BayonetPriest's page

Having scouts go forth would make a lot of sense. You could then have either all the cultists form up in the same area (probably under Faceless One), or have the survivors leave under the cover of darkness, seeing the plan as a failure and a new base of operations would be necessary. The party would then have to track down their new lair (perhaps they had a back-up lair in the Cairn Hills?), then go back to dungeon-smashing.

Abductions could also be an option, forcing the party to move without too much preparation. If I was a cultist though, I would get the hell out of town (no pun intended), after seeing all my buddies lying dead.

Hmm. I thought about a retreat but it seems to me that the black pool is important for their plans. The Overgod stirs within and all that.

I've been thinking about it today and here's what I have. After the party retreat Theldrick alerts the Faceless One. They set guards on the elevator and accelerate their plans. Monks and Kenkus are sent out in the night to abduct 2-3 victims for sacrifice. The Faceless One wishes to release the Ebon Aspect, even if it is incomplete he hopes that it will be enough to destroy the party and keep them safe, at that point they may choose to relocate, perhaps seeking out more of the worms to bring about Kyuss's rise.

So say 3 sacrifices. My timetable is the first sacrifice at dawn. Dawn is also when the abductions will become apparent. The next at dusk. And the third at midnight. If they wait until after the last sacrifice the Overgod will be released and seek them out in town.

I doubt they'll wait that long so they should have a chance to avert that eventuality and save at least 2 of the captives. The party is also probably going to lose one PC and gain two others between now and next session. So they'll have a bit more firepower this time around, they'll need it with the cultists on alert and together.

I feel the faceless One would lead his forces in an attack on their position of rest after long rest. Could make it a siege combat that way.

Also, to my regret, my party has asked to stop the Age of Worms AP, due to lack of interest. Instead, they will continue to adventure in the world of GreyHawk. I hope to read more entries from the both of you. Best of luck, fellow DM's.

Sorry to hear that. I'm sure there will be a lot of fun adventures to come in Greyhawk though. I just recently picked up the old box set PDF from D&DClassics and I really liked what I read. 576CY is a lot easier to follow than the 3e era stuff.

On my end, we got to continue last night. Things did not go as planned, for the party or for me. Very nearly wiped the group. They picked up where they left off, with 3 monks and Kendra engaging them so they couldn't rest or heal up. Now, the party had effortlessly stomped the monks so far so I didn't expect 3 monks buffed by bless to tear through them the way they did. The dice weren't with them tonight either, the first 5-6 attack rolls made by the party were misses. Against targets they could hit on a natural 8. The fighter was the only reason any of them survived, he kept himself up with second wind and a potion of heroism and slowly managed to cut them down.

They killed 2 of the monks before the 3rd retreated, they neglected to follow him into the kill box and retreated back up the elevator. They bribed some miners to smuggle them out of the mines (and back in the next day) and headed back to Ellival's estate, since he's the fighter's uncle.

So, consequences time. First up, what do Theldrick and company do? I'm thinking that with well over half their number gone they take refuge with the Faceless One. The Faceless One probably sends some scouts into the town to track where the party went. I'm not thinking any assassins though, because the party will be in a rather well put together compound with elves on watch.

Perhaps they abduct a number of townsfolk for sacrifice, trying to speed along the release of the Ebon Aspect.

It looks like the party going to try not to let Smenk know they came back to town. They snuck back in in the evening so unless they go derping about he'll still think they are in the mines. Probably going to make him sweat, not knowing if they succeeded or not.

You guys got any ideas? Anything stick out that I might have missed. The module is quite lacking in advice on this eventuality

Yeah, my party ended the owlbear in one round. I had reduced the HP of the MM Owlbear to simulate it being wounded but I get the feeling they could have taken the real deal. Or not, the ranger was very lucky it missed with its attacks but they put it down with 3 arrows. Hunter's Mark and Sneak Attack can really add up in damage, especially when everybody rolled real high on the damage dice.

I'm still not sure I'm getting the difficulties right for the encounters. They didn't have much trouble in the Grimlock caves but a lot of the challenge there is the darkness and the entire party has darkvision so they kind of skipped out on that.

