Letariel's page

I'm an avid user of d20pfsrd and Archives of Nethys, as having a bunch of tabs open is much easier for me than trying to bookmarking different pages of a paper book. Does anyone know if there is going to be something similar for Starfinder?

I'm thinking about playing a Dwarf Geokineticist, and after planning it out, I'm nervous if my character will actually be effective.

1. My first 3 feats are PBS, Precise Shot, and Weapon Finesse and my infusions will be Extended Range Kinetic Blade, and Entangle. So my build doesn't do anything other than throw a base blast at enemies until lvl 5. That doesn't sound fun or flexible, but I don't see a way around it. Hopefully at higher levels the additional infusions make it more interesting.

2. The 20 pt buy that I'm thinking of (with Dwarf stats added):

Str 10
Dex 16
Con 18
Int 12
Wis 14
Cha 5

So at lvl 1 those stats (with PBS) give me +4 hit for 1d6+5 damage with my blast. That doesn't sound that good to me (Average AC for a CR 1 enemy is 12). And as far as I project it, I don't think my to-hit is going to catch up with average enemy AC (my understanding is that when Elemental Overflow is factored in, the kineticist basically scales at full BAB, which isn't as fast as enemy AC). I could dump my str and int to oblivion and boosted my dex to 18, But is that worth it for an additional +1 hit? Is it just expected that I miss half the time with my blast? Considering that even at high level, a Geokineticist is is pretty much a martial that with a chance to debuff a struck enemy, it seems like hitting enemies is going to be very important and I only get one try per turn. Am I missing something? Do I just have overinflated expectations?

Spoiler warning: This contains spoilers for Rise of the Runelords. Don't read anything else if you care about that. :)

So, my party finally got to Karzog, and we got wrecked. We all buffed up before going through the portal, we won initiative, and we had everything going for us. We started very far away from the enemies, so with Haste we moved towards the main dais where Karzog was, and ended our turns. Then we got Chain Lightning and Meteor Swarm in the face and a couple full-attacks to the frontline and it all went downhill from there. When I tried to cast spells on Karzog (I was playing an Arcanist), Spellturning made me regret it, and when I finally got rid of that, he just re-cast it. When the frontliners tried to rush him and gang up on him in melee, he used an AoE on them and Quickened Time Stop to escape and buff up even more. When we instead tried to clear out his minions so we could maneuver easier, we were bombarded by brutal AoE spells (Horrid Wilting, Meteor Swarm, Wail of the Banshee, with some quickened fireballs for good measure) along with the full-attack of giants and dragons which quickly killed multiple party members. When we spread out, the giants and dragon would pound us worse than we were hurting them (they would move over to the giant/dragon, get one attack, then get full-attacked in return and then need to retreat for healing if they were still alive). In the end, we survived quite a while, but were on the backfoot the whole time, and whenever we tried to group up and take the offensive, it was just shut down by Karzog's AoE. After the first couple turns, our oracle was just casting Heal and Breath of Life every turn, so he was practically out of the fight. I brought out my summon (who also spent a bunch of time chasing around Karzog and trying to distract the minions so they wouldn't kill my party) and then spent my time trying to burn down the giants after I gave up on trying to out-magic Karzog's multiple Spellturnings. And the frontliners weren't able to actually do much in the fight because they spent so much time trying not to bleed out or chasing around Karzog without being able to catch him. No one could actually harm Karzog and he was just pounding us the whole time. Eventually, everyone was down other than me, and I plane shifted away at 8 hp because I was lucky enough to save against a bunch of spells.

I'm thinking back, and I just don't know how we could have won that fight. I feel like the initial burst of damage made us too weak to confront them without dying, but hanging back so they wouldn't full-attack us just means that the enemy would have added additional chain lighting and dragon breath to the AoE burst, and we would have just been killed from afar without being able to do anything. Charging Karzog past all of the minions just means we give the minions free full-attacks, and Karzog was too elusive for us to actually do any damage (there was never a charge lane, so we double-move towards him, just to get AoE'd and then he moves away with Quickened Time Stop).

I know many others have succeeded in this fight, and I just can't figure out how. So I thought I'd ask for your collective words of wisdom. How did people actually succeed at this fight?

I'm an arcanist in Rise of the Runelords, so this thread may have some spoilers.

We just found a set of Thassilonian ruins with a cool library in the basement, and I'm thinking I'll make it my home base. I have some questions for the knowledgeable people here.

1. The place is in ruins, and there is rubble everywhere. Prestidigitation/Unseen Servant can do the cleaning, but is there any spells that would help me clear the rubble without having to resort to physical labor (it's so slow and... un-magical)? As far as I can tell, Disintegrate will only destroy one block at a time, and Stone Shape will only reshape one chunk of rock at a time. Unseen Servant can only move the small rocks, and even then, what do I do with a random pile of rocks? Would Fabricate let me re-shape the rubble into walls or something? Any other ideas?

2. Now that I have a place that I'm staying, I need to protect it! I figure just putting a lock on the door isn't good enough... My initial thought is to entirely wall in the basement and make it look like it isn't there (because Wall of Stone is awesome). That should keep out random people/monsters and anyone out that can't either Stone Shape or Teleport. Anything more I could/should do? Of course nothing will keep out a persistent DM, but I should at least look like I'm trying. :-) I was thinking of trying to do something with Teleport Trap (castable next level), but I think I would also catch myself in it when I teleport home, and I don't know how to get around that.

