NoTongue's page

I think the common answer is that it's going to be no, it's in no way OP in terms of damage or healing.

As Cabbage is sort of getting at and what may have happened is that you may have seen a kineticist player use abilities in ways they cannot, spiking the damage they do.

Here's a simple list.

Utility powers - Nothing lowers the cost of burn for these.

Metakinesis and composite blasts - Gather power can lower the cost for these.

Infusions - Gather power and infusion specialisations can lower the cost of these.

Kinetic Invocation was so horrible, why spend a feat so you can choose to get a spell as a wild talent when it should have been a wild talent to begin with. Also not all wild talents function like specific spells or completely as the spell they were based on.

It doesn't help that none of the kineticist archetype were any good or all that interesting.

I'm with you on that one. A feat slot and a talent slot all for the ability to gain extremely limited access to a very limited selection of spells.

I don't think they ever really took into account how high a cost unavoidable burn is. I mean if you told a player they could get access to one of these spells once a day for 2 feats they wouldn't touch it, adding permanent health loss for the day each time you use it is a trade down.

If you ever see Kineticists in practice it's burn for defense and elemental overflow cap and that's it. I've used burn twice beyond that and regretted it one of those times when I though the day was all but over.

I get the impression this is based on a discussion you had with one guy because this is in no way true, haste is one of the most heavily recommended spells in the game if not considered thee best.

Enlarge person, bless, resist energy, fly, telekinetic charge, heroism and so on.

You are not going to get a "GOOD" guide based entirely around buffing anymore than you are going to get a "GOOD" guide based entirely around save or die spells because there is no reason for caster to limit themselves.

“The suggestion must be worded in such a manner as to make the activity sound reasonable. Asking the creature to do some obviously harmful act automatically negates the effect of the spell.”

I would submit that getting a guard to attack his king would be one that would be at least somewhat difficult to make sound ‘reasonable’ at least unless the guard harbored some resentment toward him to begin with...

That's your personnel interpretation. Neither the PC's or even the DM will have the life story of random guard number 25 or ratfolk rogue number 3.

Can threats be added in? "Kill the king or as a wizard I will make it my life's mission to end your family".

Is a magical suggestion that the King is an imposter reasonable?

These could sound be considered a reasonable request to some.

The price for such an item would be incredibly high considering how powerful the effect is and based on similar items.

Gallant Armors 54'000 gp there is way of the mark based on existing magical items.

A ring of Freedom of movement is a permanent 4th level spell on a ring, it costs 40'000. Now the major difference is that spell lasts 10 minutes a level and is a lot more situational but it is still considered a very good ring.

Improved invisibility only lasts 1 round a level and it is considered a very good spell because invisibility that doesn't turn off is a very powerful effect.

It would be incredibly expensive, I'll just put it this way, if your Rogue is on the wrong side of level 10 it shouldn't be on the table unless your playing a high powered game.

At some point in the future I will be playing a character that will require a labor force or squad of workers to carry out tasks and I would prefer not to depend on animate dead as the default giving it's heavy RP requirements.

There was a thread before but that got heavily bogged down in the cost benefit of undead vs paid labor. But it still had some good ideas.

The idea is to find what classes, feats or items can give you a reliable squad of workers. I will list what I think are usable so far.

ANIMATE DEAD

Pro's: Very cheap / it's easily accessable for many classes / you can have undead that will rarely be permanently put down / rules that allow them to be customizable / all that's really required from the player is that they know one spell / they are combat effective when required.

Con's: EVIL, could conflict with classes and backgrounds of other players, almost no one tolerates there existence. No intelligence.

POPPETS

Pro's: relatively cheap / customizable

Con's: easily destroyed / no intelligence / requires a feat to make.

BROODMASTER SUMMONER

Pro's: no cost / intelligent and skilled / easy to replace / customizable

Con's: a very heavy cost in class features that requires you compromise your classes combat effectiveness especially at higher levels / limited in range, required to be near the player.

OTHER CONSTRUCTS

Pro's: option of having intelligent constructs / customizable

Con's: very high monetary cost / multiple feats required.

Looking for any other ideas.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mydriatic-spontaneity

I've known about the spell for some time and I think it's really good, at this point if I where to play a Psychic it would be for the fact that they get this spell a level earlier than other classes.

There is even a mass version for Psychics at level 6.

It's not a mind affect so it doesn't need to worry about immunity to mind effects.

It's a will save so it can affect undead and even constructs who are not actually immune to being nauseated.

