Maximum Damage - Who can deal out the most destruction in a single round of combat?

Break it into two categories, physical and magical, as I am pretty sure no combo with backstabbing/GWW could come close to a high-level mage.

Magical

Best I can dome up with is:

Improved Alacrity
Time Stop
Dragon's Breath x 7
Abi Dalzhim's Horrid Wilting x 5

This would do 140D10 plus (at level 35) 175D8 in a single round for a minimum of 315 damage and a maximum of 2800 damage.

315-2800 damage.

You could add a chain contingency filled with three Abi Dalzhim's, for an additional 115D8 damage, for a total of 430-3720 damage.

Physical

Not sure, as I have never played a thief/fighter combo - does backstabbing work with greater whirlwind?

I bet a fighter/thief using GWW and a mislead scroll could deal out a fair bit, but you'd have to get the number crunchers to confirm. I'm not so much a number cruncher and a number mangler [img]smile.gif[/img]

How much depends on whether backstabbing works with GWW...

Assassination HLA

Assassination plus GWW = ten backstabs in one round - twenty if dual-wielding.

What two swords should the fighter-thief be wielding?

Dual-weilding will not get you 20 attacks per round. You'll get 10. If i remember right, it's 7 with the main weapon and 3 with the off-hand weapon. GWW sets the number of attacks to 10.

That's about the end of my knowledge ;) do a search - the question of biggest backstab has been done a few times. That'll help you.

Dundee Slaytern and Jim calculated the maximum single strike damage at 532 in an October post - using a particular TOB NPC dualed to a thief, with legal 25 strength and the Staff of the Ram +6.

Quite impressive for a single strike.

Which leaves the question of greater whirlwind attack open.

Dundee? Jim?

Can GWW be used along with critical strike and the backstab ability/assassination HLA?

Even without the extra 200 from the NPC special ability, that would still be 332 times 5 or 7 - for 1660 or 2334 total damage in a single round max.

Zzzz... Assassination cannot be stacked with Greater Whirlwind because both lasts only 1 round, and that particular ToB NPC cannot cast Improved Alacrity.

However... you can use Improved Haste + Assassination, so...

532 x 10 = 5320 damage in one round, happy backstabbing. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

On a magical note, there are more damaging spells than Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting. ;) 3720 damage is nothing compared to what I can do with my PRATI tactic. :D