1________DF__________1 (Inactive)

Game Master Brian Minhinnick

This the discussion thread for DF team 1.

Doting. I have a build ready to go. Just need to know about wands at higher caster level thanks.

I replied to your PM. It's fine, go for it.

I'm blind just ignore me :)

Here. :)

I have a couple of concepts, but nothing solid. I'd love to see what your build is, Ashe, so we cn figure out how to coordinate with you.

Sounds good will have it up in a few mins. What are you considering. I can help you flesh it out.

Gobo Scout & Flag-runner
N Goblin Spellkiller Inquisitor of Travel 2 / Lore Warden 1
Deity: Folca (net proficiency)

His combat offense will only be okay, but he should be able to move (hella-quietly) through dungeon in search of the flag, opponents, or wandering monster with serious efficiency.

The idea is to rush ahead and hopefully locate, isolate, and retrieve the flag before the other team can get to it. If he got caught in combat alone, he's likely to bug out and try to use the dungeon to his advantage until he can escape or put them at a disadvantage.

With Longstride up (potion), he'll have a speed of 50 for an hour, taking 10's on stealth for a 35.

Only problem ... it's a solo act. He's best when he can rush off alone ... which could be a big problem depending on how savvy or well-built the opponents are. Also, he'll eat through consumables pretty quickly (i'm kind of banking on having at least 3 to 4 potions/elixirs up the entire time).

Not bad, but I built Jing Long to destroy the oposition then get the flag. I'm not terrible at stealth but moving at half nocks me down to 10' of movement a turn. Yeah I'm not sure if it will be as easy as just finding the flag and grabbing it. Either your build will be great at it or get caught out by himself. Now your AC is good I wasn't expecting others to be up around mine so good job there. Mine will be 28 buffed and down to 26 raging. I too will be using around 1000gp of consumables. This is fine if you win. I used to do arena stuff back in 3.5 it was the core coliseum as long as you win you can keep up. If you start loosing though you will fall behind for sure. I though about just getting CL10 wand of Fireball with a few charges and make it easy, but that wouldn't have been that fun. If you go with what you got looks fine. Feel free to bounce question or ideas off me.

Character is in the profile :)

Let's see what Sarpadian is interested in bringing in, and then I'l make the call on whether this is the direction I want to go.

This will be my first attempt at an arena kind of game, and I think I'm going to need some help. I'm still working on getting the alias into Jelani's format, but here it is in the format I usually use:

sarpadian, your CL is 3, but your still only a level 2 wizard so you only have level 1 spells. If you want to do a wizard type your better off being an enchanter and trying things like sleep. Color spray will be really good the first two matches. Whats the rogue level for anyways. If you just played a level 3 wizard then you would have scorching ray if thats your plan.

I agree with Ashe. A caster can certainly be effective in a pvp environment, but you have to get really hyper-optimized and specialized around how you want to take opponents out. And loss of spell caster levels is going to hurt you ... a lot.

Color Spray can be devastating, but it's got an HD cap on it that could be problematic if this game goes on for any amount of time.

Do you have a specific way you want Pipsoo to fight/win?

Sneak attack on my ranged touch spells.

Let me think about it. There may be a way to get that working well. I normally avoid Sneak Attack in PvP games, but then again, I normally play more arena-style PvP games where getting Sneak Attack to work is crazy hard.

Getting sneak attack to work isn't nearly as difficult when you can make your opponent blind. :)

With Mudball? It seems like your opponents would be able to get around that fairly easily.

Assuming you win initiative:

Round 1: Pipsoo Mudballs, opponent fails their save, is blinded. Opponent uses a standard action to remove the mud ball, still has a swift and move action and is no longer blinded.

Seems like you just used one of your 2 castings of it (or three, with Pearl of Power) to eat up your opponent's standard action for 1 round .. at best. If they make the save, they're free to take their full actions against you or your teammates.

If you're really interested in getting sneak attack on folks consistently, may I direct you to the Oracle of Waves + Obscuring Mist option? :D

... though I guess that could hinder your own teammates as much as your opponents.

Its your character to build and play, but too much set up to get an average of 3 extra damage is not worth it

Given my Stealth modifier, a more realistic sequence is Mudball in the surprise round and an attack in Round 1, but Jing's point about setting up is well-taken.