3. I was thinking of lining the walls with lead to prevent scrying (and other divinations), but I can't find anywhere what the price of lead is! Does anyone know where to find that? Of course, actually transporting it from the nearest town could also be a chore, but I think I can get my very strong party member (with ant haul) to pick it up long enough to teleport to the area. We may have to make several trips, I'm not sure. Next level I'll be able to cast Teleport Object, so that would also make this doable. My initial thought for getting it into the walls was a combination of Stone Shape and Fabricate.

4. Even with magic, this is going to take a lot of time (since I'm going to be using my few high-level spell slots pretty quickly), and I think I'll only have a week or so to do it in. Any way to do this better/faster? I know about the Lyre of Building, but it's pretty expensive, and I'm no bard.

I love the concept of "Spell Perfection", but I can't figure out what to pick!

My character is a summoning/conjuration focused wizard which got converted to an occultist (arcanist archetype) after the ACG came out. Right now, my typical combat looks like:

Turn 1: move into position and use Summon SLA (skip if summons are still around from last combat)
Turn 2: Haste party (including summons)
Turn 3: Either throw an AoE debuff into a group of enemies (usually grease or burst of radiance, because I'm in RotR and I've seen nothing but giants for a while), or buff the party further if we are against a solo enemy (because I rarely can land a debuff on a BBEG)
Turn 4: Use whatever spell is appropriate for situation or use a scorching ray wand if victory is assured

From what I've read on the forums, it seems the default use for this feat is an attack spell that you spam twice a round, but I don't really do that. The closest I have right now is Grease, and that doesn't really benefit from repeated casting.

The two spells that I have half a mind to use Spell Perfection on are Haste and Dispel Magic, but I'm not sure if either is a good idea.

Haste lets me Quicken Haste the first round of every combat, but then what do I do with myself after there is summons, haste, and disabled enemies? There are serious diminishing returns on buffs and debuffs. :-) I guess I could toss Acid Arrows?

Dispel Magic is because it seems that the enemies that causes us issues are the ones with tons of buffs or terrible debuffs. But Dispel Magic uses a caster level check and ignores Spell Resistance, so it doesn't benefit from Spell Perfection other than the free metamagic (and what metamagic would I use other than quicken?). This spell is quite a bit more circumstantial, but it has saved the party's bacon a number of times. I'd like to be able to do Greater Dispel Magic, but I can't quicken that, so free metamagic is less enticing.

Anyway, does anyone have any good Spell Perfection suggestions for a character who mostly casts buffs and debuffs? Ideally, something that could benefit from my conjuration spell focus. And before people suggest it, I'm not going to start chucking maximized fireballs any time soon; it doesn't fit the character, and doesn't pair well with my party's "mob the enemy!" style of combat. :-P

I was looking at the SLAs that some of my summoned creatures get, and I'm not sure exactly what the formatting means, and I can't find anything on the wiki to define this. For example, the Faun has:

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 3rd; concentration +6)
At will — ghost sound (DC 13)
1/day — hideous laughter (DC 14), sleep (DC 14)

Does this mean that once per day, it can choose between Hideous Laughter and Sleep, of does this mean it can use each once per day?

So, I'd like to make an item that lets the wielder cast a spell N times per day. I've read the creation rules, but they don't seem to make sense for this type of item. Is this a "command" item? A "charge per day" item? I would have said "charge per day", but that's an adjustment, though I don't understand what it's modifying. I've seen elsewhere that someone used the continuous cost and divided that by five, but there are many spells where continuous doesn't even make sense (e.g. fireball or teleport), so I don't know how this applies. Is it a command with charges? If so, why would we be dividing the cost? *shakes head* I'm just confused.

In any case, based off of things in the spell effect column, I assume that the cost equation would look something like this:

Total = C * N * caster lvl * spell lvl

But what is that elusive constant "C"?

I'm a wizard in a lvl 5 party with 2 fighter/rogues (both finesse based; one twf whip trip build, the other is sword-n-board) and an greatsword-wielding oracle who is durable (18 constitution) but has low str/cha. In all of the guides, they say that I should focus on crowd control and buffing/summoning, and I like that concept. The problem I'm noticing in the party is that the melee characters have good durability (high hp and/or AC), but the damage output is pretty low. And if we run into anything with DR, I'm doing the most damage in the party just by spamming acid splash (all my summons do nothing to DR 10/magic or silver). My current plan is to cast haste if it's a big fight (which I just picked up and haven't had a chance to cast), and then CC or summon. After that, I have been just casting acid splash to conserve spells or snapdragon fireworks+acid splash if I want to do more damage (like to DR enemies).

I just got to lvl 5. I'm a elf conjuration wizard (strongly influenced by Treantmonk's and Professor Q's guides) with opposing schools of enchantment and necromancy. For feats, I have SF (conjuration), Augment summons, and summon good monsters (my character is good aligned, and doesn't use/summon evil stuff). I'm still debating on my bonus wizard feat. Fast study sounds good for flexibility, Feral Speech could be good for summoning (my DM is pretty strict about not being able to control them if I can't communicate with them), opposition research could be good if there are spells I need to cast often from a opposition school (though I can't think of what). I could just take quicken spells (or another Metamagic), but I can't even use it yet, so I was going to hold off on that. At lvl 7, I was going to grab Improved Familiar for the dragon fairie familiar (wand-whipping ftw).

Anyone have advice for what I can do to make the party run more smoothly? We are ok when we run across a group of goblins/zombies/mooks (my CC does wonders against them), but when we have one strong enemy, it becomes a matter of attrition, particularly if there is any DR or tight spaces involved. Should I focus more on blasting, since the melee characters aren't doing much damage? More summoning is great for distractions and flanking bonuses, but they don't seem to do that much... Of course, the SM1 and SM2 creatures aren't amazing. Any good, low-level buffs I should be using other than haste and protection from evil, communal?