Aloysius34's page

Now, the feat you need is called "dazing assault". And later on "stuning assault". You take a -5 penalty on your attacks rolls, and for one round all the target you hit with a melee attack must save or be dazed (or stunned) for a round.

And the fun part ? The save DC is 10+BAB. So, if you have bab +16 at level 11, it means fortitude DC 26 each time you hit something not immune.

As for the BAB+30 at level 20 ? It's now DC 40. The DM will probably use a lot of undead/ooze/elemental/behemoths, because every other kind of enemy will be useless.

What do you think of disruptive recall ? Too circumstancial ?

With that in mind, whenever I consider an arcane trickster build, I like to minimize my investment into martial classes by taking a single rouge level (or something that gives sneak attack at level 1, like the vivisectionist alchemist) and then taking the "Accomplished sneak attacker" feat.

I did not knew such a feat existed... Food for thought, even if I do like evasion a lot (breath weapons monsters and fireball are a problem when you are hiding in a cloud...)

Helo,
I'm thinking about my next character: a sylph sniper/spell sage going for the arcane trickster prc. Of course, it involves the cloud gazer feat, which allow you to see through three square of obscuring mist, sneack-attacking everything from the fog.

I think about making him a spellsage, because I play in a small party (3 characters), often lacking full-casters (our current group include a paladin, an alchimist and a magus) and the healing/recovering spells you often need after combat. Plus our campaign are usually low cash and low magic, so we don't have tons of wand of cure light wounds, nor raise dead available with discount in every church. The sniper archtype gives me a 40 feet range for sneak attack, which may be usefull before I get those damned sniper goggles.

For the feats, I would like to take the whole sylph package :

lvl 1 - airy step
lvl 3 - cloud gazer
lvl 5 - ?
lvl 7 - ?
lvl 9 - wings of air
lvl 11 - inner breath

So, I don't know which feat to choose at lvl 5 and 7, nor which rogue talent to select (dampen presence seems attractive, against those foes who have blindsense and blindsight, but sniper eye could be usefull as well).

As for the traits, magical knack and wind carried voice.

Any suggestion for the feats, and spell selection or warning (maybe I'm doing something wrong ?)
I will probably aim for 18 Int and 18 Dex, str and Con 10, wis 14 and cha 8 (the shy assassin type...).

One huge problem with gestalt is some class combinations are ridiculously more powerful than other combinations. Any combos that compliment (Barbarian + Inquisitor: rage+Bane+judgements+free teamwork; "yes, please") tend to get out of control, while those that broaden (Rogue + Cleric: skilled Healbot; "no thanks") tend to be just meh. It is also really hard to see all of the interactions of two classes without lots of system mastery or play testing. So, you end up with combos that seem alright at first, but become a problem later.

One solution would be to restrict the available classes, or to make pre-requisite or "tree" like choices...

Have you considered something like E6/E8/P8 or whatever the kids are calling it these days? Players don't get to level up after 6th/8th, but they do get 20 extra feats, which can feel like a mini level up. You'll lose the concept of "unlocking" magic, but get to keep just about everything else, including the CR system (5 feats ~= a level).

Yup, I did. And that's how I thought about the "unlocking magic" idea. That and 4e tiers of play. It's a common meme in a lot of fantasy stories (ok, especially in various shounen manga...) that probably translate well in RPG.

We all know that the D20 sweetspot lies around 5-9 levels. Once you reach level 12, the spellcasters classes have a strong tendency to send most campaigns into DM's nightmare territories.
Plus, the game became unwieldy, characters sheets expands into booklets and so on.

But, on the other hand, as gamer, we LIKE to level up. A lot.

So, I'm toying with this idea, to be used in a very low magic setting :

- From level 1 to level 6, PC can only be martial, without magic nor supernatural abilities. No wizards, no clerics, but no paladins nor totem barbarians either.
6 is the maximum level a mere mortal can reach, period.