It seems like a great spell for shutting down a target and then large groups at later levels.

A Bard with the Archetypes Duettist and Soundstriker can do some serious damage in later levels. The duettist Bards familiar can use the same songs so when you gain the ability to use the 4d6+charisma song from soundstriker you can churn out some competitive damage in the later levels. They also keep inspire courage.

You say Jack of All Trades but you will need to decide some form of specialization, be it ranged, melee or spells. Feats are a finite resource.

A lot of bad advice in my opinion.

Sounds like there is nothing wrong with the PC and people are doing the standard thing of suggesting a player be punished and weaknesses be exploited.

Unless there is more to this he seems like a standard front line fighter type that took down a lesser melee foe higher CR or not.

If a challenge comes up that targets will saves or touch AC then he could suffer for it, but that's part of the game. Fights being tailored to exploit weaknesses is not.

Would anyone ever seriously play another sort of kineticist?

Consistent control over what their character can do and the ability to mix elements.

Although I do think this archetype is a rare example of modern pathfinder archetype that is actually really interesting. The best thing about it is can give you access to highly situational powers that you normally would never pick for fear of being stuck with powers that are useless 90% of the time.

NoTongue wrote:

Seems to me that you aren't so much building a decent shifter as you are just taking a class and adding as many natural attacks as possible from as many sources as you can get your hands on.

In terms of DPR? Yes. That's exactly correct. Shifter lacks options, to compare to optimized characters of other Classes you need to play to the few strength it possesses...which are nevertheless pretty effective strengths to have.

NoTongue wrote:

This isn't so much a "the strength of a shifter" but the strength of stacking natural attacks, something you can do with any martial class, the sad thing is that the tiny damage increase shifters get is blown out of the water by practically every other damage increasing ability from other PC martial classes.

Well, almost no other Class can get 6 natural attacks (4 Primary) with basically no effort beyond a single item with Pounce and on a full BAB chassis and for 12+ hours a day. That's a very rare combination, and actually quite a powerful one, math wise. Powerful enough to make up for lacking any other meaningful DPR enhancer in most cases.

There are several builds that do something similar (the Beastkin Barbarian Archetype can do this pretty readily, for example) and may well be better, but they tend to be obscure and tricky to work out.

Besides which, my point was never that Shifter was an optimal choice, or even necessarily a good one, just that it was a perfectly adequate combatant as compared to other martial characters. It's so lamentably lacking in options that I'd almost infinitely rather see it gain some serious options in what you can do than I would a combat boost it doesn't really need.

I'm fairly certain you have a high degree of system mastery. You go through the forms and figure out which one offers the most natural attacks and then you seek out a magic item to captilize in the natural attack ability. At this stage of the Pathfinder cycle most people are system savvy enough to look things up in the same way you where probably aware of the helm.

The Full BAB chasis is close to meaningless and it's enhancement bonus is a bad joke.

Skald, Hunter, Ranger, Barbarian, Oracle, Summoner Eidolon, Druid, Alchemist, Bloodrager, Shaman.

These are all classes that have abilities that lend themselves to natural attack builds. The Warpriest, Inquisitor and the Slayer may have something I'm not aware of.

At level 11 a moonlight Oracle can have beast shape 3 for 11 hours a day, beast shape 4 at level 13. As a swift action they have an ability that lets them get an extra 2 natural attacks, claw, bite or gore so they can seek out more optimal forms than the shifter, they can also get an animal companion, charisma to ac and reflex saves instead of dex. This does not even include the spellcasting.

How many of these do you think beat the shifter at it's own game?

Kaouse wrote:

Animal Mask is an activated item, so it likely won't work when Polymorphed unless otherwise stated.

That's...not actually how that works by my reading. You'd need to put it on after you'd shifted shape, but that's not exactly hard. I admit it's a matter for interpretation, though.

Either way, a Helm of the Mammoth Lord definitely works, and is only somewhat more pricey.

Seems to me that you aren't so much building a decent shifter as you are just taking a class and adding as many natural attacks as possible from as many sources as you can get your hands on.

This isn't so much a "the strength of a shifter" but the strength of stacking natural attacks, something you can do with any martial class, the sad thing is that the tiny damage increase shifters get is blown out of the water by practically every other damage increasing ability from other PC martial classes.

Just for the sake of the ancient underlying math, full BAB carries a price that must be paid. And Shifter paid it like this.

