Oh, yes, tigers are also not evil. If a tiger was running free in a settlement and, given he could speak, greeted me by saying what the otyhug said, I'm fairly certain getting rid of it would be a priority. Because Maca is worried that someone gets eaten, no matter by whom it which.
Maybe not kill it, but certainly not leaving it free.
Well right now it's not running free. If it stays down here, and can be made to stick to a not-walking-around-on-two-legs diet, hey, live and let live. If we come back later and it decides that's not a choice it can live with, then a-pitter a-patter, and let's get at her.
Have to agree with Ril here. There are two kinds of threats. Those we need to kill now and those we can kill later if we want to. This falls into the latter category
Slight TOPIC SHIFT!
The category is (once again) Feats.
By itself, Arcane Strike seems like a no-go on account of action economy. If I also picked up Champion's Strike (which also lets the damage scale), you think that becomes a worthwhile choice?
I don't think you get me; I totally agreed that we are pressed and we need to leave this for later, that's already set.
But that doesn't mean this is not a threat. Picture it how you want, this is an uncontrolled creature who can kill to eat in an environment full of defenseless and innocent people. As I said, I don't really need to kill it, but tossing some meat and hoping it won't move from the place is being careless, imho. If we want it controlled, we should take proper measures for it to materialize.
Now, of course, I'm not forcing anyone to come here and fight the othyug; that's your free will. But Maca is convinced 100% that this is a dangerous threat and she will take care of it later.
Now, on the feats: Arcane Strike or its divine equivalent are awesome feats if you have no other use for your swifts.
I have a ton of competition for my swift, so Arcane Strike by itself isn't that great, but the Spheres feat lets it be always-on, and scale more if you're using it in Sphere-congruent ways, so it might be worth a 2-feat dip (hell, maybe even 3 if I go for Riving Strike).
I'm a fan of them myself! Up to +5 damage? Yes, please! If my swifts were usually taken, then I'd likely take Arcane Strike at lvl 13 and Champion's Strike at 15. Because then it would be +4 damage for 2 feats, the exact same as having greater weapon specialization.
----
As for the Othyg, Torsten doesn't want to touch it. He'll do so if need be, but he's really hoping the two of you can nuke it from a distance.
If I'm reading right (And the reason I'm posting this is to make sure I am!), Imbued Strike (aka Arcane Strike) gets to +4 dmg per strike all by its lonesome at level 15. Then adding in Champion's Strike, "when you use this ability with an attack action that only affects one target and has only one attack roll, the bonus on damage rolls for your strike is increased 100% for every +5 base attack bonus you possess." So on your main attack (but not on, for instance, a Flurry for you), that bonus gets upped to +16 damage (4 points, +300% for +15 BAB).
It seems like a decent chunk. I think I'm sold!
EDIT: As for the Otyugh, if push comes to shove, I'm hoping to see what (Tap Chaos + Searing Blast + spell point) looks like. If it hits the otyugh, I'd imagine that whatever it smells like is friggin awful! :)
And if you ever have spare feats (yeah, I know) there are nice additions to Arcane Strike such as Riving Strike.
And if you ever have spare feats (yeah, I know) there are nice additions to Arcane Strike such as Riving Strike.
Riving Strike is already under consideration, but as you said, the idea of "spare feats" got a chuckle from me. XD Only bummer is that Channel Energy is (Su), not (Sp), so I can't set up Maca's Channels with it.
One of my issues is that we are doing ABP which gives enhancement bonuses to Torsten's fists, and his enhancement sphere doesn't stack with that. This has me thinking, what can I do about this?
The best answer that I could come up with is this. A magic hat. Specifically, THIS!
Once I hit 2000 gold, I'll be buying a Defending Dwarven Boulder Helmet. Which will give him +1 AC when wearing it due to the enchantment, and it will increase as it goes up. In a way, it'll be like having a shield.
And with that, his enhancement sphere will never become useless due to ABP. Plus it works with that picture.
Torsten, that hat better not be cursed!
