A Hard Choice


Advice


Hello all, I wanted to grab some additional input for a Pathfinder campaign I'll soon be joining.

Without getting much into it, I wanted to play something I generally have next to no experience using. Checking out RPGBOT gave me a lot of insight in what I *could* use, but I don't have much time dissecting all the options in sufficient detail for me to make the best choice.

We have a few days to decide and gather around to roll out our characters, so I have some time to decide, but not as much as I would've liked to fully explore my options.

My quandary is this: Which one should I be? I have potentially three choices I'm looking at. I could either be;

A) Druid, something I've played before, but with the Menhir Savant Archetype, something I haven't done before, as I've only ever played vanilla Druid.

or

B) Oracle with Time Mystery, which looks pretty awesome on the surface.

or

C) Cleric, going through the Death Domain. I never played a negative Cleric and have always been tempted to give a shot, but most DMs have shot me down before. Can't imagine why (sarcasm). This DM is open to the idea, so I don't know.

For additional context, we're starting out at Level 5 and I've worked with the DM to determine that my race would be an Oakling, because I wanted to be a Dryad but wanted some way of circumventing or completely ignoring the whole, "locked to a tree", restriction. I know for certain we will have a Monk and Samurai in the party, another is undecided and I'm fairly certain one of us said they'd be heals, so I shouldn't have to worry too much about needing a healer.

Help deciding would be fantastic, or, if you have an idea that might be awesome for me to try out, that'd be awesome! I've tried pretty much every standard class before, so I'm looking for more archetypes or weird choices, but not so weird they're useless. Bonuses for awesome flavor to characterize, as I like having good role-playing options beyond, "I feel the burning desire to bury my axe into it until our problem is solved."

Liberty's Edge

As for C, an undead army is ridiculously powerful and not recommended unless you want that kind of thing, and perhaps weird for an oakling.

Either of A and B would be just fine. Druid naturally fits with an oakling, but time oracle is indeed pretty cool. Perhaps your character sees time more as the trees do, the long game.

Except of course that oaklings have a CHA penalty normally, so druid or cleric is far more optimal. Menhir savant plays *very* similarly to a regular druid, so if you want something new I'd suggest cleric, except again negative energy channeling is cha based.


blashimov wrote:

As for C, an undead army is ridiculously powerful and not recommended unless you want that kind of thing, and perhaps weird for an oakling.

Either of A and B would be just fine. Druid naturally fits with an oakling, but time oracle is indeed pretty cool. Perhaps your character sees time more as the trees do, the long game.

Except of course that oaklings have a CHA penalty normally, so druid or cleric is far more optimal. Menhir savant plays *very* similarly to a regular druid, so if you want something new I'd suggest cleric, except again negative energy channeling is cha based.

That is true isn't? The penalty to CHA might be off-putting, especially if I'm not rolled properly for it...hmm...if the score is high enough to compensate for the penalty, that might still be an option, but if not, it probably would be best to go Druid or Oracle.

I'll have to discuss with the DM if I can roll stats before choosing my class. Don't like doing it that way, but my dice are kind of my fate here. Thanks for the response!

The Exchange

i may have a solution for circumventing the racial penalty to charisma, but it will require you to consult your DM

D20pfsrd wrote:

Note [3PP] indicates a source other than Paizo. Consult your GM before choosing.

Aged [3PP]

Source Oracle’s Curse, copyright 2014 by RJ Grady, published by Tripod Machine.

You became an oracle late in life, or perhaps you aged and grew wise at an unnatural rate.

Effect

You are a venerable member of your race. However, your physical abilities are affected as though you were old, rather than venerable.

At 5th level, your physical abilities are affected as though you were middle-aged, rather than old.

At 10th level, you are immune to magical and non-magical disease.

At 15th level, you will never die of old age and you are immune to death effects.

not only will the boost to your charisma (not to mention other mental stats) help overcome the racial penalty, the curse fits really well thematically with the time mystery.

even if your dm doesn't let you take it, you could still probably start as an old or venerable member of your race anyways.


QLMMaster wrote:

i may have a solution for circumventing the racial penalty to charisma, but it will require you to consult your DM

D20pfsrd wrote:

Note [3PP] indicates a source other than Paizo. Consult your GM before choosing.

Aged [3PP]

Source Oracle’s Curse, copyright 2014 by RJ Grady, published by Tripod Machine.

You became an oracle late in life, or perhaps you aged and grew wise at an unnatural rate.

Effect

You are a venerable member of your race. However, your physical abilities are affected as though you were old, rather than venerable.

At 5th level, your physical abilities are affected as though you were middle-aged, rather than old.

At 10th level, you are immune to magical and non-magical disease.

At 15th level, you will never die of old age and you are immune to death effects.

not only will the boost to your charisma (not to mention other mental stats) help overcome the racial penalty, the curse fits really well thematically with the time mystery.

even if your dm doesn't let you take it, you could still probably start as an old or venerable member of your race anyways.

That seems like a very good option for me. There's a couple cool other Curses, but that seems to be the good ticket if I were to run with the Time Based Oracle. Definately like you said, that fits really well.

Thank you for the input :)


blashimov wrote:
QLMMaster wrote:

Wanted to say thanks again to you both for the input and wanted to update on what I came up with xD

So I decided to keep the Time Oracle as my choice of class. After a bit of discussion of how the Oakling would fit as one, as well as one set within the DM's world, he allowed me to have a +2 CHA instead, but only if I took the penalty to STR.

