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So since the fighter thread some time back I got to thinking about Eldritch Heritage and the various things you can do for it. The classes that can act as a vehicle for it, and how it can essentially add things to a class the few feats feasibly could.
So the purposes of this thread is kind of a guide, and kind of an outline of what can be accomplished by various classes making use of
Eldritch heritage and company. None of the builds here will be supremely optimized and are meant more as a demonstration of what the feat chain can accomplish if the race isn't listed you can expect most of the races to either be half elf or human. Likely half elf. So let’s start with some simple fighter builds.
Half Elf Fighter (Archer) 20
1 Pointblank Shot
1 Skill Focus (Heal)
1 Precise Shot
2 Rapid Shot
3 Eldritch Heritage (Celestial)
4 Weapon Focus
5 Weapon Specialization
6 Deadly Aim
7 Manyshot
8 Clustered Shots
9 Ironwill
10 Point Blank Master
11 Improved Eldritch Heritage (Wings)
12 Improved Precise Shot
13 Greater Weapon Focus
14 Greater Weapon Specialization
15 Leadership
16 Mounted Combat
17 Greater Eldritch Heritage
18 Mounted Archery
19 Improved Iron Will
20 Blind Fight
Traits:
Eyes and Ears of the City
Reactionary
So the celestial archer is one of the weaker cases of eldritch heritage awesome and one of my earlier experiments with the feat. But still a decent case. Ultimately it’s about giving yourself abilities that would normally be outside your purview. In this case the abilities are to fly, make a reroll, and have a small healing ray or damage ray that ignores damage reduction. Overall it really isn’t a bad use for the feat. All you need o take it work is a 13 charisma which you can boost through magic items to meet the other prerequisites with ease.
Overall this is a fair start and helps a class gain things they would not otherwise.
Wildblooded Sorcerer 1/Unarmed Fighter 19
Bloodlines (Envenomed)
1 Skill Focus (Know. nature)
2 Improved Unarmed Strike
2 Dragon Style
3 Power Attack
4 Eldritch Heritage (Fey)
5 Sorcerous Strike
5 Dragon Ferocity
7 Iron Will
7 Weapon Focus (Unarmed)
9 Snake Style
9 Combat Style Mastery
11 Improved Eldritch Heritage (Fleeting Glance)
11 Combat Reflexes
13 Snake Sidewind
13 Snake Fang
15 Belier’s Bite
15 Weapon Specialization (Unarmed)
17 Improved Iron Will
17 Greater Weapon Focus
19 Greater Weapon Spec
19 (to taste)
Traits:
Reactionary
Dirty Fighter
So the Fairy Puncher is a nasty kind of build that takes full advantage of Eldritch heritage to do things that would make a GM cringe. Charge, smash faces while not getting a response, turn invisible, proceed to smash faces even more. Now, a lot of these feats you can decide to do without this is just one take on an unarmed build, but ultimately it solves one major issue with fighting builds by stopping the first retaliatory strike. While the last build focused on giving more options an already tried and true strategy this build instead uses Eldritch Heritage as a sound core in which to build on. This next build looks to actually enhance and improve an original strategy.
Half Elf Fighter 20
1 Skill Focus (Perception)
1 Dazzling Display
1 Weapon Focus (Falchion)
2 Power Attack
3 Eldritch Heritage (Gold Dragon)
4 Weapon Specialization (Falchion)
5 Intimidating Prowess
6 Shatter Defenses
7 Iron Will
8 Greater Weapon Focus
9 Critical Focus
10 Sundering Strike
11 Improved Eldritch Heritage (Dragon Resistances)
12 Greater Weapon Specialization
13 Staggering Critical
14 Penetrating Strike
15 Bleeding Critical
16 Critical Mastery
17 Greater Eldritch Heritage (Dragon Wings)
18 Deadly Stroke
19 Improved Iron Will
20 Stunning Critical
Falchion Frank here demonstrates that even a fairly boring build can benefit a great deal from tapping into the family tree. Resistances to fire, natural armor, flight, and even a fairly good backup weapon in the form of natural attacks that scale with you should you be forced to separate from your falchion. With the natural armor built in you can use your amulet slot on an amulet of mighty fists if you desire or on something else more to your style. This can easily build in other directions and you could possibly go with Abyssal or Orc instead if there are other things you are more concerned about.
