Dennis Deadsky's page

Starting with 10th level characters? Yucckkk!!! To each their own, but why would any group want to do that?

In real life unarmed sparring I once fought an individual who topped 6'6" and was in training to be an MMA fighter. It certainly felt like facing a giant, and ended as one might expect.

Several people mentioned Feather Step, which is great, but no one mentioned combining Feather Step on allies with Stone Call to create difficult terrain. Result: All foes hampered by Difficult Terrain (and are denied the 5' step!) while allies move freely.

@OP: It's generally a good idea to acquire basic system mastery before attempting complicated homebrew. Some people equate 'cleric' with 'healbot'. Healbot is generally the least effective way to play a cleric, yet it's the only way a lot of players know. What's your purpose?

But really these kinds of shenanigans aren’t the problem with synthesist other than that it hits upon niche situations the rules didn’t bother focusing on.

What are some perceived problems with Synthesist Summoner? Would someone like to link old threads?

My understanding is that Synthesist Summoners, while less powerful than some other types of Summoner, pose a conundrum for the GM. The Synthesist will tend to have more HP and better AC than most of other PCs. Any foe capable of seriously threatening the Synthesist will make mincemeat of the rest of the party. The end result is that either encounters are too easy or encounters are too hard.

This sort of question is why Synthesist Summoners are banned in a lot of games. Sorry, OP, I can't help you except to say, "Please don't do it!". This sort of issue created the need for the 'Unchained Summoner', because the default Summoner's eidolon allows for this sort of exploit.

P.s. Hero lab is NOT going to get that topic right. It's software, and it almost certainly has the mechanics of this sort of edge case incorrect. Just because Hero Lab let's you do it does not mean it's reasonable.

I once fought off two armed opponents at once and managed to not lose. I'm not trained Law Enforcement or Military. Luckily for me they were untrained bunglers. I had about four years of combative martial arts experience at the time. One attacker drew a knife but could not deploy it before I arm-locked him. The fellow with the knife dropped it so's not to have his arm broken like a rotten twig. The other attacker delivered a few clumsy martial arts techniques to no effect (I parried with off-hand and blocked with his friend) but did not draw his [poorly] concealed weapon. The other fellow retreated and also submitted once he realized their tactical situation was hopeless. I was unscathed and did not have to injure either man. A police officer soon took custody of the two men.

That was IRL. In RPGs the GM of a 25 year duration campaign once hosted an epic 8-hour-in-meatspace game that lasted 26 combat rounds in-game. We challenged Old Man Winter to bring back the sun at the Winter Solstice, thus preventing the world from freezing in a Long Winter.
The players still reminisce about it.

the standard adventuring party baseline for pathfinder stuff is core cleric, core rogue, core wizard, core fighter.

No need for the Rogue. Most parties would be better off with almost anything else. A Bard makes a much better rogue than does a Rogue.

Wizard all the way. Be an elf to get bow proficiency.

Why not be a full bard? Adding Rogue levels to a bard just makes for a weak and ineffectual character. Bards are already the superior rogue! Try something different and be a rogue, not a Rogue.

How about this one? [Youtube: A Response to Lars Anderson]

With Power Attack, Combat Reflexes, your intended tripping focus, and interest in Paired opportunist you might consider carrying a reach weapon. As in, start with the reach weapon, use it to get several extra attacks at the start of combat, then draw your dual weapons. Idea is to maximize your damage output when you can't full attack (which is quite often!), then switch weapons to dual-wielding to maximize damage when you can full attack.

You would need to fit in the Quickdraw feat for the quick switch. This option might give you an impressive first-round damage increase. This will only work really well, though, if your team is tactically competent.

What does it mean "Cleric that has mostly been carborded"?

Other than those suggestions, your Ranger looks pretty reasonable.

Are we to take it you're starting at some obscenely high level, not starting at first level?

Brief real-world interjection: As a practitioner of Kenjutsu I am actually proficient with the wakizashi. While it is, indeed, a light weapon, cutting ability depends on technique and strength, not on coordination or dexterity. Many people conflate skill and technique with dexterity, but they are quite different.

