Gol Golarion's page

Hey, question to you folks to gauge how I should rule something. So, let's pretend for a minute that one of your players has decided to play a medium, and they're rolling with the archmage spirit. They accrue a fifth point of influence and hand over their character sheet to you, the GM.

If a spirit ever attains 5 or more points of influence over the medium, the medium completely loses control to the spirit. He effectively becomes an NPC under the GM’s control until after he awakens the next day with the spirit gone.

Now, the archmage, perhaps being influenced by the party's face via NPC diplomacy and RP, decides to tag along in exchange for some time to stretch their legs and flex their magical muscles in the living world for a while. The archmage doesn't get a new character sheet, instead using the medium's skillset. Among their various tools is an ability that lets them gain influence in exchange for not consuming spell slots: Arcane Surge.

You can allow the archmage spirit to gain 1 point of inf luence over you in order to cast one of your medium spells known without expending a spell slot. When you do so, the caster level and DC of the spell increase by 1, and you can’t apply metamagic to the spell.

For the medium, this is a clearly limited resource - if they ever hit that 5th point, they get NPC'ified. But for the archmage, this doesn't actually seem to matter at all. There's no upper limit to the amount of influence they accrue, and there are no further downsides past 5. Would you, as the GM, be within the rules to just... cast all of the medium's spells with arcane surge every round forever, only ever touching your medium's spell slots for Wild Arcana to pull wizard spells they didn't prepare? Surely you could raise the drama by being a rogue powerhouse, but am I missing something? Does this work like i'm thinking?

The Celebrity archetype adds the Upstage reaction, which is as follows

Activate reaction; Trigger: A foe attempts a skill check and doesn't get a critical success; Effect After your foe has tried their best, you show everyone how it's really done. Attempt a check using the same skill that triggered this reaction.

So like... what does the celebrity actually *do* here? If an enemy goblin does an adequate long jump, does the reaction allow the celebrity to follow suit with a Long Jump of their own? Does the celebrity just sort of pose athletically? Can the celebrity instead do a high jump?

I'm of the opinion that it *should* let the celebrity do a jump of their own, but the reaction doesn't read that permissively - it just says to check with the same skill. I don't like the fiction of someone being upstaged by someone basically accomplishing nothing, though. And at the same time, if the rules are read "creatively" enough to allow the celebrity to do a jump, there's no accompanying limits beyond using the same skill. If the goblin from before does that sick hop, nothing in-text would prevent the celebrity from grappling a nearby foe.

Thoughts?

I'm putting together a level 3 character for an ongoing campaign that concludes at lv 10, and i'm waffling between a few choices. One of them is, as the title might give away, a monk.

Only, I'm having trouble finding the perfect balance for the features I want.

I really want to use a Temple Sword and a shield of some description, but I want also make Focus Spells my primary specialization. If I go with a DEX build, I'll have enough WIS to turn my (expert at 9) ki spell proficiency into offensive cantrips via archetypes for that sweet Flurry->MAPless spell combo, but I'd have to give up the temple sword. If I go with a STR build, i'll either have pitiful AC or pitiful spell DCs. I could dip into Sentinel to mitigate the AC, but i'd lose out on cantrips and class features. If I accept the poor wis instead, i'd be able to throw agile shuriken around after a flurry, but that's not quite as appealing as a nice MAP-free followup attack.

Anyone have any experience with finaggling monks to make something like what I want work? I'm really racking my brains here but it looks kind of doomed to me. Are there any items that work to offset a dex-dumping monk? I'm aware of mountain stance, but it locks in a specific strike which I'm not interested in.

The Medium class, introduced in the Occult Adventures book, has a pretty wide selection of skills and abilities, but hasn't been well supported since release. Only 4 feats interacting with the class at all - Legendary Influence (& it's improved version), Spirit Focus, and Channel Spirit. I certainly like it, but there are a few aspects of it that are pretty much universally disregarded as unusably bad, that probably could've used some buffs and extra features to support it.

Like the Guardian spirit.

The guardian spirit is two of twelve spirits a medium can potentially channel on a given day (One base Guardian, and one Legendary Guardian, of which 3 have been published... none of which are particularly noteworthy). These spirits focus your Spirit Bonus into your AC, Con checks, your Fort & Reflex saves, and thaaaaat's it. Nothing active, only passive defenses. The Seance boon bosts your CMD... Which again, not something that helps you interact with the world. Your lesser spirit power grants Armor and Shield proficiency. Who has enough money to buy a second fully enchanted suit of armor they don't wear most of the time? And you don't need shield proficiency if you find a shield with no ACP.

To summarize, it's not a great foundation. Barely better than not channeling a spirit at all.

So what if you're hanging out in a castle and it's your only option for the day? Just give up and go to sleep? No, that's silly. You've got a world to save or something similar, so let's make the most of this spirit with as little investment as possible, because I *KNOW* you'd much rather put the rest of your build towards support the other spirits.

To start, I would ask that you dedicated precisely ONE feat exclusively to the guardian spirit. This is a tough ask, but I think it's worth it. That feat is Nature Soul. That's right, the +2 Survival and Knowledge (Nature) feat solves the Guardian's issues and it is now a completely viable spirit! Thanks for coming to my post.

