Race: Human
Classes/Levels: Monk 1
Gender: Female
Size: Medium
Age: 19
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Deity: Asmodaeus
Location: Cheliax
Languages: Common
Occupation: Sisters of the Golden Erinyes (Lemure)
I'm about to begin my career as a monk, but find myself somewhat torn between the Quingon monk and the Hungry Ghost. While the Quingong has a lot of really neat tricks, I do think that the Hungry Ghost path seems a bit more practical. Indeed I find the idea of sucking the life out of my victims to be quite appealing, but my biggest hang up is Punishing Kick.
Punishing kick for Stunning fist is a very poor trade. The ability to stun someone causing then to not only lose their action but to also drop whatever they are holding (weapons, for example) is just much better than being able to knock someone down. So my question is, is it worth losing Stunning Fist for the wonderful increased resource renewal that the Hungry Ghost monk's abilities offer?
I wanted to get you guy's opinion on some rules that I'm afriad are being misinterperated at my table.
First this...
Sprinter:
Sprinter: Catfolk gain a 10-foot racial bonus to their speed when using the charge, run, or withdraw actions.
My interperatation is that this increases the base speed. Meaning when running, charging, or withdrawing, the character is treated as having a speed of 40. So when he withdraws or charges he can move 80 ft, and when running he can move at 160.
Next issue...
Scout's Charge:
Scout's Charge(Ex): At 4th level, whenever a scout makes a charge, her attack deals sneak attack damage as if the target were flat-footed. Foes with uncanny dodge are immune to this ability. This ability replaces uncanny dodge.
The problem is that combined with
Claw Pounce:
Claw Pounce (Combat)
You can charge and make an attack with your paws.
Prerequisites: Str 13, Dex 15, Nimble Striker, base attack bonus +10, catfolk, cat's claws racial trait or Aspect of the Beast (claws of the beast manifestation).
Benefit: When you make a charge, you can make a full attack with your claws.
Normal: Charging is a special full-round action that limits you to a single attack.
it seems like you can make two sneak attacks per round while moving double your speed and denying your target their dex bonus.
Basically one of my players had a concept for playing a Catfolk rogue who's an assassin who basically hunts his targets like a hunting cat would. To his credit it has taken 14 levels for this build to pan out and for the first few levels it was a pretty bumpy road.
Between
Catfolk Exemplar:
Catfolk Exemplar
Your feline traits are more defined and prominent than those of other members of your race.
Prerequisite: Catfolk.
Benefit: You can take the Aspect of the Beast feat even if you do not meet the normal prerequisites. Furthermore, your catlike nature manifests in one of the following ways. You choose the manifestation when you take this feat, and cannot change it later.
Sharp Claws (Ex): If you do not have the cat's claws racial trait or the claws of the beast manifestation from the Aspect of the Beast feat , you gain the cat's claws racial trait. If you have either the cat's claws racial trait or the claws of the beast manifestation, your claw damage increases to 1d6.
Improved Natural Attack:
Improved Natural Attack
Attacks made by one of this creature's natural attacks leave vicious wounds.
Prerequisite: Natural weapon, base attack bonus +4.
Benefit: Choose one of the creature's natural attack forms (not an unarmed strike). The damage for this natural attack increases by one step on the following list, as if the creature's size had increased by one category. Damage dice increase as follows: 1d2, 1d3, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, 6d6, 8d6, 12d6.
A weapon or attack that deals 1d10 points of damage increases as follows: 1d10, 2d8, 3d8, 4d8, 6d8, 8d8, 12d8.
Special: This feat can be taken multiple times. Each time it is taken, it applies to a different natural attack.
and
Viscious Claws:
Vicious Claws (Ex): A catfolk with this talent uses d8s to roll sneak attack damage instead of d6s, but only when she uses her claws to make the sneak attack. A catfolk rogue must have the cat's claws racial trait before taking this talent.
and of course Claw Pounce and Scout's Charge he has two claw attacks that do 1d8 and can dish out 2 sneak attacks at 7d8 a peice, and treating 1s and 2s as 3s while charging thanks to
Powerful Sneak:
Powerful Sneak** (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent takes a full attack action, she can elect to take a –2 penalty on all attack rolls until the start of her next turn. If an attack during this time is a sneak attack, she treats all 1s on the sneak attack damage dice as 2s.
