Mikemad's page

Imagine for a moment the following circumstance:

1) You're a generic, bare-bones fighter with a greatsword.
2) You don't have pounce or vital strike.
3) Your party is not casting any spells or using any abilities to help position you, but they will cast fly on you if necessary.
4) The only thing you ever do in combat is attack.
5) You're in a campaign starting from level 6 (so you always have at least two attacks) and fighting a wide variety of different encounters from melee bruisers to archers to mages etc.
6) Assume you're not losing actions to enemy spells and abilities.

On average, what percentage of your turns do you think will be spent full-attacking?

And if so, how far? Just a thought that popped into my head while looking into something totally unrelated and I wanted to gather a bit of data.

My table is the greatest table of all time. Every combat is against a APL + 6 invisible undead construct dragon vescavor swarm with lightning bolts shooting out of its eyes and takes place underwater in deeper darkness and an antimagic field but also flying! Furthermore, every player will need to have at least 8 skill points per level or you’re a useless murderhobo sack of s$&@ and will fail all of the instant death skill checks of which there are at least 4 per encounter day. After all, there is absolutely no room for any amount of character weaknesses at MY TABLE! There will be roughly 14 encounters per day in exactly 1 hour intervals to ensure all of your buffs wear off. You must be fully prepared for literally all possibilities at ALL TIMES or you are STUPID and don’t deserve to play at MY TABLE!

... Also I hate power gamers. If I see any amount of optimization, that player will be banned immediately.

I’m gonna go put my head in the microwave now.

Sorry, felt the need to vent again.

The year is 2030. Literally everyone is playing arsenal chaplain. Every party is 4 arsenal chaplains. Every problem is solved by throwing more arsenal chaplains at it. Every thread on the forums is arsenal chaplain. Every discussion serves only to praise arsenal chaplain's name with dry, rasping tongues. Praise be to the arsenal chaplain. Praise to the one true class.

...I dunno I just keep seeing arsenal chaplain get mentioned. It accounts for about 15-20% of the classes mentioned on these forums. In nearly every advice thread regarding classes at least one person mentions arsenal chaplain, regardless of the situation. I felt the need to post about it lol. Thank you for your time.

Hi guys,

This item has recently been brought to my attention:

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Cauldron of Overwhelming Allies

Source Pathfinder #67: The Snows of Summer pg. 60

Aura moderate conjuration; CL 8th

Slot none; Price 4,500 gp; Weight 5 lbs.

Description
The artistic scrawls on the dark surface of this small bronze cauldron depict an array of exotic animals, legendary beasts, leering fiends, and hosts of elementals. Once per day, if used as the focus or divine focus for a summon monster or summon nature’s ally spell, the cauldron automatically conjures 1d3 additional creatures of the same kind from the next lower level list. For example, if a user casts summon monster III to summon 1d3 wolves, he could also summon 1d3 additional wolves (or other creatures from the 2nd-level list).

Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Spell Focus (conjuration), summon monster IV or summon nature’s ally IV; Cost 2,250 gp
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I have a couple questions about it.

1) Does this require a hand?

2) Are the 1d3 extra summons affected by things like augmented summons/rod of giant summoning/metamagic.

3) If used with superior summons, can the extra summon be one of those summoned by the cauldron even if they are different from those summoned by the spell?

4) If used to summon animals, will they gain alignment templates based on your alignment or the alignment of the creator of the cauldron?

5) If it is not tied to your alignment in part 4, can a cleric use the cauldron to summon creatures opposed to their alignment?

Thanks

Hey guys,

So I've been doing a bunch of research into summoning lately and have run into several guides/threads on these forums regarding the topic. Especially at high levels, people generally seem to rate summoned creatures with spellcasting abilities far higher than beat sticks. It is usually cited that at high levels, a typical summoned monster can't really keep up with the AC/DR of the opponents. Its gone so far that none of the guides I've seen have even mentioned the fact that summoned animals gain either the celestial or fiendish template depending on your alignment (you get to choose if you're neutral, so you can always pick the more beneficial one), and when people on here mention it, it's normally in terms of the DR gained.

But these things can smite.

Lets have a look at the dire tiger. It's a typical beat stick on the summon creature 6 list with 3 attacks plus pounce rake (meaning you'll get 5 attacks every time you charge). Note that it's attack bonus is about 5 higher than most of the other stuff on the list. It also has 14 hit dice.