I kid, it's just a pre-requisite for your Legendary Influence feats. When you hit Lv 4, you qualify for Animal Ally, so retrain your Legendary Influence to Legendary Influence, replacing whatever you picked initially for an Animal Companion that only exists when you're Guardian'd up.

Since you don't have the feat and don't gain it until you Seance up, you can "prepare" a new companion as if you were gaining the feat for the first time every time you channel. Horses, Birds, and Wolves are my main 3 recommendations. Horse with the Bodyguard archetype is a good "Default" pick, but on days you know you'll be delving indoors, prepare a Wolf. On days you know you'll need an aerial scout, prepare a bird. Easy!

At lv 9, you gain access to Improved Legendary Influence. Prepare "Blades Above & Below" as your Guardian feat, acquire a Horsemaster's Saddle, a pair of Training Spiked Gauntlets attuned to Outflank & Paired Opportunists. You might not have a spirit bonus to anything worthwhile, but now when you ride your temporary ally, you have an always-on +5 to hit medium or large enemies, and whenever you crit, you provoke an attack for yourself and gain a +4 bonus to that swing!

Your ally can come with the feat "Intercept Blow," letting it sponge 50% of incoming damage as an AoO-equivalent. It's unclear if you can proc Paired Opportunists off of this, but what you can do for sure is make much greater use of that DR and ER that comes from Guardian's Intermediate Power.

If an enemy wises up to your companions tricks and targets them, great! That's actually ideal. You have effectively "pulled aggro" off your team an onto what amounts to a summon. Remember that you do not have Animal Ally on days you don't prepare the guardian, so it doesn't matter as much to you as it would a ranger or druid if your buddy makes it the whole day or dies. You gain a new companion every time, as if you were gaining the feature for the first time. You can use Paladin's Sacrifice to protect them if you want to preserve them for another encounter, too.

You don't end up ever really needing to spirit surge on a Guardian, so you can Propitiate from Influence 3 to 2 at the start of the day and just never touch the Influence Penalty, enjoying the benefits of having this bonus buddy instead.

This is a lot of words to say "Get yourself a guardian for your Guardian". I hope this might be helpful to anyone who just doesn't know what to do with their weakest spirit.

*Terra Caelum hangs over the world below. The floating island is home to an ancient and prestigious adventurer's academy free of any political bonds to the chaotic and warring city-states of the world. Here in Caelum, neutral warriors train to protect the people of the world from terrible monsters, otherworldly threats, and land-shattering calamaties. Your people may have selected you as a candidate to become a student here, or perhaps a storied and famous hero has sponsored you to the academy. In time, you may become a great hero yourself, but for now, you've got a lot to learn!*

If you are unfamiliar with a living server, it is a collection of players and GMs that co-write the world and story’s in it. You can RP your character 24 hours a day, with GM’s that will run games with a story at set times.

We're currently modestly sized with about a dozen regular players and a handful of GMs, so we're now recruiting once more to bolster our playerbase. If you're interested in RP, One-shots, and character development, there's a lot of fun to be had here!

We're currently planning our first big event, a cultural festival celebrating the diverse origins of the students, the staff, and Terra Caelum itself.

To Join the discord for the world, https://discord.com/invite/gjZkHsNKEu

(The project lead has built a bit about the world on World Anvil as well, if you wish to learn more https://www.worldanvil.com/w/mystria-lilspoon2327)

So I was building a character for a Way of the Wicked Campaign, and since that campaign was balls off the wall ridiculous at times (I'm looking at you, Castle Balentyne)our GM gave us free reign on our characters. As in, we could choose any race, any class, any archetype, and so on.

After a near TPK, I chose to create a Kobold Gunslinger. Well, the Halfdragon kobold Bolt Ace, but mostly for the extra mobility and availability of crossbow bolts.

The idea of this kobold was to be an absolute gatling gun of ranged attacks. So far I've managed to get him up to 9 shots in a full round action and was wondering how I could get more out of him. To achieve such a number of attacks, he wields 2 hand crossbows. Now, you might be thinking "How does kobold shot bolt with no reloading hand?" Well he uses 4 items to help him out: A wand of Unseen Servant wielded by his magical buddies, two rings of Unseen Servant, and an amulet of Unseen Servant. Doesn't cost too much, especially since he only has to dish out 1000g every 5 levels or so.

Level 6 Kobold Gunslinger (Bolt Ace Archetype)
Abilities: S: 11 D: 21 C: 13 I: 9 W: 18 Ch: 15
Feat Progression
- Level 1: Precise Shot
- Level 3: Two Weapon Fighting
- Level 4 Bonus Feat: Weapon Focus: Hand Crossbow
- Level 5: Point Blank Shot
= Level 7: Imp. TWF
= Level 8 Bonus Feat: Dazzling Display
= Level 9: Shatter Defenses
= Level 11: Rapid Shot
= Level 12 Bonus Feat: Multishot
= Level 13: Deadly Aim
= Level 15: Greater Two Weapon Fighting

At this point, the kobold will be doing his 9 shots against flat-foot AC, though at a -6 on each attack. With the Gunslinger deed "Deadeye" though, the lower to-hits will be against FFtouch which is a great and terrible thing. Additionally, the party will have a buffer who can cast reduce person and cat's grace, which will soften the penalty to -2.

I'm wondering how viable this build is, and if anyone's ever tried something like it before.