And, before it was nerfed, you used to be able to double that by using double-barrelled pistols...
Search Posts
Chaotic Stupid is fine if you're playing Paranoia. So is Lawful Stupid, and all the rest. If you are in a serious campaign, even stupid PCs should be sensible. When 3rd ed first came out, one of my players made a dwarven paladin of the god of Progressive Architecture. He had an Int of 4 and a Wis of 14. He was barely sentient but still wasn't Stupid, although he did manage to spend 3 hours in a Cloudkill while building some steps (he couldn't climb and needed to get to the top of a wall). It was dark and he never took any damage from the cloud that he noticed to realise that it was there...
Chuckle. We faced a Karzoug which had been buffed and enhanced because the original one was too wimpy according to our GM. Did you buff yourselves appropriately? Spell Immunity, Protection from Energy, etc, etc?
Meanwhile the Paladin, Synthesist Summoner and cohort Paladin tore through the minions and just managed to drop Karzoug the round before the GM thought they would - or he would have stepped into his Prismatic Sphere and healed up and then finished them off. It was fun, but a very close-run thing.
I'm a player in a different Way of the Wicked game and our GM has completely rewritten most encounters. We have 2 vampires, one soon-to-be death knight, one greater weretiger, and one devil-bound pc. The key bit is have all the players balanced with one another, not against most normal CR-appropriate encounters. Eg at level 16, our sorceror has an AC of between 50 and 60 depending on buff spells. We tend to fight massed clerics, paladins on celestial flying mounts, with angels backing them up. Our enemies get divine interference, and we get devilish interference to help us.
Mending is a cantrip so Spellslingers don't get it at all.
The only way to be able to continuously reload 2 handed early firearms as a free action is to be a 3rd level musket master and have rapid reload and use alchemical cartridges. You really need to find out if your game will feature advanced firearms or not.
You do need to check with your GM to be sure that you can use Trench Fighter at all. It's intended for the 'guns everywhere' rules where firearms are simple weapons (look at its weapon proficiency list). In which case you should be able to get pump action or automatic weapons. Otherwise you need 5 levels of gunslinger.
Chuckle. You might do it that way. I tend to prefer feats like Rapid Reload, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Deadly Aim. I certainly wouldn't be planning to take levels of a prestige class to improve AAT in a way that is unlikely to come online until 12th level or higher. Plus there is the Mage Armour spell, if your friends are unable to keep the enemies away. Or if they use ranged attacks too. And I did mention using a rod to quicken your Haste spell, so no need to wait for 5th level spells. Now a melee Eldritch Knight might find arcane armour training more useful.
That's a good pick, since conjuration will be essential for your early levels (Abundant Ammunition will be the GOAT spell for you for a while, as advanced firearms are VERY expensive to use). What point-buy are you using? If advanced firearms are allowed, the price of them drops by 90%. But not everyone notices that bit of the rules. And it's all very much up to the GM. I never used Abundant Ammunition when I played a Spellslinger...
It all depends on what you want to be able to cast. In general, Illusion is essential for survival and Transmutation has too many useful spells in. Necromancy only has higher level spells in that are useful to a Spellslinger, so is a good candidate for Opposition Research. And Evocation's spells are mostly duplicated by Conjuration spells. So I'd pick: Evocation, Necromancy, Enchantment, and Divination as opposition schools. My guide is listed in the Guide to the Guides, which is a thread pinned to the top of this forum... It was written before Occult Adventures was released, so no Battle Host in it, and I haven't updated it for about 18 months. The key is to decide what your role in your party is: Primary Arcane (Arm/Anvil or Hammer?); secondary Arcane, primary ranged striker (Hammer), or something else. For primary arcane spellcaster, a Spellslinger is a poor choice - and it isn't worth getting most of the combat feats because you will need feats to help your spellcasting.. Pure Wizard or Sorceror is far better. For primary ranged damage dealer, then you don't want more than 5 levels of spellslinger. For 'other', you should explain.