Just for fun, let's set up a typical combat encounter. We are level 13 and have access to summon monster 7. Because we're a good summoning build, we have augmented/superior summons as well as a greater rod of giant summoning. There is a bard or evangelist cleric in the party granting everybody +3 attack and damage through bardic performance. Furthermore, this campaign is hard. The typical opponent we fight is CR 17. According to the monster creation table (http://legacy.aonprd.com/bestiary/monsterCreation.html), this means a typical opponent will have an AC of 32 and 270 HP. It's also likely going to have DR 15 or something but that bit isn't particularly important.

Turn one, combat begins, bardic performance goes up and we use summon monster 7 to call in 3 celestial dire tigers at +8 str and con. They all pounce/rake and smite evil at the same time. At this moment, they have an attack bonus of 27, a damage bonus of 29 and they ignore all DR of the smitten opponent.

They deal, on average,

drumroll please,

467.16 damage per round (hits 80% of attacks, 15 attacks total).

WHAT??!

Why is nobody talking about the smite ability?

This thing isn't just good its hilarious. It's better than basically everything on the summon monster 7 list and about half of the stuff on the summon monster 8 list. Yeah, they don't tank as well as most of the outsiders but who cares? A dead monster does no damage and even if they survive, if the DM is attacking your summons, you've basically already won.

I dunno, I've been weirdly frustrated by all the discussion of combat control and utility casting when this cat can vaporize an encounter 6 CR higher than you.

"But Mike, it has to compete with the shadow demon dealing 1d6 damage as a touch attack and casting shadow conjuration"

Pretty much title. When a medium humanoid is hit with an enlarge person spell, they take up a 2x2 square. When the spell ends, how do you decide which of the four squares they shrink into? This mattered in one of our games as it decided whether or not one of the players was in reach of an enemy afterwards.

Hi guys,

A little while ago, user LordKailas made a post regarding this magic item:

Icon of Aspects:
Aura moderate evocation; CL 7th; Slot none; Price 5,500 gp; Weight 1 lb.
DESCRIPTION
When a cleric with an icon of aspects prepares spells, she may replace the granted powers of one of her domains with those of a different domain she doesn’t have but that is associated with her deity. This lasts until the next time she prepares spells. The cleric must meet the level requirements for both abilities. For example, a 6th-level cleric with the Good domain who swaps for the Healing domain can’t use healer’s blessing even though she meets the level requirement, because the holy lance power of the Good domain requires her to be 8th level. The icon affects only granted powers, not domain spells, bonus feats, or other benefits. The icon can affect only one person at a time.

This got me thinking about a possible way to make the transition from low level to mid-high level cleric much smoother.

It all revolves around the growth subdomain of plant domain, which gives toggleable swift action enlarge person from level 1, and the separatist archetype, which lets you have a domain your deity doesn't normally get, but at a penalty. Here are a couple of things to note:

1) Growth domain is extremely good at low levels, arguably the best domain at level 1.
2) It is almost completely unaffected by the penalty from separatist archetype, you just get one less use per day of the first domain power (the second power essentially doesn't matter).
3) You get the second domain power at level 6 rather than 8, which means separatist puts it exactly at 8, thus allowing you to use the icon of aspects effectively to get other domain powers.

Ya know all those domains which are super good starting at level 8ish but suck at low levels (Madness, Heroism, ect)? This gives us a nice way to get into those domains without suffering in the early game. Here's how it goes:

At low levels, with literally any deity, use separatist archetype to take growth domain. Have overpowered 20 ft reach longspear which you can turn on and off on a turn-by-turn basis (avoiding the usual 20 ft reach blindspot issue), as well as barkskin and enlarge person.

At level 8, you gain the second growth domain power (which is relatively bad). Ditch 5k gp on an icon of aspects, and from this point forward use it to swap out growth domain's powers for the desired late-game domain's powers. For your troubles, you also get to have enlarge person and barkskin for the rest of your life. Neet.

As an example, build an Iomedae reach cleric starting with Growth/Tactics and transitioning into Heroism/Tactics at level 8 when heroism comes online.

Hi guys,

I know that things like stat-boosting items let you qualify for feats provided you wear them for at least 24 hours, but does this apply to other items?

Specifically, does the bane baldric let you qualify for extended bane feat if worn for 24 hours?

