Barbarian

Kerholme's page

No posts. Alias of Nitro~Nina.



Verdant Wheel

Um. Well. I think you'll know where this is going. Spiritual weapon lets you use your Deity's Weapon's damage type; for instance, a Cleric of Tlehar would be able to use Bludgeoning or Piercing damage for attacks with a Spiritual Morningstar. Laudinmio's divine weapon is, because they're just incredibly cool, the "Alchemical Bomb". Obviously, there's no splash or anything because it's just the damage that's relevant and the spell's pretty clear about nothing else applying, but would you really be able to use Spiritual Alchemist's Fire to do fire damage? Or Spiritual Bottled Lightning to shock your foes?

The RAW answer seems, to me, a little potent, and I'd suspect that the RAI might be "ah, shoot, missed one", but I'm also interested in how GMs would rule this balance-wise. Is it fair enough to let a player have a spell this damage-diverse that can apply Strike triggers? Should a player decide which bomb Laudinmio allows them to use for this spell, and they can retrain it in downtime?

(For reference: "The weapon's Strikes are melee spell attacks. [...] You can deal damage of the type normally dealt by the weapon instead of force damage (or any of the available damage types for a versatile weapon). [...] Despite making a spell attack, the spiritual weapon is a weapon for purposes of triggers, resistances, and so forth.")

Verdant Wheel

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Is your Elemental Hand Crossbow/Pistol/Air Repeater loaded already when you Gather an Element? The word "reload" is used as if it is, and this could create confusion since Cycle Elements is presumably not meant to immediately refresh a whole Capacity magazine.

This isn't so much a rules question as I think I'm pretty clear on the answer, but it might be helpful to make it obvious that you have to load your weapon as-normal, as much as that sucks for anyone who started the fight without a pre-Gathered Element.

Verdant Wheel

Is your Elemental Hand Crossbow/Pistol/Air Repeater loaded already when you Gather an Element? The word "reload" is used as if it is, and this could create confusion since Cycle Elements is presumably not meant to immediately refresh a whole Capacity magazine.

This isn't so much a rules question as I think I'm pretty clear on the answer, but it might be helpful to make it obvious that you have to load your weapon as-normal, as much as that sucks for anyone who started the fight without a pre-Gathered Element.

Verdant Wheel

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Obviously haven't played this new Kineticist yet, but in theory this hits a lot of the notes I was hoping for.

I especially like:
All-day martial blasts with trait differentiation
Yoon's art
Elemental Weapon
Playing with the action economy and feat system
Yoon's letter
Distinct-feeling Impulse lists for each element, including different healing powers
Built-in utility
Gom-Gom

Obviously there are always going to be quibbles (I'd like blasts to see a little more emphasis myself) but these are things I am very excited to see stay! Especially Gom-Gom!

Verdant Wheel

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I just think it'd be neat to add in a bit of language that the go-up-a-wall version can be steps or a ramp. Would add another option for wheelchair-using PCs as well as adding a bit of interesting utility that clever players could have fun with. Not a huge thing, but I'm sure it'd be appreciated.

(Plus, I'd be tickled pink to see a wheelchair-using geokineticist casually ruin the entrance of every inaccessible building they come across.)

Verdant Wheel

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The Poisoner archetype allows you to take the Rogue feat Poison Weapon at level 6. Note that, in this edition, everyone knows what I mean by "level 6" because it's the level my character is and that always means the same thing unless preceded by the word "spell". Essentially, the whole concept of a class level is a thing of the past... Which is brilliant, except that Poison Weapon mentions your "rogue level" in its Special benefit.

Poison Weapon wrote:
Special During your daily preparations, you can prepare a number of simple injury poisons equal to your rogue level. These poisons deal 1d4 poison damage. Only you can apply these poisons properly, and they expire the next time you prepare.

This poses a problem for the Poisoner archetype, as it doesn't grant a rogue level, because, as above, that's not actually a thing. Nobody has a rogue level, not even members of that class, though a Rogue player obviously knows that the feat means "your level" because it couldn't mean anything else. Even in the case of the Rogue archetype, because the rules are a conversation, one could make an educated guess and assume that, as with qualifying for class feats granted by multiclass archetypes, the effective level is equal to half your level.

However, if you agree with that ruling, no such provision exists for the Poisoner archetype. If you don't, you're left with the same conundrum for both the Rogue archetype and the Poisoner. Either you have a "rogue level" of zero by dint of not being a Rogue, or you just do as the Rogue player does and mentally edit out the word "rogue" entirely. Erring on the side of caution, the former option effectively means that they only gain the primary effects of the feat, which are cool... Except that the archetype also grants the Improved Poison Weapon feat, which has vanishingly little point if not for the Special entry on Poison Weapon. It technically saves you a poison on a critfail, but that being the sole benefit for a tenth-level feat doesn't really make sense intent-wise when you get Sticky Poison two levels earlier.

So the intent was, I think, that you get the full benefit of the feat, using your full level as always because there's no special exception. I don't know if that holds up at all, though I also don't think it'll massively throw off balance for anyone.

Is there anything I've missed or got wrong?
Is this a reasonable interpretation?
Third question for comedic effect?

