Thanatos95's page

Today my regular group tried out 5 of the classes as a team. We had all but the Kineticist and played at level 5 in a home brew dungeon crawl.

I played as a melee tank style occultist. Seemed to work alright. I took abjuration, and transmutation in order to access the various offense and defence buffs. Took conjuration as a backup just to put the cure spells on my list. Never actually had to cast them, but it let me use a CLW wand for out of battle heals reliably.

I outfit the occultist with a longsword, breastplate, and heavy shield. When combined with the focus powers from Abj. and Trans. I was able to get a pretty good AC. What really made it was putting 6 focus into the sword to give it keen and flaming.

during the dungeon crawl, i was able to use the object reading power a few times on plot items, but didn't really get anything useful out of it. I think our DM didn't really know how to use that kind of skill in play. Still, Flavor-wise I think it worked pretty well, and it let me identify some potions we found.

The dungeon was a typical wizards lair, with some conjured devils, hirelings, and, as a surprise, a basilisk.

The Basilisk was the most difficult fight. None of our classes had any useful skills or spells to really deal with it other than direct blasting from our psychic. The medium tried rushing in to beat it down, but failed his second save. The mesmerist... Ahh the mesmerist. The mesmerist was completely useless in that fight. The range of his stare abilities was the same as the basilisks stone gaze. We joked that the mesmerist would loose a staring contest with the basilisk.

As for my occultist, I ended up dropping the sword i had invested my focus in(and feats) to use my backup bow to fight from a safe distance. We managed to win, using a number of the psychics spells to blast it.

I was able to show off the occultist's skills in a fight with a bearded devil and 2 imps. On the previous turn, the bearded devil managed to inflict its infernal wounds ability on the medium, so when it tried to attack me, I activated the abjuration implement Warding Shield as an immediate action. Negated the hit completely(10 points of negation blocking 7 damage) thus preventing the infernal wounds. The psychic player was impressed, wanting to know how often i could do that. (only once more at that point)

I personally didn't have any trouble tracking the focus i put into my items, but that may be because I only used 2, my sword for trans. and my cloak for abj. Using the warding shield took 2 of the 5 points in my cloak, reducing the AC bonus it was giving me from +2 to +1.

At the end of the night, we all agreed that we liked the classes, and saw a lot of potential. We also agreed that occult classes only lacked a lot of basic role potential. No one had a full BAB or higher than a D8 HD, so we whiffed a lot of attacks. My melee build only ended up with a +10 to attack after everything was accounted for, so I was far behind on damage dealing potential compared to a fighter or barbarian.

Personally, I felt more like a cleric. Tanky, with a number of potential special abilities to adapt to the situation. I can also see that there are a number of build possibilities with the occultist, and that makes it a class Ill look into again in the future, perhaps with a High Int build to go more caster style.

Sorry for long post, Hope this info is of some help!

I am looking to spice up my players time in skull and shackles. Right now they controll 2 ships so the usual pirate encounters just arnt too interesting. So, I am looking for good aquatic monster to throw at them in a "moby dick" kind of sea battle.

What sea monsters would be good to fight their ships, when they use the ship combat rules? I already tried a dragon, but with its flight, that just didnt work out.

My players are at 4th level right now, so it cant be something that would just climb on deck and one shot them either. Is there something like a lower CR charybdis that you guys know off?

I am playing an oracle of bones in my current campaign and just hit level 3. I took the raise the dead revalation at level 1 and it has been very useful.

However, I am having trouble finding good creatures to zombify or skeletonize as I progress. At level 2 I used a skeleton horse, and it was pretty effective.

So im looking for suggestions on creatures to use, and what the best creatures at each level would be. I basicly only use them for combat, so im looking for creatures that can dish out big hits.

Ive also noticed that zombies seem to be slightly less useful for this, due to their bonus HDs. Those HD mean you would have to summon a lower level creature than you normaly would. anyone else run into this?

Do you think repeating crossbows can be reloaded like normal crossbows? Normaly they are reloaded by using the bolt racks, but it would open up some options if the can be reloaded in the normal single shot style, including using rapid reload.

