Tels's page

So, if this test (or parts of it) goes well, what can you expect the long-term changes to be? First off, we need to be clear: Regardless of what people think of the system, there's just no way, logistically, to implement a full change within the playtest period. We might—and I stress might—be able to put out some more samples or previews of where we think we're going, and possibly even guidelines to adapt the printed Resonance system further, but you won't be seeing a total rewrite of the rules.

So, if I'm reading this right, it tells me that Paizo decided they were releasing PF2 on [insert date here] whether it was well received or not?

I'm sorry, but if that is true that displays a fundamentally flawed level of confindence in one's abilities. A new system should not have a fixed release date; it shouldn't receive a release date at all until the design team and the community is happy with the state of the game. Look at 5E, it went through tons of revisions and changes and alternate systems before it was released. The current version of 5E looks nothing like the original playgest document.

You cannot approach developing a new system like you would developing a new class: decide on core mechanics, flesh it out, make changes based on feedback that doesn't alter the core mechanicsz release after 1 or 2 cycles.

If you have to go through 17 different playtest periods before the community is happy, then that's what you have to do. You can't just set a date to release it next year and hope everything turns out okay, because then you end up with Resonance.

What happens if this experimental system is just as badly received by the community? What will you do then? As stated, you might have enough time to try something else, but what if you don't? Do you just ship the product with a system that is generally disliked by the masses? Because if so, that's a good way to destroy a ship before it even sails.

You cannot set a date to publish until you have something ready to publish. As it stands, Pathfinder Second Edition might be ready, or it might not, but either way, you don't know for certain, which means you cannot set a date.

As a die-hard necromancer player (hah-hah, get it?) I am finding myself extremely surprised at my hype for Universalist.

It looks like the versatility is finally going to be worth the trade-off.

Actually, the Universalist is less versatile than the Specialist. Specialist gets to prepare up to 4 spells per level, whereas the Universalist gets to prepare 3 spells. Where the Universalist wins, iscasting endurance by taking Focus Conservation. A universalist will, potentially have up to 5 spell slots for all spell levels, except their top two spell levels.

So the Universalist will be able to go longer and farther than other wizards, but he lacks the potential variety of other wizards due to having one less spell prepared per day.

In effect, the Universalist is more like a Sorcerer who can trade out his spells each day.

I'm sure you're aware of a certain high tier scenario where the players have to battle some high level caster. That scenario has a hard mode that essentially TPKs frequently. Well, a player posted that he and a group of casters were going to attempt it. He talked about his prep and the prep of the other PCs. He completed the scenario and said it was way easier (on hard mode) than he had thought. The casters were able crush it due to the spells at their disposal. No one's done the same thing with a group of martials, that I'm aware of. Certainly not six Fighters or six Rangers or any mix of the two.

What scenario is this?

It's rare that the stars will align where you'll want to go more than two spells deep in this chain, I would think.

Even if that's true, its still a phenomenal amount of power. Turning your highest level slot into free castings of lower level slots in additio to still getting that highest level slot is still a great choice. At 11th level, turning a 6th level slot into a 4th, and 2nd level slots is still probably a good choice. You could turn those into some buffs or maybe a control spell of some sort.

Okay, so, please tell me you guys have added in limiters so the Focus Conservation feat doesn't totally break the Universalist?

Obviously don't have all the text, but what is written above is that Focus Conservation allows you to only partially drain your arcane focus to cast a spell, and then you can use the rest of that energy to cast spells 2 levels lower in succession. So a 9th level arcane focus becomes a 9th, 7th, 5th, 3rd, and 1st level slot.

But what about the Universalist who has an arcane focus for every spell level? Can he turn his 9th level slot into 5 spells as I indicated above? Then turn his 8th level slot into 8th, 6th, 4th, and 2nd level slots? And so on, and so on.

Because if so... might as well just give Universalist infinite spells, because that's what it will feel like while in play. But seriously, if that's how those two abilities interact, it will make a Universalist crazy powerful, which is a nice change of pace to how they have pretty much always been the worst choice of wizard.

