Valestrix's page

There are no regular create undead spells, there is a ritual though.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=10

Giant Instinct Barbarian with the size boosting feats, giants lunge and whirlwind strike would work pretty well with it too. Sweep will give you a bonus to your attack roll on a lot of targets, plus the forceful boost, and with extended melee reach due to your size, you have a lot of potential targets.

You could also achieve that as a fighter if you acquire another method to enlarge yourself, though you do still have less reach cause you can't get Giant's Lunge.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=96

This says creature, it does not say animal. This means as long as the size is correct, you can mount something.

and this: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=463

Well as I mentioned before, it specifically says animal in terms of wasting actions. Granted I could see arguing that a wild shaped druid counts as this as they do gain the animal trait, however a regular PC doesn't have it.

But whatever, I am not going to keep arguing with you beyond this, interpret it however you want. I think it's pretty stupid to rule that a PC suddenly loses all control of their actions if they become something's mount.

I don't agree with you, because those rules are obviously meant to apply to NPC animals, not players.

Keep in mind that your logic also applies in situations such as a druid turning into animal forms and allowing an ally to ride them into battle.

Are you sure you want to stick with this, considering your interpretation takes away from possible team builds as such?

I would imagine most DM's would be okay with this sort of thing. What about you?

Valestrix wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Are there any rules allowing a familiar to ride on its master?

Well, it'd just be mounting you. So mount rules.

It would seem inconvenient to use an action to give your familiar actions so that it can use those actions to make you move.

Also a pity about that -2 to reflex saves, expect to lose them to AOE crits pretty often, I guess.

Also inconvenient for delivering touch spells since it would have to burn an action to dismount you before it could approach a target.

The whole needing to spend actions to command a mount to move only specifically applies to animals, of which a PC is a humanoid. Though I think it's being a bit pedantic with the rules anyway to go this far into denying a familiar simply sitting on someones shoulder. :P

If they were focusing on a crossbow, I doubt they are using touch spells anyway.

Are there any rules allowing a familiar to ride on its master?

Well, it'd just be mounting you. So mount rules.

You'd just be in encounter mode the entire time you're exploring. As long as you're not taking more than one action per round on most rounds, you can do this indefinitely without becoming fatigued.

Even if a DM allowed it, keep in mind that non-lethal damage is just regular damage until a target hits 0 hp.

So say you travel for 10 minutes, each person has attacked each other 10 times. Monk has to use Crane Wing in the stance, so assuming even only half the attacks the monk makes hit, that is 5d6 + (str mod * 5) damage.

So if two of you are swinging at each other constantly, that damage is going to add up. Course you could stop and patch up the damage, but still. :P

Carry two crossbows!
1st turn - fire, drop, 1 action =>command familair to give you the new one and then pick up the other one, fire again.
2nd turn - fire, drop, command (reload, hand you the crossbow), fire again.

would this actually work?

Well it would probably take an interact action on your part to grab the crossbow from your familiar when it hands it to you. So probably not overly well.

That does remind me that I was thinking before on how it would be funny to load up a character with a bunch of hand crossbows and have them just drop them after each use. Hand Crossbows are all light, but it would be expensive to buy a bunch. Still, load up on them and use quick draw and free action release to just fire as many hand crossbow shots as you want, lol.

Keep in mind that if you planned to use hide or sneaking a lot on top of the idea of having a familiar load your heavy crossbow... It needs to use both it's actions to load your crossbow, which means it can't take a hide action of any kind. Even if it sits on your shoulder so that it moves with you, if you hide it is not hidden.

So it might be doable based on your DM, but there is this downside to consider.

Unless you're a rogue you can't get Continual Recovery until 3; both it and ward medic require expert medicine first

Ah, true. I forgot that part.

Well in that case I guess your method is the best course. Bit sad that you'd have to pick up an entirely useless skill feat for a whole level though.

Edit: Though you could possibly retrain whatever your picked at 2 into assurance by 3 if your DM gives you enough downtime. Would need a week of downtime. :P

Haha, yeah that makes more sense. Could definitely do it that way. Though I think you'd be a lot better off getting continual recovery at 2nd with the skill feat and then picking up assurance in medicine at 3rd, since assurance won't be useful until 3rd but continual recovery would be useful at 2.

