bfobar's page

I think the point everybody is trying to make to EldonG is that everything his character does, an archaeologist bard can do better.

How would using a death effect, feeding the soul on round 1 to a cacodaemon, and then feeding the soul gem to a dretch or something on round 2 work? Does the Tarrasque get sucked down to the lower planes after that?

A gnome with arcane bloodline would have...

CHA 20 -> +5 DC

Gnome magic -> +1 DC

Magical lineage (color spray) + Focused spell feat (lvl 1) -> +1 DC for using metamagic and +2 for one of several targets of spell.

Spell focus illusion (lvl 3) -> +1 DC

which is a DC 19 (DC 21 for one target) will save at level 3.

Add Greater Spell Focus lvl5, persistent lvl 7, heighten lvl 9, and pump charisma for a save that is like DC 40+

I got nothing besides widen.

I would say try to pump your illusion saves so that you won't get walloped because nobody will be functional after you cast.

The Gnome race also gets a good race feat, "Effortless Trickery" for illusions and may be worth a look.

Color Spray is a good 1st level save or die for enemies.

Invisibility is the goto second level illusion spell.

Shadow evocation and Shadow Conjuration have a whole guide written about them here.

You could go with the undead bloodline and use enchantments on undead that way too.

You could take celestial bloodline and use the level 1 power for zaps and heals.

really, if the campaign is undead heavy, just take the 0th level disrupt undead and then build whatever. All you get is an arcana, two bloodline powers, and 2 bloodlines spells by level 6.

So anyway ignoring the crazy fighter nonsense, be a specialist. I recommend divination (foresight) if you want to go first, conjuration (teleport) if you want to play a god wizard and summon monsters, or evocation (admixture) if you really like blowing things up.

Also, what is the sorcerer doing build-wise? If your sorcerer is going to take haste maybe look at something else. Sorcerers excel at repeated casting of an important spell, and therefore can drop a haste every single battle while you do something like battlefield control or summon. If your sorcerer is a blaster, then you should take haste and let them handle the fireballs.

If you have two full spell progression arcane casters in the party, just try not to overlap much.

the standard action touch buff powers are for your friends.

my understanding of the auras is that you use an action to turn them on and then they go until you use a free action to turn them off.

Burning hands because I really hate swarms.

I'm just going to put it out there that all wizards should wear point hats with WIZZARD written across the front.

lead blades and impact are the same enchantment and don't stack. also, I'm not sure your fighter can afford everything on that list, need to check. also, flying monsters and you're hosed. also, UMDing reliably requires int and cha to not be dumped which will probably eat into that 26 strength. Also you have to stand next to the monsters and need buffs to do all that.

Granted if you pull all that off and roll well and the monsters are happy to melee with you, its a lot of damage.

also, the wizard may have daze or empower metamagic and then that fireball just got a lot nastier too.

Or take the whole chain and walk up to bbegs and whallop them for (16d8 + a lot) damage on round one.

So how do we like large impact bastard swords wielded by fighters with enlarge person?

I was actually thinking of making one with vital strike for extra damage hilarity. I know vital strike usually sucks, but it seems like doubling the 4d8 base damage on a standard action strike might be worth a feat.

Also the decision on which school to give up can depend on the party. If you have a bard, drop enchantment. A cleric with debuffs? Drop Necromancy. A ranger with a bow or an alchemist? Maybe you don't need blasts so badly. etc.

bfobar wrote:

We have a two handed fighter with a great sword and cleave and she has been punishing goblins with that at low level. I think her plan is to add vital strike and have the party buffers hit her with enlarge person and lead blades and watch the damage fly into the stupid levels. At least as a fighter, you can dump a feat that proves worthless every 4 levels, so remember that you can test some different techniques and then settle on your favorite.

Cleave is not a good idea in the lower levels. Lemme guess, she didn't take Iron Will or Lighting Reflexes or Improved Initiative?

Fighters are overwhelmingly offensive in nature, so you need to spend their nonFighter feats defensively if possible. Remember, Dodge and Mobility are great in the lower levels, as it sets you up to flank.