So, based entirely on this post, Clerics are heal boots as nearly everything that has been lined out revolves around casting heal or harm spells. Thats kind if crappy.

Also, I cannot stess enough how much I despise the fact that 2E renames all of the options "feats" instead of different names. Class talents, character feats, and skill unlocks or something. Anything other than using the same word for different things. It's character level, caster level, and spell level all over again.

So... This blog pretty much confirms that alchemists can use magical items, like everyone else, but actually can't use them, because they need to conserve their resonance.

Non-magical class with non-magical abilities crafting non-magical items requires the magical resonance resource to function. Can't wear magical armor or use magical weapons because that all consumes resonance and the alchemist requires resonance in order to use it's class features.

This is a huge turn off for the class and the entire resonance system.

So, am I understanding it correctly that the alchemist gets totally screwed over by GMs? See, if they don't have the downtime to make alchemical items, then they have to use their resonance to spontaneously craft them. So an alchemist with no downtime can't use any magic items as she needs the resonance points in order to make bombs and stuff.

Which race is better? Elves or Dwarves? D&Debate has the answer!

Rebuild all the things?

Have you thought about building a character with the Iron Caster playstyle?

Instead of Wall Of Stone or similar spells, there needs to be a "Kinetic Cronstruction" talent that allows mimicry of the various wall spells, or allows construction of small buildings. Make it available to earth, water/ice, and wood. It functions like Wall Of Stone, but can be used to make any shape, not just walls or bridges and the like, but if you have metal, you can make Wall of Iron. For ice, include something like, "ice melts at 1 inch of thickness per day spent in areas above freezing temperatures, this can increase to 2 inches, or more, per day in warmer weather." But also allow for the ice user to accept.burn to make it supernaturally cold, and slow the melting down to like, 1 inch per week or possibly even permanent. It would allow for some super cool options for a PC/NPC to live in a non-melting house made of ice.

Sounds like you have a s&&!ty GM, to be honest.

If you're a telekineticist looking to disable a single target based on a fort save, why not just use suffocate and take the 1 burn? Doesn't work on golems, but golems are pretty easy to land a foe throw on...

That's kind of the point, disintegrate is red because it's almost never worth it. There is almost always something you can do better in a given situation than disintegrate.

Darche Schneider wrote:

I don't think that Disintegrating Infusion is given that fair of a shake.

...

So at a bare minimum to use it, you'll take 3 points of burn. (2 for force, 1 for it.)

Except your Infusion specialization would cover the Disintegrate cost, as by the level you can you Disintegrate, you have Infusion Specialization 3, meaning that your infusions cost 3 less burn. Combine that with a move-action gather power and you can disintegrate every round, even if you need to throw extreme range or snaking on it.

Disintegrate requires using the Force blast, which costs 2 burn, and the infusion itself is 4 burn, for a total cost of 6 burn. With infusion specialization 3 and gather energy, you can reduce the cost by 4, or you can reduce the cost by 5 if you have supercharge; either way, you are still taking burn each round. You can't fire off disintigrate without taking burn until 14th level, when I fusion specialization ignores the total cost of disintigrate itself.

Question, not sure if this would work. Water kineticist, kinetic healer, draining infusion, spark of Life. Summon elemental, drain it, use burn to heal. Rinse, repeat.

Interesting idea, I'm not sure how it works because of the wording of the infusion.

You can drain elemental energy and matter from your foes to strengthen your next attack. When you use this infusion, your kinetic blast affects only creatures with a subtype matching your kinetic blast’s element (for instance, a fire blast would damage only creatures of the fire subtype). Against such creatures, your blast targets touch AC (if it requires an attack roll) and always allows spell resistance. Because you are draining energy from the target, your blast doesn’t apply your elemental overflow bonuses or Constitution modifier. The target can attempt a Fortitude save to take 1/4 the normal amount of damage. Draining infusion ignores any damage reduction, resistances, and immunities the creature might possess. If at least one creature fails its saving throw against your draining infusion, you can reduce the total burn cost of any one blast wild talent used before the end of your next turn by 1, or by 2 if you have the supercharge ability. If you use draining infusion again before applying this reduction, you still deal the damage from that draining infusion, but the burn reductions don’t stack.

