I've been playing a magus for a while and happened upon the below advice on combat tactics in a guide, which confuses me.
It reads: "Enchant your weapon as a swift action, cast Frostbite trusting your buff spells to block the opportunity attack; then make your iterative attacks plus the one from Frostbite on any targets within reach. The next turn, use spell combat to first make your remaining attacks with Frostbite, then cast another spell."
How does this work exactly? My understanding of Spell Combat, is that it allows you to take a -2 penalty to attacks to both full attack and cast one spell. And through spellstrike, if you cast a touch spell, you get one 'bonus' weapon attack to deliver the charge. From an FAQ on the reference document site, I also know that making a melee attack while holding a spellcharge allows you to freely expend it while making a weapon attack.
This together seems to make it so that if you choose to cast a spell before attacking in Spell Combat, and you cast a spell with multiple charges, you can immediately make at least two weapon attacks both expending a charge.
But back to the quoted advice, how then do I "use spell combat to first make your remaining attacks with Frostbite, then cast another spell". As if I use one of the touch spell charges and change it to a weapon attack via spellstrike, that already counts as already casting a spell, does it not? While this sequence seems to imply that I can both do this first, then cast another spell, and thus cast multiple spells each turn through spell combat, rather than one.
I'm curious if there is a way to wear an otherwise very obvious item, a mask, with it being concealed to the outside world. For context, the mask is a decently powerful artefact, and predictably there's an evil cult out to get it.
Is there any concealment magic avalaible somewhere or such?
For a potential upcoming PBP game (jade regent), I was thinking of making a melee oracle with the battle mystery. The entire group composition is currently unknown. The character creation rules are 20 pt buy. No ability scores are allowed below 9 post racial modifyers, so stat dumping is pretty much out. Due to the nature of the path, where romance (apparently?) plays a large part, it would help if the character was compatible with elves and/or humans. I wanted to try going for a 2h reach variant of the battle oracle and play him like a reach cleric but to try and take advantage of the oracle mystery revelations.
What I keep running into when making this character is that his saving throws are incredibly bad. A str/cha build on a class that only has 1 good innate saving throw (will) and without any real room to raise other ability scores seems like a huge liability to the party; he'd be extremely vulnerable to any sort of magic and fail just about all his saves. (imo, it runs into the 3.5 problem of dex, wis and con being vastly superior stats over the others since str, int and cha don't give any defensive benefits, among other reasons).
Does anyone have any advice on how to fix this? I am aware of traits that add a +1 bonus and feats for +2 to one stat. I've considered just accepting a 2 level paladin dip as required or trying dwarf, though dwarf runs into the romance problem.
For an upcoming pathfinder game I am thinking of speccing into the sacred servant paladin archetype. Mostly, because this would allow me to summona surrogate healer/support ally to help the party since we lost our cleric in the last adventure. For this, I have to pick a domain limited to Iomedae. I was going over my options and ran into day's resurgence as a domain ability for the day subdomain:
"At 8th level, you can restore a single creature as if it had just completed 8 hours of rest. It takes 10 minutes to use this power. If the use of this power is disrupted, it must be restarted, but it is not lost. At the end of the 10 minutes, a single willing creature that you have touched regains hit points as if it had rested for the night and may make new saving throws against effects that require a save once per day. The target does not suffer any negative effects if such saving throws are failed, but success counts toward removing the affliction (if possible). This ability does not allow a target to prepare spells an additional time per day. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, plus one additional time per day for every 2 levels beyond 8th."
My question is: what exactly does it refresh? If it restores a creature as if it had rested for 8 hours, it seems like it can restore all class abilities with daily limits to their use except spellcasting. Am I missing something? This almost seems too good to be true. For my chracter, since I dipped into bloodrager even a once per day use of this would restore all smites, rage rounds and LoH uses. I'm sure the party monk and possibly arcanist would highly value this as well.
I suppose I am weighing this daily use against the tactics domain as that is Iomedae's second best domain as I can currently see it. Having an ally reroll initiative three times per day and selecting a feat to use for an entire combat can also be quite nice. Glory/heroism seem decent options but with having access to good hope the value of those is a bit lessened.
A second question would be: what is the best good-aligned healer/support type summon planar ally (level 6 cleric version) can summon? I know the eventual choice is to the DM, but I am curious what the options are.
For my next and probably last pfs character in pathfinder 1, i'm trying to build a reach cleric with variant channeling: earth. Ideally, i'm looking for an earth patron diety that grants access to the plant and feather domains who also isn't evil. If i understand the rules correctly, this would allow versatile channeler to grant access to the harm variant when needed while still able to heal at full channel value normally. I'm also trying to avoid losing levels on the animal companion if possible.
I seem to recall that all empyrial lords are considered to have all subdomains of their domains, though i can't find that rule atm. Also, i'm aware that a more powerful version of the build is acessable to horus by the seperatist cleric archetype (Exchange out one domain for any one of choice at -2 wis/cha, slotting in plant and taking feather) since his variant channel rulership is better than earth. I am however not looking to stunlock encounters.
I'm having some trouble piecing this together with the incomplete domain reference charts. Can anyone help out?
I'm wondering if there is any advice on what to do against ranged spell spells for a melee character at higher levels. Is there any reliable defense against, for instance, disintegrate, enervation etc?
I used to have smash from the air, but that is apparently no longer legal for PFS. Displacement and mirror image seem like the next two things that come to mind, however most enemies who have access to these spells will also have true sight up. Any advice?
For reference, the character is a 2H str/cha based melee 'paladin' with high UMD in a mythril fullplate with dex 14 (16 in rage). If it would somehow help out in this area, I might consider going 1H with shields.
I'm wondering if a consensus was ever reached on if the light steel quickdraw shield allowed someone to attack with a one handed weapon held in two hands during your own turn while keeping it equipped for full AC bonus outside of your turn. The basic combo is: start turn with shield and weapon wielded, use free action to put away shield, use free action to hold weapon now with both hands, full attack, don shield as free action. This leaves you with the weapon held in one hand outside of your turn, but unless I am missing something it seems this sequence should work (there will be some DM variance on how many free actions are allowed to be taken I suppose, but this doesn't seem abusive). Some downsides are that I need quickdraw as a feat, that the shield is limited to a base 1ac shield with ACP-2 and that most one handed weapons aren't that exciting.
Quickdraw light shield cited below:
"Benefit: If you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you may don or put away a quickdraw shield as a swift action combined with a regular move. If you have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, you can draw a light or one-handed weapon with one hand and a quickdraw shield with the other in the time it would normally take you to draw one weapon. If you have the Quick Draw feat, you may don or put away a quickdraw shield as a free action."
All I've found on this are some short threads throughout the years that have wildly varying opinions by different posters. Has there ever been a generally accepted ruling? If not, is there any clear reason the above sequence wouldn't work?
I'd like to ask some advice on the following problem.
I'm mostly interested in playing through some pathfinder adventure paths in play by post or play by chat, the first of which ends up here with some regularity. However, I've also noticed that the competition per spot on such a campaign on this forum is usually beyond fierce, like more than 6 applicants per spot, and after a number of failed attemps applying to these starts to feel like an exercise in futility. Reading through the player's guide for a new path, thinking of and posting a build/compelling backstory in my experience quickly takes multiple hours of free time, which I unfortunately do not have too much of, and when an application gets denied you are basically left with nothing for the effort. I also suspect that since I haven't played in any previous campaign, preference innately goes to more experienced players with more posts which further hurts chances.
