Rob Heath 803's page

Quick question in regards to a potential gestalt character build.

Can a Tatterdemalion use a bladed scarf with dancing strings to get int to hit and damage?

Ok i'm fairly sure the the RAW on this makes it a flat no but not really being an expert on these things I thought I would throw it out here to the crowd.

Channel Smite (Combat)

Source PRPG Core Rulebook pg. 119
You can channel your divine energy through a melee weapon you wield.

Prerequisites: Channel energy class feature.

Benefit: Before you make a melee attack roll, you can choose to spend one use of your channel energy ability as a swift action. If you channel positive energy and you hit an undead creature, that creature takes an amount of additional damage equal to the damage dealt by your channel positive energy ability. If you channel negative energy and you hit a living creature, that creature takes an amount of additional damage equal to the damage dealt by your channel negative energy ability. Your target can make a Will save, as normal, to halve this additional damage. If your attack misses, the channel energy ability is still expended with no effect.

Channel Element (Su): At 4th level, a Jistkan magistrate gains Elemental Channel as a bonus feat, choosing the elemental subtype that matches his blessing. He doesn’t gain the ability to harm undead with channeled energy (if he channels positive energy) or heal undead (if he channels negative energy). Instead, he can channel a blast of elemental matter and energy that buffets his targets. The Jistkan artificer’s blessing determines the damage type of this attack, as indicated by the table below. A successful Reflex save halves the damage.

Now as the magistrate cannot channel positive energy to harm undead or heal them can he channel smite with fire instead?

Ok it may be my searchfu is fail but is there any way to upgrade Spell like abilities gained from race or class to mythic versions of the spells?

We've only done the first session so far but I know next to nothing about the mythic rules or archery based characters so I am hoping to get some assistance for you fine people. :)

What I have so far is

I intend to use the Mythic abilities to wear full plate armor with no dexterity limits but other than that I have no real idea what would be good choices either for vanilla feats and abilities or mythic ones.

So any thoughts or ideas that could help would be greatly appreciated.

It's generally accepted the Stalwart defender isn't the strongest of prestige classes but a friend of mine made a side comment about combining it with archery and the snap shot feats so I thought I would post the concept here and see what you fine folks think of the idea.

I'm curious if you were the gm of a game and a player asked if he could change the race in the Scion of humanity alternate racial feature to lets say elf would you allow it bearing in mind that the Blood of Angels book does say that other racial Aasimar are allowed even to the point of changing your size to suit?

I know the Samsaran mystic past life ability has been done to death but i am curious to see if anyone has found interesting new uses for it. Personally i have just come up with the idea of a Nimrathi Ranger 1/Druid with the shapeshifting hunter feat and instant enemy as a 3rd level druid spell netting him by 7th level the ability to treat any enemy as a favored one at +4 with a swift action spell.

I have been playing around with a reach weapon wielding fighter/cleric with the growth domain and whirlwind attack and found myself wondering if a can hit everyone with the normal 10' reach then swift action enlarge to get those at 15-20?

On a related note can you use quickdraw to hit everyone withing 5' of you then swop to a reach weapon as a free action to continue the attack? (I'm thinking no on this one as you are attacking with a new weapon not continuing a single attack.)

I was reading tthe mooncaller druid and found myself wondering about the wording of

Night Sight (Ex)

At 2nd level, a mooncaller gains low-light vision. If she already has low-light vision, she gains darkvision with a range of 30 feet. If she already has darkvision, the range of her darkvision is increased by 30 feet.

This ability replaces woodland stride.

So if i am reading this correctly a human would gain low light vision, and elf would get darkvision 30 and a half orc would gain low light vision and darkvision 90. My reasoning is due to the full stops which in my (admittedly somewhat addled) mind makes them seperate.

A thread i was reading suggested that an amulet of mighty fists bane against a common foe would be useful and that got me thinking at 4k a pop surely several of these are a good idea.