It only applies to blast wild talents. So the question becomes, is kinetic healer a "blast" wild talent? There is a good argument for both sides as kinetic healer is directly tied to the strength of your blast; bigger boom = more healing. At the same time, it's equally plausible that, basically, only infusion talents are affected.

how can you save that stat block( i think you use hero lab)?

Ravingdork actually makes his sheets by hand. If you navigate your way into the tools section of the Gallery, you can find a blank charactersheet that you can open in MS Word or Open Office.

Hey folks, I am running a Kineticist only game with the extra material from the KoP books that N.Jolly published.

Any tips?

You might have to do some homebrewing or houseruling to make it work. I can't remember if KoP addresses it, but the Kineticist can't bypass magcal traps, even if it can be amazing at disable device. If KoP addresses this, and I just forgot, then this bit is meaningless :P

Early on, I suspect the part will enter many fights due to wounds from previous battles. Kinetic healer is not good at healing small, incidental damage, and is best used for emergency damage. They also won't have the skill bonus to reliably succeed on UMD checks for wands either.

You might want to direct someone to the Signature Skill (heal)/Psychic Healing trick. If you allow someone to take the Battlefield Surgeon trait (ignoring the Zon-Kuthon only prereq) then it can be a great source of out of combat healing or pre-combat buffing. Well, at least twice a day, anyway.

Something to keep in mind is that the party will probably be very brute Force in it's methods of problem solving. Kineticists can be pretty flexible, but they're versatility can only go so far.

Also, totally give them megazords (only kind of joking).

Ord Zheng already has Cunning as one of his feats.

New NPC Villain: Ganon!

Ganon is an exercise in getting as many natural attacks as possible, but in a reasonable way (not trying to abuse odd magical items or obscure rules). In many ways, he's kind of a quintessential "vivsectionist/beastmorph natural attack alchemist" but that's okay with me. Ganon serves as a Dr. Jekyl/Dr. Frankenstein kind of villain very well; in that he is quite capable of performing all kinds of weird medical experiments on creatures. If you need a villain that would have kind of deformed, anthropomorphic animals or disfigured human medical experiments, then Ganon is your guy.

I have to be honest, I did think long and hard about naming him Shou Tucker... but I think that reference might be too obvious. Though if I ever get to use this guy, he'll be using it as his "human" disguise. Skinwalker's look like humans until they take on their animal forms; appearing as a human, he could be named Tucker, but in his true form, he is Ganon.

Combat wise, he's quite the monster. Tons of natural attacks on a pounce at that. He's a "buff and bash" style character, in that he can pump a lot of extracts to make himself nearly unstoppable. Bonus! A party that uses lots of piercing or slashing weapons will find him a nightmare due to caustic blood, which squirts out a blast of 12d6 acid damage any time he takes piercing or slashing damage. Stab Ganon 3 times, get blasted with 36d6 acid damage, and another 18d6 acid damage on the following round.

If you attack him, you kill yourself. If you don't attack him, he kills you... if you're lucky. He might just make you into one of his experiments :D

Plus, with his familiar taking half of all his damage, due to the Protector familiar archetype, and Spontaneous Healing on top of a buttload of hp, Ganon is a very tough beast and it won't be easy to bring him down.... Outside of Will saves anyway. That's his one real weakness.

Ravingdork wrote:

Lostcause78 wrote:

I'm sure this has been asked in the thread a few times so apologies in advance, but damn this is a long thread!

If I wanted to look up all your druid builds, is there any way to search your character portfolio?

If there is, I am blind and didn't see it, sorry.

No, I'm afraid there's no easy way to search the online files at this time. Here is a list of all the characters with druid levels currently in the gallery:

Actually there now is a sortable list I put together over the weekend with some interesting stats.

The Emporium Data Sheet

If you are looking for a character of a certain level use the pivot table.
You should also be able to make your own copy and then sort the backend table by column to order the whole list by levels in different classes.

Hope this is useful to everyone.

