Northern Spotted Owl's page

In our last session we each gained a card/tile and were told to create a magic item corresponding to it.

I've built a fey-themed item. First, a mixed ability that's perhaps more of a negative than a positive.

You gain the Summon Nature's Ally spells on your spell list, but lose any Summon Monster spells. Likewise, you gain Fey Form but lose every other series of polymorph spells (beast shape, monstrous physique, etc.). These are each from the Druid list, so you at least gain Fey Form on the early schedule.

Then the key ability. Each day when you prepare your spells, toss a coin.

Heads: You gain Fey Spell Lore, with the spells added to your spell list whether it is a druid spell list or not. Then spell list is not fixed, and is a random (1d6) from:
- Fey Spell Lore's listed spells
- Cleric Charm domain's spells
- Cleric Luck domain's spells
- Cleric Trickery domain's spells
- Sorcerer Fey bloodline's spells
- Witch Trickery patron's spells

Tails: You gain Fey Obedience to a random member of the Eldest for that day. You must perform the obedience to gain its benefits.

In terms of pricing, I think the first ability is more of a negative than a positive since Summon Monster is generally more flexible than SNA. And Fey Form is among the weakest polymorph spell series. I'm really not sure how to price that.

Then ioun stones that grant a feat are 8,000-10,000 gp. But this is a varying feat that you can't particularly depend on. Each spell list has at least a few good spells, so that's nice. But only a couple of the Eldest's obediences are very useful. So again I'm a bit unsure how to price this.

With PF2 there's a significant shift toward tactics & teamwork rather than the character-building that characterized PF1. And the significant decrease in attacks of opportunity has radically reshaped mobility.

What are the encounter tactics you've been happy with?

About the best we've mustered runs along the lines of: trip, attack, step away.

Cheers

We're working our way through War for the Crown, and we're officially in rarefied territory. I get access to my first 8th level spells.

My short list is:

Maze
Mind Blank
Greater Prying Eyes
Summon Monster VIII

Others of interest:

Mass Charm Monster
Irresistible Dance
Resurrection
Storm Bolts (witches have so few ways to actually do damage...)

And then there are the less useful, but still compelling:

Create Demiplane
Curse of Night
Curse Terrain, Supreme
Death Clutch
Fey Gate (I mean, why not?)
Quintessence Mastery
Symbol of Insanity

So, who among us has made these choices? What were you happy with?

Cheers

I read through the Oracle mysteries, and most of them seem a bit awful. As in, mostly wouldn't want to use your focus spell at all. So I must be missing something.

Cosmos & Life looks like the only exceptions.

For the other mysteries, do you just avoid your focus spells entirely? Take the mystery benefit and pretend you don't even have focus spells?

Howdy. Our old party, plus a couple new-ish folk have just started Strength of Thousands. We are:

Investigator
Swashbuckler
Thaumaturge <-- me
Ranger (archery, not melee)
Druid
Oracle

I have a weapon as my first implement, leaning toward tome for 2nd. I'll take wizard for my free archetype. From there I have a couple questions:

1. Should I invest in the scroll thaumaturgy/esoterica feats? I'm not sure whether that's less important since I'll have my wizard dedication.

2. Should I add another dedication, or lean into the thaumaturge class feats?
2a. Sentinel: heavy armor & mighty bulwark
2b. Marshal: dread stance, etc. Do I really want more choices for my actions?

Obviously there's interaction between those two questions. If I don't add another dedication, then I have more room for class feats, such as the scroll chain.

Thanks so much.

I'm leaning toward a rogue for our upcoming Strength of Thousands AP. It'll be our group's first foray into 2e.

Notably, Strength of Thousands grants a free archetype of druid or wizard along with extra feats at each even level that can only be used on that archetype.

The obvious choice is eldritch trickster/witch/wizard. You have the occult & arcane spell lists and get a ton of spells, and they're both int-based. (The eldritch trickster/cleric/druid has too few attack spells, weakening spell sneak attack -- right?) I see two problems there: 1. spell attack DC will fall behind, so you can't count on spells & sneak attack over the long haul (do I have that math right?); and 2. the eldritch trickster only grants a single feat, along with early access to magical trickster. And extra feat is nice, but is it better than what the other rackets give you? I lean toward no.

So that leaves us with:

thief/wizard -- I could multiclass into witch for the 2 spells lists, as above, and still have the thief's dex-to-damage & thievery.

ruffian/wizard -- Same as above but, you know, with a ruffian. I'll have to sort out whether intimidate or trip (or both) are the way to go.

ruffian/druid -- I want this to work, but I don't see any good intimidation synergy with a druid. Wild shape looks roughly comparable to the ruffian's melee prowess, rather than a clear benefit. Do I lean into the animal companion option, maybe the leaf order for healing?

mastermind/wizard (yay int!) -- We already have a ranger/druid in our group, so I'm pretty hesitant to go this way since it looks like a build that really wants to be ranged.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
Owl

Say you have a monk with "stand still" or a thaumaturge with a weapon implement and its "implement interruption". Then you multi-class into fighter and take the "attack of opportunity" feat.

