Lelomenia's page

essentially a Wizard specialist is a better caster than an Arcanist or Sorcerer. So much so you can dip a level and still be better.

what advantage as a caster does a specialist wizard with a dip have over a school savant arcanist?

The few clearly overpowered FCBs > add a spell FCBs > extra HP > extra skill points > the other 90% of FCBs, for me at least.

As above, you can translate a lot of things into Feat units for one perspective. 1 HP every level is a feat. 3 bonus Reservoir points is a feat as well, so 1 reservoir point per level is amazing and 1/6 per level is bad (is only a fraction of a feat before level 18). Offhand i’d probably split elf FCBs between reservoir and a few HP.

I would go
Elf School Savant (Foresight) Arcanist, and save the full level of your casting.

For initiative, it looks like from
Dex
Foresight: Forewarned
Feat: Improved Initiative
Elf Racial Trait: Fleet-Footed
Trait: Reactionary
Exploit: Familiar

You still end up at +19 initiative at level 8; which I agree with others above, that’s overkill (especially as divination school automatically goes in surprise round), so could reallocate trait and/or exploit as preferred.

A non-magical mithril shirt costs the same as a wand of mage armor (50 uses) plus 14 scrolls of mage armor (64 total uses). Potion is a bit more expensive if your party has no magic users or UMD capables.

Mithril shirt would need to be +2 at level 1 to help in this scenario, +3 at level 5ish (+2 dex belt), +4 at level 8, +5 at level 11. None of those are plausible. Note that a Nimble Mithril Shirt does slightly better in these scenarios, but not enough that it would ever be the optimized use of your Wealth.

The point where it becomes more advantages to not use armor is a lot higher than people in the thread are saying. Until your DEX bonus alone is higher than the...

as above, comparison shouldn’t be to zero armor bonus, it should be to Mage Armor’s +4 AC with no dex cap.

No armor is better (vs mithril shirt) starting at 24 Dex (+2 more dex for each +1 on the mithril shirt), and Urban Barbarian / Urban Bloodrager expect to be at 24 dex starting at level 1 and inceasing from there.

For very high Dex builds, if you have an arcane caster in the party, Mage Armor will be better than any armor you could wear until you could afford a +4 Haramaki. But there would probably be better ways to spend money at that level.

Obviously an experienced GM can tune anything for most parties, but an out-of-the-box adventure path might feel like a serious slog if the party ends up with few damage dealing classes (especially unoptimized, which i’d assume for new players). Bard/cleric/wizard/X, for example.

If you wear light or no armor, the game almost invariably pushes martials towards a Dex build. Urban Barbarian is reasonable here, has shields and light or no armor (Haramaki as above is the ideal armor, so pretty much shirtless + shield).

Rapier might not have the sword vibe you are shooting for, but could use a different name for it (reskin), or just short sword through life until you can afford Effortless Lace on your 1-hander of choice.

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

I also advise novices to stay away from rogues and similar classes. I am a veteran player and found them hard to make work when I tried them. You have to survive in combat with modest armor and set up sneak attacks, neither is exactly easy. I nearly always play full casters so am no expert, but it's hardly the way to introduce the game to a novice.

We have found the opposite - Rogues are one of the best characters for newbies to play. they offer more than just "I swing a sword" every round, since they are typically the scout, the lockpick, the trapfinder, etc. so it gets the player more involved in the game, and since they don't do a ton of damage in combat, tend to not be the prime targets of the bad guys.

And they aren't as complex as a spellcaster.

(as for making a rogue work I find it super easy)

unRogue is fine.

Overall for group composition, most classes are fine, but I’d recommend half or preferably most characters are capable of dealing damage and taking hits. For new players in particular, that, along with class features that make something capable and playable ‘out pf the box’, would be my recommendation. Which ends up being a healthy number of classes:
Ranger, Paladin,
Unmonk
Cavalier
Inquisitor
(un)Summoner
Samurai
Bloodrager
Slayer
Warpriest
Unbarb
Unrogue.

I also prefer prepared casters better than sorc/oracle for new players, as the spontaneous classes require a ton of character decisions before session 1 that you end up stuck with and will be slow to correct when they become points of regret. I’m probably in the minority on that.

How about the daring champion cavalier? They get both the swashbuckler's precise strike and the cavalier's challenge. That allows them to add twice their level to damage, even if half of it is not multiplied on a critical. After the second round they can spend a swift action to double the bonus of the precises strike so they are adding three times their level. If you really want to get absurd use the VMC to gain the paladins smite evil. Now they get twice their level that does multiply on a crit, plus their level that does not multiply and it gets CHA to hit and ignores all DR. They also get another benefit depending on their cavalier order.

flying blade 3/virtuous bravo x is on my list of builds i’d be interested in trying someday (full attack at range adding 2xlevel to every hit with smite active).

