Long story short is that I have a former Paladin character who over the course of several campaigns had a troubled time as a proper paladin, fell from grace, returned to grace, ended up dying, and has been missing from the show for a while. She's going to be reappearing soon, and I'm looking for ideas for a rebuild. I'm trying to think of something more interesting than a plain ol' sword and board Paladin, but still thematically appropriate for someone who used to be a Paladin and has come back to serve Iomedae again. Like a melee blaster oracle, or weird religious monk multiclasser, or even another Paladin but with an unusual build. Any of you have any experience with slightly more "outside the box" builds that might be fun but also maintain a reasonable power level?
NOTE: for sources, I'm only allowed access to CRB, APG, and Mythic Adventures
OTHER NOTE: I've already done the archer Paladin thing with her, and awesome as it was (whooo DPS!), I'm going for something different.
Does the Mummification Alchemist discovery (which makes you immune to nonlethal damage) make you immune to all forms of suffocation or just to "slow suffocation"? For instance, can he survive in a bag of holding?
Mummification:
The alchemist has mastered preserving flesh and applied this knowledge to his own body, turning himself into an undead-like creature. After learning this discovery, the alchemist must perform a 30-day regimen of a special diet, rigorous exercise, and drinking a mildly poisonous alchemical tea. At the end of this regimen, he falls unconscious for 24 hours, then awakens as a “living mummy.” The alchemist’s type does not change, but he becomes immune to cold, nonlethal damage, paralysis, and sleep.
Suffocation:
A character who has no air to breathe can hold her breath for 2 rounds per point of Constitution. If a character takes a standard or full-round action, the remaining duration that the character can hold her breath is reduced by 1 round. After this period of time, the character must make a DC 10 Constitution check in order to continue holding her breath. The check must be repeated each round, with the DC increasing by +1 for each previous success.
When the character fails one of these Constitution checks, she begins to suffocate. In the first round, she falls unconscious (0 hit points). In the following round, she drops to –1 hit points and is dying. In the third round, she suffocates.
Slow Suffocation: A Medium character can breathe easily for 6 hours in a sealed chamber measuring 10 feet on a side. After that time, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage every 15 minutes. Each additional Medium character or significant fire source (a torch, for example) proportionally reduces the time the air will last. Once rendered unconscious through the accumulation of nonlethal damage, the character begins to take lethal damage at the same rate. Small characters consume half as much air as Medium characters.
Bag of Holding:
If living creatures are placed within the bag, they can survive for up to 10 minutes, after which time they suffocate.
Looking for a good, inexpensive iPhone app for keeping track of my wizard's spellbook. Something that will let me track spells known, memorized today, and used today while linking to the actual spell details would be great. Doesn't necessarily have to be Pathfinder-specific (though that would be best) as long as I can enter in my own spell information.
Looking for interesting ideas for ploys/cons/capers to mess around with and "debuff" enemies.
I just recently built a new trickster character (Illusionist Mage) for my group's mythic campaign, and I'm going to be trying to play up as much as I can the kind of character who uses his brains/skills just as effectively as his magical abilities. I'm trying to think ahead so I have a nice bank of tricks up my sleeves that will be both interesting as well as effective. So hit me up with your ideas! For the purposes of your brainstorming, you can assume crazy high bluff and disguise skills, plus a full compliment of illusions and other spells 5th level or lower (for now), as well as convenient Shadow Stepping ability for the purposes of getting behind enemy lines and getting out again quickly. And remember the guy's mythic so if double-casting in one round is completely necessary, that's an option. Also FYI, the rest of the party is 10th level currently and has a balanced assortment of ranged, tank, DPS, and buffing players.
Here's what I have so far (note-- many of these ploys assume going in disguised as the enemy first):
Book Club:
Give separate explosive runes “scrolls” to a group of the enemy and instruct them to gather together and read it all in unison when the adventurers come.
Sword of Truth:
Give the monster a non-magical sword/mace/whatever that it’s not proficient in and tell it that it’s a magical uber-powerful gift from his demonic overlord (or whatever).
Bless You:
Tell the monster you’re going to bless its weapon/holy symbol/etc., take the item and disappear.
Sleeper Cell:
Tell one or a few monsters in a group of baddies that one or more others in their group are paladins in disguise.
