Lelomenia's page

Some options in line with my (probably unconventional) suggestions above. Trying to keep your original Glitterdusty build features. You probably will want more BFC spell options; but as you don’t want Summons and I don’t have a ton of experience with Pit spells (which many swear by), I defer to others on comments there.

Traits: Magical Lineage (Glitterdust), Fate’s Favored
1 Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus (Conjuration)
3 Craft Wondrous
5 Persistent Spell (Wizard Bonus Feat), Lookout
7 Improved Familiar
9 Outflank
10 Open (Wizard Bonus Feat)
11 Open (Snake Style! 250gp ioun to meet IUS prereq)

1 Heightened Awareness
Vanish, Mage Armor, Feather Fall, Grease

2 Embrace Destiny, See Invisibility
Glitterdust, Invisibility, Tears to Wine

3 Shared Training (Lookout, Outflank), Clairvoyance/clairaudience,
Haste, Fly, Fireball

4
Black Tentacles, Dimension Door, Improved Invisibility, Emergency Force Sphere

5
Teleport, Cloudkill, Echolocation, Wall of Stone

6 True Seeing
Chain Lightning, Contingency, Jatembe’s Ire

Standard action summons is enormously valuable. If a combat is decided in perhaps the first four rounds then bringing the additional forces in the first round rather the second makes a substantial difference.

the Summon Evil Monster standard action summon effect isn’t really full standard action summon; the summons can’t act until an extra turn after being summoned. So timing wise, pretty much the same speed as one round, just with less risk of concentration breaking. And you get the extra move action. (is why i was looking at Elemental Mystery for this; elementals are good beatsticks at most levels of SM).

Dark Tapestry, the Shaman spirit, has Alien Summons as a Hex that is a massively stronger version of the Cleric Dark Tapestry It Came From Beyond Domain power. You get the Advanced Template on something from every summons, not one per day, and it applies when you only summon one creature, etc.

Shaman otherwise isn’t great for summoning. But other classes can get Shaman hexes, so if i was a summoning oriented Oracle, I’d love to have Advanced template with every cast (Spirit Guide; Elemental Mystery can give standard action summons, probably other options as well but I’m not an expert on Oracles). Summoner can get it through the Spirit Summoner archetype, but that gives up their Summon Monster which hurts the value significantly (although getting Advanced Template on your Eidolon through the Summon Eidolon spell is neat). Wizard can get it through Spirit Whisperer.

Probably Wizard with Spirit Whisperer and Acadamae Graduate and sniping underleveled Summon Monster spells off the summoner list (Samsaran or Pathfinder Savant) is going to be the best summoner if that’s allowed, hard to beat standard action casting Summon Monster VIII at 11th level for something Augmented and Advanced. Assuming that’s not allowed, Occultist Arcanist is the best Summoner, but Herald Caller Cleric is ok.

Thanks for the input everyone.

Our session is coming up this Saturday so I'd like to get my lvl 11 character wrapped up.

A lot of recommendations but I need to assemble an outline for feats/spells.

I think foresight is interesting and Divination was fun to play in 5e.

Outline assistance would be appreciated.

did you finalize opposition schools?

Shared Training (Divination spell) is kind of amazing; Lookout with Shared Training on a Foresight Wizard means your whole party gets to go in every surprise round. Might as well give everyone Outflank while you’re at it; uses up two of your feats but saves everyone else a bunch.

6 levels of magus to Broad Study for Spell Combat and Spellstrike as a Shaman, to Dazing Frostbite or what have you through your Desna Shooting Star starknife attacks. Could give neat options.

On traits:
The metamagic reduction traits are the best in the game. Assuming they aren’t allowed to stack, Fate’s Favored is probably the next best; it has particular synergy with Foresight (but eventually you should have applicable luck bonuses to everything anyway).

