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My DM is running a high level game in a quasi-ancient civilizations mixed with fantasy environment, and as players, we're intended to be warlords trying to take over a Spartan-like city.
Among the things he's allowing is for us to take Leadership. While other players are picking this up primarily for the Cohort, I'm looking to also enable a small army using followers. My character has Suzerain Scepter, so at level 15, he has 80 level1 followers, 8 level2, 4 level3, 2 level4, and 2 level 5.

I've asked for the stats I can use, and if I can actually build these followers using standard classes. He's agreed to this, reminding me that:
* They must be done with the basic NPC ability array: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8.
* They might never see the light of day in a game.
* A level 15 fireball might wipe out all of them in one round, so they might never be that effective regardless.

Despite that, it's a fun and interesting theorycrafting experiment! My goal is to find a bunch of wide area effects that might make the followers both more survivable and reasonably effective in a battlefield like setting.

Here's what I have so far:

Level 1: Hoplite Soldiers
The Build: Fighter 1, with feats in Shield Focus and Shield Brace to gain THW damage with a shield for extra AC.
Justification: Given the setting, this seems like a fun and thematically consistent starting point.

Level 2: Hoplite "Sargent"
The Build: Fighter 2 (architype: Drill Sargent), same feats as above +Flagbearer
Justification: With no range requirement except to be heard, using Tactics / Teamwork Feats plus Flagbearer gives the Soldiers some flexibility and bonuses

Level 3: War Chanter
The Build: Scald 3, with Skald's vigor, Recovered rage as Feats
Justification: Similarly, Inspire Rage is only limited by being heard by the targets, and does not exhaust the soldiers after it's done.

I haven't considered options for levels beyond 3, though I expect to have up to level 6 followers eventually. I'm thinking of trying to find a follower who can use Inspire Courage or similar bard abilities.

Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?

So I am putting together a new character for a campaign in a few months. The character is a bit modeled after Marvel's Ghost Rider in style. I don't really want to go overboard in the character except for that he has two levels in paladin and the rest in oracle for various 'chain' themed spells as well as the occult mystery to use the awesome Phantom Touch as well as the Ectoplasmic Armor revelations.

To go with this aesthetic I also really want to use Flame Steed, which is the cleric/oracle version of Phantom Steed but with a few more bonuses, namely:

* Immune to fire
* Acid, cold, and electricity resistance 10
* Exhales smoke in 15' cone if it or the character is attacked, potentially sickening and obscuring the attacker.

Now, I get that Phantom Steed lacks a lot with regard to being anything beyond a mode of transportation. It's HP (7 + CL) and AC (18) are crap and I'm not even sure what to use for it's saves. But it does have a few interesting features, namely...

* At level l2 (where my caster level will be at) it can move 100' per round and ignore just about any terrain related issues during combat.
* Immunity to fire take a lot of concern out of fireballs or the many other fire based attacks. The resistance to the other types helps soften a blow enough so it might not die with one hit.
* It's a conjuration (creation) spell. So it can't be affected by poisons, gasses, diseases, or really anything that requires it to be flesh-and-blood.

Moreover, I can think of a few feats and magical items that can keep it's survivability at reasonable levels:

* Mounted Combat feat gives me a way to negate an attack each round.
* Indomitable Mount feat does the same for a save.
* War Saddle (5000 GP) makes it a combat trained mount and boosts the Ride skill (helping both the above two feats)
* +1 Studded Leather barding (1000 GP) will raise it's AC to 22. Still not good but might block secondary attacks.

The last part of this is kind of key. It's just a 4th level spell! If it does die I keep a ring of feather fall on me to land on my feet and stay in combat without any loss to action economy. At worst, it dies quickly by taking an attack meant for one of the PCs and I lose my ability to move anywhere across the battlefield easily. And I'm not sinking lots of feats or money into extras like one does for animal companions to keep them alive. If it dies it ides and I move on. And if it does survive after an attack, (or I am attacked) then smoke cloud kicks in as a free action from the steed. I am planning on having the spell Ashen Path (see through and unaffected by smoke, 10 min/lvl) active a lot of the time in active danger situations. This will give me some time (1d6 rounds) where the target might be at disadvantage against me.

So that's it. Riding the Flame Steed is not the only thing he'll do, but it might be worth the above investments of feats (1-2) and gear (10% of net wealth) to make it work out on a regular basis. It is most certainly not optimal, but I think it has a fair amount of usefulness. Anyone want to talk me out of it? Or add some better suggestions?

Hey all. In my current campaign I am playing in, I have had a blast playing a hunter ranger. Combat wise he mostly buffs his animal companion and lets it crank ok the DPR. The build is most assuredly not maxed out but has been a huge kick to play.