I am not entirely sure what the best course of action is, but maybe I am simply looking at a oversaturated forum regarding demand for spots compared to the supply. So, I'm looking for some perhaps less known or less obvious forum/discord/wherever than the paizo main boards for online recruitment to try my luck. Can anyone offer some suggestions for this?
I was wondering about the interaction between holding a one handed weapon with two hands and the swashbuckler's panache restoration. The ability reads:
"Critical Hit with a Light or One-Handed Piercing Melee Weapon: Each time the swashbuckler confirms a critical hit with a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon, she regains 1 panache point. Confirming a critical hit on a helpless or unaware creature or a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the swashbuckler’s character level doesn’t restore panache.
Killing Blow with a Light or One-Handed Piercing Melee Weapon: When the swashbuckler reduces a creature to 0 or fewer hit points with a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon attack while in combat, she regains 1 panache point. Destroying an unattended object, reducing a helpless or unaware creature to 0 or fewer hit points, or reducing a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the swashbuckler’s character level to 0 or fewer hit points doesn’t restore any panache."
Adding to this the starting ability of the Falcata Swashbuckler:
"Falcata Emphasis (Ex)
At 1st level, a falcata swashbuckler is proficient with falcatas and can treat a falcata as a one-handed piercing melee weapon for the purposes of the swashbuckler’s finesse as well as all feats and class abilities that refer to such a weapon."
If I used a falcata held with both hands and either scored a crit or a killing blow with it, would I regain penache? If I read the rule correctly, I only need to make the attack with a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon, but I wouldn't have to hold the weapon with one hand to make the attack. Specifically, this would benefit strength-based swashbucklers since it would allow them to add 1.5x str to their attacks while still regaining penache.
I'm currently playing in a PFS campaign (with a fixed group of the same party members). We are are currently level 14, set to do a module (tomb of the iron medusa) soon and going into the all for immortality arc afterwards (at high tier, level 15). After that, there's been some talk of playing the characters further to level 20 with what I presume will be more module play, though that isn't entirely set yet. So, the character will reach at least level 15, possibly more. I expect the future modules to be upscaled in some way as to be significantly threatening; the same happened with our EoTT playthrough which featured mythic levels and other upscales to the final boss, the same of which happened (I presume) to the final boss of the season 9 final adventure.
The reason I'm asking for a bit of help is because as the tank/heavy melee dude, I am really feeling the rocket-tag starting to kick in. I'd like to not end with single digit hp before my first turn comes up, as happened in the above two instances and some others too. I also feel like the to hit bonusses of enemies are so high that even good ac doesn't seem to matter much anymore, which is why I'm looking for other layers of protection on top of just ac + lay on hands with sanctuary mercy (targeted).
I play an oath of vengeance paladin of Iomedae x/ urban anger bloodrager 1 atm. The other party members are a rogue/brawler sneak attacker/debuffer, a save or suck cleric and a control arcanist. We will supposedly be joined by a teleportation focussed unchained monk soonish as the final party member. Everyone else is an expert at what they do.
character build details:
Adol, level 13 human oov paladin, urban anger bloodrager 1.
Stats: str 20, dex 12, con 16, int 10, 9 wis, 27 cha.
Base stats: 18,12,14,10,7,15. All level up increases were cha, uses +6 cha headband, +2 str/con belt, a +2 profane cha boon and a +1 cha inherent boon. +2 wis from socketed Ioun stone in wayfinder which gives blind-fight as a bonus feat.
Hp 155, Ac: 33 (when having the buckler out), touch 14, FF 32. Saves: Fort +30 (+2 profane boon), reflex +19, will +21.
Feats: feywild foundling, noble scion (cha to init), encouraging spell, extra rage, power attack, vision mastery, quick draw, improved critical (nodachi), blind fight (bonus feat from wayfinder), skill focus: survival (Bonus feat from anger Id rager).
-Standard prepared spells: 2 x divine favor, 3 x hero's defiance, shield other x 3, energy resistance x 1, good hope x 3, greater angelic aspect x2.
Divine bond: weapon bond (+3 bonus, 3x/day for 13 minutes per use).
Traits: dangerously curious, Wayang spell hunter (good hope metamagic cost -1. I tend to reflavor this to something like 'inspiring leader').
Items: Crusading fullplate +3, quickdraw buckler +4, cloak of resistance +5, amulet of natural armor +2, ring of protection +2, ring of evasion, Helm of the mammoth lord, str/con belt +2, charisma headband +6, furious nodachi +2, eyes of the eagle, lesser rod of reach, wayfinder wirth icandescent blue Ioun stone, bracers of the merciful knight. Aside from this a number of utility scrolls, most used are scroll of heal, displacement and dimension door.
Currently left with roughly 5500 gold. I am considering buying a pair of gloves of arrow-catching for 4 k.
build strategy:
The idea of the build is to buff the party with encouraging good hope (As an Iomedae paladin, this is a level 3 spell added to my list. I use the encouraging metamagic feat/-1 metamagic cost trait to boost it to +3 effectiveness for no added level cost. With no bard, only I have natural access to this.) and to use the metamagic rod of reach to have a reached shield other on all other party members at the same time. Then, I move adjacent to enemies and use LoH on myself after attacking each turn. This leaves the targeted mercy's sanctuary effect on myself during the enemy turn, which is a DC 24 willsave due to the high charisma. In order for the enemy melee to get full attacks, they have to then try making that save to attack me. Otherwise, they either have pounce someone else (their best case, which would still redicrect half the damage to me) or need to walk to an ally and get only 1 attack.
Regarding the threat of AOE attacks, both the rogue and I have evasion and a very high dex save. Also, both the cleric and the wizard are focussed on counterspelling and dispelling. This has allowed the shield other strategy to work flawlessly so far.
I also draw the quickdraw shield as a free action at the end of the turn after attacking with the nodachi. This means I do not threaten enemies other than with the headbut from my helm or spiked gauntlet outside of my own turn, but the idea is to put the sanctuary to good use so I'm not currently looking to make AoO's yet.
While the strategy above works fairly well, there are a number of things that more or less still instantly kill me and that I need some help with. From actual play these are:
-Mythic bosses winning initiative and wrecking me with huge to hit bonusses before my turn comes up (yeah, I know. Good luck fixing that, right?). Or just high accuracy + high willsave enemies.
-Touch attacks in general, but specifically:
-Level draining touch attacks by incorporal enemies.
-Ranged touch attacks, such as musket fire or disintegrate and enervation spam.
