I want to start this off by stating that I adore Plated Vesk. It's the one thing in the entirety of the Starfinder playtest PDF that grabbed me and held onto my brain the entire time I was reading through the book. It created my first character idea, and every time I looked at an option following the decision to play a plated vesk was made in reference to how it would work with such a character.
So let's take a moment to examine its fun mechanics and what's weird about them
First off, the mechanical points about Plated Vesk's armoring. A dex cap of +1 and a base armor of +4 puts it at the highest level of medium armor. Heavy armor could theoretically be better, but having the Comfort trait would be a good tradeoff on another armor of this type, and falling under the plate armor type is good stuff. It appears to have 0 bulk, no speed penalty, a standard check penalty, and, naturally, can't be removed from you.
The good traits that you can't get anywhere else - the complete lack of bulk, no speed penalty, and the fact that it can't be removed - are in a tradeoff with the fact that you're totally unable to benefit from any armor worthy of the word. You can put on a flight suit, but that's it. Instead, you're stuck using a type of armor upgrade that's rather obscure in modern times - armor runes - directly etched into your hide. This means you're reliant on finding an enchanter or becoming one yourself; that's something that isn't impossible to do, but might be more difficult. This is an extremely cool tradeoff, putting you in a different realm of upgrades than other characters. You also can't rely on the GM to give you anything cool; a super awesome armor drop in a dungeon or while adventuring can't be used by you because of your plated armor.
The weird part about it is the way it interacts with certain things, though. Specifically, it doesn't have the exposed trait, which means technically you're totally protected from a vacuum even while completely nude, which obviates the need for the specially allowed Flight Suit. It also lacks the Analog tag, so technically your natural plated scales count as a target for technological-affecting systems. Can someone hack your natural armor? Apparently!
In conclusion;
The racial trait is absolutely stellar. It has tradeoffs which are appropriate to its narrative role, with stats good enough that you're not suffering because of that fact. The benefits it gives by being part of your body are excellent, and it plays extremely well into the fantasy of being an 'unarmored' warrior that doesn't exclusively rely on dodging like a monk would. The only changes I'd make to it are adding the Exposed and Analog traits, since without those it's got some strange stuff going on. By default Analog equipment can't be affected by armor runes, but specific trumps general, and the skin of a Plated Vesk has a rule in specific allowing it to use armor runes, so it's a non-issue.
So, one of the things I'm rather worried about is a lack of weapon variants in Starfinder.
Let me explain what I mean by that. Yes, I'm certain we'll have a "sniper rifle", and a "pistol", and a "shotgun", but generic weaponry just doesn't cut it in a science fiction setting. You get variants on weapons and armor that is sometimes subtle, and sometimes obvious. Let me toss out an example right here, stolen pretty much straight from Warframe (a rather popular free to play Science Fantasy video game)
This is the Lanka. The Lanka is a sniper rifle that, after a short charge, fires out a shot of fast moving electricity with pinpoint accuracy. It has a very long reload time, and has to charge up to get full damage, but when it does, it hits like a truck. It also has a ten round magazine, limiting the number of times you need to reload it in any given fight, to help make up for its drawbacks, and if you're fully zoomed in it has a +50% chance to critically hit. It's pure electricity and high damage if you can get over its problems.
This fancy thing is the Vectis. It's single shot, which is a bit of a double-edged sword - the reload is less than a second to compensate, which is good because you'll be reloading after every shot. It's much weaker than the fully charged Lanka (about a third of the damage) but at higher zoom levels it deals more damage, has no charge time, and is very intuitive to use, giving it a sort of bolt action feel. It's also easier to mod than the lanka due to an inherent mod polarity slot (basically makes it cost less to insert offensive types of mods, in this case).
This somewhat bulbous thing is the Vulkar. It has the same damage as the Vectis, but a few benefits - most notably, it's a semi-automatic sniper rifle, which is great. It has a 6 round magazine, but in exchange has a reload timer of 3 seconds (very very long comparatively), and every now and then one of its shots will be a dud that does no damage, which sucks BAD when you're relying on a hit to have effect.
