Erik Ginn's page

Hi,

I set up subscription for Planar Adventures on Friday, but as the system defaulted to shipping it alongside my Adventure Path sub (which would be mid-July), I had to change it to ship ASAP.

I just wanted to check if there were any issues with the order and how long I could expect for it to ship.

Foreword:

The following campaign journal is written from the perspective of my character, Laurel Dalton, during our Wrath of the Righteous adventure.

Our group has made it into book 3 at the time of starting this, having completed two of the personal trials. This means I should have a good amount of content to work with for a while. I've had a lot of fun exploring this particular character, so I decided to share his own experiences along the way.

House rules:

Players may use one of the following ability score arrays for character generation: 16/14/13/13/11/8, 17/13/13/12/10/8, or 15/15/14/12/10/9
The rules for retraining, background skills, and Fractional BAB/Saves are in use
When taking the archmage path, you may choose for all benefits to apply to psychic spells instead of arcane spells.
Familiars and Animal Companions also benefit from the additional feats and ability score bonuses from each mythic tier their master gains. They must have the mythic companion feat to be able to acquire mythic feats.

The party:

The following four characters are the PCs of the adventure. I'll let you folks discover companions and cohorts as we go:

Laurel Dalton - LN Half-Elf Spell Sage Wizard (nb: Me!)
Jacinth Adalrich - LG Aasimar Chosen One Paladin of Iomedae (nb: Two-weapon fighter)
Lily Whitemane - CG Aasimar Bard, worships Arshea (nb: Originally to be a sorcerer, but shortly retrained out of it)
Uriel Ordranti - N Dhampir Vigilante (nb: Vital Striker, dex-based, dipped bloodrager)

Prologue:

A brief prelude recording Laurel's introduction to the campaign.

So I was poking my nose through VMC ideas and stumbled across the 'use VMC Cavalier to get into Battle Herald' trick - this particular avenue of prestige seems to get more options and get more promising every time I revisit it, so I wanted to take a look at just what options it provides. This isn't a guide or anything, I've not played one myself - but I'm trying to run over what the best support we have for it is, and see if anyone else can provide any insight/experience.

Archetypes

Two main archetypes stand out for me at 1-5, please let me know if there are other options:

Exemplar Brawler

I'm a little rusty with Brawler rules, so bear with me.

Pros:
+ Feats - You can get two extra combat feats AND martial flexibility. This really helps make up for the VMC and the core of your build rolling. you could grab
+ Flurry - You don't actually get the second extra attack, but getting even one extra attack is very good with bardic performance and your one challenge.
+ Brawler's Flurry also got better with the Adventurer's Armory 2, as you can cheat any weapon into the close weapon fighter group for 500gp.

Cons:
- Bardic Performance, Inspiring Command and Martial Flexibility are going to be eating up your action economy like crazy. I'm not sure how many opportunities to use flurry (or martial flexibility) you'll get, in practise.
- Weaker bardic performance.

Oath of the People's Council Paladin
Pros:
+ Better proficiencies
+ Order of the Star offers near-complete Lay on Hands progression
+ Much better bardic performance
+ Divine Grace
+ Access to some pretty neat wands!

Cons:
- Tragically feat starved.
- Pretty much all of your skills are going to be eaten up by the prerequisites. This is a 2+int class, and the Battle Herald asks for 3 maxed skills, plus two extra ranks. The background skills alternate rule is a life saver here, and if your GM is allowing VMC, odds are good they'll appreciate background skills.
- You are playing Sir Swearsalot, who is bound to three different oaths. Not the most room for character design, there.

Singing Steel

A new material in Adventurer's Armory 2 - if you wear medium/heavy armor or a weapon/shield with this stuff, if makes it faster to start a bardic performance. This lets you actually start Bardic Performance as a move action even if you prestige at 6, making it a little more achievable to juggle both Bardic Performance and Inspiring Command. Of course, this still prevents you from full attacking and swallows your move action, however, so I'm not sold on this being good until you actually get the prestige capstone. Brawlers either forge their weapon/shield with it (and accept a -1 damage penalty), or grab medium armor proficiency for a feat. Paladins can either grab the weapon or suck it up and sink 12k into their armor.