Verdant Wheel

The War Soul archetype for the Soulblade Psionic Class adds a new Blade Skill, which can allow you to create a specific Discipline weapon, which can be of any type and you're automatically proficient with it. My question refers to this bit here:

Discipline Blade Shapes wrote:
Ranged weapons that use ammunition generate their own standard ammunition out of the mind blade’s current shape, or may use non-psychically generated ammunition as normal.

So. They can create their own standard ammunition; this is clear enough. However, what is not clear is whether you have to reload the weapon or not.

Basically: Is the ammo created INSIDE the crossbow/firearm/sling/launcher itself after every shot, or do you have to load it yourself?

(This might be wishful thinking, but this could well make crossbows and such very very viable, which would make a nice change, as well as *GASP* slings.)

Verdant Wheel

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I went on a bit of a rant in this thread about how much a Hobgoblin army may rely on Alchemists. The initial idea goes to lemeres, of course.

So that got me thinking, which races would rely heavily on which classes for their armies? Obviously there would be a lot of Warriors in each army, but I'm thinking for their more powerful troops, the ones that they sink time and resources into buffing up.

Personally, I think an Elven Army would have a precious supply of Wizards, but would have most of their front-liners be Magi of some description. They're agile, intelligent and Magi can afford to spend one of their no-action-spells to buff their lacking health. They're almost the perfect Kensai, if you take your chosen weapon to be the Curve Blade or the Branched Spear. Damn fine Eldritch Archers too.

A Magus doesn't require the same arduous and expensive training that a Wizard does, and has much more survivability at low levels, which is pretty necessary for a battle-caster in a race with a Con penalty. Even though Elves are smart, it's also much more probable to find an individual of Magus cleverness than to find the rare genius born for a life of Wizardry.

On the other hand, Orcs seem pretty much designed to be Barbarians. This is fine, and fairly obvious. It's hard to find any class that they're good at which doesn't involve angrily hitting things. They'd make really good Kinetic Knights, but of course you can't plan for the fickle energies of the elemental planes giving you enough of those for a whole battalion. So Barbarians, most likely.

What about other classes? Not just what those classes are good at being, but what they could sink resources into making armies out of. Full-Casters, for instance, are usually either prohibitively difficult to train and find, or are so unpredictable that you can't plan to have enough of them to sustain a force. Even if you can find the one bugger with the blood of dragons, who's to say that he's Charismatic enough to use it? Even if humans make the best Sorcerers, you'll never make an army out of them.

So what about it? I can't wait to hear back from y'all!

Verdant Wheel

Picture the scene. The Fighter, but 13 levels to his name, readies his sword. The dragon is too far away; easily 40 feet. A charge would reach her, but then what? One attack? Everyone else is getting off several attacks or maginuclear fireworks at this range. Or both. He feels useless. It's a familiar feeling.

Then the blade begins to vibrate, to speak. The Fighter knows what he must do.

In one fluid motion, he slices through the air, dashing forwards into a gash in reality... a Door of Dimensions. Everyone gasps: the fool! He is not one of the fabled Dimensional Dervishes; he'll surely be unable to act once he goes through!

Yet... somehow, he dives through, slicing and dicing away with all of those feat-powered strikes until the Dragon flees. But fleeing won't save her, not this time.

So how did he do it? Well, he had his Awakened sword, which at Level 9 in the Steelbound Fighter archetype can cast a 3rd-level spell on its own once per day (at 13 it can do it thrice per day), and he had it cast Dimension Door which is a 3rd-level Summoner spell. Since the sword itself was doing the casting, he had no need to fear the inaction after the transportation, or put any feats towards Item Mastery or the Dimensional Dervish line. Sure, it's not quite as good as Dimensional Dervish itself, but it's better than the first two in that chain, and doesn't require you to mess around with Item Mastery.

It seems like a decent way for a Fighter to get a long-range three-use-per-day Pounce, provided that the GM allows it (the class ability specifically mentions that GMs are fully allowed to not allow certain spells, though this one is such a cool aesthetic that anyone interested in building a group story should at least think about it).

So... my question is, would this work? Have I missed anything? Am I way too dramatic with my tabletop roleplay questions?

Verdant Wheel

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Hiya all! Just a quick question regarding the Heavenly Radiance feat.

It requires you to be an Aasimar, with the Daylight spell-like-ability. Now, as written it doesn't require the spell-like-ability to come from the Aasimar race specifically, so my Peri-Blooded character could get it from another source and still be perfectly legal.

The Lamplighter Archetype for the Investigator allows you to burn extracts to get a Daylight spell at level 5; the Ability is also defined as (Sp) or Spell-Like.

So my question is this: Does this ability allow me to qualify for feats (such as Heavenly Radiance) that require a Daylight spell-like ability?

With this, I could cast, say, Wandering Star Motes from my lantern by burning an extract, effectively becoming a spontaneous caster of that spell specifically, since I get the spell-like ability any time I burn an extract (obviously the extra Daylight use from the feat would have no effect since it's already spontaneous).

My argument for would be that it allows me to cast Daylight as a spell-like ability which is the only requirement an Aasimar needs to meet for the feat. It's not a broken combination by any means, but given the complexity of the ability I was wondering if it would be considered legal or allowed at tables.

Thanks!
~Nitro

P.S. Would this be allowed for the Quicken Spell-Like Ability feat? As written it seems to qualify, but it feels wrong to me somehow.