ExposedWires's page

Usually a player has no right to call metagaming on the GM. You are assuming a lot about your foes. Maybe your enemy is under the employ of a BBEG whos spies have informed him about your abilities and he has warned his minions. Maybe the caster simply has fought somebody with Step-Up before and decided to invest in appropriate countermeasures. Step-up may or may not be a bit unusual, bur reach weapons certainly are not, and the good old acrobatics trick would foil a reach weapon user just as easily.

A caster could get a good acrobatics if they want one, between dex and traits to add Acrobatics as a class skill or multiclassing. Nevertheless, they are investing part of their character in this defense, as opposed to just out and out killing you, so you should be happy.

Honestly it would be easier for a caster to simply pick up Combat Casting, or Mirror Image, or Greater Invisibility, or Displacement, or Fly, or any of the other plentiful options at his disposal for foiling a pure melee character. Your GM is throwing you a bone by having them *not* do that. I recommend you not spit it back in his face.

I think you're giving the DM too much credit. Good DMs metagame and you don't mind it at all. Really good DMs metagame and you love it. A bad DM metagames and you feel cheated. In fact, I'm not even sure how you can think a DM who is using blackflipping wizards to make a player feel useless even has an idea what he's doing.

Hell, I remember pulling that crap when I was first starting out. When you don't have a masterful grasp of the system, you generally become very reactionary to increasing character ability. I mean, you should always be reacting to the players, but when you're new and bad, you can't zoom out far enough to find interesting solutions to the problem of a sticky fighter. I cringe to remember things I did to my friends in high school to keep a rogue from getting his sneak attacks.

When the DM comes up with a way to prevent you from exploiting a feat to end his encounters in half the time he designed for, he is metagaming.

When he adjusts the CR of enemies so they are appropriate for your level and gives you loot that you actually want based on your level he is just DMing.

Double Standards HO!!!!

Unfortunately this game has a very bad way of opening the can of worms philosophy, and when you open up one can that destroys encounters by making the casters not able to cast, the balance of power in the game has shifted very heavily in your favor. The DM has to metagame to counterbalance the trick that you discovered when in a more balanced setting there would be more obstacles.

My question is: why can you get to "all" of these spellcasters faces in the first place? Do they not have mooks or BDFs to protect them? If you play in such a game world where casters constantly let enemy fighters get in their face, I could totally understand how all casters would find it necessary to train themselves in acrobatics to get away.

I feel like this should be resolved by just upping the CR on a fight or lowering the level of the enemies in exchange for having more enemies. Being able to stay in the face of a fleeing mage is what the guy built for and should be able to do it reasonably well. Just start putting in 2 casters (maybe we make them different but complementary styles so you have to choose which one to take out first) and not spend all of your DM'ing energy trying to figure out how to make your player feel useless.

I wouldn't consider this a double standard because the party is static, the encounters are endlessly variable, and the only goal of encounter building is making for an interesting challenge. I can tell you right now that if my character died in a fight where I endlessly pursued a mage while his friends filled me with arrows, as long as that mage was successfully shut down, I wouldn't be pissed. I would feel like I went out like a boss. On the other hand, winning a fight where I failed to do anything but make single attacks against the caster that I thought my character had trained to kill would feel empty and lame. It would make me want to do something else.

The only times you should actually work to shut down player options is if you wanted to put in something MORE interesting. Like taking all your party's stuff and throwing them in an antimagic field so they have to freestyle rap their way out of some extradimensional courtroom where they were accused of not having fly rhymes.

N. Jolly wrote:

Alexandros Satorum wrote:

The same can be said about Ninjas, inquisitors and alchemist.

People always defend this as a campaign trait, but it's a trait, no matter how you look at it. It's something they thought should be in the game. There's no trait for anything else like this. That's a pretty strong argument for how unimportant trapfinding is considered.

I also thing the existence of the trait say a lot. it is like "look, this campaing will be filled with traits but we will not want to force you to play a rogue so here is this trait"

not sue why it did not happened before.