In Rise of the Runelords, we had a PC synthesist summoner (class subsequently banned...) with a cohort Paladin riding him into combat. Synthesist casts buff spells, if required, Paladin casts Saddle Surge (I think). The the Synthesist pounced into melee, while the Paladin did humungous damage via Smite + Lance + charge + Saddle Surge... GM decided this was too OP to allow again. :)
In my opinion, Arcane Armour Training is a trap option. By the time you get it, the extra AC is insufficient - Blur, Mirror Image, Cloak of Displacement, etc are better - and quickening a spell is often essential so your swift/immediate action is occupied.
Deadly Aim feat. Plus read my guide...almost all of your listed feats are helping you fire your gun, so you should get 5 levels of gunslinger so you can add Dex to damage. Obviously, if you go with Battle Host instead this is redundant advice.
John, don't bash Rysky for answering. Like in his original reply, I thought you were advocating removing those encounters entirely. Letting players know that you expect skill checks to handle the things you listed is a good idea. It means spellcasters won't take those spells generally, so the skill monkey can continue to solve them. Fly vs climb, on the other hand, will still get bypassed by casters. At higher level, there is indeed an expectation that eg travel will be handled by teleport or other spells. This does not mean that it is a problem, but it does need to be planned for by the GM.
Setting specific rules should be just that. If you/your GM and players come up with your own rules for your games, go ahead. My group use that sort of rule as a starting point for discussing what should be allowed, not as a fixed rule. Eg almost all of my characters want Lessons of Chaldira, even though halflings don't exist in any game run by our GM (because he hates them).
Does your character have knowledge skills? If so, roll them on sighting an enemy or once you have evidence of what creatures might be around. If you your GM won't tell you anything based on the DC and your roll, inquire why not. However, your party sounds pretty disfunctional and you should probably not worry about the details and just treat it all as a bit of fun and have a backup character or 5 ready to play. Or have a full, in depth discussion about how you and the other people want to play the game. And maybe find another group to play with.
Razmiran Sorcerer does indeed require to have scrolls of the divine spells, but they do not get used up. Effectively, this allows every cleric spell to be castable on demand. Which is better than oracles who only know a few of them, and better than clerics who have to choose which ones and how many copies to prepare in advance. This is balanced by the sorceror using a higher level slot and needing the scrolls in the first place. If you simply allow a Sorceror to have all the cleric spells as known spells, then it is unbalancing. If you allow merely the hit point curing spells, then it's fine. Except Heal or Harm - those are better than anything else, and should not be allowed.
Take a look at the Razmiran Sorceror archetype (False Priest on d20pfsrd website). It allows substantially more divine spellcasting, at the cost of the spells needing to use a higher level slot (plus other details). It is regarded as extremely powerful, with good reason. The problem with allowing Sorcerors to use the healing spells isn't the hit point healing, like Cure Light Wounds (they already get Infernal Healing in their spell list, so allowing this one PC to have 'Celestial Healing' in various guises would be fine) , it's allowing them to have access to the condition removel spells like Remove Blindness. Most Oracles have to rely on scrolls. Most clerics won't have them (all) memorised, so often the afflicted characters have to wait a day for the cleric to memorise the correct spell, or use a scroll up. If you allow a Sorceror to have access to more than one or two of these, they will immediately become better healers than almost all Oracles, Clerics, and Druids (who don't even have all of these spells on their spell list!).
Don't. It will completely wreck your entire campaign. See Big Norse Wolf's post, above.
Anzyr is correct. :) Which is why my GM doesn't allow me to choose different spells every day. It's still excellent.
We've just reached 16th level, and have made our own headbands and other magic items. At low level, I was using ny oracle spells to buff/repair damaged allies and the wizard spells (only a few then) to Animate Dead for free with Blood Money. At medium levels, I was spamming Haste and Fireball. Like being a Sorceror who also had healing abilities. And Confusion. And Fly. Now, I have Limited Wish, Planar Binding, and other useful spells while still casting Haste in combat and using Heal and Harm quite often. So, overall, these spells allowed me to operate as the sole primary caster when necessary, but the out-of-combat versatility has been the biggest advantage.
