Quite puzzled at how those two discoveries would interact:
Immolation Bomb (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/discoveries/paizo- alchemist-discoveries/immolation-bomb):
Instead of dealing Xd6+INT damages per turn on a direct hit, your bomb inflicts 1d6+INT damages for X turn. The splash damages occur each turn.
Madness Bomb (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/discoveries/paizo- alchemist-discoveries/madness-bomb):
You forgo 2d6 damages on your bomb and deal an extra 1d4 WIS damage on a direct hit, minus 1 for each time you used that ability on the target to a minimum of one.
If you were to use an Immolation Madness Bomb, would you deal:
- 1d6+INT fire damage + 1d4 WIS damage on the first turn, then 1d6+INT damage every turn until it expires
- 1d6+INT fire damage + 1d4 WIS damage every turn until it expires
My google-fu failed me and I wasn't able to locate an answer on the forum (only someone who brievely mentionned the idea in a list)
In my youth, I roamed the wild lands of Varisia and saw Stone and Rune giants. I read the distant tales of Irrisen and their Ice giants. I heard whispered rumors in Nidal, speaking of Umbral giants...
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Hi all. I'm working on an aero kineticist concept and would appreciate some help.
He is a naïve, caring person that so happens to fly and blast lightning from his fingertips (second part much to his dismay). His family and a few others tend to the orchard and vineyards of a clan of storm giants. Their lords sent him on the continent to get tested and investigate his innate powers, as to avoid any incidents with the other members of the settlement.
Thing is... I don't know where this settlement might be.
The Bestiary entries I found state that storm giants lives "along remote coastlines or on tropical islands", "in well-constructed towers, castles, or walled settlements". (Also mentions of "rugged coasts, sandy atolls, rocky cliffs, and rising atop sea stacks). They "prefer to live off the land" and "maintain enormous, well-tended gardens", often hiring "other humanoids, such as elves or humans".
Furthermore, "most [storm giants] have dark hair and human-like skin tones, usually tan tending to a deep burnished bronze" / "This giant is a towering, muscular himan of heroic proportions, with bronze skin, dark hair, and sparkling green eyes".
Between their descriptions and the images found online, storm giants sound a lot like Greek-ish/Olympians. I don't know of any Greek themed regions in Golarion. Do you know any island/archipelago/Olympe style mountain or regions where storm giants are typically found?
I'm a french player moving to Montreal in a few months. As I'm saying goodbye to my current groups, I'm looking for new parties to join.
I have been playing Pathfinder 1e and tabletop for about 6 year now and Starfinder for the most part of the last year. Ran through books 5-6 of RotR, 1 of CotCT and 1-2 of Dead Suns (and a bunch of homebrewed campaigns).
I'd like to continue on Pathfinder 1e and Starfinder, but I'm also interested in Masks, M&M3e (Sorry Paizo, I'll sacrifice a goblin to your glory for this infidelity). Also played some Star Wars, ShadowRun and Cyberpunk.
If any of you is either looking for an additional player or know of an active network to find a group, I'd be very grateful. (Indeed, most of the forums I've seen online have been dead/low-activity for at least a year).
I like to think I'm fluent in English, and french is my native language, so both suit me.
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(Apologies in advance; I know english is the official language of the forum, but given the location, I'm adding a short translation of the message above).
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Bonjour,
Je suis un joueur français et je m'apprête à déménager à Montréal dans quelques mois. Obligé (à regret) de quitter mes groupes ici, je commence à en chercher de nouveaux sur Montréal.
Je fais du jeu de rôles et du Pathfinder 1ère édition depuis un peu plus de 6 ans maintenant, et Starfinder pour la majeure partie de l'année passée. J'ai rejoint un groupe sur les livres 5-6 du Retour des Seigneurs des Runes, le livre 1 de la Malédiction du Trône Ecarlate et les livres 1-2 de la campagne Dead Suns (ainsi que quelques campagnes maisons).
J'aimerais continuer sur Pathfinder 1e et Starfinder, mais je suis aussi intéressé par Masks et M&M3e (désolé Paizo, je sacrifierais un gobelin à votre gloire). J'ai aussi fait un peu de Star Wars, de ShadowRun et de CyberPunk.