I think it makes perfect sense. You have a campaign that sets out to break the typical setting tropes so they feel certain things should be more available than they are in the typical setting. Why they're less plentiful in standard play could be any number of reasons, but the most obvious one is game balance.

You know you can re-theme ninjas in a setting to be a secret society of spring-heeled jack terrorist thieves right?

No I did not. In fact, I'd never even heard of that particular urban legend either so you've done me two services. I mean, retheming things is nothing new to me, but every time I looked at the Ninja specifically, it seemed like it was just a murder-rogue, so my brain automatically passed it up if my character had any other focus (and they always do).

Hell, both my character and the other rogue are doing non-lethal builds into sap master because we anticipated lots of interaction with functionally innocent people for whom murder would cause us more problems and make them impossible to blackmail later. For that reason, I looked at the ninja and just kinda snorted and moved on. It was only yesterday that I looked again and found it was basically a rogue with a magic resource that makes him just that much more useful in most every way.

Why is he billed so hard as a totally combat class?

Still, you don't need a class feature for that. Spreading Rumors is just a simple (and somewhat obvious) use of Bluff/Diplomacy.

It's not spelled out anywhere so I'd have to rely on the DM to set the DCs and determine the effects it could have. I mean, it's obvious that I could feasibly spread a rumor, if that was the only thing I needed to accomplish. The rule of cool would even let me do it a few times to avert major disasters for our crew. It's when I started using it several times a session for everything I could think of, and the novelty had worn off (our whole party has high bluff) I figured having hard rules for it would be valuable. Since I only had to give up trapfinding, it just seemed like a neat way to handle those elements.

I knew it was unoptimized when I picked it, but I was going for a theme. I opted to have something on my character sheet that implied more about my character's focus. I would totally agree that doesn't win any points for the rogue as far as this thread is concerned. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that my party could keep the same vibe with entirely different classes replacing 3 quarters of the characters.

Can anybody else think of a good way for 4 characters to operate in the same, highly mobile, low armor and weapon-free (or concealable) team and game type we're playing?

Actually most of us just assume that rumor monger actually makes you worse at starting rumors. Because without it people who heard your lie repeat it without a bluff check because they think it is true.

Which that effect is about par for many rogue talents.

You're thinking of Cunning Lie. Rumormonger is the one that codifies how quickly you can build a name for yourself in an area. It's useless in most games, but it's something I planned to abuse in Sharn, so I thought it was best that I not leave it up to DM fiat because he's gonna get so tired of me and my crap. This way I have a set system to overuse so I can dedicate my finagling with the DM to getting the results I want from the rumors that the game specifically says I succeeded at spreading.

Fluff them as something different... A class name doesn't create the flavor of your character. You do. One of my players used to play a ninja who was only referred to as "trickster" or "scoundrel". He was basically a Rogue who dabbled in shadow/illusion magic.

I really should, but the archetype rules would be different and I really wanted rumormonger from the Charlatan Rogue. You know, looking again I guess I thought the ninja had to give up some social ability to balance it out but it doesn't look like that's the case at all. It's literally just a more effective rogue. Did the devs ever openly say that all rogues should be ninjas now, because that's what this ninja trick list is screaming at me.

Already did this a couple of pages ago, but okay.

Classes that can do that kind of campaign beter than the rogue (and monk):
Ranger with urban favored terrain.
Alchemist.
Bard.
Wizard.
Inquisitor.
Ninja.
Note that I man they can do it better. Not just as well. Straight up, laugh at the poor rogue, better.

Sorry. I skipped a few pages. I figured even if you'd discussed the scenario already, I'm actually playing in a game like that so it's not hypothetical. My party (for reference) is Rogue-Rogue-Monk-Alchemist.

A ranger would definitely be able to replace one of the rogues or monk easily as a flanker-frontliner and not sacrifice any needed skills and just raise the general dpr of the party.

Our party actually has an alchemist. He's like the guy in any good heist movie who needs to hack something for us and always needs another 30 seconds. He's not as mobile as the rest of us, but is really versatile. I would agree he's just better than the rogues here.

Bard would replace a rogue in every way that mattered and eliminate some redundancy with social skills. I'll give you that one.

