Skeeve Plowse's page

I have a slightly-more-than-passing interest in fighter-mages, and have been increasingly annoyed with the lack of support they seem to have in the card game. Flenta's close, but she's not quite what I'm looking for, and the Magus class deck isn't due out until August, so here's my take on the stereotypical rapier-wielding Magus.

Unless my math is very off, this character hits all the targets denoted in the blog post about homebrew. Anything in brackets denotes a checkbox:

Skills:
Strength d6 (+1) (+2)
Dexterity d8 (+1) (+2) (+3)
Constitution d6 (+1) (+2)
Intelligence d10 (+1) (+2) (+3) (+4)
- Arcane +2
- Knowledge +2
Wisdom d4 (+1)
Charisma d8 (+1) (+2) (+3)
- Diplomacy +2

Hand Size: 5 (+6)
Proficient With: Light Armors, Weapons

Powers
For your check that has or is against a card that has the Finesse trait, gain the skill Melee: Dexterity +1
If your combat check has the Sword trait, add 2 (4) and you may add the Magic trait (and/or Cold trait) (and/or Fire trait)

Favored Cards: Weapon or Spell
Card List
Weapon: 3 (4) (5)
Spell: 4 (5) (6) (7)
Armor: 1 (2)
Item: 2 (3)
Ally: 3 (4) (5)
Blessing: 2 (3)

I'm still working on Roles; probably going to go with one that's weapon focused (maybe call it the Kensei) and the other being more magically focused (Eldritch Knight, maybe? There aren't a lot of spell-focused archetypes for Magus to crib off of).

It looks pretty balanced to me (seeing as how I cribbed most of the powers off of existing characters), but I've never made any homebrew for this game before, so I'd like a neutral eye to take a look at it for me. I'm welcome to any suggestions or critique!

On Masterwork Cooking Tools:

Well, this is a bit of an odd situation. By the strict rules, if you buy a masterwork tool, you have one tool that's enough for you to get a +2 to your baking checks, and if you want all the other stuff, you'll have to spring for a cooking kit separately.

Now, having said that, I can't think of any occasion where, by the rules, you'd need a cooking kit to make Profession (Baker) checks if you already have a masterwork tool, so you don't need to buy one at all unless you want extra stuff on you for RP purposes. Which you might, I don't know; I carry around stuff like a Shaving Kit for just that reason.

On A Gnome Oracle's Favored Class Bonus:

That's absolutely how it works, yes. You'll still need spell slots of the appropriate level to use said spells, but if you take that bonus twice, you'd get the spells in question added to your spells known list at 4th level.

Well, I mostly picked Cad to get Acrobatics, Bluff, and Stealth as class skills. Likewise, the 14 Charisma; I've been burned once or twice in social situations in a group of all bruisers.

Traits right now are Magical Knack and Fashionable. Unarmed Fighter would save me a feat or two (depending on whether I keep Dodge) at the cost of those class skills... hm.

I'm not too keen on the idea of holding out for Quicken Spell, though; that'd come pretty late in my career to be useful for very long.

So, I'm working on planning out my build for my soon-to-be level 2 Eldritch Knight. My basic plan is to wear light armor and use Crane Style for added defense in melee, and there are a couple of empty spots in my build that I could use some advice on filling. Here's what I'm looking at right now:

Fighter (Cad) 1 / Wizard 5 / EK 6

STR: 14, DEX: 14, CON: 12, INT: 16, WIS 8, CHA 14

H Improved Unarmed Strike
1 Power Attack
F1 Dodge
W1 Spell Focus (Something)
3 Crane Style
5 Arcane Armor Training
W5 ?
7 Improved Familiar
EK1 Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Bastard Sword)
9 Crane Wing
11 ?
EK5 Crane Riposte

So I'm trying to fill a 5th level wizard feat, an 11th level wizard feat, and pick my spell focus for Wizard 1. Any suggestions?

I'm working on a few builds, and my rules-fu seems to be failing me today.

Are there any ways for a Bard to add spells from other lists to his or her list of Spells Known? Specifically, I'm looking for the Jump spell.

This took me longer to get back to than I thought, but I haven't forgotten about it. I've mostly only just looked through the magic and spell sections at this point, and it seems pretty nicely done.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a conversion of the standard d20/Pathfinder spells to this system, but I think that might be a little outside the scope of what you're trying to do here.

Also, I've been finding it entertaining to go through the spell list and try and figure out what each spell was supposed to be.

I think the reason that he used Warrior as his benchmark is because if a Warrior can do it, then just about anyone can if they focus on it.

Any one of these except the Fighter could probably fufill the 'Magical Fencer' concept. Let me know if you are interested in any of these and up to what level and I'll post the stats.

I appreciate the offer, but I'm not too concerned about taking Duelist levels; I don't want to take the spellcasting hit.

