Apraham Lincoln's page

Mages magnificent mansion, create demiplane, guards and wards, fabricate, permanent image to create the home you want with simple protections.
Age protection spells, disguise self, greater magic aura for vanities sake.
unseen servants and animate objects for minor tasks
greater teleport plane shift and planar adaptation for holidays
scrying and sending for old time instant messaging
some polymorph spells for messing about in.
Overland flight because fly
purify body/particulate form/restoration for health.

With no limits on spells known there is no reason and wizard couldnt do whatever they wanted. even with limited spells known a lot is possible

If I went with a human, I might go with something like this:

9 Str, 15 Dex, 14 Con, 14 Int, 12 Wis, 14 Cha. This comes from dropping Str down to 7 and putting the human's +2 into it.

With a human you wouldnt have to dump STR. You could have 10 STR (0 points) 15 DEX (3 points +2 Racial), 14 CON, INT and CHA (all 5 points each) leaving 2 points to give WIS 12

Have you considered a small race? Both gnomes and halflings offer something good stat wise (not so good for the cha bonus tho) It does nothing to penalise your damage and offers bonus to hit/AC/stealth.

Elemental whispers gets you a familiar that can live in your head. If you dont like the thought of messing about with a familiar it can do nothing else but sit in your mind giving you alertness feat and +4 initiative. Pretty good for 1 feat or a low level wild talent if nothing else takes your fancy.

I liked kinetic leap on my kineticist. It gives you an extra place to dump burn if you want the always on ability. If you go air as 2nd element, with airs leap (pre req for the good flying) you can pretty much jump as far as you can move from a standing start. Doesnt do much mechanicly better than flying or acrobaticsing it but feels pretty baddass.

You are only getting 4 skill points a level. you either need to choose the 4 skills you want to focus in (i recommend dropping climb anyway if you can jump everywhere, acrobatics is climb for dex characters ;) ) or grab an extra skill point from somewhere (cunning feat, Int headband, favoured class bonus)

Also healing is for sticks, not for feats

If you dont mind the religion/alignment the Wasp Familiar feat to get you arguably the best basic familair out there (+4 initiative; flies) for only 1 feat

How many useless saves per hour should a pc make in your standard adventuring bar? between bards songs and charming adverts and bored detect thoughts going off surely most people will used to making low level saves most days, and even if they fail the consequences are not usually that bad if everything is magical and could be considered a minor annoyance.

If you have a smart phone there are a few pathfinder spellbook apps (all 3rd party so at your own risk) that allow you to hot link spells in your books and has all the effects ready for you. The ones i use havent been updated for a while so no new spells from 2014 on i think but covers crb+ a few more.
Know the duration of your buffs. hour per level spells soon become "all day spells" (or as good as) and some 1min or 10/min level buffs will be able to cover multiple encounters. talk to your gm about encounter pacing to see how often/feasable it is to renew buffs. This goes for cantrips (resistance, virtue, guidance, message, light etc)that could possible be up at the cast every few mins without expenditure.
If you are going to summon stuff, everyone will love you if you know before hand and have prepped what you are going to summon. [edit - this goes for polymorph spells too]

There are so many ancient unwarded crypts and catacombs in rome that an undead scourge is inevitable unless someone thinks to check

If there are terrain features that allow for the rogue to hind behind and take cover there is often the same terrain features for the hobgoblins to take cover behind. Staying out in the open when you just seen someone hide behind a tree is asking for trouble. This is why fighting elves is so terrifying. They are so many places to hide and line of sight is often only 20 feet or so before shrubs and bushes and trees obscure things.
Dont punish clever use of terrain, learn from it

My favourite Inn name from an RPG is not from golarion (but does have links to pathfinder) is "Sad Mary's Bar and Girl" (+10 points if you get the reference without googling it ;) )
I always misread it as bar and grill

I like the cold line of spells that the witch can access (and make better with winter witch archetype and prestige class)
They layer on debuffs with some damage with higher DCs and can eventually penetrate cold resistances and immunity

Consider that i have a base move of say 30, and a fly speed of 30 with average fly skill, and enough acrobatics and abilities to jump my entire move from a standing start.