On feats:
Dazing Spell is overpowered, but you really need to build around it for it to be usable. Improved Familiar is great if you want a wand monkey, but you lose access to familiar archetypes and Protector is passively excellent without requiring a feat. Craft Wondrous is a must if crafting is allowed. Looking back, my Wizard actually took Snake Style (can meet prereq with a 250 gp ioun stone); it’s extremely impractical to get your AC up to a useful level normally, but pretty easy to have AC 45 or so once per turn with Snake Style. Which is usually enough for anything that can’t pounce, and while not having notable power synergy with a Foresight Wizard, feels very on-theme (“Maybe next time try something I wasn’t expecting.”). Mostly you’d like to stay invisible as much as possible. Persistent Spell is very strong if you ever plan to go after Saves, Quicken Spell is a must at level 13 but maybe just okay at level 11 (outside of a heavy metamagic reduction build). True Name deserves to be mentioned.

On opposition schools:
Evocation is a surprisingly useful utility school for non-blasters (e.g., Emergency Force Sphere, Contingency for no obvious reason). Necromancy is an easy one to give up, the next two would probably be Divination and Enchantment.

On items:
The guides will show standard useful items (e.g., Haversack, Pearl of Power). Some of the less commonly mentioned but strong equipment: Book of Harms, Four Leaf Clover (better with Fate’s Favored), Scabbard of Pain (getting to reroll failed will saves 3x per day with minor drawback is kind of crazy), Numerology Cylinder (DC 25 Arcana should be pretty much automatic), Talisman (e.g., Lesser of Freedom) for neck slot. Wizard in a grapple is just a punching bag. And lots of things grapple.

Monstrous cohorts tend to be horribly underpowered, and CR+8 appears to be worst case scenario on the table, so i would scale directly off CR. Also, 19+12 isn’t 29. Also, how are you getting cohorts with effective level over 20?

20d6 force damage (save for half) every time you go back and forth through an enemy’s square as part of your move action is pretty nice too. I’m not more broadly familiar with spheres of power though, maybe 60d6 is negligible compared to the other toys that system hands out.

Is there a duration on Lattice Weaver? Improved Cover is indeed the bee’s knees.

Edit: probably strong lean toward Lattice Weaver.

Spell resistance applies to energy blasts, does not apply to physical blasts (including Air Blast). Both count as magic for purpose of overcoming DR. It works like that because that’s how the Kineticist class rules work; trying to square it with core rules will add a hint of confusion potential, yes.

Lelomenia wrote:

"Faerie Dragons can add levels in Sorcerer to increase their magic ability"

Could you tell me where this came from please?

Unlike true dragons, faerie dragons do not grow larger with age, but their scales do change color, starting with red and moving through the rainbow to reach dark violet at old age. Faerie dragons grow in power as spellcasters as they age (typically gaining levels in sorcerer), learning more powerful spells to complement their innate abilities.

it’s left to the reader as to how that works mechanically.

Faerie Dragons can add levels in Sorcerer to increase their magic ability, but it’s not clear how that works mechanically; I would assume whatever way it worked, the ‘levels in sorcerer’ would stack with their baseline sorcerer casting. So kind of a precedent, albeit an unhelpful one on the rules side.

Arcane Trickster characters are almost never one level behind Rogue; e.g., a wizard 3/rogue 3/arcane trickster X always has the same Sneak Attack dice as a Wizard 3/Rogue (3+x).

In the Master Spy case, within the first 12 character levels, Vivisectionist/Master Spy Sneak Attack stacking is actually slightly worse than Rogue/Master Spy Sneak Attack stacking (specifically Rogue 7/Master Spy 1 has 5d6, Vivi 7/Master Spy 1 has 4d6). Though maybe Vivi/Master Spies would argue to use the Master Spy Sneak Attack stacking rules in that scenario.

I find it approximately 100% likely that the goal of the author’s stacking language was to prevent players from getting 2d6 Sneak Attack dice at level 2 with Rogue 1/Vivi 1 (and more generally prevent characters from having more Sneak Attack dice than allowed by their class progression), which hadn’t previously been possible and appears much more disruptive than potentially allowing an extra 1d6 at character level 13 or whatever.

