Kaboogy's page

A couple weeks ago I got enamored with the concept of a Dandy Goblin. I'm talking full on charismatic, smooth, suave (and maybe a bit sexy *wink*) goblin. Thing is I usually start building PCs with stronger mechanical concepts, planning them out many levels in advance, so I'm kinda unsure what to do next. I'm also not sure about goblin lore and names in general.

I'm thinking about going Scoundrel Rogue for the skill feats and charisma boost, but I'm open to other ideas.

So any fun builds that will fit this description? Funny names/backstories?

I’ve seen true strike brought up in several threads by now, so I thought it should have a dedicated thread.

To summarize, here’s the story with true strike as I see it:
- True strike is an extremely good spell essential for caster hit chances, and is at the base of most pre-magus gish builds
- The magus has no in-built support for true strike due to low spell slots
- True strike synergises well with spell strike crit fishing (2 round routine: cast into weapon, stride, true strike, strike)

As things currently stand the concern is that we’ll see almost all Magi either taking caster MCDs or using shifting divine staff shenanigans, cutting on build variability. On the other hand, giving Magi additional access to true strike might be too strong (not to mention that it might go against paizo’s plans with these new half casters).

So what do you guys think? How can this issue be avoided? Is it even a problem?

My opinion is that it’s a bit weird and anti-thematic that THE gish doesn’t get the gishiest spell. I think they should get good access to it, but make it mostly exclusive to spell strike in some way.

In my opinion (which you should feel free to disagree with) there are two parts to a satisfying Magus class:

- Being able to go nova
- Having loads of utility

With these two points Magus play has them doing less damage on a regular round than the other martials while staying relevant thanks to their utility (things like mobility with jump, getting at least one strike in with true strike, tanking with mirror image etc.), and they can really bring the hurt when needed by going nova.

What governs going nova is of course Spell Strike and the small number of high level spells. What about the utility?

One option is to change the way they get slots, but that can cause too many (albeit smaller) nova resources, not to mention that such a slot structure may not fit other "half caster" plans.

My suggestion is not to look to the wizard with their many slots, but to the cleric with their many heals - the Combat Font. The Combat Font is a number of additional slots equal to 1+Int which are reserved to utility spells. These slots can be used to cast a small number of utility spells determined either by some subclass structure or by nonexclusive class feat trees.

For example a "movement Magus" might get Jump at level 1, Spider Climb at 3, nothing at 5 (because of heightened), Fly at 7 etc.

A "defense Magus" might get Mage Armor, Mirror Image, Spell Immunity and so forth.

A "polymorph Magus" can get the shape spells.

True Strike should probably be on its own tree, since it's so good for a martial.

I think this kind of approach can give the Magus a more magical feel while keeping it out of other casters' niches. It also has the added benefit of keeping Int relevant if they remove the spell attack from Spell Strike.

I think by this point it's evident that Striking Spell is lackluster, but I didn't see any in depth calculations. I had some time on my hands so I cracked open a spreadsheet, and set out to answer the question: How does spell strike with a damaging attack spell compare to other 3-action combinations?

In short? Badly. In fact, out of all the options I checked, spell strike never improves round damage by more than 5%.

In the linked spreadsheet I calculated the ratio between damage dealt with striking spell and the best of the other three action options the magus has:

• -Strike then spell
• -Spell then strike
• -Strike three times

Of the 2,484 options I calculated Striking Spell improved damage in only 39 cases, all in the 65%-70% weapon hit range

I've got to say, this is extremely disappointing. Not only is this ability just plain bad, it was an easily avoidable problem; it only took a couple of hours to do this calculation.

I know the team likes to low ball playtest abilities , but this is just sad.

So with the 1.6 Paladin we were given conformation of non-LG Paladins, and what those look like. I have some thoughts and opinions I'd like to share.

First of all, I am really happy the alignment has been opened up, and I am especially excited at the prospect of more then 9 Paladins, since more can be created with the same alignments but different value systems, or even independent of alignment.