Stealth needs cover to work, we have no idea what he layout will be like, and we go off an average team Init. again its your build to play, but if your not on my team next go around you will be murderated :) I'm thinking of a different build as well. I'm going to throw it together and see which one I like more.

ah on second thought it would be kind of fun, but not sure if I could hit anything. Sticking with Jing Long how he is.

Edit: Changed my mind again. I will be changing Jing Long a bit don't worry AC will be a bit higher and still flurrying with 3 section staff, but will be able to Pounce :) So any AC under 20 I should take out on a charge. Will post when done with changes.

New and improved, you guys get a free ride to victory :)

@Jelani, I spoilered Pummeling Style and Charge, they are on the SRD but not hyperlinked for some reason. Jabbing style, grabbing style and others from the ACG are hyperlinked not sure what the deal is.

As Jing Long says, Stealth needs a source of cover or concealment to work as more than just making you quiet. There may or may not be those around. Don't count on it though. I'd be more concerned with having someone who can open locked doors, or you might end up stuck/having to bypass a lot of locked rooms. Or beat the doors down and be all loud and obvious.

Thats pretty much exactly what my gobo is for. :)

Before we get started we'll need to set up a standard marching order, and which direction you'll go if I need to DMPC the team at any point.

For example, "We always follow the right hand wall, checking for traps at doors and intersections by having (Player X) take 10 (or 20) on perception."

I'm a follower of the always left and always together. I will be away this weekend, SCA event. I will be active tomorrow from work but then off the computer until sunday night.

If gobo has a higher spot than me he can take the lead if not I will. Mine is a +10

Uh ... I still need to get my build together. Then I'll be able to get something up.

Alright, no major rush. I'm going to wait until both teams are completely set up to start the game. Any time over the next few days is fine.

I'm going back to the drawing board.

Jing Long - How are you getting double your wisdom to AC?

Its up for FAQ at the moment, but the Sacred Fist and the Monk add wisdome. Sacred fist is Supernatural, Monk is Extraordinary so as of now they stack? Its being debated and as I said I have FAQ'ed the thread as well as over 100 others. I'm cool if you want to error on the side of caution and not allow it to stack. I think I'm still pretty strong, but they may FAQ the answer and say they do stack. I would say 60% or so are rolling with that assumption now. These build have started to creep into society play, well not mine, just the monk sacred fist ones.

Sarpadian: is there anythink you need help with. I'm really good with system mastery and Eben seems like he knows what he's doing as well and Jelani is an awesome DM and knows the system really well as well though I'm not sure if he will be offering advince :)

Okay, unless it gets officially FAQed I’m going to assume that’s an error. Otherwise they just created a horde of invincible dwarven zen archer/sacred fists. For now I’m going to say you only get to add wis once. If you want to cange yourbuild because of my ruling that’s fine.

It looks to me like my job is going to be handling opponents who have over the top ACs. I see two main routes for this: 1) Keeping the emphasis on touch spells (since most high-AC opponents will be getting a large portion of it from armor) or 2) focusing on spells that target Will. Up-thread, you mentioned an enchanter who uses sleep (which would be option 2), but is there any way to make option 1 work? I have a constitutional aversion to characters who are one-trick ponies.

A witch with a high slumber DC can do the sleep thing with a hex, and then use their spells for other options.

Sarpadian, in the name of tossing you some ideas for your controller/high-AC target damage dealing mage idea, here’s a few thoughts that build on Jelani’s suggestion. (Feel free to take or leave any of this.)

Witch with the Slumber Hex could be good (though watch out for elf-blooded opponents; they’re often immune to Sleep effects). If you really want to boost that hex DC, you need to maximize your Int modifier, so Ratfolk, Tiefling, Elf, or any human-variant (human, half-elf, half-orc) would be good.

Then, to work on getting your Option 1 taken care of, you could pick up Snowball, take the Magical Lineage (Snowball) trait and Rime Spell. Those combine to give a solid chunk of damage plus possibly 2 debuffs for 1 round (Staggered and Entangled … which could be particularly nasty against casters).

Prep 2 of those bad boys, then pick up a Pearl of Power to gain a possible 3rd use of it.

