@Slid
I would got for these in order: “Deception is a tool. Master it.”, “Focus strengthens your will.” Don't get charmed while charming or bluffing the victim.
@Stanislav
“You shall be my angel slayer.” is a nice choice for you, though you right the “Strike first, strike ruthlessly and thus be victorious” may be more fitting, as it is more general to many situations, where angles are only a few.
Yeah it is tough decision on what to take, she does have +6 will save already, bonus would push it to +8 (against charms). She has access to 2nd level spells, barkskin is an option, that can be useful even going up to higher levels.
Well for R'yzzntyg, I have gone for a another Kobold feat, Draconic Breath Weapon, burn burn burn! Also thinking of going fully with the Draconic feat line to Draconic Paragon. Also Knowledge History got it's rank in too.
For Ajikisshochraos taking Drake Power of Breath Weapon of Acid (though not connected to drake's scale colour so have choice of lightning, fire, acid or cold). I choosing Drake Powers to get to flying mount capability. Seeing how well this will work mechanical, first time taking the Draconic Druid achetype with drake companion. Small druids it seems not too bad, but for medium, a flying mount is almost insane to do, only getting to fly near level 20.
Though I am baffled what feat to give Ajikisshochraos, have already Dodge feat, and she can't fly yet, only glide, so many of the flying (even the combat flying) really can't be taken yet. Wish there was a easy way to give feats to choose from, instead of a huge number of qualifying feats, that includes all the starting magical spell feats. Make finding suitable feats for drakes hard.
I was thinking the Angel Slayer trait was ideal for Cori. She already smites good as a class ability, so it looks like a great booster for that ability.
If Stan decides he wants it, though, I’ll take either the extra hit points or the Initiative bonus, depending on what’s left.
I agree. Angel Slayer works better for Cori. Stanislav will take “Strike first, strike ruthlessly and thus be victorious”. At fifth level he will gain Improved Init for a total of +6. Dex will be +4 by then I think so +10 total to init. Not bad. :)
Slid, Iron Will is good but maybe you can wait til 5th to take it? +1 to hit is big for a non-full BAB character. Hard choice.
I'm thinking of taking craft wondrous item if I don't get any feats to make my bone boi have feats. (question, do monsters get feats every odd HD like players?)
Craft Wondrous would be wondrous. :) I think it would pay big dividends down the road IF there is time for crafting. Not sure we will ever be able to by the nice items we will all want since we might not have easy access in a good town. Hmm. Perhaps that is one area where Slid's deception can be useful.
As for the first question R'yzzntyg only player characters gain a special trait not companions.
Vinnick Level up-
Saves: +1 fort, +1 Ref
Feats: Craft Wondrous Items or spell focus conjuration
skills: 2+4 for 6
Spellcraft +1
Know. Arcana +1
Know. Planes +1
Know. History +1
Know. Religion +1
Diplomacy +1
spells:
2nd level spells
1+2(same spell)+bonus spells (1)
New spells-
Lesser animate dead (from archetype)
glitterdust
Boneshaker.
Also, do I have time to purchase a few more spells?
Namely-
Rope trick
Scare
Knock
Cat’s Grace
as for the perks, I'm leaning towards either-
Perfect favorite spell (boneshaker sounds decent)
or
Focus strengthens your will. +2 vs charms is always nice.
QUESTION: For the Angel Slayer trait, is Knowledge, Planes considered a class skill going forward?
also guys, I just remembered I can channel command undead, don't let me forget that! lol. fight could have been use just sending waves of undead from the other room at him. heh.
@GM
Normally, monsters gain Feats every odd level depending on HD right? Would my skelly boi companion also gain these? Mostly because I would enjoy slapping him in heavy armor later on to help hide his white skelly bones.
I thought those white skelly bones was sexy.
Turning the squire into a shield, Vinnick is one serious evil dude.
he is, in his mind, practical. If they boy has no value, and will not join us, then the only way to make use of him is, well, as an undead skelly boi.
QUESTION: For the Angel Slayer trait, is Knowledge, Planes considered a class skill going forward?
