Rynjin |
Is that "No Gunslinger" or "No guns"? I'm considering rolling a Bolt Ace (the Crossbow using archetype) if it's allowed.
How well would a character focused around mind-whammying people work in this campaign? Like an Enchantment focused caster, or a Mesmerist?
I notice it seems heavily based around Orcus, who I believe is very focused on undead?
DM. |
POSIBLE HOOKS
1. To Boldly Go: The Desolation is a largely ignored and unexplored wasteland where two massive armies virtually smashed them
selves to pieces. Those who have braved its depths have hurriedly passed through studiously ignoring the battleground around them and the ruined city it surrounds. Surely something of value remains to be gleaned from such a cataclysmic conflict of old. In this instance, the party, having gained enough power to attempt it, can be one of the few to have ever tried plumbing the great unknown that is the Desolation. Most have deemed it too dangerous or devoid of anything of value, but there are always legends of some great knight who fell on the battlefield clutching his powerful sword that was never recovered or some powerful wizard whose mighty staff disappeared in the melee and must still be lying out there somewhere. Perhaps the party just wants to be the first to have successfully braved the farthest corners of the Desolation and lived to tell of it. Parties of a less lawful bent might be interested in the rumors of burial mounds that were erected for
noble warriors who fell in battle and were interred with portions of their riches.
2. Trail Blazers: A party of this level has many connections gained over their career. One of these, a merchant-lord and sometimes patron of their expeditions, has his eye on the lucrative trade of the distant north. There are fortunes to be made but the risks and expense are too great to make caravans through the Desolation worthwhile. However, if a party of proven adventurers could tame the area and open a safetrade route, a monopoly on the new route could be established and a fortune made by all. Maybe he wants someone to clear the monsters out of the Desolation altogether, or perhaps he just wants a safe route to be found that can easily be controlled and kept secret. Either way such an endeavor has never been successfully accomplished, but if the right group could be persuaded to undertake the task...
3. Land Grant: Rewards come in many forms to parties of successful adventurers, not always just heaps of gold and magic items. For the successful completion of a recent mission a king has bestowed upon a member of the party noble title and grant to land at the farthest flung reaches of his holdings. The land just so happens to be in the Desolation. The party must come to the Desolation to try and not only bring order to the Camp but tame the wilds of the Desolation as well in order to establish their fiefdom.
A variation on this theme is that a newly ennobled baron has just received such a grant and needs to hire a party of adventurers to reclaim his lands for him. Perhaps minor titles and land grants await them if they are successful.
4. Save the Forest: If the party is of a more naturalist demeanor (druids, rangers, barbarians, etc.) they could come to the Desolation in order to erase the centuries-old blight from the lands. Common wisdom says that surely some source of evil taint remains to keep the land corrupted, so if such a taint were discovered and removed
the forces of Nature could begin their process of rehabilitating the
accursed ground. Players following this track could have some interesting interactions with the Reclaimers at Area A5.
5. Sleepless Knights: A cleric of Muir has located in the temple
archives a set of orders issued by Zelkor during the Battle of Tsar that somehow survived and were transported back to civilized lands. These orders detail the assignment of the paladin lord Bishu and his company, adherents to the faith of Muir, to hold the city of Tsar and await relief from the Army of Light. Lord Bishu was always thought lost in the Dungeon of Graves like the rest of the Army of Light. The fact that he never returned and the possibility that he or some of his command may have survived for some time at Tsar holding to their duty has ignited the church hierarchy. What did Bishu accomplish during his time in the city? Do his bones, surely now sacred relics of the church, still rest there awaiting repatriation? Could he or any of his knights somehow by the grace of the gods have survived all the intervening span of years and man their posts still awaiting relief? The church cannot
afford to send any of its own on a possibly foolhardy mission into unknown danger with only a small hope of success, but adventuring parties are often to known to undertake such assignments.
6. Sinister Secrets: Zelkor was not the only one suspicious of the disciples’ sudden withdrawal from the city after the Battle of Tsar.