At first this sounded fair. So I built the Oracle, but halfway into it I realized that Oracles are almost like glorified Clerics, which means that penalty to strength hampered a bit of my capability in combat with him. We already rolled stats and the STR penalty was at 8, which means a -1. It's not huge, but feels very lacking.

To remedy that, I wanted to give him more options, so I dug around in the Ultimate books and found a wonderful feat: Eldritch Heritage.

I found that my character nearly had all the skills required to take any of the Bloodlines, but was caught between Celestial and Dragon as my most desired facets.

At the time, I had Magical Talent, Nature's Mimic and Convincing Liar as my traits. I decided to drop Convincing Liar and instead took Adopted, of course for the Human Trait of an additional feat. At level 5, this means I had 4 feats to burn and decided to immediately burn 2 of them on both Bloodlines.

To get around the penalty however, I needed a good physical option as a last resort. With all of the simple weapons as default, I was immediately looking into Martial Proficiency and decided Rapier would be the nice balance for this character's flavor and strength reasons. I have a 14 Dex, so taking Weapon Finesse for the last slot was a must, but it needed more...oomph.

With starting gold at 10,500, I looked into options for a Rapier, and settled on making it out of Bloodcrystal, but also enchanted it with Wounding. It's funny as heck because Bloodcrystal says that when it hits an opponent suffering from Bleed, they take one extra damage and Wounding says when it hits an enemy, it gives them a Bleed stack and can become cumulative. It's not the strongest weapon ever for a little over 9k Gold, but it certainly is *ahem* bloodthirsty xD

And for my flaws, I went with Loner, Warded Against Nature and Mark of Slavery. With DM's approval, I want his backstory to be that he was found by a slightly crazy Human Sorcerer/Alchemist fellow while he was still a seed and did sadistic experiments on him, hence why he's a freak of nature for an Oakling xD

It sounds crazy...but I know I could really do far worse if I really wanted too.


Yaakov'Tovah wrote:

At the time, I had Magical Talent, Nature's Mimic and Convincing Liar as my traits. I decided to drop Convincing Liar and instead took Adopted, of course for the Human Trait of an additional feat.

unfortunately that's a different type of trait - they are racial traits that you auto get for being the race, completely separate from the traits that you get 2-3 of, so you can't get an extra feat from human with adopted, you get race traits, that require you to be that race (or have adopted) to pick them

Example: Bonus Feat is a Human Racial Trait of the Feat and Skill category, whereas Aspiring Bard is a Race Trait that requires the Human race to be chosen
Confusing wording yeh - but that's the distinction


dharkus wrote:
Yaakov'Tovah wrote:

At the time, I had Magical Talent, Nature's Mimic and Convincing Liar as my traits. I decided to drop Convincing Liar and instead took Adopted, of course for the Human Trait of an additional feat.

unfortunately that's a different type of trait - they are racial traits that you auto get for being the race, completely separate from the traits that you get 2-3 of, so you can't get an extra feat from human with adopted, you get race traits, that require you to be that race (or have adopted) to pick them

Example: Bonus Feat is a Human Racial Trait of the Feat and Skill category, whereas Aspiring Bard is a Race Trait that requires the Human race to be chosen
Confusing wording yeh - but that's the distinction

Is there a FAQ or errata for that? This is how I was introduced to it and have seen many a group work with this. The most rule mongering people I've known use it too.

On page 59 is states, for Adopted, "You were adopted and raised by someone not of your race, and raised in a society not your own. As a result, you picked up a race trait from your adoptive parents and society, and may immediately select a race trait from your adoptive parents’ race."

I would assume race trait would mean the racial traits for the type of race one is adopted from and while there are different brackets, yes, they are all racial traits.

Perhaps this has been a misconception or an implied ruling or poor wording on the writer's part. I'm aware that the books sometimes mix words together and expect people to know the difference when there may be confusion, but if this true, than a lot of people are doing it wrong apparently and needs updating for clarification o_O because just reading the plain text on the book would have me believe I could choose any of those racial traits I desired from humans, whether it was the basic, skill and feat or alternative.

Silver Crusade Contributor

Those are racial traits, not race traits. It's every bit as confusing and particular as those seven words make it sound.

Racial traits: components of a race's stats.
Race traits: a category of traits, like combat or faith, but available only to members of the listed race (or a member of any race with the Adopted social trait).

For example, humans' bonus feat, elves' keen senses, and dwarves' stonecunning are racial traits. World Traveler, Warrior of Old, and Tunnel Fighter are race traits.

That said: if your group will let you get away with spending half a feat to get a feat, don't let me stand in your way. ^_^


Kalindlara wrote:

Those are racial traits, not race traits. It's every bit as confusing and particular as those seven words make it sound.

Racial traits: components of a race's stats.
Race traits: a category of traits, like combat or faith, but available only to members of the listed race (or a member of any race with the Adopted social trait).

For example, humans' bonus feat, elves' keen senses, and dwarves' stonecunning are racial traits. World Traveler, Warrior of Old, and Tunnel Fighter are race traits.

That said: if your group will let you get away with spending half a feat to get a feat, don't let me stand in your way. ^_^

Ever more making me believe that the writer's really need a thesaurus XD this get's confusing at times.

What's weird is that my group's before introduced me and worked this way :/ but I guess everyone is prone to error. I'll have to discuss this with my DM and see how he wants to do this since everything's pretty set in stone now, but thanks for the crucial feedback.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / A Hard Choice All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.