Lenaris Vaerin's page

So looking forward to seeing this game come together!

Anyway, the idea is just a way to implement quest making in the game, something I think would greatly influence the player made content. Quests should have an easy "build your own quest" format that makes use of key words like "defeat", "kill", "collect", "steal", etc. These keywords will have specific meaning. If the quest calls for the player to "defeat" something that would mean reducing the target to zero hit points from non-lethal damage, where "kill" would be lethal damage. Obviously the quest reward would be taken from the giver's character and set into the "contract" to be given out upon completion, or returned if the quest expires with no completions.

Having a method for creating quests gives players a lot of control over the world and works well for guilds to have major influence. Go to a guild of assassins and post a hit on their quest board. Go to a paladin guild and put up a quest to defend a location. For quests that have an evil act attached, like killing a good aligned player, the player who posts the quest should receive some alignment adjustment, and a player who posts a positive quest should as well.

I know the team is already thinking about cool stuff like this but I figure I'd put the idea out there in case it isn't already. Keep up the good work Goblins!

I have a friend in a home game playing a Guide / Urban Ranger and a friend who started a Pathfinder Society character that was the same. The archetypes stack together perfectly fine as far as being able to have them both on a single character, but there is one issue this combo has. Urban Ranger replaces Favored Terrain with Favored Community, guide replaces Hunter's Bond with Terrain Bond. Terrain Bond grants additional bonuses while in "favored terrain" and while the urban ranger still has a "favored terrain" like ability, RAW says that Terrain Bond sits there and never does anything.

Besides the discussion of whether or not Favored Community is weaker than Favored Terrain, I see this as being a problem. In our home game we are fine with ruling that for these purposes, Community counts as terrain so Terrain Bond doesn't get completely wasted, throwing away Hunter's bond (rather powerful) for absolutely nothing. For my PFS friend, this won't fly without legitimate errata.

Seeing as all the core ranger abilities that use favored terrain get alter with Urban ranger I am betting on the side of these archetypes being deemed incompatible, but that's not my call to make.

I am playing a wizard/barbarian in one of my games and we're getting to the point where prestige classes would look very nice. I would go arcane archer, but I'm using the spellslinger archetype and guns+arcane archer don't work without some houserules of it's own. Then I remembered the rage mage and decided to bust out my own take on it. This is intended to be a primary barbarian with a secondary in spellcasting, or a high level caster who dipped barbarian and jumped into this prestige class. These two methods of entry result in either a powerful barbarian type with some spells on the side, to a powerful caster type with some rage on the side.

I have looked at various homebrew redesigns and the original class itself, using almost all for inspiration. I do believe this to be in line with other pathfinder prestige classes and very much fits the flavor behind the rage mage, as described above.

Why BAB +6 and 1st level spells instead of BAB +3/4 and 2nd level spells? Firstly, my character was going wizard 1-2 barbarian 5-6 so this is somewhat for my specific homebrew benefit. Additionally, this class redesign fits better with a primary barbarian than a primary caster as far as benefits go. Primary casters will still see plenty of benefit from this prc but will be taking it at a higher level. I think this trade off combined with the specific power scaling is better balanced than the original requirements, and more flexible. You can go 8 caster and 2 barb or you can go 5-6 barb and 1-2 caster to get into this prestige class. As it was you had to go caster 3-4+ and then barb 2-3 to get in otherwise and that's much more restricting to the primary barbarian route.

Hit Die: d10
Requirements
Alignment: Any nonlawful.
Base Attack Bonus: +6
Skills: Spellcraft 4 ranks
Feats?: Combat Casting (I don't really like feat requirements on most prestige classes, but this was in the original so I'm including it anyway. Optional)
Spells: Ability to cast 1st level arcane spells
Special: Rage Class Feature

Class Skills
The Rage Mage’'s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (Arcana) (Int), Spellcraft (Int), Survival (Wis)
Skill Ranks at Each Level: 4 + Int modifier.

