Petty Alchemy's page

Hm, I agree that the base pool of rounds should be larger. Maybe 3+Con/day, for rounds=level.

I'm all for having Versatile Performance but for Professions.

Full BAB PrCs that give some magical tricks instead of more bonuses to damage/feats.

The thing that bothers me is that it's a double penalty. Small races get smaller weapons and a Str penalty.

There are some exceptions with newer races, such as Wayangs with the Wis penalty. I think that's far healthier than sticking the Str penalty on all small races. Halflings are supposed to be athletic, but they're stuck with the penalty.

Strength as a bonus to hit never sat well with me. I've heard the arguments that it helps to penetrate armor, but how does this explain why unarmored opponents are easier to hit for those with high Strength?

I guess it's harder to block blows that have more force behind them?

You can also use Nature Soul to pick up Animal Ally.

Hey guys, so I made a Phoenix Disciple PrC.

Similar in concept to the Dragon Disciple, but rather than being a gish that becomes monstrous, the Phoenix Disciple is a front-liner that gains supernatural powers themed with elemental might and renewal. Fire is the most common element, but one could easily be a Cryophoenix Disciple, or similar offshoot. My world view allows for phoenixes of other elements.

Design-wise, this class adds utility to martials without increasing their raw damage output, which is already strong point. Wreathed in Glory is fairly weak damage that I expect to be fully resisted by enemies about 33% of the time, however it serves in doing damage to swarms. Blaze of Glory likewise is an option against swarms (and invisible opponents).

Martials often become spell-drains on their caster pals, forcing them to provide them a means of flight to get to the foe, or cast boring healing spells rather than cool spells. The PD still enjoys receiving buff spells, but can provide himself with flight and healing to lighten the load on the party.

So that's my thought process on the design. I'd appreciate feedback. Some abilities could be moved around and fine-tuned. Level 6 and 7 are barren besides earlier abilities scaling, which isn't particularly fun.

I can't really think of prerequisites that I like for this. I considered a fluff prerequisite of needing to have died and been brought back, but that doesn't really do anything besides encourage players that want to enter the PrC to commit suicide once and then be dandy.

Just go above or below it. Unfortunately martials can't fly without magic items, but thems the breaks.

People don't necessarily play those races to be a special snowflake. I don't always play Grippli but I often consider them, and I wouldn't be less inclined to play a Grippli if they were a major race in the world/party. Actually, that sounds fun.

Edit: Wow, four replies within the same minute on that. Excellent baiting.

Natural Attack rules are absurd in my opinion. Why have an iterative attack system in place via BAB when you can instead have multiple attacks from the start at no penalty?

I get that the house cat has claws and teeth, but why can it attack with all three in one round, when a warrior can't pull off two punches and an elbow strike in the same time?

Frogs are cool, sir.

The double-barrel musket almost feels like cheating. But it doesn't reshape reality -besides turning things into corpses- so I guess it's fair.

Grippli - The best race. There is nothing more awesome than being a 2ft tall frogman in a world of hairless apes that take themselves too seriously.

I agree with switch-hitting, the question is which you want to be your focus. Do you want to fire an opening shot on the first turn, then switch to your sword? Or do you want to stay in the back and have the sword as an option for necessity/cleaning up?

I'm surprised they didn't give all martials a minimum of two good saves. Weird.

Returning isn't even that good, since it comes back to where you were standing rather than where you are.

I like the idea of a weapon-thrower, but I shelf it for other systems (or homebrew it). If you want Dex to ranged damage, best off being a gunslinger.

It would have to be pretty rich goblins to disarm themselves of an 8k weapon per attack.

Seems like Agile works with range, though throwing weapons is still a bad prospect in Pathfinder.

I often get a lot of mileage out of Evasion, but that's pretty much it.

Acid Splash can also shut down regeneration (of stuff like trolls), and maybe ruin some delicate metalwork (ie the insides of a lock).

Recently the mighty beard sword has been pointed out to me. So let's say your main offensive is indeed the beard.

What can we do with our hands? A shield and casting spells perhaps? What class will facilitate this? Is there another task for hands?

Why is that a problem? And you can use your own CL if it's better, but you don't have to.

I don't see where it says that, I'm looking here: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Creating-Staves

Magic Item creation general says: A creator can create an item at a lower caster level than her own, but never lower than the minimum level needed to cast the needed spell.

I don't see anything stopping you from having a CL 20 Staff of Light.

