Soractus Ex-Alkaeus's page

The new Oatia Skysage archetype (https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=199) in Gatewalkers needs a few clarifications to function;

First off, the Basic/Expert/Master spellcasting feats grant new spells known but do not explicitly grant Basic/Expert/Master spellcasting benefits, nor does it clarify that these function as innate spells, as the Captivator/Ghost Hunter archetypes spells do. Essentially, the archetype has three feats that grant spells known, but never grant spell slots with which to cast those spells.

Is the intention that these be innate, as with the Captivator? (This would make sense because the spells known progression, like the Captivator, goes up to 9th level).

Or, is the intention that these feats grant Basic/Expert/Master spellcasting benefits implicitly, as is arguably indicated by the “Spellcasting Archetypes” section in the CRB? (This would make sense because the dedication explicitly declares that the Skysage has a Repertoire, as a typical spontaneous caster does.)

Or is the intention something else entirely? It would really help to have some clarity here.

Separately from this, there is also an issue with the 14th level feat Starlight Armor; it’s a 3 action activity to activate, but it has no listed duration. Is it indefinite? Does it last until the Skysages next daily preparations? Ten minutes? One minute? Until the end of the skysage’s next turn?

Since AP archetypes historically don’t get much actual errata, some clarification on intent would be helpful at least.

(I originally posted this in the Lost Omens errata thread, but I realize that's the wrong place to put this)

The Faerie Dragon 'casts spells as a 3rd level Sorcerer'.

When taking one as a familiar, do I get to select and change it's spells known from those indicated in the stat block? For instance. Could I, for instance, give it Detect Magic instead of Flare, or Mending instead of Open/Close, or Enlarge Person instead of Grease?

Additionally, can the Faerie Dragon use magic items as a sorcerer without relying on UMD? What about items like a Page of Spell Knowledge to expand its spell list?

(To be clear, I AM NOT asking about whether this spell casting ability scales. That's a seperate question, and one which I'm less worried about.)

Okay. So, Touch Injection allows you to store a Potion, Poison, or Infusion, and deliver it at a later time via a touch attack. So far, so good.

If I have 2 attacks per round, (Let's say, an 8th level Alchemist at +6/+1 to hit), can you take the first attack with a weapon, and use the second iterative attack as your touch attack to deliver the Injection?

If Yes, can you take that touch attack against yourself, rather than an enemy, thus automatically hitting, and allowing you to buff yourself, and attack in one round? What about a willing ally?

Furthermore, if yes, must iterative attacks be taken in order (i.e. must the +6 attack be taken before the +1 attack?)

Round 2!

An Alchemist with natural weapons can also, as I understand it, deliver a stored potion, poison or extract via Touch Injection when making a Natural Attack.

If my understanding/base assumption is correct, is it possible for an Alchemist with multiple natural attacks (say, 3 from Feral Mutagen) to sacrifice one of his natural attacks to perform a touch attack against himself inject a potion or extract into himself? Again, what about a willing ally in range?

If it's not possible to make a touch attack in this way as part of a full attack action, is it possible to simply perform a normal melee attack against oneself, rolling damage to perform a touch injection? If yes, it ought to be possible to take this attack as a non-lethal attack, while using remaining natural attacks against opponents as lethal, correct?

TL;DR Does Touch Injection offer the ability to get a 'free' spell off during a full attack action?

So, I picked up Ultimate Psionics recently, and I've been inspired to try out a Cryptic. I love the flavor of the class, and it generally feels a lot like the 3.5 Warlock in all the ways that matter to me.
Thing is, I don't have the foggiest idea how to navigate the multitude of Psionic Feats and plan out a build from scratch because it's just an overwhelming quantity of information to process. I find that I learn best by looking at actual complete builds, or class guides, or other breakdowns of the information that organizes it in a manner that is not "Hey, here is a giant list of feats - roughly half of them will be of no interest to you, but they're in alphabetical order, so read them all and figure it out."
I've seen This guide, but as you can clearly see it's very unfinished and only goes so far into being helpful. (Gee, Int is important, and after that I want Str or Dex, depending on how I choose to hit things. Thanks.)
So anyone want to lend a hand? If nothing else, what are the 'indispensable, everyone wants this' feats of the Psionic landscape for a Cryptic? The equivalents of a Power Attack for melee types or Improved Initiative for a caster, or Rapid Shot for an archer in terms of "Are you an idiot? Why do you not have this feat?" (Alternately, what are the classic trap feats that exist purely to punish bad players who thought they were a good idea to take?)
Similarly, I don't know from the Psionic spell list. Is there anything that's indisputably a game changer of a spell? Any traps?