I'm glad you brought that up though, I forgot to even consider the whole general feats to pick up skill feats thing.

Need to point this out now because it's been mentioned on this forum a couple of times:

Scholar does NOT grant you Assurance in any skill you're trained in; you ONLY gain assurance in Nature, Arcana, occultistm, or Religion based on your choice when you have the Scholar background. Archives of Nethys has it written incorrectly:

Scholar Background, CRB Pg 63-64 wrote:

You have a knack for learning, and sequestered yourself from the outside world to learn all you could. You read about so many wondrous places and things in your books, and always dreamed about one day seeing the real things. Eventually, that curiosity led you to leave your studies and become an adventurer.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost.

You’re trained in your choice of the Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion skill, and gain the Assurance skill feat in your chosen skill. You’re also trained in the Academia Lore skill.

Scholar Background, Archives of Nethys wrote:

You have a knack for learning, and sequestered yourself from the outside world to learn all you could. You read about so many wondrous places and things in your books, and always dreamed about one day seeing the real things. Eventually, that curiosity led you to leave your studies and become an adventurer.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom, and one is a free ability boost.

You’re trained in your choice of the Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion skill, and the Academia Lore skill. You gain the Assurance skill feat.

The fastest way for a non-rogue, non-human to get the vital Medicine feats is to do Assurance (Medicine) at 3rd, Continual Recovery as a general feat at 3rd, and Ward Medic at 4th.

Good point on the scholar background. As a note on Assurance and Continual recovery at 3rd. You get a general feat and a skill increase (not feat). You could use your general feat to grab one of those, but you couldn't get both at 3.

Battle Medicine doesn't specify needing the tools, though I don't know if that is intended that way or not. Might need errata to specify if that is incorrect.

It is a manipulate action, so it could be argued that you need at least one hand free. Though it doesn't really specify.

I'm not a fan of it needing two hands free and using the healer's tools personally, just because it would require dropping everything from your hands onto the ground or using interact actions to stow everything in your hands just to be able to use battle medicine in a fight. Maybe that is the intention, but it seems a bit much to use a method of healing that is intended to be for combat. I guess for now it is up to DM interpretations though.

Archives of Nethys has a typo then.

In the Cleric entry it says under level 3
"At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, you gain a skill feat. Skill feats can be found in Chapter 5 and have the skill trait. You must be trained or better in the corresponding skill to select a skill feat."

So 2 ways to achieve this. The easiest is with a Rogue.

Level 1 rogue. Either take Scholar for Assurance or be versatile Human and take it.
Level 2 skill increase Medicine and one of the 2 skill feats of your choice.
Level 3 use a skill feat for the other feat.

Anyone else
Scholar background or versatile Human for Assurance medicine.
Level 2 take 1 of the 2 skill feats.
Level 3 increase medicine and use your General feat for the other skill feat.

I don't think it is honestly all that worth it to pick up assurance on any class for medicine on your background. I mean, you could, but it isn't useful until level 3. You'd be a lot better off having something you could actually use from level 1 and on, like battle medicine. I'd say anyone wanting assurance in medicine is better off picking it up for their level 2 skill feat at the earliest. Though even then it doesn't do anything for you until you reach level 3, excluding Rogue of course.

Unless you're rogue, you can only increase skill proficiency every even levels.

Anyway, Medicine is fine, and Battle Medicine is actually a very competitive in-combat healing ability that every character can get (even if you have to at least go to Expert in Medicine for it to be good at high levels).

Actually it's every odd level for classes that aren't Rogue, not even.

That said, that actually made me notice another flaw in the assurance at level 1 thing. You actually can't boost your medicine up to expert rank until level 3 on most classes, which means assurance even at level 2 is not actually helpful for treat wound checks, since you can only get to 14 on your check. So having assurance on medicine is basically pointless until level 3, unless you are a Rogue.