Given how tight Paladins are for feats, and how even tighter brawlers are for actions, I'm not sold on this, but it does make the nerfed Quick Runner's Shirt look worthwhile.

--

I mean, it looks like overall, the Paladin gets more out of it, and it suits the flavor of the Battle Herald quite well even if Oath of the Peoples' Council itself is a little dubious in flavor. It does run on bare bones for quite a while, though - anything past Power Attack is going to take a lot of time to build for.

Are there any other developments that particularly relevant for the Battle Herald? Can anyone provide any experience/advice on this prestige class?

I see this feat advised a lot as a core part of many builds. As someone who is all too eager to see where I can squeeze in Eldritch Heritage or VMC onto a character, this feat regularly comes into contest with my plans.

I can see it's a very good, if situational action economy saver and defensive tool - you can full attack things an extra 5 feet away, giving melees an effective 15-ft full attack range, or a ghetto spring (full!) attack if they're exactly 10 feet from the nearest target. Full attack, step away and now your target can't 5-ft and full attack back unless they have more reach than you, themselves.

Compared to a lot of non-archery combat feats this is already pretty great. I can see why most martials would be over-the-moon picking this. What I don't quite get is why it's described as a must-have for every reach caster under the sun, too.

It's a great positioning aid and gives martials a little more mobility. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Hiya, so one of the new archetypes I've been giddy about is the Questioner, which swaps out the Investigator's Alchemy for Int-based Bard Spellcasting, and also gives it a slightly slower progressing Bardic Knowledge (And even Eidetic Recollection, for maximum knowledge overkill).

However, I noticed that while it doesn't directly affect any of the investigator's combat, other than loss of alchemist discoveries, the change to arcane spellcasting and no feature to mitigate arcane spell failure leave me feeling cold feet when looking at how to actually fight with one. It also hampers the usual weapon options as TWF and Natural Weapons don't work nearly as well with the loss of Monstrous Physique and the need for a free hand.

I'm building for a home game, so I can definitely ask my GM for a little squeeze, but I'd prefer to look over the existing options we have and ask for peoples' experiences when dealing with ASF and the like.

The character starts at level 3, and these are my considerations.

1: Wand of Mage Armor/Pearl of Power. Bards don't get mage armour, and it's looking like the party probably won't have it either. Of course, there's the option of a wand and I will inevitably have UMD out the wazoo.

2: Grab a Djezet Skin when I can. Not really an option on its own, but one to consider. It's from the new armour master's handbook, and ups face potential with its situational diplomacy boost (great with Charm Person). It's only like, 3ac though, even if I like the idea of sneaking around in the fantasy equivalent of a wetsuit.

3: Arcane Armour Training. Uh, I mean, Investigators don't get THAT many swift actions (quick study, but then you're gonna be stabbing things rather than casting spells), but Arcane Strike is a pretty fantastic midgame feat now. Also I feel I'm going to be incredibly feat starved.

4: Chance it. I don't like this either because the best 5% ASF option is studded darkleaf armour. That's not gonna be an AC gain over the rest unless I get crazy high dex.

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The other factor, which somewhat dictates the above, comes down to fighting style.

1: Strength based seems like a reasonable consideration. It lets me spend feats on things like Arcane Strike, Spellcasting feats, or AAT and gives me a little leeway. I also just appreciate investigators having a decent amount of early-game carrying capacity as the skillmonkeys they are. AC would be absolutely horrible though, and I'd need to consider some dex. I'm also strongly considering the longspear.

2: Rapier + Fencing Grace would certainly help shore up my AC, and I'd feel less bad about needing a free offhand anyway. Stuck with 1d6+0 damage for a level or two, but I can live with that given the rest of the class's abilities.

3: Unarmed. Urgh, I don't really want to dip but this seems like the only way to make the most of Studied Combat/Arcane Strike with this archetype.

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I don't know. I really really like this archetype, with free Inspiration on stealth, Int-based Bard spells and Studied Combat, it has a ton of really cool potential but there's that massive Achilles heel that I have no experience dealing with. I'm not trying to play something super optimal, but I do want to play this in a way that doesn't just make me wonder why I'm not playing a bard.