Now, so far eldritch heritage has been tacked on to builds that already exist for fighters and honestly didn’t need them to begin with. In fact it can be argued that he might be better off with a different line of feats. So, is there a kind of fighter that actually needs these feats to function? Perhaps there is one.
Half Orc Fighter (Savage Warrior 20) with Toothy trait
1 Skill Focus (Perception or Knowledge Planes)
1 Improved Unarmed Strike
2 Weapon Focus (Claws)
3 Eldritch Heritage (Abyssal or Draconic)
4 Dragon Style
5 Feral Combat Training
6 Power Attack
7 Iron Will
8 Stunning Fist
9 Dragon Ferocity
10 Belier’s Bite
11 Eldritch Heritage
12 Scorpion Style
13 Dazing Assault
14 Gorgon’s Fist
15 Medusa’s Wrath
16 Penetrating Strike
17 Greater Penetrating Strike
18 Weapon Specialization (Claws)
19 Greater Weapon Focus
20 Greater Weapon Specialization
Here we have a build that is made possible through the use of Eldritch heritage. Normally you would have to multiclass in order to make a savage warrior work. Include feral combat training and you have a pretty nasty claw monster. The only real limitation is the duration of the claws. But even this case can be solved with magic items, spells, and what not. The beauty of all these fighter builds is the charisma emphasis pens the door to making good use of Use Magic Device so you can eventually make use of spells to give you even more natural attacks to use your weapon training with.
So overall the fighter is a pretty good vehicle for the feat chain. But what about other martial classes?
From what I’ve found out, paladin’s generally don’t benefit as much as their spell and class ability selection means they rarely need what sorcerer blood lines offer. Beyond that, they have no bonus feats that help justify sacrificing combat feats for them to work. Still, two handed paladins tend to be light on the feat side and so can probably get away with the three or four feats necessary to make eldritch heritage work.
An unmounted cavalier can make some fairly good use of the feats since they will have feats free over the course of their career for combat purposes. The more physical bloodlines like Orc, Abyssal, and Draconic all benefit cavaliers.
Rangers usually don’t have good enough incentive to bother with it. They don’t have a high enough charisma normally to care for it and generally can get a lot of the benefits of eldritch heritage through their class without it.
Gunslingers are normally in the same boat as rangers, but, with the Mysterious Stranger archetype they can qualify fairly easily and they themselves have a few bonus feats. Boreal and Stormborn provide some of the better benefits but more stealth oriented gunclingers will appreciate the shadow blood line.
So, we know that eldritch heritage can give some good benefits to martial characters. So what happens if we look outside the full BaB classes and into the ¾ classes like summoner, bard, and ninja? Funstuff.
Half Elf Crossblooded Sorcerer (Orc/Fey) 1/Ninja 19
Feats:
1 Skill Focus (Intimidate)
1 Weapon Finnesse
3 Two Weapon Fighting
5 Sorcerous Strike
7 Eldritch Heritage (Oni)
9 Improved TWF
11 Improved Eldritch Heritage (Altered Form)
13 Stunning Fist
15 Greater TWF
17 Greater Eldritch Heritage (Oni Healing)
19 Dragon Ferocity
Ninja Tricks:
2 Vanishing Trick
4 Unarmed Strike
7 Pressure Points
9 Shadow Clone
11 Invisible Blade
13 Unarmed Combat Mastery
15 Assassinate
17 Opportunist (Advanced Rogue Talent)
19 Forgotten Trick
In this first step we play with a mostly unarmed dexterity ninja. This in and of itself isn’t anything special. What makes it truly nasty is our unarmed dexterity ninja can run up invisibly and completely ruin a spellcasters day. How badly? Well for one he can sorcerous strike you with his Oni bloodline power and lay on continuous damage, forcing concentration checks. Second, he can start laying on laughing touch while punching you from invisibility.
Later on our death ninja can use Alter Self to help with his disguise, gain better vision, and eventually get what is essentially a permanent boost to dexterity. If this isn’t enough he becomes pretty hard to kill as he’ll get a fast healing power that kicks in when he falls over. Overall not a bad way to play a ninja.