There are 13 categories to bane although humanoid is split into so many it probably isn't worth it and outsider is in most situations going to be covered by the evil subtype so lets call it 12 at 4k each we are talking 48k to get +2 to hit and +2d6+2 damage vs almost every opponent in the game with the slightly amusing image of Benny from the mummy and his religious amulets (there is no rule saying you cannot wear all of them only 1 can funtion at a time).

First of all appologies for yet annother dervish dancing character build but i've been messing around with a dervish dancer tank idea and this is what i have so far. The basic idea is to combine Stalwart with crane style on a dex build barbarian to see how viable he would be with a rather cheesy Dawnflower Dervish dip to get Dervish dance early and without wasting a feat on weapon finess.

I'm considering a dirty fighter build and find myself wondering if i use a whip and whirlwind attack can i use a dirty trick combat manuver to blind everyone in a 15' radius?

I am aware that dirty tricks are normally a standard action but at 9th level the dirty fighter archetype can make them as attacks.

Ok i was just thinking about posting on the best pfs builds thread in advice and was thinking about the unarmed fighter when it occured to me if you can ignore the prerequisites for a style feat does that mean you can jump straight to crane wing without taking crane style as they are both style feats?

Specifically a level 9 Dirty Fighter gets the ability to use dirty trick as a normal attack so can he AoO with it and if so does the ability to blind as an AoO make him an impressive "Tank"?

A friend of mine was looking at this class in hopes that a viable armored wizard was now and option and this class on the surface looked perfect. However upon a closer look at the rules Arcane Armor Expertise at level 5 changes the action to use Arcane Armor Training to an immediate action which sounds great untill you look at those rules

Immediate Actions

Much like a swift action, an immediate action consumes a very small amount of time but represents a larger expenditure of effort and energy than a free action. However, unlike a swift action, an immediate action can be performed at any time—even if it's not your turn. Casting feather fall is an immediate action, since the spell can be cast at any time.

Using an immediate action on your turn is the same as using a swift action and counts as your swift action for that turn. You cannot use another immediate action or a swift action until after your next turn if you have used an immediate action when it is not currently your turn (effectively, using an immediate action before your turn is equivalent to using your swift action for the coming turn). You also cannot use an immediate action if you are flat-footed.

So unless i'm reading this wrong doesn't the ability change your swift action into your swift action?

I've been working on a barbarian/cleric concept and i began to wonder does the anger inquisition's rage ability stack with the rage domain?

For instance assume a level 2 barbarian level 8 cleric with the above domains witht the following stats

Str 19 (16 +2 race +1 level 8
Dex 12
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 16 (15 +1 level 4)
Cha 07

He would have the following rage per level?
1=6
2=8
3=8
4=8
5=8
6=8
7=8
8=14 (adds wis mod and cleric level -3)
9=15
10=24 (adds cleric level)
11+= +2 per cleric level

The same question for the effective barbarian level for rage too so would rage level be
1=1
2=2
3=2
4=2
5=2
6=2
7=2
8=5 (add cleric level -3)
9=6
10=10 (add 1/2 cleric level)
ect?

I assume your maximum effective barbarian level would be equal to your hit die if not then that would be interesting

I rather like the dimensional agility feat chain and love Dimensional Dervish and Dimesional Savant so i thought i'd try and figure out what classes can get the feats and when. For the sake of simplicity i am being very strick on the qualifications so you must be able to cast dimension door as a spell or spell like ability or have the Abundant step class feature abilities that act as dimesion door such as the shadow dancers shadow jump may count but i'm working on the assumption they don't.