Wizards, at our level (4) can't do enough things reliably to fit into our heist game without creating redundancy with the alchemist.

Inquisitor? Crap. Okay. That could also be really appropriate in the setting if you played it right.

Ninjas are hands down better than the rogue, but they're themed all wrong. I hate them.

I guess I could put together a good heist team without the rogues and monk, but I feel like it would lose a lot of specific versatility. It would gain a bunch of stuff but I feel like those would apply mostly to situations that weren't cloak and dagger subterfuge. Like, if we were a ranger-ninja-inquisitor the three of us couldn't all hide in the same bathtub during a B&E or....hold it. ninja-ninja-ranger probably could.

Ninjas kinda ruin my whole deal. Lame.

To begin, you have 25 points instead of the standard 15-20 points, have a disadvantage (for a bonus trait) and are not ranged based.

What's your point? I know what the basis for the thread was and was simply pointing out a situation where rogues fit better than others and how that situation really isn't honest combat. I guess I was saying that rogues won't make good combatants in parties that can't find a use for a circumstantial assassin and settings that never test your ability to crawl through a bathroom window or slap the mask off a foreign dignitary at a masquerade ball and steal his little black book while making it look like an accident.

But that post was a few comments higher so it's cool if you didn't associate it with me posting my sheet.

Hell, I guess my whole point is that all the classes that seem to suck just shine in particular campaigns. A fighter in heavy armor would get arrested after our first fight, in my campaign. That's assuming he was even allowed to enter the places our party needs to go wearing full plate and openly carrying large weapons.

The troubling bit is how much more capable certain classes are at coping with different types of campaigns. Rogues getting the short end of that stick by far. If I gotta point out the one game style that they work well in, there is definitely a problem.

Rogue

19 strength
rogue

*eye twitch

It's part of the gimmick. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a lot of improvised weapons that are finesse-able. Plus the extra 6 damage I'm getting per hit even that out. I really don't look like a rogue in combat, though, to be fair.

Rogues struggle to be competent in both skills and combat as they actually end up being very stat dependant.

http://www.dndsheets.net/view.php?id=61196

I dunno, I think I'm doing alright. I'm staying at max rank in all the things that matter and still pulling off combat as well as a one-trick-pony reasonably can.

Your assessment of sorcerers and wizards is pretty good except their ability to react in surprise rounds is bad and their skill at getting in and out of crowded rooms is just tragic. Magical defenses have a look about them that would tip people off that you're anticipating a fight. If you don't already have them active, your first few rounds are going to be spent casting those. That's not very in-and-out. Plus not having any mundane ability to escape is pretty brutal. We're playing at low levels now and probably won't get too far past level 10, so teleportation abilities are limited and getting into a fight, diving out a window, scaling walls to safety and booking it home exhausts spells pretty quick.

We usually tie a rope around the gnome alchemist.

The whole debate is pretty interesting, but I think the value of rogues (and monks if you'll let me roll them in) is that they have a niche. This niche is not open combat and it's pretty clear that they weren't ever meant for that.

I'm currently playing in an urban gang war campaign. (In Sharn. We're doing an eberron conversion.) We're playing criminals with hearts of gold (Sorta but not really. At least we're better than the other gangs.) who deal in fencing and smuggling and thievery and gambling. We have to deal with the law all the time and subterfuge and misdirection are absolutely key. As such, our party has 2 rogues, a monk, and an alchemist. I'm playing one of the rogues and I'm a sap adept underhanded rumormonger who uses improvised weapons exclusively. The other rogue fights unarmed. This is all critical because it means our party never wears visible armor or carries any weapons. We can get into parties, clubs, police stations and generally never be suspicious. Even when we do get into serious altercations, we can all talk our ways out. The monk even contributes to our ruses with monstrous sense motive rolls to read body language. Together we keep everything close to the chest. If we ever slip up, the alchemist just burns it all to the ground. It's working for us.

