Blave's page

Not sure if you missed the potential synergy between Effortless Concentration and Recurring Nightmare. The Nightmare is great fuel for your focus spells, since it is immortal, and my reading is that resummoning works just like summoning does, so you can resummon it anywhere within 60 ft, which gives you a weaker free action demoralise, and a free action thrall that can fly to fuel your other focus spells.

I didn't miss it, just didn't mention it. It might be worth adding to the guide for mroe clarity, thanks.

I personally don't care much for the focus spells that require Thrall Charge to be useful. I feel like there is always a better way I can spend my turn. Conglomerate of Limbs seems a little better because it grapples. But the others are just damage, and I think I would rather just cast Necrotic Bomb or something.

My thoughts exactly :) Conglomerate of Limbs is fine because it also hits two targets on top of the grapple chance. It's by far the best option if you want to use Thrall Charge at all.

A neat trick you can use with Infuse Void is to use it with any aoe damage grave spell (likely Necrotic Bomb) and have another thrall in the aoe to kill for a guaranteed focus point. So that's 3 actions + 2 thralls = refunded focus point + extra damage vs. 2 actions + 1 thrall = -1 focus point + regular damage.

It's nice if it works, but requires you to already have two thralls at the start of your turn and they must be close-ish to each other and in a position to make blowing them up worthwile. It will happen at some point, I'm sure, but it's not something I would rely on. Might still add it to the feat's description when I get the chance, thanks.

I do disagree about the two star rating for Sanguine mastery and blood infusion though. Removing an immunity on a success is incredibly strong,

Removing an immunity is nice an unique. But bleed is just not a great damage type since it doesn't stack. If the enemy fails its save, it's already suffering one of the strongest bleed effects in the game so your allies can't really make use of the lost immunity since their own bleed effects will either be weaker or only very slightly stronger than what you provide.

If the target succeeds on its save or recovers quickly, the spell hasn't really pulled its weight. Your allies can then use their own bleeds, sure. But would you get a strong bleed (those usually cost a feat or high level spell slot) just to be the "backup"?

And all that is still ignoring that in most situations you will outright deal more damage faster with a Necrotic Bomb.

and the fast healing equal to half your level is impressively good, especially since you get to guarantee it with every thrall you use (and you go through them constantly).

The thing is, you never guarantee it. Having fast healing does nothing if you don't have it at the start of your turn. No matter how many enemies you make bleed on your turn, they might all have recovered, died or simply moved away by the time your next turn comes around.

Then there's the comparison to the other fascination-specific feats. If you resist damage only once per turn with Become as Spirit, it's already as effective as Sanguine Mastery's fast healing. Same for Reinforced Skeleton, though it's limited resistances makes it less likely to happen. Thick Skin provides as many HP as two turns of fast healing without you needing to do anything at all.

I think you might have missed the status bonus to damage on amalgamation. Plus level to damage is significant and it works on all strikes not just thrall change so your future free commands when creating thrills much better. I think it's probably at least green.

I didn't miss the damage, though I did fail to mention it. I just don't think it's worth the hassle. I spend an action to create it (reducing my overall number of thralls) and one action to attack. If I want to spend 2 actions for an ok-ish attack, I'd use Thrall Charge and save the level 14 feat even if the damage is slightly lower.

And when you cast create thrall, the free command only applies to the thrall you just created. You can't use it to command the amalgamate.

One correction to Living Graveyard: it's Gargantuan, not Huge.

Fixed, thanks!

As for your amalgamate points, they are valid but it still feels like a lot of things have to go exactly right for this to really work out. It's just a few too many "ifs" to justify spending a 14th level feat on.

I did a thing.

(I hope the link works.)

First guide from me. And surely nowhere near the quality of all the others. But it was fun to write and maybe at least some players get something useful out of my ramblings.

Feel free to comment if you have any thoughts and especially if I got something wrong. I mostly mean mechanically, but if you utterly disagree with one of my ratings, feel free to give your reasoning.

Blave wrote:

Can we please get an errata that changes the deafened condition to specify that Casting a Spell requires a flat check? Or an official clarification that it doesn't.

