Sacerdos's page

Well... Winged Marauder gives up Mutagen, But unlike some archetypes does NOT say you cant gain it again, So if you are willing to sacrifice a discovery (Or Extra discovery feat) You can pick up the Mutagen Discovery to regain mutagen. You will still be missing Persistent Mutagen, And you will be down a discovery, But it is an idea if you where interested in Winged Marauder!

True, but I'd also have to pay a toll in feats to be effective while riding the bat/vulture. At the very least, mounted combat and mounted archery would be necessary to avoid hefty to-hit penalties with my bombs and infused arrows (from grenadier). Throw in extra discovery, and I'm left wondering how I'd squeeze weapon finesse and piranha strike into the build.

Also, I like gear, and the bat especially would practically need to be buffed with ant haul in order to be able to carry me, let alone my stuff.

And, the AP's guide mentions a lot of underground adventuring. I expect a lot of places with 10 to 15 foot ceilings and not a lot of room for maneuvering.

Rapid shot (or TWF) only works with bombs once you have the fast bombs discovery, until then you're limited to 1/round. The throw splash weapon special attack doesn't upgrade to a full attack naturally.

Ah. Good to know.

I don't agree about the no alchemist archetypes for an all-rounder - poison is useless for most PCs...

Yeah, I was eyeing grenadier for exactly that reason. If I want to poison someone, I'll just polymorph into something appropriate.

10 Str might be a bit low for someone planning to engage in melee if you don't have piranha strike.

My thought was to self buff before polymorphing. Bull's strength, then mutagen, then polymorph would give me at least +8 STR. But that was before the suggestion to get piranha strike, which would allow me to use cat's grace and mutagen on top of an already large DEX instead.

Sorry, for the "Goblin-Rant", but it really bothers me. :)

No problem. We all have our pet peeves.

For the alchemist: I would always go with the basic alchemist. The archetypes are always "trade-offs" while the basic alchemist is a vell-versed allrounder (which is what you need in a small group).

I wouldn't specialize to much into one direction. You can use bombs on range and then your mutagen and melee when the enemies are closing in (basically a switch hitter bomber).
Maybe in combination with en enlarge infusion for the "Hulk effect".

I was thinking something like:

1 Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot (2nd Feat given to all PCs by GM)
2 discovery: tanglefoot bomb
3 Rapid Shot (I'm reasonably sure I can use this with bombs.)
4 discovery: frost bomb
5 Splash Weapon Mastery OR Weapon Finesse
I'm not sure which one to go with. I have to take Weapon Finesse to qualify for Piranha Strike, so I'd like to take it early. I'm just not sure whether the mediocre BAB needs the extra +1 with the bombs v. touch AC.
6 discovery: directed bombs (this seems better than precise bombs)
7 Weapon Finesse OR Piranha Strike (depending on what I took at 5th)
8 discovery: fast bombs OR discovery: force bomb
Considering the AP's guide says "undead" a lot, I'm leaning toward force bomb.

After this, I'm not sure at all. Would the promethean disciple discovery be worth it as a way to add more bodies on the field for such a small group? I suppose it depends on how much time and gold we wind up with.
Would going with Two Weapon Fighting for more bombs thrown in a round be better than adding something for melee survivability?

Also, should I not worry about STR, since I'm going with DEX fighting?

In any case, thanks to everyone who's offered some advice so far.

For a small party there is also the goblin acrhtype 'winged marauder'. Having a companion and flaying could help survival.

I thought about that, but the winged marauder gives up mutagen. So, I'd have to give up on the whole polymorph-and-rend idea.

Hmmm... one post that offered some advice, and two complaining about goblin PCs. Thank you very much, avr. I appreciate the help.

I may be wrong, but isn't there an AP with a civilized goblin living in the starting town, who recruits the characters to help her relatives in a nearby ruined castle? Something something hostage scene ensues, IIRC.

It's been a fair few years since I last played a PF game, and I'm more than a little rusty. We're going to be going through the Tyrant's Grasp AP, and I'm strongly thinking of playing a goblin alchemist, largely because I've never played one and they look like a blast to play. (pun intended)

We're a very small group, so there are only two PCs with what will probably be a healbot NPC tagging along for the ride. So, we're starting with 25 points for stats and, probably, an extra Feat.

