SterMe's page

I should also comment I am more interested in low at the moment.

Tier 1-2:
Tiefling Invulnerble Rager 2
Wayang Witch Hex Channeler Evangelist of Nethys 2
Aasimar LE Brown Fur Transmuter 2

Tier 4-5:
Miro - SS - Tengu Natural Attack Rogue 5
William - SS - Suli Unchained Monk 5

I feel like this thread has done a pretty good job of staying on topic and discussing a lot of well-reasoned options to avoid most of the over-the-top game breaking aspects of Blood Money. I would be interested to get an update on if this has caused further discussion inside of campaign leadership and how that is progressing, if at all. If we actually completely missed the point of the ban and should have thought about it a different way that would be interesting as well.

Dragios wrote:

But a white Mage arcanist does allow me to qualify for a mystic Theurge.

4lvls of archanist to qualify
1 lvl of oracle to build off of
And then the rest mystic Theurge.

I do not think it works that way. The White Mage archetype allows the Arcanist to cast cure spells as if they were on it's spell list and prepared. Under the arcanist's spell casting feature it says that an arcanist casts arcane spells, not divine. I would expect that when a white mage casts cure spells, they would be arcane, kind of like a bard casting cure spells.

Correct. I was listing ways to have a "Theurge-esque" character.

+1 in support of this. My horse in this race is Milani who seems to be ascending to core status as the only lesser deity with a Deific Obedience but her inquisitors, rangers, and clerics don't get Good Hope (potentially the most Milani spell in the game).

Ok. New question: anything else that allows divine and arcane casting?

What specific aspects of divine casting?

>Shaman's can take a spirit to give them some Arcane spells. If you can wait till higher level and use it as your wandering spirit you can swap them out every day like a wizard.
>Oracle Lorekeeper Archtype can grab Arcane Spells
>Hex Channeler Witch Archtype gets Channel with a full Arcane Spell List
>White Mage Arcanist - Not particularly good but available.
>Self-Perfection Psychic which gives you a handful of SLA style divine spells

I ran into just one and it was a fantastic way to "tank" without resorting to the goading feats. Left to my own devices I would have to rule that it did stack and make one of the better teamwork build concepts I have seen, especially with any sort of crit-fisher / AoO hunting feat chains. I am really glad it can't stack with Holy Tactician.

Going meta for a minute here... one of the points of the PFS campaign is for players to play. Part of that is letting players play things they want to play, but a more important part is making sure those "things" don't interfere with the fun of everyone else at the table. From the perspective of running a group that is bigger than just one table, this last part is extremely important.

Now, here's the rub: every NPC controlled by a player takes away table time from the other actual people at the table. This applies to animal companions, pets, summoned/conjured/animated creatures, of course. It's one of the reasons that master summoners and similar multi-pet classes don't work well in organized play. Templates for created undead make them that much more capable/versatile/powerful and therefore that much more commonly used. So that may be a reason not to make NPC-based classes more versatile/powerful/etc. (EDIT: once your created skeletons start buying Pathfinder products, we can revisit this! ;)

I've sat at a table with a summoner, two druids and a ranger with pets, and a necromancer. I don't recall if I ever acted in combat. (And the druids saved their scrolls of summon nature's ally to the final fight, so there were summons as well. Whee.)

You have to look at the effect on the entire campaign, not just what would be cool for your character or what doesn't seem to be broken or "as broken as X".

Very well put. My only remaining argument is that the way the rules are for Bloody Skeletons means that I have one less skeleton at the table. Generally speaking as a player and a GM I prefer my allies to bring the one animal companion instead of the warren of earth elementals unless they really know what they are doing.

SterMe wrote:

I am in favor of allowing these templates and hadn't realized or had a GM tell me I wasn't able to use them. Between this and blood money, I am getting concerned that John just doesn't like Necromancy as a school.

Those two issues are totally unrelated, so I suspect your worry is unfounded...

I love necromancer characters myself - but *not* for Organized Play. It causes conflicts with several core classes and deities, it depends on evil when most such acts are not allowed in PFS, and it has the aforementioned "too many NPCs" issue. And, from a lore point of view, I'm not sure why the Pathfinder Society would hire folks like this, who basically confirm the stereotype of Pathfinders as disrespectful grave-robbers. It's great for a home game where the party can adapt and build around the concept, and the GM can build it into the game, but it is more problematic when you don't know who else is at the table.

I agree to a point that they are unrelated and I could just be getting paranoid. I feel like if campaign leadership agreed that necromancy didn't belong in PFS for all of the reasons you mention, banning necromancy and eliminating templates becomes the "pocket ban" if you will - eliminating most of the reasons people want to play Necromancers without having to do something so bold as actually banning a core school of magic.

Addressing the "time consuming" of either creation or management -

If well prepared, it takes the player away from the table for 5 minutes. I have a chart I reference based on the creature hit die / size to determine if I am making a fast zombie, bloody skeleton, or standard.