We can also outrun or easily hide from things that are serious threats (of which there are many) and I honestly can't see too many other classes working out as well. We're up against huge organizations so individual combats aren't about defeating our enemies so much as surviving and then hiding bodies or making it look like somebody else killed them or even faking our own deaths. Maybe some cheeky spellcasters would fit into our party, but anybody who relied on ranged would be boned in these tight streets and anybody in heavy armor is just bait for the griffin rider guardsmen.

I think in this situation, rogues are perfect. They're gonna suck in open honest combat, but here they are kings.

It's a synthesist, he's gonna be awesome. What level are you? Can you take the Large evolution yet?

Hey, thanks for clearing that up.

This is exactly why I spelled the whole thing out in a scenario. If I got anything wrong, I wanted it to be super clear where and how.

...And make people picture an invisible naked bard for the rest of the discussion.

I played my most favoritest barbarian in a Crimson Throne campaign that was pretty much exactly what Grizzly the Archer spelled out with only a few differences. Oh look! I have her coffee-stained character sheet in my bag!

Sydney
12th level Superstitious Barbarian

STR: 20 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 10 WIS: 14 CHA: 14

Trait: whichever ones give you will bonuses
human: favored class bounds: 1/3 level superstition bonus

1 Dazzling Display- feat , Race feat: Weapon Focus (Longsword)
2 Intimidating Glare- power
3 Gory Finish- feat
4 superstition- power
5 Power Attack-feat
6 Witch Hunter-power
7 erp: Strength Surge
8 Spell Sunder-power
9 Intimidating Prowess-feat
10 Terrifying Howl- power
11 Combat Reflexes
12 Eater of Magic- power

She went in with a sword and shield without raging to get into position and lay waste to a weak enemy so she could get off gory finish. With a monster intimidate, she would get almost every living creature within 30 ft and then rage->terrifying howl to get them all panicked. From there it's chasing down the witches and warlocks and butchering them while two-handing the longsword and dropping the shield for massive damage.

She was a real pleasure to play. There was nothing better than using strength surge to boost my roll for the spell sunder on some enchanted jerk. And her will save against magic stuff was just intense.

I thought it was clear when I originally read the rules on invisibility that "notice" was the term they were using for people who were previously unaware that an invisible person was in their kitchen.

I have a much easier time imagining this with a bard trying to sneak out of a woman's bedroom when her husband comes home. This bard has no points in stealth and is carrying all his clothes in his arms and is otherwise naked. If he got a few seconds to jump out of bed and gather his things and cast invisibility on himself before the bedroom door flies open to reveal her husband is the corrupt captain of the guard, he will not have left any visible sign of himself in the room.

Naturally the bard freezes. We'll say he's no longer active.

The captain is furious and is looking for a man matching the bard's description all over. Under the bed, behind the curtains and out the window. Since the bard is practically holding his breath and definitely not active, I would rule that the captain doesn't get to make a roll to notice. Although he is definitely on high alert.

If the bard tried to waddle out with his bundle of clothes, or if an unfortunate structural flaw in said bundle allowed a shoe to flop out onto the floor, the captain gets a passive check to "notice". That would be a perception check with a DC of 20.

If he makes his check, then naturally, he will run over to the door and close it. Thus starts his hunt. Active perception rolls from here out to pinpoint. He's already noticed that somebody in the room is invisible. That DC is now irrelevant. It's just his perception checks versus the naked bard's stealth rolls modified by the invisibility bonuses.

The bard has realized he's trapped and has backed up against the bookshelf and begun hyperventilating as quietly as possible. Since he's not moving the DC to find him would be Stealth+40. The captains going to take every turn meticulously searching every space in the room. As he gets close to the bard, the bard panics and bounds over to the other side of the bedroom to put the bed (and lady) between him and the captain who has drawn his sword and is poking the air with it. On the captains action, he gets to make his perception against the bards stealth+20-10(took his full movement. it's a big bedroom. the captain is very corrupt). The captain makes an amazing roll and pinpoints the bard.

The captain then uses his action to try to unknowingly tackle this naked man. There is a 50% miss chance from concealment still even after he gets pinpointed. The bard lucks out and wins the coin toss and on his turn bounds over the bed (provoking an attack of opportunity) and out the door.

