Silkinsane's page

I will add my two cents and agree. Intimidate should be a class skill.

Just remembered something else.

Take the Trait Hedge Magician if you can. It gives 5% off the gp cost of crafting items. Being a successful buff/crafter is all about volume. It may not look like much but 5% of 1000gp is 50gp.

Think of it this way: 500 gp to craft +1 armor (without cost of armor itself), you would save 25gp. 25gp is the crafting price of 1st level potion. You essentially just got a free potion out of that trait.

I played a rogue alchemist one game. I crafted and sold potions during my downtime we had between quests (this was before the downtime system in ultimate campaign). At 8th level, due to the fact that my normal cut of the loot was gold (very few useful items dropped for me so my group gave me an average gold equivalent), and my continual investment of gold into potion sales I had acquired 28,000 gp in addition to the 20,00 gp worth of items I used. My GM cracked up when the mostly munchkin party was dumbfounded by the fact that as a crafter I had turned out to be the most overly powered character. I bank-rolled the purchase of a cathedral for our cleric.

I have actually built numerous alchemists and I must say it has become one of my favorite classes.

I would say off the bat that the absolute two most important things you will need for your build are going to be the Discoveries: Infusion and Precise Bombs.
Infusion will allow you to hand out your extracts for party members to carry around as temp potions.
Precise Bombs will allow you to bomb baddies that are in melee with your front liners.

Oddly, you might consider splashing Rogue to pick up trap finding. The extra skill points (tons since Alchemist is Int based) are nice and allows you access to almost every skill the Alchemist does not have, which means you can Aid Another your allies in almost any skill situation.

The only other thing I can think of is to carry around a fair amount of those handy 1st level potions and don't be shy about asking for reimbursement.
A 1st level potion of shield lasts 1 minute (10 rounds) and costs 25 gp to make. It is cheap and a life saver if you are fighting incorporeal enemies or magic missile spammers.
Enlarge Person - Quick way for a Melee person to up their damage output and gain reach (if they are medium sized)
There are many more very handy 1st level potions that are cheep and good to have in a pinch. Go over your available spell list and look to pick those up.

Forgot to add: You can easily make the non-magic alchemical items by the boatload. If you look at the crafting rules you essentially get them 3 for the price of 1. Acid and Anti-toxins for everyone!!

Personally I would agree that most parties should handle the loot split on their own; however I would argue that it is a GM's job to ensure a relatively even drop rate of items for a party.

As a GM I have way too much on my mind to get involved with ensuring loot distribution is 'fair'. Oddly I found that an item that causes to group to argue over it generally gives me a bit of downtime to get ready for the next encounter while my group sorts it out. I have only ever stepped in when it seemed player's feelings might get hurt (which almost never happened).

As a player most of my groups kept a party "pot" which was considered group property until we split it, we also used it to pay for travel expenses, rooms, and meals. Anything someone got rid of (Ex: +1 cloak of resist after getting a +2 cloak of resist) was placed back in the "pot" for whoever wanted it or for sale when we next divided the pot.

We also decided on a "loot b**ch", whose job it was to record everything that went into the party pot. More often than not that was my job as I was usually the most experienced player at the table and the one who didn't mind taking notes. Despite the derogatory term, having a single person who handles the group loot often stream-lined the process, kept things even, and kept arguments to a minimum.
Usually when we decided to split the pot, the loot player would go down the list of what was available and what each item was worth and the group would decide who got what and what was sold. At the end there was a final tally of what everyone got and gold was distributed as best as possible to even things out.

Worst loot problem I ever had in a game was actually the opposite of loot greed. My players were so wrapped up in bashing in enemy skulls and completing the story that nobody felt like recording the items they found because nobody prepared identify spells. A couple levels later they are complaining that it has been forever since they got better gear. When I asked them what they had done with all the items they should have recovered they looked at one another and asked who had been writing it down. Thankfully I was a kind GM and after I called them idiots I gave them a couple things they would have picked up. Moral of the story: GMs work hard, players are lazy.

I did not see a thread specifically relating to this. If there was already a discussion of this please let me know.

I plan to be play a somewhat comedic Orc Barbarian/Alchemist who likes to throw whatever he can get his hands on at enemies and then rush at them with more random objects and beat them to death with said objects. Eventually I want to use hurling charge as it fits this image nicely.

Issue 1
Reading the rules it appears that one could possibly combo up Hurling Charge and Ride By Attack to: declare your charge, throw a weapon, hit with a melee charge attack, and continue on past the target of said charge up to your maximum allowed distance.

