Kiesman's page

How about playing an Oversized Goblin variant?

4) The Buddhist path to the greatest wealth:

There's a slot somewhere in the grid. Putting the coin into the slot, essentially "giving the coin away" grants you 1xp. For every coin they put in they gain 1 more xp.

I like it, but I only ever do milestone leveling.

I've done two puzzles that I found worked really well.

One was a rotating tiles or Pipe Dream type puzzle, where they had to set a path for energy to travel to the other end. However they were fighting large-sized regenerating golems the entire time, that could not easily be permanently shut down. When the golems were standing on a tile, they could not rotate that tile.

The other actually had no incorrect answer - It has three correct answers, each with different secondary results, all of which open the door to the next room. A platinum coin on a grid on a pedestal, with a plaque saying "Show me the path to the greatest wealth". They can:

1) Take the coin, which transforms into a gem worth X gold.
2) Slide the coin to the next grid point, which doubles the coin - go for as long as it can without repeating a space, or off the table.
3) Place more coins, making a path to the edge of the table, at which point the coins all become the next highest level of coin.

I wanted a fourth solution for this one, but I could not come up with one. If anyone happens to have an idea, I'll take it for the next time I use this puzzle.

If you've ever seen this game that I grew up with (Labyrinth by Ravensburger), you can find it at thrift shops everywhere, sometimes at toy stores for cheap.

Perfect for what you're saying.

As an NPC, you can finagle it that the "face" technically has the witch levels, and keeps the Silvanshee as the familiar, but because they are one creature you just combine all their stats as you've already done.

Just apply any familiar effects to the main body and any weirdness that results is because, hey, there's WEIRD magic at work here in the first place stitching them together.

Spheres of Power can be balanced, if you use it in flavourful ways, but can be very broken if you power-game it. The best, most balanced Kineticist 3rd party options are from Kineticists of Porphyra, as mentioned in N. Jolly's guide.

I'm not a good judge of 3rd party items balance because as a DM, I'm often willing to give all kinds of crazy items to my party, and if they're too beefy I just up the encounter strength.

In talking about trying to have Single-Stat casting, what about the option of Empyreal Sorcerer/Ecclesitheurge Cleric in order to use WIS for both and still get the Ecclesitheurge archetype?

The most HP-durable option if you're including self-healing is probably going to be a Paladin (maybe an archetype, not sure?) using Fey Foundling so that it can Lay on Hands himself as a swift action. The Paladin will also be getting heavy armor.

I've heard of the Butterfly's Sting combo, for sure.

Death Curse summons sounds pretty entertaining, actually, especially considering you're not exactly summoning the creatures to do their own damage.

A Sensei build could be very fun, with something flavorful like a XX/Monk multiclass build.

Keep 'em coming. If you can provide a short (even just one line) description of how it works, please do.

I'm interested in seeing what can be come up with in terms of two players building characters specifically to work in tandem with each other with perfect synergy.

For the most part, I'm looking for interesting and unique sets of builds. The obvious answer is "Outflank" rogues, but that's not interesting or unique.

What have you got, Advice forum?

(P.S. Bonus points for using very few or no teamwork feats at all)

Rather than typing it all out again:

That is a good point to make, but then you also have spells like: Ear-Piercing Scream where it is 1d6 damage per two caster levels, with no listed minimum, as a first level spell. But the spell DOES do 1d6 damage at first level.

There are multiple other abilities like this as well (see cavaliers). The only time Paizo seems to list "minimum X" is when it is an integer, not a dice roll.

If you have an Android device, the developer of the amazing app Pathbuilder also made an app called "Master Summoner", that includes all the stat blocks for Summon Monster and Summon Nature's Ally, including template and feat modifications. It has the ability to roll attacks from the summons and track HP right in-app too.

Why the heck does Blood Frenzy Assault have a prerequisite of Bloody Assault, when the bleed from Blood Frenzy Strike is straight up better (and bleeds don't stack)?

A swift action (by the wording) should get you more than one shot, because nothing in Spell Cartridges says that it ends the effects of Arcane Strike, and Arcane Strike says that it charges your weapons for 1 round. Spell Cartridges also just says "while it is charged with energy from Arcane Strike", so by the combination of the wording there, you can shoot Force Bullets as long as your weapon has Arcane Strike affecting it.

