HobgoblinLiker13's page

Kobold bloodline. Start as Human, 18 Cha, and start with spell focus/greater spell focus in some school you'll want to use a lot. Finally use a trait to pick up Stealth as a Class skill. Now any time from L1 on that you cast spells from that school from Stealth, under Invisibility or Improved Invisibility, if you beat your enemy's Initiative or any other time they're denied Dex bonus, the DC of your spell is DC 18 and up.

Another fun thing about the kobold bloodline; you can have multiple spell traps active at one time. With an 18 Cha at L1, if you have enough time to set them up ahead of time, you can open up a fight with 7 traps littering the battlefield, each dealing 1d8+1 points of energy damage and that energy type is determined when creating the trap.

By 9th level you have 4th level spells. The Arcane Ambush gives you a Swift action to hand out anywhere from +1 to +4 to all attack and damage to yourself and up to two allies, and those numbers will go up from there. Granted the bonuses only last 1 round but if you have to nova this is a decent boost. Downsides are that your foe or foes need to either be flanked by your allies or denied their Dex bonuses and you have to expend a spell slot to use the ability. I still think this has merit.

Of course, I've only ever built NPCs with this bloodline. Still, they ended up being very effective at their jobs; remain invisible as long as possible, using buff spells on a big boss, then melt out of the invisibility to be blaster casters, preferably staggering their attacks so that after the first one attacks the next round a second NPC appears, gaining the bloodline arcana while the first one finds some Cover and spends a round entering Stealth, only to reappear in round 3 and so on.

I should add that you'd need Racial Heritage in order to take the Kobold Bloodline as a human tho

Sorcerer is my favorite class, and I gotta say a huge part of the reason why is the bloodlines.

The sheer variety of different abilities and options, all with their own mostly-unique heritages and mechanics to go with them leave me starstruck in a way few other classes can match.

That being said, while I find myself charmed and drawn in by the flavor of most bloodlines, some do stand head and shoulders above others in my assessment.

My top 5 Bloodlines would have to be

1) Aberrant - One of the three big authors who primarily shaped the way I interact with fantasy, science fiction, and horror literature is Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Since I was young, I have held an intense fascination with misshapen otherness and things that should not be. The Aberrant Bloodline embodies these ideas perfectly so there's no way it's not going to the top of the list.

2) Vestige - Since I was an incredibly small child, I have always been obsessed with the distant past. Hidden away in the Blood of the Ancients Player Companion lies the perfect bloodline to bring that past to life. Also, even if one ignores the ancient past thing, having your own mindscape is just badass.

3) Draconic - Okay, I promise not all of these Bloodlines will just be "oh I really liked this thing since I was a kid so that's why this is one of my favorites" but out of the three that are, this one is actually the most so. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with dragons. I had dragon books, dragon paintings, dragon shirts, dragon stuffed animals - everything and I do mean everything was about dragons. Now, I've cooled it with the dragons by a lot but I still love them and they hold a special place in my heart.

4) Boreal - I know this is gonna be a controversial pick, cos from my admittedly limited understanding, common consensus is the Boreal Bloodline is hot garbage, and while I agree it isn't the most powerful, it is the most cohesive cold/winter-themed Bloodline in Pathfinder, and it's also got some genuinely really cool abilities (pun intended). There are a lot of things that feel magical about winter and about the extreme north and south of our world, and it seems downright tragic to me that I was born just in time to watch this magic fade.

5) Impossible - This one is a bit harder to pin down on why exactly I like it and what's so cool about it. I was immediately grabbed by the Relativity bloodline power, but even outside of that, the Impossible Bloodline is just full of weird and quirky s&&# that does fit together in a cohesive manner but at the same time is strangely hard to describe. The name, I suppose, is fitting.

Now that I've explained what my favorite Bloodlines are and why, what are your favorite Bloodlines? Why do you like them so much?

Evil is too easy. A true master of the art of plans and schemes obtains success laboring under the more demanding strictures of Good.

Also it is so exhilarating to best the most devious and conniving BBEGs for the cause of Good. To pull the smallest wooden pin and see their whole castle coming down. To witness their carefully guided hubris causing their downfall.