Hi guys,

Just a couple of questions about the following cleric domain powers:

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Madness domain 1st level:

Vision of Madness (Sp): You can give a creature a vision of madness as a melee touch attack. Choose one of the following: attack rolls, saving throws, or skill checks. The target receives a bonus to the chosen rolls equal to ½ your cleric level (minimum +1) and a penalty to the other two types of rolls equal to ½ your cleric level (minimum –1). This effect fades after 3 rounds. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Wisdom modifier.

This doesn't have any explicit descriptors like mind-affecting, but I suspect it isn't supposed to work on things normally immune to mind-affecting spells (undead, constructs, ect)?

Also, is it possible to use Dweomer's essence to buff the this ability, even though it isn't a spell? (can it use spell components?)

People always talk about this ability like it's incredible at high levels, but it seems like it fails miserably against anything reasonably threatening (immunities, high SR, basically everything you would want to hit with this).
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Demon domain 1st level:

Fury of the Abyss (Su): As a swift action, you can give yourself an enhancement bonus equal to 1/2 your cleric level (minimum +1) on melee attacks, melee damage rolls, and combat maneuver checks. This bonus lasts for 1 round. During this round, you take a –2 penalty to AC. You can use this ability for a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Wisdom modifier.

Am I correct to assume this doesn't stack with weapon enhancements? If it doesn't then does it have any effect on your ability to ignore DR? It would be a bit strange for it to act like a weapon enhancement in terms of not stacking with weapon enhancements but then also not act like a weapon enhancement in that it can't beat DR. Basically, is there any point to taking this ability?
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I'm trying to make a variation of a reach cleric which focuses on madness domain debuffing (using a conductive longspear) rather than the usual summoning/buffing. Not sure if I can make it work out effectively since trying to debuff requires me to invest heavily in wisdom (detracting from strength) and beating SR. I'm also quite concerned about becoming useless any time something immune to mind-affectings shows up since I won't have any investment in summoning and my melee ability will be worse than most reach clerics.

Hi guys,

The cleric has a massive list of spells and access to the whole list at all times. I feel like there should be a whole bunch of spells that pair particularly well. I thought we might try to compile a master list of all the cool combos we can come up with.

Here are a few examples I threw down off the top of my head:

Protective Ward (Shield of Faith/Ironskin/Defending bone): Uses entirely level 1/2 spells, gives a substantial stack of AC buffs and some DR.

Blessing of Vitality (Aid/Bears Endurance/Blessing of Courage and Life): Stacking effective HP buffs. Grants an effective 2d8+4*CL extra HP. Also gives some minor attack and saves buffs.

Blessing of Immortality (Protective Ward/Blessing of Vitality): Self explanatory.

Summon Banhammer (Ancestral Gift/Greater Magic Weapon/Rags To Riches): Creates a +3 (or higher) bane weapon of your choice for 10 mins/level.

Anti-Undead Shell (Death Ward/Undeath Ward): For when you don't like undead.

Anti-Undead Gigabuff Mk. Ultimate (Anti-Undead Shell/Summon Undead Banhammer/Smite Abomination/Disrupting Weapon): For when you REALLY don't like undead.

Bubble of Non-Interaction (Antilife Shell/Undeath Ward/Spell Resistance/Fickle Winds): Living and undead creatures cannot come within 10 ft of you, immune to ranged attacks, resistant to magic. Becomes phenomenally more powerful with CL buffs.

Blue Flare (Flamestrike/Cold Ice Strike): Give em the ol' 1-2.

Vengeance (Shield of Dawn/Blood Rage/Caustic Blood): Anything that hits you takes a billion damage and buffs you (rather impractical to set up due to the durations).

Gimme your sweet combos (preferably with a sweet name) and I'll add them to the list.

Hi guys,

What exactly is the interaction between all three of these things?

Army Across Time:

This spell functions as ally across time as noted above with two exceptions.
First, you can summon one duplicate per caster level before the spell ends.
Second, you can have up to one duplicate in existence at a time for every 3 caster levels you have.