and
Deadly Sneak:
Deadly Sneak** (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent uses the powerful sneak rogue talent, she treats all 1s and 2s on the sneak attack damage dice as 3s. A rogue must have the powerful sneak rogue talent before choosing this talent.
and deals 7 points of bleed damage per round using
Bleeding Attack:
Bleeding Attack* (Ex): A rogue with this ability can cause living opponents to bleed by hitting them with a sneak attack. This attack causes the target to take 1 additional point of damage each round for each die of the rogue's sneak attack (e.g., 4d6 equals 4 points of bleed). Bleeding creatures take that amount of damage every round at the start of each of their turns. The bleeding can be stopped by a DC 15 Heal check or the application of any effect that heals hit point damage. Bleeding damage from this ability does not stack with itself. Bleeding damage bypasses any damage reduction the creature might possess.
He can even deal two doses of poison using
Deadly Scratch:
Deadly Scratch (Ex): A catfolk rogue with this talent can apply poison to her claws without accidentally poisoning herself. A catfolk rogue must have the cat's claws racial trait and the poison use class feature before taking this talent.
He finally hit 14 level a couple of nights ago and I didn't realize just how nasty this buil was until at the end of the session the catfolk rogue (Tash) and a Aldori swordlord 7/duelist 7 (Sianne) had a little fight. Basically Tash had just hit 14 and finnished his build but it was late and the session had ended. He wanted to try out the build he'd spent almost a month putting together so his buddy Sianne agreed to an Ooc duel. It was a boodbath. Having previously purchased Catfolk Exemplar a second time he was able to increase his running speed
even more:
Fast Sprinter (Ex): You gain a 10-foot racial bonus to your speed when using the charge, run, or withdraw actions. If you have the sprinter racial trait, your racial bonus to speed when using the charge, run, or withdraw action increases to a 20-foot bonus.
and being the proud owner of a pair of boots of striding and springing he was charging at a speed of 120 and running at a speed of 240. So he got a suprise attack + poison from one claw (they were simulating a scenario where she was his mark and he was hunting her, he out steathed her perception), double sneak attack next round + poison from the other claw, a full run action the following round giving Sianne an Aoo (big deal), the on the last round a made charge dealing two sneak attacks... and that was it. He killed her. Basically in 3 round (plus the one suprise round) Tash was able to move 360 feet and deal out 35d8 worth of sneak attack damage (treating 1s and 2s as 3s). Sianne was able to get in one full-attack and one Aoo before being mowed down by a chainsaw with a movement speed, not to mention she spent the entire fight being denied her dex bonus between failing initiative and Scout's Charge.
I figure something has to be wrong if Tash can pretty much murder a fighter/duelist (she's specialized in one on one fights against living opponents) of his same CR, and in a situation where she actually had an opportunity to defend herself. So is this OP? Or was it just a case of Paper vs. Scissors?
We haven't met up since so I haven't had a chance to if this build is the encounter killer that I suspect it might be. It's just that that Scout's Charge give him the opportunity to deal out crazy damage if he hits with both attacks. It basically comes down to whether or not Scout's Charge and Claw Pounce can allow him to do 2 sneak attacks on a charge. I would hate to nerf it seeing how he spent so much patient work on this build, but Im afraid it could be a gamebreaker.
Long story short my witch was trying to get info on a fugitve from a thug whom had been rumored to be seen in his presence. he wasn't talking and my buddie and I both rolled low on intimidate.
My CN witch, not above low-intesity torture, casted Cup of Dust (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advanced/spells/cupOfDust.html#_cup-of- dust) on him promising to return the next morning to see if he was feeling more cooperative. So I did return only to see that he had drowned himself in a horsetrough outside his appartment.
Her reaction was a mix of embarrasment for not foreseeing this and frustration at wasting their only known connetion to the man they were chasing ("Oh come on!" kinda like that). A reaction which I believe was perfectly in line w/ her alignment.
Our GM however believed this was grounds for an instant alignment change to CE. I was pretty upset, for one this GM is normally a pretty opened minded guy. I tried to explain that committing neglegnet homocide and not taking responsibility for it is a far cry from the bloodthirsty nature of CE. He wasn't hearing it however. It turned into a fight that led to the end of that particular session. We haven't addressed the issue since, at first it was like the pink elephant in the room and then it was forgotten.
I'm curious tho what my character did was negligent, maybe slightly sociapathic. But grounds for an instant alignment change? There was no intent to kill the guy and her lack of remorse was more a testament to her lack of a sense of responibilty.