Having played a specialist conjurer and a master summoner as well as a necromancer, the necromancer is the least time consuming from a turn perspective and is far easier / faster than my high level sacred huntsmaster archer with a velociraptor.

I am in favor of allowing these templates and hadn't realized or had a GM tell me I wasn't able to use them. Between this and blood money, I am getting concerned that John just doesn't like Necromancy as a school.

Merrin Moonsun wrote:

Just looking for some clarification. With the spell animate dead can you animate variant skeletons and zombies such as bloody or burning skeleton or fast or plague zombie?

You can not. But, you can join me and few others in pushing for a review of this option to try to get it legal.

Last I checked Bloody skeletons were completely legal but I am happy to be corrected...

there are only a handful of cases where I can see this being used for Raise dead or other high cost Spells

and before you talk about Heart of the Metal,Pellet blast or anything with a Component cost of 100gp or under - there is a feat that allows you to ignore costs up to that that is legal

in reality I dont think this particularly breaks the game or WBL due to the amount of Fringe cases where it can be used for Super high cost Components

Cherry-picking from your point a bit - outside of conjuration (healing) and spells that are intended to be game-breaking, blood money is not mechanically that impressive EXCEPT for Animate Dead - a spell that only makes sense in PFS if Blood Money is legal because undead are temporary in PFS (like BM damage). Is there a way to protect characters who animate dead while eliminating the healing shenanigans which seem to be the only concrete problem posted?

Generally speaking books like MTT, RTT, and WMH have kept the classic fighter / paladin up to snuff with the new kids. With the January "spellbook based" book coming out I currently fear for sorcerers a little bit as they haven't really seen anything helpful in some time.

From OP to least OP I would rank my experience as follows:

The scariest tables in the 5-9 tier right now are ones where my archer and the VL's wereshark hunter are tabled together because of pheromone arrows. It's amazing how effective a 15gp "consumable" can be.

My wife and I have a pair of ranged Assassin's Creed style Sacred Huntsmaster Inquisitors with Raptors and diligently worship Milani and her rebellious spirit. One of us Good Hopes while the other Battlemind Links and we both click our boots of haste together and swift into the scent ability to use such a simple consumable. The ranged teamwork feats with pouncing 6 attack flank monsters make them borderline not fun to play from spotlight hogging.

I have a lvl 5 Robin Williams Genie Suli Unchained Monk who generally does too much damage at low level flurrying with a 7 branched elemental sword.

I just took a Self-Perfection Psychic through BK II (Mind Thrust Build) and had a ..well...blast.

My Foghorn Leghorn unchained intimidation rogue is did a pretty good job tanking / damaging / detrapping Dark Menagerie.

I have a Woody Allen inspired Unchained Summoner Who has a Aphrodite style eidolon. They work well as a lightweight conjurer / archer pair and while they aren't quite the powerhouses a chained summoner would be, are still interesting.

I am working on a 2 weapon fighter build to crit-fish and paired opportunist feed my wife's elven branched spear unchained rogue.

Having read through the thread I see 2 camps and I am personally in both:

1) It nerfs my Necromancer / Buff Wizard / Gish to the point of not being playable

2) It makes high level divine spells way overpowered.

I suggest the following for Campaign and Developer consideration:

Campaign - If Blood Money couldn't be made into a wand and everyone gets back 2pp, issue solved and can be done inside of PFS.

Developer - If Blood Money gets flavorfully errata'd that it can't be used on healing subschool spells, this keeps both with the spirit of the spell and eradicates virtually all of the second camp while preserving the first camp.

Campaign - Let necromancers track undead like other inventory. Then I don't mind paying for every Tom, Dick, and Sally I bring forth to destroy the ancient texts that killed my ancestors.

Honored to conduct the band for at least one tune, though through most of it I was pretty well beaten like a drum. For those of you who haven't heard John drop to a throaty growl before he destroys your carefully crafted battle with a flurry of blinding bombs, it is a fairly terrifying experience.

Fomsie wrote:

While we would all love to think that everyone would follow their "word of honor" in such cases, past experience has shown that people do not.

So what? How would they benefit?

Somebody decides to take what was originally a wizard and become a mystic Theurge. Who cares?

And do we really expect there to be a mad rush of this?

As someone who has a 11.15 MT, The issue would be the rush of Evangelists, not MT's. I actually blame Inner Sea Gods's power creep as the reason I won't be able to play the MT's and AT's without pulling down the party.

I have a retirement waiting Fey Sorcerer / Dual Cursed Wood Oracle MT who leveraged warp wood and glitterdust SLA. It benefits from being SAD as well as also having good flavor (He was a hero in a war in the feywild before taking up treeherding, forgetting everything he knew, and talking like Deckard Cain).

I built the character to try to show that the SLA ruling was all kinds of broken. I determined at the end it was no more broken than a straight level 11 diviner wizard with persistent spell and staff of the master (ahem DHaller). At high levels I think it plays out about right. Having 63 spells per day has it's advantages with things like Divine Interference. I am missing out on some power (contingency, G Heroism, Heal ) but that is offset by being able to keep the party buffed with FoM, Haste, Magic Circle:Evil and GMW and still having slots to ruin the days of my GM.