I had previously assumed that there was a simple rules language solution that would have achieved the dual goals of (1) preventing dipping in multiple Sneak Attack at level 1 classes to build up tons of dice at very low levels and (2) prevented players from benefiting from replacing a slow Sneak Attack progression with faster progression, but after further thought I’m not sure what that would be. Given the character options available at the time, that language was as good a compromise as I could imagine; but very not future proof.

I think the hostility was more directed to the claim that the interaction was “Rule as intended” by the author. If the only comment on it had been “as far as I can tell, it is Rule as Written, and it doesn’t appear to be out of line with other character options in terms of power, so I probably wouldn’t ban it on that basis”, I think people would have generally been on board from the start. Personally, I’ve built characters to aggressively leverage synergistic rules features in ways I presume the authors didn’t foresee, but would avoid leveraging what appeared to me to be sloppy or non-future proofed rules language. I don’t think I’m the only person that views things similarly, but I’m self aware enough to consider that as ethical principles go this probably isn’t a hill worth dying on. It’s not really overpowered, but calling it Rule as Intended is olympic level trolling.

Arcanist/monk just seems so much worse than Sorcerer/monk for no significant benefit.

I vote Arcanist/Slayer, as synergy is solid across the board.

What AP is it? I would generally view Cleave as an occasionally useful thing, but too situational to be worth investing much in. Vital Strike is kind of in the same boat. Usually full attacks are just much, much better after you get iteratives. Cleave at least is nice at low level.

Looking at Dwarf specific things, the Dwarven Fury style feat chain looks kind of neat, though i’ve never used it.

Why would a random peasant worship Baphomet, or what would be the spiritual motivation for a cleric, or what would the mechanical motivation for a player?

Mutagens from two different classes do not stack so should be treated as spells from two different classes. You have to separate mutagens, one from each class, but can only be affected by one at a time. The section on drinking another alchemist’s mutagen makes it clear that drinking any second mutagen ends any mutagens you are currently affected by. The rules from brewing a second mutagen assume both are from the alchemist class.

So, the way I would handle it is you have two separate mutagens that can coexist, but if you drink one while under the effect of the other the first mutagens immediately end.

so basically the same way when you cast touch spells from two different classes you can hold the charge with both at the same time and they discharge together….

No. At least I don't think so.

However, as a GM, I would allow an Arcanist access to arcane discoveries. They're a hybrid class of wizards and sorcerers.

I'd probably let anyone access to them if they had the focus to learn it (and maybe role play the process). It just it comes naturally to wizards.

Arcanists already have access to Arcane Discoveries through the Arcane Discovery Arcane Exploit. The problem is an Arcanist would need to be 22nd level to qualify for Staff-Like Wand. Most campaigns end before that.

An Arcanist with VMC Wizard could get Staff Like Wand. So there’s that. I can’t imagine not going True Name there though barring GM Hard No.

All the Stars in the Sky would work if consuming magic ammunition was allowed. Obviously a bit niche.

What Stranger said.

That said, there are lots of mechanics and options in the Pathfinder system to create whatever character you envision, just happens that ‘multiclass full caster’ is a really bad one.

Consider “variant multiclass” for example; you could be a fully-leveled Druid while obtaining some Cleric abilities and flavor, for example. Or vice-versa. Plenty of archetypes on both sides as well.

If i was going to try to ‘fix’ it, i would make the Max Dex scale with caster level.

I don’t mind it being a valuable effect, but the fact that a wand is basically just as good as a wizard for using/abusing it is a negative to me.

Melkiador wrote:

I’d expect most to just go with a standard quadruped build. Bite,claw,claw at level 1. You would have to pay evolution points for a weapon build so I wouldn’t expect that to be a big improvement over a standard natural attack build.

And i would have...if the shadow eidolon didnt qualify for like none of the natural attack evolutions. I'm not even joking. Honestly weapon build is all the shadow eidolon's got.

if Shadow doesn’t qualify for Bite, Claw, and/or Tail Slap,

Are those evolutions non-functioning in the Shadow base forms that grant them (like feats you get but then lose prereqs for)?

You can also get an animal companion via, e.g., Exotic Heritage feat line.