It is also interwoven in just how unintuitive and clumsy polymorph rules are, or how natural attacks can't escape the fact that they are almost purely npc rules.

Shifter feels bad, because it was built on a foundation that was already compromised.

I guess when most people did the maths they thought that if you removed 9th level spellcasting and an animal companion to get BAB you wouldn't have to further weaken the shape shifting aspect.

You're a bbeg near the end of your life. You use greater mind swap on a young person. Not all spells are meant for players.

Really dislike this argument.

When a big bad uses magic to move a mountain or summon an army of demons they don't need it in rules. In that instance a BBEG can just do it because the story allows them to do it.

Volkard Abendroth wrote:

Doomed Hero wrote:

By the time enemies gain access to 8th and 9th level spells, the only way a party of martials is going to progress is by GM fiat.

I'll remember that next time I have a high level fighter with scrolls of Antimagic Field + Step Up and Strike.

If you have ever been in a game where a high level martial was an effective threat against an equally high level caster, your GM was going easy on you.

No intelligent high level caster is going to be anywhere close to a fighter. They're going to be flying, improved invisible, casting spells that don't break invisibility, riding around on some kind of construct that will do their moving for them, their familiar is going to be firing off crowd control scrolls and wands just to gum up the works, and as soon as that fighter gets within antimagic field distance, they're going to learn that the pointy hat our caster is wearing is actually a tepee with Shrink Item cast on it. The Shrink will be dispelled by the Field, dropping the tepee over the caster's body and blocking the Field's emanation, and Contingency Greater Teleport is going to go off taking the caster to safety before the fighter has finished his step up.

Then, the caster is going to start Scrying, casting Legend Lore, calling up things like Belier devils to do their scouting for them, and making extra special magic items of kill that f$@@ing fighter. If they're feeling particularly nasty, they'll fire up their Snowcone Wish Machine and start making very specific, spiteful wishes, every day until they get bored.

And they'll do all this from the safety of their very own secret demiplane that screws over everyone else who manages to figure out how to get there.

This is such an awful, awful argument for why martial characters are bad and it seems to be something many people here actually believe.

If your argument is that class is bad because they could go up against a character that has infinite preparation time, resources and will be allowed to actively use all of this with no limit to beat the party you've failed at your understanding of this game

All the characters you go up against will have or should have set resources so that it is something the party overcomes.

As a DM I could arbitrarily give potions, scrolls, templates, minions, spell resistance, energy resistance, immunities to the abilities of a martial bad guy based on what the PC caster specializes in.

Every class is bad against a bad DM

A party of martials is actually very strong against even with some of the harder adventures paths. They put threats down faster.

I think it works fine.

There is no opposition skill to diplomacy because it's something that affects NPC's only.

It's simple enough to use, you set DC's for diplomacy. If the Bard walks into town with astronomical diplomacy he can get free board with a low diplomacy check and using perform, he can convince people he's an honest person and that they can trust him with rumors and gossip, there is no DC to get them to declare him god emperor.

If the Bard stays in the town for week he can perhaps convince people that someone in town is a spy for an enemy nation.

If he stays there for a few months he can become the local cult leader with some towns folk willing to do whatever he says.

This is of course generic town with generic NPC peasants, the townsfolk could be devote to a particular way of life and can't be persuaded at all.

The DM sets the bar on DC's and what seems reasonable as long as the PC makes it a reasonable suggestion.

I only speak for myself but if you are going to do an entire racial class it should probably be powerful races. Giants, vampires, fey, etc

Ask your DM for a vorpal weapon it if it's reasonable for the power of the campaign, only sensible way.

There is no way for a low level character to acquire a +6 weapon for a low level character in any reasonable manner.

Yes, class levels have no effect when it comes to re-animating a corpse.

What the below poster say's is wrong, here is text from an animated skeleton.

"A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD."

If they have hit dice from classes, then those get added.

Does Animate Dead actually beat out workers? I'm not so sure.

In goods and services the cost of an untrained hireling comes out to 1 sp per day. Undead cost 25 gp per hit dice, meaning an undead servant will cost you a minimum of 25 gp to create. That's 250 days worth of labor from an untrained laborer, and that's if we ignore the cost of the spellcasting services and any continued upkeep involved in controlling and housing the undead. All things considered, free laborers are looking pretty competitive with undead here if not superior.

Slaves are ludicrously overpriced in Pathfinder; there is pretty much no reason you'd ever go with slaves over free workers unless the cost of labor was significantly higher than what's listed in the CRB.

