| Douglas Muir 406 |
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Mesmerist is IMO the coolest new class in a long time, and the stares and stare powers are a big part of the reason why. So, here's a mini-guide to the Bold Stares. (Nova Wurmson has already done a general Guide to the Mesmerist, and it's pretty good and I agree with most of it. I just think there's more to be said on this particular topic.)
Background
You get your first Bold Stare at 3rd level, then one every four levels thereafter, to a maximum of five at 19th level. That's a very small number of slots, so you want to choose wisely. The Bold Stares are additive with your base Hypnotic Stare and with each other. A stare is a swift action (yeah!) and ignores SR and Will saves (yeah!). However, it requires you to be within 30' of the target (boo!) and, as a mind-affecting effect, is useless against golems, oozes, and other mindless creatures (bah!).
The Four Excellent Stares
Disorientation: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies on attack rolls. As Nova notes, this is just solid. A swift action debuff that ignores SR and saves, and slaps the target with -2 or -3 on all attacks? You can argue whether or not it's the very best, but it clearly belongs in the top four. Bam, instant debuff on a dragon or fiend or boss: straight-up fine. Debuffing is always, always good.
Two caveats. One, like all other stares, it doesn't work on mindless creatures, so don't bother trying it against that stone golem (though see below). Two, like all other stares, you have to get within 30' -- and mesmerists can be squish, and just because you debuffed it doesn't mean it won't hit you. So, either buff up in advance, or make sure your friend Mr. Meat Shield is right there on your twelve where he belongs.
Psychic Inception: The stare and its penalty can affect creatures that are mindless or immune to mind-affecting effects, such as undead or vermin. You can also partially affect such creatures with mind-affecting spells and abilities if it's under the effect of this stare; it gains a +2 bonus on its saving throw (if any), and if affected, it still has a 50% chance each round of ignoring the effect. -- So, everybody loves this, and it's easy to see why; there are a lot of mindless creatures in the game. This stare removes one of your biggest weaknesses, and it also lets you do weird game-bending stuff like Dominating vampires or casting Suggestion on oozes. (And hey -- oozes have really crappy Will saves.) That said, I don't think this is necessarily the very best stare. After all, there are lots of other ways of dealing with these creatures; the cleric can channel against undead, the wizard can freeze or burn the ooze, and so forth. That said, let's note that this is additive with other stares -- so if you take both this and Disorientation, you can debuff pretty much everything you meet.
Sapped Magic: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies to the DCs of spells and spell-like abilities used by the target, and to the target's SR. This would probably not be your 3rd level choice, because you don't meet that many creatures with SR or dangerous SLAs at low levels. But at higher levels, when you do, you will want this. And, oh yeah, it works on enemy spellcasters too. If you build into this -- for instance, with a Cha-based build, Spell Focus: Enchantment and Spell Penetration -- you could have a character who regularly dominates things like dragons that are normally just untouchable due to high SR and great Will saves.
Susceptibility: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies to the target's Sense Motive checks to oppose Bluff checks, and to the DCs of Diplomacy and Intimidate checks made against the target. So this one is less obviously excellent than the other three. But it is in fact just as good -- as long as you're in a campaign where social interaction is a thing, so that you're regularly using these skills. Note that your Bluff is going to be sky-high anyway; this lets you pump it even higher, and a high enough Bluff roll effectively lets you alter reality. And if you build for Diplomacy (take the Cult Master archetype and/or the Silver Tongued alternate human racial trait) or for Intimidate (any of several intimadation-based builds) this will really ease your way.
The Okay Stares
Allure: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies on initiative checks and Perception checks. Well, debuffing a target's Perception sounds great, but is actually very situational -- I mean, usually if you can see him, he can see you. Sure, this could be useful in a "sneaking past the guards" type scenario, but isn't that really the rogue's job? As to bumping initiative, this makes it slightly more likely that party members will get their hits in first, and that's always good. But it's probably not as good as the Excellent Four, unless you're in an all-rogue party or something weird like that.