Without having done a deep dive on that Sphere, I'd have answered, "Figure out what else the sphere does besides adding bonuses and lean into that."
Deadly Enhancement and Spectral Enhancement could both be useful at times. The Arcane Strike feat chain is a lot of fun. I'm definitely a fan. As for the otyugh, Macaria's fine with leaving it alone for the moment (but might return at a later time), so I'll resolve Gameplay now. Apologies in advance....
Deadly Enhancement and Spectral Enhancement could both be useful at times. The Arcane Strike feat chain is a lot of fun. I'm definitely a fan. As for the otyugh, Macaria's fine with leaving it alone for the moment (but might return at a later time), so I'll resolve Gameplay now. Apologies in advance....
Do they last longer due to deep and greater enhancement?
Based on my reading, Deep Enhancement applies, but Greater Enhance Equipment does not.
Yeah. I think that I'll use the ABP to get the AC boost, use enhance sphere to get the enhancement bonus to attacks, and then use lift sphere for punching.
* Clarified Strike [strike]
As a standard action, you may make a single ranged or melee attack coupled with a Life sphere ability. This casting cannot be reduced below a standard action, and does not provoke attacks of opportunity, unless as usual if making a ranged attack. If the target is struck by the attack, it is also struck by the Life sphere effect. If using a scatter weapon, the effect only applies to a single target, chosen at the time of attack.
* Break Enchantment
As a special application of restore, you may spend an additional spell point to remove all magic from the target that has a duration instead of restoring mind, body, or soul. This may be used against curses including cursed equipment, although it does not remove the curse from the equipment and instead suppresses the effect long enough for the item to be removed. Instead of a saving throw, you must succeed at a magic skill check against each magical effect in order to remove it. You may choose not to remove certain effects if you so desire (for example, you may target only harmful effects and not beneficial ones). This counts as using the break enchantment or remove curse spell against those spells and effects that specify they can only be removed through those spells. This has no effect on other instantaneous effects.
* Affliction
When using cure you may invert the effect from positive energy to negative energy. This has no effect on undead and damages the living (Will half). This requires a melee or ranged touch attack against the target, and if used at range is considered a ray. This cannot be combined with Fount Of Life.
When using restore, you may choose to inflict conditions rather than remove them. This also requires a melee or ranged touch attack. The creature must succeed at a Fortitude save or be exhausted for 2d6 rounds. If they succeed at their saving throw, they are instead fatigued for 2d6 rounds. Unlike regular fatigue and exhaustion, this condition ends as soon as the duration expires
If you possess certain other talents, you can change the effect from exhaustion or fatigue to something else, and possibly change the saving throw, as outlined below:
If you possess Restore Capacity, you may cause the target’s limbs to not function correctly, making them entangled and reducing all movement speeds by half for 1d6 rounds (Reflex negates).
If you possess Restore Health, you may make the target nauseated for 1d6 rounds (or sickened for 1d6 rounds on a successful save).
If you possess Restore Senses, you may make the target confused for 1d6 rounds (Will negates).
If you possess Restore Spirit, you may make the target incapable of receiving any magical healing, fast healing, or regeneration for 2d6 rounds (Will negates).
---------
To get the full benefit out of this, I will need *alot* of life sphere abilities. I count 6 right here. But what it does is allow Torsten to better heal himself, and at the same time punch his enemies to cause interested types of damage to them.
And I think doing things like entangling/confusing/turning off regeneration/dispelling their defenses to be more fun to use than the enhancement sphere which gives elemental damage and better critical hits.
Which makes me rethink what does Macaria contribute to the group :p
To answer a question from Gameplay, if you got hit from the acid, roll your own damage. I wasn't sure if anyone has situational and/or activated defenses, so I left it to you. I think Torsten also might have been hit once?
I'll update Gameplay once I know whether or not Yhrrilka wants to use her Surprise Round action.
Your post said Tor and Maca got actions, so I didn't think I had anything to post! :) Give me a second to mull it over.