They've entered the Battle Temple now, slaughtered their way through the skeletons, petitioners and a couple of the Flayed Hand Excoriates (Monks that I replaced the Tieflings with) They held fast in the doorway so the skeletons couldn't gang up on anybody too badly. And when they started getting some licks in the Cleric turned them all and put them out of the fight. The Boar got in one fantastic hit, he critted on his charge and did 8d6+3 damage to the rogue. But I didn't roll to hot on the d6s so he didn't even go down. One round later the boar was dead.

The Ranger has really come into his own. The Sharpshooter feat lets him stand in the back and fire arrows with impunity. When he has both his Hunter's Mark up and triggers Colossus Slayer he's making attacks at +7, 1d8+3+1d6+1d8. Very accurate, good damage. That's gonna go through the roof when he gets his second attack.

Anyway, a couple Excoriates got away and alerted the rest of the temple. Against the wishes of the fighter, the cleric wanted to take the time to cast Prayer of Healing (10min cast) to bring the fighter and rogue back up in HP. The Fighter player knew this was more of a SWAT style dynamic assault than something where you can just stop for 10 min but let the cleric have his way. So 2 minutes later Kendra and several monks burst through the door to the arena, intent on luring the PCs in. We're gonna pick up there tonight.

I've got 4 Monks left, Kendra and Garras, and Theldrick. Their plan is to fire some shots down the hall then fall back to lure the PCs. Then rain shuriken, javelins, arrows, and spells down onto the party from above. Could get dangerous, the fighter and rogue are only at half HP. Maybe they'll be smart enough to chug a potion before they go in. The cleric is down to a single 1st level slot and 3 2nd level slots. Still should be enough for the fight but I haven't decided how the Faceless One is going to react. 2 long rests is plenty of time for him to realize something is amiss.

Assuming they take out Theldrick and hole up in his temple for a long rest, what do you think the Faceless One is likely to do? I expect one of the Kenku will notice the corpse of the monk the party left in the Dark Cathedral.

The most effective way for the Faceless One to take out the party is to wait in the Dark Cathedral for them to come back out, then ambush them with all his forces at once. The party lacks effective crowd control so this is probably a TPK for even a rested party.

EDIT: Ah, I see. Yeah, the acid beetles will be a better test. The wolves are supposed to be a cakewalk—I think Erik just likes the idea of raising PCs' confidence before crushing it, though I'm sure he has some spiel about "easing them in".

Anyways, I dunno much about 5E, but immunity to weapon damage is nasty at that level. The warlock will help, but that's why there's also a mad slasher. If they breeze through the (assumedly modified) beetle fight, that's when you know you need to be more generous with the modifications. 3.5 had pretty low power levels compared to Pathfinder or later D&D editions.

Interesting that you added in a worg—I did as well. Wasn't much of a challenge, but it wasn't supposed to be. As for the acid beetles, I think the main thing I did was double the beetles' HP (the party had an alchemist) and give the mad slasher some extra hit points as well. The group had one casualty, but it was sorta Erip's own fault for not casting defensively. ;)

5e swarms don't have immunity to weapon damage, just resistance (half damage). I just used reskinned Swarm of Insects for my acid beetles. They were serious tanks with an effective 44 HP since my party didn't have any nonweapon damage capability. 4d4 damage is a rather powerful attack at level 1 as well. The party were quite fearful of them, until they stocked up on oil and burnt out the nest. That greatsword fighter with 18 Str also made mincemeat out of them, half damage or no.

Anyway, next game tonight. Will it be door number 1 or door number 2? Maze of Vecna or Battle Temple of the Mockery? I get to find out tonight.

I finished another session. The party has cleared the Grimlock caves and holed up for a long rest Grallak Kur's chamber. The session had it's ups and downs.

It was mostly a combat slog all the way through, I didn't get to give much personality to Grallak Kur or the Grimlocks beyond "crazy underground blind guys". Anytime ordinary grimlocks were encountered the party wiped them out quickly. 11 HP is no way to survive when you only have 11 AC. Almost every hit took one out and there were lots of hits. The grimlock barbarian in the tunnel was another story. That fight was a terrible slog, nobody enjoyed it. I couldn't justify her high AC in 5e because stats are lower in general so I gave her very high HP. We got the problem common to early 4e monsters where damage output wasn't high enough to be scary but HP took too many rounds to cut through. Won't make that mistake again.