The numbers show the feats in order and the level needed to qualify so Dimensional Agility/Dimensional Assault/Dimensional Dervish/Dimensional savant or manuvers

Class
Alchemist Does not Qualify*
Anti-Paladin Does not Qualify* (If paladin archetypes are allowed as paladin)
Barbarian Does not Qualify*
Bard Level 11/13/15/17
Cavilier Does not Qualify*
Cleric 7/9/11/13 With travel domain
Druid 7/9/11/13 With wolf shaman taking the travel domain
Fighter Does not Qualify*
Gunslinger Does not Qualify*
Inquisitor Does not Qualify*
Ninja Does not Qualify*
Magus 11/13/15/17
Monk 13/15/17/19 needs to keep abundant step
Oracle Lore Keeper Level 11/13/15/17, Ancient Lorekeeper Level 11/13/15/17
Paladin Level 15/17/19 with sacred servant and travel domain
Ranger Does not Qualify*
Rogue Does not Qualify*
Samurai Does not Qualify*
Sorcerer Level 9/11/13/19
Summoner Level 7/9/11/13
Witch Level 7/9/13/19
Wizard Level 7/9/13/19/

Fetchling Level 11/13/15/19 Must have the shadow walker feat.

* Special: any class can qualify with 3 levels of the Horizon Walker Prestige Class and Astral Mastery
** The Samsaran trick is playing a Samsaran and using their racial ability to get dimesion door as a 3rd level spell from the summoner class

So with no trickery the first classes that qualify are the Summoner and the Travel Domained Cleric and Druid

The sorcerer, witch and wizard can gain the higher level feats faster if they take a better bab progression class such as Eldrich Knight so assuming minimum level for dimension door + 1 fighter and Eldrich Knight they change as follows

Sorcerer 8 /Fighter 1/ EK = 9/11/13/15
Witch 5 /Fighter 1/ EK = 7/9/11/13
Wizard 5 /Fighter 1/ EK = 7/9/11/13

I may have missed a few tricks here (or messed it up entirely) and ask you the loving paizo message board lurkers to point out my faults and mistakes :P (seriously any suggestions ect. are welcome as are cools stories about how dimesion door tricks worked for your characters or in your games :D)

I hope to post some builds using the feats here later and welcome other peoples too.

Edit: deleting the Samsaran trick as it doesn't work :D
Edit 2: Adding fetchling because i can still edit :D

I was messing around with magus builds and come up with a “Flash” fighter (anime fans may know what this means :D) The concept is to use Bladed Dash or preferably Greater Bladed Dash with spell combat to move into the enemy ranks then attack using Dimensional Dervish and finish up back behind the loving protection of the party tank.

The problem i run into is the following

At 1st level, a magus learns to cast spells and wield his weapons at the same time. This functions much like two-weapon fighting, but the off-hand weapon is a spell that is being cast. To use this ability, the magus must have one hand free (even if the spell being cast does not have somatic components), while wielding a light or one-handed melee weapon in the other hand. As a full-round action, he can make all of his attacks with his melee weapon at a –2 penalty and can also cast any spell from the magus spell list with a casting time of 1 standard action (any attack roll made as part of this spell also takes this penalty). If he casts this spell defensively, he can decide to take an additional penalty on his attack rolls, up to his Intelligence bonus, and add the same amount as a circumstance bonus on his concentration check. If the check fails, the spell is wasted, but the attacks still take the penalty. A magus can choose to cast the spell first or make the weapon attacks first, but if he has more than one attack, he cannot cast the spell between weapon attacks.

You teleport with a mere thought, savaging your opponents as you flash in and out of reality.

Prerequisites: Ability to use the abundant step class feature or cast dimension door, Dimensional Agility, Dimensional Assault, base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: You can take a full-attack action, activating abundant step or casting dimension door as a swift action. If you do, you can teleport up to twice your speed (up to the maximum distance allowed by the spell or ability), dividing this teleportation into increments you use before your first attack, between each attack, and after your last attack. You must teleport at least 5 feet each time you teleport.

So my question is while you are taking a full round action with Spell Combat that lets you take a full attack does it qualify as one for Dimensional dervish?

