Lenthalia's page

Oh, okay. Phew. So, just to be 100% clear, even if you had an intelligence boost spell that lasted more than 24 hours, it would not grant skills?

O.O Does that mean, since temporary are treated exactly the same as permanent, that you can just cast fox's cunning on yourself whenever you want to know a particular skill?

It's really not complicated. Seriously just ask the player to come up with reasonable rules on what limitations he has himself.

No, because spell effects from NPC's end at the close of a scenario.

Is there somewhere concrete I can point to for that? I didn't see it at a glance in the guide.

If you want the skill bonus, you need to be able to cast the spell yourself.

How about the wand?

Huh, funny; I see high wisdom as the opposite of impulsive. Shows how subjective these things are.

Geez.

At this point, I'm not sure it matters much what you do, given how powerful that class is.

Wolves, and I'm fairly sure the majority of vertebrae animals, are 2. I only know that because I have a rule that creatures with intelligence 1 can't use tactics of any kind. :)

I would look a bit askance at the player too.

However, I think the proper approach is to ask him "What limitations, outside of skill points and other dull numerics, does your low intelligence place on your behavior?"

I would think it unreasonable, and against the spirit of roleplaying in general, that there should be no limitations of such an unbelievably low intelligence, but it's better for the player themselves to come up with some actual limitations themselves.

That's what I'd like to think, too; my characters tend to do Perform for day jobs, so it doesn't matter much to me in that arena. I do occasionally GM too, though, so I like to have solid grounds for saying that this or that can't be done in dealing with players.

For now, I'll just hope that no one tries this :)

Your 7th level feat should be Improved Familiar; this will allow you to replace the standard Homunculus familiar you get with a Clockwork one, as discussed before, which in turn will let you become even more absurd at crafting.

So really I don't know when/what to take exactly as my 1st & 3rd level feats. My free craft feat I get from Artisan will be Brew Potion. My 2nd level Artisan feat should be ? what ? I think I should grab Craft Wondrous at 2nd.

My 1st level character feat might be Scribe Scroll. And 3rd level feat will be Extra Craftsman Technique so I can get both Apprentice Wizard and Efficient Enchanting. I planned on the Efficient Enchanting at 3rd anyway but didn't remember that there was the Extra Craftsman Technique in the Artisan book.

I think this is an excellent plan for the first three levels.

After that, you can start using your feats for archery, if you like, though I'm not sure it's the best use of your feats. Honestly, given the absurdity of this class, I'd be spending it all on crafting stuff.

If not, can they get a wand of it to use themselves? (It's less clear this is profitable, since they won't use 50 charges, but it does offset most of the cost of the wand)

It's been established that the Crafter's Fortune bonus can be used for day job rolls.

Assuming the scenario ends in a town of 5,000 people, can a player purchase a Crafter's Fortune spell (10gp) to use on their Day Job roll? This is definitely profitable for those with a reasonable check bonus.

Never mind about the Skill Focus (UMD). Instead use a feat to get Extra Craftsman Technique, and get Apprentice Wizard, which will make any UMD problems a thing of the past. You won't even need to max ranks in UMD with that Technique.

These Techniques are amazing, and most of your early feats should be spent on Extra Craftsman Technique, if you ask me.

I don't think it ultimately matters whether you take Scribe Scroll or Brew Potion first.

I would actually spend your 3rd level character feat on Craft Wondrous Items, rather than waiting to get it at 5th level. You can then immediately use your 1,000 magical essence to make yourself a Headband of Intellect +2.

Note that the Craftsman Technique 'Apprentice Wizard' should make you able to use any scroll at level 3, due to being able to take 10. If you aren't going to take that technique, then I again suggest Skill Focus (UMD). You don't need both, though. 'Efficient Enchanting', though, is a pretty unbelievably amazing Technique.

Did I mention this class is unbelievably broken? =D Wish I had a GM that would allow it.

Fair, but don't forget that the druid will only be able to scribe druid spells, not all spells like you can.