Grallak Kur was a more interesting fight but a very easy one. The party ranger and rogue both got the drop on him and got surprise shots with their bows. Did pretty good damage right at the beginning. The ranger was nearly killed though. I gave Grallak's guards oversized scythes because their god in Eberron, The Keeper, has that as his favored weapon. Really just reskinned Greataxes. Well d12's are pretty nasty on a crit and I nearly killed the Ranger outright with a crit while he was at low HP. 4 more damage would have done him in. It's usually pretty hard to do that in 5e so that was definitely a close one. It kept the fight interesting though.

Anyway, the party leveled after this fight, now level 4. I have level 5 set for when they take out the Overgod. They found good bit of monetary treasure, some potions, and a bag of holding. Everybody is excited about level 4 because that means feats. The ranger is taking Sharpshooter, which means he can shoot from any conceivable firing position, he ignores cover. A big deal for him because these tight confines have been playing hell with his archery. The Rogue is taking +1 Dex, +1 Con to bump both of those stats up. The Fighter is taking Great Weapon Master, which is sure to turn the premier death machine of the party into a force of nature. The Cleric is taking Healer, which is going to be a big deal for the party's daily HP reserves.

Next up they'll choose either the Vecna laboratory or the Temple of the Mockery. Both have their ups and downs, the Battle Temple shows no quarter and is brutal all the way through but the other one has the Faceless One who will be the first unnerfed high level caster they have faced. Lastly I still need to stat the Overgod.

I just noticed that the "Aarakocra" on Page 12 of the MM are connected to the Wind Dukes and the Rod of Seven Parts. I think I'm gonna incorporate them in as the Wind Dukes' descendants (mixture of mortal form and elemental air?) and have them in later modules. What do you think about their connection?

That was the first thing I noticed when I opened up the book, very cool. I haven't really thought of how to integrate them though. I'm using Eberron which makes for somewhat different cosmology than the traditional, my Wind Dukes were elemental beings who lived on the material plane, in great flying cities and islands. The war during the Age of Demons wiped them out and destroyed all their cities. I'm not sure what to do with the Aarakocra though. If I ever set another campaign in the same canon as Age of Worms I could see an expedition to a ruined Wind Duke city, crashed in some remote area and now inhabited by Aarakocra. That would be pretty cool.

BayonetPriest wrote:

I did something a bit different with Filge than I thought I would. Instead of running to Smenk he skipped town entirely, burning the Observatory to cover his tracks. Smenk doesn't know if Filge is alive or dead but he suspects the cult killed him.

Just gonna say, this is really clever. I may use this myself if I ever re-run Age of Worms.

Thanks. I just felt it made sense in this situation. A thorough investigation of the ruined Observatory may have revealed that he escaped but they didn't do that. So now they're kind of divided about whether or not he is still alive.

BayonetPriest wrote:

So that's what's coming up. Still got work to do on those temples. The Mockery(Hextor) is mostly done, but the other two need a lot of work.

What kind of work do you mean? And I would love to hear what you did instead of using Filge.

I just meant conversion work and token making for the encounters, since I play on Roll20. And I did use Filge at the observatory, he just burnt the place and skipped town after the party attacked him. I was thinking about keeping him around and sending him in with the PCs as extra muscle but decided against it as we have a 4th PC now so it isn't as necessary.

I finally got the chance to work in this a bit more, and played a session last night. Pretty much 85% done with prep for this place, the first half of each temple is ready to go. Still need to convert the Faceless One and Grallak Kur fights. And the Ebon Aspect. I need to be careful with the Faceless One, at level 3 a fireball will kill most of the party on a failed save, the fighter can't tank even an average damage roll from one. Spellcasters are hard to get right, Filge was a pushover because I gave him Necromancy spells (which suck) and he missed with all of them but one anyway. But if I had let him burn every slot on magic missile he would have probably wiped the party. Magic Missile is kind of a beast in 5e. 3d4+3 at level 1.