Level 1 human: Power attack, furious focus, and cleave. Vital Strike for round 1 vs bosses and meat tanks at level 2. Iron will at level 3. She's wearing Medium armor so she moves at 40 feet a round making flanking impractical. The rogue is taking dodge and mobility and has an obscene acrobatics to set up the flank. Enlarge person will be a common buff. Cleave, Vital Strike, or both will probably be dumped by level 8. They are there for testing in real battles at the moment.

I think your advice works better for the mobile fighter archetype, not a two hander. For a two hander, the priority is huge reliable damage.

After your break down, I think its even more the same than you have in your conclusion.

But if you're counting on a natural 20 axe critical to punch through DR and resistances, you're going to be waiting a long time. Average of about 20 swings. by then the party is dead or has magicked the critter.

In my opinion, longswords and battle axes are exactly the same functionally because critical hits are not the primary way the weapon inflicts damage. you only get a threat on either 5% or 10% of the rolls and then you have to confirm it. The standard damage is the judge of what the weapon can be counted on doing reliably and consistently, and the extra features are the gravy.

Of course a keen scimitar is a different story because it can be counted on to critical hit and can dish out critical hit activated effects probably around 1/4 swings, which becomes once a round for a lot of higher level martial characters.

So my take really is if you're looking at a melee weapon, its rapiers and scimitars for critical fishing, or any weapon that looks cool and has the features you want if you're not fishing for criticals.

Sure that half point of damage between a 1d8 and a 2d4 weapon shows up in the mathematical averages, but really, the fighter is going to be killing things the same with either.

Have you checked out the thread here RavingDork's Character Emporium? The guy has made so many flavor characters that it is sometimes inspiring to look at.

Also maybe try to randomize things a bit. Randomly generate stats or just use a 15-14-13-12-10-8 array, randomly roll race and class, and make some flavorful dudes using the archetypes. Make them level 5 or 10 or something and see if they look at all effective. Read some feats and see if you can build a character around one. I think an abjurer wizard built around parry spell and destructive dispel could be viable, for example.

Go through the feats in the race guide and try to build racial paragons.

At any rate, you'll end up with a ton of NPCs.

Really, the variations are so small that unless you are making a critical hit build (and therefore need a falchion, scimitar, or kukri) or a reach build, then just take whatever sounds cool.

I mean, if having the x3 crit was so much better than a x2, everybody would probably get Tetsubos and have a 1d10 x4 weapon.

Incidentally, whalloping somebody with a Tetsubo is really gratifying in game.

As an illusion specialist, you get shadow magic (shadow conjuration and the like), and there is an entire guide on how that can be awesome.

What is the crit range/multiplier on a tea cozy?

Another good item is the reservoir tattoo that you would probably have to get from an NPC tattooed sorcerer or something. It lets you store half used defensive buffs for later.

Axes are also generally cheaper if you're first level.

What is a pitfall shield? I can't find that anywhere.
I was thinking that a +1 reflecting mithral buckler and a +1 dueling dagger would be a good combo. You can hold them both in the same hand.

The lucerne hammer is the coolest.

The only reason I can find to go universalist is to pick the arcane crafter subschool and then get all the crafting feats along with skill focus spellcraft, the hedge mage trait, and magical aptitude. Then you can make all the things.

This is best done with an NPC cohort and the leadership feat and then your party gets all custom magic items for cheap.

Playing this wizard as a pc would suck until they got high enough level where the magic items he outfits the entire party with at their wealth by level can completely counteract the power he gives up by not being a conjurer or something.

Also, draconic bloodline sorcerers get a Natural AC bonus with their bloodline. You can get that AC a little higher that way.

It still seems horribly expensive. If you want a dagger, get a dueling dagger for the +4 initiative bonus and just go first and do something awesome.

We have a two handed fighter with a great sword and cleave and she has been punishing goblins with that at low level. I think her plan is to add vital strike and have the party buffers hit her with enlarge person and lead blades and watch the damage fly into the stupid levels. At least as a fighter, you can dump a feat that proves worthless every 4 levels, so remember that you can test some different techniques and then settle on your favorite.

