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It might be fun if your archer fighter's rival is a "Robin Hood" type. Maybe an elf or half elf that is drawn more towards out shining the player than anything else. He might attempt to split the character's arrows in twain or some other impressive archery feats. As a GM you could really go to town with this character shooting targets blindfolded or shooting small pieces of fruit thrown in the air.
Well you'll still need good base stats to melee, but yeah those spells can make you a decent melee character. The real problem is your base attack bonus is so far behind what a real fighters is. Probably the best option for this would be a wildshaped druid with good melee stats.
Argh, I can't recall the name but my druid picked up the trait that boosts reflex saves. Probably not the best trait overall, but boosting that one weak save sure is nice.
I'd add a lot of points to intimidate, and possibly even skill focus intimidate as well.
Because it's just Chuck Norris in a costume.
Or use the sage sorcerer bloodline and have intelligence as your casting stat instead of charisma. Then you still get the synergy bonus.
Well I think you could get by with no more than a 12 intelligence if you went vivisectionist alchemist for the sneak attack, and that would just give you more skill points for supporting/plugging player weaknesses.
Portable hole and sunrods or something with a permanent light spell cast on it? You'd still have to open it up every so often and let some fresh air in and water it, but you wouldn't have to worry about it either.
No reason to be snarky, I was simply trying to offer some advice. Also nobody is saying you should have a stump walking around using inspire courage on the party. If trap finding isn't an issue I'd recommend ninja levels to get the sneak attack dice to enter arcane trickster for the charisma synergy. I prefer spontaneous casters as well, and my own trickster has sorcerer levels. I chose aberrant bloodline for the reach bonus on touch spells. A hard rule for me has been to choose a damaging spell for his first spell known at each new level and then taken all of my other spells known as buffing and utility spells. I find this gives me enough versatility to nearly always have something I can contribute regardless of the situation.
Well a good concept for any evil caster is the whole "power at all costs" type of wizard, but I really like the idea of an evil wizard who started out really trying to help people or make the world a better place but got twisted along the way. I think the more compelling his reasons for doing whatever evil thing he's doing the better this concept works.
@snow tiger What concept are you using for your casters? It's hard to recommend something new without knowing what you're playing.
I'm not really clear what it is you're trying to accomplish with him as an NPC, but if you are adding him just to find traps if neither of your characters has trap finding I'd just drop traps from your game. If you just want a support character I'd recommend a bard. Players tend to enjoy an NPC more when he is buffing them.
This is what I would do: Strength 11
If you want to be a caster druid you can swap the animal companion for a domain and then just dump charisma. Dexterity should be high because you have more armor restrictions so you won't have the AC of a cleric for a while and it helps with touch attacks. I wish Wisdom was higher, but for a 15 point buy and a race without a wisdom boost it's doable. You might consider changing to a half elf for the flavor AND the flexible boost to wisdom.
I'd like to echo what bfobar said and say detect magic. It's the one spell every single caster should probably have. Beyond that, it depends on the character. My arcane trickster/sorcerer loves scorching ray and invisibility, but my storm druid loves obscuring mist (since he's the only one that can see in it and it's effectively a no save blindness effect for everyone else).
Well I think it should have cost 1700. 1000 for the material costs and 700 for the scroll itself. The 2125 would be if it was a fifth level spell with 1000 gold material cost.
I like to find a cool mini, modify it to make it cooler and see if the rules can fit the looks. I've actually built characters several ways, but when a friend and I were creating our characters for our current game we came up with Cascade's idea. Minis are usually the last part of my character creation, but then finding the right mini, with the right race and equipment is impossible. One way I really like to do it is to work on a voice first and then build the character out of that. I love a character with a unique accent, and they are always popular around the table. Of course it helps that my job requires a lot of driving so I get a lot of practice and my girlfriend having a speech therapy degree has been pretty helpful.
I like the egg timer rule. I may even bring that up at my game. We don't use summoning in our group because we've found it to be the greatest time killer in combat. Many groups probably wouldn't go for this, but it makes a big difference.