We might be picking up another player in a couple weeks though, and good god did she roll good on her stats. I watched her do it, 4d6 drop lowest. 17, 16, 15, 15, 15, 14. She's going Barb. If she shows up that's pretty much the end of me lowballing anything. She's not got much experience as a player but that character is going to be a beast.

I really need a better medium for communicating. Microphones don't work on my computer for some reason so we can't do voice chat and text chat is not really cutting it. I'm rather bad at NPC interactions anyway and text chat is just making it more difficult. One players has hard time saying anything and it always comes out in wowspeak when she does and another says too much and takes over most of the conversation. Annoying, I really wish my group was able to get together IRL but it was just proving too difficult to schedule.

Anyway, last night's game went alright. They went to dinner with Balabar Smenk and he questioned them about what they had been up to lately and why they were derping around the Observatory. The rogue tried to through Kullen under the bus but Smenk really suspects the cult was behind Filge's seeming demise. I expect Kullen and the rogue are finally going to come to blows next time they meet. The party quickly agree to remove the cult, some for altruistic reasons and others for mercenary reasons. Because I was getting tired of the plodding conversation via text I just had Smenk send them into Dourstone Mine under the guise of another supply shipment. He also gave them a few potions, an up front payment and a bit of insurance on my part because rest opportunities aren't all that common ahead.

Another thing I changed was I put a couple grimlocks in the Dark Cathedral room instead of Mockery(Hextor) guards. My reason was simple, I didn't want the party to immediately derp into the most heavily defended temple and get ripped to shreds, so I lured them to the easiest one. The Grimlock caves are probably a lot more dangerous in 3e or 4e but in 5e everyone and their mother has Darkvision so it loses out on that.

They bluff their way into carrying the supplies further into the cave, to the first guard room. There they get in a argument with the leader of the grimlock guards who tells them they have to leave which they do, only to come back about 2 minutes later to try to ambush him. He ambushes them but is quickly overpowered. They continue to the Ledge room where they dispatch the Kennel Master, Archers, and Krenshars without much difficulty. I'm of mixed thoughts on that, by the XP that should have been a Hard rated fight, adjusted XP value was 700. But they blew through it expending just 2 spells and a second wind. I don't like that the guidelines for encounters aren't seeming to line up, but I do like that the party handled this fight without much difficulty because that means I don't have to pull any punches later.

We stopped there, the PCs debating whether to continue or head back and investigate the strange black pool upstairs. We'll probably pick back up sometime this weekend.

Sorry it took so long to reply but thanks for the advice. Haven't gone much farther, no grand heist yet and the party has just wrapped up the Whispering Cairn and sold a bunch of the loot to Allustan. Their last trip in the fighter spent some time taking notes on everything they found and they gave this somewhat detailed overview of their findings to Allustan in return for his free consulting on the Cairn. Afterwards they were approached by Kullen with a message from Smenk. They've been invited to dinner.

We won't play again till after the holidays but I'm chugging away at converting the next module and planning out the meeting with Smenk. The way I see it is Smenk wants to get a feel for the PCs and see if he can through them at the cult situation. The Rogue is already in his employ but Smenk doesn't exactly trust him (for good reason). The fighter is related to a rival manager (Ellival) but Ellival keeps out of the petty politics so Smenk doesn't likely see him as much of a threat.

I did something a bit different with Filge than I thought I would. Instead of running to Smenk he skipped town entirely, burning the Observatory to cover his tracks. Smenk doesn't know if Filge is alive or dead but he suspects the cult killed him. The party was seen skulking about the Observatory the day before it burned though so I think he's going to get to the bottom of that. The rogue has a decent excuse for that though (Kullen was sick of dealing with the necromancer so he foisted the job off on him, Kullen would probably corroborate given that "Give me the bastard's eyes" would go over even worse with Smenk)

So that's what's coming up. Still got work to do on those temples. The Mockery(Hextor) is mostly done, but the other two need a lot of work.

Sounds great! Will have to try soon!

Also, there is a synopsis of this adventure that includes how to make the campaign Eberron based. Actually, it's on paizo.com

Yeah, I have that. I was just wondering about additional advice people who have run it might have.