I hope Ravingdork is happy with me linking this. I have been talking to him about it for a couple days, but he hasn't signed off on this yet :}

Ha! I was actually slowly working my way towards a PDF of every character with some "key words" for people to search through. Wouldn't be pretty, but it would work.

You know, even with the second coming of the Biblical Flood... I'd still say 2017 has been a better year than 2016.

Don't have time to look up all of the items, but I know it will stack with the Phylactery of Positive Channeling because that simply increases channel dice by +2d6, instead of effective level increase.

New Villain NPC Deimia, the Harbinger of Fear.

Deimia can fulfill a couple roles in a campaign, either as a BBEG with minions at the end of a dungeon, or a nemesis that haunts the party, or a bounty hunter targeting a specific person.

Deimia wields fear as her greatest weapon. Thanks to the damnation feats, specifically Soulless Gaze, Deimia can use intimidate to create ever worsening fear effects for her enemies. In addition to this, due to feats like Cornugon Smash (free intimidate on a power attack), Dazzling Display (intimidate enemies within 30 ft. as a full round action) and Dreadful Carnage (intimidate enemies iwthin 30 ft. when she kills someone), she has many methods of pulling off her fear based combat style. Also, thanks to Shatter Defenses, she will almost always be able to sneak attack enemies and immediately apply her Studied Target benefits.

One change you might make to Deimia if you opt to use her in your game, is swap the Faihtful of Lamshtu Ranger combat style for the Two Handed combat style, which lets you swap Furious Focus for Great Cleave, while keeping Power Attack and Dreadful Carnage. This lets Deimia turn herself into a real AoE threat beyond just causing fear. Her Fiendskin feat is not a mandatory choice, I went with Fiendskin because at resist cold 5 and fire 5, this means she can operate in hot and cold environments at almost no detriment to herself.

Thematic wise, Deimia can operate much like Jason Vorhees. She induces incredible fear in her enemies, causing them to flee from her presence, but thanks to Slowing Strike, their movement is halved. This lets Deimia merely walk after her victims, slowly chasing them down and only heightening their terror.

Works for me when I do it on my phone. Haven't checked from a PC though.

I knew I had to be missing something; you wouldn't make that big of an oversight. Hence why I asked.

According to my notes, I spent 465gp on 75 masterwork shuriken.

(1 / 5 + 6) * 75 = 465

I don't see how that's possible. Shuriken are sold in bundles of 5, so masterwork shuriken are likewise sold in bundles of 5 as you simply add the cost of masterwork (300 gp) to the cost of the weapon (1 gp). So 1 bundle of 5 masterwork shuriken costs 301 gp. Even crafting them will only reduce the cost to 1/3 the amount.

The cheapest method I could think of to get around the masterwork cost is abuse the masterwork transformation spell. This allows the spell to affect "50 pieces of ammunition" which shuriken are considered to be in every way except "technically a thrown weapon."

So pay a caster 60 gp (spellcasting services is CL*SL*10) to transform 50 shuriken into masterwork weapons. The cost would be 10 gp (to buy 50 shuriken), 300 gp for the material compenent, and 60 gp for the spell itself, totaling 370 gp for 50 masterwork shuriken.

Did you really use 4,515 gp of Natu Yama's wealth to buy masterwork shuriken, or did you use some other method to reduce the cost of that?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bumi's full attack range increment on the rocks is:

20 base
+10 skilled thrower (hurler barbarian)
+10 belt
for 40 total. However, far shot means it's a -2 penalty up to 120 feet, which distance thrower brings down to 0. So the range is 120 ft with a -1 for every 40 feet beyond that, right?

That's f***ing sick man. I love your crazy characters.

Far Shot reduces the -2 penalty per range increment, to a -1 penalty.

In addition to Distance Thrower, Bumi also has a Hunter's Sight, which reduces ranged penalties by a further -2. Since his rocks have a 40 ft. range increment, this means at 40 to 80 ft. he would have a -1 penalty; at 80 to 120, a -2 penalty; at 120 to 160, a -3 penalty; and at 160 to 200 (the maximum range increment since thrown weapons only get 5x range increments), he'd have a -4 penalty. With Distance Thrower and a Hunter's Sight, Bumi gets a total penalty reduction of 4, meaning Bumi can throw his rocks out to his maximum distance at no penalty.