I havent seen any rules on the subject, so i'd thought id see what the boards thought. Im planning on using a repeater in an upcomming campaign and want to see how much i can get out of it.

While on the subject, do you think a repeater could hold a bolt "in the chamber" so that it effectivly has 6 shots before reloading?

Edit: Sorry about the post title, i caught it too late, and the forum wont let me edit it.

If you have to choose at creation weather to use the standard magic system or the words of power system, what happens to your bonus spells if you choose the words system? For example, sorcerer bloodline spells, Witch patron spells, ect.

Would you still have them as normal spells in addition to the word system? Or would they be unuseable? Or even more out there, would the ultimate magus book have new lists for each class using the words system?(I doubt this one is the case, too much work)

Why do almost all of the druid alternate features have late entry wildshaping, with a penalty? Even the ones that dont give a new ability to wildshape have it. Im wondering what the design idea was for this. So far, the only druid ive seen that dosent have wildshape penalized is the blight druid.

I have been looking over my PDF of the advanced players guide and I have to say the artwork is fantstic! Especialy on the Iconics for the new classes. Im looking at the witches right now, and your artist hit exactly the right combo of sexy and creepy for her.

Keep up the good work!

ok first, here is the basic form of the creature:
(pardon my formatting, i wrote it in notepad first)

I have also designed a larger, more dangerous version to use as a sort of mini-boss encounter:

I was looking for feedback on the design before throwing them at my players. These are intended to be reuseable monsters, not one shots, so i tried to design with that in mind.

I have checked the achives and i cant find a definitive answer to the question:

"can you use deadly aim to improve the damage done by scorching ray?"

I ask because i am designing a monster that uses a scorching ray as its primary attack method. If deadly aim can work like that, then it would be a great feat to give the creature. If not, then I need to find something else.

Also, if it can interact, how does it work with scorching ray firing multiple rays? does it drop the attack and add the damage to each ray, or just 1?

First I want to say I like the Alchemist class. However I, like many people have some concerns.

1: The discoverys. I like the customization potential, but you dont get enough to be effective. As is, you only get 4 before level 20, and the first is at level 4. Also, why does the capstone ability give 2 regular discoveries in addition to the grand one? At level 20 they are a little to late to be very helpful. My proposal is to take the 2 regular discoveries off of Grand discovery and put them into the regular level progresion. Also, make the first discovey at level 1. That way people that want to start with infusion can, people that want a different bomb element can, ect.

2: Being a spontanious caster. Personaly this seems a little off. The idea of the class as i see it is somone that is experimenting with chemicals. YOu even establish that in the fluff that he is a expert at the regular alchemy. So why would a guy like that not write down his recipies? I think the Alchemist should use a spellbook(call it a grimoire to be appropriate)for his formulas. He dosent have that many potential ones anyway, so i dont think its that harmful.

3: Bomb range increment. Ive been assuming its 10 ft as standard for most thrown items. Is that correct? Also, could bombs be thrown with a sling to improve that? The text says they are just 1 ounce of liquid so that seems possible.

4: Mutagens. Why do the mutagens have an effect on other people when the extracts and bombs become inert when not in the alchemists possestion?(even if it is just a save agains nausea)

5: The "meta potion" discoveries. Why are there so many discoveries that effect potions, when as is, the alchemist cant make potions? Either he should get brew potion as a free feat, or let those discoveries affect he extracts.

6: The infuse mutagen discovery. It says its intended purpose is to let you craft different types of mutagens to keep on hand. Unless i missed something, there are no different types, just the discoveries to make your mutagen better.

7: the stink bomb discovery. The discription of this one says it creates a stinking cloud for 1 round. However, all the other Cloud spell discoveries say they last for 1 round/level. Is this a typo or is it deliberate?

8: level 0 extracts. Im sure this one is just a cut and paste typo, but the extract description says the Alchemist starts with 4 level 0 formulas.

"An alchemist begins play knowing four 0-level
formulae and two 1st-level formulae of his choice, chosen
from the alchemist formulae list."

Sorry for the wall of text, i get a little wordy sometimes...