Speaking of advice, my rogue is very set on robbing Smenk. I'm thinking he's going to want to try a burglary of Smenk's mansion and steal the contents of his private safe. I'm wondering how to handle the defenses of the mansion. The material says that Smenk has 3 thugs patrolling the the perimeter of his estate and a number of dire apes guarding the outer halls. Not too useful against a rogue who can sneak good, scale walls, shimmy open windows and such. Smenk has at least one spellcaster in his employ, Merovin so I've decided he has warded the place with Alarm spells. In 5e Alarm is a ritual and can be cast for free with a 10 minute casting time, so I expect alarms will cover a large portion of the house. All the windows at least. The rogue has just made 3rd level and has picked up Arcane Trickster so he is going to have Detect Magic to locate the Alarms and I've already decided that a skill roll can bypass the alarm if you can see it(have Detect Magic up).

Any thoughts on that?

I think it's great that you're doing this campaign. I've read through it, and I plan on doing it with my group sometime in the near future.

As to suggestions, I think your plan with the monks would be a great idea.

My question to you: How hard was it to convert everything to 5th? If it's not too bad, I may have to do it as well, but base it in the original setting or Greyhawk.

The 5e conversion has been pretty easy so far. I don't have the DMG yet so I've been eyeballing everything but aside from a couple fights that were too easy, everything has gone pretty well. A lot of what I've done is reskinning 5e monsters and adding abilities to them. I haven't used them yet but my Wind Warriors are just Animated Armor monsters with the 2 slam attacks replaced by 2 longsword attacks (so slightly more damage) an added sonic blast attack, and flight. I based stats for things like the small elementals on monsters of the appropriate challenge rating and gave them elemental traits. Places where I broke down was pulling my punches on the encounter with Filge. I nerfed his zombies to human zombies because I thought that would be enough against the party, but the zombies had trouble doing any real damage. 1d6+1 only leaking through on a roll of 12 or more isn't all that dangerous. And Filge rolled crappy on his spells attacks.

So yeah, 5e conversion is pretty easy and I expect my encounter design will improve with the DMG next week. I think 3 Faces of Evil will be the first real test of my conversion skills though. There are some serious fights there and they need to be deadly without being impossible.

Finally after exactly way too many years of trying to get an Age of Worms campaign off the ground I've actually done it. We're 6 sessions in to Whispering Cairn, about to finish it up and move on to Three Faces of Evil and I'm working up my notes for the conversion of the 3 Temples.

In Eberron the Ebon Triad consists of cultists of The Mockery, The Keeper, and The Shadow.

I'm thinking about replacing the Tiefings in the Temple of Hextor(The Mockery) with Flayed Hand monks. I'm also thinking Theldrick was once a Karnathi officer and is a war criminal in hiding. And now he's leader of an Ebon Triad cell.

I'm thinking that I'm going to leave the other two temples about the same as the module. Grallak Kur leads a murderous Keeper cult of grimlocks and receives visions not from the Keeper but from Kyuss/Katashka. The Temple of Vecna is now an old lab and temple built by the mortal wizard Vecna, who may be the first human lich.

I'm also going to be reducing the numbers populating each temple. I've only got 3, 3rd level PCs right now and numbers in 5e are really quite dangerous. That and the supreme competency of the Temple of Hextor/The Mockery in their defense plans makes them even more dangerous. I'm wondering about adding an NPC to the party to give them some backup. They let Filge live and while he hates them Smenk may send him along with the PCs as backup and to punish Filge for dropping the ball so completely and spilling the beans on Smenk's involvment with the cult.

I was wondering if anybody might have some suggestions on the temples, party situation, or Eberron conversion in general.

Wow, I've read so many of these and I finally have my own. RIP Gunda. Hopefully your replacement is a bit more careful.

Character: Gunda, Gnoll Barbarian 1
Campaign: Age of Worms
System: 5th Edition D&D
Adventure: Whispering Cairn
Cause of Death: Underwater Ghoul. On a return trip to the Whispering Cairn, a slightly injured Gunda went down into the submerged passages alone and was ambushed by the ghoul. The fight came down to the wire but with his HP just a little down from full the ghoul killed him before he could finish it off. Sometime later rest of the party followed and neatly bisected the ghoul as it fed. Gunda's corpse would be burned to prevent ghoulification.

