Mark Roddison's page

I am Martro Livondar, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man from Andoran, "it belongs to the poor." "No," says the man from Cheliax, "it belongs to the Divine." "No," say the paladins, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Daggermark. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Daggermark can become your city as well.

Hmm, never thought of Randian "ethical egoism" as CE before (had considered it NE), but you make a compelling case.

I like it, too. Not sure I see how Melekatha fits in, though. When would Melekatha have been created?

I am delighted thus far. We are fledgling necromancers all.

I've always wanted one of my threads to be necromancied. Will someone ignore this thread, then later (by weeks or months), once it's forgotten, post on it again?

Spring Attack. Melee sniper!

What about moving in the other direction and just eliminating casting altogether? There are lots of bloodline and mystery abilities that would go really well on a warrior type instead. The chassis could be (with no casting) 3/4 or full BaB, good will (unique for a warrior type), a scaling arcane pool, and bloodline/mystery abilities every ~4 levels, maybe a bonus feat or two? I'd play it, but I always want to play magically-augmented warriors, so I may be biased.

What the others said:

You need to sit down as adults and talk about yur expectations of the game.

You cant "get bck" at the DM. Most overpowered character ever? DM:"A fat bee flyies into your mouth, and you choke on it. Fort-Save 27? Not enough. It escaped from a mad Mage's Laboratory, so it is extra hairy and spit-resistant. You die. Want to make another character?"

This is the same as a Rift Drake ass-pull.

Or, my monsters have no/only trivial ranged weapons, and the caster just casted Fly? Damnnnn... .... RiftDrake out of nowhere! Bam! Now i can "win" against these peasky players constantly making me "looose" when all my monsters die.

This is not how you play a RPG!

This is absolutely a possibility. Just to play the advocate for new GMs, I'd like to relate that my first few experiences GMing involved a very similar cycle. It's really hard, particularly when you have to extemporize, to balance an encounter. Things tend toward the poles very easily. If your players trounce an encounter, it sometimes seems reasonable, in the spur of the moment, to add big numbers to the next one in order to challenge them. I can absolutely understand how a person, without malicious intent, might pull out a Rift Drake.

I think she (your GM) is more afraid of you than you are of her. It sounds like you're already planning to resolve this issue out of character, which is the right move, but I would add that there is a learning opportunity here. One thing I've found helpful is co-GMing: the novice GM helps the seasoned one plan some adventures. Then he/she gets to see how an experienced GM handles things like on-the-fly modifications to encounters to account for power imbalance. Then the roles can switch--novice GM takes the lead role--until he/she is more comfortable improvising.

In short, I'd hesitate to assume adversarial intent.

Maybe I've been watching too much "Doctor Who," but who's to say that your character isn't going to become Nethys?

Fritz is a wizard, sorcerer, or alchemist. He's also paralytically uncertain what to do with his life. The Fritzes one meets are the simulacra of Fritz (original flavor), sent out into the world as life path experiments. Each is enjoined to travel far and do what he will, then report back to the original. Alpha Fritz remains at base keeping a massive journal elucidating all of his alternate lives' adventures.

Each Fritz has to remunerate the cost of the simulacrum spell; many, aware of the relative brevity of their existence, elect simply to borrow the money from someone. In this way, Fritz the First has accumulated a great many debts, and every Ancillary Fritz risks running into one of his many debtors.

Hey! I quite like this idea :). I actually played in a campaign wherein, though "Occult Adventures" wasn't out yet, my character entered a mental battle of wills and got to leave her opponent incapacitated, rather than truly dead. This kind of suggestion implantation also has a great deal of precedent with conditioning or brainwashing plots in fantasy and sci-fi, so I think people would readily use such a ruling.

Sadly, people probably won't heed this post because it's not in the appropriate forum; this kind of thing usually goes in "Suggestions/Homebrew/House Rules." I've flagged it as such.

Another theorycraft!

My goal: to excogitate a reasonably effective character that adds WIS to as many rolls as possible.

My idea: take a class that adds WIS to AC (monk or Sacred Fist warpriest), a class that affords access to channeling (for Guided Hand) (cleric or warpriest), a class that grants the Conversion inquisition (cleric or inquisitor), and an appropriate PrC for some continuity of class features, and end up with someone who can

• act as a party face with WIS to all of the social skills;
  
• do something in melee with WIS to attack rolls (idea: liberal use of the "Gentle Rest" power from the Repose domain, then smack and/or flurry);
  
• be reasonably safe with a high-to-unhittable AC and a ludicrous will save.

Potential build paths and my analyses:

Wanderer Monk 8/Cleric 1: The original idea. Worship Shizuru; take Guided Hand and Crusader's Flurry as feats, and take the Repose domain and the Conversion inquisition with the cleric level. Take the first level as cleric, then Monk to 8 for the second "off-hand" flurry attack before branching out into a PrC. Enjoy all the Wisdom to everything and a cool "walking the Earth" samurai flavor. I would probably proceed into Horizon Walker after this to sustain that flavor and give me various bonuses to to-hit and skills. Slayer might also be invited to the party. It doesn't seem terribly interesting to continue with monk after this, sadly.

