It’s unclear if you can combine rapid shot with spell combat, so you should check with your GM beforehand if you were planning to do that. Even if you’re allowed, it may be a bad idea in general. I’d have to run the math to be sure.
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You’ll want plans for when you get grappled.Dimensional Slide That doesn’t work. Grappled: A grappled creature is restrained by a creature, trap, or effect. Grappled creatures cannot move and take a –4 penalty to Dexterity This ability is used as part of a move action
You’ll want plans for when you get grappled.
I really enjoy the kineticist, but if you aren’t already familiar with them, there is a lot to understand how all of its parts work together. And it has some really common mistakes, like thinking that gather power works for non-blasts, when it only applies to blasts. Also when looking at burn costs, remember that infusion specialization often partially negates the costs of those blast infusions. Some of them seem really costly, but are nearly free a few levels after getting them.
Did you mean Inspired Blade Swashbuckler? A bit of a sidetrack, but inspired blade swashbuckler combines very interestingly with the blade adept arcanist. Maybe that could be a backup character to keep in mind if you ever need to replace your witch.
If the player has an artifact then the player has an artifact. Making it a bonded object doesn’t really do anything to improve on that. The only real advantage to having an artifact as a bonded object is that it’s nearly impossible to sunder. But most GMs aren’t going to attack your bonded objects anyway. Conversely, I could see a lot of plots involving interested parties wanting to steal your artifacts.
With an intelligence-based caster, Slayer is a popular choice. It leaves you with all good saves, skills and BAB. Studied target could be very useful depending on which blasting options you choose. But that combo doesn't do much to amplify how much of a blaster you are, like going wizard would
What are you taking in place of rapid reload?
Eclipsed spell comes to mind.
A heavens mystery oracle may work well with this.
Languages Infernal You "train" them the same way you'd train any other minion. They are lawful evil, so they respect the chain of command fairly well. They aren't the smartest though, so you should have reasonable expectations of what they can and can't do.
And I think this is likely by design. Your party isn't meant to breeze through every challenge. There will come times where you have to seek out specialized magic items to get through challenges a different party comp may have no problem with.
I really think covering for each other’s shortcomings is an important part of this game. Otherwise we’d all just have the same powers.
Yeah, it's not that hard to make a character very hard to kill. Drawing aggro is the hard part. Simply being first to enter a room should often help, especially against low intelligence creatures, but you can't contain everything. An unexpected way to go about tanking is by being a tanky healer. Strategic enemies will go after healers first, so lean into that. Paladin 2/Oracle(life) X, will give you good defenses and draw plenty of aggro. Gnome is my favorite for this, as it gets a bonus to constitution and charisma, and the smaller size is a free +1 to AC. Even if the enemies should happen to ignore you as tank, you can still absorb the damage through life-link. Note: You don't really have to dip into paladin for this. The extra hp, heavy armor and big bonus to saves are really nice, but not entirely necessary.
Healing Grace seems more like an effect that is triggered by casting, rather than a change to the spell. I don’t think it satisfies the requirement of safe curing.
This is basically the premise of Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I haven’t done it myself but I’ve played with those who’ve been low combat. The phantom thief rogue is this by nature. So, this thread could have been about the viability of that archetype and gotten mostly similar responses. My earlier insights were based on those experiences.
I feel like we may have gotten a little too far afield. Can we make characters who contribute both in and out of combat? Obviously we can. I think the original question was more about how troublesome it is to have a low-combat party member in this game, while achieving your own "class" fantasy of being low-combat. For the most part I think we've discussed the main points though
Another option is to have your main character be non-combat and have a pet be combat. Summoner and spiritualist can do this well. I’m reminded of the quintessentialist spiritualist who shifts more power to the phantom making your main character lower combat. I also like the spirit summoner for pumping up your pet over your own contributions, but it’s not really meant for that use
If you can wait till 4th level, the cheetah has a 50 foot move speed and the sprint ability. It’s one of your faster mount options if you are small.