For more ninja goodness you can also try the Raksasha bloodline and be the ultimate master of disguise. Or you could play the Shadow bloodline and build a ninja who has soemthign like Hide in Plain sight (a weaker option since by the time he gets that he can use greater invisibility.)
Taking a look at another ¾ charisma based BAB class we find ourselves looking at the bard.
The bard has lots and lots of options and can pretty much benefit from all the blood lines in some form or another. You can grab the abyssal or orc bloodlines to get some rather decent melee bonuses or you could go with Boreal or Stormborn to get an edge on your archer. Arcane can help dedicated spellcasters and lines like Raksasha can give you an unfair advantage in the deception game. Really outside of elemental based bloodlines or bloodlines that aren’t very good to begin with *cough*maestro*cough* you can get away with quite a bit. But because I’m a sucker for gishes let’s present a fun little arcane duelist build.
1 Arcane Strike
1 Skill Focus (any Knowledge)
1 Lingering Performance
3 Eldritch Heritage (Arcane)
5 Power Attack
7 Furious Focus
9 Improved Familiar
11 Discordant Voice
13 Improved Eldritch Heritage (New Arcana: Monstrous Physique 2, Overland Flight, Monstrous Physique 4)
15 Following Step
17 Step up and Strike
19 Stunning Assault
There might be some problem with this (the arcane duelist gains an arcane bond ability that syas you can only choose the weapon) but the trick is to get an ally that benefits from your bardic music and gives you a solid ally to make use of that has all of your ranks in skills, your bab and half your manly hp. Simultaneously you gain spells to add to your list that makes you an even bigger badass.
S
o to date we’ve seen mostly skill and beat down types make good use of eldritch heritage. Needless to say this feat chain smiles on classes that can spare the feats and to players that can make use of them intelligently.
But let’s face it the sorcerer bloodlines belong to a full caster. So what kind of shenanigans can we pull with casters?
Well Oracles can benefit immensely from the arcane bloodline as they can get spells to their list to expand their capabilities. In fact any caster with a spells known list can benefit from the Arcane blood lines various abilities. So, stating this there’s very little reason to actually post a build for it.
What I will show is a potentially very good build utilizing the crossblooded sorcerer with the arcane blood line.
1 Skill Focus (Any knowledge)
1 Spellfocus (Enchantment)
3 Eldritch Heritage (Arcane)
5 Greater Spell Focus (Enchantment)
7 Persistent Spell
9 Spell Penetration
11 Improved Eldritch (New Arcana)
13 Greater Spell PEnetration
15 Threnodic Spell
17 Greater Eldritch Heritage (School Power (Enchantment))
19 Spell Perfection
Bonus
7 Improved Initiative
13 Quicken Spell
19 Skill Focus (Bluff)
Powers: All fey until you get to 20th level.
So a +6 bonus to compulsion spells (most offensive enchantment spells fall under this category). You can grab spells you would otherwise not get and you can get any variety of familiars to aid your cause.
So that concludes our little journey through the eldritch heritage feat chain. Later on I might present more builds for you to consider.
For example at the moment I’ve been thinking about Eldritch Heritage Arcane for familiars on Full BAB classes. This kind of silly idea amuses me since they get half your hit points and use your BAB.
So later on once I have all my notes gathered I think I'll sit down and tackle a summoner guide. However before you point out "there is one" I would like to say that this will be a very very different summoner guide than what you are used to.
I like the idea of a full bab class with a familiar. Would it be possible to take the Improved Familiar feat in that case? I would think not since it's dependent on caster levels, but maybe you could still use your character level -2 like with the Eldritch Heritage feat. For instance, is it possible to have a 9th-level Fighter with a Silvanshee familiar this way?
Just saw this.
Really this idea is an exercise in optimizing and it forces you to.really search.
I found an Awesome combo.
Trait: Optimistic Gambler
Go all the way with the Orc Bloodline (Touch of Rage, power of Giants)
Quicken SLA -Touch of Rage
Quicken SLA- Power of Giants
What do you get for the massive 6 feat investment and a trait?
+10 to Attack and damage usable 3+ Cha per day (3 swift) lasting 2-5 rounds
Swift 3/day Large size and str increases
+6 Inherent to Strength
Pretty much any fighter would love that, but better for TWWarriors or Dawnflower Dervishes.