Finally, this bulky thing is the Rubico. Like the Vulkar, it's semi-automatic and has a five round magazine, as it's essentially a sniper rifle revolver. It has less damage than Vectis or Vulkar (and thus much less than the Lanka), and like the Vulkar has a very long reload time, but in exchange has a much, much higher critical chance, particularly when zoomed in, and deals x3 damage on a crit rather than x2.
Do you see what I mean? These are all "sniper rifles", and falling under a generic "sniper rifle" label would be an injustice to all but whichever one the generic sniper rifle most closely resembles. But people would pay to have variants like this of different weapon types - rate of fire, damage dealt, recoil, clip size, item weight, critical chance, critical damage, these are all things that can be affected by weapon variants even before getting into the mods you can put into weapons like this. It'd be huge for the community to get access to these sorts of things, and for Paizo specifically it'd basically be like printing money to have a bunch of different variants of pistols, assault rifles, SMGs, LMGs, sniper rifles, shotguns, and whatever else.
Food for thought. I really hope this is the sort of thing that gets included in the final release, because it's worked well for every different science fiction or science fantasy game I can think of, tabletop or not.
So, I was discussing things with a friend of mine, and we both came to the conclusion that AIs should be a playable option in Starfinder, and I'm going to quickly go over how that'd work. Note, I'm writing this on the basic assumption that, since Starfinder will still run on the D20 system and will be 'conversion friendly', the same things that'd work in basic Pathfinder would work in Starfinder for this. I'd like feedback and thoughts on the idea, but I think it works pretty well as-is.
Ability Scores:
Spoiler:
Now, I'm aware of the issue here; AIs are not physical beings, and thus have no physical stats, and thus only have the mental attributes; Intelligence, Wisdom, and charisma, and their statistics are based on the body or system they're currently inhabiting. this is actually very workable; you just need to cut their stats buy (or rolls) in half and allow them to buy or craft bodies.
For example, in Pathfinder, the standard six-stat loadout is generally used with a 15, 20, or 25 point buy. In this method, you'd be moving forward with 8, 10, or 12, which isn't even enough to get a stat up to 18 without sacrificing something for a dump stat but has decent ability to be spread. Ten would let you get one stat up to 16, while 12 would let you have a 16 and a 12 somewhere, which, if you look at most existent builds outside of heavy duty optimization or SAD classes, is a pair of stats most people are generally going to have, yet nothing stops you in a 12 point buy from dumping one stat (probably charisma; you know you've done it before) for up to an extra four points, in which case you can set one stat to 18, one to 10, and one to 7.
This is about the same level most standard heroes sit at. In the high powered version, you're looking at a standard character generally having a stat array of 16, 16, 12, 12, 10, and 10 if they're a multiple attribute dependent character (such as monks, paladins, fighters, or rogues) or 18, 15, 14, 10, 10, 7 for a single attribute character such as a wizard or sorcerer, which makes this fit the paradigm that's already present. Add in a stat modifier for being a specially built kind of AI (Logical, Observant, Charismatic...) and you fit in with the standard races. Make it a player choice bonus like the human +2 stats so you don't have to write three entries and you're golden.
System Transference:
Spoiler:
I'll admit, this one can be a bit of an issue, but it's solved by a system already present in the game; wealth. So you're an AI, and can upload yourself to a variety of things, such as uninhabited robotic bodies, ship systems, and the local security grid. This takes three things however - the system you wish to insert yourself into, an uplink (whether physical or wireless) that lets you interface with the target system, and time.
We'll start with the simplest one; time. Time is a factor in basically everything you can do in the d20 system, whether you like it or not. Action economy is paramount, so I believe making it take 1-5 minutes is reasonable. This means that a player can reasonably, with any level of downtime, interface with just about any system they come across, which is good, as hacking in onsite is a pretty standard science fiction trope, but prevents players from doing it in the heat of combat unless they have a very good team watching their backs. Pretty simple, all told.
A full transference (Moving from one body to another system, such as leaving your robot body to inhabit your party's starship) would likely take hours; 4-8 would be good for downtime stuff, as it means it can be done while the rest of the party is sleeping, and also prevents casual use in a (space-)dungeon. your systems would likely also be vulnerable in this time, so you'd have to make sure your target system isn't fighting you (you could subdue any issues like that through basic interfacing and purging the programs designed to keep your AI character from transferring) and you aren't in any personal danger, as interrupting the transference could corrupt a severe amount of your data - not good for you.