BAB: 3/4 progression
Fort/Will Saves: Good progression 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5
Ref Save: Bad progression 0,1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3

Table: Rage Mage
Level Special
1 Indomitable Caster, Spell Rage
2 Rage Power
3 Spell Fury +1
4 Arcane Armor Training, Shared Rage
5 Rage Power
6 Spell Fury +2
7 Arcane Armor Mastery, Coordinated Fury
8 Rage Power
9 Spell Fury +3
10 Greater Spell Rage

Class Features

The following are class features of the rage mage prestige class.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A rage mage gains no proficiency with any weapon or armor.

Spells per Day
A rage mage gains new spells per day as if he had also gained a level in an arcane spellcasting class he belonged to before adding the prestige class. He does not, however, gain other benefits a character of that class would have gained, except for additional spells per day, spells known (if he is a spontaneous caster), and an increased effective level of spellcasting. If he had more than one arcane spellcasting class before becoming a rage mage, he must decide to which class he adds the new level for the purpose of determining spells per day.

A rage mage gains this caster level increase at 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 10th levels

Indomitable Caster (Ex)
At 1st level, a rage mage adds his Constitution bonus (if any) on concentration checks.

Spell Rage
When the rage mage enters a rage they retain their ability cast spells and can make Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft checks as normal. A rage mage can sacrifice a spell slot to gain one additional round of rage per level of spell sacrificed. Otherwise, this functions as the rage class feature.

A rage mage uses the same rage as it did prior to becoming a rage mage. The rage mage’s class level stacks with barbarian levels for determining rage rounds, when taking rage powers, and the effect of rage powers. This does not grant additional abilities.

Rage Power
Starting at 2nd level, and every three levels thereafter, a rage mage learns new ways to harness his rage. This functions as the Rage Power class feature. A rage mage cannot select an individual power more than once.

Spell Fury
Starting at 3rd level the rage mage gains a +1 bonus to caster level and save DCs when casting a spell while rage. These bonus increases by +1 every three rage mage levels thereafter, +2 at 6th and +3 at 9th. The increase to CL granted by the rage mage's spell fury can cause a spell's damage dice to exceed the damage cap of the spell by an amount equal to the bonus CL.

Arcane Armor Training
At 4th level the rage mage gains Arcane Armor Training as a bonus feat, even if he does not meet the requirements for it normally.

Shared Rage
At 4th level, the rage mage can cast Rage, as per the spell, as a spell-like ability when entering a rage. The duration changes to “While the Rage Mage remains raging”, the area of the ability changes to a 15 foot radius around the rage mage. Allies must end each of their turns in this area to continue to benefit from this ability. If the affected characters already have the rage ability, they can activate their rage as a free action with the rage mage instead. Rage rounds are consumed at twice the normal rate while using this ability. The rage mage must stop raging and start again if he wishes to rage without this ability.

Arcane Armor Mastery
At 7th level the rage mage gains Arcane Armor Mastery as a bonus feat, even if he does not meet the requirements for it normally.

Coordinated Fury
While using the Shared Rage power, the rage mage and all affected characters are treated as if having the Amplified Rage teamwork feat. The rage granted from this spell counts as raging for the purposes of this feat.

Greater Spell Rage
At 10th level the rage mage gains Greater Rage as the barbarian class feature. In addition, once per rage the rage mage can expend 4 rounds of rage to reduce the casting time of a spell of 4th level or lower to a swift action. A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be reduced in this way. This ability can only be used while raging and these rounds count towards rounds spent fatigued after raging.

I've started playing a Magus fairly recently, fell in love with the class instantly and haven't had much chance to play it till now. I've just hit level 2 so I came to the boards to check out the interpretations of spellstrike and though I saw plenty of discussion during the playtesting I didn't see any final thoughts on it once it was finalized. I'm just putting what I see as the way the rules work and the benefits that may have been overlooked.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Spellstrike (Su): At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a
spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he
can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as
part of a melee attack. Instead of the free melee touch attack
normally allowed to deliver the spell, a magus can make one
free melee attack with his weapon (at his highest base attack
bonus) as part of casting this spell. If successful, this melee
attack deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the
spell."