I am currently considering training out the feats improved critical (nodachi) and vision mastery upon reaching 15, selling the nodachi and buying a keen inheritor's longsword. Then, branching into weapon master fighter for 3 levels. Upon reaching level 15, this would free up 4 feats for martial focus, combat reflexes, slash from the air and smash from the sky. These feats would allow me to make 2+ (depending on dex buffs if any) AOO's each round against incoming spells or projectiles to counter that weakness, at least. I was then considering adding a level of swashbuckler for parry to fix melee touch attacks and just sticking with 9 panache for the day without an option to regain it naturally. Finally, with the last feats I would receive I was thinking about selecting the orc bloodline feats so I'd have greater eldritch heritage at level 17 and a large inherent bonus to strength. The level 17 ability to grow to large and get huge str/con/natural armor bonusses of that seems like it would help, and would free up the shoulder slot for a cloak of displacement maybe.
Does anyone have any advice or critique on this build and/or plan going forward? Anything would be greatly appreciated.
I'm currently in a campaign for wrath of the righteous, character level 8 (or almost 8, I missed the last session)/mythic tier 2.
House rules are as follows: 20-pt buy. All classes who normally have only 2+int skillpoints per level instead get 4+int. We have weapon finesse, power attack, combat expertise for free with no requirements. Also the feats of improved grab/trip/bull rush are condensed into one feat, improved maneuvers. Additionally, we have an end of first book reward of: 1 extra feat, 5 extra hp, +2 to one ability score and +2 to one skill.
The request from the GM was to make slightly less than super optimized builds as the adventure path as written seems to be fairly easy and we have a lot of free stuff. I was originally going to try for a pure buffer/caster/summoner evangelist but I found the playstyle to be a bit boring (possibly too OP considering the request) and decided to slightly rework the character to be melee-oriented.
The party setup is Melee (no reach) occultist tank (str/int), aasimar sorceror (base sorc?), chained summoner with pet tank, reach swashbuckler/paladin/devoted muse with finesse glaive. They have the mythic archetypes for their general roles.
I'd like some advice on how to progress my build going forward. What I have now is:
Str 20, dex 14+2, con 12, int 14, wis 16+2, cha 8.
The rework basically had him exchange his previous charisma score and a bit of wisdom for the strength. I could use enhance ability to switch the +2 bonus from dex to str or anywhere else, so long as we don't have belts/headbands yet.
Mythic
-Dual path, inspired defenses, lightning performance.
-Path abilities: advance, inspires spell. (basically, I can expend one point of mythic power to give everyone a move action/5ft step or to cast any spell on the cleric list from a level I can prepare at Cl+2 without using a prepared spell slot).
I recently finished the eyes of the ten retirement arc with my party as a paladin. Somewhere in the future, the idea is to finish the season 8 12-15 module 'unleashing the untouchable' and then continue into the season 7 'all for immortality adventures' (level 14-15 mode), which would leave us at level 15. From there on, we might possibly play the unreleased season 10 12-15 modules (half speed if needed, I suppose).
The party makeup is 10(?) rogue with brawler (3?) dip, full arcanist, full cleric, and me as a 2 h melee paladin 12/level 1 bloodrager. Overall, I'd say the power level of the party is fairly high. The melee rogue does good damage and is excellent at debuffing enemies, the cleric has very powerfull crowd control channels inflicting fear/panic and disease debuffs, and the arcanist is our swiss army knife with a focus on counterspelling and teleportation. My role is more added melee damage and using shield other to soak half off the other party member's damage. While this tactic is normally dangerous, I found that with the counterspelling arcanist and the cleric having dispel focus and liking to ready to dispel whatever spell is cast, I haven't actually been hit by any aoe spell at all during the last 4 adventures. In addition, I'm specced to have the 'good hope' bard spell (by worshipping Iomedae) and have the metamagic feat 'encouraging spell' to have a really powerfull party buff.
The only real trouble we ran into during the arc was when fighting an entire swarm of level draining enemies in which we were forced to be split up due to objectives, and the final encounter which features an extremely powerful final boss (the updated version of X, with mythic levels etc). I think that in both those encounters, I got into trouble because my AC and touch AC was fairly low, and because there was no time to use my normal defensive buffs (displacement and the sanctuary mercy with a willsave dc of 24, due to having 26 charisma myself). To be fair, the final enemy was fairly b#~!#@+! with like 7 high accuracy attacks each turn dealing 45-ish (post debuffs on him) damage per hit and crits for like 120, which would have killed the rogue in round 1 if not for shield other, along with items that made X immune to spells and status effects.
Anyway, now that we've survived I'm at a bit of a loss on what to spend my remaining gold on (and we have a lot of that, considering how ridiculously much we got in those 4 adventures). I currently have 39.5 k to spend after selling some redundant items I never used, with the current magical items in inventory:
Champion Fullplate +3, Furious Nodachi + 2, Winged Boots, swarmbane clasp (in bag), Cloak of prot. + 3, dusty rose prism, br. of the merciful knight, Amulet of nat. armor +2, helm of the mammoth lord, Headband of charisma +6, belt of str and con +2, handy haversack, lesser rod of reach, lucky horseshoe (with +1 luck bonus trait) and eyes of the eagle. I also have a bunch of utility scrolls bought from prestige points and some leftover gold.
The most obvious missing item is a ring of protection of any kind. I also only have 1 magical weapon. Prebuffs, my ac is currently 26 with a touch AC of 12. Smite evil however boosts this to 36 with touch 22 against a focus target since it grants +8 deflection and +2 sacred, and I usually try to have displacement up as a scroll in round 1. Additionally, if I lay on hands myself then enemies need to roll willsave DC 24 to attack me, which can be tricky. And I do have even more buffs from wand of shield etc available. The problems start arising when there is no time at all to buff, such as when all enemies start right on top of us.
Regarding ring of protection, I am also just one adventure away from
the greater angelic aspect spell, which grants a +4 deflection bonus against evil creatures (seems to be most of them) to the entire party within 20 ft, along with dr 10/evil and some other damage resistances and immunities. I think that will be my go-to spell for round 1 every major fight from then. However, this deflection bonus wouldn't stack with ring of protection which is why I'm a bit hesitant to invest in one. The counterargument I guess is that not every single enemy we meet is evil, meaning that deflection bonus wouldn't work, though most dangerous ones so far seemed to be.
I had some ideas on what to do:
-Buy a rod of lesser quickening and a +2 ring of protection to hedge bets and invest in action economy. This would allow me to start every fight with casting a quickened encouraging (+3 version of) good hope along with either greater angelic aspect, divine favor or weapon bond. If good hope is prebuffed, then divine favor along with weapon bond or greater angelic aspect. After getting some more gold, get a ring of force shielding and further upgrade the ring of protecting to account for bad luck. The bad thing here is that I start every fight holding the rod of quickeneing, which would prevent full attacking (this is honestly fairly rare for a first turn) unless I'd drop the 35 k rod on the ground, pluc I'd miss out on upgrading the str and con belt.
-Buy a +4 version of the belt of str and con to invest in hp, accuracy and damage, get a ring of force shielding for a +2 shield bonus to ac. Ignore ring of protection, later further upgrade the other AC items. This has no overlapping bonusses and is a bit more effective on the offense and in HP durability, and has no awkwardness of weapon holding going into fights. The downside is that the action economy will be worse than the above build.
-Buy a ring of evasion for 25 k and sell an additional 1500 g worth of items to get a +4 ring of deflection. Then, go on saving for the belt or the rod. This option accounts for that the casters will probably not be able to counterspell every aoe ability that might come our way. The downside is that it's a fairly passive play and doesn't help us out offensively.