I have two main goals for the wee beastie: explode/debuff/cause chaos all over the battlefield, and at least once turn into a flying, massively buffed giant squid and wreck stupid amounts of face.

I'm thinking dump CHA and push DEX & INT. (duh!) After that, I'm staring at all those options, wondering where to start.

Is the fire bomber any good? On paper, it appears not due to only adding INT to fire bomb damage combined with the reduced save DCs for admixtured bombs. That, and I've always been underwhelmed by the elemental body spells.

If not the fire bomber, should I stick with vanilla alchemist or grab grenadier? Something else?

And, is it reasonable to be a bomb specialist *and* an occasional adequate-to-good polymorphing melee-er? (Bull's strength + mutagen + beast shape seems good on paper, but I don't know....)

Anyway, help & advice would be very welcome.

it's a typo.

it's a passive.

Awesome. Thanks!

The Feat has a one action marker on it, but the description doesn't say anything about a duration. Does that mean that you have to wait until you're likely to be (or have been) exposed to poison, then spend a third of each round maintaining the resistance?

Indeed, how would one RP a Cleric of Gorum...?

The last character I played was an inquisitor of Gorum. She did as she pleased and let others do the same, as long as they didn't interfere with her business. She generally felt that weak people deserved what they got, but tended to confront those who abused their strength--both because she didn't like a-holes and for the chance to prove her worth to Gorum in case he was watching.

She never backed down from a challenge she had a chance of winning, which caused the rest of the party some consternation. They once stranded her on the wrong side of a portcullis, facing a giant and a bunch of orcs (Quick! Name the AP!). She didn't mind; she survived, they came back for her, and not everyone has the guts to stick things out.

tl;dr: Go watch Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West". Either that or Schwarzenegger's first Conan movie; Gorum's essentially Crom, after all. You'll get the idea.

Now granted, I haven't taken a thorough look through the familiar details but from a cursory glace, it appears that familiars don't actually have a means of actually making an attack roll to deliver the spell. I could easily be wrong but I didn't see that when I looked up familiar rules.

It's in the "Modifiers and AC" section on p. 217. They use the master's level as their modifier for attack rolls.

I strongly considered inquisitor, but I want a more arcane feel to the character.

I hadn't thought to check out the unchained monk, though. Thanks, Kaouse!

In that case Sorcerer is pretty ideal. More spells per day, better spell list, and using Empyreal helps out with ability scores.

Sweet! Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated!

Really you'll want to decided what your main focus is, magic or archery, and which is the back up.

My thought was to focus on archery and use spells mainly for buffing, battlefield control, and utility. I was thinking of the eldritch archer magus or arcane archer mostly for flinging area/touch debuffs downrange.

My group's soon to start a new gestalt game, and I want to make a kick-arse magic-slinging archer. I'm sold on the zen archer qinggong monk, but I'm not sure what to pair it with. I'm torn between an eldritch archer magus and an empyreal sorcerer that PrC's into arcane archer.

Any advice or other ideas would be appreciated.

Wulfrik the Artificer, a craft-feat-heavy universalist, was my first PF wizard as well as my favorite to date. He was obsessed with constructs and mechanical contraptions, and was determined to craft the perfect eternal body for himself. Running around Waterdeep with an entourage of awakened golems and espousing a "machine is better than meat" philosophy at anyone who seemed vaguely interested, he got a reputation as eccentric even for a wizard. Eventually, he introduced a version of the warforged race to Faerun. Around 25th or 27th level, he transferred his consciousness into a ridiculously powerful glassteel golem and took his place as the first deity in the warforged pantheon.

However you are still making choices that optimize your chosen style(s) and make them functional.

You completely missed my point. Yes, optimization of a sort happens, but the primary concern is "what would the character want/do?" It is not "what works best in the game?"

The former places in-character concerns over out-of-character concerns, and the latter does the opposite. It's a question of emphasis, and it's a continuum rather than a binary system.

This is what I call Optimzing, what you are suggesting as the "optimal" cleric is Power Gaming. Do you see the difference now?

I saw it long before you posted. We're talking past one another. The OP suggested that the distinction of optimizer versus roleplayer was completely invalid. I disagree, but not strongly.

