I'm currently running an AP and as written the players have been trouncing most as written encounters without a sweat and it has been agreed to allow me to beef up and add a few homebrewed nasties. After coming across an idea in a summon focused cleric build, I've tweaked and fleshed a bit to make it even nastier but want to make sure it looks appropriate for a the party and if I should make any additional adjustments The party consists of 5 level 14 PCs and one level 12 cohort at the time of the encounter. (Not sure I want to give details on party make up since I don't want to make something that is gear to fighting them to specifically. But I will say they are specialized in fighting undead with a strong secondary focus on Evil creatures.) Character is built off a high fantasy array and has the wealth of an equivalent level PC. Main things I'm looking at are spells and additional equipment to help bolster his allies. But I'm interested in any other suggetions that people have on other parts of the build. The Kennel Master
Traits: Diabolic Dabbler (+1 hit point/hit die of devils), Flames of Hell (Channel DC +1) Domain: Trickery 1st: Sacred Summons
Notable Equipment:
Tactics:
He then uses a scroll of Silent Image of an ally they'd met earlier to lure them into the room and begins inspiring courage on his first turn. After his dogs have all lost their invisibility, he cast Lunar Veil to try to regain the visual advantage for himself and his dogs. Additional spells: Blessing of Fervor, Burning Disarm, Jolting Portent, Mass Suggestion (to hurry ahead and go rescue their friend), Confusion, Chain of Perdition, Cold Ice Strike. As necessary, he will summon more ferocious Cerberi with standard actions and quick channeling to harm enemies while healing himself and his dogs. Once he drops below 40 hit points, he uses a swift action to activate the Master's Escape, although he may attempt a final summon and channel first.
A bombchucker adds 10' range to any splash weapon, which includes bombs. Not bad for a cheap mundane item. Also once you hit about level five, most creatures' touch AC's are bad enough that the range increment penalties aren't much to worry about. As an alchemist, you can also buff up your AC to being one of the best on the field, especially with a dex mutagen boosting offense and defense.
Creatures: 5d100 ⇒ (77, 17, 15, 12, 96) = 217
Hell yawned forth and spewed forth it's cruel breath and inhabitants upon the unsuspecting world. The vile burning winds spread across the planet leaving its surface barren everywhere it touched. The original inhabitants plead the divine for rescue from the devils. Unable to stop the armies, the gods blessed individuals with fire to withstand the heat of the scorched lands and became the Ifrit, wind to escape to the skies above in flying cities and became the Sylphs, or gave them tough exoskeletons and tough claws to escape below the surface to the cooler and easier to defend underground which became the The-keen. Unfortunately many more were captured by the devils and experimented upon to create the Teifling as a race of slaves and soldiers. The overwhelming aura of evil from the planet attracted a race from the deep reaches of the dark tapestry. Mercifully the race that noticed it was the Flumph that reacted by quickly masking the aura from the rest of the tapestries inhabitants and sending an army on a one way trip as the masking process would cause even themselves to lose the location of the planet and never be able to find their way back. This army descended upon the planet and with the aid of a slave rebellion in the capital surrounding the Hellmouth the portal was destroyed and preventing the devils from receiving reinforcements. This served as a rallying point and the mixed armies of the modified races united under the Flumph's banner and began to take back their world. However, the devils conspire to reopen the portal and crush the new allience.
Player Killer wrote:
Frankly Paizo rushed of the Shifter class. The entire thing needs to go back and be redesigned.
This is at minimum it’s CN. Calista won’t have a problem with this but secretly addicting the masses to a drug “for the greater good,” is not the actions of a good character. A good character would use diplomacy or even stealing from the rich to help fund the repairs. But addicting everyone to force them to repair the building is not. Even looking at not long term harm no foul is incorrect in this instance. Even if the peasants are recovering the point of Wis damage (and we ignore that this is the equivalent of whipping someone mentally) you guys are overlooking the addition rules. While addicted they have a -2 penalty to Con if they don’t get their daily fix. And the DC to avoid addiction and recover increases by 2 each time they are drugged. After a few days most of his victims are hopelessly addicted to his magic as the save to shake off the addiction is only a 2.5% chance. (2 natural 20s in a row) until they go cold turkey for almost as long as they had been receiving the healing or someone intervenes with remove disease. And that isn’t even touching the fact that people are hurting themselves at this point because of it and he still seems to be doing it. There is a reason the item is favored by LE clerics.