Si l'un d'entre vous est à la recherche d'un joueur supplémentaire pour son groupe ou connaît des réseaux pour en trouver un, je vous en serais très reconnaissant (La plupart des sites que j'ai visité sont sans/avec très peu d'activité depuis au moins un an).
Oh, evil lords dwelling in the abyss of this forum, I summon thee.
I have been playing Pathfinder for a few years, and while I got to experiment with some ageless classic - falchion crit flying barbarian, knife-master Unchained Rogue, Shocking Grasp magus, etc - I'm growing bored with the mundane options.
The primal satisfaction of hacking a monster to pieces, smug contempt of blasting it from afar, manical glee of stabbing some thug in the kidney... Maybe I'm in a blue period, but I'm beginning to find that distasteful.
Fortunately, I'm barely scratching the more advanced classes and stumbled upon some interesting option in AP (like Feysworn or Mortal Usher). This is giving me some hope to find someone a tad more exotic and grandiose for a special occasion.
How would you go about making a character so deeply horrible that people would just fall to their knees, puking their brains and scratching their face off? Something so bizarrely alien its mere presence is anathema to life?
I explored a few leads for "visually disturbing" characters but none have turned to be quite viable:
- Madness bomb alchemist: will probably run out of bombs before anything drops to 0 Wisdom
- Tentacle grabing eidolons: multi grapple is baaaaad.
- Evil Cleric Dhampir: channeling negative energy to heal yourselves and harm those around you is fun, but not that "horror-ish" and could use some more punch.
What I'm looking for is (ranked from most to less appealing):
- Area effect (preferably centered on you) dealing damages or inflicting fear effect (either is good)
- Regenerating HP by harming something (cookie point if you get to devour the soul of... ahem, I'm digressing).
- Locking enemies near you when they would prefer to avoid your vincinity.
If we could avoid 3rd party, that'd be awesome. Otherwise, not looking for anything PFS legal, just something I could work with with an understanding DM given I point to the appropriate ressources.
I'm a bit confused as to exactly what applies in the following case and could use someone checking my rule understanding:
I'll soon play an Unchained Rogue with Major Magic: Chilling touch. Chilling touch lets you attempt a number of touch attack per level equal to your caster level up to ten. Each attack does:
1d6 of negative energy damage.
A rogue inflicting damage while their target is denied their Dex bonus or flanked can add Sneak attack damage equal to:
(1 + 1/2(Rogue Level-1)d6 damages.
Therefore in the right conditions, I can attempt a contact touch attack for:
1d6 negative + (1+ 1/2(RL-1))d6 damages
(Unless I'm grossly mistaken, the part aboce is the one I'm relatively certain about)
To trigger Chilling Touch, it seems I need to attempt an unarmed touch attack (given the flavor text, I don't think this attack can be made using a weapon). To avoid triggering AoO, I picked Improved Unarmed Strike, which should work in this case?
If I attack with an unarmed strike, at level 3 (minimum level required to pick Major Magic), I benefit from Unchained Rogue's Finesse Training and can substitute my Dex modifier to my Strength for damages. So my Unarmed Strike now does:
1d3+ DEX damages (lethal or non lethal)
If I'm not mistaken, those unarmed damages only apply on regular contact attack roll, not touch. So they do not trigger if I only attempt a touch attack?
Furthermore, Chilling Touch does trigger on Unarmed Strike, right?
(Bonus cookie point if you can advise me: I'm considering Two Weapons Fighting and Piranha's Strike for added damages and not relying only on Chilling Touch. Thing is, I'm pretty much streched out for feats and could use Studious Rogue to swap spell-like ability on the fly. Unchained Rogue fishing for Sneack Attack damages, more attack per round sounds better than the equivalent of a Power attack?)
I was wandering through old threads to prepare for an upcoming campaign, when I found this. I did not know Nightmare Fist feat-chain and it seems rather nice.
Combining the two, casting darkness upon yourself, you basically become the Batman (minus the orphaned trauma).
Is the Sanctified Slayor + Nightmare Fist any good? Anyone tried that? Seems like you could pile a good amount of damages, but I'm a bit at lost at how to build it.
My usual GM won't allow a tiefling or a drow, so no racial ability to cast darkness, unfortunately. What is allowed is: Core Rulebook, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, Advanced Player Guide and core races, core and base classes. (In the process of discussing the addition of *some* rules from Unchained, possibly Unchained classes).