Under what circumstances would it be better to jump my move as opposed to flying my move or moving my move (with enough acrobatics to reasonably move thru' threatened squares at full move against average mooks)

Even if you do nothing else with elemental whispers it can still give you as much as 2 feats (alertness and familiar bonus) and thats not using any other familiar abilities. If you are investing in perception (every character should) and would spend a feat on improved initiative or iron will (or save of choice) then you should definitely pick it up and never let it leave your mind

I think the issue is that the victory in defeat ability kicks in at 0 hps but that the simulcrum, when at 0 hp, disappears into nothingness and isnt even repairable in a magic lab. Im guessing the player wants the ability to avoid having the simulcrum being completely destroyed at 0 hps, even if all it does is limp away from combat or plays dead. Tbh its probably cheaper and quicker just to re-cast simulcrum than repair the current one (100gp/HP vs 500gp/Hit Dice; 24 hours and a lab vs 12 hours and an ice sculpture)

Maybe the reason there are so many breeds of dog is because depending on which skill or save bonus you want, there is a dog breed for you. Just choose any currently available bonus offered by another familiar and use it as your own (using fox statistics) Heck, id even allow it to speak 1 language if you had a scooby-do kind of thing and it was the kind of game group that could tolerate that. (definitely not a scrappy-do type). Other familiar users would obviously know what stat bonus a breed would give so it kind of telegraphs its masters skill set or area of expertise

Another way could be making the search roll and loot a non-zero sum affair. If another party member searches the body 1st, find the short sword, if its the rogue then add the gold (rogues know where to look).
This way the rogue gets to feel their skills are appreciated (extra gold) and the party isnt directly loosing out. and if the rigue does start to share the illicit loot then the party will be begging him to do the searches. Just make sure the bonus gold is a fraction of what you expected to be looted and shared (eg. you find a masterwork short sword worth 300g, the extra gold should be about 5% (ymmv) so about 15g. still a lot but not too much to skew wbl)

I have always used knowledge:nobility as a stand-in skill for an character who wants act as a lawyer facing the justice courts. Proper etiquette and at least some law knowledge (heredity and lines of sucession need laws and these need to cover the passing of wealth so need laws on property, defence of property etc)

Be in charge of the party loot and give them allowances.
No one can ride a mount until they have passed about 100 dc 10 ride tests. Then only let them have a pony.
Totally buy all the meals in but no one gets to drink ale but you

Spend more time with your divine mount than with them and dont let anyone else ride it incase they damage it

Apraham Lincoln wrote:

If you going off-grid anyway for armour spikes, Scale Spikes will solve the weapon and armour proficiencies

Oooo. Could those have permanency cast on them? It looks like they could.

If you playing a druid for the AC then you get the greater version at 5th level for 1hr/L and enhancements as gravy. Sadly it only comes online at 10th for a ranger. Get a wand maybe, or a potion if you can convince you t-rex to drink it

If you going off-grid anyway for armour spikes, Scale Spikes will solve the weapon and armour proficiencies

The gun scavenger archetype gains the change out ability which, among other thigs, allows you to add the scatter weapon quality to any weapon giving you loads of versatility

Or just carry large ammo

I like the shikigami kami. Immunity to a load of stuff, fast healing, ok melee and ranged damage for a familiar, invisibility for scouting and the seller for me, it can merge with you, no losing that familiar again. And a real easy alignment requirement

You can move upto twice speed for a trample

You can move about as you trample. the only restrictions are that you can enter the square and any creatures in those squares must be 1 size smaller than you or smaller.