AndIMustMask wrote:

to thread name: magus and arcane duelist (bard) were the first two to spring out at me.

upon actually reading your post i'd say: if ya wanna use a rapier, then use one. grab the agile enchant soon as you can and go nuts. tack on keen with your arcane pool to put more stabbity death enemy-ward. combat casting is always great.

also, are you even allowed to power attack with a rapier? or would you have to grab piranha strike instead?

You can power attack with a Rapier, just can't wield it with two hands.

Yeah; by RAW you actually can't Piranha Strike with a Rapier, you have to use Power Attack.

Not far enough.

I guess I technically have a ranged weapon in that I have a spear, but I don't think throwing my best melee weapon really counts as 'having a ranged weapon' for the purposes of this discussion.

So, after crunching some math and realizing my planned PFS Fighter/Wizard/Eldritch Knight should really just be a Magus, I'm setting about re-building him, since he's still first level.

I'm planning on using a rapier as a weapon, and Crane Style by level 5 to bolster my defenses, but I'm not sure where I want to go offensively.

Should I:

A) Go 12 Strength, 16 Dexterity, take Weapon Finesse at 1st level and pick up Arcane Strike at 5th,

or

B) Go 14 Str, 14 Dex, take Arcane Strike at 1st, and pick up Power Attack at 5th

or

C) Something I haven't considered yet? Dervish Dance looks neat, but I don't care for scimitars from a conceptual standpoint, and we all know how PFS is about reskinning.

...because my campaign started with a shipwreck, and I haven't had a chance to make one yet.

Within my own group, myself and a player of mine that wanted to play a wizard in full plate solved the issue by borrowing the Twilight armor property from 3.5. It's a +1 armor property that reduces spell failure chances by 10%. Right now he's level 7, with +1 Mithril Twilight Full Plate, Arcane Armor Training & Mastery, and has a 0% spell fail chance.

As for the actual archetype, well... I'd probably allow it if a player really wanted it, but it doesn't seem all that great. Also, I question the specific logic in trading out Scribe Scroll for Craft Magic Arms & Armor; a wizard can enchant their Arcane Bond item as though they already had the appropriate feat, so this isn't really necessary for anything, it looks like just a straight trade up for something better.

I have always used and expected Read Magic to be used.

I have had GM's enforce is as recently as last month. When everybody looted a bunch of scrolls the GM started asking for spellcraft checks to identify. He was surprised when I had read magic on my list of prepared spells. I always have it.

See, this is exactly why I haven't cast Read Magic since 1999. Nine times out of ten, any character of mine with access to Read Magic is going to be putting points into Spellcraft anyway, so why bother memorizing a spell when I've got a perfectly good skill that can do the same thing?

There's no penalty for failure to decipher a scroll, it can be done ahead of time, and it's only a full-round action, so if I find a new scroll I'll just take 20 and spend two minutes looking at it to figure out what it is.

Learning or preparing a spell from a captured spellbook is only DC 15+spell level, and even with just a 14 intelligence it's possible to take 10 and pass that check from level 1 on.

This is a lot of stuff to read, but it's a lot of good stuff.

I'd always been interested in playing around with GoO's Advanced d20 Magic. I might have some more concrete feedback for you once I've been able to read over the documents more thoroughly, but I'm definitely interested.

Well, life is full of little risks like that. But you're correct, I was speaking to the general case.

Neo2151 wrote:

Here's the problem with the spell:

In 3.X you only needed a single casting of GMF to cover all your potential unarmed strikes. In Pathfinder, they seem to have changed their mind in regards to this, but the Devs have failed to list specifically how many times one would need to cast GMF to cover all potential Unarmed Strikes.

In short: The PF devs took something that worked just fine, and made it all sorts of complicated, and then failed to explain why and failed to explain exactly how their change works.

It's a bad rule.

It's really not as complicated as you try to make it. It's fairly obvious that the appendage making the attack needs to be the thing that's enchanted. By default there are only five appendages capable of making unarmed strikes on a (non-monk) humanoid. If you want to use them all, each must be enchanted. Pretty simple, really.

Having said that, I think the answer 'five' there might be a bit of a red herring, since you're only going to be able to use any two of them in any particular TWF attack; it's pretty self-evident that two-weapon fighting is limited to two weapons.

So, just pick your favourite two unarmed strikes, GMF them up, and go to town. Who cares about the rest? Mechanically, you won't be using the others.

I don't understand what this potential balance problem with allowing people to TWF with unarmed strikes is.

What's so unbalanced about a pair of d3 weapons?

Note to self - kicking butt at noodle shops is out. Gotcha.

Just looking for some opinions on the matter.

Improved Unarmed Strike lets you consider yourself armed even when not holding a weapon. And anyone normal and unarmed provokes an attack of opportunity when trying to punch someone who's armed.

So the way I'm reading this, if I have Improved Unarmed Strike, and someone who doesn't tries to hit me unarmed, I get an attack of opportunity.

Anyone else read it differently? If so, why?