jonathan harvey 988's page

Right now I am playing a sorcerer. I have when needed ended fights quickly or taken over them. Usually I cast haste to help the party out and try to shape the battlefield to help them if I can. When the party was at full strength there was a fighter, paladin, rogue, and monk. Locking down a couple of opponents while they beat something to death then move on everyone gets to do something useful.

Zhayne wrote:

Mergy wrote:

If the GM wants to hit you, you'll be hit. I'm not really sure what you mean when you describe how she designs encounters, but I hope it's not:

You guys are APL 14, so I'll throw 3-10 CR 14 challenges at you.

I interpreted it as 'You guys are APL 14, so I'll make a CR 14 encounter and multiply the monsters present by 3-10'.

she takes 1 cr 14 and either rolls 5d20 for its stats or multiplies everything it does by some modifier

Is your DM used to playing MMOs? Seems like she has no idea what game balance is to me or she had a bad experience with some power gamers that altered her DMing style. The best thing you can do is talk to her, if she isn't willing to tone some things down then just quit the game.

Raging Vitality would be a good feat to pick up for surviving. That and Power Attack are the only feats I consider necessary for a barbarian. Superstition is a good rage power and if you take the human favored class bonus from ARG it is even better. You may want to look at the Invulnerable Rager archetype.

The best way I have found for dealing with power gaming is to watch the loot you hand out, limit custom items and the ability to purchase specific magic items(percentile roll based on the community), stick with the core books. If someone finds something that they want to play it should have DM approval. Sticking with the point buy of 15-20 helps. I have always preferred rolling stats myself, but I have each person roll one stat and use that as the standard array. If I have one person who is a power gamer and another who isn't I will try to help the person with their character who isn't the power gamer.

I have 7th level cleric who is defense oriented, I took Craft Magic Arms and Armor at 5th and have been able to make my own Breastplate and Shield(both +3). Normal AC is 27, when I buff with Shield of Faith and Barkskin I am looking at a 33. I haven't optimized it fully, but 20-22 isn't bad at 4th level. Can only cast Barkskin 1 time a day, but it lasts 70 minutes(normally multiple encounters), shield of Faith is normally prepped 2-3 times.
Dwarf with the Protection and Travel domains with 16 dex, so I stayed away from fullplate for Touch AC and Travel domain flavor(even though he would still move at 30 in Fullplate).

Clothes are not in the category of skill tools.

Clothes don't add to diplomacy rolls.

They can however SUBTRACT from them, such as the Noble who makes the mistake of going to two consecutive parties in the same. Or the PC who tries to pass himself off as a courtier by wearing the clothes without the expensive jewelry to complement it.

So you can penalize your PCs for not wearing proper attire, but you can't give them an equipment bonus for spending some extra money on the clothes?

Too bad that is a forged deed and won't actually do anything for them...wink

I like that they release the PDF for all of the books. I can spend $10 and get the material even if I am broke when it comes out and buy the book later when I have the cash.

It might be a little late to point this out in the fight, but the rolls for displacement didn't happen in round 2.

My Eidolon flys at(100ft), Has a 28 dex, a +30 to stealth and wields a magic crossbow. If his summoner buddy Slobad is riding him thats two magic crossbows shooting 8 bolts total at 15th level. With the eidolons fast healing all I need to do is sneak up on the fighter while hes sleeping whack him good then run away. Soon the fighter without the ability to heal will be worn down and killed by at worst an improved invisible flying eidolon. Magic wins.

With my fighter who has a maxed out stealth skill and is a dex build all I have to do is sneak up on the sleeping summoner and stab him in the face, fighter wins. This isn't a battle of sleeping characters if you read the thread.

Two-handed build with a reach weapon and spring attack is probably the best melee build for this.

I think this is a great addition for 1st level up to about level 4. As an arcane caster you were either not doing anything or trying to hit something with your crossbow to reserve spells or because you were already out of spells.

About the only time that using the attack cantrips at will becomes powerful is if you couple them with sneak attack. If I was playing a rogue I would have to think about taking 1 level in sorcerer or wizard to pick up a couple of the attack cantrips to have at will ranged touch attacks to deliver sneak attack with.

I personally like some of the feats, just a little unclear on some of them as to what the end result is. 2 off the top of my head are slithering strike and triple strike. With triple strike I don't think you get to use your feats for attack and damage with it and it doesn't have the action it takes to activate it. If it is a move action it doesn't seem overpowered to me at all, free action then it can be broken, but so can other feats. With slithering strike not sure as to whether or not you can move after every attack as a free action or just once per round. There were a few others that seemed to lack full descriptions, but I can't remember what they were off the top of my head.