On further thought, Varisia may not be the best place for Diamond Lake/The Free City after all. Mostly because after reading more, I don't think Magnimar is a good fit for Greyhawk. It's too small, too low leveled, and not seedy enough for bloody deathmatches.

So how about Diamond Lake as a mining town in Andoran. It's easy enough to drop in the Aspodell Mountains somewhere. Blackwall Keep can be an undermanned border fort along the Cheliax border (the marsh wouldn't be too hard just to drop there as a low lying area on a small river too small for the map to show).

So a hop across the pond to Absalom for the Free City. And Absalom does seem to host deathmatch gladiator fights unlike Magnimar, and it's big enough to support the levels Champion's Belt gladiators.

Alhaster becomes a city in Cheliax, with Diabolism standing in for the Church of Hextor.

Vague thoughts on Kyuss as an Azlanti contemporary of Aroden. This guy went and tried to become a god the hard way, and succeeded (sort of)

Any ideas on a good set of deities for the Ebon Triad though? Asmodeus I think should be one, to preserve the connection to Alhaster.

Well, now I know what I'll be doing Monday night.

Teresake wrote:

Steel Wind has created a remarkable blending of AoW into Golarion. See here: Steel Wind's Thread

You can PM him for info.

Thanks. I sent him my AoW Re-Rolled background.

I do have to say that it has worked out remarkably well. The merging of the iconics into the Age of Worms in one of the better campaign ideas I've come up with in decades. It just fits.

Wow. That's all I can really say. I have no words. Sooo jealous of your players though.

I think whatever I wind up deciding on will be... less ambitious than yours. You broadcast on Twitchtv? Is the campaign still ongoing?

Neat, I didn't know about Yhidothrus. Still, I really like the idea of keeping Kyuss an ascended mortal. It's just too cool to discard. Maybe Kyuss could be connected to him somehow though.

Also, what do you think of Queen of Chaos = Rovagug and Miska the Wolfspider = A new Spawn of Rovagug, who was taken down by the Wind Dukes and the Rod of Law?

I think the path was designed for the standard 4 man band so I'd think you should probably bump monetary loot up by 50% wherever they find that sort of thing. Add an extra magic item here or there so everybody gets something nice at the low levels and then try to adjust for WBL for higher levels.

I've been thinking about setting the adventure in Golarion, like many others who have posted here. I have a good idea of where to set the various modules location-wise, Varisia makes a good setting for Diamond Lake, with Magnimar as the Free City.

What I need help with is merging the lore and backstory of the two settings with respect to AoW.

Anybody have suggestions on incorporating Kyuss and Dragotha into Golarion. The Wind Dukes and their tombs? (the only bit of the early adventures I'm not sure fits in Varisia, most of the ruins here are Thassilonian in nature)

Yeah, Spell Combat was specifically worded to stop that. Spell Combat specifically says light or one-handed melee weapon. It specifies because if it didn't you could just do the free action let one hand off the weapon thing. Spell Combat doesn't work with a two handed weapon and Myrmidarch can't use it with a bow. They get Ranged Spellstrike but their Spell Combat is still just for melee. They're less an arcane archer type archetype and more a "I can also use a bow sometimes" melee archetype.

A Magus Arcana that opened up Spell Combat to allow two handed weapons might be neat though. I wonder what the implications of that would be. Myrmidarchs could be full archers maybe, using Spell Combat + Ranged Spellstrike to do the Spellstrike Full Attack flurry thing that the melees do. Two handed melee weapons open up so various high crit two handers are now options (and the higher two handed damage might be enough that you might be willing to forgo the high crit weapons entirely)

Well, he can already mostly do Spellstrike. Standard Action cast touch spell -> free swing to deliver it. Spell Combat is what precludes two handed weapons because it demands you leave a hand open.

I could see a two-hander friendly archetype dropping Spell Combat for something else but Spellstrike could be left unchanged. But whatever replaces Spell Combat would have to be both powerful and interesting unless you just want it to be a nerf.