Your point was that if you got an Animal Companion through the Animal Ally feat, Share Spells is a dead feature. And that’s a valid comment no matter how obtuse people want to be.

Lelomenia wrote:

he said you can’t take Animal Ally if you have a class that grants an animal companion.

You are saying you can take Animal Ally if your classes don’t grant an Animal Companion.

I don’t see a real disagreement/contradiction here.

With respect, “you can’t take the Animal Ally feat unless you do not have levels in a class that grants an animal companion” and “must not have an animal companion” are two different things.

they are very different. But, if you have an Animal Companion from a class (which is a practical requirement foe Share Spells to work), you generally don’t qualify for Animal Ally because of the prereq. If that sounds really obvious, it is.

Animal Ally doesn’t care about whether the Companion is granted by a class, but Share Spells does.

Are we reading the same feat? Alternately, has there been a FAQ to the feat in question? I'm asking sincerely, because what you are positing here conflicts with the way my GM and I have handled an active character of mine.

Faiths and Philosophies wrote:

Prerequisites: Nature Soul, character level 4th, must not have an animal companion or mount that advances as an animal companion. (emphasis mine)

Benefit: You gain an animal companion as if you were a druid of your character level –3 from the following list: badger, bird, camel, cat (small), dire rat, dog, horse, pony, snake (viper), or wolf. If you later gain an animal companion through another source (such as the Animal domain, divine bond, hunter’s bond, mount, or nature bond class features), the effective druid level granted by this feat stacks with that granted by other sources.

I don't see anything in that description that disqualifies a Paladin who chose to take a Divine Bond with his weapon, or a Ranger who (for whatever reason) chose a Hunter's Bond with his companions, from taking the Animal Ally feat.

he said you can’t take Animal Ally if you have a class that grants an animal companion.

You are saying you can take Animal Ally if your classes don’t grant an Animal Companion.

I don’t see a real disagreement/contradiction here.

I guess you could look at it as either

“All Animal Companions have an ability called Multiattack that grants some Animal Companions the Multiattack feat”

Or

“Some Animal Companions get the Multiattack feat/ability”

The Ultimate Wilderness authors probably viewed it as the latter situation, and felt that language was essentially just reminding people that that’s how it works. Where I think most people would interpret it the former way.

AwesomenessDog wrote:

... /anyone who finds some way to have weapon training ...

Is there some way I don't know about for a non-fighter to get weapon training?

there are some archetypes that give it. Don’t think there are feats that do it in a topical manner (there is a feat that counts as it for prereq purposes, but that doesn’t help here).

to the wielder as long as the weapon is drawn and in hand.

Weapons cannot possess the same special ability more than once.

(1) no

On the Ki side of things, it’s not an easy “dip” because monk doesn’t get Ki until 4th level. That’s a huge investment. Hungry Ghost’s Ki refill ability is at 5th. So with that, seems likely for most of your character’s life, he’ll be more a “monk with some Samurai flavor” than the other way around. You could get Ki with 2 levels of Ninja, but not sure that’s the flavor you are looking for.

I’m going to suggest you take a look at the Sohei Monk archetype (as a single class character, though a dip for Flurry of blows and Mounted Skirmisher could be a strong option too). It is basically a Samurai monk, focused on mounted combat but with conventional weapons, monk flurry, Ki, and so forth. It’s weirdly one of the strongest archetypes in the game, but not ‘broken’ because (1) core monk is a weak chassis to start with and (2) the overpowered abilities don’t synergize, e.g., Flurry of Blows with a bow + mounted ‘pounce’ (move then Full Attack) into Flurry of Blows at 1st level (Mounted Skirmisher) are both great amazing, but they don’t work together at all. But for you, depending on what you want out of Samurai, it could hit the target of an Eastern themed knight with some monk mystical abilities.

On the other direction, dipping into spellcasting classes, i would comment that shallow dips into casting classes tend to be unrewarding.

