Arbane the Terrible's page

Here's a guide to playing a sorcerer that might come in handy. It might be a bit advanced for a complete noob, so just ask if you have questions.

Basic character-building advice: Charisma should be you highest stat, then Constitution and Dexterity, then Intelligence (for Spellcraft and the skill points, mainly) and/or Wisdom (for will saves & perception rolls). Strength is a good choice for a dump stat.

Pick spells you can expect to use all the time. Save the 'it might be handy' spells for the Wizards.

Play a human - each level, they can get an extra spell known instead of a skill point or hitpoint, which is kind of a big deal.

yerp! Dodge, deflect and blame the other guy indeed

As usual, The Onion is way ahead of the lamestream media in capturing the zeitgeist of this country.

(Oh, ignore the article about the last non-telepath. Good thing this is just a funny satire magazine for non-telepathic people, which is all of them. Yes.)

Peter Stewart wrote:

As has always been, and will always be, the case, the power of a given class depends entirely upon the GM in question and the player in question.

As a thought exercise, I wonder if anyone has tried to figure out which classes are the hardest to mess up via takng poor options?

That's a tough one - "Nothing is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious." Just how poor are we talking in regard to the options?

After all, you can always make a fighter with 8s in Str/Con/Dex. :-P

And at the other extreme, here's a GM who won't let the player 'get away' with ANYTHING. (This thread, and its sequel, and its spinoff blog all just keep unveiling new levels of terribleness.)

Oh, look at this:

Liberal Groups Probed With Similar Letters From IRS That Triggered Tea Party Fury

Of course, to the True Believers, this was just a smoke screen to cover Obama's VILE PERSECUTION OF FREEDOM-LOVIN-

In fact, one of those groups even had their tax-exempt status changed, whereas none of the Tea Party groups were required to change anything.

Oh.

Well, what's next on the Outrage Of The Day menu?

The press is having a field day calling these things white house scandals.

Can you blame the poor dears? They've been starved for years, now. Bush could be counted on for at least one new scandalous incidence of utter corruption or incompetence a week, Obama's barely had any worth mentioning by non-Republicans. (Since Republicans consider everything Obama does from 'existing' on up to be a scandal.)

Benghazi: I fail to understand what they are trying to find. So we get things wrong occasionally? The IRS does not have a clairvoyants on staff? I just don't get it.

It gets better - now we have a Benghazi Scandal scandal. Seems the GOP was altering emails to make them sound worse....

Vod Canockers wrote:

You do realize that diamonds are really not all that rare.

They'd be significantly more rare if they were destroyed while spell casting.

And if mines had a tendency to become infested with horrible monsters.

Now... _synthetic_ diamonds as spell components. Discuss. :D

As has always been, and will always be, the case, the power of a given class depends entirely upon the GM in question and the player in question. Trying to rank them is a fool's errand.

I don't agree. It's a simple statement of fact. At level 1, the wizard's casting Color Spray, and the fighter is hitting things with a sword. At level 20, the wizard is casting Prismatic Sphere, summoning demons, teleporting across the world and controlling minds, and the fighter is... hitting things with a sword really well.

There's definitely a quantifiable disparity here.

Have you considered -- and I don't mean this at all in a snarky way -- something like the Hero system? If want a rich, deep set of highly customizable mechanics that can model just about anything well, you might find Hero ideal.

Or Mutants and Masterminds, which is d20 based. (And it even has a sourcebook for doing fantasy characters.)

Hmm Undead create undead under their command - Specters and Shadows come to mind.

In the middle of a big city?

Probably a VERY BAD IDEA unless you want the game to end with either the Shadowpocalypse or with a high-level caster nuking the city to prevent the Shadowpocalypse.

The first Scarred Lands Creature Collection had the Feral - a creature with one soul split between multiple bodies. Every time you killed one, each of the others gained a hit die and other stat increases, until there was just one really powerful one left.

Ninjas! (Warning: TVTropes link)

I think most of the classes stay pretty much the same as in the 3.5 tier list, except maybe Paladins (who got enough nice stuff to move up a tier).

(Check out that link - JaronK does a good job of explaining HOW the tier classifications are supposed to work. It's not ALL about power.)

As for the new PF clases, my estimations:

Alchemist: Tier 3? About the same as the Bard, I'm estimating.
Cavalier: 4, maybe? I've never seen one in play.
Gunslinger: 4. They shoot stuff real good.
Inquisitor: 3
Magus: 3
Oracle: 2 (they're divine sorcerers, so they rate about the same as normal sorcerers)
Summoner: 2
Witch: 1

Also define WMD, iraq was known to have access to so many chemical/biological weapons it is not funny.