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I like the idea of a full bab class with a familiar. Would it be possible to take the Improved Familiar feat in that case? I would think not since it's dependent on caster levels, but maybe you could still use your character level -2 like with the Eldritch Heritage feat. For instance, is it possible to have a 9th-level Fighter with a Silvanshee familiar this way?
I've been thinking about that. Anyone with a Spell-like ability has a caster level, usually full HD. That's gnomes and elves right there, with the right racial traits. The various races from Bestiary 2 should be covered too.
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Eldritch heritage makes you count as a sorcerer equal to your level -2 for bloodline abilities, including the arcane bond(familiar). So as long as you meet the caster level prerequisite (as a sorcerer of your level -2) and alignment, you can take the improved familiar feat and gain the appropriate familiar.
how about beastbonded witch with arcane heritage, you get a cute familiar of twice your lvl.
This might however not be intended by the rules.
Or a tattoo sorcerer, or even a tumor familiar that's a homuculous. Having a critter with half your hp and your bab is great, esp if it's on/in your body.
And a beast bonded 1/barb x could have a pair of EVIL shocker lizards with Eld. her witch famil,slash a level of tattoo sorc, you even get a free SLA via vasarian tattoo for your CL on improved familiar(s).
The "Arcane" Duelist has a flaw; the Arcane Bloodline's Arcane Bond specifically says "This ability does not allow you to have a bonded item and a Familiar".
You could probably choose simply not to have a bonded item. Really it's a minor flaw and I don't see too many gm's getting up in arms over it. Which says something about the bonded item.
If worse comes to worse you simply could jsut pick a different archetype. I just picked AD because I'm familiar (heh) with it.
I liked the idea of a halfling paladin2/sorc x with the celestial bloodline and armored caster feats. It would send your saves through the roof and give you an excellent AC. Grabbing a level or two more would also make you a passable healer but this would severely hurt your sorc caster progression. As a hybrid though you could still diversify into ranged combat options other than spell casting.
The empyreal bloodline also works great for a sorcerer/cleric mystic theurge. Picking human gives you great spell versaltility with the alternate racial favored class options. You could easily fit in the heighten spell/magical lineage trick for early entry into mystic theurge. (check with your DM, milage may vary)
Taking the eldritch heritage for draconic bloodline offers full martial access to dragon disciple. It's class abilities are great for a melee focused build even if you are not benefitting from it's 7/10 spell casting progression.
Taking the eldritch heritage for draconic bloodline offers full martial access to dragon disciple. It's class abilities are great for a melee focused build even if you are not benefitting from it's 7/10 spell casting progression.
Eldritch Heritage is not enough to get you into Dragon Disciple - one of requirements is ability to cast 1st level spells without preparation.
Ah, right. I knew that too. Guess thats what happens when Lune doesn't get sleep. Welp, it at least allows you access to the PrC from other classes.
I was thinking of taking eldritch heritage for arcane's bonded item, to get a weapon that I can craft myself even as a complete non-caster. Probably for a spirit totem barbarian.
I've really enjoyed the Orcish bloodline Eldritch Heritage line. I hve a recurring villian in our campaign who is technically half-elf/half-orc, though she uses the half-elf racial template. She is a standard Summoner and Touch of Rage gets pretty wicked when using it on an eidolon with 5-7 attacks a round + Reach and Combat Reflexes.
I also have a Paladin who took the entire feat line to make use of the heightened strength and the Power of Giants ability which is pretty much always on at higher levels. There is a big debate about whether or not a character can take the monster feat Quickened Spell Like Ability, which he technically qualifies for... if so, he could use Touch of Rage on himself as a swift action and, well, dominate everything.
Eldritch Heritage has two more feats in the chain Improved Eldritch heritage can be taken at 11th and can grant you the 3rd and 9th level powers though you have to take the same feat twice if you want both. Greater Eldritch heritage grants you the 15th level power at 17th and allows your full character elvel to count as a sorcerer level.
I just wanted to rez this thread. I'm building a synthesist 9/fighter 1/EK 10, and I was wondering if there are any good ways to incorporate this feat tree into my build. Any ideas?
Lincoln, you realize this is dead, right? I posted on this a while ago for fun with a question. If you have an answer, that'd be great. Lets keep this going!
Dotting for winz