It's a matter of practicality. Undead, constructs or something similar will be on hand when you need them, across a mountain, through a jungle,travelling to other countries.

Hirelings are people who need shelter, food, water and will at some point want to go home, a DM may say they don't want to go, too dangerous and then there's limited areas to hire them.

Undead will probably win out when it comes to easy access to an army of compliant workers but is there any other alternatives through spells or class features?

Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:

Occultists can have full BAB on top of six level casting, super charged versions of spells as Spell like abilities, they get free enhancement bonuses to a physical stat, which can go higher than belts, they can get free resistance bonuses as well, meaning a lot of WBL is freed up, you get standard action Bane... they can make really amazing martials. And I'd argue the Silksworn archetype makes them the strongest 3/4 6th casting class of the set.

Trapping of the warrior panoply and silksworn archetype are pretty good

Trappings of the warrior isn't just good, it's amazing, frankly too good. Full BAB on a 6th level caster broke the mold.

Silksworn is good and because they don't allow good options anymore it was banned.

I find vanilla Occultist slightly underpowered, Occult in general, it feels like there is a power seep in new content.

Some of the staples of today would be banned in a heart beat in paizos new material.

Also, its balanced by the fact that the caster has no idea how long they have before time starts again.

Don't make things up, you will confuse people.

Infusions that applies dazzle and lower elemental resistance by 5.

Stuff like that makes me jaded for the future of the kineticist class ever since the abomination that was focused blast. I wouldn't blink if the next book had a burn cost infusion to lower the targets diplomacy checks.

The Dread Necromancer from 3.5 is a perfect class to just rip off.

3.5 had 2 classes the Beguiler (enchantment/illusion focus) and the Dread Necromancer (necromancy)

Both where 9th level spont casters, instead of picking spells like a sorcerer they got access to a large number of spells that fit the dark theme, animate dead, ghoul touch, black tentacles, etc and a few utility spells like dispel magic but would never have access to teleport or normal summon monster and every 4 levels it could add a necromancer spell to it's spells known.

One of the themes of the class is that over the 20 levels you where slowly turning into a Lich. You would gain DR, a fear aura and increasing resistances related to what an undead and Lich had.

It's most popular ability was at level 8 all undead you created got a +4 enhancement to strength and dexterity, 2 extra hit points per hit die and you got to add your charisma modifer per level to the amount of undead you could control.

Actually thought about this for a bit playing an Arcanist.

Black Tentacles because every plus 1 increases the grapple, earlier trip and grapple spells can benefit.

Telekinesis

Create Undead is a very good option as it puts you ahead of the curve on what undead you can make for your level, make sure to have some undead control spells, use command undead and an undead who you created and likes you will certainly kill for you.

Phantom Steed or better yet for the party Phantom Chariot.

Battering blast.

Others of course but I can't remember them at the moment.

The +1 also helps against spell resistance

At higher levels there's an Ioun stone that gives a universal +1 caster level.

Unless you specifically know you are going up against these spells you can't prepare for all of them, the only one you should really be worried about is power word kill and there should be no adventure that put's you up against someone with PROPER 9th level casting in the first 12 or so levels.

You may have one tricky fight where a specific monster has a one off use of power word blind at level 7 but it's not something you will ever truly need to worry about.

In his adventuring career the wizard should be far more worried about the blindness/deafness spell, it's only 2nd level.

Saw this class just moment ago and as it was good (not overpowered) I knew it would be banned in society.

Terrible tendency to ban anything remotely good from new books meaning players will just keep playing what's old. They never ban options that are steamy piles of sh**.

Best idea is to throw more enemies at them. Stronger is never a good idea unless you intend to pile up the bodies.

Stronger foes over more foes will put them at an advantage for most fights but you will come to that fight where the amped bad guy drops an area effect against his weaker opponents.

Oh look that Blasphemy has just crippled the party, the breath weapon has just crippled the party, the high DC confusion has just landed and they are beating themselves to death. The amped big bad is making a full attack against the Magus, that extra power to compensate for 9-10 characters is now being channeled on to his sorry ass.

Your build requires that you start your turn next to an opponent. If you are not next to them then you cannot both feint and attack.

You also misread it, the bonus is +4 not +10. The 10 only mentions that you still take the minus 10 penalty for something.

