I would say he is a summoner and Krampus is his eidolon who kidnaps the bad children.
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I have been having a blast with a lot of my hexes. I have taken the "Extra Hex" feat a few times, so I have about double my level's allotment of them. (level 4 atm) I have been a huge fan of a two round combination: Evil Eye (saves)/Cackle
Throw in a little slumber hex like you mention and its just plain fun! As a bonus on a fight recently, I went to a third round with Blindness/Deafness (blind, of course) and basically just stopped worrying about the enemy after that.
So I have seen a few "spell combo" threads for Wizard/Sorcerer out there, but nothing with the Witch. I would like to see what kind of combinations people have come up with for Witch spells/hexes. As the witch has a pretty unique spell list, I can imagine a fair few combinations that might not have been able to be utilized before. Spells/Spells
Let's see what people come up with.
I was taking a look in the prd and in my APG, but I found nothing about a witch not being able to change her patron. I am asking primarily because I am not entirely happy with my patron choice *plague* in conjunction with where the campaign I'm in is going. In two levels I plan on taking the improved familiar feat, and so long as there isn't any rule against changing my patron, I plan on changing it to one that will suit the campaign a little better. Have I missed something in the rules? I do not believe I have. Thank you.
Why would ninjas be in an airship in the first place, they use jet packs DUH!OK, in case that last post was too goofy, what I meant to say was this: WTH? Can you come back in here and clarify just what your idea really is?You can punch with a sword in your hand. Unmanned airships: obviously the ninjas would be in the soft ballooney part where they would fall gently to the ground if shot down. because no one would expect them to use the airship, duh! lol
thank you, i did indeed mean touch ac, not flat footed (danged inability to edit older posts when you wake up and realize you said something stupid like that =P) anyway, all this is excellent info and i'm appreciating it a lot. i dont think $ will be a factor/concern; mostly just worried about the mechanics of it as that is what has always kept me from giving it a go. i was a little bothered by adamantine because it is still "heavy", whereas with the mythril i can sleep in it using endurance (feat) without problem. i also didnt care for how adamantine weighs more and has a higher ACP than the mythril counterpart, so i'm looking at the mythral one for now. all in all, i think i'm just going to have to "eat it" as far as the penalties go and just try it to try it i guess. best way to get experience imo ^_^
For years i have been using mostly the light or no armor classes, and once tried playing a ranger with med. armor, but i have been thinking of trying a heavy armor wearing melee character. The biggest problem i have with this, though, is dealing with the armor check penalty and the low Flat Footed AC. I'm just wondering what most of you do to compensate for this. for skills like climb/acrobatics/etc, there just arent enough skill points to cover the gaps. magic items to enhance specific skills seem like a no brainer, but just wearing heavy armor seems like its more of a burden than a boon. what about for Flat Footed AC? shy of deflection and other enhancements that would come up ~eventually~ i dont see a good early game solution to this. am I missing something? worst case scenario: being near water (swim = laughable in heavy armor) what do you do? also, what about speed? you will always be moving slower than everyone. I know the heavy armor wearers in my parties usually get first priority on movement enhancements, but is there another way to bypass this? these are the most important downfalls to heavy armor that have always kept me from trying it out. I know fighter can negate some of these problems, but I was leaning more towards Paladin, and they are more stuck with these problems. Am I missing something that could be used to offset these problems more? I know STR should be a high stat, but fullplate (regular) will give a penalty that wont likely be bypassed/neutralized by a high STR for a number of levels, not to mention the skill points that would be sunk into the skills (that are far and few between anyway). part of why I want to play a heavy armor melee class is to have more personal experience and to play something different than i'm used to. I'm not married to the idea of a paladin, but I think i would have a lot of fun with it, save for the heavy armor problems i'm listing above. anyway, thank you all for your comments and insights on this.
i may bypass the penalty to ranged attacks as most people aiming with a bow will close one eye to look down the arrow. same with firearms and such. people with good aim for ranged attacks are often refered to as "dead eye" for that reason =P otherwise i think i agreew ith fatespinner. although, missing an eye sounds like an excellent reason to have a custom magic eye made for the character...
