Melkiador's page

This tests the wizard understanding of the principles of magic (spellcraft), the ability to cast spells, and to create scrolls.

I like almost all of that, but it doesn't work for all of the wizard archetypes that traded out create scrolls. Unless we want to declare those archetypes as "not real wizards".

Trick Shot (Su): At 11th level, a zen archer may hit targets that he might otherwise miss. By spending 1 point from his ki pool as a swift action, the zen archer can ignore concealment. By spending 2 points, he can ignore total concealment or cover. By spending 3 points, he can ignore total cover, even firing arrows around corners. The arrow must still be able to reach the target; a target inside a closed building with no open doors or windows cannot be attacked. These effects last for 1 round. This ability replaces diamond body.

Yeah, those are pretty clearly different applications. If it had just said, "ignore total cover or total concealment" as a single statement, I could see arguing the inclusiveness of the statement. But what we have is very either/or, as far as (total cover + total concealment) goes.

Melkiador wrote:

Give them an empty spellbook and have them scribe the highest level spell they have prepared into it.

Could you cast memorize page while looking a spellbook from the library?

A wizard could, because they have the ability to write spells into spellbooks. Others can only scribble into spell books. Mostly that spell just lets you have a partial copy of the foreign spellbook in your brain. You'd still need to use the rules for copying into spellbooks to do the writing.

However, this would allow a wizard to copy a spell into his spellbook so he could prepare the spell from his book (assuming the spell takes up only one page in a spellbook).

I guess this would technically also prevent an arcanist from doing it, but that's probably accidental RAW

Spells Copied from Another's Spellbook or a Scroll: A wizard can also add a spell to his book whenever he encounters one on a magic scroll or in another wizard's spellbook. No matter what the spell's source, the wizard must first decipher the magical writing (see Arcane Magical Writings). Next, he must spend 1 hour studying the spell. At the end of the hour, he must make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell's level). A wizard who has specialized in a school of spells gains a +2 bonus on the Spellcraft check if the new spell is from his specialty school. If the check succeeds, the wizard understands the spell and can copy it into his spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). The process leaves a spellbook that was copied from unharmed, but a spell successfully copied from a magic scroll disappears from the parchment.

If the check fails, the wizard cannot understand or copy the spell. He cannot attempt to learn or copy that spell again until one week has passed. If the spell was from a scroll, a failed Spellcraft check does not cause the spell to vanish.

In most cases, wizards charge a fee for the privilege of copying spells from their spellbooks. This fee is usually equal to half the cost to write the spell into a spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). Rare and unique spells might cost significantly more.

I think I'd just remove its native burn cost and call it a day. It's a convenience ability at a level where most of the convenience can be covered by other means.

Simply casting arcane sight:D3 and examining a creature reveals caster level etc. So three judges conferring can do a guy every 2-3 rounds.

That only tells if they are an arcane spellcaster. I guess my method also lets arcanists pass, but we don't know if that is intentional to the world. I imagine flavor-wise that an arcanist is treated more as a wizard with an archetype than as a different class.

Give them an empty spellbook and have them scribe the highest level spell they have prepared into it.

"Any type of armor" is also strange language though. It's vague and the author intent isn't clear, but I'd side with saying they still have shield proficiency and general druid armor limitations.

Unfortunately, intent on these kinds of things can be as simple as the author forgot that druids normally have shield proficiency when writing this archetype.

Well, it's not really about the tea

a frog-lizard thing

That would be an alligator. I'm a crocodile!

The fighter selects one weapon for which he has Weapon Focus and that belongs to the associated fighter weapon group. The fighter can deal damage with this weapon based on the damage of the warpriest’s sacred weaponACG class feature, treating his fighter level as his warpriest level. The fighter must have Weapon Focus with the selected weapon in order to choose this option.