The next bit is the uplink, which can also be handled relatively simply. It's a piece of equipment, as integral to the AI's function as a spellbook is to a wizard, so it can't really be skimped on, but it does mean we can have fun with it. There'd likely be three types of uplinks; Port, Wireless, and Multi. A Port Uplink would require physical connection to the target system in through a port, and would easily be the cheapest. Wireless would be a bit expensive, comparatively, and would be able to interface with any system that has its own wireless uplink, such as most security grids, though unlikely robots. A multi uplink would have both, and would be the most expensive and most worth getting of the three. Higher quality uplinks would guard against corruption from interruptions in transference, have firewalls to prevent attacks from a system you're interfacing with, and contain programs that let you assault other systems more easily. Some might also make it so that interfacing and transference take less time.
The target system would generally be one of four things; a robotic body, a vehicle's computer, a general object with onboard computer, or a security system. The AI character would use the physical statistics of the body they inhabit; hardness, armor, physical attributes, all that good stuff. If there's an existing program - AI or no - inside the target system, then to transfer into it, shut things down, or exert any kind of control, one would have to interface and either subdue, bypass, or destroy them.
The Robot Body - Obtaining
Spoiler:
This is probably the hardest part to get right, but I think it's doable, possibly not even that difficult. Just like the Uplink, this is a thing that'd be covered by the wealth your character has, and would be subject to limitations based on that. Typically, an AI character would attain a robotic body one of three ways; Buying it, crafting it, or stealing it.
In buying a robotic body, there'd likely be places you can order an off-the-shelf model from. These'd be cheap, replacable, and low quality due to mass production. you could likely order a custom body, but no doubt that'd cost quite a few more credits than a basic off-the-shelf model, none of which are likely to be that great. Relatively low physical stats on these, and while you could mod them up to increase statistics, it'd be costly.
The second way, crafting it yourself, would of course require proper facilities to allow for the building process such as an assembly device or a lab where you can work in peace. All of these bodies would be custom, but would likely cost less than a mass-produced body would due to the fact that you only need to purchase the parts for it and then assemble them properly. Creating your own mods for a body would also bypass some of the unfortunate cost of such a venture. +6 strength hydraulic limbs aren't cheap, you know.
And the third way to get such a body would be what adventurers everywhere already do - stab something in the face and ransack its corpse. Chances are that in the process of taking down a robotic enemy, you'll have destroyed most of its primary systems, but assuming you didn't turn it into giblets it should be reasonable to replace the destroyed parts and rework any programs remaining inside the robot's own systems to your purposes. Cheaper than any of the other two options, but at the whim of the GM. Though there's theoretically nothing stopping you from making off with an inactive body and transfering to it while it's intact at your leisure.
The Robot Body - Stats and Level
Spoiler:
Here comes the biggest hiccups when working with robotic bodies; what about stats? Isn't hit dice supposed to be determined by level?
AIs need a couple of considerations here. First off, while an AI character could easily level up without issue (Optimizing their own programming, for instance) what this would grant them is the abilities of their chosen class, so BAB, saving throw bonuses, special abilities, spellcasting if any, companion characters, all that good stuff. What it would not do is increase HD or HP. I know the separation of HD and BAB is unusual, but there's nothing stopping it from working here.
Your chosen robotic body, no matter how you obtained it, covers three things primarily. First, your physical stats, Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. This actually makes a fair amount of sense, and is the other side of the stats, the reason why you didn't have as much in the way of point buy to begin with; with enough cash, luck, or skill, you can get them as high as you like, assuming you work a little for it.
Second is your HD and HP. This shouldn't really take much explanation, but here I go anyways. Essentially, just how tough your robot is is a fair shake at things like the size, materials used, and general sturdiness of construction. These aren't things that an AI can really contribute to - a robotic body that can take a gravity cannon to the torso and keep coming at you isn't going to change from that when an AI is actually driving it - if anything, the AI will learn how to dodge the blast, but won't be able to directly upgrade just how tanky it is themselves.