-Something I'm not aware of/your suggestion?
Can anyone offer me some advice on what I should do?
I'm a little unsure about how this feature would work. The literal description is: 'Starting at 8th level, you can enter rage as a barbarian for a number of rounds per day equal to your cleric level'.
Supposing I am a cleric or sacred servant paladin with access to this domain, can I:
-Take the extra rage feat to get additional arounds of rage per day?
-Does the rage from this domain become more powerful at level 11 like the barbarian's rage?
I'm considering taking the sacred servant archetype for my paladin. They get a 'free' version of the spell planar ally once a week, version scales with paladin level.
What I'm unclear on is this paragraph:
"By casting this spell, you request your deity to send you an outsider (of 6/12/18 HD or less) of the deity’s choice. If you know an individual creature’s name, you may request that individual by speaking the name during the spell (though you might get a different creature anyway)."
So... I suppose I don't have any control on what is sent and it's always the GM's call. But is the amount of HD the summoned creature has also completely variable? It seems to me that if the latter is the case then the spell is pretty much pointless since the gm can just keep giving you 1hd creatures. Am I missing something here?
I'm currently playing a paladin through the eyes of the ten retirement arc. I'm the tank of a party of 4, namely 2H paladin, dual wield rogue, control arcanist, low-healing control cleric w/ variant negative energy channel (disease/fear).
We just completed the first module and I was able to shield other the entire party throughout all fights, soaking most of the damage and healing it through optimized lay on hands use on myself. While I really like this tactic I'm a bit sceptical about my survival odds since things like 20d6 attacks on the entire party were available to the dm (we somehow dodged this by luck) and even a fireball on everyone at the same time could just ouright kill me if all 3 are shielded. However, I'm also sure that if I don't shield people then we'd have gotten into a lot of trouble through I.E. random crits hitting unfortunate party members and the amount of otherwise available healing being fairly low.
I'm looking for some ideas to increase my survivability in the near future. We seem to be getting huge amounts of gold (24-ish k) per module so decently expensive items are perhaps in range.
Current build (most relevant points imo):
Human, 11 oath of vengeance paladin/1 bloodrager. Hp 111/135 (rage), ac 26 unbuffed (can reach 39 with shield wand, crusader armor activation, smite evil), touch 12, Fort/ref/will 25/16/21. Feats: feywild foundling, noble scion, improved critical (nodachi), extra rage, vision mastery, power attack, extra traits (to get a bite attack for bite evil).
For the items the only relevant one is the bracers of merciful knight which boost LoH healing to 7d6+14 on self. Rest are static damage/ac/save buffers and winged boots. The main defensive features are sanctuary with dc 22 willsave on self when LoH used and potentially displacement scrolls from UMD.
Currently I have 9.3 k gold to spend if relevant.
How would you go about making this build mroe survivable? And would you keep using shield other on all 3 other party members if you were me?
I'd like to ask for a bit of general advice. I'm paired up with an unchained melee rogue quite often and set to go into the level 12 eyes of 10 arc soon. The issue is that i've recently seen her struggle a lot to keep up with other characters, and she made a couple of remarks on how her character gets overshadowed a lot by others herself. As a non rogue, i tend to see that there are a lot of situations in which it's virtually impossible to gain sneak attack, such as by mass flying enemies, enemies with concealment or see invisibility, enemies that are too large to flank effectively etc. I think that if there was a way to make this more reliable, it would go a long way in solving the problem. However, does such a thing exist?
I was toying around with the idea of making my paladin/bloodrager a part trip specialist in order and go the paired opportunists/fortuious weapon route but this is hard to fit into a build without bonus feats and less than 13 int.
Does anyone have good advice to offer on how to make melee rogues work on level 12+?
I'm having a bit of trouble finishing the character I'll be playing in a series of adventures soon (Eyes of Ten and the rest of the original PFS retirement arc, possibly beyond into the all for immortality arc and other loose adventures for seeker tier).
The basic stats of the character as is are: human melee 10 paladin/1 bloodrager, ac 26, hp 102, unbuffed saves: fort +25, ref +16, will +20, umd +25. He has high melee damage and blind fight and vision mastery to account for invisble things and concealment. Winged boots and a scroll of fly for reasonably reliable flight. High UMD and a host of scrolls and wands for utility.
The party for the next 4 adventures is: Melee Rogue (unchained, no archetype I believe), Cleric (variant channeling: diseases), Arcanist (vanilla?), and me. So basically both schools of magic are covered and the rogue has us covered on the dex skills.
I'm unsure what I should be focussing on for further preparations, mostly on how to level up from here. The level 11 paladin vengeance feature seems weak considering party makeup and I'm considering taking a dip into something to cover a remaining weakness, such as oracle to get cha to ref instead of dex (gaining me an effective additional +6 to ref), some more willsave and an extra +4 UMD. Or taking sacred servant as an additional archetype which would train away the rarely if ever used weapon bond (Usually I am much too busy killing things to have a standard action to burn on the weapon buff, and when I do divine favor is usually stronger) and gain a domain at effective cleric level 8. But If I do that, I'm not sure which domain would be good specifically for a paladin and this party. My wisdom would be 10 for this, if relevant.
Or is there some other dip I should be looking at instead?
Can anyone give any advice on what would be the best course of action?
After having been forced into a number of extremely close fights in PFS play over the last few months (18th level wizard enemies, buffed flying Harpies with bows in an ambush, underwater dragons with super high dps output, multiple vampires who dispel death ward etc), I decided it was time to switch stategy from saving for permanent upgrades to expanding a toolbox to better account for extreme situations like these. For reference, the character is an 11th level 2h melee vengeance paladin with a UMD skill of +25. The cheapest way to do this seems to be buying scrolls containing which can account for a variety of really dangerous situations.
Since the DC for casting from scrolls seems to be 15 + caster level + spell level, this should allow me to cast up to fourth level scrolls with no problem, fifth level scrolls from other classes on a roll of 4 or more and sixth level scrolls on a d20 roll of 7 or more. Also, at this number I supposedly automatically succeed at emulating the required casting stat, with the difference between my ability score and the required ability score to cast that level of spell having to be less than (UMD result - 15). With my lowest score (wisdom of 7), I'd automcatically succeed on emulating wisdom 18 for 8th level cleric scrolls for example since 26 (UMD roll of 1) - 15 = 11 (the difference between wisdom 18 and wisdom 7).
Currently his list of scrolls is: Displacement (2 charges), lesser restoration (5), breath of life (2), dimension door (1), obscuring mist (5), death ward (1), heroism (1), remove fear (2), supress charms and compulsions (1). He also has wands for most of the common level 1 buffs such as shield and longarm, can fly with winged boots and has darkvision and see invisibility as spells, glitterdust as a wand. Potions include water breathing and oil of daylight.
Suppose you have a further budget of roughly 5.5k to spend on other scrolls to use in what you believe to be the most high impact spells for what you consider to be the most dangerous situations. Things that come to my mind are Heal, restoration, stoneshape and more scrolls of displacement. But what would you recommend and why?