This is referring to the warpriest's weapon damage table

...Whenever the warpriest hits with his sacred weapon, the weapon damage is based on his level and not the weapon type. The damage for Medium warpriests is listed on Table 1–14; see the table below for Small and Large warpriests. The warpriest can decide to use the weapon’s base damage instead of the sacred weapon damage—this must be declared before the attack roll is made. (If the weapon’s base damage exceeds the sacred weapon damage, its damage is unchanged.) This increase in damage does not affect any other aspect of the weapon, and doesn’t apply to alchemical items, bombs, or other weapons that only deal energy damage.

So at 12th level, Focused Weapon would change your longsword from 1d8 to 1d10 base damage.

You may be thinking of the Warrior Spirit option for Advanced Weapon Training.

The fighter can forge a spiritual bond with a weapon that belongs to the associated weapon group, allowing him to unlock the weapon’s potential. Each day, he designates one such weapon and gains a number of points of spiritual energy equal to 1 + his weapon training bonus. While wielding this weapon, he can spend 1 point of spiritual energy to grant the weapon an enhancement bonus equal to his weapon training bonus. Enhancement bonuses gained by this advanced weapon training option stack with those of the weapon, to a maximum of +5.

The fighter can also imbue the weapon with any one weapon special ability with an equivalent enhancement bonus less than or equal to his maximum bonus by reducing the granted enhancement bonus by the amount of the equivalent enhancement bonus. The item must have an enhancement bonus of at least +1 (from the item itself or from warrior spirit) to gain a weapon special ability. In either case, these bonuses last for 1 minute.

Every time I read this, it first sounds like the “project” in Project Runway in my head. And Project Terror sounds like an amazing tv show.

My solution has the same issue Sam brought up, but it's simpler to just use both regular magic items and ABP together. You just have to forbid the stacking of such, which is mostly already covered by the rules regarding bonus stacking. As for weapons and armor, you just say that applying ABP to them temporarily overrides their own bonuses and bonus-based special qualities.

Adding ABP in this way is also a lot easier to run in an AP or module, where you don't want to modify half of the loot.

There are lots of powerful gestalt combinations. Just so many. And people commenting here will have their personal preferences. But what do you like to do? Do you prefer half-casters? Are you wanting to be in melee more or less? How much do you want to sacrifice to specifically focus on killing vampires?

So far you've expressed interest in 4 classes, but I'm not familiar with the factotum nor sure which version you are using. I would suggest that you prioritize getting as many good saves as you can, and if you have any plans of attacking then you need to have full BAB in one of your picks. And it's a good idea to not mix requirements on mental stats. For example, you don't want to have abilities based on intelligence competing against your abilities based on wisdom. That said, some classes have no real mental requirements, so don't ignore those. Therefore, a vampire hunter/barbarian wouldn't be much of a caster, but otherwise would still be a good combo.

Vampire Hunter
* Pairs well enough with inquisitor.
* The herbalist alchemist is wisdom based, so should be a decent pairing.

You want the gnome constitution for the combo with life link and shield other. Combine with fey foundling to make your self healing more efficient. It takes a few more levels to get fully online from the feat starvation, but healing the low levels is easy enough anyway.

What sort of "support" would you like to do? Are you just wanting to heal and remove conditions? Are you wanting to buff your allies? What mental stat would you prefer your character to run on?

Probably a matter of taste, but reincarnating infinitely seems way more interesting than simply never dying. Though either could drive you crazy if you aren’t suited to it. A bit of a spoiler, but there is an old manga about that concept called Immortal Rain where you have both types of immortality

We should point out that this is a level 8 spell. Moving large+ creatures, if they fit a circumstance, is certainly not outside of the scope of a level 8 spell. Even with no save. Reverse gravity is level 7-8 and this isn’t stronger than that.

While buff spells often assume a medium size character, attack spells should assume you will use them against all of the monsters. If creature size were meant to be a limitation, that really should have been included in the spell.

I have already gotten to play most of the characters I really, really wanted to play. I do think it’d be fun to play around with a synthesist summoner, but people often frown on those.

Maybe more interesting to me are the characters I would enjoy playing again. My nature fang elven archer who was obsessed with food. My cowardly arcanist occultist who kept trying to put others between himself and danger. My freewheeling archaeologist bard. My tricky osirian herald caller cleric.

