Sha-dow's page

Dear James Jacobs,

This is a question from the Chinese players, as the 2e press on we are discussing the class mechanism on this side. May you kindly explain a bit about the nature of the "focus points" of certain spellcaster classes?

Is it a spiritual/psychology state of "mind focus", or it is a method of focused training/activity, like the old Weapon Focus feat? Or something else totally?

Thank you.

This might post before if some people run their games via an online platform. In the case of our group we are using roll20, and this happened last Saturday.

The party is storming a heavily guarded fortress. For atmosphere, our GM playing background music (likely drawn from Dragon Age) via the platform and we enjoyed. The infiltration part goes without any trouble; the party sneaks into the heart of the fortress, and then identified the commander`s room and burst in. We use a Silent spell to cover our operation, so no guards but the commander is alarmed. Due to the Silent he can do nothing but fighting the party alone and desperately.

At this point, a door behind us opened. A lightly armored girl with a lute is looking the intruders on the other side with surprise on her face, then she screams. Fortunately, she is literally on the sword point of our magus and died unremembered seconds after. Unfortunately, because that scream at least a half of the guards now realized that they are under attack and swarm to our location to get their boss.

As the fight gets intensified, nobody really noticed that the BGM was turn off quietly. After a while, the magus pc realized and asked where is the background music.

GM: “You killed it.”

PC: “What?”

GM: “The bard playing music, you just killed her. No music for you now.”

Since both Brawler and Monk have ability of deals more damage with her unarmed strikes (and they have the same name and description), If I multiclass monk and brawler, will the grow rate of the unarmed strikes damage stack with each other?

Ex. Both monk and brawler`s unarmed strike damage dice will grow to 1d8 instead of 1d6 in Lv4, how about 1 brawler/3 monk?

When I check the races, I found that we can consider about half-Jiang Shi Dhampir (Ru Shi, from Blood of Night), +2 Int and Dex but -2 Wis, and also a fair background for Tian Xia investigator too.

Edit: Oh, and pretty Spell-Like ability, but you surely need to think about how to get youself heal

Still not a fan of spring attack, as one attack a round after a certain point is borderline useless. One of the only things the Investigator really lacks is Feral Mutagen, which could be solved with a 2 level Alch dip, since natural attacking is a perfectly viable route...gives me an idea for a sample character...

For claws, Tiefling/Tengu can gain them from racial traits

And standard "make you bestial" items set: Helm of the mammoth lord (gore) and Ring of rat fangs (bite).

Speak about STR base, how about dip in Mutagenic Mauler brawler?

Use Fencing Grace guys, that is for raiper and cane. (Oh, ask your GM)

Since the guide have not finish the multiclassing yet, I tried a low-level Investigator with 1 level of Inspired Blade swashbuckler, and turn out to be a great choice: planty of bonus feats in Lv1 (and we have Fencing Grace now); Int can supply on both inspiration and panache; opportune parry saved me twice, and tiny bit of BAB gain.

And BTW,Investigator still not counted as spellcaster like his big brother Alchemist?

Alright, so here is the thing.

When talking about build a character good at both swordplay and fist, kick, anything unarmed martial arts, your call. One of my friend suggest the following build.

- Some levels of Swashbuckler first, with the core hitting ability of Precise Strike.

- Follow with Brawler 1, get the Unarmed Strike.

- Now feats, Two-Weapon Fighting, Snake/Tiger style, maybe Slashing Grace.

- Weapon: One-handed piercing/slashing melee weapons (rapier here for short), and unarmed strikes, use any body parts EXCEPT hand.

So, since this guy was not holding anything on his free hand and use it to attack, Precise Strike was avalible for his attacks; Then, because he can still use unarmed attack to dealing piercing/slashing (with Slashing Grace to get the DEX damage bonus) damage in Snake/Tiger style, that means Precise Strike`s damage bonus are also accessible to his kick, knee pummeling, elbow on face, ect.

Now, TWF with rapier and unarmed strikes, both got Precise Strike bonus.

I know the TWF swashbuckler sounds not so "stereotype" ( I assume the design of Precise Strike was not intent to encouraging TWF), but I can not say that this build have problems. And it looks cool for me, BTW.

Hope you guys may give me a opinion that this build was legal or not.

The spirit guide archetype can choose the shaman`s spirit:

Bonded Spirit (Su): At 3rd level, a spirit guide can form a temporary bond with a spirit, as the shaman's wandering spirit class feature (see page 37). She must make this selection each day when she refreshes her spells. A spirit guide cannot bond with a spirit that is incompatible with her alignment, ethos, or mystery (GM's discretion).

A spirit guide gains one hex of her choice from the list of hexes available from that spirit. She uses her oracle level as her shaman level and her Charisma score instead of Wisdom for the purpose of determining its effects.

At 4th level, she adds the bonded spirit's spirit magic spells to her oracle spells known for that day, but only of spell levels she can cast. At 7th level, she gains the spirit ability of her current bonded spirit. At 15th level, she gains the greater spirit ability of her current bonded spirit.

This ability replaces the revelations gained at 3rd, 7th, and 15th levels.

So, if a oracle with Life mystery take the shaman`s Life spirit, both allow him to channel positive energy as effective cleric level, will these number of times per day stack?