I'd like to confirm something with the crowd here really quickly. I'm looking for a way for a human to get a bite attack outside of the ring of rat fangs. One of the few PFS legal ways seems to be to select the racial trait 'tusked' from Orcs of Golarion (normally half orc or orc only), though to select this I'd have to use adopted for it and spend a feat for the additional traits. The character has a half orc stepmother so lorewise It would fit pretty well.
By RAW from the adopted and tusked traits, I believe this works. It makes a bit less sense outside of raw since other than the tusks I have from the helm of the mammoth lord (which you supposedly use to gore people with it), I don't have natural tusks as a human and thus I can't think of a way I could bite people with tusks.
Is there a problem if I refluffed this to some kind of dirty fighting technique that was taught to the character by his mother to add a bite myself the moment the enemy gets gored by the helm tusk? Or, I don't know, if I pulled the enemy into the helm tusks afterwards to make a bite-like motion?
From reading the ring of rat fangs, it is implied that a character can bite really hard on his own even before his physical appearance/attributes would change from its use so I guess that means normal teeth can be lethal by themselves. Is this a plausible refluff? Or am I missing something rulewise?
Hey everyone, I wanted to confirm something before I commit to this for one of my characters. If my character was a melee weapon user who also had a ring of rat folk and a helm of the mammoth lord (one gives a bite attack, the other a gore attack as primary natural attacks), and then used a full attack, what exactly would happen?
From what I gathered from a few threads, all attacks from the weapon would be at full BAB and I would be able to both bite and use gore as part of the same full attack (since even though they are a part of the same limb, the head, they are different body parts, plus it's been cited by others that creatures like gargolyes can also use both to full attack). Since nothing is written regarding the damage the bite or gore would do, im assuming the damage of these attacks is 1d6 or 1d4 + str + any global bonusses. However, the bite and gore would be at a -5 penalty to hit as combining a weapon attack with a natural attack would make the natural attacks count as secondary. Is this correct?
Further, if I then added power attack, the weapon would get the normal bonus on each attack (or +50% from using a 2h weapon) and both the bite and gore would get half the normal damage boost since they are then secondary, per the writing of power attack, right?
My pfs character is set to head into seeker tier (12+) in about two months or so. From what I've read, both of the adventure paths available to these characters (eyes of the ten and all for immortality) are supposedly extremely deadly. I'm trying to avoid spoilers on the modules, but I would to ask some advice on how to gear/feat up for the higher levels of play with the remainder of the time and gold I have left (any advice from higher level play in general is welcome, not only specific to these modules).
Character is a human paladin x/bloodrager 1 with a 2 handed crit nodachi build and liberal UMD usage. He has rediculoulsy high saving throws as a main defensive feature.
The current feats are feywild foundling, extra rage, power attack, improved critical, vision mastery, ability mastery (+2 con), level 11 feat unpicked. Ability mastery here is a placeholder until I can spare 6 k to buy a belt for it, though it might be used to qualify for unsanctioned knowledge for access to some otherwise unavailabvle level 1-3 spells. I'm currently tentatively saving for a couragious weapon and a gloves of the merciful knight. On 12, basically 2 feats are as yet unused.
Currently I have the following specific counters:
-Winged boots for flight
-Vision mastery for darkvision and invisible enemies
-Swarmbane clasp for swarms
-I have one chronicle boon which allows me to self-ressurect if I were to die, once.
The main weaknesses I currenty see is that I have nothing vs level drain, negative levels, automatic grappling enemies, blink, enemies with large amounts of reach, and nothing to really protect other party members other than killing the enemy as quickly as possible.
I realise one character can't counter everything, but I am curious as to what others would find most important to cover and with what?
Does anyone know of a way to increase a cleric domain level for a character multiclassed into cleric? I am looking for something like the boon companion feat buy for cleric domain.
Yesterday I reveived news that the divine bond I've been using for PFS for 5 or so levels, angel bond, is apparently the only illegal one to use. So... massive bummer, and I need to pick something else. I really liked being able to protect and buff allies through it and none of the immediate other options seem to offer this. I'm also not terribly impressed with any of the other standard divine bonds in general and would like to ask some advice on this from the community.
To give some information on the character, it is a level 9 melee human paladin (oath of vengeance)/level 1 Kindness id rager with a statline of 20 str, 12 dex, 14 con, 10 int, 7 wis and 24 cha (the latter only possible due to a boon I received yesterday that adds a +2 profane bonus for the duration of one year, and retraining an earlier picked ability score increase into charisma). He typically fights two handed with a nodachi with improved critical and power attack. He has the winged boots to cast fly 3x/day. His saving throws are godly but his ac is mediocre at best. His main defensive feature is now the 'targeted' mercy which grants a level and cha scaling version of sanctuary (dc 21 will save) when I heal someone with lay on hands.
Going through the immediate options, these are the problems I see:
-Weapon bond requires practically skipping your first turn in a combat since it has no direct impact before you can start attacking, and the buffs it can grant feel fairly weak to me at first glance. The best one, speed, can only be used on character level 12 (paladin 11/id rager 1, seeker tier) and does not stack with the fairly common haste or divine fervor buffs. Also, I can cast divine fervor on the entire party by myself at character level 11 (it's a level 3 oath of vengeance spell), making weapon bond seem a bit superfluous.
-Mount: My character currently has 0 invensted feats in mounted combat and mounted as a medium size character with a large mount leads to all kinds of wellknown logistical problems in narrow spaces. I was still toying around with the idea of taking a shissah mount (a statistically slightly better horse from Qadira which is apparently legal for PFS) and just using it as an animal companion (an additional melee prescense on it's own, fighting seprately). Does anyone have any experience with the effectiveness of this strategy?
-Agathion: I guess debuffing the enemy slightly is a way to somewhat mimic angel bond. Other than being fairly weak numberwise, the major downfall of this is that every enemy gets a willsave to completely avoid the effect forever. It thus feels extremely unrealiable to me.
-The fourth one which only adds charisma to LoH healing yet still requires your standard action to activate: haha, no.
I know there is a 'hidden' fifth divine bond from the 'sacred servant' archetype which grants additional lay on hands uses per day (and thus smites from oath of vengeance) and grants a cleric domain along with the cleric bonus spells at paladin level -3 in exchange for a few less smites per day. This seems really powerful, the problem here is that I can't access the level 8 cleric domain features until I reach character level 12 (unless someone knows of something to circumvent this). Ifd there is, I could take something like the heroism subdomain and buff the party that way, and I could add a couragious weapon enchant along with the current +2 furious weapon to milk the morale bonusses from rage and the heroism aura.
It does compete with both smite evil and LoH for the swift actions, which is a bit of a downside. Would anyone recommend a different domain for a melee paladin if I went this way? It seems like for instance liberation could situationally also be really powerful.
Or am i completely wrong and are there better options I'm overlooking? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I wanted to ask a bit of advice regarding a character I'm running. She is a bard that has the 'three reasons to live' magic item and is possibly saving up money for a 'banner of the ancient kings'.
Three reasons to live has a text stating that 'When a bard uses this item to start a bardic performance, the effects of that bardic performance are calculated as if the bard were 6 levels higher'.
The banner of the ancient kings has a textline that says 'When worn by a bard, the effects of his inspire courage are calculated as if the bard were 4 levels higher'.