Infiltration: The stare penalty also applies to the target's Perception checks and CMD. See discussion of perception above. As for CMD, that's not bad, especially if you or another PC are built around CMB attacks. There are dirty trick mesmerist builds, and then of course you may simply have a grappling or sundering fighter as your meat shield. So, could be good -- it depends.
Nightmare: The target of the stare rolls twice on all Will saves versus fear, taking the lower result. The problem with this is that the PF spell list doesn't actually have a lot of great fear spells. (Quick: when was the last time you saw someone play a fear-based build? No, not intimidate, but fear magic?) Still, I guess you could build a character around this, because "roll twice at -2 or -3 and take the lower roll" is pretty close to autofail. And you could certainly build a memorable NPC. "Nobody can stand against... Lord Menace!"
Timidity: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies to damage rolls. Mathematically, this will almost never be as good as Disorientation. And it only scales weakly with level; while -2 damage is meaningful when fighting orcs at 3rd level, -3 damage is just not going to be that helpful against the Thanatotic Titan. However, you could combine it with Disorientation to really ruin an attacker's day.
The WTH stares
Disquiet: The target of the hypnotic stare is shaken while in areas of total darkness. Presumably you also must be in total darkness, right? Since you're at most 30 feet away? Well, Shaken is a pretty nice debuff, and it's untyped so it stacks with your other stare penalties. So, I guess maybe if (1) you and everyone in your party have darkvision, and (2) you're planning to spend a lot of time in the Underdark or slinking around on cloudy moonless nights, then you might consider this. Otherwise, leave this to that vampire mesmerist NPC build that your DM is giggling over.
Lethality: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies to the target's Fortitude saves versus poison and diseases. This is pretty clearly intended for NPC villain builds. In theory you could get some mileage out of it if you had a multiclassed mesmerist poison user, but that would be a very weird character.
Nightblindness: The darkvision range of the stare's target decreases by 10 feet. Wait, what? How is that ever going to be useful? I guess if you have darkvision too, you could stand just outside his new visibility range? Really, this one is just silly.
Oscillation: The target of the hypnotic stare treats all enemies beyond 30 feet (except the mesmerist) as having concealment (20% miss chance). Wait, all targets BEYOND 30 feet? So... I guess this is supposed to be used against specialist missile attackers? In some weird situation where the mesmerist is 30' or closer, but his friends are further away? I can't really make sense of this one.
Restriction: The target of the hypnotic stare treats all areas of dim light or darker as difficult terrain. On one hand, "dim light or darker" is a lot less restrictive than total darkness. Lots of dungeon crawls take place in dim light. On the other, imposing difficult terrain on a single enemy is not all that great. Not completely worthless, but not good enough to take.
Sabotage: The hypnotic stare penalty also applies to the target's Diplomacy and Intimidate checks. Unless your DM is constantly throwing Intimidate builds at you, this is pretty pointless. To be fair, Intimidate is an Achilles heel for psychic casters -- there aren't a lot of good defenses against it, and the Shaken condition shuts down your casting, because emotions. But the correct answer is to invest in a metamagic rod of Logical Spell as insurance, not to burn one of your precious stare slots on this silly power.
Sluggishness: The target of the hypnotic stare has all of its speeds reduced by 5 feet (to a minimum of 5 feet), and the hypnotic stare penalty also applies to the target's Reflex saving throws. Hey, you can weaken the bad guy's save against your buddy the wizard's fireball spell! wait, what's the blast radius on that again? Unless someone in your party is really specializing hard in Reflex save spells, this is not worth bothering with.
Phew. Thoughts?
