Mog the Magnificent's page

OK, so I've had this idea floating around ever since I saw bloodrager and thought I'd give it a go. Let me know if I'm missing something obvious here folks?

12 Halfling Bloodrager / Beastrider with Arcane bloodline.

Stats:
13 str + 3 from level ups + 4 when raging + 4 from item = 24 max
16 dex + 4 from item
14 con + 4 when raging
10 int
8 wis
16 cha + 4 from item

"Warslinger" Alternate racial trait makes reloads with all slings free actions instead of move action.
"Ammo Drop" feat at lvl 1 makes reloading a sling not provoke attacks of opportunity and makes it possible with 1 hand, so I can wear a shield. These two should also mean I can attack at my full BAB progression.
Point blank shot at 3 because you gotta have it
Precise Shot at 5
Boon Companion at 7 makes my war wolf mount mo'betta.
Improved Critical at 9 doubles crit range
Charging Hurler at 11 adds +2 damage if I move and end within 30 feet of an enemy

I might do Impact critical instead of charging hurler because then my crits would be bullrushes and knock enemies back.

Bloodline feats: Disruptive + spellbreaker. Makes it harder for enemy casters to cast near me and gives me AoO when they fail to cast defensively.

The war wolf get trip, which also gives me AoO.

Key points:
Bloodrager lets me enchant my ammo, cast abundant ammo, free blur/haste when raging. And of course slings add str to damage so rage boost to str is #win.
Halflings can add +1/4ac per level against larger foes when raging so at 8 no ac penalty to rage and at 12 I actually gain 1ac. With medium armor + dex + heavy shield should give a solid AC.
Beastrider means I get a pet, so I can ride into combat. combined with the 8 foot range on a Slingstaff I'm very maneuverable.
Sling staff threatens as a light flail on adjacent targets so I can make AoO.

At 12 with a +2 holy slingstaff I'm doing

+17/+12/+7 to hit, 1d6+6+2d6 or 1d6+8+2d6 when raging. 80 foot range, no AoO on me for reloading.

A fighter could climb a lot further up the feat tree of course, but I really like the flavor of this little halfling riding in on his war wolf, enchanting his sling, and tearing apart all these bigger guys david and goliath style.

Thoughts?

I'm sure someone must have asked this already but it's not coming up in search. Barbarian's get a rage power called "Brawler" that bumps unarmed damage while raging for a normal sized barb with improved unarmed strike from 1d3 to 1d6. It doesn't account for cases where the character is climbing the Monk/Brawler unarmed damage tree and are already doing d6 or higher since you can't multiclass monk and barbarian and the Brawler class didn't exist yet when the Brawler rage power was written.

Since the Brawler Rage power effect is to bump unarmed damage by one step when raging, it should have the same effect on a Brawler/Barbarian who happens to have started up higher up the chain. Right? So a 2 Brawler/2 Barbarian with the Brawler rage power who starts at 1d6 unarmed would go to 1d8 while raging.

Is this legit? Or does the Brawler Rage power simply have no impact on a pc with Brawler class levels?

An errata on this would be awesome.

I searched but didn't find it, apologies if this has already been answered previously.

I recently (monday) realized that I had not taken any favored class bonuses for my Druid and was entitled to do so. Looking in PCGen (a computer program for building characters, basically the free/open source equivalent of Hero Lab) one of the options listed there from the Advanced Race Guide for a half orc druid is to add 1/2 point of damage to all animal companion natural weapon attacks.

A friend who is much more experienced than I says that only Orcs, not Half Orcs, get this bonus. Except I thought half orcs counted as orcs for all racial traits and bonuses and PCGen at least thinks I do in fact qualify. He also says that none of the Orc stuff from the ARC is legal for PFS. I am not 100% sure that is the correct interpretation though.

Obviously playing an Orc isn't legal and so all the rules for playing one would not apply or be legal for PFS. Can't play a pure Orc, gotcha, check box. Makes sense. But I'm not playing an Orc I'm playing a Half Orc that takes after the Orc side of his heritage and the racial text in ARC says as a half Orc I can take Orc racial bonuses and the Paizo guide to what's legal in PFS says that all Half-Orc stuff from the ARC is legal for society play.

So can I take the damage bonus for my Lion?

Or, to be more precise, why are the animal companion charts so laughably unbalanced and bears in particular so woefully sub-optimal?

Consider - the bear starts out as a small animal while the ape, wolf, and lion start out as medium. And while the wolf and big cat keep their special attacks, bears don't.

And then consider how these other animal companions progress. At lvl 4 the ape goes to large while the bear only goes to medium, giving the ape higher strength, reach, and d6's on its claw attacks while the poor bear is stuck with d4's. Here's the thing: APES DON'T HAVE CLAWS! They have finger nails, the same as humans. Bears, on the other hand actually DO have claws. Big sharp ones that merit at least a d6.

At 7, the wolf and big cat also go large while the bear stays medium, taking the absurdity a step further.

EDIT: removed off-topic rant about all bears being larger than wolves because, as pointed out, sun bears are small. They also don't exist in the monster manual and aren't what most people think of when they decide to take a bear companion.

So what happenned here? Did someone's granny get mauled and eaten by wild bears leading to a lifelong vendetta against urcine's both real and imaginary? Did the stats for Ape and Bear get switched at birth? Or, more likely, is this just one of those obvious oversights that never got fixed?

I'd just fix this stuff with a houserule, except most of my gaming these days is PFS.

This isn't hard to fix. All we need is a developer to post an errata with corrected stats for bears or at least a second pair of stats for larger bear companions. Otherwise I'm stuck with my bear shamans animal companion being consistantly less powerful than the bears I can summon using nature's ally from the monster manual. And that just doesn't make sense.