ETA: Perhaps it would help to note that "optimizer" doesn't mean "over-the-top munchkin power gamer" in exactly the way that "roleplayer" doesn't mean "a person who plays completely ineffective characters".

"He doesn't optimize, he's got a mustache"

Can anyone explain to me how this would be less relevant than comparing "Role playing" to optimization?

Here's an example that may help. My current character is a cleric of Loviatar. In case you don't know, she's an evil pain goddess whose favored weapon is a whip. So, my character wields a weapon that does a base of 1d3 nonlethal damage, ignored by anyone in any kind of armor. Three feats later, thanks to the whip mastery feats, and she's doing lethal damage through armor at least. However, thanks to the whip feats, I haven't had room to squeeze in any metamagic or channeling feats yet. Beyond that, she tends to focus on spells that cause pain (inflict x wounds, etc.), as opposed to healing and buffing spells.

Yes, I've given her a very good wisdom and a reasonable charisma, and I've made efforts to allow her to be effective enough to be fun in and out of combat. However, she's clearly far from an optimized cleric. More to the point, every non-optimal decision has been made in a spirit of "what would my character do/want?" as opposed to "what would be the most effective character I could make?"

So, the distinction has a reason to exist, even if more is made of it that it generally deserves.

I feel educated.

LOL

Don't ask me how I remembered those two. Too many dwarf and gnome characters in my past, I guess.

Something to experiment with might be to have the extra HP fade gradually; say, at 4 HP per round or so. Or, have them wait to disappear for a full round after the barbarian dropped out of rage. Would either method be all that open to abuse?

If I recall correctly, there was at least one, maybe two gods who spread gems and minerals around underground (a dwarven one and a gnomish one) in the Forgotten Realms.

Dumathoin and Callarduran Smoothhands, respectively.

** spoiler omitted **

Just making sure I understand this...this feat isn't activated against a move or withdrawal, correct?

As I interpret it, no.

Actually, now that I think about it, if I ever start a new campaign I may have the PCs go through something like this as a sort of 0-level proving ground. It'd be a great way to provide the party with a back-story and motivation for adventuring together.

I've had great success doing exactly that. One of my longest-running campaigns started out with a merchant's scribe, a knight's squire, a common laborer, and a noble's third-eldest son banding together as the sole survivors of a Zhentarim attack on a caravan. Good times, good times.

...an unofficial Pathfinder-compatible edition of Gamma World...

This is so. Very. Cool! Awesome job. Gamma World was my favorite game back in the day, and it looks like you've done a great job with this conversion. My group is so going to have this inflicted on them at some point. I'll let you know how it works out.

Too many of the current features are designed around a lightly armored berserker charging into battle on foot. I'd rather the class be modified so that like the sorceror their are some universal features but that their are cultural packages that enable a variety of barbarians to be generated. Rage powers can do that to a degree but I'd love more of the barbarian's features to be always on rather than rage dependent.

Agreed in full.

Yeah, vikings were considered barbarians, but I think the DnD Barbarians probably hold more in common with early Greek barbarians, which was a derogatory term for the uncivilized people in their lands.

Note that the primary definition of uncivilized is not living in cities. This fits just about any notion of barbarians out there, D&D and otherwise. The Icelandic Vikings certainly didn't have cities; they were a disparate collection of squabbling farmsteaders who occasionally got together with their friends to take other people's stuff. The Norse Vikings were more civilized than that, but only just. In any case, uncivilized doesn't necessarily mean unorganized.

The berserker, if I remember right, could not use shields while raging.

I realize you're talking about the 2nd ed. berserker here, but rage seems to me to be fairly clearly styled after the Viking barsarkargang. The sagas that mention berserkers tend to have them wearing nothing but bear pelts (bar-sarkr) and shields. They're described using those shields in combat as more than chew toys.

As far as D&D goes, the material has barbarians of all kinds, from jungle-dwellers to desert bedouin to quasi-Vikings in the frozen north. I see nothing wrong with Pathfinder barbarians running that gamut, simulating quasi-Zulu tribesmen who whip themselves into a whooping fury before charging with their shields and spears, neo-Viking barsarkr in chain mail with shield and axe, and every other kind of crazy illiterate bad-arse one cares to imagine.