Ally Across Time:

You create one or more 5-foot cubes of temporal possibility where your timeline overlaps with those of your parallel existences. As a free action, you can summon a duplicate of yourself (not including any animal companions, familiars, intelligent items, or other creatures) from an alternate timeline in one of the cubes you can see, which lasts until the end of your turn. This duplicate has your statistics (though its hit points equal your caster level), threatens all squares adjacent to it, and HAS ANY TEAMWORK FEATS YOU HAVE. Although the duplicate APPEARS WITH ALL EQUIPMENT YOU CURRENTLY CARRY, it CANNOT USE any of its equipment and all its equipment disappears when the duplicate does. This duplicate cannot voluntarily move from the space in which it’s summoned. During its brief existence, a duplicate can use the aid another action once to assist you, but it cannot take any other type of action. Once a duplicate disappears, the cube of temporal possibility it occupied dissipates.
You can summon only one duplicate before the spell ends. For every 4 caster levels you have beyond 3rd, you can summon an additional duplicate before the spell ends, though you cannot have more than one duplicate in existence at once.

Allied Spellcaster:

Benefit: Whenever you are adjacent to an ally who also has this feat, you receive a +2 competence bonus on level checks made to overcome spell resistance. If your ally has the same spell prepared (or known with a slot available if they are spontaneous spellcasters), this bonus increases to +4 and you receive a +1 bonus to the caster level for all level-dependent variables, such as duration, range, and effect.

Ring of Tactical Precision:

"anytime the wearer gives or receives a numeric bonus from a teamwork feat or the aid another action, that bonus increases by +1"

The duplicates all have the ring (since the ring doesn't have to be used to function, they should in theory give an additional +1), and you have the ring (you should recieve an additional +1). Do you actually get +3 from each duplicate or am I missing something?

Hi guys.

Just a quick question regarding readied actions and reach. Suppose I have 15 ft reach and the travel cleric domain (teleport as move action without provoking). Suppose I ready an action to use the teleport as an enemy moves within 10 ft of me. Do they still provoke an AoO for approaching me or does the readied action trigger first? Alternatively, if I teleported behind them during their move (heh, nothin personal kid) would they provoke as their move continued? This seems cheesy af, but im curious nonetheless.

Hi guys,

I've been playing around with a variety of cleric builds and I built one that feels exceptional. I was wondering if I'm interpreting the various pieces properly.

It's a 9th level evangelist (Cleric archetype, not PrC) of Asmodeus.

The build revolves around using Banner of the Ancient Kings and Sacred Summons for the alternate summoning options unique to Asmodeus.

If you weren't aware, certain gods give a couple of extra summoning options. In particular, Asmodeus gives the option to summon hellhounds with summon creature 2, and cerberi with summon creature 4. These have significantly better stats than other summons of the same level, and are compatible with sacred summons.

Banner of the Ancient Kings/Flagbearer, as far as I can tell, should work with Sermonic Performances granted by evangelist since it is "similar in all respects to bardic performance used by a bard of the same level". I've seen this debated before, however. If it works, the combination with evangelist would provide +5/+5 to all allies, using only a move action.

Combining these with basic summoning feats, the cleric could summon 1d3+1 (3 avg) cerberi as a standard action with summon monster V, and then immediately buff them and the entire party with +5/+5 on top of the bonuses from augmented summons.

The 3 buffed cerberi could then attack 9-12 times per round (depending on rends) at +18 to hit with massive damage bonuses, potentially dealing hundreds of damage and providing a large meat wall.

Does all this function like I think it does or am I missing something? This seems blatently unfair. You're basically summoning a CR 13 encounter as a standard action. It feels like any other cleric build I could make would pale in comparison. All of my other builds have to be compared to this one as it stands and its oppressive af. I almost wish there's something wrong with it.

Hi guys,

I'm currently playing a campaign with some close friends of mine (no PFS or anything). We're currently level 9 (started at 4) and everyone playing is relatively seasoned at pathfinder. The party looks something like this:

Archer Bard: Opens every combat by activating inspire courage/casting good hope.

Bloodrager: Pretty standard 2h front liner. Extremely highrolled stat line (Several 16+).

Kineticist: Lightning/grapple focused. He's relatively new to the party so im not 100% sure how he works just yet.

Reach Cleric (Me): Cayden Cailean Travel/Ferocity domains. Open every combat by drinking an enlarge person potion (move action accelerated drinker trait (walks around with a tankard of enlarge person potion for flavor reasons)), casting quickened divine favor (3rd level spell with extra traits reducing metamagic level cost by 2, bonuses buffed by fate's favored) and casting SOME other spell.