So where'd they all get to once the invasion was over and Bush really wanted a scalp to show his tribesmen?

"He's amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins and possibly Smallpox."

"He's amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas."

Seems like all that stuff vanished into thin air as soon as the American tanks started rolling in. Funny, that.

My third level feat (Extra Hex) is going to be either Fortune or Misfortune not quite decided which yet.

I'd recommend Misfortune - you;ll have a lot more enemies than allies, most days.

There's no shame in letting heroic fantasy characters consistently be heroes instead of falling prone to embarrassing gaffes roughly 5% of the time they do anything. Just let them be competent and keep Fumbles out of the game.

No kidding. The only fictional hero I can think of who screws up as often as a Fumbling PC is Inspector Jacques Clouseau, and he's... not exactly a heroic fantasy character.

Over on the GitP forums, Philistine has come up with some TOTALLY REALISTIC fumble rules!

Critical Fumble Rule:

If at any time a DM shall propose using a "critical failure" or "fumble" table of any sort in a 3.X game, the players are to beat the DM with folding chairs until each of them has accidentally struck himself with his chair at least once, while keeping a count of the number of strikes made before this happens. Then, the average rate of such "fumbles" as generated by a table full of nerds swinging improvised weapons will establish the maximum probability of a "fumble" within the game mechanics for a level 1 Commoner (note that this already will probably require rolling multiple Natural 1's in succession to confirm a fumble), with the probability dropping by at least an order of magnitude per point of BAB of the attacking character. Thus a full-BAB character at level 20 might have to roll 20+ Natural 1's in a row to before you even bother glancing at the Fumble Table.

They're even playtested at the table! :D

Also, no discussion of fumble rules is complete without mentioning the tale of Sameo, the one truly epic critical failure story.

Fumble rules are great!
...if you want to be playing "The Three Stooges Go To Middle-Earth". Any other setting, not so much.

A wise person over on the Giant in the Playground forum had this to say:

I've never met a GM who's made me insist on this but my take (as a player) on fumble rules is this:

Take ten 1st level warriors, in melee with 10 straw dummies (medium inanimate objects, AC5).
The warriors make their 1 attack per round, for 2 minutes (20 rounds); the dummies make no attacks during this time.
If, after 2 minutes of battering straw dummies, any of the warriors are dead or dying then the GM must butter his fumble rules and eat them.

I'm Arbane the Terrible, and I approve this message.

My thought: Does the GM enforce the 'fumble on a 1, no matter what' rule on NPCs, too? If not, insist on it. Fair's fair, after all.

Then play a witch with the misfortune and cackle hexes. Forcefeed his NPCs 'FUN!' and 'REALISM!' until he chokes. :D

Don't be too attached to your plotlines - they won't survive the PCs. Players will gank the 'invincible' villain on Round One. They'll ignore obvious clues and spend an entire session chasing down red herrings. They'll adopt insignificant NPCs and ignore anyone important. They'll run away from harmless things and boldly walk into obvious death, and then complain you're a killer GM.

But hopefully, it will be fun.

My biggest gripe with the ability is the fact that some monsters have some totally garbage SLA, IE Moss troll and turning into a tree. Now your barbarian hits him harder because of the Witch Hunter ability. I don't want to remove it, but maybe I'll need to house rule it, or just secretly remove damage he does when he's meta gaming because he tries to google a monster.

That hardly seems fair. Do you also stop a holy weapon from doing more damage to an evil opponent if the wielder didn't use Detect Evil first?

What's the problem? 5-footing into battle isn't really a big deal, unless you're all using reach weapons and such. It's enemy casters 5-footing away from the melee types that tends to be a source of annoyance.

I'd recommend avoiding the Vows, the general consensus is that they're not very good. Try the Extra Ki feat instead?

How about the witch class?

I'm playing a witch. They can be a lot of fun, but they're prepared casters, so expect a fair bit of bookkeeping at high level.

Their main power is their hexes - some minutes-per-day powers like flying or having prehensile hair, some whacky stuff like breathing water, showing people their future, or being able to animate a hut to follow them around, and most importantly, some powers that are mostly debuffs or save-or-lose powers that they can use once-per-day-per target. The only way you'll ever have to worry about not being able to use combat hexes is if you somehow find yourself fighting the same opponent multiple times in one day. AND they ignore Spell Resistance, which is nice at high levels.
Their spell list is heavy on debuffs, save-or-cry spells, and mind-effecting stuff (plus some healing spells), so undead are a SERIOUS pain if nobody else in the party is good at fighting them. (I speak from bitter personal experience here.)