I assume that 9 is:

1 rank
3 trained
1 competence (from Magical Affinity)
4? intelligence (due to Clever Wordplay)

A masterwork tool for UMD might work for another +2 circumstance bonus, though as a GM I would made it work something like a Pathfinder Chronicle, so you wouldn't be able to use it in battle. I'm imagining a "common magical items phrases" book.

Other than that, you may have to consider investing in Skill Focus (Use Magic Device), especially if you want to . If so, that makes the human race a very attractive choice, since you can use their Focused Study alternate racial trait to replace their single bonus feat at level 1 with three skill focus feats at levels 1, 8, 16. The first you could use for UMD for, the second two whatever you wished.

If you're not going to take Skill Focus at level 1, then your failure rate for using scrolls will be very high, and I don't see any obvious way around that. Even with skill focus and a mastetrwork tool, you're looking at a +14, which is still a 30% failure chance per use.

This is a good use of 2PP. ;)

I've been pondering it for a while, but the wink is making me nervous... are you going to try to burn up my precious bow in the most recent season? :)

@DesolateHarmony, my char is 14 strength, so she can't pull back a [+3] rating bow properly. Thanks for the input, though!

Oh, and though you can't get it until level 3 minimum, the Deific Obedience feat, with Shelyn as your patron, will get you a +4 sacred bonus on ALL craft and perform checks, though you'll have to perform the little ritual described under her Obedience entry each day. If that works with your concept, then obviously it's amazing for you. Between that and all your other bonuses, you should basically not need to put more than a single rank in each craft skill.

Obviously that's no good if you're not using Golarion gods, though.

First off, I take back what I said about the Ioun Stone. I was looking again at the Artisan class, and the bonus the Ioun Stone grants won't stack with the ones granted by your Magical Affinity class ability (both are competence bonuses).

What's your point buy/stat breakdown? I think we should be able to make you able to scribe scrolls at level 1.

1 skill point in Craft (Calligraphy) + 3 trained bonus + 1 competence from Magical Affinity class ability + 2 circumstance from masterwork calligraphy tools (55gp) +1 trait from Spark of Creation = +8. That doesn't include intelligence yet. Assuming you start with at least a 16 intelligence, and you should, then you have a +11 in the craft needed for scrolls, which is a 21 when you take 10.

Anyone in your group going to have access to the Crafter's Fortune spell?

Here's another thing you'll want to consider eventually, but it's far outside your reach for 1st level. Amazing Tools of Manufacture.

No need. Get Clever Wordplay instead for UMD. It's a Social trait, so you can get that AND Spark of Creation.

Get a Cracked Magenta Prism asap. 800gp, it gives a +2 competence bonus to any skill, which you can change once a day.

It should let you do a DC 21 on a 10, so you can take 10.

Outside of special abilities, such as the Bard's, you can't take 20, Owly, because that requires that you be able to repeat the check over and over, indefinitely, and the skill specifically says you can't repeat a check simply by trying to remember "harder".

The rest seems correct.

I'd personally go with Darkwood. That's 1.5 lbs less you have to carry, and it can be Mended by a 2nd level character.

I considered it, but I have my masterwork backpack, and the heaviest thing I'll ever wear, armor wise, is the Chain Shirt I have now. That leaves 37 pounds after the backpack and armor are accounted for. And Mithral Breastplate will eventually make that even better.

So, encumbrance is not an issue, as long as I'm not stupid about it. Had I been 12 strength, then darkwood would have been the way to go for sure. Of course, then it would be closer to 500gp, with the +1 modifier, and I probably wouldn't have spent prestige on it.

So, the knowledge skill entry says, under whether you can retry a knowledge check:

"No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place."

But what if the character had, for example, a Pathfinder Chronicle? He's fighting a monster, fails to identify it. After the combat is done, he pulls out his chronicle to look it up.

I would think it perfectly reasonable that he can make another knowledge check in that case; certainly the reason given for why a knowledge check cannot be re-tried does not hold up.

What are other people's thoughts on the RAW, RAI of this, and how would you run it?