Arcanist Occultist was the Critters 10 for me. It’s not just standard action summoning which is huge, and it’s not just minutes/level, also a big deal as you can frequently enter combat with a summon on hand,

It uses Arcane Reservoir, which can be refilled at need by Consume Spells, so Occultist can reliably work from highest-level Summon all day every day (often higher than allowed by spontaneous caster progression) where other classes are limited to a 1-2 highest level casts/day.

I think Neriathale’s recommendation to use the spell Phase Step and don’t put yourself into the firing line is the right answer for this specific question. Toss a Fog Cloud out there and the Golems will have to get within attack of opportunity range of your fighter to shoot at him.

And i can’t help but note, as you list out offensive spells in search of something to use on Golems,

that Golems are immune to all magic (at least, all magic effects that are affected by spell resistance), although specific Golems have exceptions to this (e.g., Rusting Grasp on a Clockwork Golem “deals damage normally”).

Temperans wrote:

Surprised no one has mentioned the iceplant hex which gives +2 nat armor and endure elements, no dip required.

Well, they're already using an amulet of natural armor +3. Iceplant is still a good option if they give up their neck slot for something else.

Another option to use if you have a free hand and if you have an immediate action to spare is the Mirror of Guarding Reflections. When you are targeted by an attack, you can summon a mirror image to have a 50% take the attack in your place. That's not the AC bonus asked for, but I thought it's worth mentioning.

Iceplant stacks with Amulet of Natural Armor.

But Natural Armor bonus, along with Armor bonus to AC and Shield bonus to AC, has no impact on touch AC, which is what matters against gunfire.

Well OP asked how to increase AC and be more survivable after dimension door into melee and a one level dip into Fey or Style shifter does exactly that. So I don't see why a level dip to do exactly what OP wants to do would be bad.

What OP wants from Fey Shifter is just the first level where they get AC and concealment for practically every fight. Not the fey form, that they can just get via spells.

I used what my player does as an example of "its a lot stronger than people give it credit".

the Shifter AC bonus is at 2nd level. And as it is based on Wisdom, it probably wouldn’t help much.

It’s really impractical to get a full arcane’s AC high enough to be relevant at higher levels, and even if you somehow managed, gun touch AC attacks would just snicker. For other classes, i’d just say vanish/invisibility/mirror image, but none are on your list. The spell you might be looking for, Protection From Arrows, would do wonders against non-magical gunfire. Also not on your list. I guess you could craft a Talisman (Lesser) of Arrow Protection (or a few), but that’s not cheap.

Clearly the right answer is to Disguise skill yourself as a golem. Beep Boop. They have terrible perception (+0, and only get to roll if you ‘draw attention to yourself’), don’t sweat it.

The big limitations on Suggestion are that it has to be described in one or two sentences and the GM has to think it sounds reasonable. PCs of course are always going to feel that any course of action that doesn’t involve smiting enemies and protecting allies in the most efficient way possible is unreasonable. And from a certain interpretation of ‘unreasonable’, that’s true.

I would put it in context with Charm Person.

In Charm Person, you can cast it on someone “you are currently attacking” and convince them to do things “it wouldn’t ordinarily do” that are clearly “very dangerous” but not “obviously harmful.” Charm Person is a 1st level spell, Suggestion is higher; Charm Person has extra limitations on those situations, but still. And as it is drawing a clear difference between “very dangerous” vs. “obviously harmful”, I would interpret “obviously harmful” acts as ones that directly hurt yourself (“stab yourself in the foot”) vs. “very dangerous” being acts that leave yourself more vulnerable to attack.

As for “reasonable”, there’s no way to objectively determine that other than to say “GM discretion”, which goes back to the start. If you want to control your actions during combat, make your Will saves.

I might try a Trip build if all style feats were taken away.

Awkwardly, you probably want to wait until 6th to take Improved Trip to get it as a bonus feat. But if you are already 5th, may not be much of a wait.

(1) Power Attack, Combat Reflexes
(2) whatever
(3) Vicious Stomp
(5) Dirty Fighting (needed for Greater Trip)
(6) Improved Trip
(7) Greater Trip

So at 6th you’ll be
Attack/Trip=>Extra Attack if successful/Attack

And then at 7th
Attack/Trip=>2 extra attacks if successful/Attack

Then at 9th, you get Leg Sweep and you no longer need to forgo an attack to get your Trip.