I'd echo what andreww said above. Although for te ultimate rogue type character I like to use a rogue + sage sorcerer to eventually enter arcane trickster. I play one in my group and he had an answer for nearly any out of combat situation.
Your original list is pretty solid. Personally I always keep a scroll of spider climb communal on hand. It can trivialize some obstacles, and gives the entire party alternative access routes to fortresses and the like. Also, personally I prefer to memorize glitterdust to keep the DC higher and I always find a use for it in an adventuring day.
Winter's Wane
I'd go with bards. They are the Jack of all Trades class after all. Plus I like the idea that they are a traveling band. It would be like a fantasy setting episode of Josie and the Pussycats.
It all depends on the campaign to a degree. The fighter's "kick in the door" approach might work most of the time, but eventually there will likely be a trap and he will have wished the party rogue had disabled it. He may not even have had to go through that door if the party face was able to get more information from someone with diplomacy. Perhaps there is an unfamiliar critter behind the door and without the right knowledge check the party might have to burn through way too many resources to defeat it. Then there's things some character's just have to have be it ride, perception, fly, spellcraft, or crafting skills.
Creating characters does take a long time, but for some reason I love it. Me and one of the other players in my group finally had to take an oath "no more tinkering" before our last game. This was because we were both becoming obsessed with our characters every detail. Come to think of it, maybe I have a problem...
I never really thought about it, but a move action seems right. Otherwise why would anyone choose light over dancing lights?
I thought the reason hero lab costs as much as it does was because of licensing with Paizo? Maybe I'm mistaken... If that is the case though I'd love it if there was some way for Lone Wolf and Paizo to work together on reducing hero lab's cost because it is a wonderful tool for character creation.
I'd look at oracle. You get divine spells and if you played with it, or added some fighter levels you could be pretty beefy. Plus, with the charisma you could handle the social skills.
At level 2 those summoned critters will only last a couple of rounds, I'd recommend Bless or Divine Favor since you have a melee heavy team.
I think snap leaf is a one time use. A ring of feather fall is probably your best bet, and it's crazy cheap.
It wasn't me, but my GM's wife in a game. Usually she isn't the best player at the table (having to be reminded of some of her abilities etc.), but on this one occasion she was amazing. Our group of four is on top of a tower over 150 feet high and we're battling a sorceress boss. We had burned through a lot of our spells battling her minions and getting to the top of the tower, so when she takes flight mid battle we don't have any way to get her back to us. She's raining death on the party from above and we are feebly throwing what we can back in her direction. That's when Lilya (the GM's wife's character) decides to break out her grappling hook an rope, which just makes me face palm. She has no throwing skills and barely enough strength to throw the grappling hook high enough besides, but this doesn't deter her. She rolls to hook the sorceress and of course, natural 20. This is all well an good, she's hooked her, but now she has to make a strength check to actually try and pull her towards us. Keep in mind we are on top of the tower and the GM rules that failure by five or more will pull her off the tower. So she rolls... A second natural 20, and the sorceress lands right between the party barbarian and cleric, and is promptly pummeled to death before she can take flight again. Since then I've stopped recommending actions, because quite frankly I would have never even tried that and our group would have been robbed of this most epic moment.
Inquisitors are quite nice. I haven't personally played one, but I've never heard anyone complain about it either. You will be able to support and kill things when necessary. There are probably guides for it somewhere that are worth a look, other than that the good people of the forum can probably steer you in the right direction.
I haven't heard of doing this before, but on its face it doesn't seem too bad. The problem I see with it is characters really dumping a stat if it doesn't negatively effect a save for them. I guess that doesn't bother some people, but I really don't like dumping more than one stat, and generally never all of the way to 7.
What is it you want to do? Just ranged combat, or would you prefer to have spells or a decent skill list? It might also help if you tell us the makeup of your new group.