That said, it's a fantasy game, so please let's have our fun with Dex to Damage.

No.

Yeah, that group has no arcane caster and no one to handle battlefield control. Until that's handled this group will struggle in combat.

Perhaps just play GURPS, which is a very refined system that builds characters much the same way as you have 'invented'. You've modified Pathfinder half way towards GURPS. There is even a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy sequence of books that provides templates for common D&D classes. It seems like, were you to take your approach to the logical extreme and spend lots of time refining it, this is pretty much what you would have. I've played a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game for 3+ years, so I speak from experience.

The system described by The Cube of Rubik is mechanically similar to using a random number generator to determine a Point Value of the game session, then giving everyone that many attribute points to build their character. This approach does away with the big problem of random rolling (unequal characters). Since it's the BEST set of rolls, from about 6 people, the GM can pretty well expect the characters to be a 40 - 60 point build. I find it ironic that the person who so strongly opposes point build uses a quasi-point-build system.

Once that comes online at 15th level. Do you plan to play this character from first level, or do you plan to start at high level?

Why would a Warpriest dip another class? Sounds very un-optimized, although I could be wrong ...

Two Weapon Fighting is a weak style, so why would you want it on an optimized fighter? Warpriests tend to be feat-starved, so you might want to be careful how you use your feats. You don't get many.

Is your goal to make an agile flurry of blades guy who is a mishmash of several classes, or to optimize?

Please explain what is your goal with this character, and perhaps we can offer you helpful advice.

I had a martial arts instructor who specialized in capturing foes. He was also head instructor for the police academy of a major city when he wasn't working as a beat cop. He specialized, of course, in handcuffs. He currently holds a seventh degree black belt in one martial art, and several black belts in various other styles.

Fighting this guy was a gas! No matter what you tried, he would grapple you, take you to the ground, then start applying the cuffs. He would routinely and efficiently do this to third and fourth degree black belts. Only other elite specialized grapplers even had a chance. I fought him many dozens of times, over several years, and never stood against him for more than 5 seconds. When he didn't have actual cuffs he'd make the CLICK-CLICK sound of cuffs being applied, as he did the hand motions, then immobilize you with a wrist lock and/or arm bar.

I'd probably model this guy in Pathfinder as a Tetori monk, but only because I'm not familiar with the Cavalier version. Seems like this will work well against humanoid foes, but will completely fail against oozes, weretigers, demons, etc.

I have one PFS character who is a 'technical pacifist'. This PC has never personally killed anything. He's a gnome Oracle of Heavens who drops foes with super-powered Color Spray. Needless to say, most of those foes receive a coup de gras from someone else in the party, so he's under no illusions that he's actually any sort of pacifist.

@OP: You probably already know that Sorcerer Bite is a trap option. It's dangled there as if it were a good thing, but is not. If your Sorcerer, a spell caster, is trying to bite things to death then you are already in an awful situation. It has lots of flavor, but very little crunch.

So long as you are OK with a PC who is weak and relatively ineffective in combat, this is a fine way to go. You're trying to combine the two weakest classes in the game, and the process of multi-classing makes the result even weaker. If you try to dual-wield two weapons you've also chosen the weakest fighting style in the game. The result can work just fine, so long as no one else in your party created an optimized character. If they did, you may have trouble. For example, a plain Fighter who whacks things with a big stick will be much more combat effective, on both offense and defense. So long as you know what you are getting into, go for it!

What's the purpose of such a change? This seems like a clear case of "If it's not broke don't fix it."

The reason i chose this for myself isa house rule goes that if you roll a natural 1 on your d20 as an attack regardless of the number of attacks still available you lose any attacks you have left because of a fumble. so if you have 5 attacks and you roll a 1 on the first one then you lose the other four. By using Bit o luck it is nearly impossible for me to roll a 1 unless i roll double 1's. so the odds are in my favor i wont lose any attacks.

@ OP's GM: Wow, what a horrible house rule! Very clever of the OP to get Bit Of Luck, to help escape from that awful, terrible, stinky, not-thought-through house rule. Way to penalize the martials, reward the already-overpowered casters, and make a 20th level fighter fumble more often than a commoner.