What I dislike is that it seems that all of the Paladins will have a reaction as their main class feature; just within the domain of LG I want a sword of Right and Justice, that gets basically smite evil instead. This seems overly restrictive, and dismisses many loved and cherished tropes for no reason.

What I suggest (besides opening up the above restriction) is to have class feats with alignment prerequisites (single element only). This will help both to differentiate the different the different Paladins and emphasize the common ground between some of them, all with lower page count than many feats with the various reactions as prerequisites.

What do you folk think?

All in all, great work done, and hopefully great work ahead!

This may have been answered before,but my search-fu was too weak.
What action does it take to end a totem transformation (from the various Druid shaman archetypes)? And does it take a different amount of time to change the specific power gained from it?

So one of the benefits of the feat are as follows:

Aura Mastery (Use Magic Device 1 rank): Once per day, you can choose a single school of magic represented by one of your wondrous items’ auras; you treat your caster level as 1 higher when casting a single spell of that school. You can make this choice at any time during the day, but you must choose the item (and school) before casting the spell.

Does this mean that you add the bonus once per day or that you choose the spell that gets the bonus one per day, and get the bonus to all castings?

So the Ultimate Equipment errata just happened, and I was wondering if there is some list of all the things changed, or do I need to go through the updated version and compare everything to the last one. Any help?

A mystic bolt deals 1d6 points of damage plus 1 for every 4 vigilante levels the warlock has.

So, stupid question, but does this mean the damage is 1d6+(lvl/4) or (1d6+1)*(1+lvl/4)?

First of all, this post is for natural weapons, not unarmed strikes. There are several discussions about unarmed strikes, and this is not one of them, so please steer clear of them.

Let's say I have two claw attacks, Power Attack, Feral Combat Training (claws) and Dragon Style. Does my first claw attack benefit from -1\+3 PA? What if I have Dragon Ferocity? Do I then get -1\+3 to both attacks?
It's my opinion that the answer is yes to all, but I am biased, and I can see it argued that the claws aren't really 1.5 STR weapons, even if they do get 1.5 STR to damage.

So I've been working on a Bloodrager* (*with a lot of multiclassing) build for a while for PFS, and thought I should show it around for impressions/opinions/advice before finally making him. In the feat section * means the feat can easily and willingly be changed.
So here is Mel :

Level 10 Human
Bloodrager [Abyssal,Spelleater] 2\ Monk [MoMS] 1\Bloodrager 2\Fighter [Mutation Warrior] 5

Traits: Magical Knack, Indomitable Faith
STR 26 (20 buy, 2 lvl, 4 item)
DEX 10
CON 14
INT 7
WIS 10
CHA 12

Feats:

1. Power Attack
1H. Weapon Focus (claws)
3M. IUS, SF, Dragon Style
3. Feral Combat Training
5. Dragon Ferocity
6F. Arcane Strike*
7F. Riving Strike*
7. Iron Will*
9F. Martial Versatility (feral combat training)
9. Toughness *

Items 68,000 gp, 4 pp
+1 Full Plate
+1 Furious Amulet of Mighty Fists
Belt of Giant Strength +4
Ring of Rat Fangs
Helm of the Mammoth Lord
Cloak of Resistance +1
Blood Reservoir of Physical Prowess
Gloves of Dueling
MW Shurikens galor
Wand of CLW
Wand of Shield

Rundown:
[] in rage, {} rage and mutagen

Init 0
Speed 40

HP 97 [117]
AC: 20 [17]{19}, touch 10 [7], +4 from Wand of Shield
Fort 13 [15], Ref 5 [4], Will 7 [9]
[Fast Healing 1]

Reach 5 [10]
Attacks in a full attack with PA, Arcane Strike and rage, which enlarges Mel
(note that martial versatility applies Dragon Style tree to all attacks)
Us +22 (1d8+36(2*STR+3AoMF+6PA+2AS+3WT-GoD)) avg 40.5
Us +17 (1d8+30(1.5*STR+3AoMF+6PA+2AS++3WT-GoD)) avg 34.5
Claws +18\+18 (1d8+25) avg 29.5
Bite +17 (1d6+25) avg 28.5
Gore +17 (1d8+25) avg 29.5
Total 191
Against AC 27 - 125 DPR