Unlimited funds? Buy some create demi-plane scrolls and some permanency scrolls and just worry about defending a door to a planar gate to your actual stronghold...a floating castle in the astral plane.

I am unsure whether to post here or in home brew.

After playing around with caravans and reading the threads here, I was thinking to adopt some slightly revised rules based on suggestions I read here for this campaign.

Below are the rules. Please let me know if there are any glaring problems with the mechanics. If I don't mention a change, assume it is the same as the players guide.

Caravan Adjustments:

Caravan Jobs: (streamline into catagories)
Anybody can be a passenger or worker*. Only PCs can be heroes.
Common jobs (Cook/Driver/Trader/Wainwright)
Expert Jobs (Guide/Healer/Entertainer)
Warrior Jobs (Guard/Scout)
Magical Jobs (Fortune-Teller/Spellcaster)

NPC Caravan Hirelings: (lower upkeep costs)
1st level commoner, 5 gp/mo: Commoners begin with 1 common job to be qualified for.
1st level expert, 10 gp/mo: Experts begin with 3 three expert or common jobs to be qualified for.
1st level warrior, 15 gp/mo: Warriors begin with 2 warrior or common jobs to be qualified for.
1st level adept, 50 gp/mo: Adepts are qualified to be Fortune-Tellers and Spellcasters. They typically are not available to be hired for caravan jobs. They cannot be hired in the Jade Regent Campaign.
PC and NPC allies can perform any job they qualify for and do not require wages.

Trade goods: (allow some variety. make salt lucrative again)
Common (Trade Resolve DC 10): 10gp
Uncommon (Trade Resolve DC 15): 50gp
Rare (Trade Resolve DC 20): 100gp
Exotic (Trade Resolve DC 25): 500gp
Service (Trade Resolve DC 10): Varies

New Job: (give broke caravans a way to raise money)
Worker
Workers provide special services that can be traded like another good at a settlement. Each worker committed to this job counts as 2gp towards a special Service Trade Good. This good can only be traded once per day per settlement.

Trade Rule: (change trading rule to scale with new goods. Make trading expensive goods risky)
Trade resolve check. every point over the DC gives +10% base trade good value as profit. Every point under the DC gives -10% base value (you got burned). 5 trades per day, up to settlement purchase limit.

Combat and leveling: (keep non-offense caravans from getting steamrolled)
Caravan gets +1 Primary Statistic per level beyond first.
Caravan gets +1 Damage per level beyond first.

Let me know your thoughts.

I am unsure whether to post here or in home brew.

After playing around with caravans and reading the threads here, I was thinking to adopt some slightly revised rules based on suggestions I read here for this campaign.

Below are the rules. Please let me know if there are any glaring problems with the mechanics. If I don't mention a change, assume it is the same as the players guide.

Caravan Adjustments:

Caravan Jobs: (streamline into catagories)
Anybody can be a passenger or worker*. Only PCs can be heroes.
Common jobs (Cook/Driver/Trader/Wainwright)
Expert Jobs (Guide/Healer/Entertainer)
Warrior Jobs (Guard/Scout)
Magical Jobs (Fortune-Teller/Spellcaster)

NPC Caravan Hirelings: (lower upkeep costs)
1st level commoner, 5 gp/mo: Commoners begin with 1 common job to be qualified for.
1st level expert, 10 gp/mo: Experts begin with 3 three expert or common jobs to be qualified for.
1st level warrior, 15 gp/mo: Warriors begin with 2 warrior or common jobs to be qualified for.
1st level adept, 50 gp/mo: Adepts are qualified to be Fortune-Tellers and Spellcasters. They typically are not available to be hired for caravan jobs. They cannot be hired in the Jade Regent Campaign.
PC and NPC allies can perform any job they qualify for and do not require wages.

Trade goods: (allow some variety. make salt lucrative again)
Common (Trade Resolve DC 10): 10gp
Uncommon (Trade Resolve DC 15): 50gp
Rare (Trade Resolve DC 20): 100gp
Exotic (Trade Resolve DC 25): 500gp
Service (Trade Resolve DC 10): Varies

New Job: (give broke caravans a way to raise money)
Worker
Workers provide special services that can be traded like another good at a settlement. Each worker committed to this job counts as 2gp towards a special Service Trade Good. This good can only be traded once per day per settlement.