I'm putting together an Investigator to jump into an in-progress campaign, and I find myself not having any clue what to do with Mythic Feats and Powers. At this point, I'm leaning towards the Trickster path and just grabbing Legendary Weapon and a normal non-Mythic feat as first tier, but I fully admit that I don't know the Mythic options particularly well and am curious if there are any more synergistically interesting choices that I should be looking hard at.

So, I'm putting together an Investigator. Between the baseline class, and a one level dip of Swashbuckler, I've got everything but Handle Animal and Survival in class. Which is rad. So of course, the most efficient use of my skill points, to start out with, is to put one point in to everything.

Which, by my math, is roughly doable by level 3. That's with a point in all 10 Knowledges, Craft Alchemy, and no Profession or Perform skills. Thing is, while getting the +3 and stat mod (and Inspiration and Derring-Do for 1d6 extra on some of these skills), is enough to cover a lot of basic stuff, other skills, like Perception, or UMD, you can never really get high enough. You'll always want to be pouring points in to keep it up with your level.

The question then becomes, particularly in the case of skills like Craft, the various Knowledges and Knowledge-like skills (Spellcraft for example), which ones are worth continuing to pump and which ones you take the 4 +Int and run with it.

Right now, my thinking is as follows:

Skill points = Level:
Disable Device
Perception
Spellcraft
UMD

Which uses up 4/level, and leaves 6/level free for everything else, or level 5 to get 1 point in everything.

Meanwhile, as an example of a breakpoint, +10 to Appraise is generally 'enough' where, even if you care a lot about Appraising, you'd probably not want anymore - it's DC30 to identify a most valuable object, and you can almost always take 20 when you care about it.

Similarly, Spellcraft's major target DC's are going to be 16-24. Depending on how much randomness you're willing to accept, getting up to a +15 or so is often 'enough'. Certainly once you get to a +23, there's basically no point in going higher; you can identify any item by taking 20, and any spell cast you can identify even if you roll a 1.

So, what skill bonuses are 'enough' for you? Which skills are sufficiently important to always make sure they stay up to speed with level?

You summon hundreds of Diminutive spiders, which cling together in the form of a whip made for a creature of your size. You can wield this object as if it were an actual whip, except you make a melee touch attack with it instead of

a regular attack. Any creature you strike with the whip takes swarm damage as if it were attacked by a spider swarm (1d6 points of damage plus poison and distraction, Bestiary 258). The swarm whip is able to damage creatures with armor or natural armor, even if a normal whip could not. It cannot be used to make bull rush, grapple, or trip attacks, and (unlike a swarm) is subject to a miss chance for concealment and cover.

Okay, so it can't be used for combat maneuvers, and it does lethal damage, but what about the other features of Whip Mastery/Improved Whip Mastery? (AOOs, not provoking AOOs)

Can you power attack or piranha strike with an insect whip? Does it require proficiency with whips? Do weapon focus and other similar feats apply? Can you do precision damage such as sneak attack with a bug whip?

All of the above questions can also be applied to River Whip (along with, what are the actual stats for River Whip's whip damage? Is it just a normal whip?)

Can a Medlance be used with Alchemist's extracts? As written, the language is rather open ended, and it looks like it can: with a single dose of liquid, such as a pharmaceutical, a potion, or a poison. For that matter, what about Mutagens?

If so, that's pretty handy from an Action Economy standpoint - 50 GP to convert any extract into a Move Action, essentially, so long as you prep it ahead of time. (Or, if you have Infusion already, well, it's a bargain basement alternative to Poisoner's Gloves for your touch-attack Skinsend shenanigans.)