Didn't a recent FAQ basically nix the idea of enhancement bonuses of ranged weapons helping to bypass alignment/material DR?

I'm not turning him into a turd slinger.

When it comes to ranged weapons conferring their bonus onto the ammunition, yes, yes it did (I was the guy who posted that FAQ originally); however, it shouldn't apply to the gloves.

These rough leather gloves grant an enhancement bonus of +1 to +5 on attack and damage rolls with improvised weapons. Alternatively, the gloves can grant melee weapon special abilities, so long as they can be applied to melee or thrown weapons (see pages 136– 137 of Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Equipment for a list of abilities). Special abilities count as additional bonuses for determining the market value of the item, but do not modify attack or damage bonuses. Gloves of improvised might cannot have a modified bonus (enhancement bonus plus special ability bonus equivalents) higher than +5. Unlike an amulet of mighty fists, gloves of improvised might must have a +1 enhancement bonus to grant a melee weapon special ability.

The above says you can grant the abilities to thrown weapons, and the enhancement bonus is granted to "improvised weapons" where as in the next sentence they make it explicitly clear you can only add "melee" magical properties, instead of melee or ranged properties. The fact that it explicitly says you can use it on thrown weapons is pretty clear to me that the gloves would work just fine.

Also, as I said, the most important aspect is the ability to affect incorporeal/ethereal creatures. The FAQ and the thread points out that RAW, ammo fired from a ranged magical weapon is treated as magical for the purpose of overcoming DR. Also, if the ranged weapon is aligned, then it passes this property onto the ammo. So, to be safe, if you used +1 holy gloves of improvised might then, at the minimum, it bypasses DR/magic and DR/Evil; however, based on the text itself, it should also bypass cold iron and silver if used against evil creatures.

You know you want a turd slinger :P

The way I see it, is, even if you are proficient in the use of rocks, that doesn't change the fact that rocks are an improvised weapon. As such, they should still work with the gloves even if they benefit from weapon training. If this did change the rocks from working with the gloves, then this would mean that you could enhance the rocks as a magical weapon.

Either they're an improvised weapon (and the fact they benefit from Improvised Weapon Mastery and the life says they are), or they aren't. If they are improvised, they work with the gloves, if they aren't improvised, then you should be able to enhance them.

As for what to give up... You won't be able to get a set of +2 gloves by selling everything in your list because you come up 200 gp shy (Boots 12,000; backup coat 1,200; bag of holding 2,500; hunter's sight 100 = 15,800). What I would do, is keep all of your stuff, but drop the armor bonus of the O-yoroi to a +2 (this frees up 5,000 gp) to get the gloves, but in the form of a... based on the picture a bodystrap of improvised might since it doesn't cost anything more to swap the slot.

If you don't want to do the above, you could drop the enhancement of O-yoroi, and pawn off the backup armored coat, this gives you 6,200 gp to add the effects of the improvised gloves to your dueling gloves (which would cost 6,000 gp).

Or you could reduce the enhancement of the O-yoroi, sell the armored coat, then swap the slot of the improvised gloves to the body slot, pick up a quickrunner's shirt and a bag of everlasting dung. Why? You have enough dung to fertilize a 20x20 ft square, which, to me, says you have a lot of feces you can throw at someone for the hilarity of it. I would go with this option, as the thought of a guy literally throwing s&@+ at people when he is grump is amusing to me.

The most important thing, I think, is to make the rocks magical, that way it bypasses DR/magic, and, more importantly, can be used against ethereal/incorporeal creatures. I wouldn't worry about upping the enhancement bonus of the gloves until you can get it up to the +3 mark, at which point you start bypassing materials. Even then, that's not a huge issue due to Clustered Shots. But Clustered Shots doesn't help against incorporeal/ethereal creatures, which is Bumi's greatest weakness.

[Edit] Even better, a nice GM might rule the feces can function as a non-lethal improvised weapon, which, as per Improvised Weapon Mastery now has a critical of 19-20/x2. Personally, I would rule the bases feces as simply doing 1 point of non-lethal damage, and IWM increases this to 1d2, but that's just me.

