Chastity Brightsmile's page

In my current game I have a Black Dragon character that is in a semi-unique (for dragons) position. He is at the threshold of level advancement and soon to have a character class. In order to obtain optimal advice I believe it would be best to tell you about this particular dragon.

His childhood was much like what you would expect for a black dragon, harsh. His mother was uncaring, his father absent, and his siblings were murderously competitive. Eventually hatred beget action and he managed to dispatch half of his clutch mates. It was easy, simply pose as a redeemed dragon and betray the location of his brothers lairs to wandering adventurers. Unfortunately he only managed to remove three before his sisters and mother learned of his treachery. He knew that discretion was the better part of "valor" so he fled. What he didn't know is that metaphors are not to be taken literally, so he went underground.

During his brief existence on the Underdark random encounter table, he saw a party of drow wandering by. Knowing that he loved chewy elf snacks, he began to stalk them. Why not practice stealth on prey in order to better deal with predators? After following for about an hour, one more drow appeared... behind him! He was obviously very armed, but not brandishing when he made his own presence known. He introduced himself as Malice. He declared that he had located the hoard, and that he had no interest in its liberation. Intrigued, both at the fact that an elf managed to sneak up on him and that he would so casually address a dragon, he decided to speak with the brazen drow.

They talked of much, but the conversation as expected ended up on the topic of why a swamp dragon would be in a cavernous area. At that point Malice suggested that Bile travel back to the city with him. Telling him that it would be even safer. That if his family did manage to find him, it would be dangerous to openly attack a drow settlement. Bile saw the logic in this and agreed to take drow form and accompany his troupe home.

Malice would visit him from time to time. He had jobs from his house that he would offer a cut on. As time went on the tasks were greater but the pay better still. Eventually they began to form what some would call a friendship.

The party he is traveling with are:

Malice - Noble Drow, Warlock 1/Rogue 4/ Assassin 6 (with 3.5 spell progression)
Xuma - Noble Drow, Alchemist 11
Ashe - Human (Slave) Shadow Blood Sorceress 11

The game is planned to get to pretty high levels (GM anticipates epic) and obviously 3.5 material is allowed. Like I said, I'm not sure what to advance him in but he'll receive the elite array for ability scores when he gains a class level like other monsters that gain class levels.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

I'm not sure exactly how balanced this bloodline is when compared with the others. While Hide in Plain Sight discussions are a bit of a dead horse at this point, this new bloodline is powerful enough to reanimate that horse and summon a cleric to beat on it some more! From other threads I've seen it has generally been accepted that the limitation to the powerful HiPS ability is that anyone who gets it is limited to skirmish tactics (which do no lend themselves to the expedient conclusion of combat).

Now for the first time we have a character class that is only hindered to the use of HiPS when casting spells that have a casting time of "full round action" or "1 round". Otherwise your sorcerer can simply cast a standard action spell and then move, slipping back into stealth during the move. Suddenly you're only showing glimpses of yourself as you rain spells of control and death upon your enemies. You'll be the @#%$ing wind!

On the other hand, this bloodline may be enough to make the Arcane Trickster worth using. Taking 5 levels of sorcerer instead of the requisite 4 allows you to use the "Robe of Arcane Heritage" to give you the HiPS ability, which you can have the funds for by 6th level. Sure, this option results in late entry to the prestige class but doing it this way means you don't have to waste the 3 feats and extra spellcaster progression for shadowdancer. The levels or rogue will also lend themselves nicely to this build by giving the fast stealth rogue talent, exponentially increasing the possible squares you might be hiding.

As many of you have been doing lately, I've been browsing poison rules for my new Alchemist. While doing so a couple of quotes at opposite ends of the Core Rulebook popped out at me that would explain the noticeably low DCs associated with poisons.

Poisons can be made using Craft (alchemy). The DC to make a poison is equal to its Fortitude save. Rolling a natural 1 on a Craft skill check while making a poison exposes the crafter to the poison. Crafters with the poison use class feature do not risk poisoning themselves when using Craft to make poison.

You may voluntarily add +10 to the indicated DC to craft an item. This allows you to create the item more quickly (since you'll be multiplying this higher DC by your Craft check result to determine progress). You must decide whether to increase the DC before you make each weekly or daily check.

Now what this seems to do when combined is allow the Alchemist to create even stronger poisons by simply adding +10 to the Craft DC. Such as making Drow Poison at DC 23 instead of 13. It seems abuse able at first, but when you think about other options such as concentrate poison or dose stacking, the power is pretty much in line with other options.

I was looking at the evolution list for Eidolon today and something just didn't seem right with the Weapon training ability. Then it hit me that all non-native outsiders are automatically proficient with all simple and martial weapons. So why buy the ability to use martial weapons for evolution points? Is it just a trap for summoners without a beastiary? (honestly by the rules in the beastiary if you describe it as wearing full plate and using a double bladed sword your eidolon is proficient, which seems to take the inconvenience of armor training being eratta'd away, away) But perhaps I'm reading too much into all of this. Just hope my point that outsiders are automatically martial weapon approved makes it to the developers.

I was playing with my girlfriend today and an interesting point came up, as a half-fiend (she wanted to and there are no other players to annoy with a powerful pc race) she is immune to cold damage. I was going to tell her that she noticed it getting colder but as a creature that is immune to cold it brings the question of wether or not a creature that could not be damaged by cold could percieve it. Considering that the sensations of being cold or hot are minute sensory feedback of mild damage to the body.

She then brought up lepers who can percieve cold despite the death of the nervous system. Our debate came to a compromise with the point that half fiends have no resistance to heat (very odd by the way) so she could feel a greater lack of heat rather than the cold its self.

She then pointed out that as a magical protection her character is prevented from taking damage,not from feeling anything. Magic being magic it has nothing to do with nerve endings and medical science. And how boring everything would be if she were locked in a completely neutral existence. Would ice cream be cold and delicious or simply an oddity? (this paragraph by the aforementioned girlfriend.)

What do you think out there, I would love to know.

As I was reading the summoner class, especially the bits about how the summon is a mere aspect of some greater being, it naturally sparked questions of wether or not the summoner could use the Gate spell to pull in the full form of the hideous tentacled beast from beyond the planes. (or hundred clawed kitty from the seven heavens, or even the firebreathing twin headed serpent of many tails from the abyss) I was wondering if there would be a ruleset available for creating such a full form.

Possibly advanced options such as a true breathweapon, or scaling abilities like improved poison.

If thats not an option even a sidebar with suggested stats like recomended CR or HD