How are you not aware of the idea of allocating resources. If I where to make any caster melee focused, Cleric, Druid, Bard I will be inferior at spellcasting vs someone who built towards that. You are allocating stats, magic items and feats towards that. You build will therefore be considerably weaker than a Mesmerist who was caster focused. There Stare will also be better for other party members and they will be using that trick for them instead of themselves. Even the idea of vampiric touch will be likely be better.

Your build has also lost the ability to potentially affect mind affect immune creatures. The main draw for Mesmerists over enchanter focused sorcerers.

It should have been obvious how it weakened your ability as a spellcaster, we are talking about builds after all. I didn't decide you can't have feats for both, I'm just pointing out the fact that making one better often weakens the other.

Your using those tricks for yourself in your melee build. A caster Mesmerist with more tricks due to a greater focus on charisma will be using them for his allies.

Mesmerists damage is ONE attacks. Bards bonus is every attack including allies, is not precision so can both be multiplied by crits and is not negated by crit immune creatures.

That's the Dervish Feat line which is 3 feats not 5. It's outright superior to the Mesmerist ability in that you can use it at 5. Not something I would recommend.

I was referring more to the Dervish Bard ability to make a full attack while moving.

If we are going for damage builds a sound striker / familiar bard can do 16d6 +12 somic damage as a ranged touch attack with his familiar and the post errata weird words at 8th level.

At 12 level that's 24d6 and 13 and a rod of quicken 36d6 using Shadowbard.

The druid spell list is actually one of the most versatile spell lists out there. While it is not the best of any particular field it can do just about anything.

They've got good summons, crowd control, healing and blasting.

But they are bad at teleportation, terrible at buffing non-natural attacks, skill boosts, the better save or suck/lose spells and a lot of utility in general.

Wizard >> Cleric >> Druid. It has the best class features to make up for this.

This won't be Pathfinder society legal but a 3 level dip into Antipaladin Tyrant followed, cornugon smash, intimidate skill unlock feat and prowess from Scaled Fists bonus feats wound be very nasty.

The synergy beyond that of course being Charisma to AC and Saves.

This is a situation I would really recommend roleplaying and combining mechanical bonuses.

It helps your case if you describe how these things would help against a real person, not just a game mechanic. You use some expensive pleasing perfume (which gives +2 circumstance as masterwork), finding out what these men like, what they like to talk about so your DM may be more favourable with the final spells

Potion of honeyed tongue lets you roll twice and probably some other cheap Bard spell to slightly boost diplomacy.

Most important item is probably just straight up gold. Giving them donations, gifts or brides works wonders on diplomacy rolls.

Half Elf Goliath Druid
Str-15+2
Dex-14
Con-14
Int-10
Wis-15
Chr-7

Racial Feat: EWP Bastard Sword

Rage Subdomain

Traits: Giant Blooded (lowers penalthy of oversized weapons by 1)
Fates Favored

Feats
1st-???
3rd-Power Attack
5th-???
7th-???
9th-Vital Strike
11th-Furious Finish

Wield an oversized bastard sword 2d8, at large size with enlarge person or wild shape giant humanoid it will become 3d8. With impact 4d8 and with vital strike at 9 8d8.

Wondering if I would be better off just keeping the impacted bastard sword and just going the normal attack route.

Haven't played a melee character in some time so not sure what to fill in the blanks with and am a bit tired of having improved initiative.

I'm actually more worried about your treatment of another player over something as normal as high perception which is not meta gaming, your thinking of mid-maxing. High perception is not something I would ever consider a game breaker.

You should always work with other players for the most part. In this sense I would always put roleplaying as second to making sure others are included and enjoying themselves.

Surprised no one has said Aasimar yet.

With there various different heritages and NO PENALTY to any stat they can be ideal for various class builds, especially those that are mad.

The scion of humanity alternate trait allows them to pick up human favored class bonuses.

The crusading magic alternative trait gives them a +2 bonus to beat spell resistance which makes them excellent spellcasters.

I would look into monster tactician for Inquisitor. It gives you the summoners ability of summon monster 3+wisdom modifier, they also gain some of your team work feats and you even get to add monsters from the expanded list.

I would also take the Urban Infiltrator archetype, this drops the knowledge boost for some social skill boosts which are more fun and gives you the awesome roleplaying ability of alter self at will at level 11.

Pick up an inquisition that also substitutes wisdom for charisma if you want.

Play an Oni Tiefling, they get perfect stats, bonuses to disguise and intimidate and you can take the pass for human trait to gain access to that fantastic human favorite class bonus.