My question is: if I have both and start a bardic performance with the horn, how big is the bardlevel bonus on this bardic performance? Is is +6 or +10 and which actual rule is this based on?
As a side issue, there was a point raised recently on how exactly a character could use both since you need 2 hands to hold the flag. Personally I believe that since the horn only states that you need to start a performance with it, you could afterwards immediately let it go and just sing on while holding the flag, which would effectively be no different from a 2 handed character briefly letting go of his weapon with one hand to do something else. But I am curious for other opinions here; if I am wrong, then why am I wrong?
As the title says, basically. Recently I read a guide to buff-focused bards which claimed that these two feats were PFS legal. They are feats from the 'pathfinder chronicles faction guide', each granting an additional +1 to the bonus allies receive from bardic performances.
However, when I look at the current additional resources document I cannot find this book on the list at all (using text search). This to me suggest it wouldn't be legal, though I hope I'm wrong about it.
And out of curiosity, if it isn't legal now, was there a time where it WAS legal?
I'll be starting a third character for pathfinder society soon and I'm having a bit of trouble reaching a certain concept.
Thematically, the character i'm trying to replicate is Kevin Graham from the legend of heroes rpg series. He has a cover as a goofy priest travelling around for fun, but in actuality he is a super cold assassin from the church sent to find and kill heretics, usually by himself, though they have squires assigned to them from time to time.
In that game, In combat, he uses a bow or crossbow. He is a good archer but his real strength lies in his ability to protect the party from harm or using damaging spells. His signature ability, grail sphere, blocks 1 or 2 incoming attacks per party member and he has a number of additional utility healing abilities. When he drops his cover he is implied to be a beast with his bow. During cutscenes he has high level mind affecting magic.
Thematically, the class that seemed the most suited to this for me initially was inquisitor. However, the only thing that can somewhat replicate grail sphere in pathfinder, to my knwledge, seems to be a high level channel positive energy (i am unfamiliar with the variants on channel energy, but im assuming ill have to just reflavor the healing from the base channel to protection).
Currently i'm stuck on a cleric with the healing subdomain to cover the restorative part, but i'm not sure if thr rest can be covered somehow. Possibly the animal domain, pretend he altered a dangerous animal's mind to follow him to cover for lowered damage? Though thats not really a part of the character.
Does anyone have any advice on this? I think what would work best is to take a rwstorarion domain cleric and make him a good archer. How should i do this?
Recently I've been readoing some builds that expressively refer to a 'human option' to chose between +1 hp and +1 skill point per level. I know that the second option comes from the 'skilled' racial trait, but I have been unable to find which trait would allow you to pick +1hp instead. I cannot even find the option in the reference document for Humans as a race.
Does this option actually exist, and if so what source is it from?
EDIT: since everone seems to point out it's from the favored class bonus, this is not the case. I'll post this example from optibuilds.com below:
(zen archer build):
"Race/Racial Traits: Human / Focused Study (Replacing Bonus Feat)
Favorite Class Option: 1 Hitpoint / level
Human Skill / Hitpoint Option: 1 Hitpoint / level
Traits: Adopted (Animal Friend) & Dangerously Curious/"
This build somehow uses both the favored class bonus for hp AND has a way to turn the +1 skillpoint from being a human into an additional +1 hp per level. I cannot find any alternate racial feature that would grant this option, but i'm assuming there would have to be something...
Recently i've ran into some problems with my paladin's armor class in the higher level modules (10-11 range of the 7-11's). My character is a 9th (soon 10th) level human paladin (uses nodachi/power attack crit build) with a base ac of 24 (+1 fullplate, 1 dex, 2 am. Natural armor, 1 ring of deflection). Additionally, he makes heavy use of umd wands to among others cast shield in fights. If both smite evil/angel bond and shield are up then his ac is effectively 31. Most of his gold was spent on improving saving throws and his weapon. Using rage would drop it to 29 (one level bloodrager dip).
Up until now this ac combined with optimized lay in hands (mercy/feywild foundling) has always been more than enough to get by. However, ive noticed that enemies at the 10-11 range get dramatic boosts in both their accuracy, damage and attacks per round. There was a dragon in one of the recent modules that attacked 6 times per round with +27ish to all attacks which basically meant it almost couldnt miss me even with full buffs and no rage. Even if i'd spent all my gold on 3 extra ac, that still would have hit on a 7+. Its damage output was around 80-100 per round which one rounded everyone in the party except me (and it did, the 35 ac kensai also had a bad time). In that fight, im fairly sure i would have died if there hadnt been a cleric healing me for an additional 50-60 hp per round.
An somewhat related concern is that ive also recently seen a 95 damage crit from a monster outright killing another player even though he was at near full hp.
I currently have around 18 k gold ( was saving for a bracers of the merciful/avenfing knight since id had advance warning that ac would be less valuable at high levels) with around 22 k after next session which will be a level up.
So... What should i do with this money and the next level up to be more survivable?
I can see a few options:
- bite the bullet, spend the money on improving loh and soon after charisma and constitution but not ac. This would increase self healing a lot and improve the major strength, his saves and smite evil, further. Higher hp gives some indirect crit protection.
-spend the money on a 4 point ac increase (plate to +4 and buy insight ioun stone +1).
-sell the plate, buy a +3 mythril breastplate and an upgrade to headband of charisma, take a level of dual cursed oracle with deep one curse and misfortune and sidestep secret revelations. This would increase ac by 4, movement speed by 15 ft, all saves by 1, reflex by an additional 5 and will by 2. Also, it gives crit protection from the misfortune ability (and some mostly useless spells). The bad thing is that it looses 1 bab and delays the paladin abilities by 1 level. Also, it would require training away greater mercy which would further weaken loh until it can be regained at 11 and misfortune competes with both smite evil and loh for my swift actions.
I'm having a lot of trouble choosing an option and also wonder if there are perhaps options im not aware of. Does anyone have any advice?
I recently met a thundercaller bard at the UK games expo whose build was so effective it inspired me to create one as a second character. For those unaware of what it does, the main draw of this bard archetyope is being able to use sound burst (the level 2 bard spell) with a round of bardic performance.
One thing I cannot figure out however, is how he used his sound burst spells to be larger than the spell. I believe he somehow boosted his sound burst to be a 20 foot spread rather than a 10 foot spread. Does anyone have any idea how this would be possible? I do not believe metamagic can somehow be applied to this spell since it is used with a round of bardic performance... right?
I've been playing PFS for a short while now as a paladin/bloodrager and I've had some success with it. However, higher level modules (over 9) are very rare in my area and the time is approaching to start an alt. I'd like to try playing a somewhat more complex build than "barbaladin smash" and so my eye fell to a caster class.
Currently, I'm doubting between an evangelist cleric (buffer/summoner/support) build and a sorceror. While the first one seems fairly straightforward, the second one is something I'm having difficulty building optimally. Specifically, the sorceror handbooks are outdated by a few years and especially at low levels i'm running into some problems with rule interpretations. Note that this build would be for pathfinder society play and that I'd like (if possible) to play a human for the favored class bonus and flavor reasons for this specific character. My personal preference would also to be highly versatile over being a one trick pony, but if possible I would also like to deal decent damage with spells.
