Maximilian Gaston's page

They should be. But who knows you might not be able to use the Cognatogen if you can't take the downside. Kind of like you can;t take burn if you are immune to ability damage.

There's the Monk of the 4 Winds and the Heaven's Oracle.

Additionally there is the psychic bloodline sorcerer that allows you to body swap when killed.

Not familiar with those, can you explain?

EDIT: Ok the monk and oracle I see are level 20 abilities. The Witches ability comes at 10th and the Druid at 5th. Anything more playable?

Maximilian Gaston wrote:

For the witch, do they feel guilt for stealing the form they are in? Do they do this to stay young and beautiful or just to survive?

Still evil either way. They aren't satisfied with their own life, they're stealing the lives of others.

If they are stealing the bodies of foes their party would have killed, it would really be a moot point wouldn't it?

Stealing the body of the Orc their party would have killed is at least a painless death compared to what the swords or spells of their compatriots would feel like.

I was noticing something as of late. There are at least two Archetypes for the Witch and Druid that grants a PC something akin to Immortality if played right, of course they can still be killed by specific things such as Death effects though.

Are there any I missed? I noticed the Beast Bond Witch (Allows body hoping as a way of keeping alive) and the Reincarnated Druid (Allows you to reincarnate a day later up to 1 mile from your body.)

I was curious if there were others because it would be fun to possibly play in a part composed of characters who maybe where a little harder to kill. You could give them more challenges higher then they might normally handle or give them social issues of beings who are virtually immortal how do they relate to the changing world around them?

A druid who has reincarnated so many times that they forgot their original form, since they have been 1 of every common race would they have a bias toward their native race if they could remember it? How do they deal when they Reincarnate as a Goblin?

For the witch, do they feel guilt for stealing the form they are in? Do they do this to stay young and beautiful or just to survive?

Maximilian Gaston wrote:

I could see that being an interesting way of making an Accidental Lich.

Alchemist makes this strange concoction and downs it.. and suddenly is undead.

I think other accidents with the regular formula might be more interesting.

Think of a sorcerer that dumped int and forgot to carry the 2 while doing the rituals? What about an unintended phylactery?

What if the adventurers smash the jewel encrusted amulet sitting on the alter... and then a while later a flaming lich comes crawling out of the over in the long abandoned kitchen in the back of the lair?

I think it would be funny if a Alchemist accidentally became a lich and either their Homunculus became the Phlactery or the potion bottle they just chugged did. Would be kind of interesting for that party of adventurers who have to loot everything not bolted down to wake up in the morning and their Alchemist's bag is suddenly a heck of a lot heavier with that torso in it.

I wish Death Ward was like the old 3.5 version and granted immunity. I do not want to lose my Wildshaping but I know if I go Living Monolith at level 17 (need to be 7th level to take it) I would be immune but I doubt any game I am running gets that high and Death Effects become more common at 10 and higher.

What was that old rule set Potion Miscibility or something?

I could see that being an interesting way of making an Accidental Lich.
Alchemist makes this strange concoction and downs it.. and suddenly is undead.

I do not know why but I love the idea of the Sin Eater, the character that willingly takes the evil into themselves to keep it from the world. Seems like a nice concept for a Hero.

Well if you are undead you cannot reincarnate. And I get that ability to reincarnate at level 5.

Alright so I wanted to begin play with a Reincarnated Druid.
Now we are mixing in a little 3.5 for more crunch and the race I am picking is the Killoren race. Which is a Fey.

Now since it is a fey and there is only 2 feys that can be player races. Killoren and Gathlain (At least without is being a CR above playable.)

Now I am rolling for stats
18, 13, 16, 12, 14, 15 (Not in any real order)

Now my biggest issue is going to be death effects and so I will need advice on how to defeat those effects. Death Ward is a 4th level spell that gives a +4 morale bonus, but a continuous item of that level is like 100,000+ GP

Any other ways to get bonuses to those spells or a way to get immunity?

Oh I know, I am in love with the Reincarnated Druid archetype for that reason.

Ah, sorry :| I do love the vast majority of the Golarion setting's flavor!