Issue 2
Is there some way to accomplish the above without the use of a mount?

My first thought was Spring attack, but can spring attack count as a "charge" allowing the use of Hurling Charge?

Focusing on the spirit of the feats, it seems like a sensible combination. As long as the character moved in a straight line towards his target at least 10ft before making the thrown weapon attack, and then another 10ft before making the melee weapon attack, and the remainder of his movement was in a straight line past his target; I see no reason why it would not be a viable option.

Any help on this issue would be much appreciated.

Silkinsane wrote:

Personally if you a relatively new, I might lean away from Paladin only because of the restrictions of the code of conduct can be a pain to role play depending on how strict your GM is with that stuff. Though DrDeth's pally is definitely a good one that would be very fun to play.

Y....

Ranger was my second choice. But yes, as i said "Discuss the Paladin's Code of Conduct with your GM, be sure to get a Phylactery of Faithfulness (your GM might give you this for free, to guide you thru playing a paladin, tell him I suggested it)."

Good Ranger build, but not sure about going for shield bash, it's kinda complicated.

Yes I do agree with you on discussing the pally code with your GM. I have just been railroaded by a GM too much on things like that even after we discussed the code of conduct. It is very dependent on the GM.

As for shield bash, it is to allow for versatility and allows you to go for damage output when you want. You can open up for multiple attacks against lots of baddies, focus on single hits if fighting a high AC bad guy, or fight defensively if you are low on HP.

You can easily drop the bash feats and just go for defensive stuff, but when you are getting swarmed by goblins it is really fun to have multiple attacks a round. Especially if you pick up shield slam and are fighting on a cliff :) (Shield slam as your combat style, and two weapon fighting instead of Missile shield as your lev3)

Personally if you a relatively new, I might lean away from Paladin only because of the restrictions of the code of conduct can be a pain to role play depending on how strict your GM is with that stuff. Though DrDeth's pally is definitely a good one that would be very fun to play.

You might consider a Ranger with the trapper archetype. You really do not need to worry about spells and you can search for traps while still being a pretty combat focused class. If you take the weapon and shield combat style and use a small shield you can carry a Sunrod or torch in your shield hand while taking point and searching for traps.

This is "toes in the water rogue" style Ranger build. I played it personally and enjoyed it a lot:

Ranger (Trapper Archetype)
Stats = Str: 14 Dex: 17 (14+2human+1lev4) Con: 14 Int:13 Wis:12 Cha:10
(Swap Str and Dex if you want to go more damage, Int 13 is to allow for Combat Expertice if you want to access the billion feats that have it as a pre-req)

Skills = Max out Perception, Disable device, Survival, Stealth
You should have 8 Skill points per level before any favored class bonuses so with maxing out the above four, you should have another 16 points left to distribute as you see fit. I suggest making sure you have a decent bit in Climb, Swim and your Knowledge skills (never underestimate the value of a good knowledge check).

Feats = Lev1: Shield Focus, Human: Improved Shield Bash, Ranger Combat: Two Weapon Fighting, Lev3: Missile Shield

Equipment (Based on 6000gp wealth for lev 4 character)= +1 Agile Breastplate (1550gp), +1 Light Steel Shield (W/ Masterwork Spikes) (1159+310gp), MW One-Handed Weapon (300+weapon), 1 Cold Iron Dagger, 1 Alchemical Silver Dagger, MW Thief Tools , 5 Sun-rods, Warhammer or Club.
I always carry a warhammer or club because there tends to be fewer things immune/resistant to bludgeoning than there are things immune/resistant to slashing a piercing. By my calculations you should still have in the ballpark of 1,500gp left to play with. You might consider a cloak of resistance +1 for (1000gp) Kind of a bread and butter item to have, not flashy but helpful.

The guy is actually a good friend of mine, he posts under Alex Augunas and he runs a blog by the name of Everyman Gaming.

http://gamingeveryman.wordpress.com/

This is the article I think you are looking for:

http://gamingeveryman.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-math-behind-cr/

On the Tiefling Rogue I would definitely suggest some sort of invisibility doodad that allows you to break the line of sight and hide again. With my rogue I picked up a wand of Vanish CL2. Gave me 2 rounds of invisibility which is all I ever really needed to get out of dodge (if need be) or get into position for more sneak attack. A Wand like that is only 1500 gp (750 if you have a wizard in the party who can make one for you) and has 50 charges.

