Arcanaton

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber. 157 posts. 23 reviews. No lists. No wishlists.




Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have a question regarding an attack that a flying familiar could make.

Say the familiar wanted to carry a tiny or small object, fly over the enemy, and drop it on them. As near as I can find, there are multiple options that give me different possible attack rolls. Is this a:

A) Bombard animal trick (BAB to attack, uses falling object damage rules)

B) A falling object attack (Ranged touch, range increment of 20 ft, falling object damage table)

C) A thrown weapon attack (Str attack and damage roll)?


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'm running a Wizard 10 (Conjurer) right now and my GM has sort of intimated that the current campaign is likely to go into pretty high levels, possibly even up to 20. So I'm trying to figure out which feats I should be picking up for a late-game build. I'm looking at Spell Perfection, and while it's a terrific feat, I'm wondering if it's worth the investment for a conjurer. My current feat configuration is:

Level 10 (Elf)-- 8 feats

Scribe Scroll (Class)
Improved Initiative
SF: Conjuration
Augment Summoning
Superior Summoning
Fast Study (Bonus)
Opposition Research (Bonus)
Quicken Spell

I figure I have 7 feats left to get, 2 of which would be wizard bonus feats.

Now I'm wondering if Spell Perfection: Summon Monster 9 at level 17 would be worth the investment. Assuming I'm primarily using it to cast from the SM8 or even SM7 list, I'm getting 1d3 +2 or 1d4 + 4 monsters, each with +8 to Str and Con, with the doubled bonuses from Augment and Superior Summoning. Add to the fact that there's a bard in the party and I'm looking at summons that can do respectable damage. The thought of summoning 8 Brachiosaurs and watching them run wild through an enemy camp is the sort of "can destroy entire cities" power that justifies playing a wizard in the first place.

So seems pretty cool and all, but I'm not... in love with metamagic feats, and I'd have to invest in them pretty heavily to get Spell Perfection. I get the need for Quicken Spell, kind of, but I'm not sure what other metamagic does for a Controller wizard. I'd be taking 2 feats that I probably won't use often, which takes a bit of the shine off of Spell Perfection.

There's also a certain fun-factor issue in flooding the battlefield with a million summons. As in, I'd be delighted, but the rest of the party... perhaps less so.

So there's a few reasons that I'm skeptical about the cost/benefit analysis of the feat. That said, if summoning 5 t-rexes is wrong, then perhaps I don't wanna be right.

2)What are some other feats that might provide more utility? My build feels more or less on-line at this point, so my thought is to shore up some weaknesses. So I could take things like Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Spell Penetration, etc. This wouldn't provide the splashy "ALL TEH DINOSAURS" amusement of Spell Perfection, but it also wouldn't saddle me with metamagic feats I'm not sure I could take advantage of.

That said, is there anything I'm overlooking?

NB: Our campaign is less about dungeon crawling and more about character interactions and political intrigue. It's more of a sandbox-style game that takes place in a single city, and our PCs are all considered to have a power-base in the city. I was looking through some more skill-oriented feats and they mostly seemed... profoundly underwhelming. But I'm open to taking one of them if there's one worth grabbing.

NB2: We don't use item creation feats. I had Craft Wondrous Item for a while, but we all agreed that it wasn't really much fun. We'd just take all of the loot, sell it, then have me craft the items that the PCs *really* wanted. It took all of the thrill out of getting loot, so those are off the table.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'm just hitting level 9 with my wizard and my AC is just about as low as it can be. We're talking 15 WITH mage armor on all day. Just awful. So of course it might as well be 0, and I'm wondering if it's cost effective to put down money on the Rings of Protecton/Amulet of Natural Armor, etc. that it will take to push it into the 20s or so. I haven't played that many games at this level so I'm not sure if AC is a good investment. It it feasible to get to an amount that will actually protect me from some hits? Or are monster attack bonuses going to increase so much that any money I put into AC will not actually result in real avoidance?