That makes the most sense to me.

Nah. You're just a guy who will listen to whoever can justify the biggest bonuses for them.

See, now I'm hatin'. Before I was just telling you something you didn't want to hear. Albeit to be helpful. You just proved I was wasting my time.

I would rule that the ability pulls from the list of feats and tricks the monk meets the requirements for. Not just because it makes the most mechanical sense but because it also makes the most story sense. How can the sensei teach you something he can't learn?

It looks like it could be easily exploited, so let me know what kind of hijinks you get into.

Don't do the katanas. MC Templar did a magnificent job of explaining why.

Just use claws. You can spend evo points to up the damage on those things if you feel it's necessary, but you only have 4 attacks anyway so it's smart to just... not have 6 arms.

I'm playing a regular summoner right now and my eidolon is just a regular biped with one set of clawed hands and claws on his feet for his 4 attacks. He's a big fuzzy lionman. He wrecks things. Although I think that's due to the Large evolution and you don't have access to that yet.

I do have actual questions about your GMs demands, though. Why does he think you need to be a blaster? For AoE? What's the rest of the party look like? Is there already a fighter? You being a synthesist might crash his party and do the exact opposite of what your GM asked of you.

I can help you build a decent summoner, but I don't know if thats actually what you need.

What... what makes you think this has anything to do with you? Nobody here is trying to make you do anything. God, this is the internet, how would we even know? You could be a cat walking across a keyboard.

We're discussing the rules. Hashing out the different interpretations of a combo has value beyond you and your game.

I just found your dismissive attitude incredibly rude to people who are putting time and effort and thought into solving a problem.

But it's not the same. At this point, you need to demonstrate where the Guarded Life rules state that it's dealing damage from a new source for you to apply DR again.

The Damage Reduction rules disagree with you, I think.

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury poison, a monk's stunning, and injury-based disease.

Wouldn't this imply that Damage Reduction applies before the attack has any effect on you?

We aren't hating. I think we've been super polite actually. Not that this needs to get any more dramatic, but it's clear that we have problems with the rules you're using to get monster bonuses to DR. I don't know if there is a better way to discuss how we both came to completely difference conclusions after reading the same rules.

It's not personal. I hope you don't see it that way.

Hey Lobolusk,

It's gamebreakingly awesome because as a barbarian you're actually a damage powerhouse. The tradeoff for barbarians was always the loss of AC. You rage and then you're dealing 2d6+CURRENT_US_DEBT several times a round. Having a single rage power that (without fail) more than doubles your DR over and over again without expending resources is absurdly good as it immediately trivializes the Barbarian's chief weakness.

Look at Bolstered Resilience. It is a feat and should be equivalent to Guarded Life relatively speaking. It offers a DR boost but it comes with huge caveats and drawbacks.

I don't think your Invulnerable Rager has to give up enough of the chief vanilla barbarian advantages to justify the HUGE advantages it picks up in DR when paired with your interpretation of Guarded Life. It can deal pretty much the same damage as a vanilla barbarian, except that it's impossible to kill. That's not balance. It certainly doesn't seem to be intended. On review, I don't even think it works as written.

I'm not trying to ruin your build or excitement or anything. Honest.

Edit
Writer,

I can't tell what you could possibly be trying to express by pasting the Damage Reduction rules. Assiel had already posted parts and then showed all his work. It doesn't appear that you contributed anything. Please help me understand.

[To support my point, here is a picture of a barbarian.

I understood completely. In fact, I think it's the reason your interpretation doesn't work. There is as of yet no support for a single attack to go through your DR twice. Which is exactly what you're arguing Guarded Life does. It turned that spear into a magic bullet that goes back through your DR. The language of the rage power says "convert". The language doesn't give any impression it's a whole new attack from any kind of weapon.

It just converts the damage to nonlethal which is a separate resource from lethal damage. The advantages of this are obvious but not as ballrocking as the uber DR boost.

Featherfall activates when you fall more than 5 feet. It doesn't activate "if you would take falling damage". I believe that's a critical difference. It's totally possible for the featherfall ring to run out while you're still a long way from the ground.