I guess I would like to follow the idea stated above so:
Sounds already feat heavy, I might take Human for the extra feat, but not being able to see in darkness hurt. The Shadow domain help at level 8, but not before, so might be problematic. I see no Inquisition that synergize very well with all that...
I don't know if I should:
- try to squeeze in Weapon Finesse to forgo Strength and focus on Dex as my hitting ability and CA provider and relies on Studied Target and Sneak Attack to add damages (but it might be hard in the first levels).
- Pick a race that see in darkness, forget the extra feat and try to balance things with: Wisdom > Dex / Strength / Con > Int > Charisma
Any ideas/things that have overlooked that would synergize with such a build?
Currently playing some heavy-grind AP with a bunch of powergamers, not only do I end way below the group level in term of optimisation skill, but I also finding myself struggling surviving the encounter and doing something meaningful at all.
The party was short of an arcane caster, so I decided to try my hand at the Magus, focusing on melee combat and simple tricks to boost damages. I may or may not have really failed at that.
I went for the Magical Knack(Grasping Shock) paired with Intensified Spell to add 10d6 to my melee damage on a spellstrike and Improved Critical on Wakizashi to crit on a 15-20.
I was hoping to reliably hit with the crit threat range and eventually double down with a Critical Strike applying some Corrosive Consumption and Disintegrate at higher levels.
Took Step-up since I was expecting regular casters, and was planning to deal with the robes myself.
The thing is, while my teammates have AB around 22-26, I well behind and struggle to hit anything at all.
That paired with the fact that most ennemies are either immune to electricity damages and/or are spell resistant (most often than not to both) make me epicly useless in combat, as I can't even sponge damages that well.
Between a seemingly poorly optimized character and a lack of luck, I had to stay in the back for the last sessions, throwing some support spells here and there while twindling my thumbs.
Is there anything I can do in the next levels to make up for my lack of efficiency regarding combat?
Light Armor proficiency is now useless since I'm wearing Bracers of Armors, so I can retrain at least one thing without losing perks, but given the AP, any return to town is probably out of question (we're nearing end of book 5, and it doesn't look like a break is in order).
I bid thee good day, wanderer. I, Sir Stabalot, am confronted with a bit of a conundrum.
To put things simply, my party members are efficient. Maybe a bit too much so. We're currently playing The Rise of the Runelords and... how should I word it... It's not that they're murderhobos, as they aren't completely hobos, but they're quite good at the murder-y part. I joined them toward the end of the book 4 (if I remember correctly), at a moment they were nearly 13th level. Since they were lacking an arcane specialist, I rolled a magus with a knack for Thassilonian history.
And we do try to gather information and learn things. But it's a bit hard to do so when our Samouraï critx4 and whoops 200+ damages in a round. Bosses then tend to die in a gory way. He is closely matched by a Swashbuckler and a Ranger. They annihilate most encounters in less than three rounds. Meanwhile, I hang in the back to read books (fine by me), crack open magic seals, traps, and most importantly, read Thassilonian.
Thing is, our Samouraï just found a Headband of Intelligence, and the skill he got from this was Linguistics. Which made him learn Thassilonian. And make half of my area of expertise redundant.
We're about to start Curse of the Crimson Throne (no spoiler please). From experience, I know I'm not going to match this group in term of damages. Besides, we don't need *more* damage. All it would do would be to kill what little tension we have left.
(So far, the next party will include a Ninja from a less powergamey player)
What I am looking at are builds that are more Skill Monkey(1st)/Support or Healing(2nd) oriented. I mostly do Roguish-type builds, because, you know... I get to stab people, so I was considering the following.
Either:
- A Counterfeit-Mage/Sanctified-Rogue Rogue. Plenty of fun opportunities to RP in a city full of spellcasters, lot of skill points to go around and the opportunities to buff and sub-heal allies with wand.
- A Cleric of Desna. Which I wouldn't be playing in frontlane, so I'd try a distance build and I'm none too sure if that's any decent. But I would allow me to heal.
- An Inquisitor of Desna. Because I love the idea of a peaceful religion having Inquisitors, and I get to smite things. But, once again, not sure how it would fare in a non DPS role, so I'm a bit uneasy about this one.
- A Witch. For debuffs and heal. But I have not a single clue for the RP as of now.