That was kinda my idea with replacing it with the Wizard's Arcane School specializations. It's a little cludgy due to the lack of certain schools on the Magus list but School abilities can be pretty nice and specialization pretty much means an extra spell per day per spell level.

But as Craft Cheese said that still isn't as nice as casting a spell and full attacking in the same round.

If you want to make the Magus less cookie cutter and using the same weapon all the time, considering making archetypes that make other weapon styles more viable rather than taking away spell combat. Like how the Myrmidon tries (and fails) to make an Archer Magus work?

That's a good idea. My biggest problem with that is that Spell Combat + Spellstrike, while being what makes the Magus a Magus, are exactly what make it cookie cutter. Spell Combat demands one handed weapons, Spellstrike encourages crit fishing above all else. So an archetype that made combat styles more flexible would necessarily change one or both of them.

A Magus with a polearm would be really cool, and it really screams for a good arcane archer type option (better than Myrmidarch). I was hoping that by giving it optional abilites on par with but different than Spell Combat and Spellstrike you could open up its weapon options.

Driving home from work I had a random idea, what if the Magus could trade out Spell Combat for the Wizard's Arcane School?

I'm kind of tired of Magus's always being built as empty offhand/Scimitar or Rapier main hand type combatants. Without Spell Combat you'll see Two-Handed weapons thrown into the mix (albeit still crit fishing ones). Spell Combat is pretty much the core of the class but this idea would be trading out some of the melee ability for better spellcasting, the same way other archetypes reduce spellcasting in favor of martial capability. Maybe being able to specialize in different schools would make them a little less cookie cutter.

So is this totally crazy? Overpowered or a nerf the class doesn't need?

Also the Cutthroat archetype for the Soulknife in Dreamscarred's Psionics Expanded trades Psychic Strike for Sneak Attack as a rogue one half its level.

How does one get 4d8? Would they have to "charge up" each blade with a move action?

I meant 4d8 total. Basically outside of combat you take a move action to charge one blade with 2d8 and then another to charge the second blade with 2d8. When combat starts you go stab a guy with both blades and discharge them both for a total of 4d8 Psychic Strike damage. Next round you burn your Focus with a swift action and Dual Imbue the blades, letting you charge them both but each at a penalty of one die of damage so they only get 1d8 each. For every following round imbuing your blades is tricky, requiring move actions spent to charge up when it would likely be best just to go on fighting with uncharged blades.

If he does it that way then each fight, barring a major lull when he can charge them back up without any trouble, should be getting a total of 6d8 extra damage out of him from Psychic Strike.

Enlarged Blade"moves up the damage so instead of:

Light 1d6
Medium 1d8
Heavy 2d6

It becomes
Light 1d8
Medium 2d6
Heavy 2d8

I can't find it either but I was told it's in an older Dreamscarred Press Psionics book

What Psionic books are considered "cannon" for Pathfinder?

I'm not 100% on this but I believe the only books out for Pathfinder right now are Psionics Unleashed and now Psionics Expanded, as well as the little individual PDFs that contain specific pieces of Psionics Expanded. Older books would be for 3.5 I think.

No, I mean a clash between Duel Imbue and the text on psychic strike - the first implies that you can only imbue two mind-blades at one dice less, which I understood to be the intention.

Nah, it don't clash on the SRD. Here's the Dual Imbue text.

Dual Imbue

When utilizing multiple mind blades, the soulknife may charge both blades with her psychic strike ability at the same time (including when expending her focus to charge her psychic strike). However, her psychic strike damage is reduced by 1d8 when using this option. Damage remains normal when each weapon is charged separately.

The bolded agrees with the Psychic Strike wording that you can charge each seperately and get full power. Dual Imbue is just for charging them up faster, taking a single move action instead of two or letting you charge both with a single Psionic Focus.

As for what was intended, well you got me there. I think the wording on the SRD is pretty clear but I wasn't there when the class was taking shape.

That's a clash in the text, then - I may raise this with DSP. If we assume the SK took the Powerful Strikes option instead of the greater enhancement (which they cannot do) they would do 6d8+4d8 in psychic strike damage, which would add 27 damage to the soulknife's total over 3 rounds, which puts them right on par with the stronger fighter (107 damage vs 103, very little in it).