The record of that event is well-known and has been pondered by many since that day. Was it all just to trap to destroy the Army of Light at Rappan Athuk? If so why not reoccupy Tsar, a vast and defensible temple-city along a lucrative trade route, instead of settling for a dingy hole in the ground in some far flung forest. Could the entire withdrawal and debacle in the Forest of Hope have been a ruse within ruse to draw attention away from seemingly abandoned Tsar for some other, altogether unguessed reason? Questions such as these and more have been on the minds of the patriarchs of the temples of Thyr and Muir for some time. Now they wish to send in a small group to infiltrate the unplumbed ruins and discover what sinister secret may have been kept so well for so long. This hook works well with parties of a noble or holy content. It could also be used in conjunction with Adventure Hook 5 above.
Rynjin |
I was never a big fan of the Marksman class.
Though, if Psionics is available, a Soulbolt Soulknife could be good too. More interesting, at least. Well, lack of either Dex or Str to damage is still a big issue.
...Though I could get Wis to attack/damage.
DM. |
My thoughts on the bolt Ice
-Sharp shot is not as bad as I thought since you have to spend grit and it only works with one shot
- Vigilant shooter, and inexplicable reloader seems way underpowered, there are feats for that that you have to have taken levels ago.
So, you can play a Bolt Ace, though after level 5 you probably want to multiclass into something else to have "cool" stuff beyond "I full attack".
Rynjin |
Yar, Bolt Ace 5 and then...something else the rest for sure if I go that route.
If this were Gestalt I'd totally go like Bolt Ace/Stalker for those sweet, sweet Solar Wind Maneuvers. Solar Wind just has so much cool shit for ranged attackers, knocking people Prone, Pinning them, Disarming, Bull Rushing, Blinding, Stunning, etc.
I wish the Ranged Disarm and Ranged Trip Feats didn't take a Full-Round Action to use.
Rynjin |
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
I think I want to roll a Kineticist (Geokineticist).
Can I request one minor houserule? The Extra Wild Talent Feat, for some reason, restricts you to Wild Talents of a spell level 2 levels lower than the highest you can use. Can that be full level like all the Extra Talent sort of Feats?
Rynjin |
Extra Wild Talent is a Feat that gives me more Wild Talents. They're like Rage Powers, Discoveries, Rogue Talents, and so on, but for the Kineticist.
For some reason, Extra Wild Talent limits you to Wild Talents 2 levels lower than what you could normally pick, and requires 6th level to even take it at all.
They're organized kind of like spell levels, so that means that at 7th, if I took Extra Wild Talent, I could only take 2nd "spell" level Talents or, whatever is available at 3rd level).
Lemmy |
Earth is fairly simple, so that shouldn't be too hard.
Edit: How do you feel about joke names?
I giggle when I think of a Geo/Hydrokineticist named Stone Cold.
Pfff... Amateur... One of my sample character builds is a Stonelord Paladin named Rocky Balboulder. XD
Lemmy |
I just realized it's possible to use Slashing Cyclone to trip a whole party of enemies...
Since I like using combat maneuvers but also know how annoying they can be... I propose we make a house-rule where you can stand up or pick up an object you dropped from the floor as a swift action that provokes an AoO or as a move action that doesn't?
This way the enemy loses their full attack or takes an AoO, but not both, so combat maneuvers are still good but not as abusable against humanoid opponents.
What do you think?
Lemmy |
One of my homebrew feats. It's basically Bladed Dash for martial classes...
Lemmy |
Well, perhaps your feat is to blame :P,
more seriously, why that is different that using a polearm and whirlwind strike and lunge to trip a lot of people?
1- You can move.
2- You spend your AoO to do it.3- It doesn't require Dodge and Mobility.
I don't think it's too powerful, considering your still provoke AoO for moving unless you have BAB +11, and at 11th level, there are far mroe powerful things in play...