The campaign is a shipwreck style adventure, and having no place to buy or purchase magical items has been really fun to play out. And since thwre are no other humanoids left on the island but lots of animals and magical beasts there has been a lot of opportunity to use my Wild Empathy class feature along with Call Animal and Speak with Animals. The DM has been pretty comfortable with me doing this, and it's been fun creating allies among the creatures.

So here's my question. We are realizing something very bad is gonna happen (involving undead humaniods and elemental) in a few weeks game time. Possibly a really bug battle. I want to try and have my hunter maximize his ability to get the creatures to rise up against these outsiders and finght along side the rest of the party.

At level 11, I have already been using Commune with Terrain regularly to find out about animals nearby to know if anything big was coming near us. However, I was thinking of also using Jungle Mind along with Speak with Aninals to convince large packs of wolves and herds of large creatures to be part of the battle (whatever it might be).

Any other ideas of other spells or feats I could investt in to help cause nature to rise up against these creatures?

I have a low level (5-7ish) game coming up and I want to craft a character that uses improvised weapons for melee. I have settled on Inquisitor (Sanctified Slayer) because his back story is that of a former adventurer turned gravedigger, and for his improvised weapon to be his shovel.

Here's where it gets fun. I need Catch Off Guard (no improvised weapon penalty) and Surprise Weapon (+2 atk with improvised weapons) to mitigate the improvised weapon penalties. But then I want to go with the set of Shikigami feats (Shikigami Style / Shikigami Mimicry / Shikigami Manipulation) and have my shovel be a traveler's all-tool. This would increase the damage output of the shovel considerably, and allow me to use the Caster Level of the all-tool (CL9) to give it an enhancement bonus from Shikigami Manipulation. Add in my inquisitor's bane class feature and the studied target from the sanctified slayer (not all in the same round, I know) and he should be a pretty kick-ass melee option. Then I can use my spells and scrolls as mostly support, healing and AoE damage.

I plan on going human so I can get Catch Off Guard early on, but I think it's worthwhile to do the Shikigami feats instead of feats like Improvised Focus or Makeshift Maneuvers or even Extra Bane because they will always be on as soon as I enter my combat style.

Am I missing anything obvious that I need? Am I missing some rule that might limit how this might work?

My son asked for a home brew series of adventures that allowed them to use some of the archetypes that are custom for hunting undead things.

I have the outline, but now I am looking for cool ideas for a family/clan of undead hunters that all the players can be associated with.

Please don't suggest Winchesters as one of the players did. While there are some similarities, trying to keep this semi-original.

I have a player who would like to play a jedi-like character and I generally support the idea.

Background:
He's going with a combination of cleric with a monk (kata master) dip (2 levels) to get WIS to AC, evasion, flurry of blows and some jedi-like acrobatics via panache.

For the cleric levels, he is going evangelist to gain the spontaneous command spells (vs cure spells). But the big grab is the Lightning subdomain to gain flame blade (swapping fire for electricity per domain) as a domain spell. He's petitioning me to allow him to take Craft *whatever* feat to build a lightsaber. He'd like to see it have the following characteristics:

* Be able to use flame blade with it using his caster level like a staff
* Be able to enchant it like a normal weapon like greater magic weapon
* Be the size of a typical rod
* Be able to gain the advantages of Flame Blade Dervish feat (mostly the CHA to damage)

The size thing seems immaterial. Going by the rest, I am seeing the following equivalencies:

* To use Craft Staff with a level 2 spell (flame blade) that uses 2 charges to use would be 3200 (crafting cost)
* To add continuous magic weapon (to allow it to be enchant-able) would be +2000 to craft, unless I want to count it as a new power and then it would be +3000

Is this reasonable? This would be a pretty impressive weapon for 5200-6200, though the off the rack price would be twice as much. The concern is that a +1 brilliant energy weapon would cost x5 as much, though it does not require charges or spellcasting as a staff does.

Thoughts?

A player in my group has a fun idea for a character. He's planning on playing a halfling daring champion cavalier / mouser swashbuckler with a good focus on acrobatics. One of the things he'd like to do is to have allies be able to throw him into combat at the enemy. This would not happen every time, only occasionally. He would do this by using the new tightfit belt to reduce size to tiny and reduce his weight to somewhere around 4-5 lbs (1/8 of a standard male halfling). Then an ally would throw him at an enemy's square or perhaps even the enemy himself.

Weight wise, this seems reasonable. There are thrown weapons of this weight, though obviously he would need to be treated as a 'improvised weapon' with a range of 10'. Here are the other things I am considering for the rules on this:

* The throw: If the thrower is aiming for the enemy, should this be resolve a a ranged touch attack?

* Skill check: Assuming a good throw the halfling would need to keep his balance. I am assuming this would be acrobatics and not fly. Where should the DC be? If he fails, should the result be that he is prone in front of the target?