DM DireMerc: Did you see this question? It may have gotten lost in the posts.
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Yes it does become a class skill going forward.
@vinnick mindless undead and constructs do not gain skills or feats while advancing in HD sadly. However you can just put armor on the skeleton, it would just take a penalty to attack equal to the check penalty.
@Vinnick Actually...was looking into and in the rules for creating a skeleton it states «A skeleton retains all the natural weapons, manufactured weapon attacks, and weapon and armor proficiencies of the base creature» so your reginal 2.0 would be proficient with heavy armor.
For whatever reason zombies do not retain any proficiencies but skeletons do.
clearly no fleshy brain is better than rotten green brain haha
I am still working on the feat choice for the drake. Asking for advice, and it seems it is best to keep drake out of melee combat. Most is of the opinion the official drake is just bad, especially below level 11. As for feats mentioned so far, Hover and Fly-by-attack are still good choices, but only useful when drake can actually fly (at level 7).
So I thinking of keeping drake as support utility to the party. Someone already mentioned drakes can use wands, if this is correct, perhaps she can carry wands of healing, and skitter around healing as needed. She now has her once a day range attack, of her breath weapon.
I will wait a day or 2 to see what others may suggest for feats for the drake. Though the trend with the official drake, is avoid combat all together, even though drake comes with a d12 HD.
As for trait choice, I still trying to figure out which of the 4 is better one to take.
All things aside, with a d12, drakes make good off tanks, usually. And honestly, that is about all the RAW drake companions are good for until at minimum level 11.
That said, RAW drake companions do catch up to normal AnCs around that level, and start out performing them around 13-15.
Any AnC that can hold a wand and has an Int of higher than (3?) can use a wand. However, how good they would be at using said wand is... up for debate.
how many feats does the drake get? Armor or things to boost its AC could be worthwhile.
Drake gets feats at 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 17, and 19. Gives a total of 8 feats at level 19.
1: Dodge
When she can fly perhaps at 7 and 11, she takes hover and fly-by-attack (can be used for healing and buffing of party member too instead of an attack an enemy).
Drake's Int is 4.
Yep, drakes seem to become useful at around 11, and begin to shine at around 13. But till then they not very good combatants.
I also think Dodge is a good choice. Or maybe Natural Armor if that is a choice. Of what about light armor proficiency?
We wary of Fly By Attack in that it still provokes.What size is the drake now?
Drake size advancement.
Tiny: 1
Small: 5
Medium: 9
Large: 13
Huge: 17
Minimum level.
Flying clumsy: 7
Mount (non-flight - small): 7
Mount2 (flying - small): 11
So until level 13 and arge it would provoke with a fly by against medium enemies without reach. If they have 10' reach a fly by will provoke until level 17. So maybe Flyby is not an immediate need.
Note while Tiny the drake needs to enter the enemy's hex, which always provokes. So even with fly by an attack would provoke twice IF the enemy has the ability to make more than one AOO.
Seems the drake companion needs serious progression planning, compared to the usual animal companions, along with druid progression to tie in with the drake's progression. love to know what the authors of draconic druid had in mine originally when they did the progression.
Perhaps I have misunderstood the intended role of draconic druid, and role of the drake. Perhaps I need to relook at the dole of R'yzzntyg in the party, and alter the progression going forward, while there still a chance for change.
are we sure entering an enemy's square provokes additional AoOs from movement? Only one AoO can be provoked from movement a round by a single creature.
I am not sure. Was thinking that entering into an enemy's square was a special thing, but obviously it is movement. From level 5 on it does not have to enter but is still gonna provoke until it has reach UNLESS it starts in visible or goes first in initiative and its enemy is flat footed. That could come up a lot.
Having a flying animal companion with an int 4 could be great for scouting. Can R'yz communicate with it? Does it understand a language with that int?
So as you guys can tell likely this is were we splits way of the wicked storyline and dwelve a little into the tyrants grasp we will return back to the way of the wicked later as I Brew the two into my own story.
DM DireMerc: Was the sale of my breastplate and bastard sword enough to purchase a masterwork bastard sword?