Power attack wouldnt apply. Its a special attack without an attack roll

You could smite evil as a swift action and then trample it. The bonus to attack wouldnt affect but the bonus damage would i think affect the target of your smite but not other evil foes who happened to be also trampled

It may not be the answer you are looking for but i am in favour of just letting any race choose from any of the FCB for their class. It opens up more options for any class and allows people to play the race they like for their concept over choosing the one thats mechanically best for the class. What you gain in diversity more than makes up for what you lose fro a small amount of power-play advantage

Handy guide to handy haversack

For starters, what rule set are you using? Is this for Pathfinder Society?

Not for PFS, but it might have been pfs legal also. Always easier for gm nod if its pfs legal.

Since you are thinking of taking at least 1 level in Brawler, anyway, take it at level 1. You get Max hit points at level 1. If that is a level in Brawler, you get 10 hp instead of 8 for Druid. You hit Level 4 Druid at level 5 now, allowing you to take Shaping Focus the moment you get Wild Shape.

Or take Natural Spell at level 5 and Shaping Focus at level 7. Most Druids consider Natural Spell to be an absoulutely essential Feat. That's the one that lets you cast spells while in Wildshape. In concept, that might not be the case for your character, since it's a Druidzilla, not a Druid. But you should work it in your plans just in case.

Good call, as i was making it i just had it down as a bonus feat and only at the end did i realise its the MT changey feat. There are so few druid spells you are getting and the feats are needed more but a route for human druids.

Feral Combat Training no longer lets you apply Monk Unarmed Strike Damage to your Natural Attacks, but you can still apply Warpriest Sacred Weapon Damage to any weapon your Diety favors or to any weapon you take Weapon Focus for. If you take even 1 level in Warpriest, all the weapons you take Sacred Weapon for will do 1d6 for size medium, 1d8, Large, 2d6 Huge, 3d6, Gargantuan, 4d6 Colossal. By level 8, your character will be able to Wildshape into Huge Animals, and if you cast Strong Jaw on yourself, perhaps via a Wand if you only take 4 levels in Druid, you can bump your effective size up 2 more places.

If you take 4 levels in Brawler and/or Fighter, a Human can take the Martial Versatility Feat and apply Weapon Focus (and therefore Sacred Weapon Damage) and Weapon Specialization, maybe, to every weapon in your weapon group, in this case the Natural Weapon group. This way, you will be...

I did some thinking and the fact you can stack the sacred fist levels and the monk levels and monks belt and monastic legacy (doesnt count warpriest levels as they already counting as full monk levels) together beats out the weapon focus/sacred damage part. Sacred damage only gets up to 1D8 at 10 and jumps again at 11 to 1D10 where as the unarmed can get higher and is eligable for strong jaw too. The attack routine is unarmed strikes with grab and constrict. The natural attack of the creature is almost redundant. You get the armour spikes from scale spikes and greater scale spikes with greater having a very respectable length, as long as your wildshape. The spell also provides proficiency. Eventually getting 8 levels of druid gives 4th level casting for Magic fang, strong jaw and greater scale spikes and with shaping focus, whilst not getting any better animal forms, does open up some interesting plant/constrictor choices. Yes, wands feature heavily in this characters inventory

-Edit Just checked scale spikes spell and the targeting is off :/ Maybe human, racial heritage nagaji could swing it? or even reptilian as that is a subtype for humaniods? as i say not for pfs

The compression ability sounds like a good fit.
Some ability to move among slimes, maybe an immunity or resistance to the touch of slimes
Maybe the ability to use handle animal on slimes etc as tho they were animals and not mindless.
Thematic small powers

Nice handy list of stuff and that fits in a Handy Haversack

The barebones of it can be done without the human bonus feat. What is holding it back in terms of feats is the high level requirements. If you human thats great but it can be done without. choose any race, knock yourself out :)

There is always reincarnate 100, dms choice ;)

As i said its not really for pfs as it comes online really at level 11 but if you can swing the final embrace line then its worth it.

