Hey all,
So I noticed in the Hellknight faction description in the Inner Sea World Guide that there are numerous lesser orders of the Hellknights, most of which are not named. After reading on the forums the discussions surrounding how fitting it is for Paladins of different faiths being drawn to becoming Hellknights, I thought I'd try my hand at naming and fleshing out one of these small orders.
The concept began along the lines of: "What sort of lesser order would paladins of faiths other than Iomedae be drawn to?", and came up with the Order of the Scales. So, may I humbly present:
Order of the Scales
A small order, with fewer than 100 active Hellknights, the Order of the Scales are firm believers in the ideal of allowing transgressors to repent their sins. It is their belief (and one that has gotten little more than a knowing look by the mysterious members of the church of Pharasma) that when one commits a sin against his fellows - in effect, by breaking the laws - then he has put himself into the debt of society, and marked his soul.
In order for the law-breaker to repay this debt (usually referred to as “balancing the scales”) and to erase this mark so as to find peace in the afterlife, he must work until he has made amends. Thus, Hellknights of this order are loathe to use deadly force unless necessary, or against a foe that is utterly unrepentant of the heinous crimes and evils it has committed. Though this preference for arresting criminals and requesting service to the community as punishment is often derided by other orders, one should not mistake the Order of the Scales for being any more merciful or compassionate than any other. Even the smallest infraction of law is seen as something to be punished, and they are relentless in their pursuits. Most often, they target banditry and corruption, which generally means that most of the order is constantly on the move, following rumours of such things across the Inner Sea region.
Though nominally based at Castle Dunnarc in the northern Menador Mountains of Cheliax, in truth the small fort is usually only home to a few active Hellknights at a time, along with their Armigers and the various servants and slaves that are always found in such places. In keeping with their doctrine, only those who have been sentenced to slavery due to properly recorded and convicted crimes will be found in service to the Order of the Scale - slavemasters who have attempted to sell kidnapped men and women from other lands have swiftly felt the wrath of the Hellknights.
Older members of the order often elect to remain at the fort as its protectors and keepers of knowledge, more than once proving to the occasional wandering band of Orcs that a seemingly-harmless group of old men and women are not something to be taken lightly!
Paladins are relatively common in the ranks of the Order of the Scale, especially ones that follow the teachings of Abadar, though those who worship Sarenrae and Iomedae also are represented.
Almost a dozen of these holy warriors are present within the ranks, and it perhaps unsurprising that those with an evil bent are almost non-existent within this particular order. Still, even the most pure-hearted of these Hellknights are exemplars of law and order, and see the punishment of the evil in the world as secondary to bringing peace and stability to an otherwise unstable region.
Alright, after trawling the forums for answers to a bunch of different questions I had about how Improved Familiars work and either coming up squat or simply unclear, I thought I'd put together a single thread to cover them all. For the purposes of examples, I'll be using a Lyrakien familiar, because why not. I'll also be pulling all quotes from the SRD, because it is WAY easier to simply copy + paste. So, here we go:
1) BAB.
Spoiler:
This one actually technically covers normal familiars as well, which line takes precedence?
Quote:
A familiar is an animal chosen by a spellcaster to aid him in his study of magic. It retains the appearance, Hit Dice, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, skills, and feats of the normal animal it once was
Or
Quote:
Attacks: Use the master's base attack bonus, as calculated from all his classes.
Now, a Lyrakien has a full BAB, but does not actually level in a normal sense. However, the line;
Quote:
Hit Dice: For the purpose of effects related to number of Hit Dice, use the master's character level or the familiar's normal HD total, whichever is higher.
Is not particularly clear on WHAT effects that covers. Is it just spell effects, or does it encompass things such as BAB, skill ranks, etc?
2)Skills.
Spoiler:
Now, this one is a bit more hazy than the BAB question. Now, the way I read this;
Quote:
Skills: For each skill in which either the master or the familiar has ranks, use either the normal skill ranks for an animal of that type or the master's skill ranks, whichever is better. In either case, the familiar uses its own ability modifiers. Regardless of a familiar's total skill modifiers, some skills may remain beyond the familiar's ability to use. Familiars treat Acrobatics, Climb, Fly, Perception, Stealth, and Swim as class skills.
Means that I basically use a "whichever is better" rule of thumb when it comes to skill ranks, gaining bonuses for both the standard familiar class skills and the lyrakien's own class skills. Easy enough. However, how does a familiar GAIN new skill ranks? Does it pick new ones up whenever its master gains a level, or does it only gain them through increases to its Intelligence?
3)Intelligence.
Spoiler:
Now this one is a doozy. RAW, it appears that becoming a familiar actually makes most of the Improved Familiars DUMBER, as there is no rule explicitly stating that they don't use that part of the familiar progression table. However, I believe in 3.5 there WAS a rule that basically said "use whichever is higher", and a precedent for this can be seen in how the skill ranks work. However, as far as I know this has never been addressed in an errata, so which interpretation is RAI? Personally I would support the "whichever is better" camp, but I have no idea if that is correct.