I’ve had an honorable mention. Party has been fighting this flying snake woman at the top of a 180ft tall tower. Very tough fight, gunslinger is the only one that can regularly hit her. Eventually she finally starts to retreat but stops 15ft out from the edge of the tower. Gunslinger doesn’t want her to get away so he tries leaping off the edge and attempts to grapple her, a large creature with a good strength and dexterity as she’s flying. While he easily makes the jump, she gets an AoO (hitting him and draining wisdom) and then he fails the grapple so he plummets. I pull out my tower of d6s and roll damage. The dice gods had a sense of humor however, he survived the fall 2 hit points from death and then made his stabilization roll. After the incident he dedicated himself to Cayden Cailean.
This class idea still suffers from the core problems: considerably weaker than the other martial classes, worse at its own main focus written into the class’s description of flexibility than an archetype of another class, and a ripping of other class abilities and shoddily stitched onto the Shifter to create this flesh golem of a class. And this does not even touch on the messy design of the archetypes that clearly was not edited enough since several loose abilities that are part of later abilities that are not replaced. The addition of Shifter’s fury helps. While on its own not a immense power boost, but it fixes one of the most glaring problems in the class design. However, thousand faces and timeless body at 18th level are poor choices to fill an empty level since again they’re just more highly situational abilities blatantly ripped off the Druid class. These changes are a nice start, but overall I believe them to be only the first steps of many needed to bring this up to the high standards I’ve come to expect of Paizo’s usual output. I understand Paizo’s fear of power creep and want an easy class for new players to pick up, but this class has is short on unique features to make to stand out against the crowd of unique classes in turns of power nor flavor. The unfortunate effect is that this class feels more like an underpowered archetype of the Hunter or worse, a NPC class version of the Hunter than a PC class. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the Shifter’s design for me is that most of its class abilities are cut and paste from the Druid and Hunter. Rather than developing new abilities for this class, most of the class’s abilities are either exactly from one or both of these other classes or are a watered down version of something from these classes. It makes the Shifter feel like it was created in a last minute rush to get the book out on time rather than a well though out and internally tested. Combined with the way the archetypes are written, the class is a sloppy unbalance first draft that I would expect to see published by a 3rd party, not by Paizo’s themselves. For something partially unique, how about at some point Shifters get the shapechanger subtype so they can gain some of the situational benefits they have such as easily removing baleful polymorph. It’s been established that the oozemorph archetype adds a subtype, why can’t the main class. If the designer’s are worried it’s a power boost, it’s not even that large a bonus since the benefit is fairly situational and there are even cases where it can be a drawback. (Favored enemy, several cases of shapechanger bane weapons, wards triggered by shapechanger, etc. that show up in areas that lycanthropes and other were-creatures live.) But it’s something that two other classes don’t already have. If they’re willing to give the class a small but needed shot in the arm, a bonus against unwanted polymorph effects like an alchemist gains for poison would be unique and thematically fitting. I would think the same focus needed to take the proper form of the creature they want to would help a Shifter keep from shifting into a form she doesn’t want. I still find the single aspect known at 1st level to be severely limiting for a class that is described in the class role as “fluid in form and function.” As I stated in an earlier post this claim of flexibility is dubious compared to the parent class knowing all aspects at 1st. Removing this limitation on the number know would significantly increase this classes flexibility while only slightly increasing the complexity.