So ive been looking again at building a grapple based druid monk but since the change of imp Nat Att and Feral combat training since protos FoF guide i thought it was defunct. But looking again and some odd choices i think i have something that might work at 11th level and may even be pfs (not that familiar with pfs so dont hold your breath) and all done without INA or FCT.

Initial race choice: This is a really feat starved build so you would think human. But there are so few feats needed that are low enough level that i dont think its worth it. This build is with dwarf stats in mind as CON and WIS are close 2ndary stats and at certain points WIS may even be better than STR. slow and steady and hardy traits are very handy to have. If you go human you have another feat. Enjoy it :)

Traits: Beast of society is just great for druids. Birthmark is good as much needed resistance to charms and takes care of divine focus requirments.

Mostly shileighly. hit things.

More grapple uses now in wildshape forms and you get grab. Start to use the briliant scale spikes druid spell giving you +1 armour spikes that you are proficient with. they add 1d8+1(as large) damage to grapples

You will now be wildshaping into huge forms with constrict. Your unarmed attack routine will be +8/+8/+3 with a flurry all maybe with grab. unarmed damage and constrict damage will be 2d6. armour spikes will now be doing 2D6+1 extra damage on a grapple. And 2D6 sneak attack. And WIS+4. maybe you will cast aspect of bear for +4 CMB, maybe vine strike for extra 1d6 damage. And you havent even used martial training yet.

You will now be attacking as a huge creature (who may or may not be able to grapple colossal creatures with death roll) with an unarmed strike 3D6, 6D6 constrict 2d6 in a grapple sneak attack, 2d6 armour spikes. adding wis+4 as a standard, move and swift actions with a +4 to grapple and more to maintain. and they're shaken on top. thats without wands of strong jaw or greater scale spikes.

Where you go from here after is open. You could go 4 more levels of druid. gets you powerful build, definitly allowing the grappling of colossal creatures. It may even stack with death roll as one is a virtual size increase and the other effects how much bigger than you a traget must be to grapple. Also freses you from the use of wands of SJ and G ScSp. and adds 1D6 from croc domain.
You could get 1 more levels of UnMk, getting still mind and opening up monastic legacy. 1 more level of sacred fist gets to fort save for 0 stalwart ability and a style feat at 6th. both continue to advance UAS. At 2oth level i recommend 8 levels of druid, 2 levels or brawler, 6 levels of scared fist and 4 levels of unchained monk. with monks robe you will be getting 2d6 unarmed (4d6 huge) with 7 combined levels of monk and sac fist.

You should also consider deadly grappler feat to increase damge die of armour spikes in a grapple and maybe you want natural spell to cast.

Small note on FCB: Druid gets more deathrolls: Monk and brawler get ability to ignore hardness of stone/rock/metal etc. Kracken wreck allows you to do a crush attack doing unarmed damage to armour and a bonus to ignore armour. if these work together (im not sure they would but it would be nice if someone got some use out of these FCBs that i might allow it) then maybe that could be a nice extra treat/combo. Otherwise get HPs

Is my logic sound? any mistakes? anything im missing

Speak with master is different from being able to speak. The ability states its a shared language which others cannot understand. Is that enough for a wand?

Cevah wrote:

Cast Alter Self on the familiar.

I'm not convinced this works. The ability to speak and understand a language isn't a natural ability of humanoids, and it's not listed under the specific abilities the spell may grant.

Under the polymorph rules, the capability for speech is address as an ability possessed when it comes to changing shape and casting spells with verbal components (dragons being specifically called out).

The familiar has its own skill ranks if a sage. The familiar rules seem to be silent on whether it understands your language but a point in linguistics either way should solve that.