4)Saving Throws.
Spoiler:
Quote:
Saving Throws: For each saving throw, use either the familiar's base save bonus (Fortitude +2, Reflex +2, Will +0) or the master's (as calculated from all his classes), whichever is better. The familiar uses its own ability modifiers to saves, and it doesn't share any of the other bonuses that the master might have on saves.
Now, this seems to work the same as skill ranks (use whichever is higher for each one), but a Lyrakien has Reflex and Will as its high saves. Do we use those, or do they change over to Fort and Ref?
5) Caster Level.
Spoiler:
This is a smaller one that ties into the "what effects from higher HD does a familiar get"; does the CL - and thus effects from SLAs - increase as the master gains levels?
I'm hoping to get enough community feedback so to understand how most people use these rules - it is hard to go wrong by following the general consensus, after all.
Hey everyone, thought I would share my newest build and put it out there. It mostly follows the tried-and-tested formulas, but I have made a few changes just to round the character out. He is picking up a little bit of 3rd party stuff - the GM is allowing pretty much anything on the SRD, but I have tried to keep such choices to a minimum.
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Elf Magus, level 1, 20 point buy
10, 18, 12, 17, 8, 10
Okay, I know charisma is the better choice to generally loose here, but I chose to use this setup for a couple of reasons:
1) RP. The idea of this guy is that he is unhealthily curious, and a poor Wis score reflects this.
2) The rest of the party are all using Cha as a dump stat - SOMEONE has to be the face-guy.
Lastly, I don't want to min-max this guy too much - RP is important to me, and I'd rather not have to play someone who has 7 in both Wis and Cha...
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Thoughts? I took the item crafting feat so that we can have access to plenty of decent magical gear early on, and it really only replaced Arcane Strike - which to me, is pretty much only used on mooks, which the little extra damage is not all that necessary against.
Alright, I've got an interesting one for you all tonight.
Say I have a Magus that wants to craft an item to give himself both Blur and Mirror Image. But, being rather considerate of his not-infinite wallet (and the headache-inducing effect that it could have on his fellow adventurers whilst not in combat), he decides that instead of having this item function continuously, he wishes to make it use-activated for three times a day, each use lasting for ten rounds. The item will be a cloak, as a similar item (Minor Cloak of Displacement) is in this slot.
So, the questions I have are:
1) Can an item with multiple abilities be set up in the format of
[x + y both in effect, z times/day]?
2) Can you choose to lower the caster level of the spell - for example, the Magus is level 15, but he only really needs 10 rounds of the effect per use, so can he create the item at CL 10?
3) Costing, assuming both of the above are true:
(spell level {2} x caster level {10} x 2000)/(5\3) + [(spell level {2} x caster level {10} x 2000)/(5\3)] x 0.75 = 42,000gp
Each of the abilities individually cost the same as a Minor Cloak of Displacement, with the higher CL being offset by the 3/day limitation on the activation - so that seems about right.
4) Is activating this item a standard or a free action? The rules on this are a little on the vague side.
So, A friend of mine is wanting to run his first proper campaign, and I have convinced him that the shiny new version of Rise of the Runelords is a fantastic way to cut his teeth. There is, however, a bit of a premium on players around where I live, so there will only be three of us in the party.
Really, I don't think that will be a problem. The issue, sadly, is with me. See, I have a horrible tendency to over-optimize characters until they just aren't super fun, either for myself or the other party members who aren't playing horribly broken death machines. So... I am making a proper effort to not do this.
So, instead of the Dervish Dancer Magus I had lined up, I am instead thinking of running a sword'n'board Paladin. It isn't SUPER feat intensive to hit Shield Mastery, so it gives me a lot of wriggle room to do some fun things with the character, and not needing a bunch of the extra TWF feats for damage due to Smite means I won't be feeling too underpowered.
The other two party members are a Four Winds Monk and probably a Switch-Hitter Ranger. I'd like a bit of advice on building my tanky Paladin to be a solid combat character without being the sort of horribly broken thing that I usually play!
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So far, I have:
lvl 1, Human Paladin, 15 point-buy
13, 15, 12, 10, 10, 15
//Nothing under 10, so clearly not min-maxing whatsoever there...//
Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Shield Bash
//gives me a shield bash attack, both hitting at +0//
My feat plan so far:
lvl 3: Squire (Gives us an extra body on the field, not certain yet as to class)
lvl 5: ?
lvl 7: Shield Slam
lvl 9: ?
lvl 11: Shield Master
I'll be running with a longsword and light shield - the former because it is thematically appropriate for a Paladin of Iomedae, and the latter because I like being able to use LOH in combat.
