Curse of the Crimson Throne

Game Master Whack-a-Rogue

HP: 6+Con
Skills: 5 + 1 pt dedicated to Influence
Feat: Zodiac Tattoos (ASAP I plan on putting these on me for Light Fortification, as well as the Wardrobe Tattoo, and eventually Blademaster as well)
Combat Talent: Parry and Riposte (she already has this, but it "fixes the accounting" after my screw-up with the Life Sphere)
Weapon Training: Light Blades
Stamina pool: does this only do what it says on your site, or can we use the Combat Tricks feats detailed on AON?
Magic Talent: 95% sure it's Viewing; I'm not settled yet

I'm going to post the update tonight, even if I don't know for sure what my next Magic Talent is, is that legit?

Shove is a unique "armed attack" that when augmented with a talent that allows you to "use a weapon" (e.g. Brace Weapon, Slapper) will only inherit specific properties from that weapon. The Brace Weapon and Slapper talents add bonuses to hit and/or damage and certain damaging effects (such as a flaming or holy special weapon ability) but do not treat a shove attack as an attack with that weapon for other effects (such as a spell-storing weapon, the grab or trip universal monster rules, the Bashing Finish feat, or other "when you make a successful attack"-type effects).

That's clear as mud, to be honest. Basically says "some stuff applies, but other things don't" but doesn't give a whole lot of guidance as to the specifics. However, since it explicitly calls out flaming and holy as applicable, I'm inclined to believe that Energy Enhancement does as well.

@Ril: Combat Tricks are a 100% yes. They're the coolest part of the stamina system. XD The only reason they're not listed on my website is due to space.

Good call on the ABP. That’s fixed.

Profile updated. Decided that I’ll forgo power attack for now on. While it breaks my heart to do so (a strength martial who doesn’t power attack!) the -2 from flurry and -2 from power attack makes pulling off the combo too hard, as it applies to CMB. And an extra hit from flurry is better than +4 damage.

With martial flexibility, my go-to will be Giant Physique (counts as huge for CMB/CMD) and slapper (You may use a natural weapon, unarmed strike, or weapon held in one hand to perform a shove, adding its bonuses to your shove’s attack roll and its enhancement bonus to your shove’s damage, as well as damage from appropriate special abilities such as flaming, holy, etc. In addition, whenever you successfully perform a bull rush, drag, reposition, or overrun combat maneuver (assuming the target decided to block you and did not simply move out of the way), the target gains the battered condition until the end of your next turn)

With slapper, it is a move action for a touch hit. If it lands, then it is 2d6+11 damage in total, thanks to dual enhancement.

Holy schinkees, T. Given the number of times you're putting your damage on the table, yeah, you aren't gonna miss Power Attack. You'll make it up in volume.

(I'm not sure what it says about me, but Ril hasn't used PA once in this AP. For a while it felt like the gaming equivalent of leaving the house without your pants or something.)

Profile is updated, but I'm still not 100% on the Magic talent.

Well...yeah. But it still feels wrong. As you put it, it's like not having pants on. :P

Also, a spell point has been ticked off for dual enhancement.

"Dual Enhancement
Whenever you use an enhancement that gives you multiple options, you may spend a spell point to select two options. For example, you could use Physical Enhancement to provide a bonus to Strength and Constitution simultaneously, or Steal Senses to steal two senses instead of one."

Using this on "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."

So frost and corrosive are now active.

One of the main reasons I'm not 100% locked into getting Viewing at this level is because I'm looking at Ghost Sight, which has been on my figurative radar ever since we fought Blondinka.

It allows a Perception check (bonus equal to your CL) to spot invisible or ethereal creatures. Does the invisible guy get his plus-gazillion to Stealth? Unless I'm misreading this it seems like the deck is still stacked against the Detector.

The deck's still attacked against you, I'm afraid. The upside is that if you manage to pass the check, he can't hide again unless he leaves your line of sight.

Ah, fooey. I'm guessing that someone like Blondie could run circles around me in a skill contest like that. Okay, back to the drawing board.

As I said before, apart from my talent choice, I'm built up to level 7. I haven't seen yet if Torsten is, but if he is, don't let this choice hang us up. If I settle on something after we've resumed action, I'll clear it with you before I even think about using it.

EDIT: it's kind of funny, Ghost Sight seems borderline worthless, but then you upgrade to True Seeing (which has a prereq of GS) and that's doing its usual middle finger to everything.

I'm now leaning strongly towards Blindfolded Oracle. Let's say yes, so I can say I'm done and move on.

Yeah, it's not particularly useful until caster level 20 where it completely negates the "invisible while moving" bonus. Unless you're a high-level High-caster with decent Wisdom, I wouldn't bother with it except for as a pre-req.