What i'd like to know is:
-Is there a way to deal decent damage as a sorcerer on low levels without going crossblooded? If so, how? Do you need to use metamagic feats and if so, which one?
-If you take the arcane bloodline and get a familiar as a bond, how does this influence your saves? The description says you can use the familiar's save or the master's, whichever is higher. Does the familiar's saves scale with its level like animal companions (or, I suppose, higher level animals in general)? If so, does this basically mean a caster with a familiar has effective a 'good' save in all 3 categories while his familiar is alive?
-I've read a remark somewhere stating that having a mephit familiar along with the UMD skill allows the mephid to use wands to assist you in combat. Is this correct and if so, is this mephit-specific?
-For higher levels, which combination of feats, traits and the like is needed to cast maximum damage fireballs? I see things like the magical lineage trait and maximized and intensified metamagic feats, but what else is needed? Also on this topic... I've read things about using metamagic rods to cast quickened spells. How would this work exactly?
Apologies for asking so many questions. It's not my itnention to appear lazy, it's just that there's information overload and I find it a bit hard to piece it all together. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as always!
This is something that's been bothering me for a while and on searching the existing threads I cannot immediately find a topic on this. What I see a lot of while reading classes and feat lists on prerequisistes of selecting something are two different wordings:"
1. (example: weapon specialisation): required: fighter level 4th.
-I am assuming this means that I need 4 levels in the fighter class, not that my character's overall level needs to be 4 with at least one level in fighter. Is this correct? This seems fairly clear to me since it literally states that my level in fighter needs to be 4 or higher.
2. (example: mad rush, vigilante combat feature): ...'a vigilante needs to be at least level 10 to select this option.'
-On this however, I am conflicted. Again, does this mean that I need 10 levels in the vigilante class, or that I could pick it if I had character level 10 and just need enough levels in the vigilante class to gain a combat feature? The last option seems to satisfy the wording since I am both a vigilante and level 10, and the feature does not specifically state that i need vigilante level tenth the way weapon specialisation asks for a fourth level fighter.
Lastly, is this issue addressed in the rules somewhere in any of the rulebooks and where could I find it then?
I've recently been looking into the advanced weapon training feat and the weapon master fighter achetype as a potential way to further increease my character's melee damage in the future. However, the wording of the feat leaves me with a few questions and I'm also wondering how the gloves of dueling would interact with the class features the advanced weapon training feat grants you access to.
The exact text of the feat is as follows (from the pathfinder reference document, I apologize for literally copying text but believe it to be needed for this):
Advanced weapon training:
“Req: fighter level 5, weapon training class feature.
Benefit(s): Select one advanced weapon training option, applying it to one fighter weapon group you have already selected with the weapon training class feature.
Special: This feat can be taken more than once, but at most once per 5 fighter levels.
Special: Fighters that have the weapon master archetype can select this feat beginning at 4th level. The benefits of a weapon master’s advanced weapon training options apply only to his selected weapon rather than all weapons in the same fighter weapon group, and he can’t select the weapon specialist advanced weapon training option. A weapon master can select this feat as a bonus feat; if he does so, it doesn’t count for the purpose of the requirement that it can be taken at most once per 5 fighter levels.”
Supposing you are a weapon master, if I read this correctly, you could pick up this feat at level 4, and since a fighter gains a bonus feat at fourth level, you could pick it up again immediately since picking it as a bonus feat is stated to not count for the ‘only once per five levels rule’. My first question would be if this is correct, since that seems REALLY strong considering how super powerful some of those advanced weapon training options are, and getting two of them at level 4 makes a 4 level dip in weapon master for just about any melee class seem really good.
Now, let’s say that for one of those feats, we decide to pick this advanced weapon training option (as an example):
“Weapon Specialist (Ex) The fighter selects a number of combat feats that he knows equal to his weapon training bonus with the associated weapon group. The selected feats must be ones that require the fighter to choose a type of weapon (such as Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization), and the fighter must have chosen weapons that belong to the associated fighter weapon group. The fighter is treated as having the selected feats for all the weapons in the associated weapon group that are legal choices for those feats... (etc).”
Now, how exactly would these types of weapon training level-dependant bonusses interact with the gloves of dueling, who are stated to increase your weapon training bonus by 2 while worn if you're using an appropriate weapon? If my normal weapon training bonus (as a weapon master, who only has weapon training in 1 weapon and will likely only ever use that weapon) is +1 but gets boosted to +3 with the gloves, could I then pick 3 weapon specific feats with the weapon specialist feature? And what would happen to those feats if I somehow lose the gloves? Is this situation any different from wearing a stat increasing item and using that to qualify for feats? (I’m not sure on this since the stat increasing items has text that states the bonus becomes permanent after 24 hours, however the gloves of dueling bonus is also permanent as long as you’re wearing it…)
Any insight or advice would be greatly appreciated, as always!
Edit: oops, I somehow missed the part stating weapon masters cannot pick weapon specialisation in the feat description, I rolled a 1 on my perception there. Sorry!
In continuation of a different thread with a more confusing title, i'm looking for a mount that has high damage potential with single attacks.
Why this? Char is a 4 paladin/ 1 kindness id rager. Kindness id rager grants an attack to an ally threatening the target if you spend a standard action to make a single attack and hit a target with it. Since paladins get an animal companion mount at 5 (next level), i was wondering about the damage potential of using your mount for those attacks if the other players are unavailable.
Unfortunately, i am still a somewhat new player and the rules for animal companions, not to mention the huge amount of those available, are extensive. Is there perhaps someone with nore experience on animal companions who could offer advice on which companion has the most damage potential and how this companion should be build with extra abilities and feats? Remember, i can only grant one attack per turn so multiattack options seems less valuable unless the companion could somehow make those as bonus follow up attacks. Also, i believe that the paladin animal companion must be a mount-viable animal.
Recently the kindness id rager became pfs legal. I find that class very interesting since it can do something i haven't seen a melee class do yet: grant extra attacks to allies.
The exact wording is roughly: standard action: make a melee attack, if it hits, one ally threatening the enemy can spend an immediate action to also make an attack.
This feature is accessable during rage and
Is active right from level one id rager.
I had some fun as a paladin 4/id rager 1 sandwiching enemies with a rogue yesterday and that worked really well as expected.
However, there won't always be an ally you can enable. So that got me thinking...
If you are mounted, you always have your mount with you to grant the attack to. I realize that using a lance might lead to more damage with heavy feat investment, but the id rager granted attacks are essentially costless with the potential exception of taking 1 extra rage feat for having a more reliablr pool of rage rounds per day.
What are people's thoughts on this concept? Do you think it is viable? And what kind of mount would you take to grant bonus attacks to? Are there any tricks we can use to somehow make these mount attacks even better?
Just wanted to ask a quick question. Essentially, I'm wondering if there is a better way to deal damage as a (multiclassed) Paladin main using pathfinder society legal resources. The build I currently have is this:
Level 3 Human oath of vengeance paladin/level 1 Id rager (anger)
Stats: 18 str (20 soon with belt), 12 dex, 14 con, 10 int, 7 wis, 16 cha.