BUT... Maneuvers can be annoying to the GM. And I like using them, but I don't like annoying GMs, so that's why I suggested the houserule.
Rynjin |
Okay, I also request one more minor fix to the Geokineticist. One of their Utility Talents is this:
Tremorsense
Element(s) earth; Type utility (Su); Level 3; Burn 0
You can take a move action to gain tremorsense 30 feet for 1 round on any earth or stone surface that you touch. You can accept 1 point of burn to increase the duration to 1 round per kineticist level you possess. While benefiting from this tremorsense, your earth blasts and composite blasts that include earth components don't suffer a miss chance from concealment or total concealment against creatures you detect with your tremorsense.
Can we make it so it's 0 Burn for 1 round/level? Or even always-on? The other elements get stuff that is always on as their sensory power (like Fire Sight seeing through smoke and flames as if they're transparent, all the time forever).
I'm fine with being the element with the worst special movement type (competing with three different kinds of always-on Flight, and always-on Air Walk for the fourth vs my Earthglide), but I feel like he sensory power should at least be as good.
Rynjin |
Tremorsense isn't useful at all if I need to take a Move action to get it for a round. Or reduce my maximum HP by 7 points for the rest of the day just to get it for 7 rounds. Plus Fire Sight is ridiculously useful since Pyrokineticists can also make a Smokescreen at-will.
I'd trade it out...but there's not really any other good options for utility talents I can take at this level. My options were "Tremorsense" or "Get half your level to Climb and Knowledge (Dungeoneering)" (...and I have a CLimb speed already, so that first half is redundant).
Earthglide is nice, yeah, but generally not as useful for a ranged character as being able to fly all day every day like Fire, Aether, and Air can do (and Water can basically do with its Air Walk effect).
Either way, Brock Rudson is close to done.
Lemmy |
I think tremor sense all day long is too good for a 3rd level ability... But losing 7 hp to get it for 7 rounds also is pretty shitty. IMHO, the best solution is raise its duration to 1 min per level for 1 Burn and then let it automatically scale at 10th level to last all day.
The Kineticist would be much simpler and more fun if powerful abilities were left to appropriate levels, instead of giving early access to them and then taxing them with awful Burn mechanics...
Goddamn Burn mechanics... And that horrible, horrible archetype that "removes" Burn and seems to be so bad it's almost like they made it out of spite.
Rynjin |
Can it be full level rounds? 3 rounds is a lot better, but still not the greatest. With 7 rounds I can activate and be sure it'll last a whole combat, or use it to scout or something rather than it being effectively 2 rounds + another action the round I activate it.
The main reason I like special senses like Tremorsense (and Blindsight like Aether gets) is to avoid ambushes. Tremorsense isn't as good at that as, say, Scent, but it's pretty solid for anything that's not flying.
But if you feel that's too good, 1/2 level is fine for combat and the Concelament ignoring at least.
Lemmy |
I'm tempted to make a weather-based caster, but the Kineticist really disappointed me in that regard... Other than flying at will at 10th level, there isn't a lot of cool stuff allowed for wind/lightning. :(
The class is also too convoluted. Mark is favorite member of the design team, but I think he suffers with the problem of making things unnecessarily complicated.
Rynjin |
@ Nicos: Okay.
And yeah, Occult Adventures classes in general have the problem of being way too complicated, though I'd argue Mark's classes are the simplest of the bunch...even if they are the wordiest of all of them.
Take a look at the Occultist some time. Woof.
Lemmy |
Yeah, the occultist is pretty convoluted as well...
There is also the medium... Which reveals that at one point, Mark though that having freaking 54 variations that can be changed every day was a good idea. That doesn't sound like overwhelmingly time-consuming bookkeeping at all...
And let's not forget its stupid spell list that has the same problems as the Summoner's one... Wanna make a wand of Planar Binding, Plane Shift or Teleport? Now you can! Hooray! :D
Seriously, if they are going to give the class high level spells, then why the f$&* to pretend it's a 4-spell levels class?