I agree with Andeww that not having Use Magic Devise is detrimental. The DC to activate a wand is 20, whether it is a level 1 spell or level 9. Not hard to do, especially at higher levels. The problem is that by nuking your charisma you ensure that you really have to dump a bunch of points into that skill to make it viable.

The only other easy use solution is potions then. Again potion of vanish CL 2 is only 100gp (50 if you have an alchemist in the party). Cheep enough at high levels to have a couple though not as cost efficient as a wand.

On a side note: the consistency with which people nuke their charisma has always been a personal pet peeve of mine. I would highly suggest something more than a 5 because if you were to role play that sort of charisma correctly you should be either actively offensive to just about any character you meet, or so horribly inept at conversation that no character wants to pay attention to you. This can be hilarious from a player standpoint and create a very beloved character (one of my orc barbarian characters leaps to mind) but you should realize that your character should never effectively say anything epically bad-ass and most of his statements should leave people wondering why your character even bothers to open his mouth.

I think most people here have given you some excellent advice on big badguys. My only addition is that if you make many of the "innocent" people total jerks that deserved bad things to happen to them, it grants a much more "light hearted" air to being evil.

The best example of this is the Monty Python muck farmers or the French men holding the castle. Yes they might be the victims of the player's crimes but they are all so rude and obnoxious that they had it coming.

Here are some more specific ideas I have used before:

1: The old beggar lady on the corner tells the party every day that the last pile of flem she coughed up looks better than they do.

2: A wizard (who they might have met sometime previously but do not remember) sends them a sending spell every night a 2:30 am advertising his latest in "Magical performance enchantment! Get Bigger Longer!".

3: Some young yahoo with his new horse likes to make it rear on it's back legs and whinny loudly every time he passes the party, especially if they are having a conversation.

4: If they go to a ball or social event have a group of elves constantly refer to what the party wears as being "so last decade"

As you know your players very well personally I would also suggest adding in NPC targets that do things you know push your player's buttons in real life. I had a friend who hated use of the word "bro, brah, broski, etc." so of course, he met someone who used those as many times as he could in every sentence. Suffice to say the NPC was killed quickly but the table unanimously agreed that the NPC had it coming.

Silkinsane wrote:

I have done a-lot of undead dungeons. What is great about undead is the fun of bashing away without having to worry about the moral ramifications.

I like ghost story/ghost encounters where dealing with moral ramifications is part of the story. Since ghosts are often tragic undead, and the real point is laying ghosts to rest, more than just combating them. I think the moral ramifications surrounding ghosts is the point.

I agree. If you are going for an encounter that has a bit of a "deeper meaning" then a ghost or a poltergeist is an excellent monster to use. You can write a tragic story that will force them to use their brains more than their brawn and tug on your player's heart strings. Though do not always expect your player's to have them (brains and/or heart strings).

Ex: I had a rather sad poltergeist story (a tragic love story) that I hoped would prompt my players to attempt to reform the lover that spurned and murdered the poltergeist (when she was alive). They simply kicked down the front door to the house of jerk who killed her, kidnapped him, and locked him in the room with the poltergeist and a chest full of weapons, a chest full of salt, and called it a day.

In the end, my group wanted the thing resolved. They had a lot of fun and it remained one of the more memorable encounters I have run; which is really the point of running a game in my opinion.

I agree with the others on this, your base class Bard is the perfect storyteller class for the mechanics. Though Duiker is right, it is all about how you role play.

If bard is not your thing I suggest taking a look at Cloistered Cleric.

They have an ability called "Verbal instruction" that allows them to grant aid another to someone at range. It also has a bardic knowledge ability allowing all knowledge checks untrained and granting you half your class bonus to knowledge checks.

I had a cohort who was flavored to be the tutor of my character. He was pretty much a story teller who used examples of legendary and historic combats that my character knew of to aid him or the rest of the party in battle. He literally stood there telling stories during the fight.

I am hopefully going to be able to run a Pathfinder campaign using the Core Ruleset only, and I can't wait to try my hand at DM'ing, as I almost never do it in such a format. However one thing that bothers me is I do not have a encyclopedic knowledge of the game. So in Core, what are some things I should try to avoid using, or ban from use in general? I once saw a thread talking about Leadership, but other than that I'm not too sure.

I am not sure if my post will get lost in the melee of posters arguing about what and what is not OP but here goes...

My personal MOST IMPORTANT rule on banning as a GM is that I ban anything that I do not have easy access to. Generally this means that if I do not have the book it is banned. If a player wishes to use something I have not seen before they must submit it to me for review.