Trade Rule: (change trading rule to scale with new goods. Make trading expensive goods risky)
Trade resolve check. every point over the DC gives +10% base trade good value as profit. Every point under the DC gives -10% base value (you got burned). 5 trades per day, up to settlement purchase limit.

Combat and leveling: (keep non-offense caravans from getting steamrolled)
Caravan gets +1 Primary Statistic per level beyond first.
Caravan gets +1 Damage per level beyond first.

Let me know your thoughts.

Does Spell Perfection Double the numeric effects on things like the Spell Penetration Metamagic feat? Because that would get you +8 against spell resistance if it did.

Also, does it double the caster level bonus from +2 to +4 of spell specialization, and double mage's (varisian) tattoo?

Does it do anything to heighten spell?

Am I missing any other oddball feats that spell perfection would apply to?

Pathfinder: One of the few games out there that remembers that a tank without a gun is just a metal box.

The scout archetype and spring attack may be a good one to build off of. Then you can do the majority of your sneak attacks by hopping in, hitting and landing something like offensive defense, befuddling strike, or entanglement of blades, and hopping back out of range. I guess that isn't very tank-like but it keeps you from getting full attacked.

For additional hilarity, you could use a pair of 8th level death domain clerics with extra channel, and improved unarmed strike, and reach spell and quick channel and just stand there and channel 4 times a round between the two of them, healing themselves and hurting the barbarians. use touch spells like cause critical wounds if they're still standing after getting hit by negative energy bursts like 20 times. Remember that death domain clerics heal with every channel too so you can just stand there and laugh while they beat on you.

Against those barbs you could probably use a couple of fighter 5/hellknight 3 hellknight commanders dual wielding kukris or short swords. Smite chaos takes care of the DR and then the AC 16 is no problem and you just beat them to death. Take the best possible armor and as many two weapon fighting feats as you can at that level, and take some teamwork feats to fill in.

You could argue that trait bonuses don't stack with that though.

Yeah, rods are good for those weird days. A fire blaster would probably want a rod of lesser elemental metamagic keyed to cold to make frost balls instead of fireballs every once and a while. Another good rod is piercing spell, for those occasional monsters that you really want to make sure you beat the spell resistance on. Selective spell would be another good one. Silent spell too. Heck, get a golf bag full of em.

Things like that.

Thinking about the archtype:

Weapon master gets a bonus vs disarm and sunder, 1 reroll with his bow per day, and weapon training 2 levels sooner.

I may consider a vanilla fighter build here for the massive reduction in armor penalty and the ability to but that huge dex bonus onto your defense.

Another alternative could be the mobile fighter. They get weapon mastery only when moving, but get a saving throw bonus and 2 armor bonuses, and it doesn't say you have to melee.

Both archtypes may have better survivability than the weapon master, although the weapon master slightly out damages them.

One drawback of the summoning wizard that treatmonk likes now is that his work predates the introduction of the summoner base class. Not only do they summon as well as wizards, but they get a wad of buff spells in their lists and a big, weird, otherworldly buddy with terribly complicated creation rules to follow them around.

If I were recommending a caster class to a novice, I think I would not recommend god wizards or summoners. If you don't know all the ins and outs of your control spells and summons, it is very easy to screw the party over or just take forever on your turn and bog the game down. They may be super effective if played right, but if played wrong, they're just a game snarling waste of space with the ability to accidentally destroy the party in hard to notice ways, like blocking all the charge lanes for your guys with ineffective groups of low level summons while leaving the enemy casters to attack with impunity, shielded by your own monsters.

I am fondly thinking back to our last game where a novice wizard with a god build kept accidentally splitting the party instead of the monsters with his battlefield control, and tended to always cast the least effective spell on his list at the most critical times. Example: casting create pit on the fast zombies between the party and the barbarian that was out in front, then watching helplessly while the barbarian was beaten down out of range of his scorching rays. I was DM and had to fight to keep my mouth shut often. Now create is usually a good spell, but used poorly and your party fighter gets to sit the battle out at the bottom of a hole, which also happened.

