Senevri's page

Body, left hand heals, right hand attacks.

Mechanically, body's a level 19 cleric, left hand is a Life oracle 16 and right hand is an Antipaladin 16;

Very loose crunch. Mostly there's a lot of potential, unspecced abilities. I still think this is rather nasty.

Video game boss CR 20
358,400XP, 68,000GP (2x CR 16 + 1x CR 19);

790HP; DR 10/good; Left arm takes Right Arm and Body damage;

True Seeing; SR 25; AC 36, Touch 16;
Saves: 16/16/21

Body: CR 19
Body empowers: auto-empowered cure spells; SR 25 all, Deflect 4 all;
330 HP;
True Resurrection X 3
Spell Immunity 4 X 3; Dispel Magic
Spell Immunity 8 X 1
Channel 9d6.
AC 34;

Left hand: CR 16
Shield Other on body.
Left hand defends:
240HP
Mass Heal; Channel 8d6; 32hp;
Life Oracle:
Life Link: Right Hand, Body fast heal 5. Self takes damage. Enhanced Cures (CLW: 1d8+16)
Channel 3+CHA/day (charisma 24), 10.
Selective Channeling.
Sanctuary DC 24.

// Antipaladin, touch of corruption 15 times /day, + DC 25 vs. Paralysis 1rd / Blind 16rd / Curse
Wounding Evil Speed +5 Large Greatsword: +28/+28/+23/+18/+13, 3d6 + 13 + wounding.
Power Attack: -5, +15;
Smite Good: +7 to hit, +16 damage; Total: +30/+30/+25/+20/+15, 3d6+44 + wounding;
-2 all saves, -6 vs. fear

Factotum has few spell slots, but only one of them can be of top level. Basically, the rest are one level lower, or 6th level slots.

And nobody's been complaining that their casting is overpowered. So... Why keep level-specific spell slots? It makes little fluff sense, even for wizards and none at all for sorcerers.

If one'd eliminate the level-specific slots, and all slots were of the highest possible level, one could get away from spells which cap based on the level. There'd also be no need for greater/lesser variants.

I took a look at Arcana Evolved, then watched a few trailer for korean fantasy games in youtube, and since I'm on a sharing mood...

* First, indeed -- why not just progress as suggested PFRPG? Why not have progressive attacks, as well as 10th and beyond level in spells? Indeed, those spells that seem overpowering, could in fact be bumped up a level or two.

* Second, Hero points. Epic points. Epic Hero points. A bit fuzzy there, but
- for a game likely to go epic, giving the players hero points, or perhaps beginning to give them at epic, is a flavorful idea.
- I was thinking, a new use for the points could be getting the ability you could have, oh, five levels from now. Go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb, and all that.

* Third, our 'what feels realistic' sense of weaponry has developed based solely on combat against medium humanoids, and typically medium or large beasts. Weapons for monster slaying would be different. That got me thinking...
- Special versions of weapons, which have a BAB prerequisite, and possibly, a penalty, but would give, for an example, a significantly higher damage vs. creatures of large enough size. F'r ex, a Wyrm-slaying reach greatsword, which required BAB +11, and would be so heavy and slow to swing that you'd lose one attack per round, but would instead deal 4d6 or 6d6 base damage vs. Huge or larger creatures.

Exotic Weapon mechanic is clunky here, as I don't think variants of common weapon types should be considered 'exotic'. In fact, IMO, Bastard Sword being an exotic weapon makes little sense to me.

The basic mechanical reason for 'monster-slaying' weapons - I guess it could be a template - is reducing the number of attack rolls a character has. It needn't be perfectly balanced and equally beneficial - it just needs to be tempting enough to use.

- lose iterative attacks, gain bonus is the basic idea.

Thought to mention. You can animate a Huge one, which is CR 7. Next step is CL 16, which is CR 9, so...

Mecha clerics, y'know.

Any ways to boost AOs?

Okay, first this is PFRPG, not M&M.

Second, I'm skipping 'ultimate power at 20th level' builds - The idea is to play from level 1 onwards, sort-of organically.

Third, directly arcane or shapeshifting types do not need much effort, so I'm focusing on the human-looking, non-monstrous types.

Fourth, I use 'emulate' instead of 'direct translation'. This means, I intend to use spellcasting.

Fifth, no nineties anti-hero traits.

Heroic traits:
- ability to succeed. This is kind of important. If you constantly fail, it's no good. Requirement: High check in what you're doing, Rerolls and such.
- athletic nature: strong or agile or both, usually. Requirement: High stat, skill, check
- gets up after a beating. Requirement: Healing, second chances, loads of hit points.

