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The Haunt Shift trick for near immortality. Okay, this one is complex, so you'll need to read the Libris Mortis entry on hauntings and cross reference to Animated Objects in the Monster Manual. Note that this trick requires a charisma of 17 and either good or evil alignment.

Hokay, so here's the basics. Haunt Shift is a spell, 6th level IIRC (it might be 5th, but whatever), that lets you haunt any object from Huge to Tiny size using undead. The important bit here is that the undead must have 8HD or less for the spell to activate, but all the really good abilities only work for 10HD or more undead with a charisma of 17. That's okay, we won't let that get in your way.

First of all, you need to create a new body for yourself. Pick whatever you like, but make sure to look over the Animated Object rules in the Monster Manual... various forms get various bonuses. My favorite is to look like a claw footed centaur with giant wings and chains running down the body (the wings won't let you fly, but they should count as sheet like in grapples, letting you blind enemies). Or maybe just make a statue of yourself. Whatever, your call. Now, you'll want a good material for this, and there are many options. Obdurium has a hardness of 30, so that's awfully useful, but watch out for Rust Monsters. Note that Stronghold Builder's Guide says that a 10'X20'X6" wall of the stuff (IIRC) is 4kgp in materials, so it's not even all that expensive. Ceramic is another great choice... the hardness is basically nothing, but then again nothing specifically attacks it, unlike virtually everything else. Glass too.

Okay, so you know what form you want, and you have your material... what now? Okay, cast Magecraft and Fabricate to build the thing with Dwarvencraft Quality. Isn't it fun being a Wizard or Archivist and being able to craft with the best of them, never having done it before? But with the +5 from Magecraft and your Int score, you should have little trouble when you take 10 and build this thing. As an Archivist, you could also use Divine Insight. Dwarvencraft Quality increases the hitpoints by 10 and the hardness by 2 (more on the hitpoints later).

Great, the object is crafted. Next step. Cast permanent invisibility (hey, it's an object, so this works). Cast see invisibility while you work for a bit... losing your body is REALLY embarassing. Now, get your caster level as high as you can (Consumptive Field is best for this, but not available to Wizards) and launch a Hardness spell, which increases the hardness of the body (as an instantaneous effect, woot!) by half your caster level. Awesome. Now cast Augment Object, which doubles the hardness for 1 day per caster level. If you can find a Psion, have them cast Matter Manipulation, which costs a trivial amount of Exp (so it shouldn't cost TOO much) and increases both the hitpoints and hardness of the object significantly.

Okay, now at this point you may be wondering how you're going to get in there if you're not undead. No worries, you're a caster, such trivial issues do not concern you. And more to the point, two spells in Spell Compendium make you count as undead for purposes of all spells, so just use those. Sure, you're only a legal target for a short time, but that's fine, spells only check when cast, and it's instant so it's not like it could come off later. Also, the HD issue. For this, you're going to need to craft a scroll of Haunt Shift and get some holy or unholy arrows, depending on your alignment. Just equip (hold) enough of them to drop your HD to 8 for purposes of all effects (that's what negative levels do) and use the scroll to haunt shift yourself into your nifty new invisible super hard body. Woot!

Okay, so what have you got? Well, first of all you can move your body any way you want. Nifty. And since you're now part of the object, you can still cast spells... note that the only rule for casting spells is that you can make the gestures. There's no rule about it being your normal hands that do it (though there is the rule that you have to actually have hands... you DID build your statue with those, right?). Hauntings explicitly can speak no matter what, so verbal components are fine too. Your vision is limited to only 60 feet, which is kind of annoying, so you might want to permanently Rory's Telepathic Bond with your familiar or use Chain of Eyes to deal with this issue. But more importantly, you now use the object rules for taking damage, which means such goodies as "can't take damage from piercing" and the fact that you now take half damage from darn near everything. Combine that with the hardness thing and you should have little to no trouble.

Note that your hitpoints aren't well defined, but the best reference is that you have the hitpoints of an animated object of the appropriate side (since Haunt Shift says you control the body like an animated object). The other option is to use the rules on hitpoints per thickness from various sources, but that gets a little funky as it's unclear which thickness to use.

Also, if your body is ever destroyed, it's a little unclear as to what happens, but most likely the lack of a haunted body ends the spell effect, so you'd pop out next to it as though excercised. Probably naked though, so you might want a contingency for when that happens. Also, watch out for martial adepts (though they can't use those darn mountain hammer things unless they're on the ground) and the Shatter spell (make sure you're big enough to avoid that!).

Anyway, there's more details, but you get the idea. As for how to use this in a balanced manner, hauntings are fine if you don't build custom bodies or pump their hardness through the roof. Just use undead minions instead of yourself. They do make wonderful tanks. As for house rules: just don't allow players to possess hauntings themselves, and keep those hardness spells away, and you should be fine.[/quote]
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