Soothsayer/Protective Luck combo is too strong to me.

Ironbound samurai/fighter and any build that gets more than 1d6 sneak attack from a 1 level dip in vivisectionist are out for me for cheesiness reasons.

Pathfinder is kind of an optimization hungry system, so random class feature selection probably isn’t as functional as it might be in other systems. Also, there’s a ton of content that is just non-viable; I think there are over 3000 wizard spells? That seems pike a lot of work to randomly roll from.

That said, there are some functional staple shortlists that could be used, e.g., pathfinder Iconic Wizard spellbool. Maybe there are some specialist spellbooks you could look at as well.

Pathfinder 2e resolved that problem. Paladins (and antipaladins) have a much larger palette.

Pathfinder 2e Remaster went even further and removed arbitrary alignments completely

my understanding is that 2e original Paladin was a Lawful Good only champion,

And 2e remaster doesn’t have a ‘paladin’ at all.

Certainly ‘champion’ is based on paladin functionality even in remaster, but you can say the same about 1e Cavalier, Inquisitor, Samurai, etc.

From the Monstrous Cohort list, CR3 creatures are generally around Level 7.

I am going with CR3 because Harpies and certain common trolls are CR4, and you propose to count your Monstrous as 1 CR lower.

Level 7 + 2 class levels = Level 9, so i propose Level 9 as the most RAW answer. That said, the Monstrous Cohort level list is bad. Edit: i see 4 levels for the troll, so possibly 11, but would need to know what kind of troll to determine.

‘Bonuses of the same type don’t stack’ etc

You keep your class feature armor bonus, but that doesn’t change stacking rules.

My issue with fighter/wizard/cleric/rogue, beyond core rogue simply being bad, isn’t that it’s not balanced or weak,

It’s that those seem like they should be generic classes for beginners, but they don’t play the way new players might expect and require more system mastery than most more recent classes. I.e., fighter doesn’t function as a tank, cleric isn’t a healing battery, wizard isn’t a damage powerhouse, and the core rogue is probably already dead. For experienced players tho, fig/cle/wiz/rog(unchained) would be great.

Topically, without going overly complicated,

Gunslinger[Musket Master] 5/Paladin X for BBEG slaying,

Summoner[Spirit Summoner:Dark Tapestry spirit] for permanently slapping Advanced Template on your pouncy Eidolon starting at level 1,

Wizard, because*,

And plenty of valid options for the 4th slot.

*Happy to blather about why wizard is good to have. Feels unnecessary…

The language is poor, but reasonable assumption that it is a primary natural attack that can be used as any other primary natural attack (i.e., in conjunction with other available natural attacks) as would be the case for any other Slam.

Dominate the bard (scroll of Limited Wish ==> Geas) and have him Cacophonous Call the party. I’m sure party will still be fine, but it will at least be a memorable road there, and that’s really the goal.

In general very hard to balance things for a party that large.

Shaman can add any sorcerer/wizard spell to their list through Arcane Enlightenment
Shaman can add any cleric/oracle spell through Favored Class
Shaman can add any Druid spell through Favored Class Bonus
Shaman can add any Psychic spell through Favored Class Bonus
Shaman can add sorcerer/wizard enchantments, illusion(shadow), and Darkness descriptor spells through Favored Class
Etc. (spirit magic, archetypes)

The challenges/concerns you describe (mini me riding on PC, taking extra actions each turn to cast spells) are more or less the same as you could face without Leadership, just with any Improved Familiar that gets UMD high enough for scrolls and wands. If that’s not your cup of tea, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t worry that it represents some game altering power level or cheese.

Note that as a Monstrous Cohort, what he’s proposing would probably end up with ~10 levels of wizards (after the ~4 levels as a Wysp). A lot of utility, but unlikely to be problematic among 16th level PCs.

I mean, Extra Hex explicitly says the shaman can’t pick a Hex from his wandering spirit?

I would recommend discussing how Extra Hex interacts with Unsworn with your GM; it looks like it should work, but it’s very unclear how.

Sir Longears wrote:

Considering they asked the question over a year ago... They probably already got the answer or moved on.

Considering there was no answer, and I personally am struggling with finding any kind of information on the 3rd question. Not even the book itself elaborates. It'd just be nice to find something

the cost is in terms of spellcasting points that you can allocate when you choose the spellcasting ability.

