Blind Monkey's page

At Crane Riposte you are only taking a -1 to hit for +3 dodge AC and another +4 vs the one attack.

Say a Zen Archer with one level of Empyreal Sorcerer. Multiple races let you start with 14 S, 14 D, 14 C,10 I, 18 W, who cares about cha. You can dump int for more str if you want, but it doesn't matter for this. Let's say you are a tiefling and take armor of the pit for 2 natural armor. Take magical knack so mage armor lasts 3 hours.

At level 9 for +2 wis from level, +4 wis headband, dusty rose, and 25K wealth by level left to spend, then the Crane Style chain, I think it is:
dex 2 + wis 7 + monk ac 2 + qinggong barkskin 3 + natural armor 2 + mage armor 4 + shield spell 4 + dodge 1 + crane 3 + dusty rose 1 = 39 AC, possible 43 AC vs one of the attacks. And you are a fully functional archer.

At level 7 you would have 37/41 AC and no Crane Riposte.

OK. The black blade seems more like an extension of you,

... suddenly I want to be able to take a level of Master of Many Styles with Boar Style (slashing unarmed attacks), and then have my hand turn black and be possessed by becoming a Bladebound Magus with my hand as the black blade.

What drama comes from the good succubus equivalent? "She tried to seduce you, but she is an angel, so everyone just gives you high fives?".

Hehe, now I am imagining a campaign where the PCs have to fight through her several thousand other suitors while somehow still being good enough to impress her to go on a date.

And of course if you do wind up in a relationship demon lords will keep trying to capture her all Bowser-like because everyone wants an angel-succubus, so the PCs have to Mario it down into the depths of the universe's plumbing to rescue her. But then a different demon lord will have stolen her from the first. What a twist!

"Your angel-succubus is in another castle!"

I have been toying with the idea of a monk taking one level of Empyreal bloodline sorcerer (uses Wisdom as casting stat) so you can cast Mage Armor and Shield on yourself at will (or maybe Ki Arrow), and use all the wizard spell wands yourself without putting any points in UMD. With a high enough Wis you'd be able to cast 4 or 5 spells per day, and if you took Magical Knack your Armor would be lasting 3 hours and Shield 3 minutes. You'd be totally self sufficient in having a giant AC boost.

Also a monk with Prestidigitation and Mage Hand. Maaaage Haaand!

Bill Dunn wrote:

... does anyone really think this is likely to be much of a problem?

That does actually sound like something a rogue would do....

What? No it doesn't, it sounds like something idiotic a horrible jerk would do. That is not a problem with game rules, it is a sign that someone needs to be ejected from the game and told to never come back. If you are convinced the people you play with would be trying to turn suicide into an exploit, you need to find a new group.

Robin Hood WASN'T Chaotic. Not by PF's standards. He was Neutral to Lawful.

An outlaw that goes around robbing people is Lawful. This is a good example of how alignment is meaningless as a descriptor. Anyone can be argued to be anything.

For another example, let's say that we want to make an organization called "Way of the North Star."

They would have a militant order of paladins that travel the roads protecting innocent travelers. Such a paladin would be known as a...

Fist of the North Star

SO I started to look at the builds for this PFDPR calculator:
http://donovanpoe.net/pathfinder/dpr.html
And then I realized you didn't list who had Improved Criticals. Which is kind of important because it is something like a 10 DPR difference. I will guess that the fighter will get it somewhere and the monks are taking it for their 10th level bonus feat because not taking it is silly? Other than that I am just using the attack numbers listed.

For using the calculator Manyshot and things like Bane damage go into the non-critical-multiplied damage spot. The CR enemy box at the top automatically set the average AC and HP. Happens to being 24 AC at CR 10.

Fighter: 115.23
Assuming Warrior Spirit with Bane adds +3 hit and damage and 2d6: 159.89

Chaplain War Priest:
R1: 130.12
R2: 161.97
R3: 175.62
R4: 177.54

Inquisitor:
R1: 85.53
R2: 106.65
or
R1 then R2: 170.60

Zen Archer Monk: 100.11
Zen Monk Precise Strike vs an AC 24 enemy can be used on an iterative to effectively make their attack routine 18/18/18/18/14 for ten rounds. That is apparently about a 6 dpr bonus at this point.

Sohei Monk: 127.58

Medium thing: 106.75 or 112.33

Tempered Champion Paladin: 117.88

Barbarian: 89.54

Ranger: 103.88

Luring Cavalier: 123.37

Occultist: 79.43/R2: 122.01 or 72.63/R2: 114.39

So the final verdict is that casting Divine Power and Bane/Holy renders martials obsolete in the face of the Chaplain War Priest. Also Deflect Arrows vs some of these characters will block like 60-70 damage a round.

Deflect Arrows, don't leave home without it.

While you can't do Drizzt, you can still do TWF ranger.

just wear a gauntlet. Or a cestus. Those let you gesture and attack. You can even 2 hand a one handed weapon when you are not TWFing.

Forcing you to use terrible weapons instead of whatever you might want/have counts as hamstringing.

lemeres wrote:

{. . .}

Shields work too- everything short of heavy shields allow you to use your hand.

Buckler wrote:

{. . .} You can cast a spell with somatic components using your shield arm, but you lose the buckler’s Armor Class bonus until your next turn. {. . .}

Skirnir Magus, Shielded Spell Combat section wrote:

{. . .} A skirnir may use his shield hand to perform somatic components for magus spells, forfeiting the shield’s bonus to AC until the beginning of his next turn; if the bonded shield is a buckler, he retains its bonus to AC. {. . .}

Strange that these have text that specifically allow casting spells with Somatic components using your shield hand, and other shields and most classes/archetypes don't, implying that normally you can't use your shield hand for somatic components. I could have sworn to having read somewhere that you can in fact use your shield hand to cast spells with Somatic components (although needing something like the above to do so in Spell Combat), but now I can't find it.

Indeed, a light shield can be used to hold something, but not wield it, and it does not count as a free hand for anything. Which is also why it shuts off the Swashbuckler and Magus class features without a specific archetype. The workaround you are thinking of I think is that you can technically swap your weapon into your light shield hand to hold it, cast a spell, and then swap your weapon back again. But mentioning that sometimes draws DMs out to declare that it is abusiveness and they would rule against it in their games.

I think there are a great many concepts that people will jump in to say you can technically do, but as the title of the thread says those characters are still extremely hamstrung by the game mechanics. Either because they still are kind of sucky, or else because they don't even come together until around 10+ level when most campaigns end or fall apart, and given the rate of leveling most prefer would likely entail waiting around real-life year of play to build into.

Examples like
eldritch knight that actually functions more like a knight
martial character with battlefield control/tanking options
people what throw things
martial characters who do things besides just hit people
martial characters who can fight groups of enemies effectively
characters who use any of the hundreds of weapons in the game other than the viable handful for variety (because lol waterballoons)
wrestlers
anyone who dabbles in minor magic
any characters based on magic users in stories or mythology (because vancian magic is not similar to anything ever written except vancian magic)

A paladin with a flight speed is fighting on a magical conveyor belt on top of a cliff. The paladin is knocked prone but has no other conditions when the conveyor belt throws them off the side of the cliff into midair. Does the paladin fall?

gustavo iglesias wrote:

The liquid pure evil is the material compoent of the spell (either unholy water, or blood from a devil). But wands don't have, or use, material compoents.

Blood seeping out of the wand as it's used to annoint people would be pretty thematic.

Maybe a wand of Infernal Healing is actually a tiny spritzer of unholy water, like breath freshener.