Borrow skill would also let you yoink those skill ranks for yourself if needed too

Would comprehend languages work?
Dexterous familiars could use wand of ventriloquism?
Vocal alteration maybe be beyond whats expected of the spell...
Mindlink or detect thoughts are both level 1

Skalds can get it thru spell kenning if they pick up expanded spell kenning feat (allows choice from witch and druid lists too)

I agree on on the alternate FCB and race. I see the FCB as a nice little extra way to customize your character so all options are open. If there is one option that is clearly better than the others then why is that for that race. Enforcing race restricted options (as well as feats archetypes and prestige classes) seems backwards and seems like casual racism (i know they are actual different races but without actual orcs and elves to compare them to they tend to end up as slightly different humans)

Spells known for spontaneous casters. Sometimes there is a spell where i think "if i were a sorc, i would definitely know that spell" even though it isnt optimized. examples would include mages magnificent mansion, heroes feast, secret chest. There are others and im sure everyone has their favourite spell that they feel the justification to include.

Weapons too. I dont care as a GM what the weapon looks like as long as mechanically its balanced. I wish the weapon creation rules were more solid (really more weapon points for measly cash increase? who wouldnt add that on? no points for light weapons? break even on racial weapons vs traditional weapon?)

Feral gnasher archetype for goblins gets you a reasonable bite attack for being small (eventually 1d8 x3 crit) and lets you grapple larger and larger targets and doesnt give up much

-edit I can totally see a half orc adopting one as a sort of pet dog ;)

Greater Object Possession also allows construct hacking and come online quicker for psychics as a level 6 spell than control construct

amulet of either forge fist can give you valuable adamantium attacks and flaming property. frost fist does the same with frost and cold iron properties

Croc domain druid with rogue vmc and 1 level dip of brawler as above could work together. Plenty of good grapple wildshapes. Plus croc domain gets you mass heal before a cleric too

Um, rake and claw are two separate attack types. Short version, your GM is either wrong, or house ruling this.

By RAW on a pounce you get five attacks, and when successfully grapplimg add two rakes to your std three natural attacks.

And its easy to start a grapple with a tiger as all its attacks have grab.

And having just re-read the ability, it shares the same format as rend but completely different mechanics but both abilities are found on the same type of foes. It certainly confused me for a while...

I was fooling around with a fearcaster based on a spiritualist with fear phantom. Seems there could be some good synergy there

Favourite is probably wildshape. So many options and different play styles open up. You really do need to be prepped before hand and know what you are going to turn into for a given situation and what you can and cannot do.

Least favourite is any class feature (solo tactics and the cavalier one) that uses teamwork feats. The feats are so terrible and taxing and situational that they had to give 2 classes whole abilities that turn them into something that you could also do but still not great. I use any archetype that trades out these abilities.

Alright here my try at it.

Side note: Wow II never realized just how many dang class features the spiritualist has until now. even though it seems like they have so little they can do the just have tons of text explaining their many many terrible options.

My idea was to spin the spiritualist/summoner concept on its head. instead of the phantom being the melee combatant and the spiritualist hiding in the back, I want the phantom to be in the back throwing hexes and spells while the spiritualist stands in front.

** spoiler omitted **...

Like it very much. Simple and themeatic.

Couple of thoughts.
Arcane bonded manifestation. +4 to dcs is quite high for all it spells. maybe consider restriciting to its patron spells.
Arcane Understanding. I know it replaces calm spirit but in the interests of word count maybe just say you can choose from both witch and spiritualist spells lists (if on both use the lower spell level)

A 2 level dip into vivisectionist alchemist also nets you continued sneak attack as a rogue, an improved fort save, throw anything, some extracts and then you can pick up the chameleon discovery for another +4 stealth. Extracts are probably better than minor and major magic talents

Check out the weapon masters handbook. Not only does it have rules for building weapons with a reach/no-reach swift action ability, it even sample builds one for you.

Search for gnome flick mace

Nice to see you back. Thinking caps on

Ranger evasion works in medium armour but only kicks in at 9th level compared to the rogues 2nd level. As the slayer is a rogue/ranger hybrid that comes with medium armour but can only get evasion thru the rogue talent part of their class id say a compromise is that it works as the rogue evasion until 9th level where it works as the ranger evasion.

It should work with the physical enhancement transmutation implement focus power