You get 5 points to distribute, being able to cast a 2nd level spell costs 2 points, but you can cspend twice that many points (4) to be able to cast that 2nd level spell three times instead.

I guess RAW they can’t, in that they neither prepare nor know the spell in question, but that same RAW would suggest Oracles can’t meet prereqs. Pretty clear intent is that a character has to be able to provide a cast of the spell, whether through item or otherwise.

Bigger issue is that the resulting item wouldn’t be usable, as it would be an arcane item with a spell that assumptively isn’t on any arcane character’s spell list. So you’d need UMD to use it.

What difficulty? Even if the mod added a bunch of features, did it close many/most of the rules differences that made optimization in the game completely different than pnp (e.g., things stacking that aren’t supposed to stack)?

To be honest, this issue has usually been handled by banning the Vivisectionist archetype (e.g., PFS). As worded by Rules as Written, the way Vivisectionist is worded would work the way the player suggests in a hypothetical case of a bunch of levels in a generic class with 1d6 Sneak Attack damage and 1 level Viv. Nature’s Fang isn’t a generic class of that sort, however; it has specific language for how its Sneak Attack stacks with a second class that contributes Sneak Attack dice, and that language specifically contradicts the Vivisectionist language. I don’t believe there is an official ruling in how to handle this particular contradiction, so I believe it would fall to the GM to decide which language applies.

For Viv/Slayer, Slayer has no Sneak Attack stacking language so the Vivisectionist language would apply.

It would technically depend on when you cast the spell, i.e. you need to cast first thing before you throw your weapon, or you need to get it back somehow (star toss style or ricochet toss come to mind) to cast at the end of your full attacks.

Again technically nothing stops you from casting normally when you have a weapon in hand and an otherwise empty hand, see every cleric ever, but you aren't getting to make attacks at the same time. That's what spell combat is for.

So by RAW, you just need to be careful with having your weapon in hand, although admittedly by a fairly reasonably RAI, as soon as you start treating a melee weapon as a ranged weapon, it should just be considered a ranged weapon (thus requiring eldritch archer/myrmidarch/etc.)

myrmidarch doesn’t give Ranged Spell Combat. Which i originally interpreted as it being a terrible archetype. But as with the OP, on further reading I couldn’t see where thrown weapons weren’t allowed for Spell Combat. And search for other discussions on the rule leaned the same way (it probably works). Card Caster gets Spellstrike only for thrown weapons (no melee), but doesn’t modify Spell Combat from how it is written, which would also seem a bit weird if thrown didn’t work with Spell Combat.

Or the Combat Stamina feat. Spending 5 stamina points with Rapid Reload reduces the reload time for a two-handed firearm to a move action; an alchemical cartridge reduces a move action reload to a free action.

I'm thinking something like:
** spoiler omitted **

by level 7 you’ll want to be reloading up to what, 5 times per round? Which would be 25 stamina points per round out of a pool of 11ish? The language is also a bit awkward as Combat Stamina Rapid Reload reduces Move Action to Swift Action (I understand how you could argue it would work).

Trench Fighter + Rapid Reload + Alchemical Cartridges => Full Round Action (for two handed gun) goes to standard action goes to move action. Which is pretty much worthless.

Need Musket Master for free action reload (with two handed gun).

Lelomenia wrote:

I always put Musket Master+ Eldritch Archer on one side of the gestalt, straight full caster on the other. Honestly you don’t need more than 5 levels of Gunslinger or 6 of Magus.

that's what I am staring with.

Musket Master/Eldritch archer, and once I get enough levels in each to have Ranged Spell combat/Spell Strike, and the reload abilities so I can make full attacks, them I want to switch to Slayer/Exploiter.

the limiting factor is the Broad Study Magnus Arcana coming at level 6. if I stick long enough to get it, I might as well just do a dip in Exploiter and then go full Magus.

to clarify, i mean building toward

Saying you really don’t want any dips on your full caster side. Unless you are starting at high level, your full caster class is going to be worse at casting than a straight Magus would be for most of the character’s career (at even a 3 level dip).

And noting that level 5 is the milestone for Musket Master, dex to damage, not the fast reload, is the critical mass. And not sure Slayer is the best way to invest the final 9 levels. E.g., you could get Legacy Weapon, Champion Spirit, and Trappings of the Wwarrior out of a Haunt Channeler Occultist out of that.