I also do love a good classic horror setting, and super evil necromancers are good fun. The part that irked me all along was the locked in **requirement** of evil only.

The bandied about notion of a different set of creatures that are mechanically more or less undead but go by different names (maybe positive energy?) like the "good-lich-but-not-called-a-lich" hinted at above could potentially satisfy more options and subtlety while also not stepping on the toes at all of common horror tropes and assumptions.

And Anne Rice's vampire series is a pretty good example of a non-evil undead. Or well, they may be evil, they may not, they're just sort of normal people psychologically. They generally struggle with the morality of their condition, almost all of them have compunctions against killing innocents (only killing cutthroats and such while hunting), etc.

Wasn't that the argument against Twilight? That they were not killing enough innocent people in those movies and behaving as real vampires?

Btw I agree with you, just pointing that out.

I am a huge Highlander fan, immortal characters who have existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. And some of the oldest are actually pretty mellow and zen. They have had millenia to adjust and adapt. My favorite Methos was EVIL for a good while, even taking on the persona of the Horsemen Death and was feared all over the region as one of the greatest mass murderers in history. He had since mellowed, and spent large swaths of his life doing good or just living a good life.

So sure you can do evil things, but you can atone, mellow our and spend centuries doing good as well. I think we are way to set into alignments when they should be fluid.

Yes a Lich who becomes a Lich on his own is doing this for very selfish reasons. Well ok, so he becomes a lich.. then what? To finish his research? What was the research for? Oh a cure for a plague that killed his family? Does he continue with it? If he doesn't then why would he have even invested so much energy into becoming a lich in the first place? If he does create a cure, does this not show he is at least not totally drive by selfish desires? If he then goes on to spend centuries finding cures, and modernizing medicine and saving hundred if not thousands of lives. Does this still require him to be evil? Even if he does this for his own personal glory. As the man/thing who did all this?

I think to often Lichs are written as very shallow characters. Not saying Paizo does it as I have not ready more then 1 of their work but in general descriptions they always seem so Bland and Stereotypical.

I vote for saint

I understand that. So calling them Good Lich, Arch-Lich or whatever is just to say the oiginal normal Lich is always evil. Then shouldn't they be called Evil Lich?

Yes but some GMs like to limit spells known in a lower magic setting.

Pixie, the Leng Queen wrote:

If ANY undead would be able to become G or N it would be the lich. And the paladin specifically calls out that TJERE ARE G and N undead. Otherwise it would never mention it like the Oath vs Corruption or oath va fiends.

Sure, just blithely ignore the fact that in order to choose the path, you were a mass murdering SOB who killed tons of innocent people in horrific ways to get there to start with. You're talking about someone who was essentially a sociopath on the order of Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lector combined with a megalomanical power fixation to boot.

Those kind of people don't simply wake up one morning and decide to become angels. In fact, they never do.

You keep blindly stating they are all evil and all must perform evil deeds but Jacobs has said its personal and unique. So they do not HAVE to commit evil act.

That was pretty much the plot of a Highlander episode.

(Though that's not a bad thing at all...)

Well kind of, Coltec (Yes I know his name!) was a sin eater who hunted evil immortals to absorb their evil quickening and yes when he eventually absorbed enough evil their evil overtook him.

Perhaps that could even be a Plothook, this 'good lich' asks the party to find a sacred device to pour this excess evil into to seal it away forever. If they fail they must kill him before it could overtake him.

Maximilian Gaston wrote:

Are we ever gonna get another take on the Sin Eater? I like the Inquisitor's Archetype fine but I would love a more Shamanistic view of it. One where you devour the negative energies from an undead foe to purify it. Or when you render a foe helpless you can eat their sins and negative emotions to force an alignment shift on them toward neutral or good.

Maybe. It's a concept that is very much "of interest" to lots of folks here. We'll see.

That is all I can ask. I would love to play one, and it would give a good excuse to go Lich with it as well (Tie in with the thread) someone so dedicated to absorbing all that negative energy it corrupts his form and turns him into a lich (By filling his body with negative energy) and yet he still works to purge the evils of others through taking it into himself. That would be an interesting story for a Paladin to run up upon. An Undead who was selflessly taking into themselves the sins of those around them to redeem them of their evils.

