LYCANTHROPES!? You want I should use silver? What am I? Made of money?
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I would say it's still the EK archer build with 1 fighter 5 wiz 6EK and 2 arcane archer, the ability to shoot and anti magic field into someones chest cavity from range is basically the penultimate in caster shutdown capabilities.
By the way, totemic skald is incredibly fun for healing if done right. Follow me here: you gain fast healing equal to the Strength bonus your song provides Basic, we get this Your allies share in the fast healing granted by your Skald's Vigor K, whole party gets it now a totemic skald grants the animal focus abilities of his totem animal (as the hunter's animal focus ability) to all allies affected by his raging song. Combined with Bull: The creature gains a +2 enhancement bonus to Strength. This bonus increases to +4 at 8th level and +6 at 15th level. Now you roughly double the amount of fast healing you can do, reaching fast healing 12 at 16th. I believe there are more things you can do
Callers feather was a huge tip, combined with augmented calling and spell perfection that would let a wizard hit 24hd
What if the Pit Fiend wishes that will succeed on the next ability check that it makes? Magic Circle, after all, does not prevent them from making an ability check to escape the trap. If that were the case the player could have simply use wish to discover the truename of far higher level things by passing the check with a Wish.
Augmented calling feat allows you to call 20hd with greater binding, spell perfection gets you 22, and darkfire adept could add one to that.
you hijacked your own thread, I came here to help build Ron Bardgandy
I'm not clear which nerfed version you mean, but assume RAW.
you have your one wish for the year still available. How do you use it to remedy the situation, keeping in mind that all forms of dimensional travel are blocked via the anchor and none of your abilities can cross the circle line?
Okay, here's a different, radical idea: Don't sweat it. Let them have fun and play the game. If characters they're bringing in are too optimized, feel free to have a chat with them when they're creating them and point out that they're being a bit meta-game and ask them not to. It's a good answer, but I hate the answer at the same time. "too optimized" is a real stab in the heart to people who love game mechanics, and certain things which might be cool in concept are really frustrating to play mechanically. You run into that once and you decide not to waste your time anymore, you look up mechanically excellent builds and select the one you like the best and now you're a power gamer when in reality you just didn't want to fall into the trap of playing an unsupported build. Also, if you play certain classes you end up too optimized from the start (wizard) which really invalidates any argument against a supremely optimized fighter or rogue in my mind.
If the party comp supports it (two melee bros), a whip rogue with Gang Up is ungodly good, and at that point Rake is better (IMO) because you're going to be sneak attacking a lot.
I've been building a wizard for Way of the Wicked and I'm strongly considering the human feat chain for Defiant Luck to start things off. Of all the classes I think the wizard is least likely to screw something up by taking the wrong feats, so can you recommend some fun feats (or even whole builds) to take which are outside the box for a wizard? I really don't want to fill my first 10 levels with variations of spell focus and spell penetration.
EK is crap to all but wizard these days. All the other arcane classes have level scaling abilities that they lose to take EK. EK is also crap for anything but the archery build now that we have so many options for melee styles casters. On the other hand, that EK/wiz archer is supremely fun to play.
Neat, what's the benefit of doing it all one handed? A shield?
Don't you mean Ammo Drop for the feat that lets you load as a swift? Also won't he need Juggle Load, the follow on feat that changes loading to a free action?
We decided to run Way of the Wicked instead of waiting for the new AP to come out. I decided on a wizard, and I was going to go Diabolist, I just couldn't figure how it would be better than a straight wizard. In fact, the wizard ends up being just as good or better with some additional effort. Still, the charisma bonus probably does save you from needing to debuff your target devil a few times, so there is a small advantage. I really can't see what the damnation feats do though, there is such a limited list of spells with the evil descriptor for which it would help.
Bloodrager would give him the opportunity to have a familiar (Boo!) and take Escape Route, and completely avoid the entire problem of threatening areas for opponents.
Hey my friends, gonna start this AP, in party we are 1wizard, 1cleric and 1fighter pretty standard ^^, i dont think be rogue is good idea, his saves sucks, and this campaings have lot of magic ^_^, sooo ideas :3 builds or whatever. Bye and sry for my bad english :P Well I wouldn't say the rogue is ^^ hrmm... well I still think the unchained rogue is... ^_^ :3 Yeah you're gonna need a slayer.