I mistyped. Gah! No worries; neither of your actions significantly changes my action, so it's all good. XD
Hey, brief question. If I trigger a Wild Magic roll (like via Tap Chaos), does Ril know what effect was played out there? Some would be obvious (like if the casting time decreases, she'd have to know it), some less so (like "Affected creatures gain resistance or damage reduction to the effect’s damage type or types equal to caster level for 1d4 rounds. This applies before the effect’s damage.").
That's a good question. XD I have no idea if there's an official answer, but IIRC, most of the effects are fairly obvious. The example you listed, for example, would be noticeable due to your magic being less effective than expected. Due to this, I'd assume the caster would know which effect was triggered.
Fair enough. Of course, if I keep on rolling like I'm making saves on a d4, I won't get a chance to trigger a surge.
(starts looking for Aegis talents that protect vs mind-affecting, and trying to figure out where to fit that into the mix) :)
GM, I screwed up last turn. I only used my Standard for the attack, when I very much should have also used the Move to start my Aggressive Flanking Tactic. Can I retroactively have used that Move to start it? It changes nothing about how last turn played out, just means I don't have to start it this turn.
And FWIW, "no" is an acceptable answer, I like to think that will make me think this stuff through better next time! :-)
In addition to my question from this afternoon, a general map question. Given the positioning on the map, can Ril move one square south? If so, are there any penalties in place for attacks on this guy, or him on me?
I'll post as soon as I have answers for these two questions.
Holding to see if Macaria wants to do anything this round.
If she doesn't, can we at least pull her back so we're not fighting in the doorway?
Makes sense to me. Think that when in combat, we should each have 24 hours to act before being botted.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Torsten felt a sudden urge to do just that with the head, just because he was told not to.
Creation of a joke about how we might as well be adventuring with our kids is left as an exercise for the reader. :D
GM, I like the new bar along the top of your website. Is that recent? I only just noticed today. :)
My only feedback is that I'd do something with the "Classes" menu, to make the class features menus appear as distinctly "belonging" to the class in question. So for instance, "Bloodlines" appears as a sub-item of "Sorcerer."
As much as I like having 'cast and forget' spells, it seems redundant to have Torsten's enhancement sphere focus on giving enhancement bonuses to his attacks when it comes anyways from ABP. When we finish this adventure, would it be alright to just drop the enhancement sphere entirely? It would mean getting +1 life sphere talent (Clarified Strike) and I'd take Affliction as soon as I could.
This would mean becoming a master in a single sphere, which appeals to me. And the more I look at it, the more I see potential with the sphere.
The Truck Bomb Says,
I catch you spending spell points on the sly to heal undead with that s**t you're in big trouble, mister! :)
I think it actually makes a lot of sense thematically. You spend time fighting a necromancer, you start learning some tricks for dealing with that kind of thing. This is part of the reason I'm very likely to make my next talent Deathless Aegis.
For my next feat, I'm still likely to go with Arcane Strike. It'll be 100% a loss-leader, solely there so I can pick up Champion's Strike (and Riving Strike) later, but hell, we get enough toys to play with that I think I can eat one choice here. :D
EDIT: in the time it took me to draft up my response, you changed the question! :P
Heh...I edited the post which you are referring to. As I realized that (1) Mac is already going with death sphere and I don't want to step on any toes, and (2) with Clarified Strike Torsten can already hurt the undead!
Basically, Torsten could stack buffs to Cure to make it as effective as possible. With Clarified Strike he can punch undead with positive energy. With Affliction he can punch the living with negative energy. And he'd get fun curses to place on the enemy as he levels up.
He'd eat up spell points like crazy and would have to balance damaging the enemy vs healing himself. But that's more fun than just casting enhance on himself. :D
Yeah, the last time you talked about the Enhancement Sphere, it struck me that a lot of what it put on the table, ABP renders a little unnecessary.