Problem with casters:
- Too many spells. You're effectively limiting your range of abilities, so if you get a grab-bag of everything, you're golden age superman after power creep :P
-Piddly physical ability. As PF doesn't have any of the old rewrite stats stuff, abilities matter... and you're going to start, at best, with them at around 14.
-Low HP

In general, avoid OBVIOUS spells for things you don't want to be explicit 'superpowers'. You also want power trees, that follow logically. Jump, levitate, fly, teleport are the same line (flight), as are expeditious retreat, haste and time stop(super-speed).

1. Looking at Sorcerer.
Bloodline:
Either 'celestial' or 'destined' bloodline in core fits the best, although 'arcane' can be made to work. Let's look at 'destined'.
* bonus spells: 'alarm' can be mental, so it can be seen as keen senses/danger sense effect. 'blur' is bad, unless you can refluff it as high-speed dodging. 'protection from energy', 'freedom of movement', 'break enchantment', 'mislead''spell turning', 'moment of prescience', 'foresight' all fit without problem.
* bonus feats. All good.
* bloodline arcana: meh, but helps success in saves, and succeeding is superheroic.
* bloodline powers are GREAT. You're unlikely to end up with CHA less than 24, so 10/day, +10 insight on attack, skill, ability check, save... Burst break DCs are STR checks, attack can be used to hit with a spell, and so forth.

APG:
Elemental lines fit various types. Deep Earth is particularily good for powerhouses. Starsoul for cosmic (silver surfer) types.

Feats: Still and Silent. You'll probably want Spell Perfection on some stuff. Arcane Strike at first level is a good pick. Power Attack.

Spells:
As mentioned you really want spell _trees_ so that it seems like you only have few abilities which improve over time, or non-obvious ones. I'm skipping blast line since that's kinda obvious.
Cantrips: Detects are okay, for every level. and resistance. Rest are problematic or depend on the type.

Flight:
-------
1st: Feather Fall, Jump
2nd: Levitate
3rd: Fly.
4th: Dimension Door. From now on, there's overlap between flight and speed.
5th: Teleport, Overland Flight.
6th: -
7th: Greater Teleport
8th: TK Sphere
9th: -

Invulnerability
---------------
1st: Mage Armor, PfE.
2nd: Protection from Arrows->DR line and Resist Energy->energy line. False Life, Bear's Endurance.
3rd: Protection from Energy,
4th: No stoneskin due to (M). Resilient Sphere instead, perhaps Lesser Globe.
5th: -
6th: Globe.
7th: Spell Turning,
8th: Mind Blank, TK Sphere, Iron Body, Protection From Spells

Super-speed
-----------
1st: Expeditious Retreat
2nd: Cat's Grace
3rd: Haste
4th: Dimension Door, maybe. Teleportation or not is a decision you'll have to make.
5th: Teleport
6th: Disintegrate - at touch range, or you did it so fast you went there and back in single action :)
7th: Passwall, Greater Teleport
8th: Moment of Prescience.
9th: Foresight, Time Stop

Super-strength
--------------
1st: Ant Haul, Stone Fist
2nd: Bull's Strength, Shatter(use at touch range)
3rd: Keen Edge, sort of.
4th: Shout
5th: Transmute Rock To Mud.
6th: Move Earth. Just use it at touch range, in the punch ground sense.
7th: Teleport Object. Stick to your movement as a limitation(teleport object to target location, use a move to get there ) or 'throw' it.
8th: Greater Shout, TK Sphere
9th: -

Agility/coordination - 'ABILITY'
--------------------
1st: True Strike
2nd: Spider Climb, Cat's Grace
3rd: Heroism
4th: -
5th: -
6th: Greater Heroism
7th: Finger of Death, in the kung fu sense. Limited Wish.
8th: Moment of Prescience. EVERYONE gets this.
9th: Foresight

Hulk out / transformative (overlaps Super-strenght)
--------
1st: Stone Fist, Enlarge Person
2nd: Alter Self. Now you can get Green. Shatter.
3rd: Rage
4th: Shout
5th: Elemental Body II
6th: Transformation. Elemental Body III
7th: Elemental Body IV, Giant Form I
8th: Giant Form II, Iron Body, Greater Shout
9th: -

Senses:
-------
Mostly, the detect line + see invisibility + true seeing.
Also, darkvision, owl's wisdom.

Skills:
A bit of a problem. You have Intimidate and Fly, but could really use Acrobatics and other physical skills.

Prestige Classes:
* eldritch knight. 'nuff said. After getting enough 3rd spells is a good spot, as 4th is sort of lacklustre. You only really want 2 9th level spells, Foresight and Time Stop, so with APG, you can afford to lose 2 CL. Build is straightforward Sorcerer 6/Fighter or paladin or ranger 1/EK 10. The rest must be full casting, so it's a pick between Sorcerer and Loremaster. I recommend Sorcerer for bloodline advancement.