Their big weaknesses are:
Their spell-list is a LOT more limited than the wizard's (but being weaker than the strongest class in the game isn't terrible).
Their "spellbook" is their familiar, so if your GM has a habit of going out of their way to target familiars and such, AVOID this class.
They're fragile even compared to wizards, as they're missing a lot of the wiz's defensive spells.
They have problems with Undead or other immune-to-everything-but-direct-damage opponents.

Makes sense.

Now, what would ghosts want? Sacrifices? Deeds done in their name/for their cause? A _really_ fancy tombstone? Resurrection?

Are the Planar Ally spells any good for an Oracle? Seems they'd be useful, if pricey.

In my games, if the t-rex made his save, the swallowed character did as well, if the t-rex did not, then they both take full damage.

Why?

Because, one the character has zero knowledge of the impending lightening bolt. Plus where would the character dodge to "reflexively" get out of the way of the lightening? The way electricity works on a body is it works its way through the entire body. Something in the stomach would receive the treatment the T-Rex does. So the swallowed creature would live and die by the t-rex's agility.

Where in the rules does it say you need to know an attack is coming to get a save against it?

It's worth noting that the sample ghost spellcaster in the SRD is a wizard, but he's only got spells prepared from the Spell Mastery feat.

Next question: You generally have to pay a Planar Ally: what do ghosts want?

After all, you can't take it with you. (Usually)

It's an extra limb, with a strength score. Why would you NOT be able to grapple with it?

O_O

Did the players eat your share of the pizza or something? Or do you just want to make sure that they never, EVER want to have an NPC in the party ever again?

The Slumber hex isn't one you can maintain, so that wouldn't work. Drug them while they're unconscious, maybe?

Would spells that prevent healing help? I know there's a few on the witch spell-list.

Does a normal animal turned familiar age, get old, and die like any normal member of their species?

(If so, witches are even more hosed than ever.)

"elk" = ELdritch Knight, I'm thinking.

Byrdology, what's it give darkorbit that more Magus wouldn't get more easily?

Thanks! I was afraid this one would sink without a trace.

Now, to get my GM to approve it.

Necrotic Corruption
School [Necromancy]; Level witch 3
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (fragment of bone from a destroyed undead creature)
EFFECT
Range medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
One target
Duration 1 round/level
Saving Throw Will negates; Spell Resistance yes

You reach out and subtly twist the necromantic energy that empowers the undead, turning it upon its own existence. Every round at the start of their turn, the target must make a Will save, or take 2d6 damage and be sickened for 1 turn. On a successful save, they take no damage, are sickened for one round, and the spell ends.
Undead with Fast Healing have a -4 on their saves against this spell, and Fast Healing will not function while this spell is active.
This spell has no effect on targets who are not undead.

Notes:

I am getting so sick of Undead being immune to all my witch's good spells, so I thought up this one. (This is the second version - the first one was overpowered.) The -4 on saves is there for the same reason Feeblemind has it - this is specifically intended to hose vampires, since our party is fighting them every other adventure. :-P

It's single-target, very narrow in scope, and gets a LOT of saves.
On the other hand, witches do get the Misfortune hex, and this could potentially do twice as much damage as a same-level Lightning Bolt, just spread out over multiple rounds. (At high levels, the fight's probably going to be over before this does much. Maybe the damage should scale a little?)

Too strong? Too weak? Too low-level? Just a generally bad idea? What other classes should be able to get it, if any?

Okay... I swear those were apostrophes when I copied it from word...

Yeah, Word's "smart quotes" become very stupid when run through most forums' editors. :-P

Maybe she summoned an Ice Devil?

Some non-ice creatures would probably be a good idea. The Remorhaz was already mentioned... what else would be good? Her 'familiar' saber-toothed tiger, maybe?

I don't put in hard work on a stage just for it to be skipped. That's disrespect on the part of the PCs.

They didn't just avoid encounters, they avoided entire stages. That's not a "good idea", that's called "derailing the campaign". I won't have that at my table.

If I put hard work into an adventure, I expect it to be played out.

9_9

Do you also herd your PCs towards any hidden treasure they may have missed? You did 'hard work' putting it there, after all...

Please read the following translation in the voice of the Soldier from TF2.

"How DARE you attempt to use 'intelligence' or 'strategy' to skip my painstakingly-crafted fights, mister! Now, get BACK on those rails and GRIND until I SAY you are ready for a boss fight!"