Finally, the body determines what it's equipped with. For example, a simple mannequin body bought off the shelf would likely have a pair of standard arms, working eyes, mouth, nose, ears, the works. It would, for most intents and purposes, be a low-grade android body with maybe 2 HD. Meanwhile, a Rhino Class Destroyer comes equipped with four legs under its humanoid torso, a laser cannon in place of a right hand, a large plasma sword in place of the left hand, steel plate construction giving it 15 HD, and a shoulder mounted chaingun, but lacks olfactory and tactile sensors, hands, and is likely to scare the crap out of the local police if you try and bring such a monstrosity into a civilian area. Another option would be an Chrysanthemum Shield Drone, meant to act as a mobile forcefield generator for a team but lacking in strength, constitution, and weapon systems in exchange for a built-in wireless uplink, a hologram emitter, a pair of small hands and, well, a shield generator.
The same AI can run around in any of the three bodies. Say we have three AIs, one a mechanic, one a technomancer, and the other a soldier. The soldier, in the mannequin body, can manipulate weaponry and physical objects the same way a human or android might do so. At level 10, he's really quite skilled with his equipment, capable of wielding most guns well, but the body is fragile, and has a ten in every physical stat, which feels terrible for a big meaty fighter type. He doesn't like it because of this. The shield drone is even worse - low overall HD and HP, and the gimmicks it can do don't play to his strenghts; the weaponry on this thing is minimal, the the shield generator is useful but too defensive for his tastes and he has no idea what he's even supposed to do with the hologram emitter. The Rhino class destroyer though, that's his jam. Let the meatbags open doors and interact with computers - he's too busy firing lasers and chainguns and cutting apart anything that comes too close to his allies. With strong HD and good weaponry, he can make use of all his abilities.
Then we get to the Technomancer. She can store her magical information in her databanks so that it follows her through a transfer. The Rhino has no hands, which is a serious problem for a caster of any sort, and she doesn't have the programming to properly make use of the weaponry, so she can only parrot what she's seen other guns do... and do it poorly, suffering nonproficiency penalties. the mannequin and the shield drone are more her speed, however. The lack in physical abilities isn't as much of an issue due to the fact that she can use her magic to interact with most things. The drone has too many things she doesn't have the proper programming (Feat) to use in it once again, but it at least has hands to let her cast things, and is flying in the air consistently, out of reach of dangerous melee enemies though a sitting duck for those with ranged weaponry.
Finally, we get to the mechanic. Like the technomancer before him, the mechanic AI dislikes the Rhino for its lack of hands, and who needs this many damned weapons? The mannequin is a better fit due to having hands and not so much in the way of armor plating slowing it down, but it's lacking in tools. the shield Drone, however? excellent - that hologram projector can be used to show the biological members of the team the layout of the building he extracted from the local servers, the forcefield projector lets him contribute in a fight where he doesn't have any skill with weaponry, and the very dexterous small hands allow him to manipulate small objects without risk of breaking something or screwing up.
This system would also let the players prioritize; do they splurge on better armor plating to give themselves greater hardness and HD? What kind of weapon attachments are appropriate for your character? All this and more.
Miscellaneous Concerns:
Spoiler:
What about rest periods? The d20 system lives and breathes on having 'per day' abilities.
Easy enough, just add in a sleep analogue. I recommend a 4 hour debugging session that they start taking penalties if they don't enact every 24 hours - similar to sleep fatigue. Glitches, runtime errors, and the like account for where the penalties come from.
So bodies cost money? Isn't that prohibitive?
Not really. Using Pathfinder gold for the moment (as I don't know what monetary system Starfinder will use yet) a basic crappy mannequin body would likely cost you around 50 gold - completely mediocre if not bad stats, no armor plating, likely even only has 1 HD. Basically, the same position a standard human is in right from the get-go, but with less customizable stats. Later on the AI makes up for the fact that it didn't get to customize its physical statistics by running around in a custom robot that it did have the opportunity to customize the stats of. Money becomes the balancing factor here; armor costs money, mods cost money, size increase, more HD, better stats, all of it costs money. But if you've ever built a two-weapon fighter in Pathfinder, you'll know that that's not as much of an issue as you might think; parties look out for one another and the communal pool being devoted to a snazzy new body for your AI helps the entire team out as it'll let you do your job better, and the monetary price should be around the same cost as a suit of normal armor before you start getting into mods and weapon systems, which of course will have a standard price compared to their nonrobotic counterparts. If there's an issue with this, I'm not seeing it.