for some reason i'm thinking of the swarm companion as something like Shino from Naruto:
This is really a gray area because the ability dwarves has:
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that is contributing, this really is all incredible advice that is going to help a lot! This is, as you all know, a topic that doesn't have a lot of resources available specifically for it so if we can continue posting for this, we can only make other DM's lives easier. thank you, everyone! ^_^
I know there are a ton of resources out there for finding out appropriate encounters for your groups, or giving better descriptions to your players, tailoring encounters to your party’s makeup, running the game on the fly, etc, but I have had a difficult time finding any resources for someone whose main problem with DM’ing is NPC dialogue. I know, it’s a weird problem to have, but as a DM my NPC dialogue is just not very good. I wish I could provide a solid example, but its pretty much everything across the board for them. My group wants me to DM quite a bit. I have done it only a few times before and I really enjoyed it. I felt I had an excellent story, great characters for interaction, superb description of everything going on, but horrible NPC to PC dialogue. My group has been begging me to run them through another story. I did Ravenloft before, and a few of them said they had trouble sleeping after each session because they were too freaked out because of how I described everything. They all raved about all other aspects of the gameplay, but it was pretty obvious I lacked dialogue skills. I think a large part of this is I’m one of those folks that likes to think things out, so for my sessions, I would plan tons of things out and have countless contingency plans, but you cannot really plan out how dialogue is going to go, so I always felt a bit stuck and sluggish with how the flow of interaction went with the NPCs. This is very odd, because I don’t seem to have as much of a sluggish response when I’m one of the PCs, perhaps because there is less of an expectation on you as a player as there is on the DM. I have spoken with the other players about this, and their most common response is: practice. I agree with them to an extent, but I also want to provide them with the best entertainment possible, and I just don’t feel I can do that while I “practice” on them. So what kind of tricks/tips/exercises/etc can the DM’ing community offer? What kind of things do you do to keep the dialogue moving? How much/little dialogue do you have in a “neutral” campaign (not a kick in the door, and not an intrigue (dialogue heavy) campaign? What should I ultimately be shooting for with this? Will I have to bite the bullet and ultimately just “practice” on my group? Most importantly: What DM resources do you all use? (Please list as many online ones available to everyone that you can). And thank you to everyone that responds and assists aspiring DMs.
1: it sounds to me like you are looking for something like Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil depending on how you playing Schizophrenic is definitely chaotic, as is the “judge that kills” part. The bit about recognizing mankind’s potential makes me lean more towards the Neutral side than Evil, as you kill people who are “not living up to their potential” rather than “just because you felt like it”, which the latter would also fit well with the Chaotic part =P 2: Totally normal for PCs to have hidden agenda, at least at my Roleplaying sessions (this is part of what makes it less Rollplaying for my group) and you should not be worried about not telling your party about everything you do/want/feel/etc. It seems like you would want to invest in bluff and diplomacy a fair bit, possibly even sense motive so you can tell when others are catching onto your deceptions/half truthes/etch. Nothing special would be required in roleplaying this, just say what your character would say, and as long as your DM knows what your hidden agenda is, he will have you make bluff/diplomacy rolls as needed, or make them in secret for you. 3: Regarding the classes: just remember, they are skeletons basically. Your feats/skill choices/stats/actions dictate so much more than what your base class does (for the most part). If you let us know what kinds of things you are hoping to do with your character, we may be able to make some suggestions to you. Are you more of a melee class, or more of a mage class? I see you played FFXI (me too! Woot ~Fenrir Server~) are you trying to emulate a class from that, or another game? If so, we can show you some tricks on how to do it ~_0 4: Skills are basically the mundane (for the most part) tasks you do. Can you run/jump/climb/swim/pick locks/speak a lot of languages/are you book smarts/etc Feats are special modifications to your character that let you bend/ignore/take better advantage of rules in the system (combat reflexes lets you get more Attacks of Opportunity than your normal one per round; extend spell will make your magic last for twice as long; etc) Spells are magic affects that let you break reality: produce fire/lightning/other element from nothing and have it go boom; make you grow to giant sized or shrink to the size of a child; make you fly or allow you to move through stone and earth as if it were water. Spells are pretty much everything you could ever want to do. There are a lot of pregenerated spells/abilities/etc in the game, but each one has a multitude of different applications, unlike most MMOs/video games. A Grease spell may just make someone fall over in a video game, but in a pen & paper rpg, it can be used to make you ridiculously difficult to wrestle with; or make a weapon impossible (almost) to hold onto. Disable device can be used to pick locks/disable traps/take a wagon wheel off a cart or make it fall off after it has traveled a ways. Its all about creativity and now being hampered by “game walls” as you have with other video games. Don’t get me wrong, I play my share of video games, but nothing is as good as a pen & paper RPG.