Ideally, I like for all ability scores to be covered by at least one party member’s primary or secondary scores. Going through an adventure without a wisdom or intelligence character can be a real pain, but you will even come across challenges desiring high constitution. This often gets fulfilled by random chance, but I’ve seen low strength and wisdom parties before and it’s tough. Race is mostly only important for making some niche builds come online earlier. As long as you aren’t taking penalties to your primary and secondary ability scores, you should be ok. Less necessary, but being able to use most equipment is nice to have. I’ve seen so many suits of full plate turned to vendor trash just because no one can use it. It’s almost a running gag in the APs to give you some really nice pieces in the very early adventures. My random picks that could change tomorrow:
Edit: check with your GM first to make sure dwarven longaxe is allowed with a weapon group. That’s an oversight, and many will let you use it as either the axes or polearms groups. If not an option, consider dual wielding waraxes
In general, the game is intended to be designed in such a way where the order shouldn't matter. In this case, it's less about the bonus than the cap on the bonus. While I don't expect an official answer, I doubt the intention was for an ioun stone to not "stack" with a trait like this.
I think it's obvious that the game divides up PC roles and you have melee/ranged, magic, skill, and special ability focused classes.Not only is it not "obvious", I say this is outright wrong. Any such separation is done by the players and only serves to make characters and games worse. I do think the base game is quite a bit like that. But then we added so many more options that blurred the lines so much.
The rules about summoned creatures are the exception, because the section on summoning specifies, they expire. But that rule does not apply to anything else, including called creatures. Yes, but it’s the exception that proves the rule. If just anyone’s spells ended when they died, then the summon wording wouldn’t be like that
They end if they were cast by a summoned monster that “dies”
When the spell that summoned a creature ends and the creature disappears, all the spells it has cast expire
I will add that most “plinkers” could contribute something to combat with just a tiny amount of investment. Any character could help with flanking and positioning, even a wizard could carry a dagger for threatening. The aid another action can be better than dealing 1-2 damage per round. Just being in the mix to draw some attacks from teammates can be very helpful for damage distribution. Basically, you don’t have to specifically contribute to damage to contribute to the combat.
The larger the party, the more room there is for non-combatants. There are a few intrigue archetypes with this in mind like the phantom thief.
There is a psychic bloodline for the sorcerer. A lot of people feel that it is a better choice than the actual psychic. Unfortunately, Paizo started getting way too conservative with their design goals in later books. They were so afraid of creating overpowered options, that everything became pre-nerfed.
To be clear, I was saying why Wizard did work its way into the conversation. I was not suggesting that it should be part of the conversation. The thread has now been clarified to not be about wizards.
I dont know why everyone is bringing up wizards, Wizard was never on the table, I'm pondering Arcanist or Sorcerer, No interest in Wizard... I guess it’s just the nature of the discussion. Hard to discuss the users of this spell list without bringing in all 3 options. Honestly, all three are surprisingly well balanced against each other. For this discussion, I prefer sorcerer for blasting and arcanist for utility. Also, as Mysterious Stranger pointed out, arcanist archetypes are pretty significant. They can really change the way the class plays.
Arcanist is the most forgiving of the 3 options. You can change your spells known every day and even swap out mid-combat with the quick study exploit. You have the fewest spells per day, but the greatest ability to use every spell slot. Sorcerers have a lot of spells per day and their options often allow them to do things that are not easily replicated otherwise, like boosting damage by 1 to 3 per damage die. Their spells known is limiting but there are ways to add a few more. They are easy to use in play because their options are so locked once chosen. Conversely, they are the most stressful when gaining levels, because you are “stuck” with those choices. Wizard can get almost as many spells per day as the sorcerer, but their odds of getting to use most of those prepared spells per day is not great. A wizard might prepare two dispel magics that never get used, or he may prepare two but end up wanting to use five by the end of the day. Basically, the class is going to be “wasteful” a lot of the time. You can get around this a bit with items and by not preparing all of your spells slots at the beginning of the day, but those options carry their own costs and downsides. The wizard is easy to level up, but basically has to deal with the sorcerer’s spell choosing anxiety every single adventuring day.
