Kestrel Cavandish's page

While an interesting take, my criticism stems from the fact that you changed warlock from what it originally was to something very different. Changing in spells to sub for invocations doesn't make a warlock a warlock, it appears to make them a slightly worse ranged magus.

The entire draw of the Warlock class was that you could do a very few select arcane tricks infinitely. The Invocations were awesome because many of them were entirely unique and interesting, with effects that could not be duplicated and settled firmly into the "weird and cool" category.

Examples include, for instance, Flee the Scene (Which allowed you to do a short range Dimension Door spell and leave behind a major image), Devour Magic (Which allowed you to gain temporary hit points upon dispelling magical effects), See the Unseen (which gave you darkvision and the ability to detect invisible creatures), and Hungry Darkness (Which created magical darkness filled with a bat swarm).

Changing those effects out for bog standard spells means the class loses a lot of what makes it cool. You have, yes, technically fixed Warlock's problems with utility, but you've done so by turning them into a slightly worse Sorcerer.

My fix from 3.5 was much simpler. Turn Eldritch Blast into an attack action instead of a standard action, and add on the character's charisma modifier to the damage of Eldritch Blast. While this does not fix a Warlock's limited amount of utility, it does mean that in between your cool utility options becoming relevant, you at least have the option that any medium base caster does. Hit them with a brick for moderate but respectable damage.

Aardvark Barbarian wrote:

I don't think you've really read that much DragonLance either. Almost EVERY time Raist cast a spell he would end in coughing fits, and cough up blood. He had what closely resembeld tuberculosis. All that was at an 8 Con. Can you imagine what a 6 or 7 would be if an 8 is coughing up blood, multiple times a day?

None of which appears to affect his effectiveness, combat or otherwise. In fact despite dumping that stat, in a couple short years he's able to kill the very gods of the world.

That's how wizards'll do ya.

Trolling the board like I have, seeking ways to improve my gameplay and my DM'ery; I see builds of characters all the time. And most of the time I see people who drop a stat or two all for the sake of a +1. I understand certain feats require certain Stat mins. But is dropping your WIS to a 8 to 5 really worth it? Ive never seen it that much in 3.5 or older (less of course you just rolled sucky). But now with the move toward more point buy games it seems to me more common place. Has ROLL-Playing overtaken ROLE-Playing? And for that matter, does anyone have the stones to dump stat CON? I'm not pointing out anyone in particular. I'm trying to understand. Thanks.

People don't think it be like it do, but it is.

The real problem is that a character can't be good at EVERYTHING, so when you run point buy the players take their concept, I.E. that smarmy guy that's good with the ladies, the strongman that can headbutt a tree into submission, the mystical dude that can recite arcane formulas and the entirety of Monty Python's Holy Grail, people tend to exaggerate them slightly. Suddenly the ladies' man becomes a gullible stooge with the attention span of a rabbit, the strongman couldn't scratch his own back with a backscratcher, and the arcane mystic probably couldn't lift his own arms, let alone a heavy library book.

It's honestly quite funny to see how far some characters will go, it's not just limited to power players, heavy role players will also dump stats to either make characters "more interesting" or do what they want to do with the character itself.

Why did you swap out the gunslinger, by the way.

Because Kestrel had a bad habit of going the exact opposite direction of the plot. I built the character anticipating a more laid back campaign, then things got very real very fast and it seemed like Kestrel would be more the type to steal all the party's loot and make for the first ship to Vasta (basically the in campaign equivalent of ancient Italy/Greece)

I brought in Lucius Arellus because a lawful good inquisitor fit in better with the plot and what was going on in it.

You... what? Dude, you're Van Helsing. How the heck could you possibly believe the class has a boring weapon selection? You are THE vampire/undead/demon hunter. You get a repeating crossbow as your weapon. Their weapon selection is great, what do you want out of them, a spiked chain?

My go to move is usually barbarian or fighter because building a spellcaster takes time, effort, and thought, and I'm terrifically lazy when it comes to that sort of thing.