The Shifter’s problem is that it’s mostly elements of the Feral Hunter Archetype with two shakes of Monk but much less flexible. The increased BAB and one step up on hit die size doesn’t make up for the loss of spells and fewer skill points and class skills. Also a Feral Hunter’s aspect is unlimited in duration and can be shifted with a swift action to any aspect whereas the shifter gets minutes per day limited to aspects known. And the Feral Hunter gets full wildshape when the shifter gets their limited version of it albeit with some improvements on the limited number of species they can turn into. The fact that the Shifter’s selling point is that it’s highly flexible but one of the classes it took things from is much more flexible is a bit of a head scratcher. (By the way, if their animal companion is dead, even a vanilla Hunter can do this the way a Feral Hunter can.) Chimeric aspect is one of the few advantages a Shifter has due to having two or more aspects. Unfortunately by the time it comes into play a Feral Hunter can probably afford the gold cost of the magic item that has the same effect. Not to mention with the ease of shifting the Feral Hunter has, he may be able to shift fast enough for it not to matter outside of bull, tiger, and bear for combat. The other semi unique ability this class gets are the claws that grow in power. Overall, this is again lackluster. For a martial class’s signature offensive ability, no iterative attack with the claws makes them quickly lose their value outside their wild shape boosting ability starting at level 6. Letting a Shifter gain iterative attacks with his shifter’s claws by having one claw used for the main and interatives and the other become a secondary natural attack would be something although that just uses the unchained Monk’s flurry of blows mechanics limited to use with the would be simpler and closer to the power of other classes. Additionally, as someone mentioned earlier, having there claws count as Improved Unarmed Strike for prerequisites would have allow for some fun builds and add some much needed flexibility to this class. Also, how does this ability interact with creatures that naturally have a claw attack like some tengu can? The one almost unique ability this class has is the Monk AC bonus that is partially retained in armor. This is the one thing I truly like about this class. As for the other abilities the class gains, I’m not particularly impressed. While they are fitting with the theme of the class, these abilities are bromidic since these are the same abilities the Hunter already inherited from its parent classes. If you’re making a new class, give us something that isn’t part of the vanilla abilities of three classes already. (Especially not three of the most situational.) Also Rageshaper, also needs to be a way to increase the number of rounds for their shifting. 1 round/level of an ability that takes a full round to activate is laughably short. At fifth level, a Rageshaper needs to last more than one fight a day. Until level 6, an enemy spellcaster can thwart this archetype’s signature ability with a single casting of the spell vanish and sneaking until the devistating form wears off. If you’re going to make another attempt at an archetype for the not so jolly green giant, he needs to last long enough to fully say “[insert name here] smash!” (That said, this is still an improvement on the Brute.)
RAW, mirror image affects your grapple target if they try to attack you while you have them grappled, silly as it sounds. Technically reversing the grapple may be considered to also have to go against the mirror image, but it's specifically a CMB roll but not specially called a maneuver. Since it's not a maneuver, it might not be considered an attack roll as part of the break out. Personally, I'm fine with grappled targets having the mirror miss chance when attacking but not when trying to reverse the grapple.
quibblemuch wrote:
Quibble is right. If we're playing RAW lawyering to cram a square peg into a round hole, Pact Servant only allows your paladin to be LG while worshiping Ashmodeus since for the purpose of YOUR alignment. Ashmodeus is still treated as evil and it does not preclude the general paladin code of only limiting associating with evil to only when needed for the greater good. While a paladin can work with even a devil to slay a worse evil, worshiping the (possibly) oldest evil god in Golarion is definitely a violation.
Seranrae Papadin Code: Quote:
Looking at at point three, inaction via surrender which could result in his allies' deaths would be a case of breaking his paladin code so I'd say he's okay for now for kneecapping the guard.
I'd rule it as a mildly Chaotic Neutral act if not just Neutral. Neither of which should affect your party's alinement at all. Using the flesh of once sentient beings is not inherently evil. Aside from dragonhide there normal humanoids skins used in creation and maintainable of zombie skin shields which are not inherently evil. (Replacing the skin is done by letting the shield steal the skin of a fresh medium humanoid corpse.) Cannibalism is also not necessarily evil either. There is an entire barbarian archetype, Raging Cannibal, built around this idea and only needs to be non-lawful. That said, this may offend some that witness this act or find evidence of this act. Especially lawful of good druids. |