2. Looking at Bard
- Eschew Materials is obligatory. Vanilla Bard isn't that good...
APG: Arcane duelist, Detective. Magician in some cases.
Now, there are certain types which can work with Bard, but not the flying brick archetype.

3. Looking at Cleric
Clerics are very good for this. A right pick of domains does wonders, and the spell list is by default inclined towards buffing. Here's some Domain recommendations.
- First of all, ANY domain can work for some concept. Focusing on the awesome/flying brick line.
* Glory/Heroism.
* Nobility/Martyr
* Protection/Defense
* Strenght, Strength/Resolve
* Sun/Day
* War, War/Tactics

4. Looking at Paladin
- Paladin fits very well thematically, albeit it's a bit lacking in ability. Fortunately, you can enter Horizon Walker to get Flight and few other goodies and only lose 3 levels of paladin.

5. Others:
A Monk, Fighter, Rogue, Ranger and Barbarian all have various abilities which help. A Horizon Walker 3/Stalwart Defender 10 is a good finale for tough types. Horizon Walker is very nice, let's take a look:

Horizon Walker: Every 3 levels, a Terrain Dominance.
- Air: +4 fly, 3+WIS times per day FLY sla.
- Astral: +30 fly spd in no gravity, Dimension Door.
- Desert: Immunity to exhaustion and fatigue
- Swamp: +4 perception. Tremorsense 30.

Coincidentally, this highlights the problem in 3.x rules, as well as some issues in comics - Why is Daredevil adventuring with Superman? How can he even be of any use.
I guess you could pull of a decent and more sensible Batman with Master Craftsman usage.

If I'm writing replies to multiple threads, the replies end up in the wrong threads. Put the target thread into the POST - or GET request (whichever you're using)instead.

Just for clarity, an example of current functionality.

- I'm browsing the forums, and open a couple of threads in tabs.
- I start writing a reply to a thread, lose my train of though, take a look at other threads.
- Start writing a reply in the other thread
- Come back to original thread, finish the reply and post.
- and find out the reply went into the other thread instead of the original thread instead.

Annoying.

A chance to play core PF! As a player!

Anyway, I'm sort of torn between rogue, bard, monk and the two full arcane classes (or a paladin, hey!)
Is there an in-depth look on PF rogue?

On Dazzling Display... So, I was thinking of a sorcerer-based Arcane Trickster ('cause tricksters are cool), and as I explicitly can pick weapon focus for 'ray', I could use Ray of Frost on the Dazzling Display, right? Then, Shatter Defenses --- I could use scorching ray, I think, although the feat just says 'hit by you', so depending on the reading, a magic missile or maybe even a fireball might do, but a strict DM would require an attack roll hitting AC.

Regardless, all those targets are now flat-footed. Either a second volley of scorchers, or a simple fireball would do, with Surprise Spells...

This is all rules-legal, right? Of course, that's at level 17 earliest --- but, even as early as level 9, I could hit three separate targets using scorching ray.

Just a little thing, really, but traditionally TWF is considered to be a bad choice for melee unless one has significant damage adders for each blow. Thus, fighters weren't really considered a good choice for a TWF fighter, outside a dip for gaining the feats.

I wonder if it's still so?

I'm going to give a very very basic feat chain:

Power attack, TWF tree, Weapon focus+specialization line.

A PF fighter gets this little thing where they gain a total of +4 to hit and damage. With power attack and TWF, this puts them at -1 hit chance from full BAB, thanks to weapon focus. Each primary hit gets a +3 from power attack, while off-hand attacks get a +1. This is, in fact, one point less damage than a 2-handed weapon using fighter would get.
However, they would also only get a total of 32 points of damage from weapon specialization and weapon training, while a twfer gets a total of 56.

On weapon size, the 2-hander probably wins by 1d6, or average 3.5.
So far, the twfer is ahead by 19.5 points of damage.
The 2-hander does win for 0.5xSTR bonus in damage, though.

Other factors - weapon enhancements - While it costs double, a twfer will get 3x the potential weapon enhancement to their damage, meaning an extra 15 points of damage, for an example. As said every point of extra damage on every hit, helps the twfer ahead.

Also, things that launch on every hit help here - such as criticals. Weapon Mastery supports us directly, here, so critical focus, critical mastery and two critical feats might be a decent set of picks.

At this point, we've spent a grand total of 11 feats, meaning only a fighter can really get all this, with any amount of leeway.

With a 25% crit chance, and three extra crits, you're pretty much guaranteed to crit. ( which always makes me lust for Blood in the Water stance. )

So... presuming a STR score of 24, full power attack and boring +5 weapons, we're looking at a haste-less damage output of dice + 33 on primary hand, and dice + 24 on off-hand, for a total of 7xdice + 204 damage per round, with a rather high yield of criticals with additional effects. This is at least average damage for a damage-dealing character, with 6 free feats yet unused.

That is, presuming my math is correct.