Now you're in combat and an opponent moves within your range, but only enough to trigger a single AoO. Can your character make 2 attacks on them, e.g. one "stand still" strike and another "attack of opportunity" strike? A RAW reading would seem to indicate so.

More along the lines of 1e, if an opponent moves through 2 squares within your reach, can you make an AoO on them as they leave each square? And lastly, if two separate opponents trigger an AoO, can you attack them each once?

Here's the scenario: a wizard (or whoever) casts Suggestion on an NPC. If the NPC successfully saves vs that spell then they realize that the wizard just tried to enchant (with spellcraft they can perhaps tell which spell) them.

Now you likely have an at least moderately antagonistic NPC.

I think that's all pretty broadly agreed upon. So, given that, how do you even use compulsion spells like Suggestion, or Sow Thoughts, or what have you?

I mean sure, if you're invisible and have a rod of silent spell then you're set. (Or some other combination of silent & still). But apart from those precautions, how does this work in your campaign?

Side note: This is motivated by the fact that the feat Spell Hex generally isn't very good. This is because (particularly past lower levels) it's not worth investing a feat to be able to cast a specific 1st level spell 3/day as a spell-like ability, even if it's with your hex DC.

Except perhaps for Sow Thoughts. Spell Hex (Sow Thoughts) could be rather nice, and Split Hex of course applies to it.

A witch's familiar can deliver touch spell on behalf of the witch. This is generally a bad idea for any offensive spell, since you really don't want a dead familiar.

Say the witch has an improved familiar that can use wands. Is there any reason the familiar couldn't use a wand of spectral hand to deliver those from a safer distance?

witch --> familiar --> spectral hand --> bad guy

You can prefix your Google search with "site:url/path". This means that web content that's organized in a path-like structure is really easy to search.

Want to find all of the spells that mention "undead"?

site:www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells undead

What about all of the weapons that mention "critical hit"?

site:www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons "critical hit"

Analogously you can search the Archives of Nethys for feats that mention stealth via:

site:www.aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx stealth

The question this morning about a 9th level casters prompted me to start this comparison of the 9th level casting classes. Maybe eventually I'll add archetypes.

Comparing Casters

I don't want to get into a huge argument over one class vs another, but rather give a sense of where each of their strengths (and weaknesses) are. In each category I'd like to have one (or more) classes rated a 10 -- hence these comparisons are only among 9th level casters.

For now I'm only looking at vanilla instances of these classes, i.e. without archetypes and without optimizing for a particular feature. In particular, sorcerers range from awful to highly competent at combat.

And let's be clear. This summary contains somewhat ridiculous comparisons. Which are better, Bloodlines (7!) or Mysteries/Curses (only 6!). My vague rule of thumb here is to ask: If I could trade (e.g.) witch hexes for arcanist exploits, which would I rather have? Then I made a wild guess at ratings from there.

All of these classes can be great and wildly enjoyable. Except maybe Shamans. It should be clear I don't know much at all about them. But I imagine they're a fine class too.

I'm helping play a 10th level NPC brawler who is with our party for an unknown period. The guides that I've found (wombo combo) are great for focused feats, such as the blind fighting series. But what I need are the dumb ol' basics.

1. What feats to you consider part of the indispensable core that he should actually know outside of martial fitness? You may ask, "how do I want to play him"? And I guess I just don't know. I'd like options that minimize my need to know every martial feat. What are 1 or 2 solid, dependable play styles for a brawler, and what feats should he really learn to pull those off?

2. And then what are a few of the feat combos you found yourself going back to fairly often with martial fitness? Was it the case that 2 or 3 combos handled 70-80% of the encounters, and the other 20-30% of you time you chose more specialized feat series?

Key detail: I play casters, so talk to me like I'm stupid.

I posted this a week ago, but botched the link. Let's try again.

Owl's Guide to Witches

There are very good witch guides already (which I link to), and I only made this one to broaden their coverage. My aim here is to cover the material online at:

d20pfsrd

That is, I'm covering more hexes, patrons & spells. To keep the length manageable I limit much of this to "only the good stuff". E.g., the motivation to take a given patron lies in the good-to-excellent spells it offers, so let's just skip the chaff.

If you think I've overlooked something of note, maybe a spell that's not an everyday choice but that has particularly nice uses, please let me know.

Cheers,
Owl

This guide builds on existing ones, which I've linked to in the document itself. These guides are excellent, and the only motivation for another is simply to broaden their coverage.

To keep its length within some reasonable range I've skipped some details. E.g. when listing patron spells I only list those that make the patron in questions worth taking. Please call out anything I've skipped over that you think is worth adding.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tYE8wheVXGAitQzgLW15X8RoPI8-d27o_GTgUXS VHZ0/edit?usp=sharing

Cheers,
Owl