The EK will make the Skald worse, Skald is a very strong option.
I was considering the same issue for my diabolist in an upcoming campaign. I decided this is the appropriate time to just go ahead and use simulacrum to make a succubus, because they really can't be trusted unless you weird science one yourself.
You're gonna need to remove the Oracle. Just have your PC stand up and say he doesn't feel the oracle is pulling his weight, that it's threatening the lives of you and your fellow party members, and that until the oracle gives up his vow of combat celibacy you're not heading back to the dungeon. You're an adventuring party, it's like a business. Get a majority vote and fire him. Just insist your character feels the Oracle is the biggest threat to the lives of the party members. Optionally, just say that you've been inspired by the Oracle and you too will be joining him in his "do no harm" vow and ask the others to join you in it. If the DM won't work with the Oracles desire to weaken the party, then you shouldn't either.
I guess I should have read the rest of the statement, oh well. Still plenty of ways to get that sneak attack.
Based on the player identifying the Slayer first, I'm going to do my best to uphold the idea and let the player play what initially grabbed his/her attention. I think it's pretty well know that any archer is going to lay down more damage than almost any other party member, so I don't think you need to plan too meticulously to make sure the newer player has enough oomph. A slayer archer doesn't need to rely on sneak attack at all, and can pretty much ignore it while still contributing more damage than anyone but some of the barbarian builds (or a few other archers). The Gang Up feat is INCREDIBLY easy to build for, and as long as there are two melee in your party you will see plenty of opportunity to use it (http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fn#v5748eaic9n87 to see the FAQ where they say it's allowed) Shatter defenses along with the countless ways to achieve intimidation are another way to get this going, and don't forget about the Goz mask + any sort of fog cloud effect. I think you can safely run slayer without issue, and frankly archer slayers are awesome without the need of sneak attack. Finally Slayers have the ability to take some of the initiative/surprise rogue talents, which let him land sneak attack openers regardless.
I think the best caster/archer in the game is fighter1/wizard5/EK10. I've played it myself and it's really excellent at all levels relying on how OP archery is for the first few levels and then leaning more into magic to buff up and compensate for missing stuff later. You end up with 9th levels spells. You can even dip 4 of AA at some point so you can drop the anti magic shell cheese on casters.
The trapfinding trait was opened up to the party, the cleric has it. Also the AT doesnt seem to come into his own until later levels. Emeral Spire ends at 13th at most. I'd hate to spend the whole campaign sucking only to just get good enough on the last levels
any link to a good arcane trickster build?
The cleric is a summoner/buffer, we don't force anyone to heal and especially with the witch and cleric summoning there should be plenty of stuff in the way to soak damage. I've been considering some stuff along the lines of a gunslinger or archer, but conjurer wizard is also in the mix.
focusing on enchantment with a witch already in the party?
We have a Witch, an Evangelist Cleric and a Bloodrager. What would you run for the 4th player?
can full attack anything in a 45' wide circle So you mean 20' reach? Yeah it's not hard. You can build an abberant bloodrager who gains 5' reach at 4th along with access to enlarge person and long arm. At 4th level you can have a 20'reach with just that since they all stack which means a 40' reach with a reach weapon and later a 50' reach with lunge.
TWF itself is mechanically deficient due to requiring more resources for an inferior product. I can't build a good playable TWF ranger that I'm happy with, but I can build extremely playable 2h rangers no problem. It really requires looking hard at your ranger style options, I like Gorums best.
Any class built with a pounce mechanic (without giving up too much) plays drastically better than a character without that mechanic. You can build without pounce, but you're doomed to spend half your time without something to do but move. You can design around it by taking the cleave feats and hurtful, invoking more than one attack after moving via those mechanics. That ends up being just fine. There are just some classes where it's harder to do than others.
Optimizing hurtful really means waiting for cornugan smash at level 6/7 on a full BAB class. Anything sooner and you're blowing more feats for a more questionable applicability (immunity to non lethal). Also, the progression of your intimidate bonus slowly outpaces the target number by .5 per level, so the longer you wait to bring it online the less feats/traits you need to blow pumping intimidate for a certain roll.