Can a verbal only spell be ditinguished from simply talking? For example if a sorcerer was being arrested by a city guard could she pretend to surrender and then cast suggestion (a verbal only spell)? Would he immediately realize a spell was being cast and get to roll initiative?
This Bard template looks really cool (although it really ends up not being a bard at all). So has anyone play tested the Dervish Dancer template. If so please give me some feedback. :)
An issue that came up in a session I DMd in 3.5. Enemy mage used a scroll, player wanted to take his attack of opportunity against the mage's scroll rather than the mage himself. Is that allowed?
I have a question pertaining to Ruthazek's 3 challenges. Is a standard non-monty haul characters supposed to even have a shot at this at their level? Our party had just turned lvl 11 when the king showed up, invited us to dinner, and challenged us to his 3 tests for control of the City of Seven Spears. Seeing how we couldn't have repelled his small army of giant monkeys we accepted.
The first test required a DC 25 str roll, which our fighter just couldn't make despite his appropriate for his level str, (20 including magic items) a couple of buffs from our cleric, (Bull's str and some spell I'd never heard before so I forget), and a fortune hex from my witch. In the end I believe he needed a natural 17!
Second test was storytelling which our cleric was able to make with a high diplomacy check.
Third test pissed me off most of all between one of our players and the inherrent unfairness of the task. One of us had to fight King Ruthazek in single combat. The cleric and I figured it would be foolish to try and match muscle for msucle against the big guy. Our Ranger didn't like HIS odds in a duel but the guy w/ the fighter (notorious for being a stubborn ass and then jumping to the defense that he's "just playing his character") demanded to be the one to fight him. We tried to have a discussion over who was most fit to match big Ruth bit Phil (fighter) jumped the gun and tried to commence the fight while we were amid discussion. I used Slumber on him but appearently (per DM) our continued conversation outlasted the 11 rounds so it ended up Phil vs Ruth after all.
The "duel" lasted a total 2 rounds as Ruthazek was able to hit him w/ all 3 attacks W/ Power Attack! Turns out Baby Ruth was a lvl 14 Fighter... with the stats of a Dire Ape! I figured he was going to be tough, but I didn't realize that one of us (I repeat ONE OF US) was expected single handedly defeat a wlaking woodchipper!!
The part that sucked most of all is that I found out later that, had we somehow defeated evil King Ruth, he would have held up his end of the deal to depart without incident. But, by virtue of being thrust into an almost unwinnable situation, our mostly good aligned party was forced to break OUR promise, steal into the city, murder some apes along the way, and sneak into the Vault so we could save some dude's life.
Once again we are a party of level 11 characters. We have a decent arry a magic items collected throughout the AP and were built using the 15 point standard fantasy stat buy. How in the hell were we supposed to accomplish our task without resorting to outright backstabbing?
Forgive me if this has been addressed already but I couldn't find it.
I hadve a few questions I was hoping to get an official answer on regarding new wicth abilities listed in UM. Some of the decriptions seened a little vague in parts.
Ice Tomb/Hoarfrost - I didn't see any range listed on either of these. Both seem really cool, Ice as a battlefield control and Hoar as an interrogation tool, but I'd like to know if it's the standard 30 ft or if it's a touch.
Prehensile Hair - Showing up the group fighter by ripping a door off it's hinges that he couldn't muscle down sounds awesome, but does this abitlity also give me a 10 ft threat range while active? Also does it let me use INT for my CMD rather than STR?
Spell Poppet - Does this thing have a movement speed? I see it can be used to deliver touch attacks.
In the complete Mage it mentions a spell called Necrotic Spell Bomb. The spell is referanced to the Spell Compundium but when I looked through it I couldn't find it anywhere. Does anyone know any details abuot this spell or where it can be found?
I'm currently playing in the Age of Worms campaign and am planning o running it with a differant group once I'm done. However a couple of things are troubling me and I was wondering if anyone could help.
I was wondering weather or not there was an actual location for Magepoint and the Wormcrawl Fissure in Greyhawk. My DM pretty much just improvised something and when I looked in the actual adventure discriptions it doesn't seem to say and of course neither are on the Greyhawk map. However in the Feind Folio it mentions the Wormcrawl Fissure under the Ulgrstasta description and as for Magepoint, if that's where Tenser lives than it has to be worthy of an actual map position.
I'm just wondering if I might have missed something, let me know.