The black blade arcane pool is fairly small, so using 2 points for an effect is costly. At 5th level doing so uses the entire pool. At 20th level the black blade arcane pool only has 5 points in it so you can turn the damage to force damage twice at most.

Yes, it's a niche ability but powerful at certain points in the game. For completeness, you can refill its pool at level 19 by killing creatures with it. Though it's unclear if it counts when you kill someone with it, by using it to deliver spellstrike.

Regardless, level 18+ play is rare to see for multiple reasons, so level 18+ behavior won't matter to most bladebound magus playthroughs.

The problem for the Magus is that the Arcane pool enhancement of his weapon is meant to be a "balance" for his 3/4 BAB.

Yes, but it's only one of multiple balances. The arcana can also do a lot to make up for the lower BAB.

I think of the pool weapon enhancement as being more of a "temporary fix" for BAB. At low level it does indeed do a lot to catch the attack bonus up to expectations and it has a nice combat-long duration at those low levels. But in higher levels, it allows you to adapt to lots of situations, and you gain even better uses of those points, like arcana and spell recall. So, it doesn't "keep up" well, but it never really had to keep doing that.

It's not a perfect ability, but it's pretty nice when you remember to benefit from it. If you use the 2 point version you can count as force, which doesn't have many immunities or resistances and also hits incorporeal.

True, the regular arcane pool is a stronger ability in general, but the black blade does have a few merits. And the cost in pool points isn't as big as you'd think.

Levels of 1/2 + Intelligence vs 1/3 + Intelligence:
3: 1+I vs 1+I
6: 3+I vs 2+I
9: 4+I vs 3+I
12: 6+I vs 4+I
15: 7+I vs 5+I
18: 9+I vs 6+I
20: 10+I vs 6+I

For most of your career you won't feel the difference.

Changing the damage type to energy is basically ignoring DR in a more roundabout way. It’s a useful ability sometimes.

I didn't say all magus would have a +2 by that level. Just that it isn't particularly unusual. Also the black blade scales pretty slowly.

At level 9, you go to +3. Wealth by level would be 46,000.
+3 weapon costs 18,350. That's becoming very likely you have a +3 weapon at that level, earlier with crafting.

At level 13, you go to +4. Wealth by level would be 140,000.
+4 weapon costs 32,350. Now you are likely to have already had a +4 weapon. Very likely with crafting.
+5 weapon costs 50,350. Possible but very possible with crafting.

At level 17, you go to +5. Wealth by level would be 410,000.
+6 weapon costs 72,350. Almost guaranteed.
+7 weapon costs 98,350. Wouldn't be strange at level 7.
+8 weapon costs 128,350. Stretching the odds, but very doable with crafting.
+9 weapon costs 162,350. Actually not strange with crafting at level 17.

The Black Blade still has its merits, like the ability to deal elemental damage. But it's not even strange that a bladebound magus may be using a regular magic weapon over their black blade for a lot of combats in end game.

I don’t think being a class feature in itself is the problem. It’s the nature of the class feature and how it has its own bonus progression that is nonsensical when combined with crafting mechanics that were written assuming a non-scaling item.

Regardless there’s an FAQ telling you that you can’t craft upgrades on your black blade.

https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fz#v5748eaic9qux

Encumbrance becomes a non-issue fairly quickly but so does not having mundane attacks. Handy haversack is cheap, wand of magic missile is cheaper

Keep in mind that a traditional +2 weapon isn't unusual at level 5 either, especially if you have crafting. The bladebound isn't getting much of an attack buff from this compared to a regular magus. They are just free to spend that wealth on other things.

Side character limit should based on party size. But 7 is a very large party. With that many party members, in combat healing is rarely a good use of actions. Most enemies will die in a round or two, because of the weight of 7 different characters trying to kill them. And there isn't really a good way to account for this other than inflating enemy numbers, which leads to very long rounds of combat. You may consider using a turn timer, to keep combat hopping along and prevent the players from getting too disconnected while waiting on their turn.

I have seen so many guys try the mule before for it to fail super quickly. Mules just aren’t easy to get around most dungeons and adventures.