Starting here, this means that you cast the spell as per the normal rules, provoking attacks if you do so in melee range and the like, but the free action you get during that round to cast the spell can be either a touch attack as per normal or with a melee attack. This is something that should be decided on when the spell is "cast" as it will determine where the charge is being held.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If the magus makes this attack in concert with spell
combat, this melee attack takes all the penalties accrued by
spell combat melee attacks."

The older versions stated that you do not gain a free melee attack when using these two abilities, and I think that this is still implied.

Normal spell combat you could cast the spell, provoking if in melee range already (five foot step in if not), attack with weapon, melee touch attack.

With spellstrike assuming no free attack. You cast the spell and make a full attack action, as per normal spellcombat. The difference is that each swing of the sword is now holding the charge so one hit will result in both hits. This becomes more beneficial as you gain more attacks, as the non spellcombat use of spellstrike is better with only a single attack action. As soon as you gain multiple attacks the spellstrike + spellcombat combo becomes more powerful.

With spellstrike assuming a free attack. You cast the spell and make a full attack action, as per normal spellcombat, with a free melee attack in addition. As described above, spellstrike + spellcombat truly shines when you have multiple attacks in a round as it grants more chances to hit with melee and thus more chances to discharge the spell. That being said, a second level magus should not be able to get an effective 3 attacks in a single round (one weapon, one free weapon, a spell discharge if hit). Granted, a melee attack is less likely to hit than a touch attack (against armored opponents) so one could argue the extra attack is fair but if you look at the above example, proper use of spellstrike + spellcombat, this version is clearly too powerful.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was also a great deal of complaining about how useless spell combat + spellstrike is. The above should demonstrate that it is in fact quite powerful, but only with multiple attacks right? Lets not forget the other benefit of spell combat, which is combat casting bonuses. If you are already in melee range with an enemy, you can't five foot step away to cast the spell, then step back in to spellstrike, you simple don't have the actions. Now you could either provoke the attack, cast defensively normally, or if you are concerned about wasting the spell but still need the attack now (say life or death situation) you can use spellcombat, utilizing this aspect of it:

"If he casts this spell defensively,
he can decide to take an additional penalty on his attack rolls,
up to his Intelligence bonus, and add the same amount as a
circumstance bonus on his concentration check."

This may not be the greatest benefit, and I would certainly prefer a normal spellstrike over a spellcombat + spellstrike with only one attack, but the situation could be quite dire and you may need this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"This attack uses the weapon’s
critical range (20, 19–20, or 18–20 and modified by the keen
weapon property or similar effects), but the spell effect
only deals ×2 damage on a successful critical hit, while the
weapon damage uses its own critical modifier."

Yes, this does encourage a spellstriking magus to use high crit range weapons while providing no extra benefit for a x3 or x4 weapon, but lets be realistic here. If you crit with a rapier for double damage and double spell damage, that's a pretty impressive hit. If you crit with a scythe for quadruple damage and quadruple spell damage, at higher levels that becomes completely and utterly game breaking with no downside whatsoever.

The gunslinger Wizard variant released in ultimate combat grants spells a 20 x3 crit, which is quite powerful, but at the risk of completely destroying yourself on a crit fail, or for an AoE if one enemy crit succeeds (more likely the more targets you include!) so the downside to this powerful feature is high. The magus needs the crit capped at x2 else another seriously powerful downside to make the higher crits more dangerous to make up for the game breaking potential. I don't think that would have been a good choice. The class is complex enough without making this ability even more difficult to understand and with so many upsides and downsides you can't keep it straight.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

That is all! Hope this helps clarify for those who don't understand the wording and helped show the benefits more clearly for those who didn't see the use.