Gloves of Improvised Might for Bumi?

Cross-posted from another thread:

Ravingdork wrote:

Grizzly the Archer wrote:

Looks good. When did you take the realistic likeness feat?

It's been there all along. If you meant where in the progression, it would have been as early as possible (level 1 or 3). Next to keeping allies alive, disguises/shape changing are kind of her thing.

Grizzly the Archer wrote:

Also, I noticed you didn't take fey founding for the extra +2hp heal per die rolled when you heal. With all the channeling you'll do looks like a great feat.

The very first iteration of the character actually DID have it. I ended up removing it because I didn't want this character to be a clone of another healing specialist in my gallery, Lailah Hael.

Having diversity in your character portfolio is important when making it useful to the widest audience.

It's also important to note that it only increases her healing when used on herself. She does just fine without it.

Now, if the bonus healing did apply to others as well, well then, I would definitely consider it again.

I saw you talk about how this character was definitely going into the gallery, and my first thought was she would have some connection to Lailah. I was honestly surprised you made her the adopted sister of Araonna instead. What made you think to link the Channel Specialistt with the Undead Queen?

Ravingdork l have a challenge that l believe only you and the great minds here can help me with my GM is planing to run iron-fang AP(plus using all horror splat books) and l would like to try and build ..... a manga themed character

(please don't kill me)

anyway the themed character is based on Orcbolg (Goblin Slayer), from the the light novel "Goblin Slayer"

** spoiler omitted **

were l'm coming up short is do l go for fighter, ranger or slayer as he uses sword and board as his main weapons any help you or the others here can give me with planing out a lvl 1 version of this would be a...

Sounds to me like what you want is a Trapper Ranger; they forgo spellcasting, but gain the capability to create a host of magical traps and can even attach those traps to ranged weapon and fire them at his enemies.

Other possibilities would include Inquisitor, Warpriest and an Oath of Vengeance Paladin. I think Trapper Ranger fits you best, though. By the way, I'm guessing the "used a protection spell as a trap" was, basically, taking a force field normally used to keep things out, to, instead, trap enemies inside, along with something dangerous?

I didn't get a response on the third party thread, so I'm asking here.

Kineticists of Porphyra has a void utility talent that gives the square you're standing in darkness. You can also spend burn to increase the radius by five feet.

How does this work in practice? Is it intended that it always gives the kineticist total concealment against anything that doesn't have darkvision (assuming you're not in bright light)? Or is like fog that you get 20% concealment at the edges and 50% in the center when it's been expanded?

Well, it works like the spell, which reduces light level by 1 step; bright becomes normal, normal becomes dim, dim becomes darkness. In dim light, you gain 20% concealment and can make stealth checks, in darkness, you gain total concealment.

Wasum wrote:

Could you tell me where I may find the image of Father Grigori?

Reverse image search reveals the file name is "Wizard by Keun Chul Jang." I couldn't find a deviantart page or anything like that for him, but I did find this website that features a number of his works on them, including the sought after image. Scroll down to find it.

I cheated. I took a screenshot, then opened up the immensely powerful digital art program, MS Paint (Photoshop, eat your heart out) and cut the picture out then did a search.

Could you tell me where I may find the image of Father Grigori?

Reverse image search reveals the file name is "Wizard by Keun Chul Jang." I couldn't find a deviantart page or anything like that for him, but I did find this website that features a number of his works on them, including the sought after image. Scroll down to find it.

I went ahead and turned the post I made above into an actual NPC.

Astrid Halgradottir is a shield maiden and defender of her people. She blesses all those who fight at her side with the strength and endurance of the gods, and each of those so blessed find their wounds rapidly healing as they shine with the radiance of the sun.

The above is possible because of the +12 strength bonus, and +6 con bonus she gives to those that accept her inspired rage. They also gain fast healing 12, and each ally who accepts her song sprouts a halo that shines "as if it were daylight" while simultaneously acting as an [i]invisibility purge[/it] spell within their space and all adjacent squares.

