TarrasqueEsque's page

In my previous post the 18s were total 16+2 racial, to clear up confision. I figured the op would puzzel out the strength dump so to make the stat array perfectly clear here it is:
Str 5(7-2), Dex 16+2, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 16+2, Cha 10.

A few things they may not be optimal but I will through them out. Improved familiar umd monkey. Your are getting quicken first level spells if you have a bunch of wands kicking around. You can bless a lot more weapons that way.

Heightened spell may help because you can use your highest dcs for your save or die spell. Hold persons at 5th level is still a fight ender even at high levels. Blindness deafness on the right target is rough to.

Persistent is the best for increasing dcs. Likely better than heighten.

Finally, I like piercing spell better than spell penitration it is much better on spontaneous casters obviously a rod would be great but it is still great value.

Level 1: Snowball, Burning Disarm, Frostbite, Produce Flame

Level 2: Aggressive Thundercloud, Burst of Radiance(vs evil), Chill/Heat Metal, Flaming Sphere, Frigid Touch, Stone Call (more control then blasting, Stone Discus (especially at 7 and 11)

Level 3: Ice Spears (especially good when you get a new spear), Burst of nettles/ call lighting (ok when you get it but not for long), Thorny entanglement (more control than blast), Spike Growth (can actually do a lot of damage),

Level 4: Greater Aggressive Thundercloud, Ball Lighting, Explosion of Rot (fireball with status effects that scales, the radius has pluses and minuses), Flame Strike, Greater Flame Sphere, Spike Stones, others at this level but they don't scale or are hard to use.

Level 5: Call Lightning Storm (Large air elemental), Fire snake (shapeable fireball), Wall of Fire, Wall of Thorns (not a blast but can do decent damage especially to casters)

Level 6: Sirocco, roaming pit. It starts to get thin here but if you are still blasting you better have the metamagic feats to back it up

Let's look at the whole quote. “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

The point of a Jack of all trades build is pick up where others fail. It is rarely to be the focus of attention. You wont shine the brightest but you will glow consistently.

What do druids have going for them:

- Prepared casters (Grab some terrain specific spells once you get to your location or prep what you need once you have more information)
- Scouting (you think that pigeon is spying on us? You're crazy)
- A pretty good mix of spells (utility, some basic healing, blasting, control)
- A great all day combat buff in wild shape (adds to ac, attack, number of attacks, damage, movement and can add to con)
- Accesses to every type of movement

The problems:
- Limited weapons. This gets solved by wild shape
- There main buffs conflict with 2 of the big 6. This can make maintain accuracy and defence hard.
- Weakest utility casting. They have endure elements, resist energy and some remove spells, speak with____, control weather, but they lack Knock and tongues etc. from other lists.

Solutions:

Take an animal companion. At low levels is does the work for you at higher levels You have a flank buddy (this can be improved with feats and equipment). There is a trick using an allying weapon which helps keep cost manageable for natural weapon enchantment.

Frostbite can really help keep your damage up. Compensating for accuracy buy hitting hard can work.

I think people have covered defence well, barding, mage armour, wild stone plate eventually.

Late game animal companions do fade out. I have 2 build solutions.

Bodyguard and in harms ways allow you to keep the damage spread around greatly increasing your defences. It is very useful when ACs DPR fades. You can take extra traits, and benevolent armour and make a little totem animal medic. Helpful and Heavenly Touch are good choices. That just increased your HP and provided at least +2 to ac when is starts and keeps growing.

The second is anything with Grab AC's CMD scales faster than most casters. Even at level 14 a tiger in rhino hide pouncing a caster is very bad for that caster. I have not run it to level 20 but by the number it should still grab reliably if it does not run in to a contingency or force sphere.

Hope that give you some ideas.

I get that and you are right but a lot of people here are involved in organised play and have to consider these things. Just try to help keep things transparent for those folks.

Yes but my point is there is there is no official listing for these as a class of rod. In Ultimate Magic there are table listings for the things stated by Nefreet. There is no listing for generic +0 rods, thus they can't be officially made. You can infer the prices as 1 500, 5 500, and 12 250 but that is not official and that is all I wanted to make clear. So, yes you can have merciful but every other +0 feat applied to a rod is a house rule. Sorry for not being clearer.

There is no entry for +0 metamagic rods that I can find. So, as for as I can tell the only ones not legal are fleeting and Eclipsed. Unless some one else has a citation I missed.

Widen exist as well.

Make your familiar a Protector +50% hit points after level 5. And some additional AC.

my lv5 strigator was a bab 3 + str 4 + mutagen 2 + studied combat 2 + weapon 1 + heroism 2 from potion and alchemical allocation - power attack 1 = +13 to hit for

1d8+ str 6 + mutagen 3 + studied combat 2 + weapon 1 + power attack 3 = 1d8+15 ~ 19.5.
compared to +10 for 2d6+16 ~ 23 that the barb was doing with power attack I felt quite good at damage.

To add to this the higher the AC of the opponent the more the calculations favours accuracy over damage. So the average damage against high AC, often higher CR targets, equalises the damage further.

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I know it's too late, but I tend to shy away from multi-classing with hybrids. They already have what you need, and even a 1-level dip puts them behind what they could be capable of with their own abilities. Just sayin...

I generally agree with this. There is a reason it is the prevailing wisdom. But, I think it should contain this caveat, "if you want to play a martial character but want more versatility in and out of combat and a level dip or two gets your charter to comparable DPR to a dedicated martial but you still get utility casting, broader more interesting class features, and potentially better save then go for it." You just have to know your not playing an optimised casting class your playing a Fighter with a cool bag of tricks.

To the OP remember once you have Keen (get access earlier) or Improved crit (is better) you should be criting once a round so with parry repose you are actually taking an extra attack per round that you have to factor into damage. If you use long arm and combat reflexes there will be more attacks you have to consider.

With fencing grace on this build I like you want to buff your self like crazy. This goes into high level gear but here is goes.

Mutagen for a +2, reduce person - an additional +2 to hit and no change in damage, cat's grace/belt, Deliquescent Gloves, Bane Balbric, and alchemical allocation heroism.

Even two thirds of these should make you the most accurate person on the team. If you did not dump strength take power attack you can handle the minus no problem.

Inspired weapon weapon and combat inspiration will give you some burst damage. If it's a hard fight inspired strike each turn using a point to restudy (as suggested above)

More radical option.

Multiclass again into Urban Barbarian or Unchained Barbarian

- Consider drunken brute so you can use potions better.

- Get a furious weapon.

Urban Barbarians have better AC. Unchained Have better will saves, and hit points. Both net more damage and accuracy and a better way of dealing with DR.

You wont notice much of a drop in your skills only 2 points. But you will lag in you "casting" but alchemical allocation helps with that a bit.

Wait, it would seem that power attack effects attack and damage it does not effect weapons.

What are people defining as effects if not enchantments, spells, super natural abilities etc that target weapons?

If the definition of effect is not limited, why would primary natural weapon getting 1.5 strength to damage not be "an effect" that applies to unarmed strikes? It seems to me the argument requires two things. The first establishing what constitutes an effect and is it an effect on a weapon.

Some bards buff attack and damage, skalds buff strength, but spell warrior skalds effect weapons. Each can get a +1 to attack and damage in their own way but not all of these are effects on weapons.

Moreover, power attack modifies attack and damage and weapons modify power attack as it is written.