Deafened has no effect on spellcasting, unless the spell has the Auditory trait. Casting spells requires you to be able to speak magic words (unless subtle), but you're not required to hear them.

Quote:

Casting Spells

The casting of a spell can range from a simple word of magical might that creates a fleeting effect to a complex process taking hours to cast and producing a long-term impact. Casting a spell requires the caster to make gestures and utter incantations, so being unable to speak prevents spellcasting for most casters. If your character has a long term disability that prevents or complicates them from speaking (as described in GM Core), work with the GM to determine an analogous way they cast their spells, such as tapping in code on their staff or whistling.

Yeah well, I agree with this reasoning, but there's a new shield in IM that specifically reduces the deafened flat check by 2 "if you attempt to Cast a Spell or perform an action that has the auditory trait"

So does this mean "Cast a spell. Or use an auditory action". Or does it mean "Cast a spell or action with the auditory trait"? Nobody knows.

Everytimd the matter comes up there's discussions with no real consensus. Hence me plea for official clarification. One way or the other.

Can we please get an errata that changes the deafened condition to specify that Casting a Spell requires a flat check? Or an official clarification that it doesn't.

Hedge mage still allows you to get up to 8th rank slots without the need to get a skill up to legendary. I'd say that's quite a big upside given how most classes can only get 3 skills ever to legendary.

Runesmith invocation was way too strong in the playtest. Now its (probably) fine. I like the change.

Yeah, judging create thrall a pure action tax seems wild to me. And its not like you only use them for your focus spells either, there's lots of things you can do with them. I find them significantly more interesting than the "action tax" of some other classes like ranger, thaumaturge or investigator.

The bard is widely regarded as one of the best classes because his one action compositions work so well within a caster's action economy. Necromancer is much the same. You need thralls more than a bard needs his compositions, but you also get a whole lot more out of that action, not least of which is multiple thralls.

I was very vocal during the playtest that a single thrall per action felt terrible (and I stand by that) but I have absolutely no issue with were the Necro landed in its final version. Not sure about the "best class in the game" claim, but it is a very powerful and versatile caster with great resource management.

2 slots is fine since you get lots of great focus spells to choose from and your thralls are useful to create and have around. I'm significantly more willing to let the "only" 2 slots slide on the necro than on the psychic. The latter simply doesn't have enough other stuff going on to justify the reduced slots.

Kinda hoping they release the pdf later today with a blog post announcing the day 1 errata for the book...

TheFinish wrote:

Thrall strikes are not magical, as they lack the [Magic] trait and don't otherwise say they count as magical in any way, nor can they gain this through feats or features.

ig only spirit thralls can hit incorporeal undead. That's a pain

Seeing how easy the necromancer can deal vitality damage, I don't think incorporeal undead will pose much of a problem.

I'd be more worried about devils and other creatures resistant to anything but specific materials. Thralls don't come in silver or cold iron flavors, after all.

But yes, if you want your thralls to Strike often, spirit is likely your best choice of fascination.

The thralls don't have the magic trait so I don't think their Strikes would count as magic. Summoning a Wolf doesn't make its attacks magical either, after all. I could maybe see an argument for Thrall Charge being magic, but I don't see how Command a Thrall could result in a magical Strike, even if it is done as part of Create Thrall.

I don't think it's possible to combine those feats, but a creepy sprite Necromancer riding her slobbering undad corgi mount into battle is a mental image I'd like to realize at some point. Her thralls are all manner of zombiefied dogs.

Learned Spells:

"A spell you learn is added to your repository of spells, such as a spellbook for a wizard, familiar for a witch, or spell list for a cleric or druid. If you have a spell repertoire, such as a bard, it's not automatically added since you can only know a limited number of spells. Instead, you can select it when you add or swap spells."

The problem is that Learn a Spell explicitly references a repository of spells and a spell repertoire. Spell repertoire is a fixed bit of rules that comes up for every spontaneous caster. The term Repository however doesn't appear in any class description. There are examples given, and I do agree that the RAI is very likely that Dirge and Keepsake are Repositories and work like spellbooks. But since that bit of the spell learning rules is not referenced anywhere outside the activity, the RAW could be a lot cleaner.