Orders are Orders:
Tell one or a few monsters in a group that their demonic overlord orders the execution of a particular individual in their group as punishment for past failures.
Closer Than Your Friends:
Tell the monster/group that the adventurers approaching are false crusaders or disguised monsters here to lay a trap for some other adventurers. Get the group in prime position and then attack.
Master of Illusion:
Tell a monster that someone in the party is an illusion and to ignore that person. It may seem like they are damaging you, but it’s not real, just part of the magic.
Draft:
Call out to one baddie as if he was your ally and say the time has come to remove his disguise, then cast an illusion spell over him making him look like a paladin to the other baddies.
Watch Your Step:
: Create a pit and an illusion of a pit immediately next to it, blocking off all approach. Have Elliot spring attack across the illusion, and then create another actual pit in the same place after he’s back across. Sit back and wait for the enemies to run over the “fake” pit.
Poor Man’s Banish:
Create an identical illusion of the floor under a monster’s feet. Next round, make a big show of “banishing” him to the celestial prison plane of never-ending torment, and create a pit underneath him. He falls through, effectively vanishing. Now intimidate other creatures as appropriate.
Voices in Your Head:
Convince an intelligent monster that it has gone insane by whispering in its ear while invisible.
Push to Open:
Create an illusion wall blocking off a group of creatures and then cast stinking cloud or cloudkill in the area through the wall. If needed, reinforce by readying a Wall of Force spell to cover just the area the creatures inside try to break down while maintaining an avenue through a different part of the illusion wall to pelt them with fun things.
Howdy,
I'm helping a friend build a Leonal Agathion character and don't have time to do as in depth delving as I normally do, so I need help brainstorming. Anyone got cool ideas for classes/archetypes/feats/special abilities/etc that would work well for improving upon the base Leonal? I can take it up by a few CR-worth.
Oh sages of Pathfinder,
I've got a magus/duelist (plus a couple splashes) build that has a couple slots open for some new feats. To give you a general idea of the build, the other feats I've got or will have in addition to the ones provided by the classes are:
The idea here is an extremely elusive fighter with a bit of frigid touch casting shazam. She definitely stays in melee, is already crazy hard to hit (so i don't need combat expertise or anything like that), and is looking for something to either take advantage of the many misses opponents have or boost her damage output.
For the purposes of my next feat, I've got one slot open at lvl 9 and one at lvl 15. However, with the lvl progression, I'm not going to be able to utilize any more of the high level magus arcanas, so you can save the suggestions of the Extra Arcana feat for things like Dispelling Strike and whatnot).
Any feats that have worked out well for those of you with duelists or magi out there?
A party member recently turned on our party in the midst of an encounter on promise of gaining greater power from our opponent. Now that combat is over we have to decide what to do with him. Now, he was really just roleplaying his character so we don't want to screw him over too badly. Still he got one of us killed (me) and almost killled two others. Any ideas on appropriate penance/punishment? (We already have resurrection costs covered)
I know this is essentially just getting at the heart of a roleplaying game (you know, those things where you play a *role* in a party), but I'm I've been thinking about working with a friend in my group to create a pair of characters who are *particularly* well-suited to working together. I'm not just talking about "hey, it's nice to have a wizard for wizarding and a fighter for fighting." I mean two characters who would be highly dependent on each other yet be exceedingly complementary.
I've come across smaller instances, such as one character specializes in making the enemies flat-footed for his rogue buddy to sneak attack, a bard that boosts the morale bonuses of his barbarian buddy, etc. But I'm looking for something broader where the entire build of both classes assumes the other's assistance. Something like a mounted combat character riding a wild-shape shifted druid, or a caster that specializes in creating the precise conditions that a certain kind of monk likes to fight in. Note: I'm not looking for just good multi-classing ideas. I'm talking two completely separate characters.
Has anyone come across any builds that have this kind of synergy?
EDIT: I'm not looking for two characters that are essentially the same class which work well doubling up. I'm looking for two distinctly different characters.
A friend asked me to temporarily join his campaign for a session or few, but they are still using 3.5. Thus, I find myself in need of some quick tips/rundown on the primary differences between 3.5 and Pathfinder (what were the biggest changes when Pathfinder was written?). Is there such a guide out there that will be more efficient that just reading the whole 3.5 rulebook, since this is only going to be for a few sessions?
And fear not that I will revert to their primitive D&D ways. Pathfinder for life!