More importantly the Guarded Life rule does not say "If the barbarian would be reduced below 0". This is the crux. Either that's a typo that was always meant to give huge DR bonuses or it means what it means and it simply keeps you from taking lethal damage when you go unconscious.

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm spamming you. I'm taking advantage of a small window of time I have for being a huge dork right now.

The Damage Reduction is worded poorly, you do indeed have two damage reduction pools.

If you have two DR pools that operate the way you say, then an Invulnerable Rager with DR 8/- (DR 16/lethal) has an effective DR of 24 against nonlethal damage because both those apply to an attack from a sap.

That's not right.

...I thought I just did. Those two things I said have been mostly ignored in the discussion and I think that if those things I said are correct, all of the arguing about how much DR it adds was moot.

I don't know what else you want from me. I gave you my exact reasoning. I've been checking the resources available to me and even all the other rules questions threads for any additional insight but it appears that everybody who quibbled over which DR gets added when had to unconsciously skip over those two caveats I presented.

I have yet to see them addressed.

That is absolutely not true. Everybody in this thread is saying it's not a good rage power. Go search through the rules questions forum for Guarded Life. It turns up thread after thread of people saying it sucks.

But that's beside the point. I'm not trying to prove you wrong. I don't win anything if I convince everybody I'm right. I really only care about game balance and fairness and I've been working this out in my head all day. If it follows your ruling, the only character who can take advantage of Guarded Life's superawesome ability is the Invulnerable Rager. Why would they put a rage power in that only works with a single archetype?

I broke it down to two reasons why the DR boost interpretation doesn't work. First, that the power specifies that you already got dealt the damage so it's past the stage where DR was applied. And Second, you don't have two DRs. It's one DR that is double when the damage is nonlethal. If an Invulnerable Rager gets hit with a sap, his natural DR is simply doubled. He doesn't add two huge DRs together. It's the same tough skin.

I'd love to be proved wrong on this as guarded life seems like it would never see the light of play under this strict interpretation, but I no longer see any evidence for it.

You don't have two DRs. That's what I'm telling you.

You have one DR that gets doubled if it's against nonlethal damage.

To throw a wrench into this, I want to point out that the DR/Lethal isn't actually a separate DR. The Rager rules say that your have DR/- but that it's doubled against nonlethal.

Therefore, to let the damage apply to your DR/- and DR/lethal would be double dipping.

Symbolically, your DR represents your incredible resilience. If the arrow is already embedded in your flesh, why would a rage power let you use your ridiculously tough skin again? It's already passed through.

I'm operating on what would work best for the game. Looking at the various ways of interpreting the combo, either Guarded Life sucks because it just keeps you from dying( As in the damage that would have taken you below 0 is converted to non-lethal and you're on the floor unconscious but not bleeding out.) or it's amazing because it more than doubles your DR when you're low on health.

Strictly speaking, the only time Guarded Life is a good Rage Power is if you're an invulnerable rager. If you're not, then it is just a mediocre ability that lets you be the first party member to go down, but not have to be resurrected later. What other class/feat/race has a monster amount of DR/lethal besides that archetype?

Even more strictly speaking, this line:

While raging, if the barbarian is reduced below 0 hit points, 1 hit point of lethal damage per barbarian level is converted to nonlethal damage. If the barbarian is at negative hit points due to lethal damage, she immediately stabilizes.

clearly states that this conversion takes place after you've already taken damage and thus a strict reading of the rules says that your DR/lethal doesn't get to apply. The damage has already passed through your DR. It doesn't get to loop back around for a second pass now that it's a different type. Especially considering that it's not two different sets of DR. It's the same DR that is simply doubled for non-lethal damage.

Needs an FAQ for sure because after mulling it over all morning, I'm leaning towards Guarded Life being only as good as the other Rage Powers and generally being a trap. It would be more clear if they said "if the barbarian would take damage that reduced them to below 0..." or "if an opponent would deal damage greater than the barbarians current life total...", then we would have precedence to apply DR, but it simply looks like you already took the damage and thus it's already had your DR applied.