- Then, after some kind of quest or trial, they are able to unlock the power of magic. Or the power of Ki. New ennemies, more powerful and more sinister appears, and their old abilities are useless against them (outsiders, undeads, incorporeal and so on : stuff that would send a 6th rogue or fighter without magic crying). From this point, the PC can/must select "magic" caster classes, but no fullcasters. Paladins, bloodragers, kineticist, magus, monks... PRC could also be used as base classes. They use the gestalt rules, starting from level 1, and gaining powers, hit points, skill points and so on accordingly. Plus feats. But this stops at level 12, which means that they won't have spell higher than level 4.

At this point, they have, for example, a rogue 6/kineticist 12 abilities, but with only 12 HD and 10 BAB at best. However, they have 8 feats rather than 5.

- And then comes the third tier : high magic (probably after another quest). Cleric, Sorcerec, druid, wizard, psychic... But once again, the PC starts at level 1, like the old dual classed characters, except that this is their third class. They probably won't gain any new hit-point nor BAB before long, but they are able to learn new spells at an increased rate.

In the end, once they reach the equivalent of level 36 (in real life time), they have 18 HD, level 9 spells and twice as many feat as a standard level 18 character.

But, before that, you have expanded the sweetspot for many, many levels : basically, between level 3 and level 26, the PCs don't have access to 5th level spells or higher, while still being more powerful at each level. You can play for years without entering the realms of campaign-breaking spells (raise dead, scry/teleport and so on), and without having to freeze completely PC growth.

The main problems I see are the following :
- the challenge rating rules won't work.
- every character will end-up with martial abilities plus growing magic abilities. For team play, it's better to have different characters. Sure, a rogue/shadowdancer/necromancer is going to play very differently than a barbarian/bloodrager/druid or a fighter/magus/witch...
- magic items should probably be nearly banned or very, very rare.

Any thought, advice, remarks ?

So, now that the errata nerf has made precise strike and evasive (among others : nearly all deeds are now useless for the magus) useless, is there still a real interest to chose flamboyant arcana ?

There was that olf french RPG "bloodlust" which was all about intelligent weapons and their holders... Of course, some silly players dropped their "holder" when they found a more powerfull warrior ; and then, theyr dropped the weapon when they found a more powerfull one...

Anwyway, I would recommand you and your DM some mechanic that allows you to either project a (somewhat solid ?) manifestation of your spirit, or to morph yourself into a (demi)human being. Or both. Let say 1 round/level for the morphing stuff, and one hour for the "astral body". This would help you greatly to have meaningful interaction with the story.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/yapcg/

This excel character sheet does the trick, but there are a few missing archetype. There is a new version every week or so however, so archetypes ends up being implemented.

The main problem is that it's slow. Awfully slow, as visual basic can make even a core i7 cry.

I mean, while thematically appropriate, it still just doesn't do enough.

Two hours to heal 18 hit points? Really? That's unacceptable under most conditions, unless the adventuring day is over. A wand of cure light wounds does that in 4 turns, which is 24 seconds.

And an adventuring day in most dungeon is roughly 15 minutes...:D

In many campaign I played in, we had one big fight in the session, after which we were mostly recovering from our wounds and loss of offensive potential (spells and so on), when not running away and hiding somewhere. Sure, the pesky low-threat fights were there, too. But, particularly at low level(1-6) and with small party (3 PC), those rules do make "heal" a more interesting skill to max out.

Being an old 3.5 player, I did not read the pathfinder heal rules with attention, until now. But with Unchained they are NOT wwhat they used to be.

Treat Deadly Wounds*

Requirement: You must expend two uses from a healer's kit to perform this task. You take a –2 penalty on your check for each use from a healer's kit that you lack.

When treating deadly wounds, you can restore hit points to a damaged creature. Treating deadly wounds restores 1 hit point per level of the creature. If you exceed the DC by 5 or more, add your Wisdom modifier (if positive) to this amount. A creature can only benefit from its deadly wounds being treated within 24 hours of being injured and never more than once per day.

and with signature skill "heal"

With sufficient ranks in Heal, you earn the following.

5 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the target recovers hit points and ability damage as if it had rested for a full day.