I'm going to be running (for the first time) a pre-fab scenario that involves an enemy sorcerer who is supposed to cast solid fog on the party and an enemy rogue who is supposed to make heavy use of spring attack (according to the listed tactics). Now, it seems to me that solid fog would make spring attack useless since...
A) It would halve the rogues movement to 15 ft, which is not enough to use consecutive spring attacks. Spring attack would essentially become: Move 10ft to hit a dude and move 5 feet away from the dude who will just 5 foot step to full attack you next turn.
and
B) Solid Fog (as per the fog cloud effect) means that the rogue couldn't see anyone further than 5ft away and therefore couldn't target them with a sneak attack.
So the outlined tactics seem to render the rogue useless (she has no equipment or abilities that render her immune to fog cloud). What am I missing? The best I could come up with is that the rogue could use hearing to locate a target well enough to move toward them with spring attack, then when within 5ft attack the target, and finally complete the spring attack by moving away. However, that only solves problem B.
If it comes down to it, I'll just ignore the listed tactics and have the sorcerer cast Fog Cloud Instead, but it seems like a waste.
I need a good spell (preferably divine, but arcane is ok) that will make an already dead character very difficult and/or impossible to raise or resurrect. The basic idea here is that a king has been assassinated, and the cleric who is supposed to be casting the resurrection spell on him instead casts the spell I'm looking for in order to make sure that he stays assassinated.
(And gosh-- who knew that relatively cheap ways to bring people back to life would be turn out to be so annoying? Sure puts a dent in the assassination business)extremely blurry, distorted photo
I've been working on a mage hunter build using an Inquisitor of the Spellbreaker archetype with the spellkiller inquisition. Among other things, this will net a +6 to the DC of defensive casting around me, which sounded pretty good to me. However, I've recently heard some talk about how the Disruptive ability never really pans out for PCs/ just isn't that good (sort of like SR never really working). Can someone who has more experience with a Disruptive character (or even better, someone who's played a PC with Disruptive *and* Foil Casting) shed some more light on this?
With the the Foil Casting bumping up the Disruptive DC to a +6 DC, will this ability actually make a difference?
p.s. I will also have Step Up, so I can avoid the 5 foot step dance with casters.
What caster level does Determination Armor cast breath of life at?
Determination:
A shield or armor with this property provides the ability to fight on against seemingly impossible odds. Once per day, when the owner reaches 0 or fewer hit points, the item automatically provides a breath of life spell.
Breath of Life:
This spell cures 5d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +25)...
I'm building a Cavalier, and this is my first time playing a mounted character. As such, I'm not 100% clear on how mounted combat works exactly (not the feat, just regular riding around a combat-trained horse in battle). I've looked around at the Ride Skill section in the CRB and a couple other places, and those don't do such a great job of explaining.
So can someone give me a basic rundown on the way it works?
e.g. Move actions, standards actions, your actions vs. mount's actions, you doing a charge vs. your mount doing a charge, provoking, etc.
The whole shebang.
Thanks,
Confused Cavalier
And as an aside, (typically) how often do things attack your mount instead of you? That is, how concerned should i be about someone killing my horse, provided i give it decent armor?
Trying to figure out exactly what the Cavalier Order of the Tome's "Powerful Knowledge" ability lets you do.
Powerful Knowledge:
At 8th level, the cavalier gains the ability to read scrolls and cast arcane or divine spells from a scroll as if he had a caster level of his cavalier level –4. He can decipher all scrolls, using his Linguistics skill in place of Spellcraft, and does not need to cast read magic in order to decipher a scroll. Which type of spell the cavalier can cast is based on the Knowledge skill he chose for specialized knowledge. If he chose Knowledge (arcana), he can cast any arcane spells from a scroll. If he chose Knowledge (religion), he can cast any divine spells from a scroll. Furthermore, he gains a +1 bonus to an ability score for purposes of determining the level of spells he can cast from a scroll, and this bonus increases by +1 at 10th level and every 5 levels thereafter (to a maximum of +4 at 20th level). The ability score that gains the bonus is dependent on which skill the cavalier picked for his specialized knowledge ability. If the cavalier picked Knowledge (arcana), he gains the bonus to Intelligence. If he picked Knowledge (religion), he gains the bonus to Wisdom.