For Save-or-Suck casters like enchanters, the single stat is key and the MT gives you more tricks against mindless enemies. When I compare it to a straight kitsune sorcerer the versatility and dual-cursed I will stick to the MT every day. Spells like Charitable Impulse and Terrible Remorse cover up some of the lost power (side note: Ever made a Xill turn over all it's weapons or made Glabrezu punch itself to death? Hilarious). I was also a pretty outstanding face character as well so I wasn't all combat based even though my skills were limited.

I would say 3-4 was the hardest part as I hadn't really come online and was a one trick pony with a misfortuned command to provoke attacks of opp at a DC 20 or so. 5 got me Calm Emotions and 6 got me Command Undead so I could start controlling the battlefield a bit. At level 8 Haste came online I felt a lot more useful but that's when casters generally start tearing stuff up.

Magical Knack was pretty key for SR. For MT's, You are trading a trait for a feat.

I did not participate in the playtest this year.

The one person I know of who was going for the 9-slot boon was not able to get it due to tables failing to make and having to respec because they were unaware that they were not able to take a level dip and still get credit. I believe they did get to 6, however.

As has been indicated above, both the timing (between my two busiest holidays) and the short playtest duration did not help. There were several other chilling effects which resulted in my not playtesting these classes at all, but the main chilling point was the fact that most of my game play right now is in PFS and the structure of the chronicle sheet made me disinclined to sacrifice more time & effort.

** spoiler omitted **...

I got to the 6 boon but ran into the issues Tim mentioned between the very strange multiclass restriction (I didn't really follow as not working out dip impacts of new classes is perhaps more damaging then straight classes (see MoMS)) and just the amount of scenarios available. I even went to try and find online games but it was just hard to come by. I also realized that burning that many scenarios on a character I may not want to play to seeker was not a great tradeoff. I was essentially trying to get people round up for things I didn't want to play on my more preferred characters. Lastly, trying to play a single character with no room for GM breaks or other flavors of character inside of a single month was starting to burn me out.

David Haller wrote:

Game Master wrote:

Ill_Made_Knight wrote:

Unless a GM has full control of a game and abilities to modify on a whim, Goz mask+eversmoking bottle, makes 95% of games easy, even ones with hardmode.

If you're trying this exploit on me and I have access to a villain with wish, you'd better believe I'm wishing the bottle (if not the person holding it) to the middle of Golarion's sun. :P

I sympathize, but in PFS, you're kind of bound by RAW.

Wish is a hell of a spell, man. You'd be hard pressed to say that with the insane reality bending power of 'Whatever the GM thinks is okay goes' would invalidate teleporting an object you can't see.

Wish could also utterly cancel the bottle trick in about fifteen other ways simply by duplicating a spell.

Also in David's group. Carlos got dice fubar'd when he rolled 1's on our Inquisitor's Variant channeling save vs. Daze so he couldn't get the wish cast to get rid of the bottle. Even still I believe we got him with an Anchor (we had 3 or 4 at the table) and I had Bit the Hand on his Bebilith who was blocking his escape. Once the archer with adamantine arrows started firing away, it didn't take long.

I have a playtest gnome mesmer running for PFS and I went ahead and abandoned attacking outright and it has worked out okay and let me be CHA Dependent (at level 5 now). DC 20 Loathsome Veil as a level 2 breaks any large mook based battle. I have bailed out our tank with my +12 will save (note: you get CHA to will) and made a hunter pretty terrifying with the flank trick. Glitterdust and silent walls let you carve up the battlefield pretty well. Important things to remember is that if you get another controller wizard (or anyone that preys on will saves) you are essentially giving spell focus to him for free with that stare.

Only a couple of issues so far: If I compare tricks to say hexes in terms of power level then they could use some love. I would love a misfortune trick.

Level 3 is the first spell list that doesn't have more illusions than I want for offensive casting. I would love to see a couple of the Lvl 4 Wizard illusions added to the Level 3 list.

Also if I wasn't going for the boon I would have dipped into Oracle for Awesome Display and burning hands to really balance out.

Sacred Huntsmaster doesn't get handle animal as a class skill. Inquisitor doesn't have it base and there are no skill subs. Seems a bit odd for a class with an animal companion.

Here was my level 1 last night: Favored weapon of Shurikens with weapon focus kukri's. Tack on 2 weapon fighting and double slice and we start getting silly. I am doing Monk damage with 18-20 Crit in Fighter armor (19 AC with trait and 4-Mirror Mail) and am still able to go ranged if needed for the SAME DAMAGE. I can't imagine what happens at 2 when I can actually draw as part of a move AND Divine Favor or Cure Light AND attack. Anyone know which Chronicle Sheet has a Belt of Might Hurling on it? Granted the season 0 had us fighting rogues with 14 AC and I was playing with a party of Druid's, the damage / flexibility seemed intense for a 2 save class.