Oracles break their own legs or gouge their own eyes to enter their class. They get a little better over time though.

No, the gods do it to them.

Apparently, Oracles are selected from people who owed the gods money, or something.

A witch with a dead familiar. At least wizards can make backup spellbooks...

Doesn't stealing a cleric's holy symbol stop them from casting a lot of spells? (If anyone ever paid attention to that rule, anyway.)

From the description of the Dhampir:

All dhampirs have elongated incisors.

Incisors are the flat, wedge-like teeth at the front of the mouth. The Canine teeth are the ones that most depictions of vampires (except in Nosferatu) have as fangs.

So, all dhampires are buck-toothed. This amuses me mightily.

In AD&D days, when the Sword of the Planes debuted, the pricing of magic items was significantly different. WBL tables didn't exist.

It's also worth remembering that in AD&D days, Identify was a fairly high-level spell, and rarely used. Identifying magic items was like trial-and-error bomb disposal.

So, you don't think their mind being changed such that they offer free aid and assistance to a potentially former enemy undercuts their free will?

Oh, it totally does. Which is why GOOD spellcasters should only deal with enemies via less morally problematic methods, like burning them to death or stabbing them with swords repeatedly.

Have the barbarians favorite cleric cast spell resistance on him before the fight. I believe it apples to SLAs.

Hexes are (SU) powers, so this wouldn't work.

Does the BBEG know he's got a sleepmongering witch coming after him? I'm sure there's some tricks he could pull if he has time to prepare. (Silly idea I had - scatter small caltrops all over the room, so if he keels over, he'll get stabbed and wake up - suboptimal for a meleer, but it's a start...)

I've never used the Scar hex, personally - being able to toss Ward or Fortune on allies from long-distance sounds fun, but the Tattoed Turtle Trick always seemed way too cheesy to me. My witch has survived to level 13 so far, so I must be doing something right...

Emmit Svenson wrote:

Surrender a lot. Like, at the end of any turn when one of your goody-goody opponents is in melee range of you. Talking’s a free action.

(SNIP)
What? You’re evil!

^ Was planning similar tactics actually. Playing a woman really helps with playing on the misguided sympathies of good men. I just really hope my GM doesn't make me do a bluff check every time she bats her eyelashes at an enthusiastic worshiper of Mitra.

Finally, a possible use for the Charm Hex! Bluff isn't on the witch's class skill list, but a few points in it certainly couldn't hurt. (Especially in Way of the Wicked, which seems to involve a LOT of lying to people.)

At higher levels, Create Meatshield - sorry, Summon Monster I-IX are quite useful. (At first level, not so much.)

For self-preservation, the assorted fog spells might be useful - with a witch's pathetic AC, miss chance is your friend.

Some hexes to consider aside from the usual fortune/misfortune/etc:

Disguise: From what I remember, WotW involves a LOT of 'social engineering' - free Disguise Selfs could come in very handy.

Cook People: You're already evil, might as well embrace the cliche. And it gives you a good way to discreetly dispose of all the corpses you'll be creating. You do need the Cauldron hex first, though.

Given drow's love of darkness, the Blind-Fighting feats might be useful if you can shoehorn them in somewhere.

It's also in the SRD: Acadamae Graduate.

Random instant death is a lot easier to tolerate when the game is a plot-free skirmish wargame where making a new character involved rolling 3d6 6 times, buying some iron spikes, and thinking up a new name.

When it's two years into a three-year campaign with each character having a dozen sub-plots? Maybe not so much.

I was afraid of that. Oh, well...

Can a Witch take a level of Witch with a _different Patron_, to gain access to that Patron's spells?

Yes, it'd cost a caster level, but I'm getting mighty sick of undead.

1 Control Down Time

2 Conttrol money
3 Find out the all player wealth compair it to the weatlth by level table. See link
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gamemastering.html
4. Make sure all folks are on par or at level
5. Learn Sunder, Disarm, and steal rules. And use them. This will drive the point home to the PC.
6. Kill the PC and let him pay for the Resurrection 5K cost, and the 2 Resurrection for 2K.
7. Mage's Disjunction Trap

I know the correct response to players actually achieving anything is to BURN IT TO THE GROUND so they can get back in the dungeon, but wouldn't just telling Crafter Guy "pick another feat" be less likely to make them quit in disgust?

pres man wrote:

I think the guy is a bit cuckoo for coco puffs, but you do have to give him some mad props.

Is that her dad?

Snerk. That's her husband - former Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.