Sacred Fist Warpriest 8/Cleric 1: A modification to the original, adding more combat feats, a lot more spellcasting, and great nova ability at the expense of some skill ranks and ... not much else that I care about. This is probably a straight upgrade over the original, but I'd probably have to go with human to get enough skill ranks for my face skills to matter. It's a touch clunky to have to take a cleric level and warpriest levels. As above, I might proceed into Horizon Walker, but Slayer actually looks quite tempting for its skill points and melee abilities. Of course, after this much investment into Warpriest, it might be best to treat that cleric level as a simple dip and continue with Warpriest.

Sensei Monk 2--3/Cavalier (or Samurai) 1--2/Cleric (or Inquisitor) 1--2: A totes different beast. This one is pretty clearly intended to go into Battle Herald, and I must admit that a single-stat Battle Herald build appeals greatly to me. In this case, "do something in melee" might very well mean "stand in front, bolster allies, and maybe guard the back row," so using one of those reach monk weapons like the kyoketsu shoge or kusarigama, taking Bodyguard/Lunge, and just threatening all over looks like a good time. This one is also much less feat-intensive, since my WIS to attack is covered by Sensei, so I can spend my feats on fun stuff.

As you can see, broadly, I'm looking at either a debuffer (via Gentle Rest) who relies on a great number of attacks, a pumped-up to-hit stat, and a high crit chance (probably with Power Attack) to do meaningful damage OR a group buffer who can safely stand out in front and swat enemies away. Has anyone got thoughts, experiences playing such a build, other ways to achieve WIS SADness, etc.?

Is this for a home game? While the FAQ regarding spell-like ability qualification for feats has been rescinded, it sounds like that's not an issue for you. Thus, perhaps it would make sense to try the old "[d]ip into teleportation subschool wizard" trick, or, if you're okay with waiting until seventh level, using variant multiclassing.

I would go with the former, simply because 1) you need your feats for this build and 2) it allows you to start taking the feats sooner.

This also feels really organic: you're a swift-footed assassin who wants to teleport around. You decide to take up a bit of wizardry, but, once you've learned how to hop around dimensions a bit, you totally stop studying; you get better at acting after you teleport (represented by taking the dimension door-related feats), but not at actually teleporting (you have but a single wizard level). It's only later, when you've gained a lot more experience, become habituated to teleporting, and truly mastered the astral plane, that your intrinsic dimension door abilities can be unlocked. Mechanically, you'll be a wizard 1/slayer X (only 5 needed for PrC qualification, but that sixth slayer level is tasty) with access to an occasional teleport trick; later, once you take the PrC, it will be clear to all the world that you have mastered the art of slipping between dimensions as a blade between ribs.

What about a normally untenable (or at least suboptimal) class/ race combination? A nagaji wizard, a fetchling cleric or monk (the latter isn't exactly awful, but the lack of wisdom hurts most monks), a kobold ... anything?

simon hacker wrote:

as above, re-roll, no challenge and nothing to role-play, bland, boring

You just rolled "perfection," and when you consider that at higher levels those rolls are actually quite far away from perfection, which sounds pretty fun to roleplay to me. There's nothing in the rolls, and you have to provide a personality for yourself, but there is so much potential.

I don't know if you could be a good guy with so few flaws, but you could be a fantastic (to use pro wrestling terminology) comedy crybaby heel.

What if one were to treat the character's awareness of his or her "perfection" as inducement to forswear the accretion of wealth? Maybe the character never uses stat boosting items or forgoes armor without mechanical benefit.

Ooh! Take templates that weaken you. Young (you're an elf only eighty years old!), hungry (you are a mendicant or your religious beliefs require you to fast; this is bad for a non-melee character), pod-spawned, etc.

I've been thinking that it might not be bad to have both Warrior Priest and Arcane Armor Training. Replacing the fighter level with oracle (battle or metal), you get all of the proficiencies anyway via Skill at Arms, and then you can take Extra Revelation for revelations that will scale with your Hellknight level. It "only" costs one point of BAB, but the revelations might not scale enough to justify that. It is an option, though. It's possible with some cleric archetypes, too, but the return becomes even less (unless there are some crazy domain powers that I can't think of).

Human female bard/ commoner with Perform: Oratory.
Gnome male rogue/ ranger (favored enemy: fey).
Big, hairy ogre male with Int 3 and Stone Call as an SLA.
Awakened tiny dog male cavalier with riding dog mount.

Their opponent is a sexy wizard.

Gozreh is an a%*$!*$

Whoa. Whoa. I think we all need to cool off a bit.