We are probably moving to homebrew at this point. So, it sounds like you want to trade spell combat and spellstrike out for weapon focus and specialization. That’s probably fine. Keep in mind that magus also has improved and greater spell combat. And the capstone also effects spell combat.

Gaining weapon specialization that early should not be overpowered, but it is earlier than the fighter can get it.

He almost seems to be building Asta instead of Guts. Or rather, it seems he wants a weapon like Guts, but otherwise a different character.

Dexterity doesn’t matter as much to combat reflexes as most think. The truth is that in regular play you will very rarely get more than 2 attacks of opportunity per round, with even 1 per round being somewhat rare. There are builds that help you trigger more but those are unusual. The main benefit of that feat is that you can take attacks of opportunity when flat footed, which is great when you lose initiative while holding a reach weapon.

Of course going for a feat chain is another good reason to take it.

If you like the fantasy of summoning, then the arcanist with the occultist archetype may be perfect for you. It comes with a small warning though. At level 1-2, you get so many “free” summons per day through your points. This feels great. But as you level, the point cost increases faster than your point total. This works out ok though, because as you are also getting more regular spells per day. And you can consume spells to get more points for summoning.

I only put that warning, because it can be weird when you discover an ability you spammed in the beginning becomes more and more limited use as you level. It’s still a great pick if you want to be a summoning “wizard”.

Any particular reason for combat reflexes?

Anything carried does apply to your weight. What you suggest may be a reasonable house rule, but it would be a house rule and not part of the default assumption. Also consider that you are still carrying a walking stick during half of the time you are using it. And you are carrying it in a more dynamic way, which could also reasonably increase the amount of force you are carrying. A walking stick is more about stability than weight at any rate.

Melkiador wrote:

Why have a quarter staff when you can have a dagger?

Bludgeoning damage (skeletons, etc.).

You can always drop the quarterstaff and get a new one (0 gp) if 4 lbs becomes an issue. Then again, I usually avoid the 8 Str (or lower) wizard stereotype; 10 Str is not a very high bar unless you're min/maxing to an extreme degree.

AC 16, touch 12, flat-footed 14 (+2 armor, +2 Dex, +2 natural)

First, skeletons are very rarely such a threat to the point that a wizard's tiny melee damage would make a difference. Second, 1d3+1 damage of acid splash isn't much different than 1d6 of a quarterstaff. And the odds to hit with acid splash are at least as good as the odds to hit with a quarterstaff, since ignoring armor cancels out the penalty for shooting into melee.

As I mentioned, I don't drop strength that hard either, but even with a strength of 10, that's still a lot of extra weight to carry around. Are you just not using the encumbrance rules? But again, we are in the minority here. Strength dumping is the default behavior of most players.

Why have a quarter staff when you can have a dagger? That’s a lot of extra weight for almost no mechanical benefit. Unless you’ve built some sort of meme strength wizard, the 1 pound dagger does everything you are expected to do in melee as a wizard.

Heck, you’d be better off just to have 5 daggers that you could also use as throwing weapons and then recover them after combat.

I generally recommend that, at a minimum, every character should start out with a dagger, a morningstar, and a light crossbow.

With 10 bolts, that adds up to 12 pounds you’re carrying there before you add your other adventuring gear. I don’t dump my strength as much as most guides suggest and that’s still too much weight. As a wizard-type, I take 1 dagger and rely on acid splash and other spells for everything else.

When you get a handy haversack, you can maybe carry those other things. But really, I can’t ever see a Morningstar being useful from a standard wizard. That damage and hit chance will be pitiful and the dagger gives your ally just as much flanking bonus.

Crossbow vs Acid Splash. The Crossbow deals more average damage per hit and can hit from further away. But it also takes an action to reload and requires ammo, which adds onto the increase in weight you take from carrying the crossbow. Acid splash targets touch AC which is often much easier to hit. Its damage can be increased by 1 by using an acid as a focus. It has no reloading or weight except maybe the weight of an acid flask, which is only 1 pound. It ignores DR, while acid resistance and immunity are relatively rare. And in social situations, the non-crossbow wizard looks unarmed.