I have not got time to flesh this out atm but the idea was stuck in my head and festering so i thought i'd stick it in your heads instead and cringe at what is made from it.

I'm fairly certain at higher levels this is still possible without the Samsaran Gorganzola clinging to it but i wanted to overdo it as much as possible.

I've been playing around with the idea of a Paladin of Ragathiel that due to failing to save his family from evil tends to lose it in combat. I first of all considered Sacred Servant with the rage domain or anger inquisition but neither of these seemed right and barbarian was not an option do to the non lawful problem so this is what i came up with.

Due to an unfortunate case of fast zombie troll i find myself in need of a new character for Serpent Skull and decided to try my hand a Kensai.

I have 2 slightly different builds in mind with very different motivations but i'll focus on the one most likely to be allowed. (The other starts with a dawnflower dervish dip and involves a gap year gone badly wrong.)

I'm looking for insight and suggestions mostly on finding a more appropirate "native" weapon is doesn't have to be totally optimal but it does need to be finessable. Any other interesting ideas and thoughts are welcome although please don't push strength magus i know they are technically better i just fancy a dex build as my last character was a strength inquisitor.

My group was gaming tonight and my inquisitor of Achaekek bought the farm in part 2 of serpent skull

This lead to what is either a really stupid or kinda scary idea of using a 2 handed whip which for laughs (i don't really wanna play it) i stated up so i thought i'd throw it up here for everyone else to look at.

Half Elf
Lore Warden 4 Armored Barbarian 1

10 18 +2 race
5 14
5 15
0 10
0 12
-4 7

Lvl 1
ARB 1 Exotic weapon (whip) from half elf
level 1 Power Attack
Hp 15 AC 19 (Scale Mail, Hvy Shield, Dex,) CMB +5 CMD 17
Scorpion Whip +4 to hit 1d3 + 6 dmg +6 1d3+8 w rage

Lvl 2
Lore Warden 1 Whip mastery
Hp 23 AC 19 (Breast Plate + Armored Kilt) CMB +6 CMD 18
Whip 2hands +5 1d3+9 [+7 d3+12 w rage]

Lvl 3
Lore Warden 2 Combat Expertese
Lore Warden 2 Weapon Focus Whip
level 3 Combat Reflexes
Hp 32 Ac 20 Plate Mail CMB +9 CMD 19
mw whip 2hnd +8 1d3 +9 [+10 d3+12 w rage]

Lvl 4 +1 con
Hp 44 AC 21 Plate +1 CMB +12 CMD 22
+1 Whip 2hnd +8 1d3+13 [+10 d3 +16 w rage]

Lvl 5
Lore Warden 4 Weapon Spec Whip
level 5 Improved Whip mastery
Hp 54 AC 23 Plate +2 Ring +1 CMB +13 CMD 24
+1 Whip 2hnd +9 1d3+15 [+11 d3+18 w rage]

+1 whip for 23??
+2 platemail 5800
+1 ring of pro 2000

So he gets 15' reach on attacks and 10' for AoO of which he gets 3.

An odd question occured to me. Would the vestigial arm discovery count as a free hand for the purposes of the crane style feats?

If so what about the races with prehensile tails?

As an experiment i thought i'd throw together an archery based bard and run it though a few levels

Obviously atm a much better melee fighter than ranged hopefully that will change
Build wise i chose feather step as battlefield mobility may become important (5 foot steps in difficult terrain is nice)
Round 1(a) If the terrain is bad cast feather step and move to a good spot then if not or afterwards preoceed to round 1(b)
Round 1(b) Battle Dance (move action) and Attack +6 to hit 1d6 +2 damage (+7 and +3 in 30')
Round 2+ Dance (free action) move if needed and shoot