So it's clearly trying to let you bypass some of the requisites for casting a scroll. To cast a scroll you need:
1. The spell must be of the correct type (arcane or divine).
2. The user must have the spell on her class list.
3. The user must have the requisite ability score.
How many of these does the powerful knowledge ability let you bypass? It looks to me like 1 and 2, with them main focus being on 2, then the second part of the ability helps you meet requirement 3.
Eaxmple: Provided the cavalier picks knowledge (religion), and has a wisdom of 10, he could cast a scroll of cure light wounds.
1. Knowledge Religion ties you to divine spells
2. Ability lets you bypass class spell list
3. Ability score will be 11 with the PK ability, meaning you can cast 1st level spells.
I'm going about making a character that is posing as a Paladin. The basic idea is that he forsook his vows and lost his Paladin abilities but is trying to stay true to his former church/cause. So what I need is help making a non-Paladin as good a fake as I can.
Some restrictions:
Cannot have levels as a cleric, oracle, or inquisitor. The idea is that his church, god, etc. have abandoned him so I don't want his character to have that kind of direct divine help.
What I've got so far:
I bounced around lots of ideas for how to best mimic the paladin abilities (e.g. Monk of the Healing hand for lay on hands, or some type of rogue with UMD to mimic divine spells with wands/scrolls). What I eventually settled on was a Cavalier, Order of the Tome. Aside from fitting pretty well flavor-wise this gives some very rough equivalences that I can roleplay to make look like some of the Paladin's more outwardly obvious abilities--
Smite Evil = Challenge
Divine Bond (Mount) = Cavalier Mount
Divine Spells = Powerful Knowledge ability
Lay on Hands = Cure Light wounds scrolls in a spring-loaded wrist sheath
Ally Buffing special abilities = Tactician
What can you add? Best ways to mask my fake divine spells? Any cool way to mimic channel positive energy (if not, I can always pretend I took the Oath of Vengeance)? Particular feats I should consider? I'll take anything that will make this guy more convincing.
So this seems like it should be a fairly obvious "yes", but just to check...
If you have Rapid Grappler (and the Greater Grapple prereq), can you make three grapple checks per round? That is, on standard, one move, and one swift?
Greater Grapple specifically spells out "This feat allows you to make two grapple checks each round" while Rapid Grappler doesn't, but it seems to me that if you made a standard already and used the move action to make your second grapple (assuming success on the check), that you'd still trigger the swift. Obviously, this wouldn't be to maintain the grapple but to do other grapple-related actions (e.g. move half speed in a grapple).
The second in my series of sunder related questions for the Breaker Barbarian i'm building:
The Breaker archetype gives you bonuses to sundering and using improvised weapons and is clearly designed to take advantage of the "break stuff and then use it" strategy. I like this idea, but I'm unclear on the rules around it.
Can you use a destroyed (not "broken" but *destroyed*) weapon as an improvised weapon?
I'd like to be able to sunder an enemy's weapon, then use it as an improvised weapon for bonuses and basassery, but I don't know if this is a) legal, or b) at all a viable strategy. I'm not talking optimization here, just decently viable strategy. If someone could clear up both of those issues for me, that'd be great.
(and yes, I will be taking the appropriate "improvised weapon mastery"-type feats, traits, etc.)
Trying to figure out what the point of a hand crossbow is? Originally thought (based on the name) that the point was that you could fire it in one hand (duh!), but it still requires two hands to load, so you still can't do anything with the hand you freed up. Even Rapid Reload does not mitigate this problem, since the free action to reload still requires two hands, as per the hand crossbow description.
That leaves what? A bad crossbow that you can fire once while having something in your other hand? A bad crossbow that you can use while using a buckler?
I was really looking forward to building a dual-wielding hand crossbowman. And I'm certain I'm not the only one.
So can anyone tell me why the hand crossbow exists? Or is it just for flavor?
Can you Sunder a creature's Natural Weapons (e.g. Claws, teeth, etc.)? I'm building a Sunderer character (for fun in a one-shot) and trying to figure out exactly how worthless he might be against monsters with no equipment.
Are there any traits or feats out there that let you get additional attacks of opportunity per round *other than* Combat Reflexes? Or anything that lets you base your number of AoO off of Intelligence or Wisdom?
I need help picking and prioritizing schools of magic for my Spellbreaker Inquisitor's Defense against Magic ability.