Just picture her standing in the midst of an army of soliders, all sporting gleaming halos that shin like the sun, all of whom heal faster than trolls, and each one capable of snapping tree with their bare hands. She is a force to be reckoned with.

I'm asking this here and a few other places to see if there is anything wrong with it.

A raging song counts as the bard’s bardic performance special ability for any effect that affects bardic performances.

Totemic Skald with the Bull Animal Focus.

Song of the Beast (Su): The totemic skald grants the animal focus abilities of his totem animal (as the hunter’s animal focus ability) to all allies affected by his raging song. He treats his skald level as his hunter level for determining the abilities of the animal focus (such as the improvements gained at 8th and 15th level).

Feats:

Master Performer

Grand Master Performer

Skald's Vigor

Greater Skald's Vigor

So, I'm just trying to see if I understand these abilities correctly. In the build above, whenever an ally accepts the Skald's raging song, it gains a strength bonus (via Song of the Beast). This means that the Skald's Vigor feats will always be in affect whenever the Skald uses raging song. Since raging song is affected by feats or effects that affect Bardic Performance, this means Master Performer and Grand Master Performer also affect raging song bonuses. In this case, this would means that the Skald always provides at least a +6 enhancement bonus to strength whenever he uses raging song.

Furthermore, whenever the Skald uses inspired rage, affected allies gain an additional bonus to strength, but it's a morale bonus, and, that means it stacks with the enhancement bonus from Song of the Beast! Just to sweeten the deal, Skald's Vigor grants fast healing equal to the provided strength bonus from raging song. An inspired rage, in this case, would therefore provide fast healing 6 or fast healing 12 (when taken at the minimum level required to pull this all off). Just to sweeten the pot, it also grants a +6 morale bonus to constitution.

This means the Skald turns any affected allies Wolverine-esque beefcakes. They gain incredible strength, incredible constitution, and regenerate hit points at a ridiculous rate.

To further make it even crazier, a Tuned Bowstring should let the Skald do this without using his rounds of performance.

Am I understanding this all correctly? Is this all rules legal? It feels like one of those, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," situations.

Would Child of Two Worlds be a good swap out for Rina Lhorn? Not sure what she'd give up for it though...

I could see some Eldritch Knight/Arcane Trickster/Champion of Irori esque prestige classess for the Kineticist.

Elemental Magus - Kineticist/Magus advancing Spellcasting and kinetic blast, granting a talent pool to choose either wild talents or arcana, and letting the character spend arcana in lieu of burn, or accept burn to power arcana. Gather Power could possibly be used for both, with some limitations, like not being used for spell recall.

Kinetic Thief - Kineticist/rogue (especially telekineticist). No t sure how it would work, but it's an idea.

A Kineticist and Monk/Brawler hybrid prestige class. Kinetic Blade/Whip is treated as a monk weapon for flurry, gains a ki pool that stacks with Monk, and can use burn in place of ki (and gather power with some limitations) for some things.

It's entirely possible for there to be prestige classes for the Kineticist, but most of them would likely be hybrid classes. Either that or they would need to be akin to the rate chemyst for the alchemist in that it highly specializes into one aspect of the class. Like an Elemental Lord that could be like the Winter Witch prestige class and specializes in a single element.

Hmm... CHA boost for Gathlain, too.

Well, it's just perfect for your Vampire Gathlain Overwhelming Soul now, isn't it?

Really, it's good, but it gives a good reason to use two normally really bad options, thus promoting diversity. Sure, it's more powerful than the average FCB, but it does exactly what the FCB is supposed to do- make certain races more attractive for different options.

If this takes a race that normally would be "Eww, ick. DOn't touch that race/class with a 11-foot pole," and turns it into "Wow. That's actually pretty good," is that really all bad? Or did it accomplish exactly what it was intended to do?

A Vampire Gathlain would be an interesting backstory considering vampires can only turn creatures of the same type. That would mean there has to be a legacy of Fey Vampires out there for it to exist at all. Otherwise, it would have to be bestowed upon it by some other being. Cursed/Blessed by a God or something like that.

Tels wrote:

Human bonus feat: Racial Heritage (Gathlain).