For more fun, you could see if you can swing picking up the Mage’s Tattoo feat (which requires Spell Focus: Conjuration as a prerequisite). That boosts the DC of your Snowball by 1 as well as boosting your caster level on it by 1 … kicking your damage up to 4d6 on a hit (averaging 14 damage on the spell).

Then, to get even more focused on your build (mwahahahahahhahahahaha), you could drop one of your levels of witch to pick up a single level of Cross-blooded Orc/Draconic Sorcerer, which will add +2 for each die of damage on a cold spell (in your case, 3d6 + 6, averaging 16.5 damage), though you’ll take a hit to your will saves (off-set by being a half-elf and picking up the Dual Minded alternate racial trait?). If you went with straight sorc, you could get this same set-up, but boost the damage up to 4d6 + 8 (averaging 22 per hit), but you'd lose your Sleep Hex (obviously).

Ya know, i've never really considered it, but the Witch has a nice little spell list for this type of competitive game.

Alright. I toyed with going with another character, but heck ... let's have fun with it. :)
(This is Eben, btw)

Hey Jelani, No I will stick with build. I figured you would rule that way. We will have to wait on the FAQ. They realy did this one to themselves. Making one EX and the Other SU so now everyone is like different sourse so they stack. We will see.

If gobo has a higher spot than me he can take the lead if not I will. Mine is a +10

Flik will have an Elixir of Vision running for the first hour of the dungeon, pushing his Percpetion up to +18. And he'll also have Bloodhound running, giving him Scent. I built him assuming he'd be taking point.

Hey, team. I was thinking through Jelani's request for "marching orders" in case the scout or group inst' online to keep the action moving forward.

When playing an actual dungeon, I usually use a systematic approach ... either always taking left avenues to their completion before moving on to the right (or doing the same to the right). Given the competitive nature of this game, however, that might not ethe smartest way to try to find the flag.

I'd suggest we have a running directive of "always try to be moving towards what we think is the center of the dungeon" ... at least as far as we can tell is the center, then circle outwards from that location if the map isn't there. It's definitely not as clean of an approach, but we're in a race here.

Love to hear everyone's thoughts.

I know that you can't combine archetypes that replace the same class feature, but what if one of the archetypes just modifies a class feature that the other replaces? For instance, can I be a crossblooded sorcerer and a tattooed sorcerer at the same time?

Hey Jelani, No I will stick with build. I figured you would rule that way. We will have to wait on the FAQ. They realy did this one to themselves. Making one EX and the Other SU so now everyone is like different sourse so they stack. We will see.

I mean, if they allow it to stack, it's going to go the way of synthesist summoner with 90% of DMs houseruling that you can't do it anyway. Then it'll get banned from PFS.

It just seems like an oversight in my opinion. After listening to a lot of interviews/convention panels with the design team, I know they wouldn't do something like that on purpose.

If it does fly though, I'm totally rebuilding one of my low level PFS characters into a Sacred Fist/Zen Archer, lol.

I should also point out, that I ended up not putting the flag in the center of the dungeon so much as a roughly even number of rooms away from the starting points of both teams. That seemed more fair, since the dungeons aren't really symmetrical, and it would be no fun if it was two rooms away for one group and seven for another.

I know that you can't combine archetypes that replace the same class feature, but what if one of the archetypes just modifies a class feature that the other replaces? For instance, can I be a crossblooded sorcerer and a tattooed sorcerer at the same time?

Normally that's up to the DM. For this game, I'm going to say no to that, I think. Better to keep it conservative when there's PVP.

No problem, that just means I have to be a human to get all the feats I want :).

DM Jelani, based on the progress of both teams (and your own DM prep), how long until you think we'll be ready to kick this thing off? I ask because another build (that plays the same roll in the group) came to mind, but I don't want to hold the game up if we're pretty close to kicking things off.

We're just waiting on Sarpadian to finish his alias. If you can finish before he does, no problem.

This is sarpadian's alias. I think I'm ready, unless anybody has great suggestions for stuff to spend 123 gp on :).

No! I have a better second concept!!!

I'm not going to be able to get the build together tonight. So I'll stick with Flik.

How does Isaac have darkvision? What's the marching order going to be?

Flik<Isaac<Jing Long?