Defense against Magic:
At 3rd level, a Spellbreaker picks a single wizard school. She gains a +1 bonus on saving throws against arcane spells of that school. Every four levels beyond 3rd, the Spellbreaker picks a new school and gains this bonus against arcane spells of that school (to a maximum of five schools of magic at 19th level). Furthermore, each time the Spellbreaker picks a new school, the bonuses for the schools she has already chosen increase by 1.
The character we're working with here is a Dwarf Inquisitor of the Spellbreaker archetype with the Spellkiller Inquisition. First feat taken will be Steel Soul.
Here are my thoughts so far on the various schools:
Abjuration:
Primarily not an offense-based school, so probably not as worth worrying about.
Conjuration:
Definitely has some offensive focus. However, a lot of the spells I'd be worrying about are not save based (e.g. summoned monsters, acid arrows, etc). Still, there are the pits and fogs and such, so this will probably be a good one to include fairly early on.
Divination:
Again, primarily not an offense-based school, so probably not worth worrying about boosting saves for.
Enchantment:
(Hello Sandal) Definitely some offense-type spells in here that can mess with your character, but most of them are Will Save based, which will already by my strongest save, as well as mind affecting, which I will get two rolls on (Spellbreaker). Thus it might be more efficient to focus elsewhere.
Evocation:
Obviously the classic offensive school, so plenty of spells here to get thrown at me. Plus, the typically relevant save for Evocation spells is Reflex, which will be my weakest save in the Inquisitor class, so it would definitely be nice to have a little bump there. On the other hand, some of the offensive spells you see a lot are "ranged touch" based (e.g. Scorching Ray), so saves don't matter as much. Still, when the fireballs start flying, he who has good saves has a happy(er) day.
Illusion:
As with Enchantment(!), plenty of annoying offensive spells in the Illusion school but mostly Will Save based and Mind-affecting, the two things that I will already have the best defense against (high base Will save, high Wisdom, and roll twice for mind-affecting).
Necromancy:
Lots of scary offensive spells going on, almost all of which are save-based. Most are Fortitude saves, which will be a decently strong save for me already (Fast progression in inquisitor and will have a decent CON), but it won't be as good as Will, and I won't get the mind-affecting bonus roll. The main thing holding me back (aside from wanting to maybe focus on Reflex-based magic school first) is that Necromancy is maybe *slightly* less common than some of the other schools.
Transmutation:
As before, not really a direct offensive school. Won't worry to much about saves against this one.
My current order of priority is as follows:
1) Evocation
2) Necromancy
3) Conjuration
4) Enchantment
5) Illusion
What do you think? Which schools should I prioritize?
Looking to build a sort of mage-hunter type character in my next campaign. I'm starting with a Dwarven inquisitor of the Spellbreaker archetype with the Spellkiller Inquisition. Got any advice for nice feats, traits, tricks, combos, etc. to make him even better at doing what he does? I'd also *consider* a one- or two-level splash in another class if it was going to net me something really significant against casters.
(As an aside, I'd also welcome any advice on picking schools of magic with the "Defense Against Magic" ability of the Spellbreaker archetype)
I seem to remember seeing something about always getting at least 1 skill point with a level up, but I can't find it anywhere in the rulebook. Is this so? So for instance, if you were a sorcerer (2 skill points per level) with a -2 INT mod, and you were putting your favored class bonus into hp, would you still get a minimum 1 point to spend?
As a full attack action, can you fight defensively and use the Parry ability from the Duelist prestige class.
Fighting defensively has:
"You can choose to fight defensively when taking a full-attack action. If you do so, you take a –4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round."
Parry has:
"Whenever the duelist takes a full attack action with a light or one-handed piercing weapon, she can elect not to take one of her attacks"
It sounds like to do both, you would make all your attacks at a -4 penalty, and sacrifice one attack to open yourself for a parry later on. Both of these seem to me to be ways to modify a full attack action while not replacing the action itself. In fact one of the things that the Duelist class gives you is a defensive bonus (elaborate defense) when fighting defensively, and I don't see why they would give you a class-specific bonus that then precludes use of the most important ability the class has.
Alright, the name of the game is Sense Motive. What I need from you guys are static abilities, feats, etc. that give permanent bonuses to Sense Motive (i.e. not spells like Guidance). For the purpose of this exercise, you can assume a 20th level character.
