I do harbour a kind of sick hope that someone will drown here, in the three times i've run this encounter other than this one the closest its been was a lame oracle in a breastplate who found himself holding his breath for 22 turns, passed 2 fort saves as well before someone pulled him out.
I was planning to run this section and give vael some time to return then reopen recruitment for an arcane caster when you were heading back to town. I love our current four as well, i don't think any of you will do the disappearing trick which happens too often, but i would like a fifth man to cover those times when people just can't post. One of my biggest regrets is not accepting maksim from the start, i think your all excellent players and posters but i think he would have been an asset in those early days like andrej and egan were early on and silva has proved to be since he joined.
Thats an acrobatics check followed by a bullrush or trip attack with a +2 bonus for attacking from higher ground. I doubt it would be more than difficult for a lightly armoured first level rogue with a decent dex score, probably about dc20 then bbeg's cmd.
Just a note on the detect magic issue, if you read the spell and follow the usage via RAW its terrible for detecting anything. 1st round reveals the presence or absence of magic items in a 60ft cone, 2nd round the guy your detecting simply walks out of your cone and you have to begin detecting again, its a terrible spell for catching anything that has half a brain and can move, as are all of the detect spells. The pathfinder field guide has some excellent adventuring kits in it by the way, Pathfinder kit/dungeoneering kit/spelunking kit are all great additions to any characters inventory and the chirurgens bag is invaluable for just 400gp.
i ran an encounter last night with a lurker in light (cr5) for 4 4th level PC's who had a really hard time of it. this was the second time they had encountered it and it took them over an hour of real time to deal with the one encounter, even on fast combat rounds. they got stuck in a readied action loop and the lurker who had been faerie fired by the druid before wouldn't attack while he looked ready to cast a spell, was their second encounter of the day and they still had a fair few resources left but by the end of the encounter they were forced to spam wand charges to keep people alive from the invisible flyby sneak attacks. they also got really lucky that their healer didn't get blinded (passed 3 saves at dc16), if he had got blinded the alchemist, barbarian and druid would have been ruined. eventually they killed it with readied grappling actions because i failed an escape artist roll.
ratfolk witch, small rat witch with a tiny rat familiar riding a improved HD awakened dire rat... (my most recent and horrible character idea, might never get to play it). goblin cavalier, a great and potentially hilarious character with loads of goblindoglanceskirmisher action. kobold draconic bloodline sorcerer, my friends next character in kingmaker since they have an alliance with the kobolds and he has always wanted to play one (even funnier when he turns up with the highest cha and the players make him king via metagaming). halfling two weapon warrior (cleavers), the mad halfling chef. that completes my love of small characters, honourable mention to gnome alchemist (find a way to become large or larger).
You appear to be mistaking what people talk about on the forums for what they do at their gaming table. I like to make an optimal character and i side with the opinion that prepared casters are more powerful than spontaneous caster, does that mean i would never play a sorcerer? Of course not but i can still think that the sorcerer is mechanically weaker and say as much on the forums while playing one in a game.
One other thing which i recently thought of, i'm not sure if its RAI but it certainly is RAW. Greater Spell Specialisation... Benefit: By sacrificing a prepared spell of the same or higher level than your specialized spell, you may spontaneously cast your specialized spell. The specialized spell is treated as its normal level, regardless of the spell slot used to cast it. You may add a metamagic feat to the spell by increasing the spell slot and casting time, just like a cleric spontaneously casting a cure or inflict spell with a metamagic feat. Wizard School Specialisation... ...In addition, specialist wizards receive an additional spell slot of each spell level he can cast, from 1st on up. Each day, a wizard can prepare a spell from his specialty school in that slot. This spell must be in the wizard's spellbook. A wizard can select a spell modified by a metamagic feat to prepare in his school slot, but it uses up a higher-level spell slot. So if you were to make a diviner with a crossblooded sorcerer dip in the way described above you would lose the ability from the admixture school to change the element of your spell at your whim (you could use a feat insted) as well as the +1/2 wizard level damage from the school power (+9 at level 20 is minor, +1 at level 3 is still a tiny ammount of damage compared to your overall 5dx+10+1) and gain a huge bonus to initiative which comes in very handy for blasters, the ability to always go in the suprise round, the reroll ability from the foresight school and apparently the ability to drop a divination spell prepared in a speciality spell slot and cast your specialised spell. No more moaning about foresight being the only 9th level spell you can use, say hello to an extra fire snake, probably not RAI but seems to be RAW.
