Oh, hahaha. I kept reading dire ROC. I was a little bit confused from this thread XD Thanks for clearing that up Tarantula.

But still, ant haul would allow for an even easier time with the carry weight I'm pretty sure.

Maybe I missed seeing this already, but ant haul could make this situation even more ridiculous.

Also, in terms of the zombie roc rotting away, it would cost almost nothing for the necromancer to learn restore corpse. Cast that once or twice a day and the thing should be fine. That combined with natural armor should hopefully prevent it from rotting too much.

I think that Anti-paladins always win in terms of the scariest character possible due to aura of cowardice. An anti-paladin is apparently so scary that even creatures without the capability of fear are afraid of them. Oozes? Terrified out of their non-existent minds. Zombies, skeletons, and other non-sentient undead? Outa there. Adamantine golem? Considered its legs freshly oiled. Paladins? Pansies before the terrible, terrible aura of an anti-paladin. It's hard to get scarier than a being who can terrify a being incapable of fear.

Yeah, I really wanted a rapier based character, so I went with Inspired Blade and went with a 16 charisma, even though I've got a 10 in intelligence.

I'm happy to see that someone else noticed the nice panache thing. Charisma and intelligence are listed separately, so it always gives at least +1 to the pool.

I think that the charmed life ability will be very good. Swashbucklers only have one good save (reflex), and are already wanting to get high dexterity and charisma, so their will and fortitude saves are bound to suffer. I think charmed life will help to compensate for that, so that the first dominate person spell thrown the party's way doesn't wreak havoc on everyone. Iron will only goes so far haha.

Ah, alrighty, thanks for the quick responses guys. Darn, I was really hoping I had missed something and they were a completely int and dex based martial.

Hey guys, I was looking at making an inspired blade, and I was pretty stoked to see an intelligence based swashbuckler. But then I noticed that only like two of their abilities become intelligence based, while everything else stays charisma based, such as charmed life and most of the deeds.

Am I missing something? And if so was this deliberate or just a mistake in printing?

The hard thing I find in this whole thing is that most characters, especially those in MAD classes, really need to get their points from somewhere. Take an average human fighter as an example. They will probably want an 18 in strength, so that's 16+2 for being human. There's ten points. They want to be able to take some hits, so they take a 14 in constitution. There's 15 points. Then they also need armor class, since they are the front line, and would like some CMD too, so a fourteen in dexterity. There's 20 points. Then you are left with the three mental stats, one of which is determining their will save, which is vital. So the fighter is left asking: should I take out of intelligence, which affects all of my skill growth, or out of charisma, which affects only social skills. Oh, and with one feat (intimidating prowess) I become very good at one social skill, so I've still got something.

As a fighter the party has certain expectations from him in combat; namely, dealing damage, not dying, and not being mind controlled. Charisma just makes the most sense to drop from a combat perspective (i.e. what a FIGHTer is supposed to do).

I use a fighter as my example, though it applies to others too, but I've rambled long enough haha

I feel like there is also a place for dervish dance in the flavor category of things. Magical training takes a long time, and I doubt that most mages spend their Saturdays at the gym. Even if they are trained to fight, someone who is training in the magical arts will simply not have the time to train to be as physically powerful as a dedicated fighter, so why try?

If a mage were to learn how to fight, I imagine they would be hitting the books, studying various techniques, and learning how to outwit their opponents by through finesses and cunning rather than using brute power. They're just playing to their strengths.

I love the concept of a character who may not be as strong as your paladin or barbarian but makes up for their less than average strength with swiftness and agility, dancing around the battlefield striking with precision and skill. I think that it also makes sense that someone very well trained with a specific weapon would be able to use pinpoint strikes to get bonus damage similar to a paladin or barbarian would (assuming they are not power attacking).

The existence of power attack and the two-handed strength bonus helps to balance out the the other martial classes though. While having high skill can give a dervish dance character a significant boost to damage, they will simply never be able to match the raw damage of a two-handed, power attacking, raging barbarian.

And this makes a lot of sense; the magus is supposed to be a fusing of martial and mage; they get to do some physical damage, but not as much as a dedicated martial, and some magic, but not as a much as a dedicated caster.

Thanks for the ideas guys, I appreciate it.

My thought was to have the drill bit be on the top of the chest vertically, and then apply 2.5 pounds of force away from me on the left side and then 2.5 pounds towards me on the right side, but I see what you're saying about it not being enough force. I would have nothing but gravity giving the drill downwards force, and so it wouldn't bore through the wood but simply sit there.

Hm... I didn't realize that drills were in the APG. Using unseen servant with that is a great idea. I didn't realize how diverse that spell is. Once I'm a higher level that is definitely going to be up all the time.

If I wanted to avoid using a level one spell (since I'm only level four, and those are quite valuable right now), what if I used a heavier drill bit? If drilled like I explained above, but used a heavy bit, like ten pounds, would you guys think it would have enough force to dig a hole through a wooden chest?

So I currently have a 4th level wizard who is going to become an arcane trickster later on. I was thinking of some creative ways to open chests/bypass traps for my ever so cunning wizard to employ. I was trying to think if there is a way that I could make a drill to be able to drill open a hole in chests, and then use a grain of sand with light cast on it so that I could see the contents of the chest without opening it. This would allow me to see what is in the chest, and also would show me where objects were so I could see where it would be safe to saw open the chest. The trouble with a drill would be having a spinning power source that is portable.

So my thought was that I could use prestidigitation to create a drill bit, to show a gnome engineer, have the gnome produce a drill bit for me (since the prestidigitation drill bit is too weak to use as a tool) and then use Mage Hand's 5-pound telekinesis to spin the drill bit from a distance, safely drilling a hole into the chest.

I might also create a tiny mirror on a stick with prestidigitation to get an even better look at the insides of the chest.

What do you guys think? Is this a legitimate use of these skills? Do you think it is an effective way of opening chests?