That is a good point to make, but then you also have spells like: Ear-Piercing Scream where it is 1d6 damage per two caster levels, with no listed minimum, as a first level spell. But the spell DOES do 1d6 damage at first level.

There are multiple other abilities like this as well (see cavaliers). The only time Paizo seems to list "minimum X" is when it is an integer, not a dice roll.

I put "Reloading" in quotes to emphasize that it's not really reloading, because the weapon isn't really loaded with anything in the first place.

1. Round start, Swift action activate Arcane Strike. All weapons in your possession are charged with arcane power (per the feat), and per the Spell Cartridges feat "While your gun is imbued with power from the Arcane Strike feat, you can fire force bullets instead of regular ammunition." and "Force bullets do not use ... ammunition". Therefor, not needing ammunition, they are not loaded or expended.
2. Fire your first shot of "Force bullets". The gun does not suddenly lose it's Arcane Strike charged energy, per the feat it lasts for 1 round.
3. Fire any further iterative "Force bullets". All of the above still applies.

And I found a developer post comment answering my question:

Michelle A.J.'s Post

About Reloading: The wording of this is "While your gun is imbued with power from the Arcane Strike feat"

and the wording of Arcane Strike is "As a swift action, you can imbue your weapons with a fraction of your power. For 1 round..."

Wouldn't this mean that "Reloading" is just the swift action of activating Arcane Strike each round?

With access to arcane magics, he can simply use the age-old Illusory Major Image of himself with divination magic from a remote location, or something similar (make up a custom-researched spell if you want -- you're the GM!). Nondetection to prevent others from finding his remote location.

Cool, thank you so much for finding that for me! I'll probably be taking the Eldritch Heritage [Sylvan(Fey)] route, since for this character's concept he's not going to be doing much (or ideally, any) fighting on his own, so I don't need my feats for myself. I also don't want to be restricted by a mount.

Doesn't it only take 2 feats? Exotic Heritage + Eldritch Heritage?

Oof, I totally missed the fact that I can't stack Boon Companion... I was planning to go Hunter most or all of the way if possible.

Are there ways as a human to keep my two companions effective and viable for longer without multi classing? If not, what's the most minimal multi classing to keep just two companions scaled?

I do plan on using Boon Companion as many times as necessary to keep my two companions both fully leveled. I decided I should probably put both my Eye For Talent bonus and his 4th level bonus into Con, which nets him ~60 HP at 7 -- Mildly squishy, but not pathetically so.

As for a companion to go alongside him, what about something high Con, a beefy meat tank like the Uintathereum? 17 base Con plus 7th level bonuses makes him have approximately 85 HP at 7th level. And something like 22 Str.

@Toolbag

Ankylosaurs are herbivores, yes. But also the fact that they're both companions and will have boosted INT.

@Secret Wizard

Barding will grant more AC but when it DOES get hit (touch spells, crits, etc) it will fall over preeeetty fast.

A wolf is good -- for early levels. Anything past 6 or so and you're going to be reaching untrippable levels of CMD as well as immunity.

Can the companions themselves learn Beastmaster Style? I don't plan on doing much (if any) fighting or even using my PC on my turns other than to give orders.

I'm building a Pack Master hunter for one of my games who won't be doing basically any fighting on his own (to prevent bogging down combat on my turns -- it will be worked into the character personality), and I am 100% going to be using an Ankylosaurus as one of my companions because it is my absolute favourite dinosaur.

However, I have no idea what to take a second animal companion to go along with it. What would compliment it well? Something with reach? Something small and high DPS? Or something beefy with lots of Hitpoints since Anky here has a high AC but only a +1 Con bonus? Perhaps something with a ranged option?

On a side note, how do I make my Ankylosaurus have more survivability? Sure it will be hard to hit, but once it GETS hit, it only has... 36 HP at level 7? That's a stiff breeze.

I don't need help building the PC (feats, skills etc), but if there's feats for the PC that will help, feel free to suggest.

There are actually quite a few youtube videos you can find which have recordings of people speaking (as accurately as linguists can determine anyway) in an "Old English" accent. Most of the time it's almost entirely unintelligible.

By the wording of:

...the hunter automatically grants her teamwork feats to her animal companion. The companion doesn’t need to meet the prerequisites of these teamwork feats.