thank so much for the fast responce, Raving. Very much appreciated! ^_^
Crafting Magical Items and the CL associated with them: Clarification requested…
constructs are a bit of an odd occurence in the game, but overall, i think i'm in the camp of "animated object" = "object...that is animated", and for a few reasons if you take a look at (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/creatureTypes.html#construct) under the "construct" section you will see on the 12th bullet point down something very interesting: "Immunity to any affect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects, or is harmless" this entry in the "construct" field seems to set a precedence that seems to dictate that, yes indeed, constructs are affected by spells that affect objects. Conversely, in the same entry on (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/creatureTypes.html#construct), on the entry listed "Traits" (just under the 4th bullet point), there is another listing that gives creedence to what others are saying in respect to constructs being creatures: "Traits: a construct possesses the following traits (unless otherwise noted in a creature's entry)" This entry seems to also lead us to believe constructs are indeed creatures. with both entries, i would be perfectly fine with allowing a construct to be the target of a spell that would normally affect only an object, especially when you look at the stone golem's entry specifically the two spells listed under the "immunity to magic" section of the Stone Golem's entry (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/golem.html#golem-stone): spell 1: Transmute Rock to Mud (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/transmuteRockToMud.html#transmut e-rock-to-mud) looking at this spells first line you will see something very odd, especially considering the target being a worked stone golem. "This spell turns natural, uncut, or unworked rock of any sort into an equal volume of mud." odd, being that the Stone Golem is a worked stone figure as described in its monster entry: "Construction: A stone golem's body is chisled from a signle block of hard stone, such as granite, weighing at least 3,000 pounds." odd that a spell targeting an unworked ~object~ could target a ~worked creature~ even considering the precedence set earlier that a construct does indeed receive affect from spells targeting object, but thats ok, its an extra spell vs the golem. for further example, the 2nd spell listed under the stone golem entry helps even further: spell 2: Stone to Flesh (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/stoneToFlesh.html#stone-to-flesh ) this one is a bit odder still as the target of this spell is "one petrified creature or a cylinder of stone from 1ft to 3ft in diameter and up to 10 ft long" again with this spell descritpion we see a spell that specifically is targeting the stone golem as an object (the golem is NOT a petrified creature, of course) again, aiding in the "animated object" = "object...that is animated" argument. it must also be noted, though, that neither of those spells given specifically in the entry affect the golem as described in the spell itself. thusly, i think i would rule in my game (i'm not saying you should in yours, but this is what i would do) that the stone shape spell does indeed shape the golem into an object of the caster's choosing, but i would say the golem could "reform" himself after say 1d6+1~ish rounds and make that a full round action each round to do so. something to that affect would preserve the encounter as there would still be a lot of danger if the golem was not killed in the time it took it to reform, but would still allow the caster to have a moment to shine.
One thing i think people are overlooking as well, is the actual affect of the items created. in the first example you have a total of +8 to AC (+4 from shield and +4 from mage armor) but there is a draw back to having this item over +8 bracers of armor and possibly a reason to combine them: The type on the bonus is very relivant in the end picture. for example, the shield/mage armor item give +4 shield bonus and +4 armor bonus. a pair of bracers of armor provide up to a +8 armor bonus. The difference here, is if you had both items on, you would have only +12 to your AC because the +4 from the Mage Armor spell would be overshadowed by your bracer's +8 bonus (of the same type). This will make your shield/mage armor item just a bit less cool. in another example Scipion del Ferro brought up: "Someone brought up just making an item that gives you +1 deflection, +1 insight, +1 natural armor, +1 sacred, and +1 luck. For what like 17,000gp? Instead of +5 deflection (or whatever) for 50,000" you have an item that sure seems overpowered, except that most of those bonuses are going to be overlapping with other magic items you are likely to already have, or find (and with better bonuses) making it so you keep getting lesser returns for a slot over time. Deflection is a ring, insight could be any number of things, NA bonus from barkskin the spell itself is better or from an ammulet of NA (that will have a much higher bonus), Sacred is a bit more rare, and luck from an Ioun stone is pretty standard. all that will really net you, in the end, the sacred bonus of +1 to AC for 50,000GP. to me, that seems pretty crappy of a price, but if my players wanted to drop their money on something like this, i wouldn't have a problem. it would be even more fun watching them trying to sell it to an NPC that knows ~anything~ about magic items and have the NPC turn up their nose at it making the players sell it back at a price that would AT MOST make them break even. All in all, combining bonuses like this can be affective at lower levels, but even by the mid levels, the items will be hugely overshadowed by something they are likely to find or buy outright. on another page, going back to the original example of the +4/+4 Shield/Mage Armor example, something people forget is that the +8 from Bracers of Armor DOES NOT NEED TO BE BONUS(ES) TO AC. Read the description of them again, you can have each +1 directed towards a bonus that would be present on a set of armor itself. This means its possible to mix the two items for maximum result giving you something like: +4/+4 AC from Shield/Mage Armor item