Wow, well if you're fighting mega encounters like those on a regular basis, ones with
Well for starters I would definitely enforce that if they didn't say they did something prior to combat, cast a buff or draw a weapon, then that never happened. That forces them to keep their character and surroundings in mind. Obviously tell them before the next session you are doing this to avoid whining. If they are so interested in the combat aspect then add a twist to that. Make it so that a bad guy escapes, combat focused PC's HATE that, and they will develop a real passion for pursuing that villain.
Yikes, +5 CR? I'm playing a storm druid in one of my games now, and when I absolutely positively have to inconvenience something I go with spit venom (3rd level spell). It's a ranged touch attack, but with your dex that shouldn't be an issue. It isn't mind blowingly awesome, but it works against nearly everything.
@armouredmonk13 I really think it would be better if it was a safe and you rode it down as a cowboy for a round or two first.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried rolling 3 4-sided dice for barbarian hit points or 2 for the d8 classes? Maybe a d6 and a d4 for d10 classes? This removes the possibility of rolling a 1, but also makes it statistically harder to get a Max score.
The crafter in one of my games charges an extra 10% to craft our magic items. So I guess that comes to 55% of the total item cost. I personally think that's fair as they did sacrifice the feats and it is still a great boon to your wealth by level. The only real issue I see with it is how completely unbalanced a crafter's wealth could become in a four or five member party. It's also important to remember that the crafter is also sacrificing his time to craft that item, time he could conceivably be using to either craft his own items or possibly earn gold in another way.
As far as dropping anvils go, you might consider the anchor feather token. I almost had my GM convinced that I should be able to drop this on an enemy while I was invisibly spider climbing on the ceiling. One of my better ideas that never got to be employed...
106. The Playtest Dummies
There are a few archetypes that allow you to spontaneously cast from domains as well. I know it isn't exactly what you are looking for, but perhaps you could expand on that idea, or someone may even find one of those an acceptable replacement for a spontaneous caster. I know Storm Druids can do this, and I want to say tempest and arcane can as well.
91. The Critical Threats
I would be curious to hear if this GM would allow a wizard to use a wand or scroll of a spell not in his spell book. Even if it was could the wizard not use the scroll/wand if he didn't prepare the spell that day? What if he did, but he already cast the spell?
The A-team (plus a monk)
18. Mcguffin retrieval service
Wow Gameos, that was excellent. I wish my GM allowed 3rd party because I'd love to play that in our next module. Really you had me with two marvelous words: spontaneous casting. I'm going to be playing a storm druid in a game starting Friday and one of the reasons I really liked the idea was that I would be able to spontaneously cast from my domain spells. I'm not a big fan of summoning, and I really like the mechanic of spontaneously casting domain spells.
I do like the idea of being able to partially turn into an element (kind of like hands of stone), but I think getting access to elemental body early is a big enough boon that some people would opt for it, if only for the flavor of it. Besides, I would rather sacrifice some forms I could shift into than delay wildshape altogether like some of the archetypes currently do. That said, maybe some other ability at an early level would be nice. Something similar to what you said is intriguing but I don't know how you would make that mechanic work. Maybe something like elemental body but only for minutes per level?
I would like to see a druid archetype whose wildshape focused on turning into elementals. You could get rid of plant shape and wild shape effects and move the elemental body effects forwards two levels so that the druid could wildshape into a small elemental at level 4 when he normally could first use the beast shape effects in wild shape. You could further restrict the archetype into taking one of the elemental domains (Air, Fire, etc.). Personally I think it would make an awesome character, what does everyone else think?
I can't think of an answer to that question specifically, but when I think of wolverine I always think of his fast healing ability. There are several versions of the pearly white spindol ioun stone that grant regeneration. I think the cracked version is less than 4K so that isn't too pricey of a magic item to throw at a player and it fits his character concept. After all wolverine had fast healing before he had metal claws.
Maybe add an Orc boss or sub-boss that has class levels as a scarred witch-doctor. A couple of Orc fighters and that should make the PC's look at orcs a little differently. |
