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The player who bravely dove into the beta Hunter class this Sunday shall be forthwith known as Pea (as in Japanese for 'pair'). Pea loved the class and all of the options it provided for mixing it up in combat with a pet, including the teamwork feats, which he wanted more of, and the Animal Focus abilities. He had a great time switching between the different animal emulations from Animal Focus throughout each fight and applied the different buffs beautifully. An enemy shadow creature tried to run away from a fight, so Pea switched from Bull focus to Falcon to track him, then Monkey, Stag, and Frog to follow him to his den. He then duo'd the creature into unconsciousness with his animal companion, a wolf. Again, he was having a great time. We noticed that, after about five hours of play, Pea suddenly began to work his pencil madly on a piece of scrap paper. I asked what he was up to, but he asked to wait until he had fleshed out the idea. So, at the end of the night I bugged him again. He showed me a rough, and I mean messy, concept of a Hunter that basically swapped out its spell casting for sneak attack progression every other level like a rogue. I've been mulling it over for a couple of days, but I don't know what to think. Is the trade off of abilities fair and balanced? Is a rogue with a flanking animal companion too good or just logical? Will he grow bored without weird spells to cast?
Stronghold (Story) Feat There is no cooldown on this ability and it can stack with itself in a couple of ways. You can keep dishing out the AC dodge bonus to infinity and it'll stack. And each time you do that you can also apply one of the other four options (attack bonus, fort save, ref save, and will save) due to the double effect bonus for completing the quest. I now know that I will be building a Pally ~ Noble Scion who buffs his troops into, "You can't hit me, neener neener, dracolich god thing."
Well thanks for being optimistic Xyllen, my GM does indeed find Vital Strike to be a joke compared to other methods of dealing damage. Even within RAI I could make the Furious Finish druid or a Fighter/Gunslinger with a Double Hackbutt, enlarged (via spell or what have you), and Imp Vital Strike to throw out 18d6 damage 2 out of every 3 rounds. Hehe, that's funny to me.
Here is a valuable reference: http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz1grg?Charging-with-a-Vital-Strike#22 Jason Bulmahn, halfway down the page, concludes that Vital Strike is an attack action which is a kind of standard action. Poor Vital Strike... /patpat.
I researched posts on our boards here concerning this feat chain combo and was not convinced by the decisions made by the one thread I found. Vital Strike can be used when you make an attack action; Deadly Stroke requires one to use a standard action to make a single attack. Would it be correct to assume that making a single attack is an attack action? If they can be combined, I am also assuming that the math would work as thus: Short Sword damage: 1d6.
Because Vital Strike asks us to add the results of the weapon damage dice together before adding bonuses to damage such as strength, precision damage or elemental damage, we apply Deadly Stroke's doubling power to the result after Vital Strike as it doubles normal damage. To clarify, I see Deadly Stroke asking us to calculate all damage before doubling, which would include Vital Strike because it specifically states to add the results of the weapon damage dice BEFORE adding extra flat damage or precision/elemental damage. Deadly Stroke uses the term 'normal damage'... I wonder what would be included in normal damage. Weapond damage of course, but what about Strength bonus to damage? Challenge and Smite bonus damage? Enhancement bonus to damage? So my three main questions are as follows: 1. Do they work together?
Oh, wow am I sleep deprived. I meant to agree with Concerro, Touch of Corruption is the one. And like Archaeik said, it doesn't really matter what special ability I'm speaking of as long as it has the potential to crit, like touch spells and supernatural abilities. As I read the Conductive ability, it simply is not clear enough when the effect takes place. Is the special ability part of the entire attack (thereby benefiting from weapon critical hit range but only multiplying by 2 as per normal spell criticals) or is it added after the attack (thereby adding the special ability's normal, non critical, result to the weapon attack regardless of if the attack was a critical hit or not). As a GM, I'd say no auto crits on the special ability. As a player I'd say hell yes. If only the description of Conductive said something like: "...who takes the effects of the weapon attack and THEN the special ability." or "...who takes the effects of the weapon attack and the special ability combined in one blow." something like that. People will want to crit with this kind of combo, it needs to be resolved.
It is supernatural, and a monk/witch is far from broken. The Monk class option in Advanced Player's Guide, Monk of the Four Winds, has the potential to cast three hexes in one round at level 12. We're pretty sure the DM is going to let us get away with it regardless of what is discovered here, he just wanted a second opinion. I value messageboard input more than him I suppose; you guys know your business.
Has anyone found or heard what kind of special ability Hex is? As in, Supernatural, Extraordinary, or Spell-like. We've been assuming it was the latter, however a multi-classing Witch/Monk needs to know the exact type in order to establish if his build is broken or not. If it is typeless...umm...I dunno what to say. Does that mean it fits into any of those categories if they ever come up? Like we can pick and choose according to our needs at the time? |