If simplifying weapons as a whole is in your interest, why not adopt an a la carte approach as the Legend RPG does?

You can have basic damage die depending on the category of the weapon (light, one handed, two handed), then pick X qualities (reach, trip, better crit range/multiplier), with perhaps more such qualities depending if the weapon is simple/martial/exotic.

I think people are thrown off by the topic name "What sort of monk for a new player", then the post says exactly the type of monk the player wants.

The immediate action attack is generally used when an AoO would not be provoked.

It seems pretty strange, but I don't see anything in the rules. Have I overlooked something, or is this legal?

Or even just ask for access to the archetype on another race, there's nothing super ratfolky about it.

It's very much the best in "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes? I don't shoot until I can see the tears glisten on their cheeks."

Unfortunately that also makes it very dangerous, and best played in a group in which someone is playing a bodyguard (either martial or shield other).

Metal fighting beards

One of the rare cases in which rule of cool is present in Pathfinder.

What about attacks of opportunity then?

Immediate actions are a fun way to stay involved while waiting for your turn. I wish there were more, as I find some characters have too much to use their swift/immediate for, while others never use that action at all.

As has been mentioned, this is likely a reaction to his Archer dying. Let him have his fun for a few sessions, then he might miss the semblance of challenge. Or he might enjoy curbstomping things. Whatever's fun.

One of the cool things you can do with Undine Monks is take Hydraulic Maneuver and pick up Hydraulic Push as Qinggong power. It's not super strong, but it's pretty cool.

I'm played a similar character but such a character works best in a big melee party. When you're the only frontliner, you aren't sharing your blundering defense with anyone.

I used Crane Style (it was good back then), and was considering the Golden Legionnaire PrC. He dipped into Aldori Swordlord PrC to use Dex. The Fighter archetype Swordlord gets Steel Net at 7, which is also pretty great.

Petty Alchemy wrote:

The American Colonies: Don't Tread on Me.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

The hound from Game of thrones. Might manage to climb himself up to CGJammie is CE and might climb his way up to CN (or further) but attempted murder of an 8 year old is a reeaaaaaally deep pit.

The Hound is LN going CN.

Jamie is LN on the path of redemption to LG. After all, he was commanded to push Bran by the Queen and he is sworn to obey.

Edit: This is interesting because both the Hound and Jamie have killed a child at the request of the royal family, yet you assign them rather different alignments.

And ironically the killing of children isn't the act that keeps me from making either of them Lawful. . . it does start them both off as neutral however.

With Jaime its the King slaying that you have to reconcile against the strict code of the order of Knights he's sworn to-- vows which he otherwise hasn't broken except two obvious breaches (kingslaying and incesting).

As far as the hound. . . (going to spoiler tag this since its not first book necessarily)
** spoiler omitted **

Tyrion's henchman character is another interesting candidate for CN, though since he is solely motivated by greed I'd say NN or maybe a hint of NE.

Another example-- The Bloody Nine/Logen Ninefingers-- definitely starts off as CN.

The American Colonies: Don't Tread on Me.

The hound from Game of thrones. Might manage to climb himself up to CGJammie is CE and might climb his way up to CN (or further) but attempted murder of an 8 year old is a reeaaaaaally deep pit.

The Hound is LN going CN.

Jamie is LN on the path of redemption to LG. After all, he was commanded to push Bran by the Queen and he is sworn to obey.

Edit: This is interesting because both the Hound and Jamie have killed a child at the request of the royal family, yet you assign them rather different alignments.

Probably Human or Half-Elf to use the favored class to learn more spells. Skill Focus can be put into Perception (or you can use Focused Study to get a few over your career).

My experience with Stunning Fist differs. If you invest little into it, it may have poor odds, but the payoff is just that good. Against Arcanists your odds go up notably. And you can use it to Fatigue a Barbarian with some luck, shutting down their Rage until they can take 8 hours to rest.

It's also pretty easy to pump your DC with Mantis Style, perhaps Mantis Style and Ability Focus if you really want to. Even so, I'd take odds for a stun over 2d6 damage any day.

Edit: Should also mention putting Stunning Fist on your AoO against slippery rogue types.

Sub Zero makes a good point about Dirty Tricks with weapons. In general you just use weapons for disarm, sunder, or trip

Also Assassins make it pretty tough for people to be brought back. Destroying the body pushes you to even more expensive and higher level spells.