Combining them in this way will be a bit more affective, but again, will not be the best idea overall
Howdy, all, First off: LordGriffin,
I read most all the posts (skimmed a few =P) and I didnt see anyone post/ask if you have discussed using the battle sorcerer variant (Unearthed Arcana iirc). This variant is very well balanced, i know from personal experience because i've played it myself. =================================================================== For those that arent familiar, the basic gist is this BaB progression of cleric
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Sorcerer_Variant:_Battle_Sorcerer =================================================================== Anyway, this variant would get rid of some of your magical adaptability in place of being able to actually use your melee ability a bit more, which it sounds like it may fit with your idea more, especially since you said you are going to veer away from "blasting" or "direct damage spells". also, i know a few folks mentioned doing away with the claws' limited rounds per day issue (4+cha is not nearly enough for my tastes, too). you could get rid of the rounds per day and have them at will, i dont think this would be game breaking. but, in spirit with having a character concept that is more about roleplaying and embodying your concept, i have always found that ~some~ limitations really make you care more about your character because you have to take more stock in them. one of the other posters mentioned having the 4+cha being how many times you can "summon" your claws per day. This would be a good way to go about using them. Another alternative would be changing the "rounds per day" to "Minutes per day" and making it so you have to spend the "minutes" in 1 minute incraments, thus giving you a number of good combats per day where you can rely on them, but you would still have to be conscious of how much you did in case your "minutes per day" ran out. Regarding taking the "weapon focus", if i were DM'ing, i dont think i would have a problem with you doing "weapon focus: yourself" so you could apply it to both your claws and hands. Again, huge flavor without breaking the game is a very good thing. Another alternative would be wearing gauntlets (spiked maybe to look like claws, but still function as spiked/regular gauntlets) so you could still attack unarmed when you are out of claws/day usage. Maybe make them "open fingered" so you can summon the claws with them still on (maybe with a penalty similar to wearing a buckler or something to represent the weight difference with them on). Also, excellent feat choices (at the risk of sounding like optimizing, which i'm not trying to do) would indeed be "improved natural attack". Bumping those up one claw size would make you a bit more self reliant/capable in combat. Dont bother with Multi attack, as you pointed out you dont really have penalties to using claws/bite anyway. From a DM point of view, i dont think i would have a problem with you making drawing your claws out durring an AoO. Again, not game breaking, but very good for story telling. Maybe your DM will allow you to do it "for free" should you take improved initiative or combat reflexes to show your "quick twitch" muscle mastery or something if he wouldnt let you do it otherwise. Another feat you may want to take is "Arcane Strike". This would let you dole out just a bit more damage that would scale with you because your claws ~will~ lag behind before long, but that feat would help to limit that dragging. Just remember, with the melee you are thinking of doing, that dragons also have lots of magic, so dont be afraid to whip out some nasty spells in the middle of combat (combat casting may be a necessity depending on how you play =P). for that, you may want to focus on spells that embody your dragon's choice. For example, if you do a White Dragon draconic bloodline, focus on Chill Touch/cone of cold/etc to really play it up. It may limit your functionality a bit, but sure does make for better roleplaying that if you did the same dragon bloodline and started firing off fireball or lightning bolt or something. Other spells like "enlarge person", "rage", "transformation (much later)", etc can also close the gap between your melee and that of a dedicated melee'er (haste as well will be a godsend). Anyway, sorry if i jumped around a bit. i'm low on sleep and i dont think my caffeen has kicked in yet =P Oh, oh, also, i know it didnt really fit your idea as well, but the druid idea that was posted before may be a route you could take as well if you can talk to your DM and see if you could do Dragon shapes (wyrmling, young, etc) rather than animal/plant/elemental shapes. It would take a lot of work with your DM to balance it out and work out the kinks, but that may be a fun option for you as well. I mention this in large part because of the elemental nature of the druid's spells and abilities like "thousand faces" which fit perfectly with a dragon's identity (just imagine you asuming any humanoid shape, just like your grandpappy dragon!). Again, i know it doesnt fit as well with your idea, but there is a lot you can do if your DM is willing to work with you. Congrats on playing the character you want to play and not what will dish out the best results in "X" situation. Optimized playing ~can~ be fun, but i definately prefer playing the idea a lot more. Hope that helps ^_^ |