* The attack: If the halfling 'hits' the target and makes the skill check to maintain balance, should he get an attack? A charge attack? The halfling wields a kukri normally, so a small light weapon should be usable.

* Does the halfling provoke an attack of opportunity while doing this?

My players know this is sub-optimal and don't care that it is. And I think its fun and creative way to do a mini fastball special. What does everyone think?

In another thread I was describing some gaming issue this weekend but I wanted to ask a more general question.

Does the GM have a responsibility to guide players towards effective characters in a campaign? If so, how much?

In brief, I recently spent 15+ hours designing a character for a high level game. I informed the GM of the character concept, including certain combat capabilities (movement, smiting, crit fishing, some ranged attacks) and non-combat capabilities (healing, party face, etc) with the intent of ensuring a balanced team. He gave me feedback along the way and encouraged the build. This occurred weeks before the game.

When we started playing though, it became obvious that none of my combat capabilities would help against the encounters (tight spaces, creatures immune to crits and non-evil alignments). I was reduced to minimal or no damage in all the encounters. As a player of a martial build, that stung a lot.

I believe the GM should have at least alerted me that the dungeon he was putting together would have severely hampered this character. Am I wrong in this belief? When I GM I don't go out of my way to help people shine but any time wants to do something awesome, I will encourage them to give it a shot. But maybe I am too generous. Any thoughts appreciated!

Our normal group was taking a break from our current campaigns (the GM was moving into a new house and job in the same area) so we were looking for someone to GM a short run of adventures. After throwing around a few ideas, one of the guys asked if he could run an old school D&D 3.5 adventure at level 20. Many of us were intrigued as we normally don’t play to this level, but he and his friend (another gamer at our table) were giddy with the prospects of returning to Greyhawk. The other three of us decided this would be fun and moved forward.

One gamer chose to go eldritch knight. The friend of the GM wanted to pull out his LN assassin from ages ago. Another wanted to be a straight druid. I decided to try something fun and interesting, so I went with a halfling paladin / beastmaster / halfling outrider with an uber-mount. I discussed this concept with the GM weeks beforehand because I wanted him to get buy in on many of the optimizations that may or may not be allowed. He seemed very excited for me to play this character. He also warned us frequently that we’d need resurrection spells or magic items since he was gonna try to kill us. We had been warned.

After having spent 15+ hours re-familiarizing myself with 3.5 rules and then getting the character and his gear approved based on his requirements (core + complete books only, special rules for merging magical items), I felt pretty excited.

The premise was decent enough. A sultan hired us to find this relic of his god captured by a psionic god. Oddly enough, the sultan’s kingdom was smack dab in the middle of an anti-magic region, encompassing 40+ miles in radius. The only place magic worked? The 5’ square where the sultan sat on his throne. OK, deux ex machina, I thought. The sultan was a racist power-hungry authoritarian, but we agreed the psion-god was the more pressing issue, and we had to keep the book from being used.

We determined the location of the book and traveled to the entrance of the underground dungeon. Three rangers were on patrol outside the entrance. I (the paladin) attempted to communicate with them, assuming we could handle a few guards easily enough. They resisted but we were able to put them down fairly easily, and I was able to restrain one for interrogation. Then adamantine spiked logs began rising out of the sand and being thrown around telekinetically at us. They hurt the druid pretty hard (they were treated as a +5 weapon, the GM said). After spellcrafting that this was working via a telekinesis spell, the eldritch knight readied an action to use stop any other projectiles. But as the next one appeared, the GM informed him that the logs exceeded the upper weight limit of the telekinesis spell. The EK asked the GM “How are they moving them? If I spellcrafted telekinesis on the logs, wouldn’t that also not be powerful enough to move them?” No, the GM said. that telekinesis was not as powerful as this one. Not even for a deflection. We all exchanged glances but soldiered on. The EK ended up disintegrating the gem controlling the logs (apparently it was a psionic familiar of some kind).

My pali on his griffon mount was chasing down another ranger that was hiding but apparently missed the psionicist that was nearby. The psionicist attacked my mount with some sort of metal attack (I don’t know what … I never played a psionicist) targeting the mount’s CHA. I made the save but still lost 6 points of CHA to my mount. Then the GM said he used a quickened SLA to do it again. Again, I made the save but lost 4 points of CHA. At this point my mount was at 1 CHA. I was able to pull it out since both my mount and I had rings of feather fall, and I had scrolls of restoration (and awesome concentration). By this time the druid noticed the psion and flame strike’d him repeatedly until there was nothing left. My paladin mopped up the last ranger. I was annoyed but focused on doing better with the next encounter.