Sometimes you get a character really integrated into the plot, he's a mover and shaker, his personal backstory is starting to show as the DM puts an adventure in his homeland with his personal villain...and he dies. Putting in a completely fresh character without those ties you've already developed can kinda suck, or even if you put someone in whose backstory ties them as much into the plot, he still wasn't actually around for all those moments in the campaign.

Anyway, it's not personally a deal-breaker for me. I'd still play a game where resurrection magic doesn't exist.

I think the chance to stun is worth a lot more than a little elemental damage, unless the campaign is going to be full of targets that are immune to stuns. The DC will scale by your full level rather than Monk after all, while five levels in Winds gives you +2d6.

Koan is excellent (as it so happens my current Monk is using it), but it takes a swift action so that interferes with most other monk stuff. Matters less in a primarily fighter build, but your ki pool will also be fairly limited then.

Either way he ain't swinging back (or he's doing it blind).

You don't need to worry too much about your AC when your opponents are blind (if you're willing to gamble on succeeding at your task). You could go for dance, I enjoyed picking up Greater Trip and Vicious Stomp, since leading with the blind makes the other combat maneuvers that much easier.

You're lucky. My DM has us climb and swim ALL THE TIME so most of us veteran players with him always have points in those skills.

Bah, in my day we had to climb, swim, and balance to get to the adventure, and it was uphill both ways. And Balance was a stand-alone skill that did nothing else.

Oh, I thought you wanted a head slot item that did a mini (30%) Empower on all of your spells.

gnomersy wrote:

Marthkus wrote:

And if I cast protection from evil enough times, I'll stay a good character.

Because that is as equally dumb as being a saint who becomes evil by binding demons.

Which is why I said there were certain spells which I felt were alignment neutral but name me a saint who got that way by summoning demons, and furtermore explain why if he's so saintly he couldn't call upon an angel instead to help him in which case he doesn't plague the world with an increased number of unholy beings made of pure congealed evil.

Well supposedly King Solomon summoned a lot of demons and he was generally considered a good guy. And keep in mind he was making them do stuff in the name of God who is generally considered good.

Word of David (through word of Joseph Heller) says Solomon was a dim-witted plagiarist, I'd say neutral at best.

For some reason I thought it was like Staggered, maybe due to 4e Daze. In that case it's definitely a nice feat, though it'll be pretty late in your career.

Speaking from my experience playing a MM Dirty Trick specialist:

Maneuver Master can stack on Dirty Tricks and other maneuvers quite well. The +Wis swift is what you'll usually use, since it costs no Ki (assuming your Wisdom is up to snuff). If your DM allows you to Dirty Trick with your weapon, that's a point for the Fighter. Otherwise, point for the Monk.

Dirty Trick Master didn't exist when I played my monk, but two things: The monk gets it very late since it has BAB +11 prereq, and it's a trap feat. You're better off going with Blind from one trick than Daze/Nausea in two tricks. Of those three conditions they're going to just wipe it with a standard action anyway, since they're nearly equally crippling. As a maneuver master monk you can apply Blind and Entangle (or whatever your second favorite is) and then they're still entangled when they clear off the Blind.

get claws skills.

I think I like where this is going...

Monks are pretty good in social situations with Sense Motive.

Sorcerers are better off when waking up naked in a cell, should you find that occurring often.

This thing has derailed on the first page.

There is no parley when the rules are just guidelines.

There is no way a Sorcerer can maintain the same Int score as a Wizard without taking serious hits in Charisma, his own main casting stat (barring Sage bloodline as mentioned, though it's not cheese IMO). Unless you're playing with extremely generous stat gen.

It annoys me to no end that a Sorcerer needs to take a trait to make Diplomacy class, generally the most useful Cha-based skill, and has little going for him at the mage (If you're the main caster, you should be the resident Arcana/Spellcraft expert). Meanwhile Wizards get class with all Int based skills, and the Int gives them the skill points for it.

The only reason I ever pick a sorcerer rather than a wizard is due to laziness.

This is meant as a sort of community game, though given the nature of it, this forum seems to fit best.

Roll for a Magic Item, then provide stats for it. Hardmode would be taking the first item you roll.

Cruel Kings' Crossbow
This heavy repeating crossbow is made of dire elk horn and gold. It was created for a mad king who made sport of his own court: "It's fun because they dare not fire back".
+3 Heavy Repeating Crossbow, gains Bane against enemies that have not damaged the wielder within the past 24 hours.