All the PCs were carefully chosen and cultivated by the dragon to become the exact persons they needed to foil the plans of Evil. A small act of kindness here, the proper encouraging words at the proper time there. All subtle moves to ensure the gathering of the heroes and the final victory of Good.

I love all of these replies but this one is my favorite

More Hobgoblin feats other than the Demoralizing Lash feat chain

Honestly I really like Cosmopolitan. It's an excellent way to make your characters a bit more flexible while also giving you two free bonus languages.

Empath is also fun if you're running an Occult game, and you can never go wrong with Skill Focus.

Splintering Weapon has limited utility at higher levels, but is really fun for lower level characters and can be a nasty surprise for the PCs when a Villainous NPC has it.

Noble Scion and Racial Heritage can be great for flavor, though I honestly dislike how the latter is limited to humans.

Gruesome Shapechanger is also really, really neat, though unfortunately it is incredibly situational and, being a horror adventures feat, is better for enemies than players. The same cannot be said for my second favorite Horror Adventures feat, Disconcerting Knowledge, which is much better for PCs than monsters in addition to having amazing flavor and can really feel like a "Oh how the tables have turned" moment if pulled off right.

When it comes to metamagic, I really like Elemental Spell. It has limited utility but a lot of flavor and can be amazing in some specific situations.

I also remember really liking a bunch of Story Feats from Ultimate Campaign but I forgot most of them.

Unfortunately, even though Hobgoblins are my favorite race, most of their feats are rather disappointing. The whip fighting feat chain (Demoralizing Lash, Taskmaster, and Terrorizing Dislpay) is decent mechanically, but incredibly narrow and only really fits with a specific build. In addition, flavor-wise it'd be a better fit for a BBEG than a PC, which kinda annoys me in this particular instance because the Advanced Race Guide felt more geared towards Players than Horror Adventures or even Ultimate Combat did.

Honestly my favorite Hobgoblin feat is the Teamwork Feat Spirit of the Corps, which was introduced in the Monster Codex but honestly feels better suited for PCs than the Hobgoblin feats introduced in the Advanced Race Guide AND doesn't require you to be a Hobgoblin to take it.

Also, a lot of this was copy-pasted from another post, but this thread reminded me of another feat I forgot before which I really, really like - Cunning

Exactly what it says in the title. What feats are your favorite?

Honestly I really like Cosmopolitan. It's an excellent way to make your characters a bit more flexible while also giving you two free bonus languages.

Empath is also fun if you're running an Occult game, and you can never go wrong with Skill Focus.

Splintering Weapon has limited utility at higher levels, but is really fun for lower level characters and can be a nasty surprise for the PCs when a Villainous NPC has it.

Noble Scion and Racial Heritage can be great for flavor, though I honestly dislike how the latter is limited to humans.

Gruesome Shapechanger is also really, really neat, though unfortunately it is incredibly situational and, being a horror adventures feat, is better for enemies than players. The same cannot be said for my second favorite Horror Adventures feat, Disconcerting Knowledge, which is much better for PCs than monsters in addition to having amazing flavor and can really feel like a "Oh how the tables have turned" moment if pulled off right.

When it comes to metamagic, I really like Elemental Spell. It has limited utility but a lot of flavor and can be amazing in some specific situations.

I also remember really liking a bunch of Story Feats from Ultimate Campaign but I forgot most of them.

Unfortunately, even though Hobgoblins are my favorite race, most of their feats are rather disappointing. The whip fighting feat chain (Demoralizing Lash, Taskmaster, and Terrorizing Dislpay) is decent mechanically, but incredibly narrow and only really fits with a specific build. In addition, flavor-wise it'd be a better fit for a BBEG than a PC, which kinda annoys me in this particular instance because the Advanced Race Guide felt more geared towards Players than Horror Adventures or even Ultimate Combat did.

Honestly my favorite Hobgoblin feat is the Teamwork Feat Spirit of the Corps, which was introduced in the Monster Codex but honestly feels better suited for PCs than the Hobgoblin feats introduced in the Advanced Race Guide AND doesn't require you to be a Hobgoblin to take it.

I really love Wax Golems tbh. They have so much story potential and I love their flavor.