In every AP I've run in as a player the GM applies a minimum of the advanced template to all creatures and buffs up the big guys even more, he then removes loot from the APs to the point where we never make WBL and the adventures still become obscenely easy after a certain point. The system really loses its luster in later levels, but you can stall that breaking point a bit by not having as much loot to buy the OP items as quickly.
Actually your natural reach with longarm and lunge is 15', your reach weapon doubles your natural reach, so you can hit 30'. If you enlarge person your natural reach in this setup would go to 20' and reach to 40'.
So I've always assumed these two work together nicely, but now that I read closer it appears that heroic echo only works with spells, SLAs and magic items. Bardic performance is a supernatural ability. Do those stack? If not does the shared buff ability bypass the requirement? How are people using heroic echo? I'm trying to figure if it's worth having the eldritch heritage line for this bloodline.
Nothing will beef you up like the reach build suggested above. That and a boarding pike are extremely good for the campaign. Coupled with a source of slipstream (multiple castings stack) you're going to be very impressed.
Agreed, there are so many ways for archers to get into melee without any real drawbacks, and archery is so vastly superior to melee on most classes that I wouldn't let anything stop me from making an archer if that's what I wanted to play.
I just looked at that build. First of all, the familiar still gets all the saves and whatnot, still pretty flatly better than one bonus spell from an item considering what valet familiar and lookout get a diviner, that's not considering the tremendous boon a faerie dragon is if you snag improved familiar later. I mean, in my opinion, +4 initiative and double craft speed is worth way more than one spell a day. Secondly, how are you building a melee reach EK without mentioning combat reflexes? Third, how are you telling him to take arcane archer when you laid out his feats and none of them included any of the three archery feats required to get into the class? The "third character" build made no sense, took additional traits with other vital feats missing.
Savage Dirty Tricks is a perfectly ideal rage power if you're stacking bull totem on an amplified rage skald. The save is strength based and you get to stagger/daze nauseate someone once a round. This gives you a good amount of control for a melee character. Sadly none of those conditions actually makes the target easier to hit. I know in my build I'm looking at hurtful/cornugan smash though, so the loss of an attack each round isn't quite as bad.
Reckless Rage is (IMO) terrible, you invest a feat that is power attack without the scaling. I'd much rather have Harmonic Spell, lingering performance or invest in a measterpiece.
Wow, so that now brings up a whole bag of worms. If all my moral effects are increased via courageous weapon property and the -2 AC is a morale bonus, can I negate the penalty and even eventually get a +1 AC if my +4 courageous/furious weapon is in use? Probably no, they'd say you don't get bonuses to morale effects, just morale bonuses.
I would say to avoid the bear, the extra HP is nice but it can outright kill you if your not carefull.Also, if your allies are benefiting from your raging song they have to worry about their HP as well. I would say Bull is the only great choice if you are taking skalds vigor.
The cavalier level lets you share your teamwork feat, but only for 3 plus cav lvl rds per day. Is there a way you were planning on extending this? Valet familiar template shares all teamwork feats.
Is there a reason you say that? EDIT: Found it, it's because share spell only works on spells with the target of "You" and shield other targets "one creature"
Another thing that's kind of tempting me here is to access shield other and use share spell to have my familiar cast it on me, so he is the one taking half the damage, this could essentially double the effect of our fast healing. Is it possible to share spell with the Tales of Twisting Steel masterpiece?
Also, using the totemic skald archetype you can select the bull as a totem animal, now your song provides far more strength making your vigor provide far more healing.
greater skalds vigor just provides the skalds vigor to the party, uses the same process to determine the bonus.
Fast healer feat would seem to be easy to build in due to half orcs already having free access to endurance. Get half your (inflated) con bonus to all healing effects like skalds vigor. It does not call out fast healing as not acceptable.
On the other hand amplified rage is modifying the base bonus provided by the song, not granting a separate bonus. There is certainly merit in the argument to give them the whole thing.
This build will now be used to resurrect Minsc, and give new purpose to his giant miniature space hamster Boo. If you're going to have a valet familiar why not take Escape Route and never provoke an AOO from movement?
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