Runelord Apologist's page

While I love the Razmiran/False Priest archetype for sorcerers, something that always bugged me is the fact that everyone seems to use scrolls and wands as the source of divine spells for False Channel. It's convenient and they're easy to acquire, but it completely kills the flavor; you're not going to convince anyone that you've got divine powers when every spell you cast is preceded by fishing around in your haversack for the right magic item and telling everyone to look away and cover their ears.

Rather than play a comically inept phony priest, I went looking for alternatives to scrolls. Turns out, it was another sorcerer archetype that had the answer: spell tattoos don't require storage, are silent to activate, and the activation method (touching the tattoo) can easily be disguised by dramatic posing as you revel in your divine might. Sadly, the archetypes themselves won't stack, but the crafting feat is easily acquired and the Razmiran Priest's UMD bonus means you can easily make use of divine scrolls to meet the crafting requirements.

With the thematics solved, I'm now wondering what sort of sorcerer build would work best with this theme. Tattoos are somewhat slot-limited (you can fit 11 on a humanoid), so I'd need to pick the most useful/impressive divine spells to have 'on me' at all times. Bloodline is fairly unrestricted, though I'm leaning towards Rakshasa (making it even harder to distinguish my arcane casting from divine) or Arcane (everyone loves a familiar, and with the transfer tattoo spell it could serve as storage for additional tattoos). Further, once False Channel is acquired at level 9, there's not much stopping me from multiclassing out or going for a prestige class. Tattooed Mystic and the Razmiran Priest PRC are the obvious contenders, while Pathfinder Savant gives great bonuses towards magic item use.

So, any advice? How do I make this build into the best pretender priest it can be?

Sir Roguesworth of Ooemdee, a level 10 Rogue, happens upon a scroll of Animate Dead after busting up some necromancer clerics. They were pretty crap necromancers, so the scroll is of the minimum CL (5), but Roguesworth could use a new butler, so he goes ahead and makes the DC 25 UMD check and raises up to 10 HD of undead, with a theoretical cap of 20 HD. So far, so good.

Now Roguesworth digs up another scroll, same as the first. He's been trying to get into Casty the Sorceress' pants for a while, and gifts her the scroll as a token of affection. Casty's level 10 as well, and thus can already cast animate dead on her own steam; she's got a closet full of 40 HD of skeletons. But she figures, hey, why waste a spell slot, and goes ahead and uses the scroll. What happens? Given that Roguesworth can raise and control undead with no caster level, it would seem weird if Casty couldn't, but how do the spell and scroll limitations interact? Can she control 40 HD on her own steam, and another 20 HD through the scroll, or does her personal cap cut the scroll off and force her to let skellies out of the closet?

Continuing on, Roguesworth digs up a third scroll (these necromancers were hoarders, too). This one is slightly better, CL 6 instead of 5, and was made by a wizard necromancer instead of a cleric. Roguesworth shrugs and attempts to raise additional skeletons. Now, the new casting can raise up to 12 HD of undead at once, and with the new scroll's CL, Roguesworth would have a cap of 24 HD. But at the time he raised the first batch of undead, he had an effective CL of 5. Do the two totals merge (24 HD overall) or stack (24 + 20 = 44)? Does the scrolls being of different types have any effect on their interaction, as with Mystic Theurges getting separate caps from divine and arcane castings of the spell?

So I'm sure everyone knows the basic rules for polymorphing and armor. Druid wild-shapes, armor melds, druid sad. However, there seems to be a consensus that the wild-shaped druid can still put on barding after transforming, though usually with some help from other party members.

Now consider the armored coat. It's the only armor that can be donned and doffed quickly enough to be reasonable in a battle. Further, I can't find anything that would prohibit armored coat barding from being purchased for a mount, or in this case a druid wild-shaped into a dire tiger to model for the armorer (ignore for the moment the whole metal issue).

The druid and friends get ambushed, and the druid decides he wants to be a kitty now. He pulls the tiger-coat out of his trusty bag of holding as a move action, tosses it on the ground as a free, then wild-shapes as a standard. On the next round, tiger-druid picks up the coat as a move action (in his teeth, I guess? I can't find any prohibition for animals picking things up, anyhow), then spends another move action to put it on.

Now, I'm not sure shaped druids in barding was ever RAI, but it seems to work RAW, and the image of a dire tiger running around in an armored longcoat is too beautiful for me not to consider it. So my question is, am I missing something? Is there some reason this wouldn't work?

Okay, so I'm planning out a maneuver-based alchemist/fighter, and I'm having some trouble understanding how ye old Tentacle discovery will interact with the Quick maneuver feats and Two-Weapon Fighting.

On your turn, you can perform a single [whichever] combat maneuver in place of one of your melee attacks. You must choose the melee attack with the highest base attack bonus to make the [maneuver].

Now, my first question is, when using these feats in combination with Two-Weapon Fighting (assume daggers are the weapons being used), would the penalty from the attack being replaced apply to the quick maneuver?

Carrying on, the Tentacle discovery, per loads and loads of arguments on the subject, can only be used to attack by replacing an existing attack. So, say that the character in question is full-attacking with a +5 BAB (feat prereqs being ignored for simplicity). He has two attacks, primary and off-hand, at +3/+3. The primary attack is replaced by a Quick maneuver, as per that feat, leaving him with the off-hand attack. Now, he wants to replace that attack with the tentacle.

Is the tentacle attack:
a) an off-hand attack, thus taking the TWF penalty, as per the attack it replaced?
b) a primary natural attack, since no weapon has actually been used thus far?
c) a secondary natural attack, since there was a weapon attack preceding, even though it got replaced?
d) not possible, due to some rule I missed or misread?

I'm not sure if anyone here has much experience with the Fetchling summoner archetype, Shadow Caller. The major feature, Shadow Summoning, alters the summon monster lists to add a bunch of Shadow-Plane-flavored monsters.

Summon Monster IV: A shadow caller cannot summon Medium elementals, hell hounds, hound archons, or mephits, but can summon allips, gloomwings, and shadows.

My question is specifically with regards to shadows, and their Create Spawn ability.

A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities.

Create Spawn (Su): A humanoid creature killed by a shadow's Strength damage becomes a shadow under the control of its killer in 1d4 rounds.

Does causing creatures to become other creatures fall under the "no summon or conjure" ban on the spell? It's not a spell-like ability, and there's nothing the Shadow actively does to trigger it, nor can it just decide not to create spawn. Further, would a created shadow be under the control of the summoned shadow, or the summoner holding the strings? Could the summoner tell "his" shadow to tell the newbie to obey the summoner, or would it just wander off once the spell ended?

As far as balance goes, a wizard could do this perfectly legally... at level 15, with Create Greater Undead. That's a hell of a level gap (summoner needing only level 7), but it does take a very specific build to pull off. I can only imagine the ethical issues that would crop up from turning every dead guy into a dementor-lite.