Now he is looking a bit more archerish i took lore warden for the extra skills due to the low probability of needing the heavier armor profs
Round 1(a) If the terrain is bad cast feather step and move to a good spot then if not or afterwards preoceed to round 1(b)
Round 1(b) Battle Dance (move action) and Attack +8 to hit 1d8+4 damage (+9 and +5 in 30')
Round 2+ Dance (free action) 5' step if needed and Attack +6/+6 1d8+4 damage (7/7 and 5 in 30')

Not too much different slightly better at archery. I took arcane strike as i am not using swifts for a while and no penalty to hit and having abundant ammo in my spell list seems the right thing to do combat is much as before
Round 1(a) If the terrain is bad cast feather step and move to a good spot then if not or afterwards preoceed to round 1(b)
Round 1(b) Battle Dance (move action) and Attack +9 to hit 1d8+6 damage (+10 and +7 in 30')
Round 2+ Dance (free action) 5' step if needed and Attack +7/+7 1d8+6 damage (8/8 and 7 in 30')

4th doesn't really change much so i'll skip it so next is

Now he is looking like a good archery character probably not optimal but good none the less and can also function in melee if needed.
Round 1(a) If the terrain is bad cast feather step and move to a good spot then if not or afterwards preoceed to round 1(b)
Round 1(b) Battle Dance (move action) and Cast Allegro (personal haste)
Round 2+ Dance (free action) 5' step if needed and Attack +9/+9/+9 1d8+10 damage (10/10/10 and 11 in 30')

Melee
Round 1 as above
Round 2 Full Attack +11/+11 1d6+7 damage

Looking forward to the next few levels
6th gives him an extra +2 to hit and +3 damage (battle dance and arcane strike), Dance skill now counts as the fly skill
7th he gets +1 to hit and a feat
8th he picks up +1 to hit an Iterative attack (so 13/13/13/8 d8+13) and can cast actual haste for his friends

Feel free to critique, advise, poke fun at, post alternate builds, and/or flame as needed! :P

I attempted what i thought was an inovative tactic in a game this weekend and i'm curious to see how others would have ruled on it. Please note i have no intention on chalanging the ruling made i just wonder how others would handle it. To the point!

We were in a temple complex and fighting a darkstalker with a level 4 party (rolled stats average about 30 points i think) my character attempted to defeat it's deeper darkness ability by going outside and reflecting sunlight down the straight corridor into it's are using a small steel mirror and an enlarge person spell the dm ruled it didn't work.

(I also looked into using a silent image of a mirror but figments can't have real effects so that was quite rightly ruled as a no)

Personally as a dm if a player of mine had tried it i would allow the mirror to have worked due to0
1/ its a cool idea (but it's my idea so i may be biased) &
2/ the party had no other method to deal with it

If you are interested we did eventually beat it by lucky rolls and the slightly too good stone call spell from the apg.

I don't know about you folks but nothing depresses me quite so much as the lack of skill points which certain classes suffer. So I'm working on a concept to remove the number of skills gained from the classes and intelligence stat and give a static number.

My current thinking is everyone would get 6 skill points per level and certain classes would gain an automatic rank in a skill if it is essential to the class so far i have

Alchemist - Craft Alchemy
Bard - Perform
Barbarian - none
Cavalier - Ride
Cleric - Knowledge Religion
Druid - Knowledge Nature
Fighter - none
Inquisitor - none
Monk - none
Oracle - none
Paladin - none
Ranger - Survival
Rogue - Pick 4 "rogue skills"
Sorcerer - none or Bloodline Skill
Summoner - none
Witch - none
Wizard - none

I'm curious as to what everyone else thinks and if anyone thinks I've missed something (I'm ignoring the play tests for now).

I also intend to make some skills universal, things like climbing and swimming so any suggestions for those would be good too. :)

Ok it's a silly question i know. It came up in the session i recently ran and sparked the broader question that if Aquan is intended to be used underwater would being able to speak it enable casting while submerged?

Just had an idea that i don't have the time to attempt so i thought i would throw it out here for others to consider.

