Dakumi's page

I wanted to make a wizard with a Transmutation focus, casting beast shape in most fights to get stuck-in with the fighters. I was curious how changing shape alters your character outside of gaining the medium/tiny size changes. Do you lose the ability to cast spells while an animal? Do your ability scores change to match the animal, or stay the same? Does your HP change? Those kinds of things.

Any other things to think about or reflect on when being the 'animal mage' would be helpful. As an aside, I wanted to be a wizard instead of a druid because many of the wizard spells are more appealing then being a druid, although druidic beast shapes are also appealing.

Series of simple questions pertaining to natural attacks and how they interact.

We're playing a brawler/18 and alchemist/2

We grabbed tentacle as the discovery for grappling and fighting.

"Benefit: The alchemist gains a prehensile, arm-length tentacle on his body. The tentacle is fully under his control and cannot be concealed except with magic or bulky clothing. The tentacle does not give the alchemist any extra attacks or actions per round, though he can use it to make a tentacle attack (1d4 damage for a Medium alchemist, 1d3 damage for a Small one) with the grab ability. The tentacle can manipulate or hold items as well as the alchemist’s original arms can (for example, allowing the alchemist to use one hand to wield a weapon, the tentacle to hold a potion, and the third hand to throw a bomb). Unlike an arm, the tentacle has no magic item slots."

1. Am I able to combine unarmed strikes with natural attacks?
A simple punch and a tentacle attack, for instance.

2. How does using a tentacle attack(natural) interact with swinging a sword or cestus punch(manufactured)? Assuming I want to whap someone with a punch, while using a cestus, then go for a tentacle attack/grab.
This shouldn't fight the 'no extra attacks' because it'd just be making a secondary attack with a natural weapon(I think?), penalty eventually being overcome with maneuver training+high strength+mutagen.

I'm not worried if this is not optimized, just how the rules work, since the idea of a half-orc with a tentacle getting up in people's business sounds impressive. And the half-orc racial bonus:

"Add 1/4 to the brawler’s effective level to determine her unarmed strike damage."

Will eventually negate the 2 level damage penalty.

I've got a player attempting to 'handle' a Mega Raptor after cutting it down to half health in a brutal 1v1 fight. I had the creature fall back as a DM, figuring a predator like that isn't used to taking that much damage from 'food'. The player then tried to handle dat' animal and I found no rules about handling something like that in the rules of the skill, but in diplomacy I found one for 'influencing attitude'. Since the mega raptor has an int of 6, does that count? Or would it always be Handle Animal?

These options are all great, and the half-orc and ghost rider are the most appealing. He's wanted to keep 'expert trainer' which ghost rider would lose, and he wants his cavalier class and to not play anything 'small' so fighter/familiar (while so awesome I wanna make a kobold crossbow-foxrider now) is out of question for him. He's trying to keep expert trainer.

I'll try out the idea of going with Ranger's "mounts" and the half-orc/orc feat. Otherwise I'll just cut-loose as a DM.

Are you able to use "Handle Animal" to tame a new mount, changing out your starter/current mount with a new animal that would start to level with you? Is there a different skill or action required? I know Beast Rider lets you select a new mount every level, with some fun ones at 4, but I'm considering multiclassing with Horse Master, which requires Expert trainer.

After drooling over Construct Rider for a while, I got weary of the idea of taking either expensive or caster-seeking alternatives to healing the machine. Now I'm curious if there's a better way to get a mount. I was considering taking 4 levels of cavalier, order hardly matters to me, and grabbing Horse Master with my mount so I could have a nice leveling steed.
OR
Grabbing beast master/ghost rider for the technical-ride and nabbing boon companion for a max 8th level beastie.
OR
Saving up some dosh and just buying an axe beak or warhorse when I had the dough, coughing up for the basic feats and a cheap Comb-trained horse to start.

Assuming the game should reach about mid-level to late, would it be more feasible to go after a mount with special abilities that reaches level 8- then stops, sacrifice the technical mounts for one that levels with me to have extra health and potential power, or should I just drop cash on buying a mount now-and-again to ride?

Or, after all that, should I just go with riding a construct because I'd not lose alchemist levels, but have something painful to heal?

My biggest problem is that I want to Hyde it up with a beastmorph mutagen, and the Construct rider prevents the useage of a mutagen, EVER, without giving me the ability to just HEAL the mount somehow without dropping 100 g per HD level. This makes the other three more feasible, but having a non-eating, non-sleeping, darkvision having, same-perception-score-as-a-player, mount sounds really... Well neat.

That would be perfect with a few c.l.wounds in my pocket each night, especially if I got some boro beads or what not, which should be *very* affordable if I can cover that.

So I guess I need to buy an expensive scroll, or roll a DC+5 check, and put a beating heart in my robohorse. That's a long-term solution, but I like it.

It's kind of a wild idea, being a druid that's ridden, but it sounds reasonably possible if you're willing to take the feat. To be fair, that's such a funny idea. Someone spends their entire life in defense and in tun with nature, then they go on a wild adventure where they... Pay someone... To ride them... Oh how civilization corrupts.

The Axe beak sounds like the best suggestion, along with the monstrous mount feats. Sadly, he's trying to avoid beast rider, he wants to keep expert trainer in case he wants to multiclass, to keep Horse Master as an option without retraining.