With Mutagen:
US +24 (1d8+40)\ +19 (1d8+33)
Claws +20\+20 (1d8+27)
Bite +19 (1d6+27)
Gore +19 (1d8+27)
Total 206
Against AC 27 - 155 DPR
A casting of Chill Touch ups this base to 171 for one turn
A use of Blood Reservoir of Physical Prowess ups this base to 239 for one turn

Ranged: Flurry with Shurikens in rage with mutagen
Shuriken 7\7\2 (1d2+15)

So the build is simple in essence- lots of attacks, lots of strength to those attacks. The AC could be better, but money is tight and if I have extra I'd probably get longarm bracers for super reach.

So I'm working on a kickass damage dealer for PFS that
I'm real happy with. Problem is, his AC is abysmal, and he's a bloodrager, so it only gets worse when he rages. I've only done the calculations for level 10, but at that level my AC is going to be a horrible 15/13 when raging. Now I could shell out 12K to up that to 19/17, but it'll hurt my DPR quite a bit, and I'm just not sure it's worth it.
So tl;dr- how low should your AC be (and at what level) to just not care anymore?

So I have a natural weapon bloodrager, whose build I planned out (mostly) up to level 10. In my planning I noticed that I am extremely low on money, with the main culprit being the +3 amulet of mighty fists, which costs a staggering 20000gp more the the +2. Now, the +1 to attack and damage isn't worth the high price, but it does grant my attacks the ability to bypass cold iron and silver DR. So the question arises, is bypassing the DR worth the cost? How much does cold iron and silver DR come up?

TL;DR- How common and how high are DR/cold iron and DR/silver in PFS games?

So I have a level 2 PFS transmutation (enhancement) wizard. I have only played a mid-high level home game before, and the change to low levels and PFS have left me with some questions.

First of all, I am debating the effectiveness of my Augment school ability. In practice, it means I give an ally a +1 to attack rolls and damage rolls for 1 round as a standard action. Is it worth it, or should I only use it once I ran out of spells?

Secondly, I was always a bit underwhelmed with the wizard feat choices, and now that I can't take crafting feats, I find myself struggling to chose enough of them. Which would you recommend?
On a related note, what do you guys think of Combat Advice? I was thinking that giving me something to do with my move actions would be great, and I have the book, but I don't have a lot of in play experience and I'm not sure how it measures to some more standard feats, like spell penetration etc.

So I've heard that the Elemental Annihilator is damage focused, but I just don't see how it does more damage then the regular Kineticist. Since I've seen no one else ask this question, it seems I'm missing something obvious here. Could someone go through the EA damage calculations so I can see what it is I missed?

So I'm building a PFS wizard, and we didn't really pay attention to non magical equipment in my regular group, so I'm pretty lost. I'm playing a wizard with a bonded object, and I only have the Advanced Players Guide. What should I get? What are the standards?

I've been playing in PF for a while now, and found out on very short notice that there is a PFS game near me. So, with very little time I'm trying to make a first level enhancement wizard to play. Now, I know the rules well, but I only made a 9th level character before in a very unorthodox table, and obviously not PFS. So, I need help with rushing this on paper, especially with spells, equipment and encumbrance (that were mostly ignored in my group), and PFS stuff.
I've been thinking of this build
human wizard(enhancement transmuter, opposed divination and enchantment)
str 7+1(transmuter)
dex 14
con 14
int 18+2(human)
wis 11
cha 7

traits: (can I choose any without buying ultimate campaign first?)
reactionary
?
As for the feats, I need to choose spells first in order to make my mind. I don't have much time, and don't own any books yet, so options that can be chosen without owning a book are preferred (same with spells), and if it's from an additional resource please say which one in case I have the time to buy it.

Does anybody have any idea what would happen if a wizard with multimorph cast PAO on himself? Seems to me that they would basically have a permanent pick and choose greater polymorph, but PAO is such a bundle of confusion that I'm not really sure about anything. Ideas?