Here’s what I have so far:
Wisdom maxed to 24 (and yes, I know I can get this higher with a Headband or Ioun Stone): +7
Sense Motive ranks: +20
Stern Gaze Inquisitor ability: +10
Skill Focus: +6
Alertness: +4
Eye for Talent: +2
Survivor Trait: +1
Snake Style: +2
What else can you give me? I want to max this sucker out. I will accept feats, supernatural abilities, multiclassing (as long as it provides more than it takes away from the inquisitor stern gaze), equipment… anything that’s permanent or useable many times per day. Help me out.
Now, why am I looking so hard for maxed out Sense Motive, you might ask? Well, if you take the things I have already, that’s a +52 to the check. That means, with Snake Style active, my AC will be between 53 and 72, depending on the d20. Even higher if I spend money on advanced magical equipment. Fun, right?
(And yes, yes, before you all jump down my throat, I know I’m not the first person to think of this. I just haven’t seen additional tips on the forums for how to pump the sense motive even higher. And yes, I also know that this would only work once per round and would therefore not be the best bet character wise. This is mostly for fun to see how high we can get it)
I’m trying to figure out how my various abilities would interact with Acid Arrow in terms of how much damage it deals.
Here’s what you have to deal with:
Elemental Bloodline Arcana (Fire):
Whenever you cast a spell that deals energy damage, you can change the type of damage to match the type of your bloodline. This also changes the spell's type to match the type of your bloodline.
Draconic Bloodline Arcana (Fire):
Whenever you cast a spell with an energy descriptor that matches your draconic bloodline's energy type, that spell deals +1 point of damage per die rolled.
Elemental Pupil (Fire):
Choose one of the following energy types: acid, cold, electricity, or fire. When casting a spell of 1st level or higher that deals damage of your chosen energy type, the spell deals 1 extra point of damage of this type.
Havoc of the Society:
Whenever you cast a spell that deals damage, you gain a +1 trait bonus to the total damage dealt. This damage is considered force damage regardless of the type of damage dealt by the spell.
Acid Arrow:
The arrow deals 2d4 points of acid damage with no splash damage. For every three caster levels you possess, the acid, unless neutralized, lasts for another round (to a maximum of 6 additional rounds at 18th level), dealing another 2d4 points of damage in each round.
Let’s say I’m level 3 so the acid lasts one extra round. Normally, the spell by itself would be
Round 1: 2d4 (Acid)
Round 2: 2d4 (Acid)
But with my abilities thrown in, which of the following would it come out to be?
Option 1--
Round 1: 2d4 (Fire) + 2 (draconic) + 1 (Elemental Pupil) + 1 (Havoc)
Round 2: 2d4 (Fire)
Ok guys, I need your words of wisdom here. I’m trying to decide what route I want to go with the last couple levels of the Duelist I’m building, and basically I’m going to end up having to choose between two fun sets of abilities (and no, I can’t mix and match between them). The options boil down to this…
Option 1:
Stunning Critical and Crippling Critical (the duelist version, not the feat version)
Obviously stunning critical is fun, and with the Duelist version of crippling critical (which is way better) not being a feat, it will stack onto Stunning to make my crits even better. With my other abilities, I’ll have a 30% chance of critting every hit, and with a many attacks as I’ll have this late in the game, that’s a pretty good chance of getting a crit every round or two. And with those two abilities stacking, those crits will be pretty ugly.
Option 2:
Snake Fang (and style) and Sickening Critical
Of course sickening critical isn’t as good as the other two, but at least it’s something. The main point here is the snake fang and the sickening is just thrown in to sweeten things up a bit (same 30% on each hit). Things to consider with the Snake Fang idea:
a) The feat gives you up to two unarmed AoOs every time an opponent misses you
b) I’ll already have the monk version of Improved Unarmed Strike, Weapon Finesse (I’m obviously DEX based), and since Snake Style makes your unarmed strikes piercing damage, I’ll get my Duelist bonuses. Thus, these AoOs will have a decent chance of hitting and will still do ok damage
c) With the defensive bonuses of Crane Style, Elaborate Defense, Canny Defense (the Duelist’s INT bonus to AC ability), a very high DEX, and a host of other abilities, not to mention whatever awesome armor I’ll have this late in the game, there are going to be a lot of misses on my character to take advantage of. *Especially* when you throw in the Parry ability, which can convert an attack into an automatic miss. And with Combat Reflexes and a high DEX, I’ll have the ability to capitalize on about as many misses as you’d care to shake a stick at
d) The GM has hinted that many of our encounters are going to be “quantity of enemies” focused.