By the same score a theoretical situation in which a wizard can never use his advantage is absolute rubbish. The fact is that if a wizard makes bad choices for daily spells like you suggest then they are boned for that DAY, if a sorcerer suffers from the same issue then they are boned for FOUR levels. The wizard CAN leave open slots to use utility spells, the sorcerer CANNOT do this. These are just examples of the advantage to prepared casting and the point Abraham is trying to make is that your argument rotates around the fact its best not to have that advantage incase you never use it. This is not a good stance to take, your arguing against options on the grounds that you might not need options. I enjoy playing a sorcerer just as much as a wizard but the simple fact is that wizards do have an advantage, how that plays out in your game or my game, where you play or i play could be entirely different due to system mastery, group dynamics, gm fiat and any number of minor differences in the way we play. But if you stand back and look at both classes objectively without bias then the mechanical advantages are plain to see, and thats all we can discuss on an internet forum without navigating the mine field of home rules and opinion. I'm also not saying that my game is better than yours or i play the game better, however you appear to be against people who know the rules and use them to enrich their game. I prefer to run a game by RAW so everyone knows whats going on and we can get on with pretending to be fantasy heros and rolling dice while eating pizza.
After a min of kicking the fighter cannot break down the door which is actually an arcane locked iron shod door covered with an illusion to fool Borris the Strong and Fair and the wizard has finished preparing knock due to his fast study ability... But he waits another 14 just to prove a point anyway so the fighter doesn't accuse him of moving the goal posts.
I just make a home made pad with name, ac, touch, flat, cmd, will and perception on it. I have my players roll initiative at the end of the last combat to use in the new combat. I make perception tests for them as we roll up to an encounter and tell them what they see, i used to give them the option of hero pointing those perception roles but no one ever did so i stopped. While setting the scene i draw the map and ask them to position theirselves while i set up the combat order and roll initiative for npc's, the suprise round goes off then we get down to combat. Every player has a postit for combat stats and hp tracking and we use a huge die for bless/haste etc, the caster keeps track of the buff effect but its easy to write haste on the initiative tracker underneath the caster and tick off rounds as you move down. I have a first answer only policy and run an audit on character sheets every two or three levels, this came in after we had a paladin who hit ac 20 for 18 damage, miss, sorry 21 with haste, miss, oh 22 with bless, miss, oh 25 with my cha for smite, miss... I expect people to know what their spells do but the first time someone casts a spell they should read the full text out loud to the table and describe the effect, save dc etc so everyone knows whats happening. I have a phone app for summoning, spell indexing and pf srd for conditions etc, i would also recommend making a cheat sheet for combat maneouvers and putting it on the wall. Other things that could be handy are a whiteboard for status/spell tracking and keeping everyones vital stats in plain view, this also helps your healer know who he needs to help out. The repetition trick, make a session dedicated to grappling monsters and by the time the pc's fight the nth npc the grapples them they know the grappling rules.
Just a note from this thread which i'm not sure is correct but if it is, the thassilonian wrath specialist with admixture sub school gets 3 additional spells per spell level for evocation spells, two of which have to be the same. That would mean with an int of 20 you would have 1 spell, 2 stat bonus, 1 evocation and 2 evocation that must be the same. The build i posted at second level would have silent image(dc11) 3/day from sorc, 2 burning hands(2d4+5 dc17), a shocking grasp(2d6+5), a charm person(dc16), a vanish and an enlarge person. If that interpretation is correct its an even stronger spec than i thought in the first place.
I agree that i do assume that the build has a spell available to cast at all times that will be useful in any given encounter, but considering it can cast silent image or colour spray 3/day from its sorcerer levels i think that is a fair assumption. I would go with silent image in my sorcerer spell slot with ray of frost as a spamable touch spell, then at level 2 my adventuring spells would be 2 burning hands (2d4+5 dc17), charm person (dc16), vanish and enlarge person. At level 3 i would have an extra 1st level slot that i would leave open to cover any usage i needed to replace after an encounter or two, the burning hands is now 5d4+11 damage. That is about as prepared as any level 1-3 arcanist can be, no sorcerer would have a better selection of spells per day before level 3, a standard tm wizard build would probably have a control spell in place of two burning hands and would hit 2nd level spells a level earlier, but wouldn't have an extra 3 silent images a day. While i agree with what your saying that preparing for the day ahead is a hard choice you seem to think that its harder for this character to prepare than any other. Mostly i think memorisation is personal preference but at level 3 with 3 silent images, a charm, 2 aoes dealing 33 average damage, a buff for the fighter and an escape mechanism as well as a spare slot to fill in blanks your about as prepared as you can be. Blasting cannot be the right thing to do in every situation but just because a character is optimised for blasting does not mean it cannot still control, this one deals hp damage insted of summoning but can still throw up an illusion or hammer home a debuff or pop out a haste. Your problem Ciretose seems to be with memorising spells rather than anything else and that is far more a personal point than an optimisation one.