Dedicated to expunging 'black magic' and the worst excesses of demonic sorcery from he world, etc. Etc..

I love the class and crunch and theme of the build, and I have a pretty good idea of how it role plays, but I just don't know Golarion as well as I'd like to know which particular church heirarchy this sort of character would fit into.

Human, if it matters, probably going to be used for Reign of Winter or Iron Gods.

I'm building a Myrmidarch Magus. Through complicated house rule nonsense that isn't worth getting into, I have access to sneak attack dice. I'm not building around SA as my primary means of hitting things (because ranged SA is annoying), but with the option there, and with the bonus that I'll have an archer rogue buddy shooting things up alongside me, I'm trying to figure out what spells I can use to deny an opponent a dex bonus; spells that can be delivered via Ranged Spellstrike, (whether relying on Reach Spell or not) are ideal choices here.

The main two I'm planning to lean on pretty heavily right now are Ghoul Touch and Mudball. I'd love to have some alternatives to Ghoul Touch, because at half an Arcana and a Feat (and a Trait besides to really do it right!), it's pretty g$&~&$ned expensive. Mudball is solid, but targeting Reflex is the least ideal option, and there's the whole Goblin thing that I'll need to check in with the GM about.

Others I've got an eye on:

Gloomblind Bolts at level 3 is basically Scorching Ray at +1 Spell Level to add a Blind effect.
Glitterdust is Glitterdust. It never fully goes out of style.
And of course, Greater Invisibility fixes everything eventually.

The Toppling Spell metamagic feat would be *incredible* except... well, I can't find anything worth using it on.

So what am I missing?

I'm futzing around with building out a Grenadier Alchemist with Explosive Missile. As I read it, one of it's perks is that it includes loading the weapon in the standard action of imbuing it with a bomb and shooting it, which makes it possible to do things like firing a Heavy Crossbow every round without expending more feats on stuff like Rapid Reload, and turning Bombs into long range implements. What's interesting to me, is that this also explicitly works with firearms, allowing for instant reloads of, for example, a musket, which essentially doubles the range at which bombs can hit touch AC, and is also just insanely flavorful for what I'm looking to build.

The question is, what's the best way to get Firearms proficiency to do this. The way I see it, there are 3, maybe 4 main options:
1) Half Elf racial, take the weapon proficiency.
2) Burn the feat on it; probably best to go Human if I do this.
3) (Maybe) Gnome, with the Master Tinker racial option, and enough crafting skill to make his own guns - since he's automatically proficient with any weapon he creates, that would do the trick, assuming Gunsmithing isn't required and you're willing to roll up the very difficult craft checks during some long downtime.
4) Dip Gunslinger.

Honestly, my ideal race for this character concept is a Half-Orc, and a Gnome would be least favored, but I'm perfectly open to arguments for any of the 4 races mentioned.

The main question though. is, what methods exist to extend the range increment on a gun, and thus, the range at which it's going to hit Touch AC?

The main one that I can see is just going Gunslinger as a dip and only using Grit on Deadeye - which works great, except for the whole not having great Wisdom or Charisma, which means it's not usable all that often. The Siege Gunner archetype gets Grit from Int, which is amazing for an Alchemist dip... but gives up Deadeye, which *mostly* misses the point. (There are other good uses for Grit though...)

So, what other means (Feats, traits, magic items, whatever) are there to boost that increment that I'm missing? Longshot buys 10 feet, but I don't know of anything else, since most of the other effects I can find, reduce the attack penalty, rather than raising the increment.

I'm currently leaning towards a 1 level dip of Siege Gunner to get the gun proficiency itself, and just using the grit for dodge and gun repairs, but I'm open to being convinced that just grabbing the feat is the best way to do this. (Or, I suppose, going Gunslinger without Siege Gunner and maxing out Grit without pumping Wis/Cha some other way). Regardless, the basic idea of building towards using Explosive Missile with a gun is very much the objective, and ideally, I'd like to get there by somewhere in the level 5-7 range.