(emphasis mine)

This means that the animal companion has gained that feat himself. It doesn't list any stipulations or restrictions, and doesn't have wording like the inquisitor saying "...treated as if they possess..."

Therefore, I would rule that in all of the above situations, yes the companion still knows those teamwork feats.

Your best bet in that regard is the Knife Master rogue, I'd say. d8's for sneak attack damage with daggers is a HUGE boost to power.

Yes, Channel Energy feats apply to all instances of channel energy that you have. However;

You may channel energy as a move action by spending 2 daily uses of that ability.

Emphasis mine. Quick Channel requires that you expend the two uses from the same pool, and any other feats with similar reference.

Unfortunately a weapon being small does not change its 'handedness'. It is still considered a two-handed weapon. However if this is a home game, you can always ask the GM to allow it.

As a GM myself, I would allow it with the caveat of requiring a separate trick taught to the companion to activate each individual item created in this way.

Not only all of this... Summoned creatures are returned to where they came from when they die. You can't eat it.

Nice work. Thanks!

Glad you like it, I've been going on a creative tear lately (since starting to run my first game) and I've been making all kinds of sheets and charts.

My next goal is multi-page index card (or playing card?) sized character sheets to save table real estate. I'm thinking one card/side for combat-important stuff, one for skills, etc.

Hi all!

I've created a sheet for Game Masters who like to immerse their players further in the game, by not tipping them off with a request for Perception rolls or Sense Motive rolls.

HERE!

Ask your players if they'd like to 'take 10' by default on Perception and Sense Motive situations. If they do, you're done here. If not, have them roll 6 times for each and record the results, then as the GM you can roll a simple d6 to determine (secretly) if they found that hidden door, or noticed that trap, or felt intuitively that the in-disguise BBEG was lying to their face!

It's not for everyone, but it cuts down on everyone shouting "I search the room!" every single room, and I made it for myself so I thought I'd share it.

Good show Firebug. A question: Is this build specific to Alchemist Fire and Acid? Is there variety in what it can use? I'd love to be able to use all different kinds of alchemical tools.

I have a challenge, which relates to a build I want to play but cannot figure out.

A character who's main ability in combat is using non-standard weaponry and tools such as alchemist fire, fireworks, and other similar items.

Likely this will be an alchemist, I realize... But I want to see what people can come up with to optimize non-class-feature alchemical weapons and tools.

Any character sheet that fits that will have print so small that you need a microscope to read it.

Rather than index cards, a tablet / ipad /etc. can be used quite easily. Even a phone that has a PDF loaded could work.

If you can afford Hero Lab, it works nicely on such devices.

/cevah

I more meant something multi-page, like base info on one card, next card has combat info, skills on another... Something like that.

I'm wondering if anyone has or knows of an index-card (3x5 inches) character sheet for Pathfinder. I've found one for D&D 5e (which I find a lot of cool stuff for when looking for Pathfinder stuff).

Our group has gotten fairly large, but our game tables haven't so I'm trying to find ways to conserve table real estate. I was thinking of picking up one of those two-ring Index Card binders and figuring a way to fit it all into there.

There isn't any official REASON other than for flavour. There's feats allowing you to do both, so I see no reason why you can't DM fiat allow the mixed options. Giving both Channels and both Spontaneous all at once might be a bit much IMO, but if they have to choose for each... why not?

Thanks for all the advice guys, it's given me a lot to think about. Thankfully, the point at which they (might) encounter this trading post is pretty far away so I'll have plenty of time to flesh it out with some of your ideas and my own

In a campaign where the players have access to large-city level item availability and purchasing, what can you do to make a trading post interesting?

Not only this, one player in the party has an encyclopedic knowledge of almost everything Pathfinder, and another has a pretty good knowledge of items.

Second the Pathbuilder app, it is a phenomenal program and the Export to PDF generates my absolute favourite styled character sheet I've ever seen (Other than the fact that the headers need to be bold text -- I'm in the process of talking to the developer about that).

If you have the Ultimate Campaign, you can use the retraining rules to retrain your bloodline. This costs 5 prestige for each bonus feat and bloodline power you change. if you're level 2, this will cost you a total of 5 prestige. Still a bit cheaper than 3 feats :D

Also, I think you'll actually need Iron Will, Familiar Bond, And Improved Familiar bond to make your familiar a "true" familiar before you can replace it with Improved familiar. I could be mistaken though!