Aelryinith i have not quoted you to keep my post on the shorter side but i will attempt to answer your points. 1st level is a bad one, same as any other crossblooded character, your bread and butter damage is acid splash for 1d3+2, i actually made an error in my stat distribution and should have had cha 11 for colour spray through level 1. At level two you get a decent blast in burning hands and pick up lots of extra 1st level spells with sin magic. The reason i mention sin magic is as i related in my previous post it gives the wizard build 1 more spell per day per level than the crossblooded sorcerer build, you could take a standard admixture sub school evocation specialist and still be on par with a sorcerer but we are talking about optimisation. Level 3 gets good, your caster level is 1 sorc/2 wiz+1evoc+2spec, your speced in burning hands and doing 5d4+11 damage when you admix acid, you can do that at least twice with you spec spell slots, you have loads of spell slots spare for silent image control or colour spary from the sorcerer side. Level 5 second level spells and intensify come online, burning hands becomes a 7d4+14+2 acid cone. Level 7 you change to spell spec fireball and pick up greater spec, you can now spontaineously cast 10d6+20+3 acidballs whenever you want, no longer bound by memorisation. Through these levels you probably want to keep a shocking grasp or scorching ray in there somewhere for finishing things ofc, the reason you don't need to memorise loads of blasts is that after the fight while everyone else is picking over bodys and taking 20 looking for loot you can reload the artillery and if your dropping more than two big aoe's in a fight its not going well anyway. Level 7-11 you are throwing around 9-15d6 + 18-30 + 3-5 depending on where you are for metamagic and spell slots, caster level and class level, sometimes intensify is better, sometimes empower is better. Spell perfection is only available at level 16, which is a bummer, but spell perfection makes the build capable of huge damage for low level spells, it lets you quicken an intensified fire snake for a 5th level spell slot. Without spell perfection the build deals between 1/4 and 3/4 damage but expends more resources depending on level etc, the same as a sorc would without spell perfection, for cheak if you wanted to taking burning or dazing spell to use with a spell perfected acidsnake you could and it would be funny. To be honest i don't think i'd play that feat selection, +23 to overcome sr at 16 is easily enough and the save dc is if anything over optimised for its level, dc30+ should make most npc's have at best a 50/50 pass chance unless they have a very high save and most have poor reflex by those levels. I'd swap those optional spell penetration and elemental focus feats out for some crafting feats most likely. Also the order i have put the feats down is not set in stone, if you want to spontaineously cast your spec spell earlier take greater spec at 5 and push back intensify, if your worried about damage take the metamagic sooner. Most of all plan your slots, if you can drop a spell for an intensified empowered 22d6+44+5 acidball at level 11 don't memorise loads of aoe blasts, get a few walls and some single target dd and then fill up on buffs and control. The crossblooded archtype actually removes 1 spell from sorcerers each level so reduces them to the same number of spells per day as a standard specialist wizard, as i have explained several times over several posts, a sin wizard has 1 more spell per day per level and a scrollmaster just laughs at the notion of spells per day. The caster level of this character is 1 behind a standard crossblooded sorcerer build but as we can see from the level 16 firesnake casting that he is already 1 level over his maximum for that spell, it may have a minor effect on the odd character levels such as 5, 9 and 13 where applying metamagic could sometimes get the sorc an extra d6+2 damage but this washes out due to the extra 1/2 wizard level damage the admixture specialist always gets and the versatility of the elemental damage changes. Having already explained twice in this post i will explain one more time in the hope that someone finally reads it, in a contest of quantity the crossblooded sorcerer has 6-1+stat modifier spells per day and the sin wizard has 4+2+stat modifier spells per day, the wizard wins at every level, and due to the sorcerers slower progression the sorcerer dip doesn't even delay spell level aquisition compared to the full sorcerer. Like i said you don't have to be a sin wizard, a standard specialist can equal the sorcerer but if your trying to optimise sin magic is the way to go. Caster level does matter but being 1 behind is not a big deal when your casting at level 5 as a level 3 character. I have thrown everything behind blasting in the spec as well, except for listing no equipment other than the obvious, with cwi and ss this character can have a library of scrolls and enough boosting items and pearls of power to literally ruin any arguments about spells per day, with the scrollmaster archtype he applies all of his feats etc to scrolls as well and can have a UMD class skill from sorc as high as you wish to optimise. Wasn't sure if anyone would notice the compy tattoo familiar by the way, well done Beebs. One last thing to mention is skill points and knowledge checks, this blaster has level+3+int in all of the key knowledges so he knows when to use acid, when its better to use fire/cold for vulnerabilities and when the target(s) are immune or resistant to acid, this allows a quick bit of math to determine the best type of damage to do for maximum destrution or if he needs to fall back on his stave/wand of force effects.