Wouldn't this take quite a bit of development time?
It might, if it was being developed in a vacuum. Instead, we already have AI rules in Pathfinder, and confirmation that AIs are going to be front and center in Starfinder; the Mechanic class gets one as a companion, to say nothing for enemies. A PC AI would just have more sense of self than the majority of them and be capable of making their own decisions, having grown beyond their original programing through self-edits or emergent intelligence situations.
What's stopping an AI from spending everything on an awesome body and crushing the campaign, or stealing an awesome one?
What's stopping the fighter from spending everything on an awesome sword? The GM, primarily. If it's gotten to the point where the robot's body is causing issues for party balance, chances are the GM would have caused such an imbalance by granting the players too much money in the first place; a well trained human with a set of artifact equipment is just as dangerous, if not more, as an AI with the same. As for the theft of a superior body, I have no doubt that a more expensive set up body is going to have anti-tampering features, such as electrocution, lockdown procedures, and self-destruction for whomever is cheeky enough to try hacking the thing. These sorts of countermeasures might be overcome with a few proper skill checks, and if the GM is smart they'll make the players work pretty hard to get the body, which eliminates most of the issue.
What about the Mechanic's robot companion? Couldn't an AI just inhabit that body?
Is there a problem with that? It's a class feature and he'd be actively sacrificing action economy by only having a single body on the field. It's an actively weaker choice than getting his own body and letting the robot companion do its own thing, and in exchange the Mechanic gets more money to spend on things that aren't a body. I'd say that's a decently balanced choice, as anybody who's played high level Pathfinder will tell you that Action Economy is king.
Isn't magic an act of will? How would an AI be able to use magic?
The same way an android might, I think. At some point, the AI has moved beyond its original parameters, and become not just a smart program, but sapient. This is what separates the Player Character AI from standard robots; it's capable of creativity, of learning, and modding itself to be better. At some point, it may have even gained a soul.
How would AIs interact with mind-affecting effects?
Well, I'm willing to bet the old "same as Androids" idea applies here. The trick is that it isn't just a set of programs running routines; it's made of code, but it's a true mind at this point, thus making it vulnerable to illusions, phantasms, patterns, and all that snazzy stuff unless it has specific abilities or items that block those out.
What about other immunities, like poison and disease?
It's true, a robot would be immune to these perrenially underused hazards. It's also be immune to the vacuum of space or hostile atmospheres (which would probably fall under poison, now that I think of it) but their setup also results in a variety of vulnerabilities. ever seen the "Anti-tech field" spell in Pathfinder? How about Heat Metal? Rusting Grasp? And robotics are more vulnerable to electricity than other creatures types as well. They can avoid some general hazards but have to deal with others more than biological characters as well.
I recently came across a few rules that interact in an interesting way together, all adding into each other. the first time I put a build for this together, it was with a T-rex. The problem with the Rex is that after a bit, it has considerable size limitations due to the fact that you can't get it into the short-list for the Mammoth Rider PrC.
Then, I found the Gorthek. From the Monster Codex page 172, it's one of the very few animal companion choices in the game with the Powerful Charge ability, and the single most powerful one available to an animal companion at that - with a 2d6 damage base attack and 4d6+double strength powerful charge, this animal starts laying on the hurt once it sizes up, especially since to my knowledge no other powerful charge in the game adds strength into the bonus damage. It also has Darkvision and low-light vision and badass natural armor, on top of an excellent statline that appears to have dumped charisma in favor of strength, like any good brute. It's also thematically quite awesome, since I think the only conglomerate animal (it's a bison-lion-rhino-goat)that's available for being a companion and according to the fluff orcs like to raise them from birth to be living battering rams. That's not the reason we're looking at it, though.
