Hi, I'm having quite a bit of choice paralysis for a themed character I want to build for a game starting at level 4, 25 point buy. Does anyone have any interesting ideas for making use of Hastur centric abilities? Cleric, bard, the 'deific obedience' classes for Hastur, or other more roleplaying-ish ideas? I'd also appreciate hearing about any Hastur characters anyone else has ever seen or played.
Bards are an obvious choice. The Mute Musician archetype is a good option, given that it creates eerie music that messes with the minds of your foes. Masked Performer can also be a good Bard archetype to take, especially if you play up his alternate identity as a split personality.
Mute Musician looks great, since it can poach from the wizard spell list. A great way to pick up stuff like Planar Binding, andit gives me the mental image of a snake charmer with a flute except the snakes are rather more dangerous. I had been thinking of a cleric of Void with a separatist Hubris for the touch of glory cha boost, but a bard would have Cha for binding naturally... What do you think about using Evangelist or Sentinel for it as opposed to progressing raw bard? The spell abilities of the archetype hint towards avoiding melee, so maybe trying to use the rapier/fencing grace is a bad idea since the Mute has to have an instrument of some sort... which would disqualify dex to damage..?
Any opportunity to play the Elder Mythos Cultist should be embraced.
I want to have a decently optimized character around this concept, and I already regret the loss of versatile performance for the Mute Musician since Hastur's deific obedience is a +4 to Perform. What is specifically great about the cultist archetype?
Snakers wrote: What is specifically great about the cultist archetype? Well, having your casting keyed off of the same stat as your channels is nice, for one. Plus there's the maddening gaze that can inflict Wisdom damage, sickening, and confusion - which combines quite nicely with Hastur's second evangelist boon if you decide to go that route. And of course, there's always something to be said for playing a divine full caster when you're worshiping a Great Old One, just so you can make use of the amazing Dreamed Secrets feat.
Hmm, I've never actually tried playing a debuff cleric before, it should be interesting to attempt the playstyle. A last question - what domain (or subdomain) associated to Hastur would be recommended, do you guys think, from the chaos/evil/void restriction attached to the Mythos Cultist archetype?
I'd probably go with void - the powers give you a bonus on saves and a confusion effect you can toss onto another spell as a swift action, and the spells are nice enough give you both flight and planar binding. Either the dark tapestry or stars subdomain could make a decent alteration, the former for enhanced summoning, the latter for a bit of spontaneous casting and self-healing.
Definitely Void. Great powers, great spells. Chaos and Evil are passable choices for the kind of character you'll be pursuing. They're pretty good for melee clerics, especially with the Demon subdomain, but none of that is applicable to you. So Void is the obvious way to go here.
And yes, Dreamed Secrets is ridiculously good for the cultist. Ordinary Clerics have to use it very sparingly since a failed will save will hurt their spellcasting ability for the remainder of the day. The Elder Mythos Cultist loses almost nothing from taking wisdom damage.
Alas, Sandy Peterson's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder hasn't hit public release - there's a lot of good options for following Hastur in there. XD
Dasrak wrote: And yes, Dreamed Secrets is ridiculously good for the cultist. Ordinary Clerics have to use it very sparingly since a failed will save will hurt their spellcasting ability for the remainder of the day. The Elder Mythos Cultist loses almost nothing from taking wisdom damage. Plus there's the fact that Will saves are a Charisma-based check for them, so with a circlet of persuasion their bonus will be something like +16 by the time they get the feat.
Is there anything I can do with the +4 to Perform as a cleric, by any chance, should I want to take the Deific Obedience?
Snakers wrote: Is there anything I can do with the +4 to Perform as a cleric, by any chance, should I want to take the Deific Obedience? Unfortunately, most of the things that use performance are bard/skald stuff- everything else just uses it as a prerequisite (which doesn't actually care what your check is, since that just focuses on skill ranks).
I did find "Fanged Crown Massacre", which lets you take an immediate action when an ally attacks in order to give them a +2 to the attack. This also requires a DC 10 perform (oratory) check... you are a cha caster, but perform is not a class skill for clerics, so the obedience, your cha, and 1 or 2 skill ranks would let you pretty much ignore the check.
...You can put on a performance of The King in Yellow?
Well, the tenth level ability of the Evangelist does just SCREAM putting on a performance. Thank you all for your advice!
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