The portal into the dungeon could only be opened for one round every 5 minutes. After checking for traps, we entered. The GM cackled, and then informed us that there was a disjunction spell on the inside of the door, which we triggered when the door shut. DC 29 Will save for all our magical items or they were permanently broken. The assassin apologized for not casting clairaudience/clairvoyance to check the inside for traps, but I was feeling set up. Most of use lost only a few items, but some were more significant than others. I lost my best weapon (a +3 keen magebane rapier) and several stat items.

On the other side of the door, we could see nothing (deeper darkness). We held our actions while the EK cast daylight. We found ourselves in a 30’x40’ room with a construct from the plane of shadow (like an iron golem, its got all the joys of being a construct but no penalties). It advanced on us. I attempted to detect if it was evil. Nope, even shadow constructs are not evil. And I could not charge or even fly without provoking. The EK casts stone to lava and pretty much ends the encounter as it could not escape the lava.

The further we went, the more it became apparent that my paladin and the druid had nothing to do. We found an intelligent mace in one room but the room was filled with a T-Rex shaped plant monster. The EK got it out using an air elemental. No combat. We went though other odd conditions (flying down 4 miles in a narrow shaft, squeezing through tunnels, etc). Again, nothing that the paladin or the druid could do, but the EK and the assassin (with use magic device) had scrolls and spells for everything. The druid and I started checking facebook on our laptops.

We finally reached the final chamber. It was, again, a very small room with hardly any space for flying. Within was the tome on a pedestal surrounded by some flesh ooze. The EK did a knowledge check and told me to stay away from the ooze as it was quite deadly. THe EK then summoned a huge fire elemental that proceeded to burn out the ooze. After the first round, the GM asked me if I wanted to “shoot the ooze or something”. I shrugged and pointed out that the DR on the ooze for piercing was gonna negate any real damage, and besides, the elemental would kill it in a round or too. It did. We got the book, and were allowed to teleport out (all other rooms were restricted from teleporting).

The GM was very excited and pleased at how things had gone. I tried to talk positive, but I believe the following killed the game:

(1) The GM didn’t follow his own rules. He limited us on the application of telekinesis but not himself. He pulled monsters out of books he restricted us from using for spells and magic items.

(2) He knew what character I had chosen and either deliberately did things to minimize anything good I could do, or simply didn’t think to encourage me to try something more appropriate. Outside of the first combat there was no place to fly or ride a large creature, let alone charge with a lance. Nothing was evil (so no smite) and everything was immune to crits via my rapier.
(3) Wizards are simply way too unbalanced in 3.5. The EK specialized in polymorph spells and was amazed at what the GM told him he could do. Even the player later commented on how OP his character was. Outside of detecting for traps, he believed he could have solo’d the whole dungeon.

Now, I don’t want to be that guy that complains unfairly. Maybe I am just not experienced at 20th level dungeons. Maybe I just chose a bad character to play. But I felt seriously shafted by the GM. I want to talk to him about it. I already spoke to the player of the EK, and he felt the GM was pretty one-sided favoring his character and bent rules. The player of the druid was similarly pissed but did not show it the way I was. I suspect I’m gonna have to call him and discuss what happened. Am I off on any of my above points? Any suggestions on what I want him to know?

I ran across a scenario that interested me, since I did not see it being addressed anywhere else.

The situation involved a mounted attack. The mount was a rhino (picked up via the half-orc Beast Rider feat). The mount had both improved and greater overrun and was charging at the target. The mount successfully hit the target via the overrun, which then provokes an AoO. Here are my questions:

(1) Does the AoO gain any benefits/drawbacks from the charge beyond the +2 to hit and -2 to AC (this benefit specifically states it applies to all attacks until the start of your next turn)? Or does the charge benefits end as soon as the overrun occurred? The mount was wearing Rhino Hide armor, which would give it an additional 2d6 damage on a successful charge attack, and was equipped with a Belt of Thunderous Charges, allowing the gore attack to be one size category larger.

(2) If the mount has the powerful charge feature (which the rhino does) does the increased damage apply here?

I would think that this AoO is simply a continuation of the action begun by the charge and would be inclined to allow it. But I cannot find any RAW that indicate this would be part of the charge. Thoughts?

I am in the midst of writing up a level 10 bard/paladin for a new campaign and was considering having his back-story include that he was a foundling that was adopted by a fey. As I was looking through the likely fey that this might work for, nymph seemed like a good alternative given its alignment as well as the tie-in to its inspiration supernatural ability. That being said, the token of a nymph is quite a boon for a bard.

What sort of handicaps would be appropriate to allow the character to have such a token from his adopted mother while not affecting the balance of the party? I was thinking of having it cost against my 62000 wealth, but I could not easily put a price on the token. Does 20000 seem like a reasonable penalty to have such an object?