My Oracle in a very high-powered game has managed to get 10 wizard spells (high stats plus headband). They are extremely useful. However, my GM does not allow me to select a different set of these each day, so trading one out per level is the only change I can make. It is still extremely powerful and would be unbalancing in a low-powered game. It is likely to be ok in a medium game, since I'd end up with less spells.
I'm betting the +4 bow actually means Mighty Composite (+4 Str). Ends up being the same for damage so works out the same in the conversation unless we're talking about to-hit and the like. I hope that you are right!
In addition to the rest of the advice, one other thing to look at is the amount of magic items the party has. You have said that the archer has a +4 bow: that is listed at 32,000gp. The suggested wealth that a level 4 character should have is 6,000gp - for all their items. If the rest of the party isn't similarly equiped, then they might be justifiably feeling inadequate; if they also have such high-level items, then they will all slaughter your encounter with ease.
This does nothing for an oracle as they don't prepare spells. And Azten's remark "How is it unclear when Oracles do not prepare spells. " I refer you both to this very thread. I would not attempt to use this hex in a PFS game, simply because the actual rule seems to show that this hex does nothing. However, many players would like it to do something useful so they ask their GMs to make a house rule. Which house rule gets made (if any) will vary from game to game until such time as Paizo makes a FAQ or erratum concerning it - if they ever feel it warrants one.
Expect table variance. My spirit guide oracle uses this hex. He has a fixed list of wizard spells which he casts using his oracle slots.
I can see it being declared that the hex does nothing for an oracle, or that a new selection of spells can be made every day.
It's more derailing, but does this mean that in your games pretty much all Good characters must be vegetarian? And, since druids and plant creatures exist, possibly only eat plant material that regrows? What about the famous 'Hydra buffet'?
Ask your GM.
And the raw materials aren't that valuable, it's the complicated bit where they get turned into a gun that adds the value. I wouldn’t allow you to get an advantage over the other players: eg forging a new gun could require the use of a forge and that would cost you money to buy, rent, or build.
Tiefling (especially with the tail) is a good choice, but check out the encumbrance rules and how much guns and stuff weigh - and then increase your strength! I was the person who played a gunslinger5/spellslinger5/Eldritch Knight and then wrote a guide to point out my mistakes. Could you let us know how your character performs in practice, please? Oh, and Dasrak is both right and completely wrong about how elemental enhancements work: he's right because the rules as written in the rulebooks do seem to work that way; he's wrong because they have been repeatedly clarified to be 'always activated as soon as the weapon is drawn without needing to be individually activated'. I'm on my phone otherwise I'd add links - a simple search should find some. This is a balance issue because if you insist on individually activating each element, the enchantments aren't worth having. Instead, the command words are so you can turn them off if don't want them on for a particular fight.
If you are allowed to make/have custom items, then you can get the other AC bonuses on armour: Luck; Deflection; Insight; Natural; etc. The downside (and main reason not to) is that they will cost a lot more than either the enhancement bonus or the separate magic items.
And as James often says, 'Expect table variance.' My own opinion is that you have to use more expensive rods, for the same reasons as stated by James and others; my current GM agrees with vhok, again by recourse to the same argument. I go along with my GM. I would, however, be interested in how a PFS GM would rule it.
Do the fused spell feats have level limits on when they kick in their improved bonuses? If not, I'd add them at 12th level. I've long felt that the various fighter feats should be free as soon as the character qualifies for them - eg Improved Trip and Grapple and the rest, and then Greater versions, etc. So I think any house rule that helps with those is a good thing.
I would allow it to work. But it's something that would definitely need the GM to approve. If you're the GM, and a player has asked you, I'd still say yes, but not in combination with the Guild rules concerning Eclectic Training and Esoteric Training until I saw how powerful it was in play.
