ChexMix's page

Thanks for all the help, folks. It breaks my martial-loving heart that there doesn't seem to be an unambiguous way to do this without spells, but the Warpriest using Fervor to cast Silence is pretty slick.

So I'd like to build a character that can sneak up on isolated enemies, grapple them, and then keep them from crying out while they're being choked into unconsciousness. The best I can do so far is to get close enough to touch while in stealth, initiate a grapple during the surprise round, win initiative, and then use Kraken style to keep them from shouting out. Is there a smoother and/or less risky way to accomplish this?

It kind of blows my mind that the Chakra rules are PFS legal. Make no mistake, practical or not, they're still awesome. But what do folks think about them from a practical perspective? I can see situations where grabbing a little quick DR for one Ki might be helpful, but what about the advanced ones? How about the Chakra feats? Is there a character build here someplace?

How much official information do we have about how Brastlewark and the gnomes therein get along with the rest of Cheliax? Obviously there's a story there but the materials I've looked at haven't had much more information than "yeah, there's a Gnomish city over there". I'm writing a scenario (for fun, for my own use) involving a Chelaxian nobleman hiring a Gnomish music tutor for his son, and I want to make sure the details match all the Paizo-official material.

Another idea for giving individual Slayers some options- make their secondary abilities cued to different non-physical stats. Intelligence could match up with their "study the enemy" abilities, Wisdom could match up with their "hunting and tracking" abilities (and maybe their self-healing if you want to go that way) and Charisma could match with their Intimidate-related abilities. The powers would have to be powerful enough to justify the MAD, but you'd have all kinds of decisions to make with your character. You could focus on one part of the triangle and be awesome at it, generalize, or downplay the non-physical stats in favor of the physical ones to get a more traditional melee character with a little extra juice. All without losing the flavor of a manhunting killing machine.

The Slayer might be my favorite of the new classes, but the big factor to making it the kind of class I want to revisit and approach from different different directions will be a healthy variety of flavorful Slayer Talents. (Also on my wish list would be making the Slayer Talents available to Rogues the same way that Ninja tricks are, but not making all the Rogue stuff available to Slayers. I think it's in character for Rogues to be more option-based and Slayers be more focused).

The flavor of the mechanics and skills the Slayer already has lends itself to:

-Studying your enemies to gain an advantage.

-Lurking/stalking your prey.

-Ambushing from stealth.

-Being implacably focused on a single enemy.

-Being frikkin' scary.

Plenty of cool options to pursue- you could basically watch Batman: The Animated Series for a few hours, write down everything cool that Batman does, and make each one a talent. A few possibilities:

-Let the Slayer Pounce its favored enemy and get Sneak Attack on it's attacks if and only if the Slayer has concealment.

-Bonus to attack and damage if the Slayer is attacking while jumping down onto its target from an elevated position.

-Access to Ranger Traps, and making the traps more effective against the Slayer's Favored Enemy.

-Giving the Slayer make an Intimidate check to Demoralize their Favored Enemy when the Slayer has concealment and the target is unaware of the Slayer's presence. (The target can't put their finger on it but they feel like something is watching them...)

-Eliminating penalties to Stealth and other skill checks while wearing Medium armor.

-Letting the Slayer charge their Favored Enemy as an attack of opportunity if the Favored Enemy attacks someone other than the Slayer. This would combine nicely with the Stealth Pounce trick and let the Slayer simultaneously be stealthy and still do some of the "protect my buddies" job that full BAB d10 HD classes traditionally take care of.

-Letting the self-heal when they defeat their Favored Enemy. This would help justify ignoring other dangers and absorbing the occasional hit in favor of taking down the FE.

One idea that would help raise the rogue's profile and give some build options to the new Sneak Attack classes would be to create some juicy and powerful new feats with SA as a prerequisite. Maybe some debuffing to go along with (not replace) the extra damage, maybe a chance to make some skill checks and benefit from them the way a lot of the Combat Style feats do. The Slayer and the Investigator would have some options but the Rogue would get them sooner and be better able to take advantage of them.