There's also the issue that the Hedge Mage only learns low level spells from its feats, despite gaining up to 8th rank slots. It's possible that this is just meant to be a flavorful quirk and you can learn new spells for the archetype freely. But maybe the intention is that you're using heightened spells and can't actually learn spells of rank 4 or higher.

Anyway, at least I wanted to bring it up. Until further notice, I'll allow both Necromancers and Hedge Mages to learn spells freely. But a bit of clarification wouldn't hurt.

Can you add spells to Necromancer's Dirge and the Hedge Mage's Keepsake via Learn a Spell? It seems implied, but it's not clearly stated anywhere in their description. Some clarification would be nice.

'm a little sad that it sounds like you won't be able to play a living nexus as a monk, thanks to them needing martial weapon proficiency. Have I got that right?

You need martial weapons, yes. Ironically, the artwork for the archetype looks VERY much like a monk powering up his fist.

An ancestry that can give you martial weapons at level 1 is probably your best bet if you want to get into nexus early as a monk.

Thralls expire after 1 minute. Beyond that I'm not aware of any limitation. Some focus spells create more thralls per action that create thrall and I saw mention of a 20th level feat that creates like 20 thralls for one action once per day.

Does inevitable return work on undead and constructs. The way its written an undead or construct reaching 0 HP they do "die", but because of things saying constructs don't really die and undead are destroyed is causing confusing, but doesn't Paizo use specific wording with reactions? If it didn't work on undead or constructs, wouldn't the reaction say so, or at least it should? This is for Society Play too so while a VC or somesuch can make a ruling, they cannot rewrite rules?

The likely intent is that it does not work on constructs and especially not on undead. Otherwise you could use it whenever one of your thralls is destroyed, which seems a bit much.

See my Edit above. The Void trait makes effects damage living creatures.

The undead trait covers that.

Once living, these creatures were infused after death with void energy and soul-corrupting unholy magic. When reduced to 0 Hit Points, an undead creature is destroyed. Undead creatures are damaged by vitality energy and are healed by void energy, and don’t benefit from healing vitality effects.

EDIT: Or do you mean that doesn't strictly speaking include immunity? Then it's covered by the Void trait, which makes effects "deal void damage to living creatures". So an undead creature can't be damaged by any void effects.

I don't think create thrall improves at all when you gain levels. You're stuck with 2 thralls (+/- command or puppeteer). So you might end up with fewer thralls overall at higher levels when compared to the playtest.

Infuse Void + thingy will still often require you to not only have a thrall (or two if you want to kill one to regain focus), but also the thrall being in a position where the thingy makes sense.

Unless create thrall counts as a damaging spell (which I personally don't think is true), the only one action damage grave spell I'm aware of is deathly scream. But that one does mental damage, against whoch your thralls are immune. If the feat requires you to kill something specifically with either void damage of the spellshape or the damage of the spell, you couldn't go create + infuse + thingy on the same turn.

That's interesting. I don't have the book and I'm mostly going by some spoilers and description from various sources like YouTube and discord. Makes it a bit hard to compare exact wording.

But even if you can blow up a thrall with Infuse to regain a focus point, it still requires quite a bit of setup and costs multiple actions. I still wouldn't count on it as being a viable refocus option I'd rely on heavily. But it does increase the value of the feat.

Infuse Void is mandatory because Necromancer is all about focus spells

I don't think Infuse Void is quite as essential as you state. Three Focus points per fight is plenty in most cases. By the time you've spend all of them (let's say turn three) most encounters should be decided and you can mop up with cantrips (or your weapon if you're a Reaper). And if it's a severe+ encounter, you're likely to spend at least one of your first turns on a max level spell, making your focus spells run out even later. Puppeteers have their once per day instant refocus and if that's still not enough you could get a familiar (undead or otherwise) to regain a focus point on demand once per day.

Infuse Void also only works with grave spells and nearly all of those that deal damage require you to already have a thrall. Most are also two actions, so you'd need to have a thrall at the start of the turn if you want to do Infuse + Spell. And then it's only a single focus point you can regain per encounter. You of course also need a target to die to it, which is unreliable and probably means your side is winning even without your one extra focus point.

I'm not sure a spell that causes a thrall to make a Strike counts as a "spell that deals damage". If it does, you could use Infuse Void with Thrall Charge or even Create Thrall. That would definitely increase its value.