The thing you seem to be missing ashiel is that with the extra damage per die from crossblooded empower/intensify is actually better than maximise, a maximised fire snake deals 15d6+30 damage maximised to 120, an intensified empowered fire snake deals 30d6+60 averaging 165 out of a potential 240. Elf tattooed crossblooded black dragon/primal earth sorcerer 1/scrollmaster thassilonian sin magic wrath admixture subschool wizard 15
varissian tattoo
At 16th character level
At lower levels you can focus your efferts on burning hands until character level 7 then fireball till character level 11 Fire snake also one of the best blasting spells out there, its shapable, admixable, it goes to 20d6 with intensify, its level 5 so you can use it with spell perfected quicken and with magical lineage you can still intensify. This is now the third time i have posted the build method and figures in this thread, even with powerful blasting build suggestions that can end encounters from level 3 and scale as you level, people just seem to gloss over the posts that don't agree with their argument though.
I'll bite, why does it need to be changed after so many years and editions of being barbarian? Just because Conan is a famous barbarian doesn't mean all barbarians have to be like him, think back to Rome and the Goth barbarians, the Goths would have been very much like the pf barbarian and were regularly called barbarians by the culture they fought against. Same goes for the Huns and most residents of Gaul at the time, the Berbers of northern Africa and most of the Celt and Pict residents of Great Britan. The early greeks regarded anyone who was not greek as a barbarian, the word originated from people with no Greek or poorly pronounced words, but this was not accepted by many of the scolars and thinkers of the greeks and has a single mention in the illiad describing a band of Carians fighting on the side of Troy. Similar words are used throughout Asia and in China especially, Europeans have been using the word for years to describe Vikings, local tribes in the tropics, Africa and the Americas as well as the Irish being described in such a way as well as the Italian usage for many years describing anyone who was not Italian. Now with that in mind the image that is evoked in my mind when we say barbarian are of the Goths, a huge well equipped army of strong but dirty warriors, they seem unorganised to a "civilised" viewer but their command structure and leadership are sound. Bear in mind to the Romans who were clean and washed and had due process etc the Goths would be the epitome of the word but to the Goths they were just fighters who had slightly different looking equipment. Flying into a rage definately evokes a feeling of the berserker but even then would a berserkers rage be as controlled as a barbarians? For me the mechanic is tied to the name as it is the name i have been gaming with for many years, the frenzied berserker prestige class from 3.5 represents unbridled and uncontrolled destructive power. I think many of the archtypes the barbarian provides are better suited to being called a barbarian by local civilisations than berserkers, invulnerable rager, mounted fury, superstitious, drunken brute, savage, totem warrior, armoured hulk, sea reaver. I think the Taldans and Chileaxians in Galarion and similar nations in other settings would refer to people like this by the term barbarian, within their own tribe they would probably be called warriors or something similar since they are the uncivilised version of a fighter. In the end your talking about abstract class titles, fighter, barbarian, paladin and comparing it to what should be an in character name, Swordlord, Berserker, Templar... Call them what you want at home but leave the well established and widely used class names alone.
Its a spell like ability so you can quality for quicken spell like ability, its a very potent ability that scales as you level and it is especially good for a large pc with a reach weapon and combat reflexes. I think you probably need to find another way to use it rather than tie it into loh, but your home rules can let you do anything you want.
As always get improved two weapon fighting, shield bash, double slice and two weapon rend, try and squeeze in shield master and bashing finish around the barbarian staples, power attack keeps your damage up, you need raging vitality. Take a dip into fighter if you need feats. If you can become immune to fatigue bolstered resilience and invulnerable rager give dr 20/-.