Having more uses of consumes means that you could consume more lower level spell slots that you may not have needed anyway, to power your higher level spell slots. Dumping charisma completely means that you won’t be able to improve the number even with buffs. 7 Cha = 1 use
Consume Spells (Su): At 1st level, an arcanist can expend an available arcanist spell slot as a move action, making it unavailable for the rest of the day, just as if she had used it to cast a spell. She can use this ability a number of times per day equal to her Charisma modifier (minimum 1). This is the other reason that charisma is important for an arcanist There is also an exploit, consume magic items, that has a similar limitation, but that is of limited value, and requires choosing that exploit.
Arcanists are a little more ability dependent than sorcerers. A sorcerer could dump intelligence without much trouble. But an arcanist has to make some hard choices if he wants to dump charisma. Dumping charisma is viable, but it also locks off some options from your character and lowers the amount of spells you can consume per day to get back reservoir points.
By mid levels, a well built fighter could also be a skill monkey through advanced weapon training and advanced armor training. They could also gain the warpriest damage chart through advanced weapon training. So, if you don't want to play a fighter, that's fine, but they may offer more than you are familiar with. But if you have the unchained rogue as an option, I think it could let you do most of what you want to do from very early level.
I think there isn’t more investment in these because by nature they aren’t that powerful. You are giving up half your feats which is big, but also at each step you are only trading in a feat’s worth of ability, which isn’t very big. It leaves you with an option that just never feels as strong as you’d want.
Unless you have a lot of spellcraft in your party, it should always be maxed when playing the intelligence based caster. It comes up a lot and you’re the one expected to do it.
I don’t really think it’s meant to apply here. But technically 1 is a possible damage die.
In addition to that, the official SRD has collections of them:
I assume you are using Variant Multiclass (VMC) alternate rules Yes, that's the page he was quoting. Variant Multiclass is mostly just for fun, as the options aren't that strong. But it is interesting how well it lines up with elemental ascetic. Neither are that great on their own, but together they are more appealing.
You could combine this with elemental ascetic kineticist to get the flurry of blows. The two have surprisingly good overlap actually.
In my experience, it is incredibly rare to have a paladin in your party and somewhat rare to have a magus. You’re more likely to have a ranger and a fighter or rogue.
Let them try it, it will not take long before they realize it is a trap for a PC. Sometimes the only way to understand how bad something is, is to try it. Unless you happen to have a pure wizard or cleric in the party to compare, you probably won’t notice the difference. If your MT is the only primary caster in the party, it could easily be a fun time.
The MT was relatively more optimal in 3.5, because the casters had fewer class abilities to give up. Part of the design intent of Pathfinder was to make the core classes more desirable instead of immediately heading for a PrC, as was done in 3.x. They almost went too far the other way and made most PrCs irrelevant.
A transition to BS is meaningless when you could have both though. Especially when you are downgrading to such a smaller audience.
I didn’t even see the link. But I’m also wondering what the purpose of such a subtle link would be. Maybe improve their results in search engines?
Glad you found what you were looking for. Always feel free to start your own thread if you are needing ideas. Many of us have more character ideas than we could ever get around to playing.
Bloodrager into dragon disciple PRC is a little more dragon-like and not a bad combination. Really, sorcerer into dragon disciple isn’t bad, but comes with a near requirement to take all of the prestigious spellcaster feats. The dragon companions are typically underpowered for combat, though the dragon familiars are good little helpers.
“Fun” is hard to judge. MT is not particularly optimal. But if it matches the class fantasy you want, that can make it fun. Personally, I’d probably use a human lore shaman for this kind of class fantasy. The lore shaman can cherry pick from the wizard spell list. And the human shaman can cherry pick from the cleric spell list. It’s pretty much everything you want in one convenient place.
If willing to homebrew a bit, you could declare it to be a phantom instead of a ghost. The phantom is an outsider instead of an undead, but is otherwise very ghost-like
I believe healing is untyped unless it references its type. Though there are few such sources of untyped healing.
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