Doug M.
| My Self |
For the Restriction stare, If you can consistently get dim light and have a fighter-type or mage hunter in the party, you can consistently ensure their target does not get away. Being in all difficult terrain means you can't 5-foot step and your move speed is halved. That's significantly (although situationally?) better than Sluggishness. The 5-foot step part is the killer- an opponent forced into melee with your fighter brute will always incur an AOO (from movement), a full attack, or a wasted turn (spent withdrawing). If you can get someone to routinely cast Darkness on your fighter, you will have basically spent one spell slot and one stare to get what most fighters spend a feat chain on.
| Douglas Muir 406 |
Well, tactically that combo faces the problem of range -- Darkness is 20', and the mesmerist's stare is 30', and the target has to be within range of both. So yes the target loses the ability to 5' step, and that's nice -- but if it moves just a little distance away, it leaves the "difficult" terrain. And it doesn't affect flyers or diggers or swimmers, and is kinda marginal against things with more than 10' reach. And Darkness is not on the Mesmerist spell list -- though, to be sure, Use Magic Device + a wand will fix that pretty easily.
All that said, I see your point. I might move this to the "okay" category, especially if you're in a party that has a melee monster and/or is very tactically inclined. Good catch.
cheers,
Doug M.
| My Self |
I was thinking that Drow or Tieflings could snag Darkness as an SLA. And since you're casting it on your fighter, you close a bunch of range problems. Or, if there's dim light, there's no need to cast it. It ends with your fighter needing to be next to your enemy, and you needing to be somewhere within 15 feet of them. That's a better deal than the Rogue's Sneak Attack gets. Granted, you're right that it takes more setup for less reward than, say, -3 to hit or -3 to damage. But it might be workable, so yeah.
Sluggishness is still complete trash. Well, unless you're dealing with non-mounted halflings and gnomes in heavy armor. Then it's just mostly trash.
Deadmanwalking
|
Nightblindness and Disquiet aren't great in a normal party. That said, the 'all Darkvision' party who can also make Darkness can do some hilarious and abusive things with those two in combination, particularly throwing in Restriction, too.
You make the area around them dark, decrease their Darkvison and stare at them, making them shaken on top of other penalties from outside their newly lowered Darkvision radius. It's not even a super specialized build, just a group that all have Darkvision and decide to abuse that fact.
So, situational more than bad, IMO.
Which really points out the flaw in your guide. Most guides have four rankings for Very Good, Good, Average, and Bad. You lack the Average category and thus everything is either in Very Good, Good, or Bad. And that's not really accurate, IMO.
| Douglas Muir 406 |
I was thinking that Drow or Tieflings could snag Darkness as an SLA. And since you're casting it on your fighter, you close a bunch of range problems. Or, if there's dim light, there's no need to cast it. It ends with your fighter needing to be next to your enemy, and you needing to be somewhere within 15 feet of them. That's a better deal than the Rogue's Sneak Attack gets. Granted, you're right that it takes more setup for less reward than, say, -3 to hit or -3 to damage. But it might be workable, so yeah.
Yeah -- it's not trash, and it probably belongs in the "okay" group. But the gap between the "okay" group and the "excellent" group is still pretty large.
Sluggishness is still complete trash. Well, unless you're dealing with non-mounted halflings and gnomes in heavy armor. Then it's just mostly trash.
Yup.
Doug M.
| CryntheCrow |
Nightblindness and Disquiet aren't great in a normal party. That said, the 'all Darkvision' party who can also make Darkness can do some hilarious and abusive things with those two in combination, particularly throwing in Restriction, too.
You make the area around them dark, decrease their Darkvison and stare at them, making them shaken on top of other penalties from outside their newly lowered Darkvision radius. It's not even a super specialized build, just a group that all have Darkvision and decide to abuse that fact.
So, situational more than bad, IMO.
Which really points out the flaw in your guide. Most guides have four rankings for Very Good, Good, Average, and Bad. You lack the Average category and thus everything is either in Very Good, Good, or Bad. And that's not really accurate, IMO.
Effectiveness in Pathfinder has a tendency to be pretty binary, IMO.