IluzryMage's page

So then, looking at Control spells we have these tiers:

Sorc/Wizard
Druid
Shaman & Witch (roughly tied)
Cleric/Oracle

There are far fewer class abilities that grant control. e.g. the arcanist's Counterspell, or the witch's hex Swamp's Grasp. The metamagic feats Persistent Spell & Extend Spell are relevant, but apply equally to each class (accounting of course for their varying spell lists).

Should we include turn/command or otherwise control undead here? For a necromancer those abilities are better categorized under the woefully named "Critters", but for a good-aligned cleric, oracle and perhaps others this seems like the right category.

From there (and reading what others have written) I think the scores should run something like:

Arcanist (8-10): best spells + counterspell
Sorcerer & Wizard (7-9): best spells
Druid (6-8): great spells
Shaman & Witch (5-7): good spells + swamp's grasp
Cleric & Oracle (3-5, 8*): some spells + turn undead

As always, what am I missing?

For clerics it really depends on domain and variant channeling. There are variant channelings that can set up difficult terrain, ones that can can force or stop movement all together which act as control.

There are also scary domains like the chaos domains aura of chaos that limits your actions or madness domain that means if you walk in here you are catching confusion and so on and so forth.

Spell list wise they actually get access to some good control spells like wall of stone, obscuring mist, and remember they ALWAYS have access to all of these spells while wizards/arcanists/witches have to go out and find them yadda yadda.

I would bump them up to a 3-6 or 7 in control if they really lean into it they can be a pain in the ass.

Made a new thread in the advice forum. Also reddit!

Also posted the cleric guide. TLDR, they are really good at most stuff besides blasting imo.

So I'ma be upfront here, I usually don't post because these threads can get icky real quick. That said, this was an important guide to me and I need as much help as I can get to make it better!

Blessed Be The Faithful (reddit post)

Blessed Be The Faithful: Iluzry's Guide To The Cleric

As always, be constructive, not cruel.

Honey, I made a guide for this.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Iu-XQ18JqInx7b90QP_biwCjkLviiMou4oSFEp fQYM/edit#heading=h.fc65bivujegw

IluzryMage wrote:

Hi everyone, I somewhat exist. {. . .}

Sounds like me when I wake up.

IluzryMage wrote:

{. . .}

Honestly the only reason I replied is that someone asked for my thoughts! Yall do what you think is right! Ima just keep working on this cleric guide in the background.

Now I'm waiting to see this Cleric guide . . . which is actually relevant here.

** spoiler omitted **

I did and made the changes as appropriate I'm p sure.

I mean sure someones going to be bad, but I I'm not suer if the shaman is it. NOW as far as listing all of the debuff spells, do I think there are more? ABSOLUTELY! Dozens likely

Am I going to add a single one? PROBABLY NOT! Not because I don't care or don't think its worth doing mind you but I literally don't have the mental bandwith to do so!!

Honestly the only reason I replied is that someone asked for my thoughts! Yall do what you think is right! Ima just keep working on this cleric guide in the background.

Hi everyone, I somewhat exist.

Anyway I think druids in general are probably not the best at debuffing base but if we are including archetypes, halycon druid and feyspeaker can put down some serious hurt debuffing wise, same with any of the druids that focus around necromancy stuff.

that said, I'd probably not list them more than a 7 at most.

SHAMANS on the other hand, I WILL ABSOLUTELY fight about. Shamans get access to a lot of spell lists and even if we keep all fcbs out of this, they still get accesst to evil eye + Misfortune + chant and ritual hex and have acess to arcane enlightment and EVEN if we want to go with the whole "shamans have a bad base spell list thing" it isnt like....unusable? Its just a bit awkward because its basically the witch spell list slammed into the druid spell list. They still ahve access to debuffs like hold person, bestow curse, baleful polymorph, and dominate person like...they aren't WEAK. Deserves to be up with witch, and at the lowest one point down for max.

(not even getting into archetypes)

Temperans wrote:

the number one thing at any level is action economy. Being able to standard action spell and then move opens up a lot more freedom (specially if you are flying or invisible).