The rules say you can make a trip attempttac instead of an attack. The trip attempt uses your CMB, so absurdly replacing a +17 first attack with trip and a +2 fourth attack would use the same bonus to the trip attempt.
Am I missing a line or a ruling, or are the rules really as so? Seems a bit broken to me (not that fighters have that much love from the rules).

As the title. The pfsrd has only four tattoo, and I understood there are more. I'd also like to know what books they are from.

So I came across the guided weapon property and got really excited, but was confused at the lack of the sound of monk enthusiasts' heads exploding. I'm guessing this is because of the source of the property, which seemed weird to me since it is paizo material.
So, what I'm asking for is an organized classification of the different types of sources. Which are for simple games, which are for the advanced, which aren't used for some reason (when and why) etc.

I'm thinking about starting a cleric, but since I have no experience playing one I need a little help. I looked for some guides, but they were all either old (CRB and APG) or extremely incomplete (if you know of a good one I'd like to see it).
So, I'd like some advice. what kinds of ability scores do you use, what are some good domains and such. Also, are the variant channeling a thing that can be used every game like archetypes, or are they variant rules that completely change the game?

I think I understand how the pricing works, but I'm not sure.
If I have a +1 flaming glamered weapon it would cost 8000(for the +2 bonus) plus 4000 for the glamered effect, to a total of 12000gp from what I understood.

Also, the set price bonuses don't count against you bonus restrictions, so you can have a +5 vorpal dueling weapon (that will cost 214000gp).

The title pretty much says it all. Can you use the retrieve item spell to retrieve an item from an extra-dimensional space? If you can, what type of action is it?

Can you hide the presence of ioun stones by using disguise self?

Let's say a duelist with two-weapon fighting forgoes his off hand attack to parry, and then ripostes, do any of his attacks get the -2/-4 penalty for two-weapon fighting? I think that he doesn't because of the answer to

and

In other words, you make a one-handed full attack, so no penalty, and then you make an AoO, so no penalty.

And on a related note, did the question on whether or not the precise damage applies in the aforementioned situation get resolved?

I wanted to hear some opinions on this discovery, but found no posts on it, so here it is.

First question, does anybody know of any spell except bull's strength. eagle's splendor etc and their mass counterparts that is affected by this discovery?

Secondly, what do you think about this discovery? Have any useful ideas for it? The only one I came up with is a (preferably 20th level) commander that can really benefit from giving a whole bunch of allies a plus 6/8 to an ability score with a mass spell.

If I find a magic item, I can sell it for half price. What about crafting a magic item? Do I sell it for half price or full? If I sell it for full price, when does it turn after a half price sell? After I wear it? Never?

I want to add some abilities to my level ten wizard with some permanency spells, and wanted to add to my caster level while casting to avoid being dispelled. So, I need a list. Spells, consumable items and permanent items are all good for this cause, as long as it can be used by or on a wizard.

I want to make an item that allows my wizard to prepare another spell each day. The item crafting table says it should cost the spell level squared times 1000, but that's what a pearl of power costs, which does something less powerful. This implies that my custom item should cost more than a pearl of power. Thought?

*First thread on the site! Huzzah!*
While looking for equipment I noticed the arrowmaster's bracers and their 1/day hit for one of my lvl 10 wizard's ranged touch attacks, which is great. Thing is, I don't need the rest of the item. I already have a deflection bonus, and don't mind the casting protection from arrows every day.
So, I started deconstructing the cost to try to see how much just the truestrike, or an additional use of it, would cost. Sadly, none of the effects follow the formula: (two of the effect should cost *1.5, one I now what costs the most)
The DR would have cost 12000 if they were 10/magic, but they're 5/magic.
The deflection bonus should have been 2000, but it's only against ranged attacks.
As for the true strike, my best guess is that it's a quickened trustrike, with the cost of a command word/5 for one charge per day. This ends up as 5*9*2000/5=18000

I'm lost. Any ideas?

arrowmaster's bracers:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/a-b/arrow master-s-bracers