(Also Half-orcs and Half-elves)

Doesn't work, Gathlain are fey, not humanoids.

Oh good, otherwise the whole idea of it being even remotely balanced for them is moot as 3 other races could just steal it.

Human bonus feat: Racial Heritage (Gathlain).

(Also Half-orcs and Half-elves)

Was that an exclamation of shock, or frustration? I can't tell if you're surprised at it's power, or if you've merely encountered it before.

Exclamation of shock. I hadn't encountered it before, and I haven't seen anyone mention either.

G&% d+~n... That node of blasting spell... It's so bloody broken in the hands of a creative player who has prep time. I mean, you could cast that on bullets, load those into alchemical cartridges (so you aren't touching it when you reload a gun) and then shoot someone for essentially, an extra 6d6 typeless damage at no extra cost.

Or imagine casting it a bunch on grains of sand overtime and just walking around with a pouch full of sand to dump on someone. Pocket sand that literally blows your mind.

Seemingly innocent permanent wind wall that is full of head explodey pocket sand.

Undead/construct archers with quivers full of spelled arrows/bolts. Or even just slings and stones.

Make it a Preferred Spell and pick up Empowered Spell, at the end of every day, just turn all of your left over spells into explodey sand/rocks/bullets/arrows/diced carrots for the stew you're making for the mercenaries that have served their purpose...

Not sure about buff spells, maybe swapping out Deathwatch for Death Ward and regular applications of Arcane Sight/Greater. You've hit pretty much all of the good long duration ones.

Well I think brawlers count as fighters for feat prereqs, and the snakebite striker gets some sneak attack.

You're right. I totally forgot about the Brawler; I knew an archetype gave sneak attack, but thought it was only the strangler and that has conditions.

Brawler has some interesting possibilities to it. Snakebite stacks with Winding Path Renegade, which helps ranged a little, but one interesting aspect is the Mastery of Untwisting Iron. It allows a Brawler to treat all metal weapons as if made of adamantine, which could, theoretically, be combined with the Weapon Material Mastery feat; this allows the Brawler to completely ignore DR on critical hits made with metal weapons.

Brawler would also make for a passably decent switch hitter. I'm just not sure if it has enough feats to do it all in a reasonable timeframe. Also debatable over which route to take.

Warpriest is obviously the fastest route to the blessing, and comes with Weapon Focus and spellcasting for wands and stuff. However, blessing is limited use.

Divine Tracker Ranger gets blessings at 4th level, but unlike the Warpriest, has no limit on the uses per day. It also grants some Spellcasting, not as good as Warpriest though, and it gives access to some no pre-req feat choices.

[Edit] So in really looking at the options, I think the Warpriest damage progression just won't work out that well. The only ranged weapon that would really, potentially, benefit is the shortbow, and that's a lot of feats to give up for such a minor benefit.

By the way, dropping Natsu Yama down to a 4th level Weapon Master Fighter, and then taking a single level of Warpriest for the Air blessing might be a decent choice for her. Removes all of the range penalties for throwing shuriken, letting her attack foes from a far more distant range than one would expect.

Question for you, can you think of anyway of getting the Advanced Weapon Training feat on a sneak attack class, or, in lieu of that, getting sneak attack on a class with access to fighter levels or "counts as fighter levels for feats?"

I ask, because a post on Reddit made me aware of a Warpriest's sniping potential. My first thought was somehow stacking sneak attack, Warpriest damage increase, and Vital Strike for a super powerful single shot sniper. But I can't think of a way of getting Warpriest damage and Sneak Attack on the same class, unfortunately.

Huh?

I pretty much universally toss or ignore errata Paizo issues stealth or not. They tend to have a very heavy handed approach when it comes to errata, usually utterly destroying the item, feat, ability etc., that they change.

Tels wrote:

Did Pathfinder Savant get more levels and abilities in some recent book? Every copy of it that I've found has it stopping at 7th level and I can't find the source of some of Eibon's abilities.

Adventurer's Guide overhauled it for the better. Details here.

Maybe I won't dumpster the all of the stealth errata of that book.