No, we're looking at the accompanying text.
Monster Codex Page 172 wrote:
"An orc who takes the Beast Rider feat (Path finder RPG Advanced Race Guide 56) can choose a gorthek as an animal companion or mount."
The RAI is clear; you shouldn't be able to take it as a companion unless you have Beast Rider, but never does anything prevent you from just taking it as a companion normally, orcish blood or no. However, this leads into an interesting interaction with Mammoth Rider. Mammoth Rider pares down the animals you're allowed to choose as companions pretty brutally, cutting out most of the small animals and dinosaurs (save the triceratops) in favor of furry megafauna and, inexplicably, wolves and cats. The gorthek text, however, clearly states that you can take a gorthek as your animal companion if you have Beast Rider, damn what your companion list says. To take the feat and get the gorthek with Mammoth Rider you need to be a half-orc or orc, but that's hardly a real problem.
The build I'm currently looking at is as follows:
The Build:
Class: Half-Orc Hunter 10/Mammoth Rider 10
Stats With 20 Point Buy:
Str: 12
Dex: 14+2
Con: 12
Int: 13
Wis: 14
Cha: 13
Thing is, this isn't complete. By and large, a lot of our focus is on the animal companion in question; while he gets his own feats and the proliferated teamwork feats from the hunter (that's a hilarious ability, by the way), the pet also gains a variety of tricks from both the normal list of Handle Animal tricks and, particularly notable, from the Skirmisher Ranger archetype. By the end of its career, it should have 16 different tricks (assuming you upgraded its intelligence to 3) and while they're mostly a matter of choice, there's a few I'd like to point out as extremely important and/or hilarious.
- Taking Attack twice will allow you to get your companion to attack 'unnatural' creatures without pushing, and that's important. They make up like 70% of the monsters in the game, so you're next to guaranteed to run into some sooner or later.
- Heel is extremely useful, and completely obviates Come.
- Exclusive is the sort of trick that you'll be very happy you take when your GM decides to mess with you. Charm animal can cause lots of problems if you're not prepared for it.
- Hunt will cover the logistics of feeding this thing.
- Guard is useful when you don't want your companion following you for whatever reason
- Down is great for when you've caused a problem and need your pet to not get you killed.
- Cunning Pantomime is a hilariously useful ability from the Skirmisher Ranger that basically lets you turn your animal companion into the party translater. Seriously.
- Second Chance Strike is another Skirmisher Ranger ability, and one of the very few ways to grant your companion the use of immediate actions. Extremely useful, particularly if it botched an attack roll somehow.
As for feats, Narrow Frame and Lithe Attacker are going to end up decently important, but Improved Natural Attack will let you pump up the damage of the gore attack better and power attack is just all-around good as I'm certain you know. At level 10, your companions new feat is Vital Strike, hands down. You'll see why in a little bit.
The Charger companion Archetype is pretty nice because it lets you armor the gorthek without too much in the way of problems, and due to the ability to move at full speed with a medium or heavy load you can turn it into a workhorse - not that it lacked for the ability to drag stuff before, but when you have a mount it's preferable for it not to get bogged down by your attempts to keep it alive. losing evasion isn't a huge problem as the animal aspects you get from the Hunter can grant Improved Evasion to the companion, on top of the ability to potentially ignore will and fortitude targeting effects Charger gives it.
At level 20, your warbeast should have a statline that looks like this without items, animal aspects, or other buffs applied:
Str: 43
Dex: 7
Con: 23
Int: 3
Wis: 10
Cha: 5
Then, because of the Hunter's ability to cherry pick from both druid and Ranger spells, we have access to both Strong Jaw and Animal Growth. this will crank the gorthek's strength up by another +8 due to the size increase and take the constitution up to 27, but will bring dexterity down to an abysmal 5. More importantly, it makes the pet Gargantuan, which means things start getting weird. Particularly when you add in Strong Jaw.
See, the interaction between Improved Natural Attack and Size Increase is a bit difficult to parse. It says it increases the size of the dice dealt by a natural weapon by one, and then it proceeds to provide a size up list that doesn't follow the same pattern as Strong Jaw and Animal Growth provide. As such, we'll be applying that feat last but before buffs, in an effort to retain some semblance of legitimacy.