Interesting, Combined with the Human FCB you would have a lot of spells to choose from. Wonder why they set a limit on this one? Also if not taken at late game you still only have a small selection of higher level spells prepared.

...trying not to get too worked up whenever someone spells it "liche" with that extra e...

Not alone in that my friend.

Are we ever gonna get another take on the Sin Eater? I like the Inquisitor's Archetype fine but I would love a more Shamanistic view of it. One where you devour the negative energies from an undead foe to purify it. Or when you render a foe helpless you can eat their sins and negative emotions to force an alignment shift on them toward neutral or good.

Does the feat work for the Arcanist. I know it has a Spells Prepared section rather then a spells known section but we all agree they function the same. Those are your spells known for the day.

So would it work via Raw? OR would it work via RAI?

Reincarnating Druid gets it at level 5, with a week cooldown you can easily change races fairly easily.

Just fear the Death effects

Berinor wrote:

I don't intend to pull large segments out of books, so I hope this doesn't cross a line but will understand if it's deleted, but this is from Undead Revisited.

Quote:

Yet for most, these pleasures eventually begin to pale. Though they may start out simply seeking more time in which to continue their work, with no true predilection toward evil, in the end, all liches inevitably cycle down into madness or a paranoia that mortals seek to annihilate them—the latter, of course, often being true. Through the endless centuries, the cycle of time speeds ever faster, and the faces of those lesser beings still trapped in death’s plan become a blur, nameless and forgettable, with the lich remembering only those who seek to destroy it. Is it any wonder then that most liches grow to nurture a generalized hatred for life, or that they surround themselves with horrific magic to destroy interlopers?

The thing is, is hew wrong for being right?

It even mentions that he is usually right in that people tend to actively try to destroy him. Is it wrong for.him to want to preserve his existance. If you had a living guy that has had multiple assassination attempts, would he be evil for having multiple wards and protections and traps to stop any further potential threats?

As, for the time thing, how is that different from elves around humans? Unless your saying elves who libe among humans will eventually become evil because of human's short life spans? Or what about dragons?

Honestly, as bad as it sounds I think this does roll down into the Ugly = Evil dynamic. They are skeletal beings who may or may not have committed horrible deeds to gain this semblance of immortality and they are hated for it. If like Cayden Cailen they became gods through good deeds they are beloved for it even if they are horrible as a god, drunk and what not.

If you had a template that gave you all the powers of a Lich but did not turn you into an undead, but instead an Outsider or something. I have no doubt people would say it was fine In Universe.

Again I can't help but be drawn back to the very vague "Horrific acts" argument and say "What horrific acts" Is all the books detailing it have no details of things they do then you lose that argument because you have no grounds.

Lich with a Contigent Gentle Repose and so forth could end up Immortal and looking good. Why do I have a feeling if you were dead sexy and a lich not even the Paladins would consider you evil?

Admit it most people think Lich-Evil because their icky and all skeleton like.

I have had a character who was an NPC but totally Human, he was old and withered from age and sure enough at least two of my four players cast detect undead on him because they figured he was a lich or a vampire or something in disguise. WE only think Beautiful things are good and ugly things are evil.

But what is required to become a lich? Why does it seem like we are just getting these vague "They do unspeakably evil things" as a default. Sorry but if I don't see what specific act is so terrible I am having a hard time with why they are evil off the bat.

So can someone provide me with the information? What adventures have this information? What splat books? I am seriously curious at this point.

Can you take Weapon Focus Kinetic blast? If you can then it should.

I think you can take Visionary Researcher for PA for a form of Mutagen
Also not seeing the PA in the list for Archetypes is it on a later page?

The companion replaces bombs and mutagens. The only discoveries you can't take are the mutagen and cognatogen ones. So you can take the greater variants of mutagen if you got it from somewhere else.