10 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the target recovers hit points as if it had rested for a full day with long-term care.

15 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the creature recovers hit point and ability damage as if it had rested for 3 days.

20 Ranks: When you treat deadly wounds, the target recovers hit point and ability damage as if it had rested for 3 days with long-term care.

Now add

Benefit(s) Heal is a class skill for you, and you can use the treat deadly wounds aspect of Heal 1 additional time per creature per day.

It means that a level 20 character can heal 2(3x4+wis) level hitpoints without using any magic, and probably without even needing the medkit (DC29...).For a 24 wisdom druid/cleric/whatever healing his barbarian buddy in the antimagic plane of no escape, that's 494 hit points healed in two hours, just with mmundane skill.

What about lower levels ? A level 5 character with 18 wis [b]could[b] heal 2x(5+4) =18 hit point. Not stellar, but that's a two hour action requiring no magic expanditure, just four uses of the healer kit. If he don't rolls high enough, that would be only 10 hit points.
If you add the fact that this skill is precious against disease and poisons.

In most guides I have read, the poor "heal" skill is rarely highly rated. It seems that wands of cure light wounds and magical healers are everywhere in every campaigns. Sure, a skill tax and a trait tax may seem useless in any standard campaign with a cleric, a paladin and groceries full of magic wands. But even so, with Pathfinder Unchained and the treat deadly wounds mechanic, I think this skill could be used as your standard "out of combat healing".

Plus, I like the flavor of characters needing a few hours of actual healing after a combat rather than the standard "whizz, whizzz, whizz, whizz, one more wand charge and I'm OK".

I asked my DM to remove the medium/heavy armor abilities and replace them with the dodge and mobility feats. Likewise, I asked to replace ride and intimidate with perform (dance) and acrobatics.

AC : I took mage armor and protection from evil with spell blending. Int+Dex+4 (mage armor)+4(shield)+2(protection from evil)+3(fighting defensively...) : you can tank very effectively against most ennemies.

I know the guids would rather recommand heroism or energy resistance, but they are higher level, harder to cast with your limited spell per day total and somewhat situational. While "protection from evil" and "mage armor" are both very precious 1st level spells.

You don't have tons of feats nor arcana to spend... Especially since you are not an elf and can't take "1/6 new arcana" as you favored class bonus.
Trip or disarm are nice, but trip AND disarm seems very feat heavy. I would not bother woth disarm, as so many monsters don't have weapons anyway...

I can take Slashing Grace for Dex to damage, is that viable enough for melee?

That's 1d4+4 damage. With arcane pool used, that's something like 1d4+1d6+5 around level 8. But those are "extra" damage, in addition to whatever spell you are throwing (from shocking grasp to fireball). As soon as you get arcane deed "precise strike", however, your base damage will make your DM whine.

A note about spells :
You can't cast a lot of them. That "-1 spell per level" is really a pain. So, you should aim for the spells that are usefull for a whole encounter, like aqueous orb, haste and calcifying touch, rather than those who will deplete you magical power.

Calcifying touch (get it withtspell blending) is wonderful if you also take the kapenia "curse" arcana. Dealing 3d4 dex damage to a BBEG on a critical hit and turning it to stone in the surprise round...

Aloysius34 wrote:

Get slashing grace, so that you can add your Dex to damage, and dump STR to 10.

I don't think slashing grace will work since the scarf (I am assuming he'll be using a scarf) is a two-handed weapon.

The scarf is a two-handed weapon... except it is not one for the kapenia dancer.

a bladed scarf dancer can wield a bladed scarf as a one-handed melee weapon.

Thus, slashing grace does work for them.

Get slashing grace, so that you can add your Dex to damage, and dump STR to 10.

I would not take the whole trip/disarm feat chain, for the reason explained by Rerednaw.

Rather, it would be :
1 : weapon finesse (you have weapon focus for free)
3 : slashing grace

As for Arcanas, flamboyant arcana and arcane deed would give you precise stike.

Last but not least, note that, IIRC, a kapenia hexcrafter can also be a blackblade magus, something that makes your weapon much more efficient.