Thoughts/ideas? Someone already played a similar build and can offer advices? Someone already went through the campaign and point at the build best fit for this AP without spoiling?
I'm in need of some help for my last creation.
The base idea was to create a social back-stabber. I babble a lot, look like a friendly guy and then I put a dagger through the neck/heart/vital organ of the person I'm speaking to.
I indead up filling some gaps in my group, meaning I'm also the skill-monkey/knowledgeable guy around (and I tell you, this group of illiterates do need someone of my quality).
I've recently started toying with my build after reading several threads here, but I'm kinda at loss as to what make of my character after level 12th.
I use a homebrew subracial for Tiefling which swap the attributes and give me Charm Person instead of Darkness as my spell like ability. For the rest, it's classical rules.
We're level 7 at the moment, in a pseudo KingMaker campaign (so gold isn't likely to be a problem) and we should soon(ishly cause my GM is hard) get access to vast amounts of adamantine.
By now, I have +17 Diplomacy, +15 Bluff, +15 Stealth and +15 Sleight of Hand (22 to conceal a dagger, without the dagger bonus). My follower is a Large grapple orc, and one of my team-mate can reliably flank with me, so we can both maximize our damage.
My dagger deals 1d4 + 5 damages + 1 point of attribute temporary reduction.
The sneak attacks add 3d8 per attack, with a +9 to touch.
On a Betrayer strike, that means 33 damages net, with 1 point of attribute reduction, either in STR or DEX.
For a level 7, that seems *weak* (especially with the numbers I see flying around here). My average DPS in fight is decent, as long as I can sneak attack reliably (i.e. if I got one of my two flankers) but I'd like to amp up this weakling.
What I had I mind was to dip a level in Kensaï Magus, to get Favorite Weapon, Cunning Defence and a little bit more of spellcasting for versatility (+ all cantrips).
Then keep piling up Unchained Knife Master levels, get Wave Strike at lv 9 (optionnal, but nice to have more "surprise-eat-my-dagger") and ITWF at level 11 (can't fit it before, cause of the BBA restriction). Skill Mastery would also be nice at lv 12, just to handwave most of the social tests before slicing someone's throat.
My problems are:
A) I'm nowhere near skilled in optimization (at least, not on this forum level). And it feels *weak*. My DM is a huge optimizer, and he prefers throwing us on big optimized encounter per day than three smaller. I need to be able to play the political assassin, but also kill what comes our way.
B) I'm at loss as what to do after. Seems like by level 12, all the straighforward paths are taken, and I don't know what to do with skills and feats. I suppose I can keep getting more sneak attacks, but I don't know how to get the most of them.
I mainly got to my social-trickster/con-artist/backstabber vibe, but I lack the one-shot aspect, as well as ideas for what's next.
I never played an alchemist, and while I see full well how to make a firebomb happy alchemist, I had something else in mind.
In a Pathfinder novel, "City of the Fallen Sky", the MC alchemist throw a bomb on a bunch of pirates, drowning them in a cloud of purple smoke. A few seconds later, the enemies are running around screaming, scared to death, and throw themselves overboard, kill each other and generally puke their brains out.
Now that's something a little less common, but it doesn't lack style. You don't burn your targets, you make their claws at their eyeballs with mouth foaming while you take notes of the effects.
I see a few discoveries that are thematically appropriate, such as Madness Bomb, that expressedly "sear the mind", Confusion Bomb, and the like. I'm also interested in the Mind Chemist archetype, as it increase your INT and thus the damages and potentials DC of your bombs.
The problem is, while thematically, I can shape up something, the mechanical result is mediocre at best. The fact that I can't apply more than one effect to the bombs bugs me out, and only the direct hit target suffers the effect. I lack options to synergize my "awful-shoggoth-fart-bomb" to make damages and sow madness around.
I'm looking for:
- A build that throws splash weapons around.
- Said splash weapons have a mind affecting effect provoking madness and possibly horror.
- The enemies actually end up dying from it, not just screaming and trashing on the ground for 1d4 turns before being lucid and really pissed at me.
Bonus:
- Can affect several targets.
- Gruesome effects for the lucky ones to receive that nasty gift.
My DMs usually prefer core or featured races, but everything else Paizo official I can find source of is allowed.