That's a good point. A problem with the Razmiran priest is that he needs move actions to use those scroll spells in combat, and can't use metamagic on them (and casts them at minimum CL and DC). If he casts more than one, he'll probably need an additional move action to put the previous scroll away again.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

If the reason the Wizard is more powerful than the sorcerer is because of prepared casting than the arcanist should be even more powerful.

The arcanist is definitely stronger than the sorcerer. However, the wizard still gets higher level spells one level early (that is, half of the game the wizard is casting spells that arcanist or sorcerer cannot access yet) and wiz has markedly more spells per day than arc. I'd say wiz and arc are pretty much tied in terms of power.

You are entirely correct! Which is why we want 3 levels in Pathfinder Savant and 2 Levels in Cypher Mage.

3 savant gets us some neat spells and SCROLLMASTER which lets us cast at our CL (and we can use prestigous spellcaster to get our progression back) and cyphermage gets us the swift scroll cypher lore (you dont provoke for getting your scrolls and if you move 10 feet you can draw for free!!!!!) and insightful scroll for the DC (but only a few times per day..)

There are plenty of other neat scroll tricks you can do with cyphermage too, so don't be afraid to take a few more levels (like boosting your CL even further beyond!!!)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/vttca3/iluzrys_guide_to_sh adow_spells_and_mirror_magic/

Try this, it links to the reddit thread which should have a working link.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QNlMsNANJtFLIAAVUUzZS1UKz6eb2dkMbTGYDil Mw_M/edit#heading=h.fc65bivujegw - Shadow Spell Guide

And the item would be your scrolls yeah, hopefully carried in like a spellbook or binder or something.

I have always been told that in a vacuum and a theoretical world, that Wizards and their fellow peer fully prepared casters are Tier 1, and Sorcerers and their compatriot full spontaneous casters are Tier 1.5.

I have also seen that there are ways to bring Sorcerers etc up to be on this esoteric level.

How do you do that?

What follows is my thoughts and ramblings and ultimately I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Race: Half-Elf
I think this is the best choice for 2 reasons. The first being Elf Blood which lets you grab the Human Sorcerer FCB for more spells known, and the second is PARAGON SURGE.

Paragon Surge
A combination of Shapechanger Bloodline, Emergency Attunement , and Expanded Arcana should give the Sorcerer access to EVERY Arcane Spell as needed

False Priest
Being able to use Divine items without expending them gives you even MORE spells

Shadow Spells
A high risk high reward strategy but, boosting their DC boosts the DC of the spells they are imitating, and gives you even more spells on demand.

Bloodline: Arcane
Archetype: False Priest

FEATS
1 - Skill Focus (Disguise) *Free Feat Tax
1 - Spell Focus (Illusion)
3 - Eldritch Heritage (Shapechanger) *Feat Tax
5 - Solid Shadows
7 - Emergency Attunement
9 - Improved Eldritch Heritage (Shapechanger)
11 - *Metamagic*
13 - Quicken Magic
15 - Spell Perfection

It is all just theorycrafting, would love to hear what you think

As the person who wrote the shadow spell guide and the sorc guide...empathetically yes. The False Priest Sorc is imo the strongest caster in the game if built correctly, because it can potentially access the wizard, cleric, druid, and shaman lists all at once, and ALWAYS has them prepared so long as you have the item, which is the most tier 0 character possible.

If you were going to do this AND shadow spells though, I'd suggest ditching the shapechanger bloodline cheese, and leaning into shadowspell DC for your first 3 feats with spell focus, deific obedient to mallatalah, and then greater spell focus or some other feat to make it that much harder to resist.

Hear me out...use a gun.

Dragons notoriously have high SR/Saves/AC and like to fight from afar....but have trash touch AC. Which means that a good gun can do some real hurt.

get you spell cartridges to do force damage on touch attacks that they probably cant resist and hit them a lot. Try an eldritch archerX /spellsplinger1

That will kill the f~++ out of a dragon.

Well I just wrote an arcanist guide, so I can probably get a crack at that one, and I'm a little obsessed with the oracle so ya know...maybe two for two? But I've already done a bunch and don't want to hog them!