A worshipper of Haagen Dazs ? Lot's of ice spells, so you need something about cold magic.

More seriously, the construct domain could be used for something like a Frankenstein cleric.
The protean subdomain seems to have potential, as well as radiation and insanity subdomains. Your player should keep at least one death/undeath related domain, like the undead subdomain.

I play an elven magus. I took "lingering pain" as a bonus arcana. Since that time, I have never encountered a single enemy spellcaster... Too bad, because they would have been toast.

All damage from that attack (including damage from a spell cast using the spellstrike ability) is considered continuous damage for the purposes of any concentration checks made by the target prior to the beginning of the magus’s next turn

Seriously, this is insane.Concentration DC 10+1/2 damage dealt + spell level, when you can easily deal 30+ damage with spellstrike... Too bad that I have not been able to use it, except for roleplay ("I make it squeal with lingering pain !").

So, there is a new elven weapon finess-able exotic weapon : the elven branch spear, which gives reach.

Does that means that a dex-based elven reach cleric is now a viable option ?
Let's say you take "heirloom trait". Because you are an elf, "elven" weapons are martial weapon, so you can get the weapon proficiency for the branched spear, without having to take a feat.

At first level, you take combat reflexe. Thank to the elven branch spear, you have a +2 to attack roll when making an AoO. This should help to hit even if you don't have weapon finesse yet, as long as you have 10 str.

At level 3, you have weapon finesse. And, thanks to "masterwork transformation", your heirloom weapon is now masterwork.
It means that, with your 18 Dex, you now attack at 4(dex)+2(bonus vs AoO)+2(BAB)+1(MW) = +9. And you are able to do 5 AoO per round.

What about your damage ? That's the main problem : a mere D8+0 (Str 10) is not particularly sexy... You can't use power attack either. Until you are able to enchant your heirloom weapon with the "agile" property (you can't cast "cat's grace", alas...), "divine favor", "sun metal" and "weapon of awe" are the only (weak) ways to increase your damage input.
So, if someone knows a way (archetype, trait...) to increase this damage input, even a little, such a build could start to shine. The goal is obviously to be able to dump Str to 10, so that you "only" need Dex, Wis and Cha...

Note : I also looked at the amateur swashbuckler feat. You can't get "precise strike", and "opportune parry and riposte" seems useless (no AoO against foes 5ft away from you...Reach weapons do have drawbacks.), but "dodging panache" lets you add you CHA against one attack and move 5ft away. Exactly what you need to stop full attacks or negates the "It makes a five foot step toward you". Don't forget to KS monsters to get the precious panache point. Anyway, it could be a good 5th level feat, as I did not find any feat allowing you to shorten you reach.

What if I'm the GM and is looking for some advices about this spell ? I have found plenty of thread dealing with Aqueous Orb other problematic aspects, so I guess that this spell is a favorite of "controler" wizards. And I think that using it against a large number of ennemies is one of its obvious use.

Of course, if you never play in something else than 10 feet wide corridors and 40x40 feet square rooms with no more than 4 NPC/monsters of appropriate CR, this kind of question is somewhat pointless. However, I do think that large scale battles involving armies or mob makes for great adventure's climax. And would like to know how this spell works.

1) Suppose an Aqueous Orb roll over dozen of goblins. What happens once 16 goblins are in the orb ? Are the other goblins immune to being engulfed ? Are some engulfed goblins ejected ?

2) What happens if a creature is somehow pushed inside an orb that is already full ?

3) If creature dies inside the orb, it cease to be a creature and become a corpse, an object. As Aqueous Orb does not pick objects, is the corpse ejected from the Orb, freeing a place for another victim ?

4) If a creature makes it save to escape the orb, but is ejected on an occupied square, is it pushed back into the orb ? Or does the orb eject creatures only in free squares ? What if there is no free square at all (because of wall, ceilling...)

5) Can a creature pass through the Orb, either by saving after entering the orb, or by entering the Orb while it is already full ?

Unless there are similar tools/conditions to fight Kyuss

Such as a sphere of anihilation ? :D