Yeah, either prereq-bait, or explicitly for use on ethereal creatures, but man that's nichey as heck.

That's kind of Pathfinder's whole deal: niche feats. XD

Since you both are about done with leveling, I'll update Gameplay this evening. I'd do it now, but all my stuff's at home.

Torsten, because I didn't feel like working on my database upgrade, I was perusing that salsa-kicking combo you outlined yesterday. DO NOT FORGET that on the Flurry attacks, assuming the target is tripped (and assuming they're done as the last item of "order of operations"), the target is at -4AC for being prone. So yeah, I suspect you'll be fine.

Right! I’ll move flurry to the end. Thanks for catching that

Previously trip came first, to give everything that juicy -4AC and extra damage. However, this combo allows trip without a -2 penalty as found in the open hand sphere, and allows for much more damage overall (shove + reposition damage). Seemed like a good trade. :)

Now remind me, is this all now being done "steady-state" (i.e. without using martial flexibility)? Because if so, and you think we really need to hammer someone, you could flex into Greater Trip or Greater Repo, and throw in an AOO from me to add insult to injury.

(For that matter, when you reposition them, put them near both of us so they provoke from both of us when they try to stand, assuming they live that long.)

At Fighter 4, I get a similar flex ability. >:)

All done without martial flexibility! My plan was to use MF for Giant Physique (+2 CMB and CMD) and Slapper (+1 hit shove, with 2d6+7 extra damage). Giant Physique could be swapped out if you have AOOs to spare

I don't have Combat Reflexes yet, but I absolutely will before too long.

Also one more "Have you been..." Just checking to make sure you know, if I feint a target, they lose their Dex bonus to everyone until beginning of my next turn.

Wow. Well, I will say this now. I’ll need to be sure to attack after you then. Set up that lack of Dex bonus to make the combo more likely to go off!

I love this disguise/misdirection plan of ours. I definitely don't see any ways this could blow back on us.

I could very well see T&R being sent to track down this mystery cult that we made up

"Marshal, it seems the cult was led by a man named Keyzer Soze, and my guess is you'll never see him again."

I wasn't kidding about all hell breaking loose....

By the way, excellent work tying your disguise to an existing faction. That makes your bluff much more believable. XD

Yay! One of my favorite scenarios. Heroes holding a choke point as waves of enemies crash upon them. :D

Also hats off to Ril for making that connection.

Finally…Torsten might have done 136 damage to that poor cultist. So glad that none of the important rolls were low for his first attack with this pattern

Making what connection? Is that actually a thing? I thought I was making s@#+ up!

You might say that....

There is no way that this will bite us in the arse ;)

I've been looking through the Combat Feats (including the ones we get for free via EITR rules, and Deft Maneuvers that rolls like five of them together) to see what the Stamina tricks are for each of them. Some are underwhelming, some are "so what," some are indecipherable. But one or two are really nice. Gotta be sure I remember the one for Agile Maneuvers is there if I ever have to pull a Trip on a Huge creature or something like that. XD

Speaking of pulling a trip on a huge creature or the like...I've found what I can do for it.

Lvl 10: 3x uses of martial flexibility as a move action.

(1) Muscular Surge
(2) Giant
(3) Titan
- Counts as 1 size larger for who he can target with CMB
- With focus, counts as 2 counts as 2 sizes larger!

So that means for 3 uses of martial flexibility and focus, he can reposition and trip huge creatures. Meaning that if we face a dragon, Torsten can still use his wombo combo on it. Which is really funny, because it would mean this little dwarf would grab the dragon, throw it against the wall, drag it to the ground and jump on it's head.

And therein lies the power of martial flexibility. Using 3 combat sphere talents for that really wouldn't be worth it, because it's a really niche situation. But should it come up? It's nice to be able to adapt on the flly.

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Unless Ril has a better way of pulling that off? Do you see something from other spheres which would take fewer resources to do?

Just launched!

Very cool! It'll be great to see what they come up with. :)

Felix Makes Sure He Understands Spheres, Chapter 8.

Under normal circumstances, a Tactic's effects end in any turn in which you don't spend the action to maintain. Ril just started Aggressive Flanking, in what we'll call Turn 1. If I don't maintain in Turn 2, the Tactic ends and is not in effect for that turn...

Except, she has Persisting Influence. So instead of ending, it starts a 2-turn clock, which lets it run through the end of Turn 3. Do I have this right?

That's correct. XD

That's great! I was considering adding in Marauding Monkey, but stances in SoM seem to be a little too action-intensive for my taste (a swift per round), so I might not do that, but I might still get something else from Warleader.

EDIT: Torsten, you see anything that's wish-list material in this sphere?