Recently however I found something new. The Summoner. I haven't had a chance to play one yet, regrettably in my current game I swapped my gunslinger for an Inquisitor (another cool class) and I don't want to further test my GM's patience by switching in the summoner.

To be fair, I like summoner because it's the most meta class ever. You go through the effort and time of creating a character, and that character then goes through the effort and time of creating another character. Eidolons are so versatile you could literally have a goddamn summoner only campaign that focused on anime-esque battles between different summoners and their hand-crafted eidolon companions. I can't wait for Ultimate Magic to come out with the new eidolon starter templates to see if I can find something better for my "sneak sneak bite grapple" darkness eidolon build.

Rage Prophet seems like a more flavor based class to me. I love the idea but I'm not so sure about the mechanics. However, I'm a firm believer in the idea that a badass character concept/fun build is more enjoyable than building a character just to be the best at everything.

Many prestige classes exist to flavor the characters, not necessarily make them mechanically superior. But look at it this way, what's more interesting: a baseline fighter, or a fighter/rogue made for dealing sneak attacks off of feints? One may be more powerful, but another might be more flavorful. It all depends on what you enjoy doing in game.

godsDMit wrote:

Is it good? Yes. It is ridiculous? No.

As others have said, the round or two build up, and the limited amount of time you can use Bane or your Judgements balance it out.

Inquisitor seems to be a ridiculously useful all around class, kinda like bard, without the silly singing!

It is, they have quite a bit of utility since a lot of their class abilities boil down to "put half your class levels into this very useful skill".

I happen to like bards, but Inquisitor is another very nice class that does a little bit of everything.

Thanks for the insights. I appreciate it. Makes me less inclined to drop Lucius for an Oracle.

Kestrel Cavandish wrote:

But trust me when I say you need somebody in your party who can drop those heal spells and do it on command.

For the record, we won that fight, but only because my inquisitor build is so monstrously damaging. Also our Alchemist hasted us. The monk still got flattened unfortunately.

Bolded for emphasis

Who couldn't use a CLW wand or cast those spells why? Even if it was after combat.

Depressingly, none of us have crafting feats.

And to be honest... the idea hadn't even really occurred to me.

I probably should have read this thread a little more than the first post before making my own.

But even so, that being said. A healing class can make all the difference. The utility and buffs they usually bring to the party, not just healing, can be game changers.

Additionally, nobody has addressed the idea that not all damage is raw HP damage. Ability damage is often just as devastating if not more so, and the only classes that can get rid of that effectively are clerics, druids, and oracles so far as I know.

Okay, so, first off let me say I'm not much of a powergamer. I'm not terribly interested in mechanics insomuch as they drive the game and the story forward.

That being said, I wanted to ask about the inquisitor and if anybody else has been finding it to be ridiculously (some might say ridonkulously) good at damage.

I will admit that my first instinct with the inquisitor was to pick up all those beautiful TELL THE TRUTH type spells they have, but then gradually I saw more and more damage buffing and augmentation spells. Spells like Divine Favor, Wrath, Weapon of Awe, and Heroism. Spells that in combination with rapid shot, multishot, bane, and the destruction judgement, gave me a terrifying +17 bonus to damage on single shots when factoring in the +3 composite nature of my longbow.

I caved to the temptation and now deal monstrous amounts of damage in a single round assuming I can get off my full attack action.

The thing is it just seemed so easy to do, has anybody else had, for lack of a better word, trouble with inquisitors dealing absurd single target damage?

Speaking as a person who just got out of a fight the other day where our party didn't have a person who could act as dedicated healer, you need one.

That isn't to say the need to be healing all the time, in fact there should be times where they do cast hold person or throw down Bull's Strength and start tossing their weight around. But trust me when I say you need somebody in your party who can drop those heal spells and do it on command.

For the record, we won that fight, but only because my inquisitor build is so monstrously damaging. Also our Alchemist hasted us. The monk still got flattened unfortunately.