EDIT: Another possible way to run it would be to allow them to apply the +2 after the combat to the result they rolled during combat, and see if that makes the difference in identifying the creature. This might be the best from a logical perspective, but it also requires bookkeeping.

Your clockwork familiar needn't travel around with you. He stays in your workshop/base; you only need him when you make things.

You should look at the Clockwork Familiar, though I confess I don't know how it would interact with your class abilities. You should be able to craft it, but it might not count as a proper "familiar". Perhaps your DM would allow a feat so that it could be so? Dunno. But, it's perfect for you. +2 to all your Craft skills, for example.

If you can get that going, consider applying the Valet familiar archetype to it. (Which would be insanely good for your build)

Thank you, good sir.

Spark of Creation trait is both thematically and mechanically sound for your idea.

I want to believe you're right, Ben, but can you direct me to a source on that?

I've heard that about metamagic feats, for sure, but not about generic class abilities.

Just wanted to verify my math on this, and my understanding that I could get this with 2 PP.

Composite Longbow = 100gp
MW = +300 gp
+2 strength rating = +200gp
Greenwood = 50gp x 3 lbs. = +150gp

Total = 750gp.

Seems legit?

I realize that using greenwood is not that big a deal, as I can't recall playing in a scenario where your weapons were ever damaged, but my character's strength is 14, so might as well use the 150gp gap for something.

72.5 damage at level 11, though that's admittedly a minor difference. Whether it actually does more than just attacking would depend, as you say, on AC.

What's not minor, it seems to me, is that we're talking about a standard action.

EDIT: Also note that this would not require much investment for the Paladin build; at most a trait to get UMD as a class skill. Thus, we're not talking about an archer paladin versus a magic missile paladin, but about an archer paladin who also has a wand of magic missile.

EDIT2: It's actually even better for a melee paladin, who can use it when he couldn't otherwise get a full attack against the smite target; it clearly outstrips a single melee attack by a significant margin.

I'm not sure about how the rules will fall with Magic Missile and Smite Evil. However, for those who think it wouldn't be a big deal if it applied to each missile, since it's hard to make a Paladin who is good at both... please remember that it's not at all hard to make a Paladin who is good at UMD.

9th level magic missile wand would be, what, 6750gp? For 50 charges, each of which does 5d4+5+5xPaladin level in damage?

For example, a high charisma but a low intelligence = Derek Zoolander.

If you're going for a charisma based character, I'd consider that approach rather than the Forest Gump approach.

Fair, but I'm not sure that Zoolander fits as well into his backstory, nor his class as an Iroran Paladin.

The character is definitely very sure of himself, comfortable in his skin, and exudes a simple, straightforward charm.

And you are correct, the 14 wisdom is what carries him through as mostly normal. The 5 int is lack of education, slow to figure things out, lack of comprehension. The wisdom says 'hey, you don't understand and that's OK. Let's work with what we did understand and make the best decision we can with it'. This allows him to function in society as passibly normal. His charisma score allows him to fake it until he makes it? :)

Heh. I like this interpretation.

@Lenthalia, Your character already sounds endearing and refreshing. I have no innate prejudice against characters with low int or severe handicaps. It comes down to who is playing the character and I believe that you would do a good job of it. I won't walk away from your table. Besides, I have to keep an eye on my clone, right? ;)

Heh. In actuality, I posted this as an example build on the 21st of July, as part of my Iroran Paladin guide, with the specific post about the example builds being here. (Rudy2 is an alias of mine).

That being said, Int 5 Demon-Spawn is such a neat idea that I'm not particularly surprised that two people came up with it independently. There's a lot you can do with it. :)

It's changed a bit since that example build. My feats are now Fey Foundling > Extra Lay on Hands > Greater Mercy > Ultimate Mercy > Dragon Style, for example, picking up Dragon Ferocity with a dip into Unarmed Fighter after that.

Oh, I have that figured out. First, his adoptive father is a former pathfinder, who called in a few favors to get my character accepted into the society.

