Pulpo_Rabido's page

Well, are you sure you need to cast spells at all?

If you want to do a super combat wild-shape dude you don't need all the levels of druid. I mean, beast shape III is as good as beast shape ever gets for druids, and you can get that at 8th level.

With Shaping focus at lvl 5 the only reason you have for going back to druid is if you want to wild shape into elementals and plants. But I don't think you need to. Don't forget, wild shape lasts for hours per level. So at 4 lvls and four levels of anything else you're already up to 24 hours of wild shape. Since you'll likely be sleeping for 8 hours of the day you could even spend half your waking hours as a celestial version of your chosen form. For the rest of the party you might as well exist as Dire Tiger. Now if you really want lvl 3 spells you could stick in Druid until lvl 6 as a lion shaman and gain use of beast shape 3 without needing your shaping focus feat. This would still give you 12 hours a day of what I assume would be dire tiger form (pounce and rake). The only reason I would suggest taking six levels of druid is so that you can take wild speech, allowing you to talk with the rest of the party in wild shape form. Which I imagine the party will appreciate.

I would strongly consider level dipping monk for the wis to AC and all the free feats. If you know of an item that gives wis to AC you could probably skip the monk. So if you were starting at 8 or later I would say to take your level's like this for the best feats.

Monk 1/Lorewarden 1/Lion Shaman 6/Lore Warden 5/Whatever

1- Improved Grapple, Improved Unarmed Strike, Stunning Fist
2- Power Attack
3- Dragon Style
5- Weapon Focus (claw) [your totem transformation gives you access to natural attacks]
7- Natural Spell
9- Feral Combat Training, Dragon Ferocity, Combat Expertise
10-Greater Grapple
11-Wild Speech
12-Weapon Specialization (claw)

At that point anything's a good option. Your CMB is ridiculous. You're damage is . . . good. If you're sticking with core classes dwarf is probably your best bet?

15 point buy lvl 12
Str 16 Int 10
Dex 12 Wis 16
Con 16 Cha 8

Wild Shape on a Dire Tiger on a 15 point buy (no magic items). Lvl 12
Cool stuff you'll have as a dire tiger- Scent, Speed 40, pounce, rake, and a grab on all your attacks.

2 Claws +16 (2d4+10 plus grab) Bite +15 (2d6+6/crit 19-20 plus grab)
or power attack at -3 to hit +6 to damage. Sadly you can't make rake attacks the turn you grapple. Keep in mind greater grapple lets you make a grapple check twice in a turn. Meaning four claw attacks on any target you have grappled. Also, whenever you crit with a claw your opponent is shaken for 1d4+str mod rounds, no save.

And your CMB to grapple is +26.

I do like the idea behind elemental spell- but what non fire spells do I have that I could use change the element to fire? Guess I'm not too familiar with the druid spell list.

Okay, just wondering what other people's thoughts on this were, I'm playing in a fairly goofy campaign and to my knowledge there's only one thing house rules-y about this build, but that's just using a 3.5 wondrous item.

So my goal here is to play as a tiny monkey (wild shape lvl 6) that rides his raven familiar while using the fire domain to sling fireballs like it's nobody's business.

20 point buy, +2 wis from race, +1 wis at lvl 4, +2 wis from headband
Human
Druid 6/Sorc 1 Saves; Fort +6; Ref +4; Will +11

Str 7 Int 13
Dex 14 Wis 22
Con 13 Cha 11

Wild Shape 2/Day :Tiny Animal (monkey, lowlight vision and 30ft climb spd)
Crossblooded: Draconic (fire)/Arcane

Feats: Spell Focus (Evocation), Greater Spell Focus (Evocation), Heighten Spell, Preferred Spell (Fireball), Natural Spell, (hopefully empowered Spell at lvl 9)

Taking a trait that allows your caster level to be 2 higher so I might pick up one level of something else at some point but probably stick back to druid for level 8+.

So I'm fairly sure the save for fireball right now is DC 23, which seems good. And I'm not sure what kind of penalty's apply to riding a raven.

So, for people that play spellcasters more often then me (I don't play them that often) does this seem like a decent build?

I've said it before I'll say it again, buy multiple guns- enchant the ammo.

Gotta say I really like that you went into this much detail over this.

I just wanted to point out that without going through the trouble of making a bullet that has a shell containing the powder I was under the impression that misfires were quite likely. The problem being that since you have packed powder and ball in six wholes of the cylinder, when you lit one is there was a frightening probability that all six would ignite, often leaving the gunman fingerless. So the mechanism we see in our old western revolvers, allowing for multiple loaded shots has definitely been around for awhile but there's a reason the technology was implemented in mass. My point being that creating guns with higher firing capacity might yield a much higher misfire chance, you could probably get around this with some sort of feat or enchanted gunpowder.

Other than that I think the 'Pistoleer' archetype has some real potential. Spending grit on lightning reloading would suck, but combined with the quick draw feat you could pump out a high number of attacks. Maybe I'm playing it wrong but I've always thought Rapid Shot applied to multiple different weapons. That is to say you could buy a third and fourth pistol you could fire twice, drop the guns and keep fighting. Could be a pain to pick them up later. But you get around a lot of the cost by enchanting your ammo instead of your guns. Maybe you enchant bullets in groups of 100 instead of 50... you know less mass than an arrow or something?

Feat wise that build would be needing Point Bland Shot, Rapid Reload, Rapid Shot, and the Lightning Reload Deed, and probably taken in that order. That said, it's a build that in order to be effective would be pretty feat heavy in a class that can't dip into normal fighter bonus feats... which really sucks.

I've gotta agree with the wisdom dependent ki pool. Perception and Sense Motive just seem more in line with the whole mystic assassin bit. I would like to quote the core here and say, "Wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, awareness, and intuition." Those are all things I think of when I think Ninja, the descriptors for charisma is "personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance." One of those just rings ninja and the other doesn't. At least the way I understand Ninja lore, fantasy or otherwise. I understand that with ninja being an alternate class option for the rogue there's a strong desire to keep some of the required stats the same, but 'Ninja' is just such an iconic class to create and be making decisions that are based on trying to keep it close to a rogue.

On the same note it seems odd to me that grit is based on based on wisdom. Grit is something that can be replenished by being a showboat, by attempting things that aren't likely to succeed and getting criticals. that and the whole boastful nature just seemed more like a Cha thing, but to be honest this one doesn't bother me near as much as the the ki pool based in charisma.