Does the party already have a Bard? If no, you want Inspire Courage and should consider sticking with regular Bard. If yes, proceed with Archaeologist.

You are putting way too much trust in Herolab. Use herolab as a guide, but don't let it lock you in. It sometimes has errors.

Out of curiosity, what difference does drawing back a sword and smacking someone, make as versus drawing a bow and doing the same thing. In terms of AoO?

Yes, I know its in the rules. But really? At that range and in that situation, it doesn't make any sense.

You do jest? As a martial artist specialized in ground combat, I can tell you there is an enormous difference. The adjacent archer/gunman/whatever is just begging for to be grappled, smacked, or tripped from the ground. The guy coming at your with a sword ... not so much.

^^^^
This. Like Tarondor says, this player is a fun-vampire. Cut him loose, and do it soon. Nothing else will work.

Those Chaotic Neutral types sound like extreme trouble. Like others said, if not kept in their place their shenanigans are certain to destroy the campaign in short order. They sound like they are really Chaotic Evil, but chose CN so as not to be banned. See this current thread and about 100 others.

[Resists making snarky answer to the thread title]

Seems like you have it right.

As someone who trained in Kenjutsu for five years I am pleased there is no way it is not easy to get Dex-to-Damage with the katana. The Katana is very much a Strength-based weapon. When I see people wanting to get Dex-to-damage with such a weapon it makes me suspect they have conflated skill with Dexterity. As an experienced martial artist who is competent with this weapon, allowing Dex-to-damage with it would offend my sensibilities. I know, from many hundreds of hours on the dojo floor, that a katana does not work that way.

I have a player who is forbidden, by agreement of everyone in the group except him, from ever playing a character who uses explosives or area effect spells. He's not a bad guy, but he loves explosions and is very foolish in their application. He has killed eight other PCs with unwise (mis)use of explosives and area effect spells. He's killed two of my characters this way. He's also killed himself thrice. After the third time he killed himself, and took down his allies with him, we all agreed he is forever banned in our games from playing a character who uses explosives.

This is a rare example of a problem player who was able to abide by rules and stopped killing his allies. So long as his characters don't touch explosives everything is fine.

This probably won't work for your problem player, as your problem seems much worse.

Sounds like this is a case of 'lesson learned'.

You chose to dump Strength, and now you're trying to figure out how to do damage? That's what Strength is for ...

The historical art of Ninjutsu teaches skill-and-strength based weapon combat, with a heavy dose of deception. I've sparred many times with Ninjutsu black belts, sometimes with swords, often to my detriment. Many people who are unfamiliar with actual combat seem to confuse highly skilled fighting with dex-based fighting. Hollywood promotes this incorrect view. Real Earth ninja-style sword combat relies on strength and skill to inflict damage ...

While it's possible to get DEX to both to hit and damage in Pathfinder, it's quite sub-optimal. You must spend multiple feats and buy an expensive magic weapon just to keep up. You can never match the damage of 1.5x Strength and 1.5x Power Attack. You miss out on the most effective weapons. Two weapon fighting won't help - if anything it will reduce your average damage output, except when you sneak attack - at the cost of another feat.

It sounds like you've already figured out your best options, and have realized they're inadequate. I'd like to help, but really have no useful suggestions. Sorry, but you caught yourself in this Chinese finger trap. Sneak attack is probably your best way to deal significant damage.

One useless suggestion: Do verify exactly what is, and is not, immune to crits. A lot of things that were immune in 3rd edition are not immune in Pathfinder. Make sure your GM is following the Pathfinder crit rules for your Pathfinder ninja, else you may be getting the short end of a certain stick.

How does a Cleric/Witch Mystic Theurge go about getting more Witch spells? Please point me to this info.

Two weapon fighting doesn't work well with clerics. Two weapon fighting is a weak approach even for fighter types with feats to spare, and offers nothing to a feat-starved cleric. Math suggests that trying to do it, in this case, will actually reduce her combat effectiveness. She's much better off with a good shield.