How about converting Kingmakes to a large inland sea and doing it as a swashbucklery game with many islands? I've not read much about it in the (probably vain) hopes of one day playing it but the idea of an aquatic version of it appealed to me.

I've been looking through fantasy sword buying sites and ran across what i think an elven curvebalde should look like Here and i'm wondering what everyone else thinks they look like :)

I've been playing around with druid builds and came up with this somewhat ammusing monster of a druid. As far as i can tell it's allowed by the rules but there are people here that understand these things far better than me.

I've not bothered with skills and such as those are fine (apart from one on my companion which may or may not be allowed)

Some of my choices may seem odd like the armor for the wild shape but i chose it so if needed i can be ready for combat in 2 rounds (standard to wild shape move pick up armor in round 1, move to don armor and move to pick up/draw axe in round 2).

I was looking at the ranger options and noticed there was no mobility option for their bonus feats so i thought i would work on one of my own as a suggestion.

So far i have;

Level 2 (need 4 of these sure there are more choices though)
Dodge
Step Up
Nimble Steps
Mobility

Level 6 (2 here)
Acrobatic Steps
Spring Attack
Following Step
Wind Stance
Sidestep

Level 10 (2 here too)
Improved Sidestep
Step up and Strike
Light Step
Lightning Stance

Obviously there are too many here and some i probably missed so i would like suggestions and thoughts please. :)

I'm also considering a Gallant ranger archetype to try and build a swashbuckler with some decent skill points so thoughts on that would also be good

I have created (maybe am creating :)) a prestige class to combine paladin and wizard in response to a thread asking for help and i'd like to invite you all to kick the tires then flame me about how bad it is :D

Arcane Templar

P.S. any constructive criticism while probably accidental will be gratefully received ;P

Is it me or does the the Call Celestial Ally ability give these paladins an overwhelming ability?

If i read this right you are basicly getting a leadership feat level cohort with exceptional abilities for free. (at lvl 8 you can have you very own hound archon "pet").

Obviously most DM's will make sure this is not as abusive as it seems but if i read the spell right you could use it to call a level 6 Aasimar of whatever class you would like as it's lesser version.

Having just finished a fun packed first session of Serpent's Skull and contemplating the idea of party roles i had the idea of reward traits.

These would be traits like the campaign traits used to further the plot and/or fill role gaps based on character actions but judged by the GM. Such as a character unexpectedly thrust in a leadership role could earn a trait based on that concept ect.

Obviously they would only be awarded occasionally but seem to me a better reward for out of the box thinking or good roleplaying than a few more xp or another minor trinket.

I'd like to "hear" other peoples suggestions and thoughts on this idea.

This is mostly a curiosity on my part but i am interested in at what point people consider common sense stops and metagaming starts?

For example in this the (hopefully :)) real world there are many old sayings and rhymes to teach us of common hazards some of which are truer than others. So how would you see this in a fantasy world setting would children or more pertinently training adventurers be taught similar stories and songs that warn them to burn a troll or club a skeleton?

After much debate i see that the hand of the apprentice ability has (rightfully so) gotten removed. However this ability has yet to truely leave us as the magic domain has much the same ability only in the hands for the cleric i am hoping this was mearly an oversight on the part of the developers but i supose we will have to wait and see.

There have been a few topics that included the idea of racial feats so i would like to propose that those who are interested in this actually suggest ideas for them (so as not to make the designers do all the hard work :D).

Personally i like the idea of using racial feat chains and my first suggestion would be to enable these races to partially or totally mimic the racial prestige classes for example.

Arcane Archer:
This prestige class is elf and half elf specific but is rarely used as it (in my opinion) is badly constructed so how about a feat chain an elven wizard could take to let him cast spells with his bow keeping the archetype of an arcane archer without needing to move away from wizard as a class

Similar could be done with a dwarven defender and any other (can't think of any ogl ones) racial classes as well as creating new ones to fit the other roles such races normally fill.