^Good points.

(1) So Extortion > Negotiation. Figures . . . .
(2) Good addition -- I had thought about this for a while for Summoner Eidolons not built to be combat powerhouses (especially as a way to make Master Summoner's Eidolon be still useful), but apart from the lack of feats, it's true for Familiars as well, if you put some thought into it, although on the flip side, it requires more thought in the first place when you're down at levels where Improved Familiar doesn't get you the good stuff yet, and even once you get that, it's still different for specific different Familiars. Actually deserves a whole section or maybe even a whole guide of its own, and somebody even did a pretty recent one that I need to go read, and . . . hey, Iluzry, you didn't tell me you did one too!

Oh yeah that came with the shaman guide I also wrote and have not posted here.

Lelomenia wrote:

I really endorse MrCharisma’s proposal to use ranges for all of these; lots of cases where a class is generically not very good at something, but if you build toward that thing it becomes better than other classes building toward that.

That's what I'm working toward, but need some help from other folks who know these classes in greater depth. In particular, shaman & psychic are real weak spots for me.

Lelomenia wrote:

Shaman examples are an extreme example of that in multiple ways. Going by their default spell list, they are the worst 9th level caster for spell list: i’d put them at a 3. But building for spell selection, they have by far the best effective spell list in the game (i would have them as the only 10). And it would be confusing to a reader to just toss that into ‘class features’; if someone looks at the guide wanting to build something with a strong effective spell list, they shouldn’t be pushed away from classes that are potentially ideal for that (also not clear that FCBs are ‘class features’).

Combat is the same challenge for shaman. By default, shaman is the worst divine class for combat (i’d give them a ‘4’ maybe). But building for it, i’d put them 2nd among 9th level casters built for combat (behind druid).

I'd appreciate (truly) more detail on those builds.

Ya know its funny...im writing a shaman guide RIGHT NOW.

HI try playing the Feyspeaker druid that has 6+int skills, is charisma based, and is a prepared full caster that gets access to some nice mind affecting abilities.

Hi its me again. Remember when I had that poll forever ago and a bunch of people asked for bard things? I am here to deliver on bard things. Not to say that this is EVERYTHING you need to know about bards, but this is what I was able to more or less put together. If you are going to leave comments, please have them be constructive, I make these guides for the community, and so as a community I want us to try to make them better.

The Show Must Go On

It also comes with a spell guide, which is mainly just ripped from my sorcerer guide so...do with that what you will!

*Writes down information for bard guide.*

IluzryMage wrote:

Hi as the guide author i would like less of this because really its just going in circles and i've already addressed both arguements in my guide.

Hey, IluzryMage. I was reviewing your guide again and had the thought: In your "Class Options' section where you state "Rather than list out every single combination that you could possibly do...", would you be interested in linking to my guide? You can say something along the lines that 'most of that work has already been done in this other guide'. It might even fit in your Anti-Early Entry section as well. I'd be more than willing to provide a link to your guide in my 'Early Entry Shenanigans' section.

I'd be happy to do a trade. I think it'd make sense to have a link to an up to date guide for people who don't want to do early entry, and you have some really good stuff in yours. I was actually thinking about this earlier!

Hi as the guide author i would like less of this because really its just going in circles and i've already addressed both arguements in my guide.

@ Illuzy.

Could I ask, where that main Art is from on the first page? I love it.

Finally, a question I want to answer.

https://twitter.com/mintsadui

They are a very talented artist with not nearly enough follows, please check them out.

Asked around on reddit, figured it needed an update, here is everything I could think of to say, lets do it!

The Art of Omnicide: Iluzry's Guide to the Pathfinder Slayer

Hey team, while im loving the work here, could we move this to a seperate forum so people can like appreciate DeathlessOne's work independent of what is going on here?

Right now their guide is kinda hidden in all of this and I think it'd be nice to have its own thread to work with.

I honestly think the best builds involve using magehunter -> bladecaster.

I'd say take Myrmidon Fighter - > Magehunter -> Bladecaster for a murderous 1-6 murder mage.