At large size, the gore attack of the Gorthek deals 2d6 damage. One size increase (from Evolved Companion (Improved Damage(gore))) takes it up to 2d8. Getting to huge size changes it to 4d6. According to Improved Natural Attack, that 4d6 gets upgraded to 6d6. Animal growth taking it up to Gargantuan means that (at least according to Strong Jaw) we just double it now, taking the damage up to 12d6. Strong Jaw then doubles the damage dice twice, going to 24d6 and then 4d8d6. This part is actually doable by level 10, so that's snazzy. Now, we add in other damage bits; our beastie is sitting on an unmodified 51 strength. Ignoring items for the moment, your Animal Aspect of the Bull takes that up to 55 for a final modifier of +22. As a primary natural attack, the gore adds the full +22 modifier to damage, and the Powerful Charge for some reason adds twice the strength bonus again, resulting in a +66 damage charge. end result is that, on a charge, this companion has an average damage per attack of 236 when charging.
Remember when we took Vital Strike? That actually becomes important here. Vital Strike doubles the damage dice you use for an attack, and 48d6 alone has an average damage of 168, so we just straight up double that to 336 before even adding in strength bonus and similar bonuses (such as the greater Magic Fang you'll be certain to have applied at this point). The cool part is that unless I'm reading things wrong, you can do this kind of Vital Strike as part of an Attack of Opportunity this means a typical turn will look like: Charge -> Proc Improved Feint Partner -> Gorthek uses Improved Vital Strike to slam its face into the enemy again. This should result (assuming it all hits, which it should if you took Second Chance Strike) in a DPR of 582 damage, give-or-take depending on what damage modifiers are present.
I'm not precisely an amazing optimizer, so I'm certain there's things I've overlooked or don't know about that'd add to this. Anybody want to help me see how far we can take this madness?
So, I've been going over various ways of playing classes that I haven't spent much time with, and one Archetype that really stood out to me due to my love of playing tieflings (it's such a versatile race!) was Fiendish Vessel. Coupled with the Devil Spawn Tiefling type being best suited to a cleric in my opinion and having a lot of synergy with Archdevils and Asmodeus, that's what I've decided to go for. The penalty to charisma also mitigates the problem that is Channel Evil, as it means I won't be tempted to use it nearly as much.
Despite this, and my character being evil (Lawful Evil, but still), I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to roleplay the character in a mostly good party (we have no paladin or other holy type, so that's not a concern), and could use some advice on how to manage that. Does anybody have any suggestions?
So, I'm about to start a new game of Pathfinder because my GM picked up the ACG and it inspired him to run a new one. this won't be an adventure path, but something a bit more sandbox-y, meaning that there's no "optimal" build to make use of environment or enemy types, so don't worry about that.
I'm going with a human hunter character, and the one thing that caught my attention rather firmly was that Hunters can take teamwork feats without screwing up the builds of their teammates. They don't even screw up their companion builds if they have one in mind, since the animal companions get the teamwork feats proliferated to them. However, I also understand this might end up not being the optimal route, and I'm here to try and figure that out.
First off, my party makeup consistes of, at the moment, a swashbuckler, an arcanist, a bard, myself, and one player who's as of yet undecided, but is leaning towards a divine caster to help round out the party.
So, my question is; what are the good teamwork feats? What feats are traps? Should I even go with teamwork when I could just burn all of my feats on evolved companion and similar? What sort of stat loadout for my human should I go for, since it's 25 point buy?
Oh, yeah, and I decided to go for a t-rex as my animal companion, because I love the 2d6 bite and grab, and since I can use Strong Jaw and Animal Growth to turn it into an absolute chompy powerhouse at mid levels.
thanks to anybody that decides to help out. I've never really built with an animal companion or teamwork feats before, so it's giving me trouble.
I'm rather curious what the views of people are regarding tieflings or half-fiends both as player characters and as NPCs are. I myself tend to play tieflings a lot because due to personal issues I can connect pretty well to "Not quite human" type characters. What sorts of views do you have? Are they a good thing to include in a campaign? A bad thing?