Lelomenia wrote:

(4) If dazing spell is counted as debuff, it’s one of the strongest debuff effects. And shaman are one of the beat classes to abuse it, based on having good spells to carry it and good class features to, again, make it stick.

Tell me more about the shaman's "spells to carry it" and making it stick. By the latter do you mean misfortune or evil eye? Those are great, but hard to justify in the action economy by the time you're casting 4th and higher level spells.

And for spells, do you mean thorny entanglement? Maybe fireball (thanks Arcane Enlightenment) or others from the wizard/sorc list?

for Dazing, you tend to want spells that are at least 2nd level (spending a round to daze someone for one round isn’t much of a win, but two rounds without actions is forever in pathfinder), but not much higher than 4th or so (Dazing Stormbolts requires fairly uncommon 11th level spell slots).

So focusing on that 2-4 range. Ball Lightning is sort of the standard “Best Spell” for Dazing, hitting multiple targets each round and able to force repeated saves round after round. And heaven help you if you are wearing metal armor. Here, combining with Hexes to cripple saves (Evil Eye) isn’t an action
economy conflict, you can cast spell Round 1 and whack some people with electricity, then Round 2 (and on) Evil Eye whoever isn’t dazed and take them out.

Beyond Ball Lightning, as you note Thorny Entanglement might be the best 3rd level spell for Dazing, and is limited to Druid/sham/witch(/ranger). Fireball’s area isn’t great, and it only forces a single save, so nothing special for Dazing.

Other options at 3rd could be Burning Entanglement and maybe Flashfire (depending on how it actually works), at 4th also Spike Stones. Again, action economy option to cast and then next turn Hex targets that aren’t yet dazed but will likely be making saves next turn for the Entangling spells.

2nd level spells aren’t as strong. I like Burning Arc on the Wizard list better, but mostly because it serves as an adequate single target damage spell as well (where the shaman damage spells all have terrible damage, which is why i rate them as basically the worst blasting class). That said, specifically for Dazing Spell application, Pinecomb Bomb is better, with larger area, more targets allowed, and more difficult saves for the additional targets. Winter’s Grasp is Fireball area one level lower, etc.

Spotted Owl has made a list of good debuff spells in the google doc; do you feel there are spells missing, or spells listed that shouldn't be there? If we want to measure the quality of (e.g.) the shaman spell list, at least where it comes to debuffing, it makes sense to base it on that tab.

The catch is that evil eye / misfortune is fairly weak compared to the spells in that tab; so this is not somehow the gold standard of debuffing. Just having access to evil eye doesn't make a class good at debuffing; it needs good class features and/or a solid spell list for that.

Quote:

Deserves to be up with witch,

Shaman appears to have a WAY worse spell list than the witch, in addition to having worse hexes, so I don't understand why it would deserve to be at the same rating as witch.

as above, part of my issue is that i’m not clear on what is being called Debuff vs. BF Control. But I would comment that:

I could see the low end of range for shaman being pretty low, as by default they don’t have relevant abilities or spells. But optimized? In the past five or so years, I’ve seen all of one instance of a PFS GM having an issue with an overpowered PC build. Came here hoping he could rule differently against a PC, as there wasn’t even a point in having combats vs. the BBEG with the shaman cakewalking over everything without blinking. Response was “yes that’s overpowered. But that’s a shaman for you.” And it was a debuff shaman (again, counting dazing).

Two levels of Pathfinder Savant prestige class could add Bladed Dash. Could be fun for a while.

I’m going to agree with an earlier comment; in a big (weapon-oriented) group, generic bardsong for Inspire Courage is a big deal, and going archaeologist there hurts a lot. Slayer can take trapfinding if it’s important.