Temperans wrote:

Intimidate is a straight upgrade to the skill.

Of course these are all a straight upgrade. The question is whether that "straight upgrade" is worth spending a feat on.

And in the case of intimidate, it costs a standard action. So the question isn't "does this skill unlock do something", but the question is "is this worth using my only standard action". Doing this every turn is not good tactics.

If you want out-of-combat feats on your character, great! But there are much better options.

I mean...anyone who is making an intimidate build isn't going to use just their standard action. They are going to take cornugan smash/enforcer to be able to just bap people and then get a free intimidate...but before that would only net them a shaken. Now as they put more ranks into the skill (a thing they were likely going to do anyway) you can get higher levels of fear that are even better.

Depends on the skill!

Intimidate and Heal are gamechangers, with intimidate giving you higher levels of fear to destroy people, and heal giving you actually useful nonmagical healing on any character.

I wont say ALL of them are useful, but at least those two are pretty significant in my opininon.

IluzryMage wrote:

Hey team, so It took me a while because this is not the class that I am used to playing but ya know, it seemed like people wanted it and jesus Christ, most of the guides for these classes are either incredibly outdated or straight up broken.

So is the first draft of Ilzury's Guide to the Pathfinder Paladin and Antipaladin

Thanks for writing an updated guide!

I saw your note about equipment shopping at the end of your guide (and hard agree), but one note that might be useful to add is to tell players to consider barding and magic items for their mounts, if applicable. A player may be only thinking about the Big 7, but there's some great options for a mount out there. If you want a few suggestions to list, I like horseshoes of a zephyr, horseshoes of speed, and the Advancing armor quality for barding.

Even if you don't want to get into the specifics of magic items for mounts, a quick note reminding a reader to look at those options could be helpful.

Ya know what this is super important!! Lemme get some things written down

I'm back at it again Ilzury's Guide to the Pathfinder Paladin and Antipaladin

Paizo Discussion Thread

Hey team, so It took me a while because this is not the class that I am used to playing but ya know, it seemed like people wanted it and jesus Christ, most of the guides for these classes are either incredibly outdated or straight up broken.

So is the first draft of Ilzury's Guide to the Pathfinder Paladin and Antipaladin

So actually things brings up something fun. Usually what I do with guides is that I put up a 90% finished first draft, and then let people rip it to shreds.

This time, I wonder would anyone be interested in me instead just sorta starting with an outline and throwing information at me as I go along?

Well I guess im working on a paladin/antipaladin guide next

I was going to do one on the bard but I lost a fair bit of steam. I only see paladin players around occasionally and figured I'd ask if a new paladin guide would be useful.

Ah well most things werent something where i had to really change anything just make a note of but I diiiid note one or two things

For prestige classes -- Any comments on Sentinel? Unlike the Evangelist, it is a full BAB class, but it offers its own combat bonuses instead of nearly full class feature advancement.

So the main concern with sentinnel is that it lacks align class, which means you miss out on a lot of your order features, your challenge damage/bonuses, and tactician upgrades which is a LOTT of goodies to give up.

Divine Infusions: Dazed: Dazed is less severe than helpless -- a Dazed opponent doesn't lose AC (including their Dexterity bonus) -- they just can't take actions. So this means no automatic Coup de Grace, so Dazed isn't automatically deadly. Still brutal, though.

Divine Infusions: Blinded: If you apply this as a Cruelty, your Rogue/Ninja/Slayer/Vivisectionist ally will love you. Green (3/5), dinged only because it is competing with Paralyzed (but still good to have a backup in case they're immune to Paralysis).

Archetypes: Arcane Exemplar: The weird thing is that even though you don't get armored arcane spellcasting, you still get Medium Armor + Shield proiciency. This means you actually could take Arcane Armor Training and Arcane Armor Mastery for reliable armored spellcasting, but that's 2 feats and eats your Swift Action economy. Still bad.

Feats: Power Attack/etc.: These are must-haves for a full BAB character, but on a 3/4 BAB character, you not only get only 3/4 of the benefit, but you also fall even further behind in total attack bonus.

