Owen Quillion's page

Well, I noticed while browsing through the campaign setting for my own concept that apparently there's a city-state in the River Kingdoms called Tymon that has a famous gladiatorial arena. That would put him a bit closer to the actual setting of Kingmaker, too.

One little nitpick is I'm pretty sure Andoran and the River Kingdoms both are pretty ultimately opposed to slavery, but that's a detail that can be handwaved easily enough.

Well, over the playtest period I've had two summoners in my group (DMing for one, playing alongside the other) and both were able to contribute nicely.

The first one, who was 10th level and mostly played pre-nerf (so the following report isn't exactly accurate to what you'd play now, but he still did fine post-nerf), focused on buffing (haste, the mass ability enhancement spells), summoning, and had a couple of blasting type spell wands he used with Use Magic Device to pick off wounded targets. Black tentacles was a favorite too.

His Eidolon, Melisande, was a giantess who specialized in moving the enemy around the field (with the Awesome Blow feat and the Push special ability in the Eidolon description) and dealing one big wollop of skirmishing damage (something like 4d6+27 or so - the dice dropped to 3d6 because of the loss of a feat after the nerf if memory serves), and with Multi-attack wasn't too shabby for a full attacker either. She was a tidbit squishy (albeit this was in a high-powered campaign), but picking up the DR evolution offset that enough. Between her knocking foes around and the summoner himself firing off summons, enemies had a hard time not being herded into the waiting blades of the other party members.

The second one started at I believe 8th level, with the concept of a poisonous, tropical, lizard-like biped with lots of attacks. We only got to see him in action once prior to the nerf, and unfortunately we were in an undead-heavy adventure. With the next adventure, the degrade to only being able to poison once a round was griped at but tolerated. He performed smashingly, doing a decent job of filling the primary full-attack meleer (as our paladin had been temporarily retired to make room to playtest an inquisitor). The added bonus of STR poison was gravy. (The player also just pointed out to me that this eidolon was also on the receiving end of several buffs - primarily defensive in nature - and a simple bull's strength cast by my cleric.)

The summoner herself in this case takes the onus off the arcane caster to throw up buffs, her repertoire consisting of things like barkskin, mage armor, and the attribute enhancement spells and the ever-popular haste. She also provides tactical support with summons too, of course.

So the short of it is that, at least in the 'sweet spot', summoners seem to perform quite adequately. The main weakness we've seen is slightly-weak defenses (again, we play high-powered games) and the fact that the summoners themselves seem to run out of spells rather quickly - though I suppose that's largely intentional given it is bardic casting. (On the other hand, the summon monster spell-like ability is fairly unlikely to run out, so plenty of resources to back up the spellcasting)

I once spelunked through the Bestiary to get an idea of what 'non-core' options there were and got a list for my players of alternate ideas. I'm not sure if this list is complete or not, but I wasn't exactly being picky on a flavor basis so I think it is.

Aasimar
Drow
Tengu
Tiefling

If memory serves, there's also some Genasi-like half-genies in the Qadira companion book that are 0-HD humanoids and thus roughly on par with the normal PC races. There's also a wealth of advice for Tieflings in the Council of Thieves adventure path.

That's all I'm personally aware of but my sources are hardly exhaustive. Hope it helped!

There's pretty much no question that killing 60 innocents is unspeakably evil, and one of those things that will tend to knock someone toeing the dark-gray line flying off into the black.

That's sort of like bringing a bomb to a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around where that would be anything but an absolutely last-ditch effort by a neutral/good to keep a huge disaster from happening. (Not that such a thing wouldn't wear heavily on their soul)

As far as Neutral characters going Evil and not Good, that's because evil is easy. It's easier and more seductive to lie, cheat, and steal than it is to be selfless. Sure, a selfless Neutral character is eventually going to work his way up to good if he has his heart in it, but that's just not as likely. It's a lot easier to fall than it is to be redeemed.

That's what I figured (and said player also agreed). Hopefully this will all be clarified before the final version though, if only to give us some guidance on what to do when 'Something Cool Happens'.

I just wanted to clarify a little about how a 'critical' roll on a bomb would work. Since I can't find anything to the contrary in the section on bombs or on Splash Weapons on pg 202 of the core book, I would assume they have the 'standard' setup of 20 / x2.

The questions that come to mind are;

1) This passage:

The damage of an

alchemist’s bomb increases by 1d6 points at every oddnumbered
alchemist level (this bonus damage is not
multiplied on a critical hit or by using feats such as Vital
Strike).

I would think this means that a successful crit would do 2d6+(2x whatever the Alchemist's intelligence modifier is) + the extra d6s from levels (which aren't multiplied).

2) This passage:

Bombs are considered a weapon and can be

selected using feats such as Point Blank Shot and Weapon
Focus.

A player wants to pick up Improved Critical (Bomb). I assume this would be the same as above, except the threat range would be improved to 19-20.

Also on an unrelated errata-ie note, Point Blank Shot isn't something you select a weapon for, so I don't know if that's simply an error or means bombs function appropriately with PBS, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, and their ilk.

Thanks in advance for any insight into whether I'm interpreting this correctly.

With the caveat of not having played prior to 3rd edition (and very little prior to 3.5), I think it kind of came from the fact, in core, you were a singing/prancing ninny who was most effective at buffing others and otherwise doing any given 'role' somewhat poorly. (How true that is I dunno because I never saw a 3.5 bard).

Outside the pen-and-paper hobby there is also Edward of Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the U.S.) fame whose premier ability was to hide from the enemy. Amongst newer players (like my own group) that might have predispositioned them to disliking the bard.