The reason why my character wants to join is first, to follow in his admired father's footsteps, second, because he believes he will be able to do good, third, because he feels it is his path to perfection (that being a big thing in Iroran teachings).

EDIT: And, no, he's not meant to be someone you ask to do skilled or subtle things. He will be able to deal damage, take lots of damage, and pop off raise dead's at level 7 via Ultimate Mercy, which I'm sure many companions will appreciate the potential of.

At level 1, he's mostly a meatshield that has a Bardiche, a bite attack, and a +7 Diplomacy check. I figure he charms them with his simple and straightforward nature.

For Golarion, this is incorrect. About one NPC in six has a Int of 8, other than a few set-pieces, that's the lowest. In other words, folks in Golarion are NOT rolled 3d6 but use the standard array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8) or Elite array.

At the end of the day, it doesn't much matter to me whether the general populace follows a bell curve or not "officially".

That being said, the assumption that a standardized array implies that everyone in the world actually has that array seems a bit off. It seems perfectly clear that that is an ease-of-use decision, and is not supposed to be implying that there is not a single peasant out there whose ability scores don't go below 8, or above 13.

Now, as far as acting stupid, this gets very old, very quick. Suitable for a Toon! game, but not D&D.

Also, they may be folks at your table that will be offended by this.

I think I have to make an important distinction.

One thing to do is to "act stupid" in the sense of shouting random things, and screwing up the mission for your party all the time. This is not what I want to do.

Another thing is to convey the sense that your character is slow, and not quick to pick things up, despite his best efforts. I don't think there would be many people that would be terribly annoyed by this.

I'm not talking about picking up random things and eating them, or otherwise acting like a fool. Think Forrest Gump. I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Forrest Gump is a Lawful Good fellow with an intelligence of about 5, 6 at best. He doesn't go shouting random things, or eating random things, or getting distracted by teh shinez in the middle of combat situations.

He's just much slower than others to adjust to new concepts, and to pick things up.

EDIT: There are two characters in question, now. My character has:
Str 18 Dex 12 Con 14 Int 5 Wis 10 Cha 17.

Lenthalia wrote:

Now, if we assume that the majority of the common folk are generated via 3d6 methods, that means that he's dumber than 96.7% of the populace.

I don't think this is much of a valid assumption, personally.

He's only 15% less likely to succeed at an INT-based task than someone with a 10. That's not a huge disparity, plus we're attempting to quantify the unquantifiable in the first place.

That's fair, but that's more the general problem with trying to resolve skill based issues with d20 rolls in the first place. It's the same problem with why Strength 7 wizards can sometimes succeed at strength checks that strength 18 fighters fail.

In any case, the 3d6 distribution was only used to give me an idea of how to play this character relative to the population; I'm not claiming it as a "rules" matter.

@Zalman: Had to look up the name, but perhaps I'll watch some clips; thanks.

@Devin: If you do the actual standard deviation calculation, using 3d6 as the distribution for the "common folk", this puts him barely above a 70 IQ, believe it or not. 71, 72, something like that. This puts him on the border between the description you give and:

Which is more what I was going for, too.

The rage issues are helped greatly by more than a decade of growing up in a monastery, so he doesn't have any more rage issues than Forrest Gump did. Thank you for the other suggestions!

@Orfamay: Good points on the language, which I'd thought of, and the generalization, which I hadn't. "Have I done this exact thing before?" is an absolutely fantastic tool to use. Thank you.

He doesn't have to actually be stupid because of the stat. He is still clever in his own way. I just use the low score to represent his utter lack of knowledge and skill and formal education as well as the severity to which his dark impulses distract him from actually thinking about things.

I dunno... I think if you have intelligence 5, you have to be at least a *little* stupid. I mean, you make intelligence checks for things like finding your way out of maze spells. I guess you could play that as he just rushes blindly through the maze, though?

In any case, this version really will be stupid. But endearing :)

Yeah, he's got a 10 wisdom, so he's o.k. there. "Father says that lack of caution leads to calam.... calam.... bad things."