I think Intensify will only get 7d6 per blast.
Unless I've misinterpreted it?
As a sometime GM, I wouldn't allow it to work. For the same reason that I wouldn't allow a character to 'hold' multiple wands or rods simultaneously - the time spent switching between rods/wands is factored into their costs, and acts a penalty on the spellcaster's actions to be able to use different ones. My current GM has, however, allowed our characters to get Tattoos of metamagic rods, using the Inscribe Magical Tattoos feat. His reasoning is that there is a penalty to using tattoo versions in that we can't swap rods between ourselves and therefore everyone that wants eg a Rod of Quicken has to buy it. I think it's cheesy, but it hasn't stopped me doing it when I have permission!
There is a further caveat: the levels that Gulthor suggests for getting the guild training are unlikely to be granted that early. You'd have to negotiate with your GM but they might not be available until level 9 and 15... Have you looked at the Razmiran Sorceror instead?
Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge, and Arcane Trickster. Great and flexible options for those who want to mix-and-match. It's a real shame Pathfinder didn't take the opportunity to fix them, and left their draconian prerequisites and utter dearth of class features unchanged. Oh, they got a handful of class features but nothing significant. I'd really love to see Prestige Classes Unchained focusing on these three. Seconded.
Diabolist is quite
a) take a look in the homebrew forum, there are uncounted numbers of threads rehashing this whole argument, ad nauseum. b) I'd combine the fighter with the rogue: full BAB, lots of skills, give a bonus feat/rogue talent every level, make getting +1d6 precision damage a rogue talent. Any 2 saves good, the other weak, character's choice at creation. Fixes the fighter's lack of options out of combat; fixes the rogue's lack of hitting power in combat; plus allows any character which wants to be able to specialise in more than one combat 'style' enough feats/talents to do so. However, many people don't seem to like the idea of merging the two classes whatever the merits (or otherwise).
I'm playing in it at the moment. We've just reached L12. I have no idea how well written it is, or how much my GM has had to change, however it's been a lot of fun. There's a free player guide which sets the scene, share that with your group and see how they react. If they are up for a really evil campaign, then go for it. If any have even a twinge of conscience, eg try to make a neutral PC or try too hard to get you to allow it, then skip it. The beginning is a prison break (as detailed in the free guide), which isn't too different to a normal game. Then we had a bit of tricky role-playing, where we were trying to become evil villains. Now, we're finally quite powerful, with minions and wicked plans, so we can cut loose with the megalomania and other mental problems so it's more fun. We've been compiling a list of all sentient creatures in the game world, so we can make tasting notes. Our characters all became cannibals after the initial sea voyage where captured/killed enemies were better than the rations we had on board...
Also good points from Dasrak.
If you went with guns being simple to fire but still want some sort of training being necessary, I'd increase the misfire by 4 unless it was loaded by someone with the feat to represent that.
I'd go with the simplest changes that you can. So, as few rules for firearms that are different from the normal rules rather than starting with the Pathfinder rules for firearms - which are pretty terrible. 1) 'real' muskets could be fired about 3 times per minute, after quite a few months of specialised training (cf the Duke of Cumberland's army). So, I'd go with reloading taking about 6 rounds; knock off 2 rounds for the Rapid Reload feat (but let it apply to all black powder firearms); and knock off a further 2 rounds for using alchemical cartridges too. I'd make this the same for all muzzle-loaded guns, for simplicity. Effectively, this means no characters will reload during a fight. Using double barrelled guns, or pepperboxes, or multiple guns would be necessary if someone wants more than one shot. Which is what happened, apparently. See various pirate-themed movies. And, yes, impose some penalty for being encumbered if anyone has too many! Eg -1 for all d20 rolls (except Intimidation) per gun after 2. 2) remove the whole 'hits touch AC' business. Normal AC. See all the threads about gunslingers killing dragons too easily. Plus it's simpler. 3) allow 'Dex to damage' for all firearms, so they are relevant. Allow an alternative for taking multiple rounds to line up a sniping shot, perhaps +2 damage per round. Don't let that stack with Dex though. 4) keep misfires, which then need the gun to be cleaned out. About 10 mins to do, but these will be less important because no-one will be reloading in combat anyway. 5) decide if you want guns to be entirely non-magical - ie incompatible with enchanting as magical items at all - or not. 6) you could make guns simple, or martial, or exotic. And you could make firing them be simple, but reloading them martial, or exotic. Above all make them fun to use for your group, without making them too big a part of the story - unless you want them to be.