Yes dodge bonuses stack as long as they are not from the same source, but they are both from your intel mod so they dont stack, here is a link because this topic comes up -alot- on the boards. http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=385?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Qu estions-Here#19247

Encounters, at least in pathfinder terms, are generally combats. If the DM sets up specific social encounters thats one thing but generally talking to someone is not considered an encounter. Again refer to DM for that one before the session starts because it seems not so on the straight and narrow. General Rule of thumb is that if your not getting exp its not an encounter.

Iaijutsu Focus isnt even from Pathfinder or 3.5, its from 3.0
If your allowed to mix 3 diffferent versions of the game along with 3rd party I would think you can make a cooler character then this, which requires alot of houserule and handwaving on the side of the GM.

Check out some of the guides on the board and they can help you think up alot of cool stuff. For this build I would specifically look up Either a magus guide of the "Getting X to Y" guide for pathfinder.

3.0 -> 3.5 Skills that were not specifically called out as being removed (Such as in Errata) moved forward, just no class used it.

Also Thank you, your link proves that they stack.
Modifiers from ability scores aren't actually bonuses, strictly speaking. If they are, they're untyped bonuses—which means they stack with all other bonuses except themselves. Thus, if you have multiple things that say "Add your Dex modifier to this roll," you only get to add your Dex modifier once.
Because they they do not say Add your Int bonus to AC, they state that you add your INT bonus as a Dodge Bonus (Which stack) meaning they are not the untyped bonus that they are talking about here. They are two Dodge bonuses that happen to be the same (Your Int)

Also 3rd Party is restricted to Dreamscarred but honestly we do not even need to consider that because Elan was part of 3.5 and adding the floating +2 is all Dreamscarred press did which the conversion guide mentions.

And I somewhat agree with the encounter rule, was more or less just throwing out a random example. Pretty much anytime you do a new thing such as interact with an NPC that is part of the plot it would be considered an encounter with that person because its part of the campaign.

Your character is nice, looks really cool.

Both are Dodge Bonuses, which specifically Stack. You would be right if it was a straight Int to AC bonus like Monk's Wis to AC.

Also Factotum's Inspiration resets every encounter, so battle ends and we talk to someone this is a new encounter. Font of Inspiration is 1+2 for a +3 from two feats. if I took it further it would be 1+2+3=6 for taking it three times.

Even without the +3 to Int this is a Int focused build and Slashing grace is to add Dex+Int to damage so the few times I use Inspiration to hit I hit well. Also Iaijutsu Focus becomes a thing which can add up to 9d6 in extra damage (Not marked as precision)

Sorry mixing my 3.5 nd PF/Dreamscarred as the 3.5 one says the bit about not physically again.

Also the Brains over Brawns adds Int to those skills and Initiative as a Modifier, not a bonus. Basically increasing the Dex or Str by the Int amount as its modifier not a bonus. Plus Canny Knowledge adds Factotum Level not Int so they would stack.

Factotum adds INT to everything. It has all skills, adds Int to AC, To Attack, To Dmg, To Saves, etc.
Factotum

Also little loophole in the rules, Elans are called out as never physically aging, having to move from place to place to hide their immortality. So basically they would never actually take physical negs.

Alright so I would like to make this really ridiculous gestalt idea. A Factotum//Magus (Kensai) combo just seemed sick to me.

We allow Dreamscarred at our table so I am taking the Elan race and adding my floating +2 to Int. I am also going venerable to add a total of +5 to the Int.

Now taking two Flaws (Basically the feats that give me a -4 to hitting a women, and a -4 to hitting a foe who is not armed with a melee weapon (Unless they are able to use a lethal Unarmed))
Those two feats will likely be Font of Inspiration.
At first level take Knowledge Devotion
At 3rd level Weapon Finesse
at 5th level Slashing Grace
The Bonus provided by Magus would be Intensify Spell

Traits would be Magical Lineage (Shocking Grasp)
and Student of Philosophy to make Diplo and Bluff Int based checks.

btw I pick up free Exotic Weapon Prof. Gnomish Quick Razor and Weapon Focus on the Quick Razor.

How would you guys build this differently?
25 Point Buy.