Infuse Void is a good spellshape, but I'd mostly pick it up as a puppeteer for the extra damage. If I regain a focus point with it, great! But it seems too unreliable to use it as a means to refocus. Though I'm not sure it says you have to kill an enemy with it. Surely you can't just make one of your thralls take vitality damage from a nearby Infused Necrotic Bomb to regain a focus spell, can you?

Necro at 6 has sooo many good feats... the necro in general has a ton of feats for a caster. I think about 70 or something? Though about 2 dozen of them are just "get a focus spell". (Someone with the book might be nice enough to do the counting.)

But from all the previews I've seen, level 6 has the reaction bone burst. And the feats giving you a holy/unholy aura that passively hurts anyone with the opposite sanctification. A feat that for one action makes all your thralls immune to area and splash damage for 1 round. Reclaim Power for self sustain. The reaper/puppeteer specific feats. And i think there was a focus spell that summons a bunch of indestructible immobile blood "whips" or something that just keep hitting nearby enemies in the face. Sounded amazing in tight quarters.

Yeah, but if you're having it do something like carry valuables, it might be a pain to have them all clattering to the floor every sixty seconds.

I was more thinking about having the thrall retrieve a key from a hook on the wall or something. I wasn't going to use a thrall as a carryall.

Is there a rule saying a creature can't take more damage than it has HP? Vampiric spell gets you tempHP equal to half the damage dealt to one creature. Could you just attack up one of your thralls with a cantrip as a prebuff before combat to start with a decent amount of extra HP?

Also from what I understand there's nothing keeping you from having a thrall up at all times, making it walk down that dungeon corridor some 30-ish feet in front of you, correct? It can even open doors and chests (if unlocked), pull levers, push buttons, probabaly bring you items...? That seems like a ridiculous amount of utility outside of combat. Am I missing something that would prevent this?

Blue_frog wrote:

shroudb wrote:

I believe it's mostly to be used by the Super-Thralls, all of whom have special bonuses for it.

Like, Conglomerate gets a second target and potentially grabs on a succesful hit, or Perfected does an extra 6d6 or Graveyard an extra 3d6 and recurring an extra 2d6 and etc

Yeah, that's what I gathered ^^

By the way (well, no, it's a totally unrelated topic), does anyone have the exact description of the grave spell Song of the Soul ?

There is also value in the fact that it's a Grave spell and that it can destroy a Thrall, since there are feats that itneract with Grave spells and with you killing your own Thralls.

Like, even on a regular one, you can (as an example) Infuse Void on it, and then sacrifice the Thrall to get double the spell rank in damage, potentially getting back a focus point, and getting resist All because you sacrificed a Thrall, on top of the regular cantrip damage.

I don't think Thrall Charge is a a viable spell for infuse void. That spellshape only works on spells that deal damage, I believe? Thrall Charge doesn't deal damage, it only increases the damage of the Thrall.

shroudb wrote:

I believe it's mostly to be used by the Super-Thralls, all of whom have special bonuses for it.

Like, Conglomerate gets a second target and potentially grabs on a succesful hit, or Perfected does an extra 6d6 or Graveyard an extra 3d6 and recurring an extra 2d6 and etc

Yeah, that's what I gathered ^^

By the way (well, no, it's a totally unrelated topic), does anyone have the exact description of the grave spell Song of the Soul ?

2 actions, 30 ft range, turns a thrall into a soul instrument that can only be heard by a single ally within 15 ft. Heals the ally for 1d8 damage per rank and grant fast healing 1 per rank as long as the target is within 15 ft of the thrall. Does not destroy the thrall. Duration is one minute, though I guess the thrall will still end after 1 minute if it's from some previous round.

Also heals with vitality or void, depending on what heals the target.

VEEEEERY good out of combat focus heal, even more so on a class that regains 2 focus points innately. Could also easily be grabbed via the archetype.

Blave wrote:

Invictus Fatum wrote:

Blave wrote:

The thrall trait says all checks against the thrall auto-succeed which I would interpret as being a regular, non-crit success.

The trait also says thralls auto-fail any check, which is a bit weird since Escape is one of the actions they can take.