Hey! Burning hands is only a Xd4 spell.
mage's tattoo (if the tattooed sorcerer archtype is allowed in your game) at level 1 makes burning hands hit for 4d4+4 (or 8 if cross blooded).

If you do the DPR optimization math there, it comes out really close to a level 1 barbarian with a great sword. But it is an AoE.

My blaster has that and mount for spells at level 1. Mount is super useful but I might soon be facing the divine ire of the horse god at the rate I'm burning through them.

As a counter point, a blaster sorcerer (draconic bloodline and tatooed for example) is still quite effective. Compared to the wizard, they can cast any spell in their arsenal until they run out of slots, so if you're fighting a big nasty boss you weren't expecting, you can flip over and fire off 5 or so enervations in rapid succession, and then resume fireballing the peons.

A sorcerer will be a face character instead of a skill monkey, but if you're taking spell specialization, then you didn't dump int and will still have some skills. If you already have a rogue or alchemist in the party, this may be better for party makeup.

Crossblooded sorcerers and optimal blast wizards also still take a -2 penalty to will saves which may not be best.

Wizards also have dependency on spellbooks. Sorcerers just wake up ready to rock.

There is a feat (spontaneous metafocus) that pairs up nicely with spell perfection to remove the full action casting problem.

Having a few spells known that are always available requires much less bookkeeping than a spellbook, so may be more enjoyable to a novice to the system.

The Paizo iconic miniature for the sorcerer is way hotter than the one for the wizard.

Basically, sorcerers are viable and may be just as good as a wizard depending on party makeup due to their unique traits.

Anyway, here are some feats that any blaster caster may want to look at:
spell focus: +1DC to one school
spell specialization: +2CL to once spell, can change spells
spell penetration: +2 vs spell resistance
greater spell focus: +1DC to one school
greater spell specialization or preferred spell (wizard only): spontaneous casting one spell
greater spell penetration:+2 vs spell resistance
spontaneous metafocus (sorcerer only): standard action metamagic one spell only
dazing spell: take damage and fail save makes enemy dazed (sits there)
empower spell: +50% more dice and numeric effects on damage
quicken spell: cast as a swift action
intensify spell: +5 dice level cap (10d6 max becomes 15d6 max)
heighten spell or persistant spell (boost save DCs or roll twice for saves)
SPELL PERFECTION!!: Multiple powerful boosts on one spell
Improved initiative: +4 initiative = blast sooner
mage's (varisian) tattoo (non core): +1 caster level to one school
-traits-
magical lineage: -1 spell level cost of metamagic on one spell

favorite blasty spells:
burning hands
scorching ray
fireball
ball lightning
fire snake
chain lightning

I went with the sorcerer over the wizard in my current campaign, and the fighter and I are trashing all the encounters while everybody else is not being terribly effective at the moment.

Also, don't count out burning hands at low level as a blaster. Most guides rate it as worthless, but at low level, you are basically the orkin man with burning hands vs swarms.

Finally, boosting caster level at low levels really ups the damage dice out of the box. It also helps with beating spell resistance. Boost save DC's next to make sure the spell effects stick. boost spell penetration at later levels when enemies with spell resistance become more common. Add metamagic from the mid levels on to further increase the nastiness of your spells. Try to pick your favorite spell at the beginning so that you can have magical lineage, spell specialization, spell perfection, and spontaneous metafocus all on your favorite goto spell

I'm pretty sure you can designate the target square without any perception checks or anything if you have line of sight to the square. just enlarge, point, and boom. burning metamagic might be funny here. try to get your dm to go along with starting a fire in every effected square.

In other news, if I were a wizard on a boat, I would want to prepare some fog cloud and image spells to prevent this by denying line of sight so opposing casters don't know where the ship is.