On a different topic, I think it’s (highly) misleading to suggest wizards can consistently target weakest saves using highest level slots benefiting from greater spell focus. For one thing, the schools (focus affects one school) tend to have particular saving throw focuses: evocation usually has reflex saves, enchantment generally will, necromancy hits fort, etc. So if you want to benefit from greater spell focus, you won’t be able to switch what save you are targeting between encounters. More problematically, reflex saves are the most common bad save, and reflex saves are generally damage based, and the damage is piddly unless you specifically build for blasting. Which is all a long winded way of saying if you plan to go after saves, plan for beating strong saves unless you build for dazing spell on evocations.

There’s an argument Cha casters gestalt better than Int classes, because there are a few martials that get big benefits from Cha (Paladin, Dragonscale Monk, possibly etc.).

For Arcanist, the ‘Class Feature Synergy’ second class path might be through Magus, at least up to Broad Study (can go full BAB after that if you want and are allowed). For a ‘Generic Stat Synergy’ build, Ranger and Slayer will give you a lot more hitpoints, all good saves, lots of skill points, full BAB, and a lot of other nicenice.

I guess I’m used to a breakdown of “Debuff: effects that weaken enemy offense and defense” and ‘crowd control’ where “Crowd Control: effects that prevent enemies from taking relevant actions in combat, whether by directly removing their actions, by preventing them from moving to position to attack, or by other means.”

And was viewing ‘Battlefield control’ as more or less ‘crowd control’ effects, as walls etc do exactly that. So ‘dazing’ would be 100% battlefield control.

But am i understanding the breakdown is viewed as it not mattering what effects you have on enemies, only whether or not the effect puts observable junk on the battlefield? (‘Yes’ = ‘Battlefield Control’, ‘no’ = ‘debuff’)

I’m not sure if there’s any campaigns, evil or otherwise, that are okay with a zombie army PC.

And I’m also not sure that zombie army is generally useful for any particular purpose other than making good guys feel powerful when they hack through them with ease.

Duergar have Type: humanoid (dwarf), so yes, they meet dwarfy prereqs.

This is an archetype i would’ve wanted to see. You’d have to home brew pretty heavily to compensate for the restriction though. Or you can always just ignore your larger spell access, but that feels pretty unrewarding.

If treated as Baleful Polymorph, having a pre-existing polymorph doesn’t matter, because Baleful Polymorph doesn’t care. If treated as Flesh to Stone, having a pre-existing polymorph probably doesn’t matter, because Flesh to Stone isn’t a Polymorph effect (though as PAO is a polymorph spell, one could weirdly argue that Flesh to Stone becomes a polymorph spell when cast through PAO).

So not all that straightforward.

Everything OmniMage says is true.

But other point is you need the Scribe Scrolls feat in order to make any scrolls (which witches do not get automatically). Once you have that, crafting is half the cost of buying at market price.

It’s not clear.

I would take my lead from Flesh to Stone (which PAO can mimic) for living creature ==> inaminate object transformations.

Caravan Bond (Su): At 1st level, by leading a group prayer for 1 minute, a Varisian pilgrim can select a number of traveling companions equal to her cleric level + her Wisdom bonus. She may use her domain-granted powers on any of these traveling companions as if they were her. She can use these abilities on her traveling companions at a range of up to 30 feet, even if the ability normally requires her touch.

varisian pilgrim doesn’t grant your companions your abilities (and assumptively additional uses that would come with that).

You can spend uses that normally only target you on others. Which is nice with the right ability, but And Copycat isn’t Mirror Image; you only get 1 duplicate, vs. an average of 3.5 to 8ish depending on CL for a casting of Mirror Image. Good Fortune goes from being one reroll per day for you to one total for your group.

On the Blaster topic, Shaman is particularly bad. Basically, if a spell appears on at least two of the oracle/druid/witch lists, shaman gets it, but at the higher level. Flame Strike at 5th (druids get it at 4th), Harm at 7th (clerics get it at 6th), firestorm at 8th (druids get at 7th), but no lightning bolt (witch 3rd), explosion of rot (druid 4th), or hellfire ray (cleric 6th). And almost no shaman class features for blasting. I would rate them below cleric, probably for both unoptimized and optimized.