Edit: Lets look at another interpretation real quick. Say you're at 8hp. You're still raging and dangerous and somebody slams you for 20 lethal damage. Your 12th-level-appropriate Invulnerable Rager DR 8/- reduces that damage to 12. Then, with Guarded Life, 12 of that is converted to nonlethal. You take that nonlethal damage normally. This means you still have 8hp, but your 12 nonlethal damage exceeds that, so now you're unconscious. This means, that in 4 hours, you get up and walk away all by yourself since that's how long it takes to heal nonlethal damage. The power also states that if you take more damage than it can mitigate so that you actually drop below 0 hp, you automatically stabilize. So even though you won't wake up on your own, you aren't going to bleed to death. That seems pretty nifty as a rage power if your character is like that. And it doesn't seem broken.

How the DR is applied vs. lethal and non-lethal is also up for interpretation. I do agree with Writer's interpretation, since it is two different types of damage being applied against the barbarian, then both his regular DR and his DR vs. non-lethal should apply against each damage type. Why shouldn't the DR be applied twice?

You misunderstand. It's a questions about when you have Guarded Life kick in. If it kicks in after you've already applied your regular DR, then it splits your damage up and lets it pass through your DR again. Technically that might mean applying your DR/- twice and your DR/lethal once. That's what I meant by applying twice. Spreading it across DRs is not a problem. You've got the right interpretation there.

The problem I just ran into is that when raging at level 12, Guarded Life bumps Sven's effective DR up to 40. The question is when does it kick in. His DR 18/- is already reducing hits, so does the additional damage have to drop him below 0 for it to kick in the other DR 24/lethal, or does he get to start using his DR 40/- immediately?

It matters when he's at 20hp and somebody hits him for 22 lethal damage. With his DR 18/-, he's taking 4 damage. That doesn't let him use Guarded Life. If it applies before, then 22 damage is enough to flip the Guarded Life switch and make him take no damage. Which is it? 4 damage or no damage?

The only way this works in my head is if it's the 'no damage' option but that just seems so strong.

Your analogy doesn't really apply because that's not the issue with Guarded Life. Rather than the issue being two different kinds of DR being applied, we're worried about applying DR twice.

Say you're at 8 hp. Some jerk fires an arrow at you. Hits you right in the eye for a whopping 20 lethal damage.

Now, the DR 8 would reduce that to 12, but that's still enough to drop you to below zero. Guarded Life kicks in. Do we then convert 12 of that damage to nonlethal and watch as your DR absorbs the whole thing?

Sounds like it should work that way by the only simple way to interpret that. But now anything that hits Sven for less than 30 damage is completely negated. That's not right.

Maybe you look at whether it would bring you below 0 before applying your DR 8/-? So if somebody hits you for 10 lethal damage, Guarded Life kicks in even though if it didn't kick in, you'd only drop to 6. Which means when you're at 8 hp, you can still only be damaged by attacks of 20 damage or more. Does that seem right?

I guess it does, but it means you're applying Guarded Life earlier and earlier as we're not counting your current DR for the purposes of the rage power and then applying pretty much all of it. Which I just redid the math and while raging that's actually up in the 50s. It's in the 70s if we let it apply normal DR twice. Any damage less than 50 is negated when your life total under 50. That's a problem.

Lobolusk wrote:

DR 16/lethal, 8/—; Resist cold 2, fire 3, extreme endurance (fire)

That's DR 16/non-lethal, DR 8/-, correct?

No he has it right. It's DR 16/lethal, meaning you have to deal lethal damage to get through it.

Also, shouldn't Sven's standing AC be at least 27? The stats I'm seeing are not reflecting baseline info.