Thinking about this more,

The simplest spell combo is protection from arrows and fly. This makes their composite longbow damage max out at 2 points on you so it will be nearly a non issue to make concentration checks. then either haste for superior movement or dispel magic if they try to fly and they will be unable to get into melee with you. Then all you have to do is bombard them with reflex save blasts and ranged touch attacks. by using dazing spell metamagic and magical lineage on a 2nd level spell, you will lock them down reasonably quickly and then be able to blast with impunity. Then you can probably lightning bolt or fireball for 6 rounds or so from 2 sorcerers. If you follow a blaster build, those blasts will probably hit for 10d6+10 or more each. If you get off 10 blasts, that is a max of like 700 points of damage.

Other great spells to use would be ray of exhaustion, enervation, dazing ball of fires, stinking cloud, and even magic missile. If they can't attack you, even magic missile will wear them down and go right through the damage resistance.

If you can access r a quicken metamagic rodd with your point buy, then your caster will be unstoppable by being able to get up defense and mobility on your first round, and cast twice two more rounds to daze, debuff, and damage them into a nonfunctioning heap. Then blast them to death.

Basically, you cant beat a sorc or wizard if they can see your abilities before the fight. all they have to do is get off a spell before they are able to get attacked.

Oh gosh, I'd just use a sorcerer with greater invisibility, dispel magic, fly, and a bunch of rays and blasts. Also if you take magical lineage burning gaze you can get a dazing burning gaze cast on your familiar at level 8. enjoy the dazing turret standing on the sorc's shoulder. Also wait to cast dispel magic until he's flying up to look for you, preferably about 200 feet up.

Actually if you dispel their flies, you can just enervate them to pieces and then finish with blasts.

Human Arcane Sorcerer: Int 13, Charisma max, Dex as high as possible. Dump str and wis, dump con if you're feeling mean.

Feats:
1:spell focus abjuration
1:spell specialization: dispel magic
3:mage's tattoo: abjuration
5:dazing spell
7:improved familiar
7:improved initiative
magical lineage burning gaze

this gives +3 caster level to dispel magic. The fly potion has a dc 16 to dispel. You will be rolling 1d20+11 so you'll dispel it on a roll of 5 or more (80% success) dropping them to their doom. Your range is 211 feet.
Strategy: keep moving every round to force them to try to close cast in this order
1: protection from arrows
2:fly
3:dispel magic
4:dazing burning gaze on familiar
5-7:Now the barbarian should be grounded, damaged from the fall and dazed. use your remaining 4th level slots (3) with enervation. This should cause up to 3d4 negative levels, meaning 3d4x5 damage, and -3d4 on saves.
8-10: lightning bolts for 8d6 each with guaranteed failing of saves.

For two barbarians, use dispel magic twice and spread around the burning gaze and enervations.

The line between good and legal makes the paladin fun to play. Not working with it makes the paladin lawful stupid.

Neutral Good typically doesn't care about order or chaos. It's just good for goodness sake.

Chaotic Good is for rebels with a conscious. They'll dismantle the system, but will try their hardest to not hurt anybody doing it.

Lawful good is orderly good so you have justice and mercy.

Lawful neutral obeys the law because it brings order and order is their big thing, even if it hurts people.

Lawful evil bends the laws to personal benefit, and tends to appear very tyrranical.

These are all subject to interpretation and debate, but it is usually fine to have a paladin break a law if it leads to evil and suffering. It isn't a "valid law" in their mind. Paladins wouldn't support legal slavery for example and may hide runaways even if it is against the law, and probably wouldn't lose any powers or anything.

Also magic still hits for half damage, so the bard could blast with something like Ear Piercing Scream. Also, if the bard has UMD, you can carry some scrolls of force spells like magic missile or chain of perdition.

In my last campaign, the group found a wand of command undead with maybe 8 charges in it from a module adventure. This got used up making things like shadows and allips into sock puppets that were then sent forth into the dungeon and told to merrily kill everything that wasn't the party. It actually worked out pretty well because as the DM, I had to make some of the bosses move forward behind the scenes and kill the rampaging allips, expending resources.

Dwarven Cleric of Gorum with the Strength (Ferocity) and War(Tactics) domains, Armor Spikes, spiked destroyer, improved overrun, greater overrun, charge through, and the relentless race option. Cast Righteous Might and Blessings of Fervor. Take one level in Fighter and use a two handed sword. IT WILL BE SILLY.