Alphonus's page

I like the new changes to Studied Combat and I really like the idea of applying status effects with it. The advantage that the rogue and ninja talents have is that they can be applied to ANY attack with sneak attack. If you're strictly replacing damage die of the studied strike with a status effect, that's still only one status effect for a limited duration and you're still losing studied combat versus that enemy for 24 hours. I would like to see maybe giving up some or all of studied combat's bonus damage instead of giving up studied strike. Maybe different status effects require the sacrifice of different amounts of damage or the sacrifice of additional damage to increase the duration (which could help to restrict more powerful status effects and longer durations to higher levels). Perhaps, in order to even attempt to apply a status effect, a reduction to your bonus to hit is applied as well.

I personally like the fact that its not sneak attack (and so different from SA), but in its current incarnation, its not good enough to use. Not having as restrictive circumstances as sneak attack to benefit from it is definitely a plus, but only effecting a target once every 24 hours is too limiting and making it melee only really reduces your weapon options. I think changing the duration to level dependent and the bonus to Int mod would certainly help as well. Maybe starting at a lower level but increasing the damage dice advancement to every 4 or 5 levels instead?

I'm going to have to agree with the lastknightleft. My DM just started up a game this past monday, with many of his players giving some of these new classes a shot (summoner, witch, cavalier, and inquisitor all represented). I helped my brother a bit in putting together his eidelon, and its quite frankly disgusting. He went with the quadraped, picking up the extra pair of claws, pounce, and grab (not sure why he didn't go with the trip, he might be preparing for rake later on down the road). He also went with the energy attack, which for only two evolution points gives an extra d6 of energy damage to EVERY one of his attacks (unless we missed something).

He never bothered trying to pick up the armor proficiency, because he didn't want to spend the gold on the armor, only to have to get it resized when he went large. He spent his last two points on reach and an extra bump up on his bite's dice size, also figuring he'd just switch them out when he goes large.

Overall, it seems like its going to be rather overpowered. We'll see more this Monday.

A friend of mine was wondering about this himself. He's writing up a cavalier for a game we're starting, but the mounts available to a medium sized creature at level five is extremely limited (horse basically being it).

In an effort to find something that would work, I was flipping through the bestiary and out of curiosity, began reading the description for the Pony. I found this part interesting:

"Ponies are smaller breeds of horses better suited to halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, but they also make fond pets for humans as well."

The important bit being the dwarf being listed as a possible rider for the medium sized pony...