I think he can probably count at least as high as his fingers, though. =D

I bought him a chalkboard and chalk so he can practice his writing during downtimes.

One thing that makes him a bit more functional than he might otherwise be is that he's an Iroran Paladin raised by an Iroran Monk. He's driven to perfect himself, and his Paladin Code is basically "Don't give up." So, he practices these things that are difficult to him relentlessly.

I've got a 5 intelligence Demon-Spawn Tiefling I'm going to be using in PFS. Now, since it's PFS, I could in most cases simply ignore my intelligence, as it has no effect in PFS outside of skill points and other direct numerical things.

However, I don't want to do this, and would actually like to make something fun out of the fact that my character is mentally challenged.

Now, if we assume that the majority of the common folk are generated via 3d6 methods, that means that he's dumber than 96.7% of the populace. This puts him, roughly speaking, in the same relative position as Forrest Gump.

So, I'm basically looking for ideas about how I can roleplay this character in an interesting manner, without irritating the hell out of my fellow players.

So far, I have that he was raised by an Iroran Monk (who considered raising my character to be on his own path to perfection) who very, very painstakingly taught him how to survive in the world. My character has lists that he checks over, written by his adoptive father, along with easy to remember catch phrases. "Father says that .. preparation is the key to perfection." (spoken slowly)

If you put your Favored Class Bonus into skill points you could gain 2/level.

Possibly, but this one is too busy pumping his lay on hands using the tiefling favored class bonus

But, yes, to answer your question, even if your Int was 2 (as is the case with most animals) the item will still grant you max ranks in a skill.

Weird, but good to know. Thanks.

Here's the sitch. Demon-spawn Tiefling, intelligence 5, paladin. Has 1 skill point per level because that's the minimum.

Later gets a Scarlet and Blue Sphere Ioun stone imbedded in his tough hide. This grants a +2 enhancement bonus to intelligence, bringing him to 7, and also has an associated skill.

So, does he get the skill ranks from the item, even though bringing his intelligence to 7 would still put him at the minimum of 1 rank per level?

Note that I only even consider this to be a question because it means that a character who achieved intelligence of 7 via an item could have more skill ranks than one who has intelligence 7 naturally. The same could apply to intelligence 9 as well, if you consider characters with a natural 5 intelligence too much of a corner case.

OOC, that would be fine by me in bargaining. In character for a paladin of such mercy, it would be odd. That said, if a character dies during a scenario, and it's not straight up their fault IMO, I always offer to pony up a share of raise dead/restoration.

As do I, but I have run into a number of players (not characters, players) who do not have a team-minded attitude. While my character will gladly use Ultimate Mercy on them whenever possible, it's a bitter pill to swallow as a player, that other players would not be willing to reciprocate in some small way.

That being said, the character's defenses exceed even a normal paladin's, so he's unlikely to be the one killed, even being on the frontlines. Tiefling with Lay on Hands favored class option, Fey's Foundling, Iroran Paladin archetype for crazy AC, dip into Sohei for the armored flurry and further saving throw boosts... death should be rare. So, hopefully it doesn't come up. :)

THANK YOU for the excellent feedback. It's very helpful.

Hm, that seems kinda against the idea of self-sacrifice for a Paladin to me. Are you saying you'd have a Lawful Good Paladin refuse to heal/bring back someone, even though it would cost him/her nothing?

Hence why I use the words "Out of character". He'd do it even if they said no, but they don't need to know that :/

That's why you also need the Monk (Contemplative, Ki Mystic, Sensei, Qinggong) who can apply 'restoration' to anyone in the party without a material component ;D {Wouldn't work in PFS until level 11, though, so little point}

Also, would it be considered inappropriate to say something like this, out of character:

"Alright, my character will use his Ultimate Mercy (assuming its possible to use 'raise dead') on anyone who dies in the group, provided that you all agree to chip in 1,000 gp a piece for a Raise Dead for my character, should it be necessary and possible."

Or is out of character bargaining of that sort not permitted? With people I play with locally, it shouldn't be necessary, but I'm thinking more of con-type situations.