He's not so crazy he's running after a griffon or a construct horse, just something that he could start with that's different then a 'another horse'. The axe beak sounds promising and the 'every class suggests this' camel is too close to a horse.

As for what he 'wants' it's up in the air. He's willing to wait for the creature to 'grow up' to large size so he can ride it eventually, and he's okay with just about any theme. I'm not taking them underwater, but underground and through cities and forests. He's- of course- interested in anything that can fly, is somewhat more partial to dinosaur-like creatures, and likes anything that's weird or has a fun ability, even if it's less powerful as a fighting mount. He's torn between being a mounted-archer and a lancer. Hopefully that gives a bit more direction.

Side note: Ghost rider cavalier sounds neat as brix. What's it from?

I'm playing as a new DM for a group and our cavalier wants something other than a horse to start with, and they're not going with beast rider. Could I get suggestions for what be good alternate mounts? He's a medium sized character and does not want to play a smaller race, but he's willing to swap to one of the same size. I'm open to non-core content, since I'm too brave for my own good. The 'theme' of the adventure is rather open, since we're more focused on having fun then sticking with that, I just want this to be "Fair".

I didn't think of that in the phrasing. Guess it's tindertwig and 1... Extra point of fire damage. Woof. And yeah, a cohort keeps looking better in this game each time I keep trying to resist playing a gunslinger.

"You can light up to six incendiary arrows as a full-round action (a standard action if you use a tindertwig)"

"Once lit, the arrow burns for 2 rounds."

Assuming I only wanted to light one of them to fire one of them, how much time would it take to light and then fire a single Inc. Arrow? How much time would it take with the tindertwig? (Assuming I was too rich to care about spending an extra G' every arrow)

When reading it's description I found: "This spell does not affect creatures (including constructs)". Unless they changed that rule or my DM overrides it, that won't work for me.

I've decided to go against my better judgment as a newer player and nab a construct mount from the Alchemist subclass of "Construct Rider". I've found Make Whole and Rapid Repair spells, but are there other methods to repair constructs? I'm hoping for an item, like a wand or scroll, that I could use to throw out a heal now-and-then. I'm using "Use Magic Device" so any class or racial restrictions could, eventually, be nulled. To be fair, even if there are only a small amount of ways to heal a construct, the idea of a horse that belches beam-bombs and lets me slash with a greatsword is far too appealing to not try this at least once.

From what I can tell from the above...

I could wield a two-hander in either set of arms and use one of them per-round to make single attacks, with more attacks with a growing BAB bonus, but not gain an 'extra attack' from either because the vestigial arms own text prevents that?

When I reach level 7, or so, and gain +6/+1 BAB, would that allow me to attack with one weapon twice at my BAB, or either weapon once with the first at 6 then the other at 1?

Honestly, just being able to keep two-two handers at the ready without using quick draw/sheath works fine for me. Reach weapon and a Greatsword sounds 'gross' enough for a feat/discovery at second, or in this case third, level.

As another added bonus, if I were to make an AOO against someone, would that be possible with either applicable weapon, such as the reach at range/greatsword up close and personal, or would something else govern which weapon I could use? Since I'm not making an 'extra attack' vestigial arms seems to permit using either weapon.

I love the idea of this so much I'm willing to put up with it's oddities, but I'm curious if anyone else has played with this and their GM's to have suggestions on good "alternate mounts". A mechanical horse is cool and all, but other creatures would be more fun, I feel. Any suggestions on better mounts? Not just because they get pounce+rake metagame-metagame, but because they'd be 'fancier' or just more interesting. As a side note, how do you heal a construct of damage as a construct-riding alchemist? Am I able to heal it's body with an alchemist check? Do I just take an hour to repair it out of combat? Are there specific rules?

So just swapping my 'primary grip' between the greatsword and the blunderbuss would allow me to either shoot or swing with no penalty if I just doubled up on two handers with 3 hands to hold them? Great. I'll use my last hand for a shield and go nuts.

One level of gunslinger, nineteen levels of alchemist. I'm grabbing vestigial arms twice using the natural second level discovery + 'extra discovery' feat at level 3. Since this would give me a total of four arms, I'm planning on wielding a greatsword in my upper arms and a blunderbuss in my lower set, keeping the greatsword in the 'primary arms' pair and the blunderbuss in the 'offhands'. My questions for this playstyle are:

1. What penalty would I take when using the blunderbuss like this if I were to just fire it using my pair of lower off-hands, with and without multi-weapon fighting?

2. Am I able to re-grip my primary hand on my blunderbuss, leaving my greatsword in a my off-hands to fire my blunderbuss without/with less penalty? For instance:

Free-action let go of greatsword and grip blunderbuss

Fire blunderbuss as a standard action

Use Rapid Reload+Paper Alchemist rounds to move action reload B.Buss
(I could always just wait a round to reload if I run out of paper rounds)

Free-action re-grip greatsword and blunderbuss in original hands...

If not the above, then can I just 'swap out' which pair of hands is using either of the weapons, upper w/primary or lower w/double off-hands?

3. Are there any feats that might help this along? Would taking two-weapon fighting assist in using these abilities?

4. To make this really fun, would I be able to stick a buckler in the lower pair of hands and keep my AC bonus with all this handy-swapping?