The focus spell explicitly calls out that attempts to escape do not auto-succeed and the DC is your spell DC

Yes, but that doesn't change the RAW on any Escape attemps done by a thrall.

That's covered by the generic Thrall Trait:

"However, they can make checks to Escape using your spell attack modifier.
Escaping this way uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty"

I somehow missed that, thanks. Guess that can happen if you have to rely on YouTube videos for actual rules texts.

What are people's thoughts about Conjurer of Corpses. I love extra spell slots and like the idea of summons, so on the surface it seems cool. Just not sure of action economy of Necromancer and whether it is a good option. Thoughts?

Casting it costs 3 actions which obviously keeps you from creating thralls so hopefully whatever you summon is worth the investment. I'm pretty sure I'd not spend a 6th level feat on this and just prepare summon undead I a regular slot if I want to cast it.

That being said, the feat does allow your summoned undead to be targeted by your abilities that target thralls. Thrall Charge is an ability that targets a thrall. Not sure if that's RAI and if you could still command the summoned undead when sustaining the spell to give it 2 more actions, but it could have some interesting potential.

My memory might be off, but isn't full artworks a relatively recent development on AoN? Pretty sure they were an official partner before they started getting access to artworks.

I get that the art is important to many people, but couldn't you at least go back to the before-art agreement? Give them the books early (and hopefully for free) so they can keep helping the game grow even if they have to remove all (or at least most) art from the site.

From what I've seen, the necro healing focus spell doesn't destroy the target thrall and provides the target with fast healing as long as it remains within 15 ft of the thrall. If you get the undead familiar, you can target it with your abilities as if it is a thrall. So you could make it independent and have it follow the healee around to keep the fast healing going. The familiar should be much harder to get rid off than a thrall.

On top of handing out free books, there's probably some effort involved when it comes to providing artworks. I assume at least some amount of work goes into this and AoN isn't simply handed all the artwork or given free reign to pull anything they want from the PDFs.

I don't believe this is a huge amount of work, but it still costs paizo money. With the recent layoffs they might also simply lack the manpower to keep doing so.

Not sure any of this justifies the step or even plays a part in the decision at all, mind you. But it may or may not have been a factor.

Not sure how often thrall charge will be used in practice. You can easily follow up create thrall with a MAP-less cantrip or one of your focus spells. Thrall Charge seems like a decent backup but so far I don't value it all that highly. I'd definitely try to avoid having it as part of my basic combat plan.

Reaper and puppeteer both get 2 thralls and one Strike out of one action. The Reaper's can be potentially much stronger (albeit with slightly less attack bonus at certain levels) but in exchange for that, he needs to be closer to the action and danger.

I honestly think that's a perfectly good trade off.

Blave wrote:

The thrall trait says all checks against the thrall auto-succeed which I would interpret as being a regular, non-crit success.

The trait also says thralls auto-fail any check, which is a bit weird since Escape is one of the actions they can take.

The focus spell explicitly calls out that attempts to escape do not auto-succeed and the DC is your spell DC

Yes, but that doesn't change the RAW on any Escape attemps done by a thrall.

That seems like a sensible interpretation. I hadn't even considered Strikes.

The thrall trait says all checks against the thrall auto-succeed which I would interpret as being a regular, non-crit success.

The trait also says thralls auto-fail any check, which is a bit weird since Escape is one of the actions they can take.

The immediate effect of this might not be huge, but pulling support from a community site that is such an integral part of the game sets a bad precedence. AoN costs paizo basically nothing as far as I can tell, while their support and endorsement for the site was hugely positive publicity for a long time and brought many new players to the game.

Would be fun if hedge witch could get cantrips from all traditions with that feat. I'd love to pick up Vitality Lash on a Necro, but it's hard to find 12 great cantrips on the divine list.

Thankfully, there seems to be a spellheart that provides vitality lash.

The Magical Understudy line got a big boost too, with the eidolon now using your spell modifiers and DC instead of its own.

Summoner isn't exactly a class I know very well but hasn't this always been the case?

Trixleby wrote:

Also things like the Reaper, like it doesn't adjust your martial proficiency in the same way the Warpriest does. It's just slapping medium armor and martial weapons on a 13th level expert martial progression.

