Jokon Yew's page

Does an Arcanist count as a wizard or sorcerer or neither? The Arcanist is a blend of Wizard and Sorcerer. Feats may work a little differently. For example, Expanded Arcana, instead of adding to the list of "Spells Known" for a sorcerer with a list of spells known, It adds to an Arcanist the number of "slots" or spells an arcanist can prepare.

All of the advanced classes count as both for purposes of effects that are dependent on their constituent classes. That is, an arcanist is considered a wizard and a sorceror. This means that you can't multiclass arcanist/wizard, as the arcanist is already a wizard. This is particularly potent for a bloodrager, as there are numerous items that grant barbarian rage powers (which are usable per the bloodrage ability as that qualifies as rage for all effects that affect it).

Where did you find your writing that Expanded Arcana does that for arcanists? I'm pretty sure that since arcanists prepare spells, they can't take the Expanded Arcana feat. They cast spontaneously, but don't actually have a list of spells known. Spell Mastery is not valid RAW, but it's more in line with the type of feat you're looking for.

Some comments that I need to preface by saying: The first few levels of arcanist are particularly painful. You get so few spells known and so few slots that levels 1-3 are excruciating. Level 5 or 6 is where the class takes off.

Arcanists prepare spells from a spellbook. They don't have any problems with spells known that aren't solvable with gold in PFS.

The worst part of alignment arguments is that it's essentially meta-gaming. Without abilities that reveal and/or interact with alignment traits, it's completely invisible to most characters and NPCs. It's always a good idea to double-check with a GM regarding a sketchy course of action, but insisting that your character would or would not behave a certain way because of alignment is like saying you won't step into the color spray because you know you only have 3 hit dice.

At best, alignment is an awkward control for characters that have specific restrictions on how they're allowed to behave - a control that is essentially under the hand of the GM. As a player, you have no arbitration on what defines a good or evil act that's not explicitly defined by your character's abilities.

People seem to forget neutral. Maybe this is a good time to plug the new splatbook? There's a really good section describing each of the alignments as well as providing personality profiles common to those alignments.

Using an evil spell to heal an injured person is a neutral act. If I take the powers of the damned and save an orphanage with hellfire, I am neutral. Describing that event is just weighing the scales; it may be more good or more evil, but the net effect is neutral.

Killing an aggressive tribe of orcs to save a village from raiding and looting is neutral. A good character would seek redemption, negotiation, or other means of ensuring that all parties come out ahead. Failing to do so is not evil; if a paladin has no choice but to destroy the orcs then he commits an unspeakable act of neutrality, barring any specific conventions of his beliefs. Destroying the orcs because he can is evil.

There's a thousand ways to die, you can't cover all of them.

Retirement.

You can also purchase multi-scrolls with PP. In most cases you'd rather buy a wand, but for level 2/3 spells that you want multiples of you can go with a multi-scroll.

2 PP gets you a 5 charge scroll of invisibility, for example. Or see invisibility.

It actually is pretty swervy. Here's the average values I calculated for myself - this is the amount of gold you earn after three scenarios played, and represents the amount of gold you should expect to have by the start of the next level. Your mileage will vary. It assumes that you play each level to the tier recommended - out of tier averages were not used.

TOTAL GOLD BY LEVEL
1 - 1500
2 - 3000
3 - 7000
4 - 11000
5 - 16200
6 - 23700
7 - 35700
8 - 49200
9 - 65400
10 - 77900
11 - 100400

GOLD EARNED PER LEVEL
1 +1500
2 +1500
3 +4000
4 +4000
5 +5200
6 +7500
7 +12000
8 +13500
9 +16200
10 +22500
11 +22500

As you can see, a PFS character definitely is ahead of the wealth curve, but not always at an even amount. This has to do with the way tiers are structured, but that's a topic for another post.

John - the best I could find was in the FAQ. It explicitly says that the items created using the Alchemy class feature can't be sold. Although this particular ruling is in the context of creating items to be sold back mechanically at profit, I think it creates a specificity/functional conflict with day jobs. There's actually a lot of strong arguing for both positions in threads all throughout 2010-2013, so short of someone laying out the law I don't see a solid ruling.

It's not like there's no precedent for class features modifying day jobs - gladhandling bards comes to mind, and valet familiars are a grey area.

I actually had this happen to my conjuror at the table I played at last week. Summoned a babau to dispel magic and had the superstitious barbarian go nuts - it became an optional encounter!

We all had a hearty laugh, and I went on to eat a sigil wafer. I wouldn't get too worked up about it.

62.) If I insist on save or suck, I will have some method of improving my chances.

13.) If I am a spell caster, I will prepare spells that I can expect to actually use.

Howdy! I'm attempting to build a valet familiar that can take advantage of the flyby aid another feature. Here's the scenario I want to cover:

Most familiars are tiny or smaller, meaning that to use aid another in combat they have to enter the square of their target (to make a melee attack) and thus provoke attacks of opportunity. An approved improved familiar (brownie, faerie dragon, imp, lyrakien azata, mephit, quasit, and sprite) can be given a *tiny* whip, which has a 10' reach at that size. Imps, lyrakiens, mephits, and quasit familiars can get proficiency for this whip using a Cracked Opalescent Pyramid Ioun Stone (they are proficient with martial weapons), and the others can get this proficiency with a normal opalescent pyramid (at a hideously expensive price for the privilege). This means they can make aid another attempts at 10' AND use the flyby-aid feature of the valet without provoking those nasty attacks of opportunity. Heaven forbid you try this with an animal familiar at home.

My problem is that none of the good-aligned familiars get Weapon Finesse. The requirement of Weapon Finesse limits the cheaper build to imps and quasits - both creatures of dubious character, neither of whom I'm inclined to give a whip, and both invalid improved familiar choices for good characters. If you can shell out 10,000 gold for the better stone you can add other familiars, but that's a serious opportunity cost for the alignment choice.

My question is this - is there a way in Pathfinder Society to get Weapon Finesse onto a familiar whose base form does not possess it? The familiar's normal feature that adds dexterity to attacks only applies to natural attacks, which will trigger attacks of opportunity. A normal reach weapon isn't ideal for any of these creatures due to their poor strength scores (although an imp with a ranseur is neat). Just to reiterate, this would not be as big a problem if I weren't limited to good/neutral familiars.