Oh, so it's different in the actual book? I don't have Psionics Unleashed (just got Psionics Expanded though) so I use the SRD for that.

Here's the text from the SRD saying you can imbue two fully charged Psychic Strike so long as you do them individually.

If the soulknife forms her mind blade into two weapons, she may imbue each mind blade with psychic strike as normal. If she reshapes her mind blade into a single weapon form, the additional psychic strike imbued into the additional weapon is lost. At every four levels thereafter (7th, 11th, etc), the extra damage from a soulknife's psychic strike increases by 1d8.

I don't see that as a problem. It bumps up the power of TWF by a little for the very first attack but that's no different from TWF being better for delivering Sneak Attack damage.

BayonetPriest wrote:

At level 8 and with Dual Imbue he should be able to open combat with 2d8 psychic strike with each blade,

Duel Imbue reduces the psychic strike damage by 1d8. He can only have either 2d8 in one blade, or 1d8 in each. So max psychic strike damage he can dish is 4d8.

I meant that he would imbue each blade separately outside of combat using the normal imbue rules. According to the SRD you can charge each individual blade normally with a move action. The Dual Imbue is only for in combat use where it does indeed weaken it by 1d8. Personally I would have taken the Blade Skill that bumps it up by a d8 if I was working to max out Psychic Strike.

Well, I don't think he can have Improved Enhancement yet seeing as that requires 12th level. At level 8 and with Dual Imbue he should be able to open combat with 2d8 psychic strike with each blade, then burn his focus for 1d8 each the second round. After that he needs to burn move actions to imbue, something that will really screw up his offense seeing as he doesn't have Twin Strike. Also I can't seem to find Enlarged Blade on the SRD or in Psionics Expanded, what does that one do?

How does this guy tend to fight? How long are the combats that he busted? Also, what enhancements does he have on his blades?

Psychic strike never struck me as anything close to overpowered. It's fantastic for that first round, twin-blade alpha strike, but after that you really can't use it much in the fight. It's best for TWF guys because they can land it twice but when you burn your focus for another, even with dual imbue, your second round isn't going to get the max number of d8s. Without manifester levels you can't get another focus with Psicrystal Containment either so your stuck with just that one. Also, and this may not be very good optimization, I like some of those feats that let you do things better while focused. Burning the focus for another, lesser Psychic Strike means I lose my 40' base speed, run on the walls powers that I really like.

Anyway, I don't think Psychic Strike needs daily limits because it is limited by the action economy, after that first round in which you turn a guy into swiss cheese you do more damage just stabbing people like normal than you do recharging for more strikes.

That said, while I wouldn't call them overpowered, I think the Soulknife is my favorite class for TWF. Twin Strike and Improved Furious Charge are just beautiful. I also really need to pick up the new book for the Gifted Blade archetype I've been hearing about.

Edit: Not trying to say your wrong about having a problem, I just agree with the others that something screwy is probably happening because RAW I don't see why it should be so bad. As detailed a description of how some of those combats went would probably help the psi-experts here figure it out.

Are you sure about that? It looks like that elite array was made using only 15 points (7, 5, 3, 2, 0, -2). It doesn't seem like a 25 point buy.

Pretty sure he means the old 3.5 edition point buy. Pathfinder 15 point is about equal to 25 point in 3.5.

It's intentional I believe.

Lingering Performance effectively makes it (4+mCha)*3.

Ok, I'd definitely want to play a Half-Elf or Human then (then again I usually do anyway). Half-Elf gets an extra round of performance as a favored class bonus and Human gets a bonus feat you can spend on Extra Performance or Lingering Performance.

I was looking at the Archaeologist bard on the PFSRD and I noticed something. It says for Archaeologist's Luck that you get it for 4 + Charisma rounds per day, just like Bardic Performance. Unlike Bardic Performance it does not say this limit increases by 2 per level of bard. Is this a typo or is it intended this way? I hope its just a typo because otherwise that really weakens the archetype. Even if its not I'd like to play one, it just seems like a perfect class for your stereotypical adventurer.