The party has always had an incredible damage output, bringing down most encounters in 1-3 rounds. Over time, this has caused our DM to to slowly increase the difficulty of the encounters we face (everything is a slaughter otherwise). This caused us to accumulate wealth much faster than a normal campaign (we killed a level 16 wizard we weren't supposed to, dropped 300k+ gp in items). This combined with liberal use of item crafting feats means we are overgeared as well (perpetuating the high dpr issue). Nowadays, we commonly face cr+4ish encounters.

I've been having issues getting value out of my spells in combat. Most things we fight have some combination of very high SR or unbeatable saves that make offensive spellcasting impossible. Summoned creatures, even with bard aoe buffs, are so underleveled compared to our enemies that they cant consistently do anything (often missing opponents on 19's). Enemies tend to just ignore them. Wall of stone gets flown over/teleported over/walked through by ghosts. Everybody already has boots of haste, making blessing of fervor unimpressive. Other AoE buffs largely covered by the bard (I guess I could cast prayer (meh)).

I honestly have no idea what I should be casting anymore. These days most of my spellbook has been going to out-of-combat utility and prebuffing. It feels like the only thing that works consistently is high-accuracy physical damage. Any ideas of what I should be casting in combat?

((((By the way, sorry for all the parentheses))))(()()(()()()()))))))))))))))))))))

Hi guys,

I've been thinking about a lightning domain theologian cleric. The build would take a single level dip into crossblooded sorcerer, use traits to get empower spell for free on lightning bolt, and then use incenses of meditation/bead of karma at opportune times. My wonder is whether the domain power from lightning domain stacks with regular empower spell, allowing the end result lightning bolt to deal upwards of 250 damage to the primary target (absorbing the recoil damage with protection from energy).

The domain power granted by lightning domain reads as follows:

Lightning Rod (Su)
As a swift action when you cast a spell with the electricity descriptor, you can designate one creature within line of sight. The spell’s damage against that creature increases by 50%, as if affected by the Empower Spell feat. This additional damage results from divine power that is not subject to being reduced by electricity resistance, and you take an equal amount of electricity damage immediately after you cast the spell.
The spell can deal this additional damage only once, even if it could affect the target multiple times.
You can use this ability once per day at 8th level and one additional time per day for every 4 cleric levels you have beyond 8th.

What do you think?

So I was playing a battle cleric in a level 4 campaign with a few friends of mine. We were about to raid a hobgoblin camp and we had a bit of time beforehand so I decided to pre-buff myself into a mockery of clericzilla (basically dumped my whole spellbook) just to see how ridiculous it would get. Turn 1 of combat I charge straight into one of the hobgoblins....

...

...

...

...and roll a natural 1, threaten critical on myself, confirm critical on myself, deal 64 damage to myself, die instantly (LOL).

Serves me right I guess.

Hi guys,

So I will be making a combat-focused cleric for an upcoming campaign with some friends of mine (starting at level 4) and I happened to be blessed with the best set of attribute rolls I have ever gotten. Before any bonuses from leveling up or the human racial, my attributes look something like this:

18/17/14/14/12/10

Now, my original plan was to build a standard reach/summoning cleric as detailed in Brewer's guide:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p68o?New-Class-Guide-Reach-Cleric

However, since I will likely have a much higher wisdom stat than a typical reach cleric (18+), I am considering focusing the casting side of my character on debuffing rather than summoning. I would like to try out the madness domain (the domain powers seem absolutely insane) and perhaps get a conductive weapon longspear down the road in order to deliver vision of madness with reach.

As far as I can tell, the best way to go about this mechanically would be to make a cleric of Lamashtu for the madness and ferocity domains (enlarge person as well as a nice damage boost). However, this has the obvious limitation of trying to roleplay a follower of the mother of monsters in a non-evil campaign.

The option I can see for getting the madness domain on this character without having roleplaying issues is to build a cleric of Sivanah. In this case I would take madness and trickery. The issue here is a general lack of domains which aid in melee combat. I would feel like a decent debuff cleric, but also as if I had sacrificed my melee ability entirely (trickery is a useful domain, but not real helpful in the general focus of the build).

Does any of this seem like a good idea at all? Would it be worth trying over a typical summoning setup? If not, is there a better way of properly utilizing a high wisdom score with a reach cleric? It just seems like a waste for me to cast literally no spells which use wisdom.