EDIT: so for alternate blasts, I've been eyeing up one of the (light) ones, Blinding, Incandescent, or Radiant. You like any of them better or worse? They all strike me as fairly equivalent.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@Yhrrilka: Thanks for noticing! XD It's a new feature I added to make navigation easier. It's not pretty (as you've expressed), but for literally 5min of work, it's not too shabby. I'll fix it up a bit later on down the road. Too many projects; too little time.... XD
@Torsten: I'm perfectly fine with that change. ABP is awesome but has a few wonky interactions with Spheres, so simplification is a plus in my book.
Ril: I think any of those talents would work. It’s good to see the fire theme going!
And it turns out that my planned life build doesn’t work. Will still make some changes so Torsten isn’t overlapping with ABP. But it won’t be full life. Mac will be our master healer
Ok. I think that I've figured it out. For now at least.
Level 1 Life Sphere
* Self Renewal (You may spend an additional spell point to use your cure or restore ability on yourself as a swift action. You cannot use this to shorten an ability that has a casting time of more than a standard action, and you cannot affect any creature other than yourself with this ability. You may spend an additional spell point to do this even if you are normally unable to cast due to a condition you can restore.)
* Drawback Bonus: Deeper Healing (Your invigorate grants 2 temporary hit points per caster level instead of 1. Your cure heals an additional 1d8 hit points, +1d8 per 5 caster levels.)
Level 2 Enhance Sphere
* Buy the sphere
* Bodily Enhancement: You cannot enhance equipment and objects, only creatures. You can only take talents which can affect creatures. Gain Natural Enhancement with the bonus talent gained by this drawback.
Level 3 Enhance Sphere
* Energy Enhancement (enhance): You may enhance a weapon, granting it the corrosive, flaming, frost, or shock weapon special abilities. The weapons deal an extra point of elemental damage for every 2 caster levels possessed.
Level 4 Enhance Sphere
* Deep Enhancement: When you enhance an object or creature, the enhancement remains for 2 rounds after you stop concentrating. When you spend a spell point to make an enhancement last 1 minute per caster level without concentration, it lasts for 10 minutes per caster level instead.
------------------
Swift action healing stays there. Works with ABP. Not sure where it goes from there...but at the very least this should fix up the character.
I'm curious, what doesn't work about it?
And yeah, I figured as a Sarenite, if I want to diversify from fire damage, a (light) blast was the way to go.
Clarified strike for life doesn’t work with the drawback. And removing the drawback removes the flavor of the build. Plus Mac is all about life and death. So...yeah. Would have been cool but didn’t work.
Life and death, yeah, but Death doesn't offer much to her. She can talk to dead people (way weaker than the spell, btw), and that's that. Most of the talents work around the Sphere's built-in ranged attack, and she already uses Destruction combined with Channeling. The rest revolve around necromancy, and we don't want that.
So yes, Maca is about healing. She's got tons of healing, so much healing you'll never have to worry about healing in your entire life :P
I wasn't planning on picking Affliction, but the shennannigans in the Destruction blasts are not as nice as I forst thought, so maybe I'll end up picking it. 20 ft burst nauseated effect seems cool...
The past few days discussion of the Life Sphere got me to reading, and if I've got this right, Macaria does have the ability to fix my Con damage (Restore Soul). When we get a spare moment, can I get a fix on that?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
(jumps to Reverend Lovejoy)
And it just goes on like this...
Damn, you're right... I'll see to it next round of actions, sorry.
Damn, you're right... I'll see to it next round of actions, sorry.
Dude, totally no worries. I am very comfortable with this waiting until we're out if the current fight as well. This doofus is out of reach of the truck bomb, so it's on us to seal the deal.
I added an entry on my Status line for my Divine Future ability, the better to keep track of it.
Just need to see what Macaria's doing - especially since positioning is involved.
I'm glad you've got a fallback position for undead and the like. With Ril, fire-immune dudes will be a swords-only affair until like, 9th level?
Slight topic shift: how sure are we this guy is actually Lamm (my own answer for this is about a 2 on a 1-10 scale)? He was initially described as another "blue-skinned humanoid," similar to the guys in the first room or two. Unless the magic he's using has altered him, this might well be someone else.
To the best of your knowledge, Lamm is a human. This creature is definitely not.