Gosh, even if you could use those feats together, why would you want to? You've strung together two of the worst channeling feats. Channel Smite only exists so that low-CHA negative-channeling battle clerics have at least some use for their channel energy class power. Guided Hand can be useful to at least score a hit, for low-STR high-WIS clerics, but what's the point of hitting when your STR is too low to inflict serious damage?

Are you aware that the Aasimar race is now banned in PFS, unless you already accumulated a certain amount of XP before the ban started? You're probably fine, but best check that.

Are you a Cleric, an Oracle, or a Shaman?

What's the purpose of having CHA 20? Will be use spells with high DC, or is this mostly for Channel Force? How do you plan to handle foes who laugh at your paltry channel damage? You could use your Force Channel to feed AoOs to your party ... is that your plan?

And Dabbler wins the thread necro award for a 5 year thread necro :-) Three cheers for Dabbler! Hip Hip Hurrah! Hip Hip Hurrah! Hip Hip Hurrah!

I would never allow a polearm as a finesse weapon. As GM I'd shut that concept down, hard. Be glad I'm not your GM :-)

The US military is extremely powerful so long as it exists in the context of a functioning civilian economy. Think three flavors of ice cream in an air-conditioned tent in the desert. In the absence of a functioning civilian economy it will not be able to operate for long. The US military just had to declare-victory-and-withdraw from Afghanistan, where it faced mostly goatherds with AK47s.

This is much the same situation as the OPs original question. Sure, that 15th level character (or the US Marines) could massacre large numbers of revolting peasants (or goatherds with AKs), but that won't help govern the area effectively.

To the people who were ragging on the Archaeologist Bard and it's archetype trade off: you don't understand this archetype. It can be a very powerful and effective archetype, but requires considerable system mastery to pull off. For example, trading away group Inspire Courage would suck, unless the group already has a bard. Note that Archaeologist's Luck stacks with Inspire Courage. The sample 'balanced party' in Tark's Forge of Combat includes an archaeologist Bard and an Evangelist Cleric. Don't multiclass with anything. An archaeologist Bard is far more combat effective than any Rogue, and fills the same niche.

My cleric took eltritch heritage for ac.

I tried out both a flyer (vulture) and a trex.
Both were amazing without items.
Divine favor, divine power heroism all boost it easy and fast

Its survival is almost as good as the cleric. Not that bad

You know that Eldritch Heritage can not normally give you an Animal Companion? This requires the GM to make a custom home rule, as it's not normally allowed. So long as your GM knows this and approves, that's dandy.

Those stats seem to be way high? If your group rolls for stats don’t waste stats like those on a fighter.

Looks like a 56 point build. It does seem a pity to 'waste' such awesomely fine stats on a mere swinger-of-weapons. With attributes like those you could easily play an exotic concept that requires high stats, like altering reality with your mind.

1. Call out to the Wizard to see if it's you he's trying to kill or the other vampire. If it is a revenge killing, then maybe you are just caught in the crossfire.

This! If he's after the other guy, offer to help him. Betraying a 'friend' is the anti-paladin way. If he didn't see it coming he's a fool.

Now we know why vampires don't take over the world. They're too busy destroying each other!

After this disastrous episode ends, perhaps start your next campaign with low-level non-evil characters. It takes a lot of maturity and RPG experience for an evil campaign to have much chance of working out. Also, new players do much better starting at low level. Like, first level. When you play a character up from first level you have a much better idea what your character can do. For example, had you started your vampires as childer, and worked up in levels, you'd surely know about the Darkness spell. It's almost impossible for new players to create high level characters and do them justice.

Now you've had the experience of playing a cantankerous party that bickers, fights, and destroys each other. Next time try the experience of having friendly characters motivated to work together as a team. A great way to accomplish this is to create characters together, so you can plan characters who will get along well and work effectively together. The world is harsh enough without killing each other.

There is no PFS where I live.

Yes there is.

You're looking for this article about Handloading Metal Firearm Cartridges [Wikipedia]. That should answer your question.