Guarded life is awful. As are the diehard feats. The only reason they're even remotely kosher for this build is because you're getting them for free with that level dip. Otherwise, you're taking feats to alter your experience of a tiny window of HP that you should never really get to if you're doing everything right.

new player comes to PFS event

player is assisted by one of the GMs in making a character
player expresses interest in pokemon

...THEN

What kind of GM would build a summoner for a player that liked pokemon? It's not analogous. In the context of pokemon, you don't really play the trainer. The trainer is just a plot device for you to get in a bunch of fights as a bunch of different pokemon. If you want to find a class that captures the essence of pokemon, you don't give them two characters with wildly different skills that you need to control on the battlefield at the same time. Oh, and they need each other to survive. If one dies, you probably lost the other one.

A better choice for a guy like that would be sorcerer. More versatile than a fighter and you get to pull out elemental stuff when it feels appropriate.

Sorcerer used Fireball on the deck of a crowded ship! It's super effective!

That seems like an easy question to answer with this simple thought experiment.

"If this build is allowed, would I have to be crazy to do anything else?"

If the answer is yes, then there is probably something preventing that build from being viable. In this case, you can't legally wield a two handed weapon in one hand. At least not as a weapon. It's too heavy. You can hold them, but you can't use them as weapons any better than you could fight me with a coffee table. Magazines and all.

The intent is that you are the creamy chocolate center of a unholy murder machine. Your Con doesn't really matter until your Eildolon shell cracks. So while you're fused together, your effective Con is the Eidolon's, be it higher or lower than your Summoner's.

You should let him trade out the feat. It does nothing for him and his Roc since they threaten different squares and will never get AoOs on the same target.

No, because it wouldn't be your turn.

I just went over readied actions and the Lunge feat again and it looks like that's a totally legit move. Lunge isn't like an attack action or anything, it's something you set up at the beginning of your turn that lasts until the end of your turn. For that moment you could take advantage of flankers on the other side if your target because you technically threaten them now.

Now, if somebody readies an action for when you attack, their readied action goes off before you attack but after your turn has started and you've already declared you're lunging.

The trade-off is that you can't ready full attack actions. Just individual attacks, so no iteratives. Which you definitely have because a BAB of +6 is the prereq for Lunge.

So I've gone over this whole thread trying to figure out why this is so confusing. The designers couldn't possibly have intended for people to deal that much damage each turn. It's not like this is even some combo with an obscure feat that they didn't think about. This is the archetype as-is.

As it stands, I can't see any justification for why Thunder Call & Inspire Courage can be used in the same round. Thunder Call is a Bardic Performance. Inspire Courage is a Bardic Performance. The rules are super clear on this.

Each round, the bard can produce any one of the types of bardic performance that he has mastered, as indicated by his level.

A bard cannot have more than one bardic performance in effect at one time.

That's the RAW. If you want some kind of precedence to assess RAI for yourself just look at the Bardic Performances that have immediate effects.

Suggestion (Sp): A bard of 6th level or higher can use his performance to make a suggestion (as per the spell) to a creature he has already fascinated (see above). Using this ability does not disrupt the fascinate effect, but it does require a standard action to activate (in addition to the free action to continue the fascinate effect). A bard can use this ability more than once against an individual creature during an individual performance.

That's a long quote, but you'll notice that TWICE it makes an exemption for the fact that it doesn't stop the fascinate performance. Thunder Call does not mention the same exemption.

Clearly the intent was to give you the option to deal damage with your performances not deal damage AND keep buffing your allies.

One more example:

Inspire Greatness (Su): A bard of 9th level or higher can use his performance to inspire greatness in himself or a single willing ally within 30 feet, granting extra fighting capability. For every three levels the bard attains beyond 9th, he can target an additional ally while using this performance (up to a maximum of four targets at 18th level).

By the way everybody else is interpreting multiple performances of Thunder Call, I should be able to use Inspire Greatness on multiple allies by simply starting the performance multiple times. If that was the case, why does it start granting additional targets as you level? Wouldn't the additional rounds of Performance you get as you level scale it well enough? And even then, why would it put a cap on the number of targets at lvl18, when you're doing it to three people by lvl13 following the rules people are using for multiple Thunder Calls?

The truth is that Thundercaller is a side-grade from vanilla Bard that makes you give up suggestion so that you can contribute some damage when the party doesn't need you to be Inspiring Courage. You know, because you can't do two performances in one round.