So considering all those things, getting 8 AoOs per round is a very real possibility. Plus how fun will it be to Parry and get three AoOs (Riposte and Snake Fang) from it.
So there you have it: Extra good Crits or Lots of AoOs. I’m torn. What’s your vote?
In case you want it, I’ll post the details of the build below so you can see what else is going on here. Please keep in mind that while I really want your advice, I’m not interested in hearing how much better a completely different set of feats would be, or how your barbarian would beat my duelist.
Also, I should mention, we're doing an beefed up campaign with 25 point buy, ability point every other level (can't do same ability twice in a row), going up through 20th level (and maybe to 21 or 22). Needless to say, we will be facing appropriately horrendous enemies.
SO we have:
1) In full defense, you can't take AoOs
2) Snake and Crane style let you take AoOs when specific criteria are met (respectively, when enemy misses you or you deflect their attack)
I'm guessing that in these cases, the core rule takes precedence in that you can NOT take the Snake and Crane AoOs. Am I wrong? Do the style feats override the normal restriction?
Does anything stack onto the "sense motive AC" from snake style, such as fighting defensively, deflection bonuses, Monk's WIS bonus, dodge bonuses? Or is it how it looks in that what you roll is what you got?
Kirin Strike says, "While using Kirin Style against a creature you have identified using that feat, as a swift action after you have hit a creature with a melee or ranged attack, you can add twice your Intelligence modifier in damage (minimum 2)."
Since this is a swift action, I assume you can't do the extra damage from kirin strike if you hit when it's not your turn (i.e. from an AoO)? Or does this override that somehow and let you apply the damage on an AoO if you haven't used a swift that round already? I wouldn't think so, but definitely worth a check.
This may be an obvious thing, but I just want to make sure I'm not overlooking something stupid.
I've been tinkering with different styles for my monk (MoMS), and I'm trying to figure out if Crane and Panther Style work together.
With Crane maxed out to Crane Riposte and Panther style at its first tier (just one retaliatory strike), could I fight defensively (Crane style), move past enemies to provoke (Panther style), and get retaliatory strikes/AoO from both Crane and Panther? Once as a retaliatory strike against their AoO, and another if I parry their AoO. And the whole while, I would still have the defensive bonus of defensive fighting?
If not, does this change when I get to Panther parry such that I could fight defensively, move past an enemy to provoke, get my Panther parry first, deflect their AoO (if it would hit), and then also get my Crane Riposte (again while retaining my defensive bonuses for the turn)?
Crane style lets you "deflect one melee weapon attack that would normally hit you" when fighting defensively or using total defense. This does NOT work against a monster's natural attacks, correct?
The Master of Many Styles archetype says, "At 1st level, 2nd level, and every four levels thereafter, a master of many styles may select a bonus style feat or the Elemental Fist feat. He does not have to meet the prerequisites of that feat, except the Elemental Fist feat. Alternatively, a master of many styles may choose a feat in that style’s feat path (such as Earth Child Topple) as one of these bonus feats if he already has the appropriate style feat (such as Earth Child Style). The master of many styles does not need to meet any other prerequisite of the feat in the style’s feat path."
Does this mean that you can also take style feats without meeting the prerequisites during your normal feat gain levels (1st, 3rd, 5th, etc)? So for instance, if I had 10 strength, and took Dragon style as a bonus feat despite not having the requisite 15 STR (bypassing prereq), could I then take Dragon Ferocity at level 3 despite still not meeting the prerequisites? Or does the bypass only apply to the bonus feats?
So current build is a DEX (instead of STR) based monk, at least as far as hit/dmg is concerned. He's kitted out with weapon finesse and an amulet of mighty fists with the "Agile" weapon special ability, so his DEX is replacing STR for the relevant combat roll bonuses (to hit and damage). DEX is 18(+4) and STR is 7(-2).
My question is how this relates to the feat Dragon Ferocity.
Dragon Ferocity states, among other things: "When you score a critical hit or a successful Stunning Fist attempt against an opponent while using this style, that opponent is also shaken for a number of rounds equal to 1d4 + your Strength bonus."