I always put Musket Master+ Eldritch Archer on one side of the gestalt, straight full caster on the other. Honestly you don’t need more than 5 levels of Gunslinger or 6 of Magus.

I guess one factor for attributes not noted so far is Archetype access; on launch, a Wizard’s Int gave access to what, only Alchemist class archetype? Where Bard and Champion were both attractive archetypes for an Arcane caster. Squeezing 14 str/14 cha on an Int class was fun!

Now with witch/inventor/investigator/psychic also available (wizard too), there are at least enough options that Int unlocks for it to be ‘interesting.’

Wouldnt you be able to start the game with skills at expert by doing that part of character creation after picking skills from class if int provided skill increases?

no, that would make Int worthwhile. Class and Int only make you trained and you select them at the same time.

“Trained in a number of additional skills equal to 2 plus your Intelligence modifier” etc

Question. Does everyone playing a non fighter martial feel like they are not optimal because they have 2 less to hit?

i would hope they feel a big, comparable contribution from their other class features to compensate. But the fact that a +2 is a massive, great class feature is really an argument that dumping +4 to +3 is comparable to throwing away half the benefit you’d expect from class features.

A lot of it just feels weird right now, hopefully lore addresses. Weird that schools have 3 8th/9th (combined 2+1) level spells but only 2 1st level. A second level wizard has 7 1st level spells in his book. That seems off…already by second level the vast majority of your spells you learned elsewhere? It’s not possible to stat instructors that only have two spells per level either.

I’ve always imagined that the extra slot was available only to spells of the school because there was something magically unique to the spells of your school, which is rules demonstrated by the typing. That logic feels gone.

And the fun random schools, like civil service, why would they go up to 9th level? Is there a single civil service magic school somewhere led by an nigh all-powerful 20th level planar wandering civil service bureaucrat, or are surprisingly identical civil service wizard schools that go up to 9th level all over?

It would have been really easy to do something flavorful and made good lore sense, e.g., publish a few high level wizard NPCs that ‘established schools’, and wizards can pick one of them and have their spell lists as school spells. Maybe they get automatic access to some Rares etc. Hopefully my brain adjusts and it feels fine/normal after a while.

Nine Lives is worthwhile even if you have to take a feat to get access.

People seriously underestimate the range limitations.

Also, cackling makes noise, and if you protective luck everyone, while cackling and then kick in the door you give the enemy time to prep and takes party members * rounds turns to do so, and is reasonably loud.

So, if you properly police time, and have enemies react, for example by retreating a bit and casting their buff spells and reading actions etc, things get less effective too.

The BBEG can jsut have some mooks who have stones that have silence cast on them, and throw them close to the cackling witch. No more cackling.

with soothsayer that’s not an issue, you set up potentially hours in advance and don’t need to cackle until combat is underway.

If curricula are really going to be as narrow and limited as currently appears, i’d think most wizards would want to be dual majors.

For those who mentioned that PF2 should have been more flexible with for example using int with a Religion check to recall knowledge about undead, this is already in the rules: "If the GM deems it appropriate for a certain situation, however, they might have you use a different ability modifier for a skill check or when determining your skill DC." (Source)

For some reason it just never happens in practice, I haven't seen any PF2 GM make use of this rule and as a GM I never use it myself. Maybe I should, but then I think players will expect to always be able to swap their ability modifiers.

that reads to me to be intended for niche situations, like allowing a Str modifier to Intimidate other competitors in a weight lifting competition. Not carte blanche to use Int for Wis skills because either you think it should have been an Int skill in the first place or feel bad for Int characters.

Str is for anyone that ever wants to swing a weapon that has a relevant damage die. Which is probably > 50% of characters.

Ok so what if I was a Fire Kineticist and used Kinetic Blade on my sword, which deals my Kinetic Blast damage (Fire)... Could I then use Blistering Feint and deal fire damage with my weapon (the sword) which is now "enchanted" with Fire damage?

kinetic blade IS the sword, but to your point, yes, that should work. I do think Blistering Feint is poorly worded; probably should have said “deals fire damage on a melee hit”. How much fire damage does a Balor’s Lash do? Or a Fiery Boulder (or an Alchemist bomb w/fire damage) used as an Improvised Weapon? I think it’s fair to say Wand of Fireballs doesn’t do fire damage, it casts a spell, and the spell does the fire damage. But other items just directly do fire damage (Hellcaller’s Edge, Flametongue), so that criterion doesn’t fully resolve things. I think mostly you just pretend it says “fire damage on a melee hit”, and go from there; as such, Kinetic Blade and Flame Blade do full damage. Which is fine.

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.