This weekend, I will spend time reviewing R'yzzntyg and Ajikisshochraos. Put together a progression all the way to level 20 (even though I doubt we will get there).
Rereading Draconic Druid, the mechanics of the build seemed to focus more on teamwork melee, with dragon breath ranged attacks. The dragon shaping only kicks in at level 10, thus no flying capabilities for R`yzzntyg until level 10 using dragon form for flying exploration. The half transform from level 4 is only armour improve, and bite gain (her scimitar is already better than her bite she would gain), so practically rather useless until level 10.
It really seems to what people say about Draconic Druid, pretty much weak and useless below level 10, gaining strength at 10, starting to be powerful at around 13. The progression of feats to normal druid, is definitely very different, such as natures spell only taken at level 9 (preparation for level 10 for dragon shape (dragon 1), instead of level 3 (in preparation at level 4 wildshape)
Only difference between dragon wildshape and spell dragon shapes, is that duration is hour units instead of minute units. This is where the draconic druid begins to shine.
So it seems a rather boring fights, of only mainly support healing and buffing till both her and drake gets to level 11 to really take part melee, other than use the ranged breath weapons.
Do not discount Druid spell casting. You have some great spells. Barkskin is a long lasting awesome buff for instance. Frostbite is a super useful spell that can damage and fatigue with a touch. No save versus the fatigue. And it has sorta a until you use it up duration - one touch per level. I see people use it through the share spell ability with their animal companion too. Early entry into Delay poison is a great long lasting buff and the communal Delay Poison at 3rd has saved a party I was in more than once.
I am not tossing spell casting away. Got a mega load of spells to choose daily from. At least Draconic Druid did not mess with the spells, about the only thing that did not change.
Ah, Share Spell feat, now that is a good one too. Teamwork (escape route) or Share spell for level 5, as I going the Dragon Paragon route for Kobold. R'yzzntyg is dragon nuts. Need to see how to intertwine the other feats amongst the dragon feats, and perhaps get some dirt trick feats for drake, while she is doing the the dragon route. Giving me some thinking to do, as I have not completed level 3 yet for either one.
Though I love to get to level 20 for to see the capstone feature kicking in, at will transformation of dragon forms, going from one type to the next, using the various breath forms. It would make for a dazzling show of raw primal forces, along with some awesome weather storm effect.
Just trying to make her more useful, yet keeping the theme of pyromaniac dragon crazed kobold with her drake companion.
I have only played book one before, and as our GM has informed us, we are going off the rails anyway, but from what I hear the challenge rating is up there as we progress to the point that your capstone would likely not be overkill. The little tweaks our GM is already adding in has increased the challenge significantly but I think the rewards have been increased as well.
I do worry that you are our only healer R'yz. Likely we need to invest in serious healing magics- wands and maybe even staves as we advance. By 5th level Stanislav will be undead. Slid is already basically. And Vinnick's minions are. So we need positive and negative healing capability.
Yeah, the blend of healing requirements is most unusual for sure. I have been thinking, R'yzzntyg has healing spells, perhaps remove healing from her prepared spell list, and substitute them with wands/staves for both healing requirements.The freed spell slots used for other buffing, utility spells. I guess I would need to give Use Magic device skill ranks to drake, so can also use the wands, so can also move around the combat area when not doing active melee combat. So having both R'yzzntyg and drake delivering healing to our 4 melee combatants, making both of them actually more useful, and melee combatant to worry less about healing focussing on landing hits.
She still has the spontaneous animal summon options to her prepared list.
Saturday I will put a proposal together for progression for both, so you guys can give comments on. Thanx for your comments and inputs already.
I would suggest more subtle spells for the upcoming task. Sadly, Vinnick cannot use enchantment magic, so do not hope to rely on that. And it is likely we will need to leave the undead and drakes behind at a "safe house" during our operations. If not out of the area entirely.
The only healing we really need to worry about at this time in emergency in combat healing.
Slid, if you are open to suggestions, a level of inquisitor soon might do a lot for you.
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So, Vinnick, I am very much open to suggestions. Could you walk me through your suggestion, please? I have zero wisdom.
