Baldwin the Merciful's: Treasure of Chimera Cove (ACG) (Inactive)

Game Master baldwin the merciful

Hell yes I am interested.

Interested, but it's taking a lot to remain useful.

SLAYER OR SKALD!

(couldn't resist)

Cool. I am interested to see how some of the other classes do too. I was initially interested in Skalds (I like bards) but that doesn't seem so appealing now and I'm wondering if some if the other classes are unexpectedly good. E.g. hunter with all sorts of teamwork feats.

Investigator is the best. This module is the problem. Water this, squeeze that.

Then there's tactics.

The posting rate has fallen off a lot, are people still interested in this?

DM has been swamped all my games have slowed down.

Xavier sent me a message he needs to pull out of all his games for the time being.

That's a shame, but that pesky life thing does happen.

Here is quick DM status update. I'll be busy through Friday but I should get a post up Friday night. I plan on posting this weekend. I will not be available at all on Monday though. It is still up in he air what happens after Monday.

Sounds good.

I will be away for a few days and posting may be sporadic. Bot me as needed. I will be back online regularly on Wednesday next week.

I'm traveling back this weekend. Will be jetlagged...

Fair warning - I'm going to be off the radar all day Monday.

Unfortunately, my work is going to have me busy all week and next. I should be able to put up an occasional post this week (but not many) and I will be out of the loop next week.

I will be offline until the weekend.

A wonderful and happy Thanksgiving to all who partake of the roast avian beast! Unless your vegetarian, in which case you may partake of tofu-key! Not so avian, but we get the jist!

Didn't want to clutter the gameplay thread, but unless Poltur has natural attacks he needs a weapon with an evil alignment (which he could well have) to overcome the DR:

Overcoming DR

Damage Reduction may be overcome by special materials, magic weapons (any weapon with a +1 or higher enhancement bonus, not counting the enhancement from masterwork quality), certain types of weapons (such as slashing or bludgeoning), and weapons imbued with an alignment.

I'm busy at work till tomorrow afternoon.

I've been swamped today.

It's OK, we can die later.

It's alright, let's not be negative. :)

No, I'm pretty positive we're gonna die.

It would have been better if you'd run like Quiz suggested ;)

For a character with no future, why not have a glorious last stand? Of course glorious would require me to actually hit something.

Yeah :[

Would Xavier smiting have made a difference? Double smite damage... Evil Undead/Dragon.

Would it also hike his AC?

I wish I'd had a haste left, that probably would have helped.

I was actually curious to see if arcanists could do what sorcerers can, as in swap out a higher level spell to cast a lower level one. It was not listed as an ability, so so much for that. Haste certainly would have helped more than the tentacles.

Tentacles have been singularly useless tbh.

They took a large nerf in the transition to PF from 3.5 iirc.

Would Xavier smiting have made a difference? Double smite damage... Evil Undead/Dragon.

Would it also hike his AC?

xavier had mentioned that he was low on spells and abilities and he departed quickly so his profile was not updated. Regardless we are almost done.

I vote TPK, and the Mephit goes on to rule the world! Undead Warpriest minions, and all.

I don't see a TPK form the Terrakin....Xavier and Bug most likely, those at range probably survive. Although the cavern is collapsing which is another issue. :-)

You all did well ... congratulations. I would be interested in reading any last comments on the advanced classes.

Brawler is really only powerful if you throw in master of many styles. Of course the interesting thing about the game is how many things are really powerful when you throw in master of many styles.

Though in truth, I'm not really sure how much I needed that. I never got any mileage out of pummeling style anyway, so any route to getting dragon style would have been sufficient, so I just would have had to adjust the stats so I could pick up stunning fist (and spend a feat on it, but losing pummeling style would have cost me nothing).

Looking at it, I would have been a bit shorter on skills, and lower on saves, but would have had more flurry ability. Not a huge difference.

Truth be told it's the dragon style that is powerful, the brawler class just happens to be nice for taking advantage of it. Though Bug did demonstrate he is one hell of a glass cannon. He AC is lousy and there's really no way to get around that. I guess I could dip a level of fighter and wear heavy armor and tote a shield, but then I lose +2/+2 from the brawling property on my armor (limited to light armor).

I could probably put together a 8th level barbarian which is more effective without much trouble to be quite honest.

I do have a brawler which looks a lot like this guy underway in PFS, though only 3rd level. He's monk/brawler, but without the mutagen master. I find that PFS modules are very often written to reward versatility so I decided to keep to the base brawler to get the ability to take feats I might need on the fly. Not sure if that's going to be as good as the mutagen though.

ROP and Amulet of Natural Armor and pumping up the dexterity would help with the AC.

In my experience, AC is an all or nothing exercise (not completely true, but it is how I approach it). A moderate AC is generally only useful against mooks, and if mooks are a threat, you have other issues with your build. For AC to matter in a boss fight, you have to go all in, and that takes a goodly bit of money and feats. I have done it on many builds, because I do think it is worth it. I'm generally a bigger fan of being the last one standing because I didn't take damage rather than relying on rocket tag to beat down the enemy before it beats me down. Bug's rolls in this final fight appear to be a vindication of my normal approach over this glass cannon build.

I think the best thing about Arcanists is flexibility. Quick study is a seriously strong ability *if* the Arcanist has a wide selection of spells.

The occultist archetype seems strong, the summons are a swiss army knife, although in hindsight I'm not sure it was worth investing quite so many feats into improving them instead of getting more exploits.

I note you could make a decent blaster arcanist but I feel they would quickly run out of spells.

In terms of overall power I'd say they where roughly equal with wizards (I.e. weak to begin with, then masters of the universe at higher level) and strictly above sorcerers.

How to challenge an arcanist? Have long adventuring days.

Long adventuring days, or waves, of combatants can challenge any spellcasting class.

Indeed, Arcanists get less spells per day than most wizards and definatly sorcs so they probably feel it first.

This almost felt like you had to muscle through. Too short, game time wise.

I know Rena was not a combat optimized build, but the dice screwed her hard.

Investigator is good, but almost everything will cost you a round to buff. And if the group just moves/engages without planning, several buffs are wasted. Buff, then "10 minutes later" (fast forward, lose buff).

Investigator doesn't work well with a gung ho group. Needs a methodical team. Warpriest and Barbarian... Eh.

I like the class and can see power (from my perspective) RP capabilities if optimized.