So, with my weapon finesse and agile thrown on there, would I substitute DEX for STR in the "shaken for 1d4+STR" equation? Seems to me to only make sense, both in terms of the intention of the rules and in terms of gameworld logic, but I know how picky people can be about RAW.
At the very least, if STR is still applying, which for me would be -2, I would think that there would still be at least a minimum of 1 round of shaken even if I roll a 1 or 2 on the d4 and then have to subtract 2.
I would especially think the DEX would substituted since weapon finesse also lets you use your DEX in place of STR for weapon-specific combat maneuvers. The intention to me is pretty clearly that when you are achieving effects with the relevant finessed/agiled weapon, DEX is the stat to use.
Thoughts?
We all know that to put a magical ability (e.g. flaming or ghost touch) on a weapon, that weapon must already be a magical weapon (e.g. longsword +1 or higher). Question is: Could you put a NON-magical special ability (e.g. throwing or agile) on a non-magical weapon?
The relevant rule quote here is "A weapon with a special ability must also have at least a +1 enhancement bonus"
Now, I argue that a masterwork weapon does indeed have a +1 enhancement bonus (to hit), and while I wouldn't necessarily say this lets it receive magical special abilities (masterwork does not equal magical weapon), I see no reason, either in the rules or in game/story world logic, why non-magical abilities couldn't be included in the making of a masterwork weapon.
Take "Agile" for instance. "Agile weapons are unusually well balanced and responsive." No mention of anything magical here, just that it is a very well-made weapon. Sounds sort of like a masterwork weapon, wouldn't you say? So how about you pay the extra 300 for masterwork (+1 enhancement) and then an extra 2000 for it to be made extra balanced (agile), and there you a have a (non-magical) agile masterwork blade?
I'm wondering if I can use a Monk's Robe to boost the damage I deal with Elemental Fist. For a Monk of the Four Winds, elemental fist damage increases every five levels, and the Monk's Robe allows your unarmed damage to be treated 5 levels higher. I think the robe boost is maybe just intended for the normal unarmed damage, but since the elemental strike damage is part of the unarmed strike (damage is dealt with the unarmed strike damage, success is completely dependent on whether or not the unarmed strike succeeds), I can see a case for the level bonus applying to it as well. I can especially see the case with a Monk of the Four Winds, for whom elemental strike is an integral part of combat.
Let me know what you think. I can see it both ways, but it's not very overpowered, makes sense in a rules sort of way, makes sense in a game-mythology sort of way, and would be an interesting mechanic in-game.
Relevant rule pieces:
Monk's Robe
This simple brown robe, when worn, confers great ability in unarmed combat. If the wearer has levels in monk, her AC and unarmed damage is treated as a monk of five levels higher.
Elemental Fist
When you use Elemental Strike pick one of the following energy types: acid, cold, electricity, or fire. On a successful hit, the attack deals damage normally plus 1d6 points of damage of the chosen type.
Monk of the Four Winds
A monk of the four winds receives Elemental Fist as a bonus feat at 1st level, even if he does not meet the prerequisites. At 5th level, and every five levels thereafter, the monk increases the damage of his Elemental Fist by 1d6 (2d6 at 5th level, 3d6 at 10th level, and so on).
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I've got a character with two claw attacks (draconic bloodline sorcerer) and the produce flame spell-like ability (pyromaniac gnome racial trait). I'm trying to figure out if there's a good way for me to use my produce flame as a melee touch in conjunction with my claw attacks. Seems to me if you're hitting something with your claws while one claw also have the (produced) flame, you should be able to hit for claw damage as well as fire damage. There's a few ways I could see this working out, and I'd love to get your thoughts on what you think is the most reasonable:
1) Make normal attacks (against regular AC) with the claws and produce(d) flame. If successful, one claw (designated beforehand) deals its natural damage plus fire damage, and the other claw deals its natural damage.
2) Make attacks with the claws and flame. If the flame-applied claw hits regular AC, it deals natural damage plus fire damage. If the claw misses regular AC but hits touch-attack AC, deal just fire damage. The second claw deals damage as normal if it hits regular AC.
3) Make attacks with flame and one claw. Flame replaces the first claw attack and hits against touch-attack AC. Other claw attack hits as normal.
Thoughts? Any other ways you think this should be applied?