This is wild in the same book as magus with the same casting progression and martial scaling.

Same SLOT progression. Necro is still a legendary caster, unlike the magus. Also gets 10th rank spells.

Reaper is the first legendary caster with medium armor and martial weapons I think? (Not counting war mage since it's technically only familiar, not proficient). Also the first legendary caster with fort instead of will as their strong save and it even goes up to legendary, which is rare for caster saves. Strong fort goes a long way towards making a character more better at melee.

I really don't think the Reaper (or the puppeteer for that matter) has a bad proficiency chassis. It's not quite bard level, but it's way above average for a caster.

I genuinely think Reaper goes great with Marshal. Probably needs free archetype. But a 1 action bless is great, buffs your flanking thrall buddy and boosts one of your weak saves. Getting Reactive Strike is always good as well. Saves you from getting Bind Heroic Spirit, so you have more focus points and better action economy. Also support your allies, of course.

I've also read about some aura feat that can be activated for one action if you're holy and deals some spirit damage to nearby unholy creatures (with sanctification). Not sure if that's a stance or not (I'm hoping not), but it seems like it could be very effective on a reaper.

Blave wrote:

My impression was that the hedge mage can't learn new spells outside of its spelllcaster feat progression. Does the archetype say it can learn a spell at any point?

Anyway it's weird that the heighten spellshape makes the hedge mage better for full casters than non-casters. As far as I understand, you could use this to heighten your rank 9 spells to rank 10, increasing your number of 10th rank spells quite significantly.

No spellcasting archetype has text for the learn a spell activity as far as I know. Unless you want to also say archetype wizards and witches are unable to add spells to their spellbooks and familiars.

Those get a spellbook and a familiar as defined in their parent class. There's no definition anywhere that says you can add spells to a keepsake via Learn a Spell.

I could see this going either way. The fact that you learn only low rank spells (but lots of them) makes me inclined to believe the hedge mage is meant to use low rank spells exclusively. But I can't really say what's the RAI here, especially since I've only seen parts of the archetype.

John R. wrote:

gesalt wrote:

No restriction at all on just learning spells via scrolls to properly fill out the higher slots instead of heightening.

Wait, hedge mage archetype alone can potentially learn spells higher than 3rd rank?

It has spellcasting, the keepsake is a repository, that's all the requirements to fire the Learn A Spell activity.

It's a bit stupid that Learn a Spell says how it interacts with repositories and repertoires, but only the latter is ever explicitly called out as being part of a class or archetype. If Dirge and the keepsake would be called repository at any point, we could save ourselves quite a bit of headache.

My impression was that the hedge mage can't learn new spells outside of its spelllcaster feat progression. Does the archetype say it can learn a spell at any point?

Anyway it's weird that the heighten spellshape makes the hedge mage better for full casters than non-casters. As far as I understand, you could use this to heighten your rank 9 spells to rank 10, increasing your number of 10th rank spells quite significantly.

I read your post. It might well be a room issue, sure. But its not like we never got a class feature that's written across two pages. Even if it didn't fit on this page, would there really - really - not have been editing option to make room for one or two more lines? I don't think page 28 is the last of the Necro class section, right?

But regardless of what we guess is the reason, my point stands. The wording isn't clear and could be improved or at least clarified in an errata or something.

The wording is just weird. The "and learn via Learn a Spell" at the end of the sentence doesn't fit at all, no matter how you look at it.

I agree that the necro should be able to add spells to their dirge like wizard, witch and magus do, mind you. I'm just saying that the text doesn't really support (or deny) this in any way.

The full text according to someone on discord is

"Each time you gain a level, you add two occult spells to your dirge, of any spell rank for which you have spell slots, chosen from common occult spells or others you gain access to and learn via Learn a Spell."

It never says you add via learn a spell it only says you can add spells on level up that you learn via learn a spell.

I have honestly no clue what the RAI is, seeing how this is our first prepared 2 slot caster. But the RAW is definitely not super clear.

EDIT: Just remembered that we have another 2 slot prepared caster now: the magus. Had discord check and apparently his spellbook feature does list adding spells via learn a spell separately.