Feats: Divine Fighting Technique: You don't have to take this twice to get the advanced benefit -- you just need to meet the prerequisites (usually another feat and a BAB requirement, but some Divine Fighting Techniques modify this for better or for worse). Desna's Shooting Star is busted good (Megenta 6/5), and you can even substitute ranks of Sleight of Hand for BAB to qualify for the advanced benefit, although it does have 2 prerequisite feats (but you will want Rapid Shot anyway, and Point Blank Shot is a prerequisite for that).

* * * * * * * *

The Herald: Spell Casting: "Unlike spells per day, the number of spells a Herald knows is not affected by her Charisma score; the numbers on Table 2 above are fixed" -- currently, Table 2 is actually below, not above.

The Herald: Sermon: List of Sermons: Litany of Lethargy: Busted good (Magenta 6/5) if you stack it with the Slow spell (on the Herald's spell list) -- at higher levels,...

Okay made all of the appropriate edits I think. Also really good catch on the herald oversights! Especially with me taking the text for Weapon of Wrath.

now a neutral herald can choose planar or negating, so they can cut through DR with incredibly ease.

Question, so has anyone brought up the runesage archetype?

It counts as a universalist wizard but can also use thassolian magic. You must even be able to turn your bonded object into an amulet of magecraft, so that your 2 thasslian slots can be used for any spell of that days respective school!

Just ya know, a thought

If they get orisons and spells of 1st to 6th level, isn't that a 2/3 caster, not a half caster?

So that might be just a terminology thing on my part. I always thing 1-6 is half and 1-4 is quarter but frankly thats probably a me issue.

Hi its me yet again.

This time with the Omdura.

Divine Might and Sacred Rites: Iluzry's Guide to the Omdura

Discussion Thread Here

So the omdura exists, I didn't see a guide for it, so I made one. Short, sweet, to the point.

Obviously if anyone has anything they want to add, I'd appreciate that, but only if its done in a constructive manner.

Divine Might and Sacred Rites: Iluzry's Guide to the Omdura

Well first I've gotta ask, do you want to be ONLY a blaster or just mainly a blaster?

So like pathfinder is FULL of powerful martial options.

I'd probably my person favorites are either:
-Trappings of the Warrior Panoply Occultist: Who is the only half caster that gets actual full bab, has more spells than most half casters at late level and has lots and lots of tricks thanks to being a psychic caster

-The Ironbound Samurai Fighter: Wherein you take 5 levels of fighter, and the rest in the Ironbound Samurai archetype and ALL OF YOUR CLASS FEATURES STACK AND YOUR FIGHTER LEVELS COUNT AS SAMURAI LEVELS AND VICE VERSA for a truely astounding number of bonuses and feats. Not to mention that fighters are pretty damn good on their own now.

Otherwise, another fave of mine in melee is...9th level divine casters.

I am unforunately serious.

-The Druid can wildshape into a doom dinosaur and tag team with their hyperbuffed doggo companion and both get like 5 attacks per round and pounce.

-The Cleric can cast lots of buffs, is still a 3/4th bab character and can get wicked powers from domains.

-I stand by my opinion that oracles can do whatever they want but they can easily get charisma to ac, initative and a bunch of other stuff if you know which mysteries to pick.

-Shaman can also do whatever it wants and with wandering hex, you dont even have to be focused in battling, you can just pick it up for kicks and get a hex that makes you better in melee.

All divine casters can basically wear whatever armor they want (just watch out of ACP) get insane spells, and if you want, can probably take samasaran mystic past life to just steal all be best spells for the paladin. Ever wanted a +5 weapon at level 7??? Holy Sword your cleric for easy ouchy!

Okay so technically, what you are looking for are the Planar Binding and Planar Ally spell lines that are ya know, really intense.

That said, if you don't want to deal with that hastle, and are okay with 3rd party, I have just the class for you

The Pactmaker By Radiance House is all about binding spirits and getting super powers from them, even if you can't always summon them into the material world. You can use vestigal bonds to usually get some sort of companion.

Also has a whole system for binding called Pact Magic

Have fun!