Nothing about Improved Familiar states that your familiar needs to have all the abilities of a normal familiar, just that you have to have a familiar. So I think I'm okay without Improved Familiar Bond.

As for retraining... I'd have to completely retool how I wanted my character to be, I suppose. He was originally supposed to be a natural attacking Abyssal/Salamander cross-blood, but getting my natural attacks at 4 and 8 would be... rough.

OH! I didn't realize that they only start with those two slots unlocked! Well dang, definitely I'll be taking Extra Item Slot, and I guess Familiar Focus. I noticed that the Organized Play FAQ also mentions retraining future feats gained. I didn't think Familiars gained feats at higher levels?

On a related note then, what item slot do you think would be the most effective to grant a Soulbound Doll? My character is a natural attacking melee Bloodrager with UMD ranks and traits, so the familiar will probably be doing a lot of wand using etc.

Extra item slot wouldn't help, since it's a Biped [hands] type and gets all slots anyway. Actually gets rather confusing since it's a creature that can't normally be a familiar anyway.

It would be, and if I had done this scenario first I would probably have done that but unfortunately I'm second level now, so the feats are my only real option. And it's actually 3 feats at this point, because I need Iron Will, Familiar Bond, and Improved Familiar.

Was there really no additional feat replacement options added with Familiar Folio? Only the Animal Archive?

Interesting. So some more reading, and it seems like one of the only feats I can replace with is Familiar Focus unfortunately, because it is an improved familiar... And my low strength, decent dexterity familiar is stuck using strength for touch attacks.

Since I'm gaining my familiar through the feats, I don't get the deliver touch spells ability, which is what most of the feats seem to require.

So, I've never really played a caster, especially one that uses a familiar. However, playing last night with my Bloodrager I got a boon that allows me to take a specific special familiar as an Improved Familiar option at 7th level.

I thought "This is so cool!" even if it isn't the most mechanically optimized, and remade my future character plans to incorporate it (Iron Will, Familiar Bond, Improved Familiar).

However, looking at the familiar I get... Both the feats it start with do nothing on a Familiar (Improved Initiative + Toughness), since familiar's HP is 1/2 the master's, and work off the master's initiative roll.

I tried to do some research into the matter, but I can't find any options that would work for replacing those familiar feats, if it's even possible?

Please advise.

The real reason why it doesn't work is because a "Round" of combat, specifically, all the individual "turns" that happen during a "Round", all happen concurrently. There isn't really any "Going first", you just moved ever-so-slightly faster than the people after you.

Therefore, the bat can't take off and fly the full amount after you stop moving because that's already a lot of the time of the "round" used up just to get to the point where the PC stopped.

*

A character with a longsword takes an attack action and makes a single attack with his longsword. This attack is made at +7.
The same character takes a full-attack action to make two attacks. The first is made at +7, and the second is made at +2.

The same character now wields a dagger in his other hand. She takes a full-attack action to make two attacks. She can choose whether to attack with only the dagger, sword, or both. In either case, she only makes two attacks at +7 and +2.

*

A character, who holds both a longsword and a dagger, and possesses the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, intends to take a full-attack action.
He can choose to make a normal full-attack, resulting in two attacks. He can also choose to gain one extra attack, by suffering the penalties for Two-Weapon Fighting.

Since he has the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, and the off-hand weapon is a light weapon (the dagger), he only suffers a -2 penalty to his attacks with his main/off hand. He gains one extra attack, and his new attack routine is +5/+5/0.
However, he can not decide in which order to attack since he uses two-weapon fighting to gain an attack. The second attack at +5 is always made with his off-hand, and the rest of the attacks are made with his main hand.

Also, he'd only add half of his Strength modifier to the damage of his off-hand attack.

I gotta say, you broke this down perfectly and in an easy-to-read way. I might actually play a two-weapon fighting character for once now!

Advanced template + 25% HP seems like it might help make the first parts of the campaign less of a breeze, good idea! I had forgotten about templates like that.

@ Duiker, it's likely that will happen most of the time anyway - the party has recently come into the possession of a Double Hackbut and have loved to make use of it, effectively ending all stealth efforts.