TwilightArcanum's page

Well, urban barbarian tends to lend itself more towards a high dex build straight from the box. Unfortunately you'll be doing sub-par damage until you can get an agile weapon or unless you dervish dance. 16Dex 14Con 14Cha and you drop whatever to generate the extra three points.

You could drop your two starting human feats to grab heavy armor and then just be Two handed barbarian who happens to have okay AC and is kinda pretty. The stat array could be pretty much the same with Str and Dex switched. Also 14Str 14Con 14Cha wouldn't be too bad and then you could stick the 2 somewhere useful. In fact i'd probably go with that if I had to build a facebarian.

So now you have to tell your horse to attack the ground ten feet in front of the dude you actually want to lance. Wow

Humans can trade their free feat for the weapon training of any race. So you could pick up eleven weapon training, orc, or even the tengu one.

Are you adjusting your formula for size based on size of the party (which would be roughly from 1-infinity), if not, your math is wrong.

And no you really can't examine archetypical even and scenarios to get a fair estimate unless you can also determine the number of times each of those events come up, which of course, you can't

First things first you don't need to have the problem go from one to infinity since technically you aren't in a fight until you are within perception range of your opponent. So the problem is really from 1 to the edge of this perception range

Now here is the general way I'd go about determining the quantifiable value of any one of the monks various abilities.

Step 1. Stat up a few monk builds and enter them into your programming language of choice I'm only familiar with Matlab so I'll assume this is actually possible with that programming language though another may be more optimal. For each of these builds make sure you have an exact duplicate that is only missing the one ability you are testing for, in this example move speed

Step 2. Enter all the Monsters of Cr+-1 from the monk with all their abilities into this program. This may take awhile

Step 3. Make an imaginary battlefield that the monk and the creature will fight on

Step 3. Program a fight sequence where the two fighters start at fixed distance from each other. Then have them fight realistically,for instance if they get low enough on health they may attempt to abscond.

Step 4. Run a simulation of this 100,000 times keeping track of 4 things. Damage dealt ratio, Damage received ratio, Win rate, and Survival rate. Do this for every monster.

Step 5. Change the distance and run again till you've done every possible distance

Step 6. Change the battlefield then do step 4-5 again.

Eventually after tons and tons of testing and retesting you'll come out with the average percent, as well as the average variance, by which the monks combat and survivability are improved by the ability.

Admittedly there may be a few problems with the specific example I have given, I think there probably should be even more things analysed, yet do not let this distract from the main point of this post. Namely that there is indeed a method through which one can quantify how "good" any particular class ability is to a character.

I'm still a bit confused how you are able to deliver a touch spell through your normal attacks. From my interpretation of the rules (my eyes are bleeding btw), you should only be able to deliver the charge through your weapon from the free action the touch spell gives you.

Can a magus use spellstrike to cast a touch spell, move, and make a melee attack with a weapon to deliver the touch spell, all in the same round?

Yes. Other than deploying the spell with a melee weapon attack instead of a melee touch attack, the magus spellstrike ability doesn’t change the normal rules for using touch spells in combat. So, just like casting a touch spell, a magus could use spellstrike to cast a touch spell, take a move toward an enemy, then (as a free action) make a melee attack with his weapon to deliver the spell.

On a related topic, the magus touching his held weapon doesn’t count as “touching anything or anyone” when determining if he discharges the spell. A magus could even use the spellstrike ability, miss with his melee attack to deliver the spell, be disarmed by an opponent (or drop the weapon voluntarily, for whatever reason), and still be holding the charge in his hand, just like a normal spellcaster. Furthermore, the weaponless magus could pick up a weapon (even that same weapon) with that hand without automatically discharging the spell, and then attempt to use the weapon to deliver the spell. However, if the magus touches anything other than a weapon with that hand (such as retrieving a potion), that discharges the spell as normal.

Basically, the spellstrike gives the magus more options when it comes to delivering touch spells; it’s not supposed to make it more difficult for the magus to use touch spells

I hope this helps clear up a few things

TwilightArcanum wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you just wear a chain/hide shirt under normal clothing? If so,doesn't that sort of screw up the "He's not visibly wearing armor kill him" argument?

Arcane spell failure chance.

Now otoh, I've played an elven wizard who looked very 'bardish'. Elves have longsword and longbow weapon familiarity. I took the light armor feat, the arcane armor feat and wore mithril chain mail. End result was a decent AC, looked like a bard or thief and could cast spells without any sort of arcane failure.

Oh no, Sorry, you mistake my arguement. My argument is that in a world where someone can just as easily be wearing a chain shirt(and whatever protection it gives) under his doublet, isn't it erroneous to assume he's not wearing armor(and is therefore a wizard) just because he appears to not be clothed in mail.

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you just wear a chain/hide shirt under normal clothing? If so,doesn't that sort of screw up the "He's not visibly wearing armor kill him" argument?

So I think I can figure out ways around everything but a mother at her dying sons side. :/

Functionally I don't really have a problem with what it does I only have a problem with how it does it. So instead of a skill check with a dumb dc I'd make it a will save with a dc 10 + .5 ranks in intimidate + cha perhaps if they wanted you could still roll the dice and if you beat the old DC the person gets a negative one or maybe two to this save. Then like a witch's hex it matters not if you effect them or not you can only use it on someone once per day. Then I suppose tack on that it is a language dependent effect to limit it more.

Besides that I have a question related to this line, " The effect ends if the creature is prevented from attacking you or attempting to do so would harm it (for example, if you are on the other side of a chasm or a wall of fire)." So what happens if you would take an AoO by attacking this hypothetical antagonizer? Take for instance a man who is completely unarmed(he doesn't even have improved unarmed strike). Does the effect end immediately for him,does he have to walk up to the guy who did the antagonizing then it ends before he attacks, or does he have to take off his pants(or pick up a rock) and then throw it at the guy?

I apologize if this has been answered but I didn't see anyone mention it when I skimmed the thread