Broken Zenith wrote:

Alright, I think I got everything. Added some guides, and made copies of some of the older guides.

Feel free to poke around and let me know what I missed.

It's crazy that some of these guides are over a decade old!

Guide to the Guides

Guide to the Builds

Hehehe...I've got 4 guides on zenith now...I'm so happpppppppppyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

And back with a 5

Iluzry's Guide To The Mystic Theurge

Discussion Thread

Is there anyway of getting someone who is a bit blasty, skilled at talking and sneaking, and is a psychic caster?

By bit blasty, I'm not looking for maximized super duper fireballs of doom, but something that is a bit more contained Like little touch attack spells that deal damage.

My goal is to make a kitsune spell caster and kinda want to be able to cast while in fox form.

Mostly I wanna be able to do physic spell casting stuff but not be immediately screwed the moment I meet a zombie or something not weak against enchantment/illusion

So okay if you just want to do this first of all, I'd say just play a psychic, and pick up the Will of the Dead Psychic amplification and from there, pick up a discipline that gets you 1 or two go-to bonus spells, like faith, or rebirth (or take the esoteric starseeker archetype if you are like me, and can't choose).

Psychic sorcs CAST like psychics but use the sorcerer spell list. Same with arcanists. If you want to do psychic mind things as your main, I'd say just play a psychic and find easy workarounds.

HI EVERYONE, It's me, that girl who just KEEPS WRITING THINGS.

So like basically what happened is while I Was writing my incredibly long and wonderful sorcerer guide (that you should definitely read), I started thinking about the Mystic Theurge and the fact that it kinda has a bad rep?

Like okay I know it has some issues, but I thought, "hey if you know how to deal with those issues, and how to think about the class, it's actually INSANELY powerful as a prestige class."

...And well you can guess what happened from there. So uh...here's a mini guide!!!

Yo Dawg, I Heard You Liked Spell's: Iluzry's Guide To The Mystic Theurge.

Next guide I THINK will be for the omdura but ya know, I'm taking this one slow after writing 4 of these....well I guess 5 now.

IluzryMage wrote:

So nothing in the item description seems to specifically say arcane spells...just that its only useful to arcane spellcasters. Moreover, we know that you can cast any spell so long as you know it and its on your spellcasting list, which this ring does. So...idk seems like a silly raw thing but hey if you can find something for me that says it only arcane spells, I'll take it.

Actually it specifically says "Arcane spells" in the last paragraph...

IluzryMage wrote:

Also I have because transmutation spells include A LOT of great buffs. Moreoever, you CAN cast so long as the form you take a.) has limbs to perform somatic components and B.) can speak A language to perform verbal components, so elemental body, Form of the Dragon, Fey for, Undead Anatomy, Monsterous Physique??? All of those spells fly and you can still cast in those forms.

That's good news, especially Elemental Body. But if I were a Razmiran Priest, I would need a False Focus to cast...

The last paragraph specifically calls out arcane spells that are off list being 1 level higher...it doesn't say that the spell you CHOOSE needs to be an arcane spell, only that if you do, and its not on your list, its a level higher.

Again if you can find something in that text that says the spells you CHOOSE have to be arcane spells, I'll roll with you.

Also you don't NEED a false focus to cast, it's just nice to have because it pays for things. If you have a polymorphic pouch you should be fine.

Alright, I think I got everything. Added some guides, and made copies of some of the older guides.

Feel free to poke around and let me know what I missed.

It's crazy that some of these guides are over a decade old!

Guide to the Guides

Guide to the Builds

Hehehe...I've got 4 guides on zenith now...I'm so happpppppppppyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Is anyone having issues seeing the melee summoner guide? I keep geting requests for access.

Also try using this link gomen

Is anyone having issues seeing the melee summoner guide? I keep geting requests for access.

Hm no I have access. Lemme see if I can get a link for you

Also since I've had it reviewed enough that I think its finally worth putting up, I've finally finished my 4th guide, Unlimited Mageworks: Iluzry's Guide To The Sorcerer and Building God's Grimoire: Iluzry's Guide to Sorcerer Spellcasting and Selection

Discussion Thread