One last wall of text, i was thinking about the antipaladin portion of your guide and i thought that might be the best place to offer up the sword and board style since antipaladins will most often be on the other side of the screen and be looking at 4 people attacking them at once so i put together a little vampire example. some kind of undead template is a must for the antipaladin npc so it can heal itself and vampire was the first to come to mind, i guess wight or something similar would work as well. using 20 point buy i present the Bunker of the Third Reich(its evil and hard to get into)... Str 16 Dex 15 Con 10 Int 8 Wis 8 Cha 15
feats: (human)two weapon fighting, (1st)improved shield bash, (3rd)power attack, (5th)double slice... this gives you a huge AC and as much damage as a two hander due to double slice, when your smiting you do far more damage than a normal two hander. after level 5 feats to consider;
boon: weapon boon is probably the way to go so you can afford to skimp on your scimitar and buff up your shield. equipment;
if you build him right an optimised party will have trouble hitting him with normal attacks, at high levels he would easily have an armour class in excess of 70 forcing optimised archers and melee to hit him on 16+ or worse without power attack or deadly aim. his saves will be very high due to his charisma and his touch ac while smiting will be passable(but the smite ac bonus and the ring do not stack). i currently run for an optimised 5 man group of players and i honestly think it would tpk them any level after 7 unless they pulled out some crazy plan, if i was actually going to run it in a game as an NPC i'd probably tone it back a little. if you want to run an antipaladin as a PC you really need to find some way to get negative energy affinity such as eldritch heritage undead bloodline, being a dhampir if your gm lets you or the necromantic affinity feat from inner sea world guide. dhampir being the easiest way to achieve the results, in that case i would aim to get my starting stats as str 15 dex 13 con 14 int 8 wis 8 cha 14 so after the dhampir racial modifiers you end up with:
that should be my last wall of text for a while.
I roll my dice open and give my pc's hero points. Adventuring is a dangerous business and people die, intellegent opponents are also played intellegently. If your in a fight to the death people die.
Grapple, sunder, trip, touch attacks, reflex saves, no save spells, silence, anti magic, swarms, aid another monsters...
Because the hyped up response force are bounty hunters who are paid to travel a long way to deal with the adventurers turned murderers, or relations of the guard they killed who just happen to not hang around town since their well known werewolves, or a powerful wizard who owed they mayor a favour after he let him hide out here 50 years ago who only checks in once every few months and heard about the pc's misdeeds a few weeks after then spent a year planning how to deal with it. None of these people would be available to deal with any adventures the pc's are doing but will be happy to deal with upstart pc's who go crazy in town.
Post it notes, tick down counters like mtg uses, big dice, harsh rules on creative maths. My group uses the full rules but we have a rather harsh system of if you say "hit ac 32" thats what you hit, even if you forgot +10 worth of bonuses. This has resulted in our party cleric having a huge bless die, me using a spindown counter for haste and people tracking their own buffs. Everyone uses a postit for their to stat modifiers, after a while people naturally start using the same buffs and the confusion disappears, as our cleric said "use the bonus or i might as well cast a summon monster spell". Part of the gaming contract is the players run their characters, tye gm runs the world. If you need to spend ages working out buffs its you running their characters, all you need is a note pad with their names on it and a column for bonuses etc, after that it should take about ten seconds each time someone buffs to track their stats. If your having real trouble make an A3 wall chart, make some buff markers for +1 to +10 and set columns for the different types, write in what items they don't stack with or even each pc's existing bonus for that type and have people pin stuff to the board when they buff, the buff board is a great way to help new players learn the game as well as help the gm keep track. Reward the Vordaman with a hero point at the end of the session if they eun the board all night.
For one min at a time using a limited resource that powers most of his characters other abilities? Yeah i'm fine with it, if he's got a plus 5 weapon at level seven and he's using it all the time his spell recall and arcana are not getting used as much. Also +5 weapons are hardly game breaking intensified empowered shocking grasps delivered via a keen scimitar are kinda harsh though, oh he can spend a point of arcane pool to recall those spells as well? Damn, i hope he uses the +5 weapon now.
Not really sure why you would need to enchant it if i'm honest, the black blade is capable of overcoming any dr and even capable of dealing extra damage vs creatures with elemental vulnerabilities, its always got a level apropriate enhancement bonus as you can add abilities to it as you please with your arcane pool. Wouldn't you think you'd be better off investing in pearls of power as they save pool points which in turn enhance your blade? Or even just buying defensive items to keep yourself alive. I know its not an answer to your question but i don't know what use you will get out of the answer.
Nice boots, my old mum used to say you don't want to get killed by a dragon and have the guy who steals your boots to think you were poor and scruffy. |