My reasoning for this is that as a GM it is my job to know the world of the game and be able to act/react to player's actions accordingly. If a player can use something I can too. If something appears to be OP I need to know what its weaknesses are so I can counter it if needed. Acting as a balancing agent to make the game fun is almost impossible if I do not have access to the source material from which the imbalance arises and this is the easiest way to make something OP.

Of course golden rule of "it's my world" can be used to fix the problem as well, but having to constantly bludgeon your players with GM fiat to balance things out is a quick way to make them no longer want to play.

There was a 3.5 Book called the Draconomicon that had a ton of things you could craft from Draconic remains. I am not sure if the content is open game but I highly suggest it for anyone who plans on doing a lot with dragons. It is an excellent book and I still use it as most of it translates easily over to Pathfinder.

I suggest you flesh out the location of at least 3 or 4 of the 8 scrolls, and some circumstances regarding their disappearance and reemergence. You can flesh out the rest later, but come up with at least 3-4 scrolls worth of story, so your party can stumble upon options.
Options = choices. Choices = not being railroaded. Not being railroaded = fun!

I Agree wholeheartedly with Zedth here. I have been railroaded by a GM concerning my character's personal story/quest and it can ruin interest in a cahracter. Presenting options allows for your player to feel like they are writing their own story.

My suggestion is to make the scrolls do something on their own too. Maybe one allows the holder to re-roll a perception check once a day and another allows it's holder to know what another person dreamed about the night before. Maybe one was destroyed but survives inscribed on the inside of a shield that is being used by a powerful orc commander (who is illiterate and doesn't have any idea what it is) or one will grant an extra use of stunning fist if tattooed onto the skin of a monk. Make them something the party wants to find for reasons beyond "It's our Cleric's quest". If they are something the whole party can benefit from, then they will eagerly chase down leads when they appear.

To allow for options, allow the scrolls to "move on their own" so to speak. You could make a rumor of one show up in a local town but it is in the opposite direction of a garrison that the PC's know the Orcs plan to attack. If the PC's reenforce the garrison then the trail of the scroll disappears for a while and re-emerges in a tougher encounter. If the PC's go for the scroll then the orcs take the garrison leaving less to stop the Orc empire's expansion. You can also have false leads, a powerful scroll turns up that the PC's think is one of the scrolls but turns out to be just a scroll of magic missile that was written on mithril foil with solid gold lettering.

I personally love linguistics for the forgery aspect. I had and Alchemist/Rogue who used it with devastating effect in a kingdom building game. My group was able to take over a town and imprison the mayor/land-owner by replacing the original charter with a forgery and then calling the authenticity of the document into question. Bluff was very useful in that situation as I was the "expert" called in to validate the document (my forgery), which I exposed as a fake and blamed the Mayor for.

I have done a-lot of undead dungeons. What is great about undead is the fun of bashing away without having to worry about the moral ramifications. You can do the dungeon either in a fun way or a creepy way depending on your mood. I once had a room full of undead (don't remember if they were ghouls, skeletons or zombies) using a head as a soccer ball, the players could hack them to pieces and move on or they could play the game and get the prize. In this situation it was the "prize cup" which was hidden behind a secret wall and worth a nice amount of gold. You could also make it so that if they return the head to the body it came from for some sort of blessing reward, etc.

Mechanically, one of my favorite memories was a combination of Zombies and Pit traps. Zombies can be incredibly stupid, thus any situation where the PC's are at the bottom of a long drop can easily result in the stupid shambling undead raining down on them. It is not only hilarious, but also quite terrifying! Especially if the PC's are at the bottom of a pit trap and have no way to take cover, or half-way up a long climb.

It will depend greatly on what spells you tend to keep available and your personal play style.

I like the face skills like Bluff or Sense Motive. Bluff is a more offensive tact and sense motive is more defensive. Lies are the hallmark of a good political intrigue game so having one of those maxed out will make you helpful in a social setting. In regards to sense motive, it is always nice to have more than one person in a party with it maxed out because as a player I almost always roll poorly. And a wizard who catches a lie the rest of the party may have missed can easily use a cantrip like message to get it to the rest of the group. I had a game where we nicknamed our wizard "dispatch" because he functioned as the radio link for our party.

Another good skill would be Fly. Especially at higher levels where you might be using your fly spell in nasty weather conditions or blasting flying creatures in the air.

Lastly, Escape Artist is helpful as it really sucks being a grappled wizard.