This. Anything else will ruin either your fun or the players'. Replace it with whatever society they intended to put there themselves. Then you can continue to game with them.Alternatively, find some other players to play with.
An admixture evoker dipping one level of crossblooded sorceror begs to differ! Even if they'd rather use 'balls than rays or cones... Spellslingers can be fun, but that doesn't mean the same thing as effective.
Gray Warden is giving lots of good advice, the only points I'd like to add concern the pros and cons of the Spellslinger archetype. What exactly does your player want from his character? If he mostly wants to be a wizard, and needs to be the primary arcane spellcaster, then he's better off not being a spellslinger at all - Gray's build will still work (with a bit of tweaking) - whilst having a gun to shoot anyway. A spellslinger is markedly weaker than a normal wizard: admixture evokers will do more damage whilst still getting a much wider variety of spells due to only having 2 opposition schools. No cantrips, no school specialist spell slots, no arcane bind, etc. If he's going to be a secondary arcane caster, and wants to fire his gun as much as possible, then taking 5 levels of gunslinger followed by 5 levels of spellslinger (or even normal wizard) and then eldritch knight works very well. Using the class as a dip, and taking the rest of his levels in witch doctor, or sorceror also works, but at a cost of spellcasting levels. For all of these, it's worth your while looking at the optional guild rules called Esoteric Training and Eclectic Training so you can decide if you want to use them.
Play one, then see if you agree with everyone else :) A bard makes a better stand in for a real wizard than a Spellslinger. However, if you want to play one it's a lot of fun.
I wrote a guide to the Spellslinger, it's slightly out of date now (early entry shenanigans are barred now) however it should answer most of your questions about the archetype.
You can find the guide in the advice forum in Broken Zenith's guide to the guides post.
I'd do it the same as when you use See Invisbility and see an Invisible Stalker or other innately invisible thing. Ie you see a fuzzy area. You can still see through the Wall, but know that there is an invisible wall there. And See Invisbility works on yourself so you'd still be able to detect an invisible wizard on the other side.
You can delay. But then all the orcs will get to attack you first. And then get slaughtered by you. If you ready, you only get one attack Scott. But you can take it before the recipient attacks, depending on the chosen trigger.
Negative energy affinity means that the dhampir reacts to negative energy as if it were an undead. Are undead immune to the strength damage of a shadow? Yes, it only affects living targets. This is stated as being a negative energy effect. Therefore, dhampirs are immune to this. Although it won't heal them, unlike inflict or channeling negative to heal undead.
As written, RotRL characters reach 17th level, I think. So Spell Perfection is doable. If your GM doesn't want you to craft, then don't. Negotiate about the possibility, or see if you can re-train if you find that your crafting feat isn't usable after all. Craft Wand is very useful, particularly for low-level buff spells you might want to cast frequently. And for spamming Enervation... My bad about Summon Good. Sorry, and you're right that it isn't worth it at lower level. We didn't have any divine caster except a Paladin (until our Slayer died and made a Cleric, near the end of the AP), so my monsters were providing access to clerical spells. I almost always take Craft Wondrous Item at 3rd level, followed by Craft Arms & Armour at 5th so I haven't really looked at the alternatives. Otherwise, you can't lose out by having Fast Study. Just make sure that you use it.
|