Feats: feywild foundling, weapon focus greatsword, extra rage. During rage (12 rounds/day), anger Id rager gives access to Power attack for free.
Equip: Greatsword+1, fullplate +1, ring of resistance+1, amulet of natural armor +1.
I think I deal fairly good damage per hit with the rage+power attack route (2d6+17 per hit at level 4), but now that I'm grouped with level 6 or 7 characters I noticed that I'm failling drastically behind due to the amount of attacks others are making compared to me. For instance, the level 6 bloodrager I was recently paired up with had 3 attacks per turn for 3d6+20-ish each using his claws, and the swashbuckler had 2 +/- 1d6+20 attacks per turn with a parry and reposte additional attack (so 3 acutally) in between each of his turns. Even if I were to be level 6 and get a second attack from BAB myself, I feel like I'd still fall behind quite a bit due to being a lot less mobile than the others and having at least 1 less attack per round.
Is there a fairly easy way someone knows of to get extra attacks per turn as a paladin main? I am hoping to stay mostly paladin x for the defensive features of the class but I'd be open to dipping into a third class if needed. Or, if that's not possible, is there some other way of increasing the damage per hit further?
(The only ways I'm currently aware of to get additional attacks are:
-combat reflexes + reach weapon, would require more dex plus limited by +1 dex mod max in fullplate.
-Two weapon fighting: can't because feat starved.
-Multiclass into swashbuckler for parry/reposte: can't because class prohibits heavy armor and seems to prohibit 2h weapons
-Level up paladin to 11 to get the haste buff from bonded weapon, but only works at character level 12, at retirement...
Damage per hit buffs:
-Keen Falchion somewhere in the near future?
-Vital strike?)
So yesterday during pfs, the following situation occured.
In short, we were infiltrating a lawless town were the aspis society and pirates crime lords are the only established order. One of the goals was to help an pfs aligned achimist who had gone silent.
When we find him, we learn that a local aspis agent has poisoned the alchimist's son and has been giving only small portions of antidote to keep the child weak and the man in check. Naturally, we decide to help him out.
In the next section, we are immediately attacked by the aspis agent/crimelord upon entering her turf (sort of to be expected, we were rolling poorly on social checks thusfar and had been in a fight already). We still manage to win the fight and subdue her.
Then, things get a bit messy.
In short, the aspis agent is constantly mocking us. She refuses to tell us anything about the antidote despite rolls of into the 30's of diplomacy and intimidate. She also heavily implies she will kill the alchimist's family the moment she gets away and that we're not going to harm her anyway since that's not what pathfinders do to prisoners.
Eventually, we do find the antidote nearby.
Now, a long argument starts on what to do with the aspis agent. We have no allies in the city who can lock her up. The gnome npc who stepped up to take over her establishment after her thugs were dead and she defeated suggested just killing her, but he couldn't offer any kind of nonlethal assistance. We cannot take her with us since we need to keep as low a profile as possible. We are level 3 to 7 and have no major magic in the party to wipe her memory or do something similarly useful. Tying and leaving the npc was implied to be equal to us willingly letting the nearby gnome npc kill her which would still be an evil act.
Througout all this, the dm keeps insisting that killing the agent is an act of blatant evil and threatens to change mine and our rogue's alignment to evil if he executes her (thus making that character illegal for pfs play). As the paladin, i'd been looking for nonlethal options such as those above but every time the gm answer is 'no'. It seemed to be a binary choice of comitting an evil act ans saving the npc family or letting the agent go and condemning the family to death.
Personally, i then figured that i had no choice but to kill the child poisoner. This sentimemt was shared by some party members but the rogue and cleric and me were held hostage by alignmemt change threat.
The argument spawning from this between characters took all momemtum out of the session and made me wish more and more we hadnt tried to stabilize the aspis woman when she went down in the actual fight.
Looking back on it, we maybe should have given up and just convinced the almlchimist to cut and run with us along with his family right now, though he'd have to leave his home and shop and risk us being able to protect them out of the city while we finished our buisness, though that would also have been dangerous to them.
I am wondering what others would do in this situation. Is there some option to handle this we didnt think of? Is killing the aspis agent here so evil it should immediately make our characters pfs unlegal?
I recently started playing Pathfinder and will probably be playing in the PFS adventures exclusively. It's been tons of fun so far and the community in the region is great. Thus (and because I'm a power gamer deep down), I'd like to bring the best possible character to help out the team. I've had some success up until level 3 now with a standard human paladin greatsword build.
For reference:
Archetype: Human Oath of Vengeance Paladin (level 3)
Stats: 18 str, 12 dex, 12 con, 10 int, 7 wis, 16 cha (after human racial of +2 str).
Feats: weapon focus greatsword, power attack, feywild foundling.
Lay on hands feature: Mercy removes fatigue.
Gear: Amulet of natural armor +1, greatsword +1 (next will probably be a +1 fullplate and a +1 cloak of protection, then +2 str belt)
Traits: Dangerously curious (UMD skill), reactionary (+2 init).
Current wands: Longstride, protection from evil, honeyed words, cure light wounds.
Most builds I've seen of higher level paladins recommend spending all feats in the extra lay on hands per day after this, up to level 11 or so, when some take eldritch heritage feats. Some however go for a combination of lunge, vital strike, improved sunder and blindfighting. I've recently also seen a build using the weapon of the chosen featline with vital strike to roll twice on each vital strike.
The main Issue I'm currently facing is that even at low level, using power attack means it's sometimes very difficult to hit, with d20 rolls of 10 frequently missing (that would be 17 vs AC now without conditional bonusses like flanking, somewhat hard to get as a tankish character i've found). Also, I feel like my offensive power from level 1 is dropping very rapidly; enemies now take 2 to 3 average hits to die and sometimes there are also no smite evil targets in the entire adventure. I realise one shotting everything like level 1 is not a healthy goal but I do like the idea of being able to do a lot of damage.
What I was considering to counter this somewhat was taking 1 level of bloodrager either at level 4 or level 5 before continuing to level paladin. Rage seems to be a free action +4 morale str bonus while it lasts which adds both accuracy and more damage, and seems to stack with smite evil when it gets used. The extra rage feat grants this 6 more rounds per day which would be 11 rounds/day total at level 5. Taking the celestial bloodline from level 1 bloodrager also makes all my attacks good-aligned and adds 1d6 extra to evil outsiders. For some extra class synergy, lay on hands can remove the fatigued condition as a swift action when rage ends. Bloodrager also grants access to str, dex and perception skills to not suck as much in heavy armor out of combat.
Further down the line I could see taking a Furious weapon enchant along with another extra rage for 17 rounds/day of rage at level 7. Furious' attribute makes the weapon receive a +2 additional enhancement bonus while under the effects of rage for the cost of only a +1 enhancement.
Of course, this would put my paladin progression 1 level behind par and doing this would eat up at least 1 feat slot, probably 2.
To me, while this looks like a good idea on paper, I've been unable to find a similar build, making me somewhat nervous if I'm overlooking something. As a relatively unexperienced player, it's also hard for me to gauge how things will be at higher levels and how important more lay on hands, lunge, vital strike etc are at that point.
Can anyone offer any kind of advice or critique? Any would be greatly appreciated.