My initial plan for Slid was to go assassin from levels 6~15, but I'm not sure it will be possible (being an assassin involves participating in the assassin's guild which might come in conflict with our benefactor's plan. I was planning on discussing it with our GM once we get closer to that level).
Now, if you know of an inquisitor archetype that uses int or cha instead of wis, it would be even better.
I misread the int for wis, that said.. perhaps a level of oracle then? The curses level with your character level, not oracle level. I know there are a lot of inquisitor archetypes that swap face related skills to use WIS instead, which is unfortunate. But none swap Wis to Cha that I remember off the top of my head.
the main reason I suggest it is, rogues, fighters, and a few other more martially focused classes gain a decent bit from a 1 level dip. Particularly into casters. They also work well as starting class dips to go into other classes.
what you would get-
Cantrips, which have good utility.
spells- not only do you get 1st level spells, but you can now activate spell completions from the oracle spell list. (admittedly, if you are putting a skill point per level into UMD likely not that big of an issue in another 4-5 levels)
a curse that progresses with your character level, not your oracle level.
+2 to your will saves
you give up... not that much. You put off rogue progression for one level, but that's it really. If the GM is open to fractional BaB then you don't even give up the BaB. (fractional BaB is- D8 get .75 of a BaB every level, d6 gain .5. So, instead of saying +0 BaB, you would look at your class levels, 3 levels of D8= 2.25 BaB, so when you dip into oracle, you gain another .75 BaB, which would bring you to your +3)
The other choice would be sorcerer so you can gain vanish and another spell of your choosing.
I've always been an advocate of multiclassing in certain classes. Rogue/unrogue being one of them. Save maybe the eldritch scoundrel archetype. But I usually go into arcane trickster with that archetype anyway.
@Slid I have no issues with you being an assassin, there is an assassins guild that works for the the whispering way and they count for this purpose.
@Cori No you would get lets says 170 gold (that's being a bit generous) for selling them and you would need 385 gold for a masterwork bastard sword.
I don't do fractional BAB what you see in the progression chart for the class is what you get.
@Slid, great suggestion. I will work with Vinnick in choosing our spells for the day.
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So, I could go with Oracle with the Streets mystery. It's cool that I can go with assassin too. I thought bard too.
I'm thinking that this is purely a mechanical choice. I think Slid is the type of guy who succeeds with his wits, but having such a powerful patron, he would consider giving in to some mystical powers too.
Opinions?
With bard, I'd probably want to drop 2 levels into it. If only for versatile performance. (though, usually this is planned)
both are good, both would provide a different flavor. One more divine in nature, the other more... musical.
It would depend on if you find a curse you really like or not maybe.
let me know when your characters are all ready and we will start the next chapter
How much if I just sell my Agile Breastplate?
I want to be able to replenish my alchemical items.
What do you guys think is more usable for the drake? Mount or Flight?
Effectively need to get to level 15 to enjoy flying mount.
Another thing, instead of aiming for a flying mount, perhaps progress with breath weapon flying combination?
At character level 11, see can get Draconic Paragon, which gives R'yzzntyg 20 feet (average) flying speed. Though also has access to 10 hours of dragon shape, flying (fly 60 feet (poor) for form I, or 90 feet (poor) for form II (level 12), if she remains in the shape for long time.
Perhaps, needing a flying mount is needed less.
@DireMerc: Am I correct to say, R'yzzntyg does not require Natures Spell feat to cast spells in Dragon Shape, as up to level 10 she is still kobold, with dragon aspects; and at 10 and above, the dragon forms she can take, do have claws and arms for somatic requirements, and dragons can talk (draconic, many speaking common too) for verbal requirements. Dragons can wear belts, so she could easily have her spell pouch not melded into her form, by taking it off first, change shape, and use longer belt wear the spell pouch as belt, or as a bandoleer.
I am busy constructing complete progress to level 20 for both R'yzzntyg and Ajikisshochraos, simply searching the web the suggestions and comments indicates that draconic druid is a tricky class to progression, due to the limitations imposed on draconic druid.