It’s really not my favorite sphere. But…

While outside of combat, whenever a creature makes a Bluff check against you that involves speaking, you can make a Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check opposed by their Bluff check; upon making a successful opposed check, you can force them to either tell the truth (as far as they know) about the subject or take a -5 penalty on Charisma-based skill and ability checks (this includes Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate, even if the target uses an alternate ability score to determine their bonuses with these skills) against everyone who listened to them speak for 1 day.

Out of combat this is *amazing.* It doesn’t even require you to be aware of the bluff! Talk about an intimidating persona.

Allies within range of this tactic are granted a +1 morale bonus on Will saves against charm, compulsion, and fear effects, +1 per 4 ranks in Diplomacy you possess. Once per round when an ally affected by this tactic fails their Will save against such an effect, you may spend an immediate action to allow them to reroll the save.

Save vs suck is bad. With a party of 2 it is TPK worthy. Rerolls are great.

As long as an ally affected by this tactic is adjacent to at least one other ally, they gain a competence bonus to AC equal to 1/4 your ranks in Diplomacy (minimum 1).

Competence bonuses are rare. And at lvls12+ it’s a fair chunk of AC.

Interesting choices all. The one I was also eyeing up is:

Allies within range of this tactic are granted a +3 competence bonus on Acrobatics, Escape Artist, and Stealth checks, increasing by +1 for every 4 ranks in Diplomacy you possess. Allies benefiting from this tactic may use the Acrobatics skill to move through threatened squares at full speed without penalty. Allies can benefit from your Covert Operations tactic even if they cannot see you.

If we need to be sneaky, that'd be the ticket.

I'll look at my options among those.

Certainly great for sneaking. Though an illusion sphere suppression gives +caster level to stealth. Takes an extra spell point but it’s twice as powerful at lvl 10 and allows for hiding in the open. Hence why it is good, but not wish-list

Sounds quite nice, but also requires investment in another sphere. That's not in the budget. ;)

Sounds quite nice, but also requires investment in another sphere. That's not in the budget. ;)

Ah…but if all you want is suppression then take this drawback:

“ Disappearance: You cannot create illusions or tricks, except to make suppressions. You must select the Suppression talent as your bonus talent for this drawback.”

Can then take obscure mage and Glamered brew for extra invisibility power. ;)

(I was looking into this as part of an idea for a caster who makes every effect via potions)

(Felix reads up on Suppression glamer)

Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh!

Now the originally slight-looking bonus on Ghost Sight makes more sense! You wouldn't get the +20/+40 bonuses without the Advanced Talent; without that, it's a level-scaling bonus so it's a much more even match. I still think I might prefer Blindfolded Oracle for cool factor, but it's useful to know about that.

What do we think, T? Try and talk them into surrendering, or try to take them before they break the glass?

Cultists surrendering? I don't see that happening. And taking them out before they break the glass? Likewise, it's a long shot.

I say that we just jump into combat and if the demons get loose, we destroy them too.

Leukodaemon: 117/170 hp remaining!

This…might be a problem. We can take 2 of them, right?

"Three of the forms are motionless, but the fourth twitches now and then."

I interpreted the above quote to mean that there's only one to be freed, which absolutely looks to be about as much as we can handle.

Can an Elementalist's pulses ever be used to emulate a reach weapon? If they're made into a single two-handed weapon, can it still be, if not light, at least finessed, like an ECB?

(No, the current fight and the fact that I've proned my dumb ass does not have me fearing for Ril's life and looking at some of the backup character ideas I had floating around, why?) /eyeroll

The elemental pulses can probably be worded better. They're "orbs of elemental energy" that can apply feats/talents/etc as if they were weapons. Think of the various types of *pew-pew* from Avatar: The Last Airbender. "Light weapon mode" lets you flurry; "Two-handed mode" gives you a stronger attack. In regards to weapon properties (reach, finesse, etc), think of them as destructive blasts.
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You only need to fight one leukodaemon at this time. Unless one of the Urgathoan cultists reanimates one of the corpses, of course.... XD

I know ATLA is a thing, but have never seen a second of it, so any reference to it will bounce off my thick layer of ignorance. (Which can be vexing anytime there's a post about Kineticists, and someone says oh it's just like when What'sHisFace does WhateverIt'sCalled and all I hear is "blah blah blah".)

And if these jamokes can do that, we clearly had no business being in here and I should definitely be thinking of a second character! :D

Thinking about a second character is always fun. And it certainly takes the sting away from losing the first.

"I'm not gonna die. I'm gonna live forever!"

(bursts into flame)

Is T up in initiative? I think the last cultist goes first?

I'm keeping the enemies together in initiative, so Torsten's good to go.

Torsten, if your Reposition was successful, where are you putting this guy?