Personally, my wizards don’t bother with crossbows until a good one drops in the loot.

The big difference is that sorcerers have to be extremely careful on choosing their spells known. A wizard who memorizes the wrong spell can simply memorize a different spell tomorrow. A sorcerer that makes a bad choice of spells know can be affected by that choice forever.

Which is why I recommend the arcanist. You can change your "spells known" every day. The tradeoff is that you don't have as many castings per day as either. But in an unpredictable world, I find they actually use more of their spells per day. The Quick Study exploit just adds to the adaptability.

I'm not sure if Mythic changes a lot for the exploiter. It downgrades one of my favorite exploits, Quick Study, because Wild Arcana outclasses it by a lot.

The attack cantrips don't scale well, but they are a decent something to do when you are very low level.

If you are worried about trying it for the first time, I'd recommend the Arcanist class instead. It has mostly the same flavor and is more forgiving about its daily spell selection, so much less spell selection anxiety. It also has an archetype called occultist that can allow you to summon lots of helpful monsters at low level, if you are worried about low level contributions.

Another alternative to wizard is Magus who is also a decent melee fighter, but it plays a lot differently than wizard, so may not interest you.

Assuming no other means of threatening, the person would threaten at 15 and 20, but not threaten at 5 or 10.

It's not unusual to use a second weapon to threaten within those closer areas. Improved Unarmed Strike is the most accepted way of doing this, but something like armor spikes may also allow multiple ranges of threatening with some people arguing against

In 3.5 the spiked chain was often considered to be too good. I think Pathfinder nerfed it too far the other way. But maybe some tables still use the old 3.5 version.

This is how the 3.5 version worked:

A spiked chain has reach, so you can strike opponents 10 feet away with it. In addition, unlike most other weapons with reach, it can be used against an adjacent foe.

You can make trip attacks with the chain. If you are tripped during your own trip attempt, you can drop the chain to avoid being tripped.

When using a spiked chain, you get a +2 bonus on opposed attack rolls made to disarm an opponent (including the roll to avoid being disarmed if such an attempt fails).

You can use the Weapon Finesse feat to apply your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to attack rolls with a spiked chain sized for you, even though it isn’t a light weapon for you.

So, not only did it have reach, but it also didn't have a dead zone. If that version existed in Pathfinder, you'd have a large humanoid threatening everywhere within 20 feet with it.

Sorry, I think I'm missing something here, how is a Magus 3 casting 2nd level spells?

I just skipped over that error because it ultimately didn’t matter to my final conclusion. But yeah, you’d need 4 of magus to get the 2nd level spells.

Accomplished Sneak Attacker is maybe more favored for early access.

It's questionable that two sources of sneak attack stack like that for purposes of prerequisites.

You also probably wouldn't want entry with magus, because they don't have full level 9 spell casting. 1 Rogue + 3 Wizard +Accomplished Sneak Attacker just gets you there so much smoother, while giving you "better" options.

Btw, it's actually an FAQ, so it's not just our opinion
https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9nv6

I just found it interesting that the text doesn't actually talk about completing an action that has already begun, in this case the full round action of spell combat.

MR CRITICAL wrote:

If you use dimension door to bring your Allies with you do your Allies have to wait another turn for actions or just the one casting the spell ? It mentions After using this spell, you can’t take any other actions until your next turn. ???

the more important question is: Can a Magus using spell combat make his attacks after using dimension door to get closer to the enemy?

After using this spell, you can't take any other actions until your next turn.

I guess you could question what qualifies as an action. And if completing an action already started qualifies as taking an action. But I feel pretty confident the intention is that once you cast dimension door, your turn is over.

https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lk4l?With-a-Little-Help-From-My-F iends

You will probably need to run some of these by your GM. I do believe that the common opinion is that you can by default apply arcane pool to natural weapons and you can spell strike with a natural attack. You may notice that the Natural Spell Combat arcana doesn't even mention either of those other abilities, so it isn't necessary for you either way.