It slipped my mind that you couldn't actually boost to expert at 2, oops.

Battle medicine is pretty awesome, doesn't require healers tools either, so even people who didn't want to spend their beginning money on tools could make use of battle medicine. Course it can only be used once per day.

Ah yeah, I figured a background might but quickly looking over them I overlooked that one. :) So that is an option too!

Though assurance at level 1 doesn't help you a lot anyway, cause at best you would only get a 13 in treat wounds, and you need a DC 15 check for even the basic treat wounds check. That becomes viable at 2 if you boost medicine to expert, plus you get a skill feat at 2, so if you wanted assurance for early medicine checks you'd probably be better off getting battle medicine or something from background and then picking up assurance at level 2 when it actually helps.

Not my idea but others have come up with a way for anyone to be a good healer.

Level 1 train in medicine and take Assurance for Medicine.
Level 2 bump your Medicine skill to Expert and take the Continual Recovery skill feat. Your treat wounds is at 10 + lvl + proficiency bonus (4) =16 so you can't fail the check and you can heal one person every 10 minutes.
Level 4 you can take Ward Medic and cure 2 people every 10 minutes.

Two cool things about this.
It uses Assurance + skill proficiency so you don't need good wisdom to do it.
And each person is only immune to your Treat Wounds for 10 minutes. If more party members do it more healing gets done every 10 minutes.

You can't get assurance in medicine at level 1 unless you are a Rogue or playing as a human, which the person here is playing a Dwarf Druid.

Other than that, yeah it is a pretty good way to quickly become good at healing. :)

Edit: Oh, I did overlook it at first but. You said 'each person is only immune to your treat wounds for 10 minutes' I assume you are implying that you could treat one person and then someone else could proceed to treat that person? I don't believe that is what continual recovery actually means.

Here is the text:
You zealously monitor a patient’s progress to administer treatment faster. When you Treat Wounds, your patient becomes immune for only 10 minutes instead of 1 hour. This applies only to your Treat Wounds activities, not any other the patient receives.

I believe that last line is in reference to the one right before it (I bolded both).

I'm pretty sure when it says this applies only to your treat wounds activities, it means that when you treat someone they are immune for only 10 minutes. However if your ally treated someone and they don't have continual recovery then you can't treat them 10 minutes later because they are on the full hour immunity.

An example of the interpretation I have:

Someone else in your party without continual recovery uses Treat Wounds, this sets the target on the 1 hour immunity. Even though you have continual recovery, this target is on this 1 hour immunity since you don't get to apply continual recovery off someone else's treat wounds activity. You now have to wait the entire hour to actually treat them.

Now, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.

There is also a pair of healer's gloves

https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=444

And the Crying Angel Pendant that Joe mentioned is here:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=203

Keep in mind the pendant is a talisman, which are one use items. So you could possibly stock up on them but it would be expensive.

As for the feats, that looks pretty decent to me, if you really wanted to focus on healing you could consider the field medic background if you haven't already picked one. That would give you battle medicine at level 1 and then you could pick up the rest all sooner.

I personally would probably prefer ward medic over assurance as once you hit level 7 you could get medicine to master and treat 4 people. Robust vs assurance is a little harder, but at level 8 you are probably better off taking Robust over assurance, cause at that point assurance just guarantees you succeeding at DC20 rolls (it gives you an auto 24 if you boosted your medicine to master at 7). However if you boosted your wis at 5 and have a +4, plus boosted medicine to master rank, then you have a +18 to your rolls anyway so you easily get the dc20 roll unless you roll a 1.

That said, if you did roll a 1 it is also an automatic crit fail. :P Though you could also just roll for dc15, which would mean that you never crit fail, and have a decent chance of critical success.

I'd say it is ultimately up to your preference though, robust could be rather situational on how useful it is so you may prefer the sheer reliability of assurance if poison and disease hasn't been much of an issue up to that point. Other people could easily have different opinions than me too.

I would say no also, because it doesn't list that in their bestiary entry. There are other enemies in the bestiary where it says unarmed attackers take damage though.

Do you have the expanded healer's tools already? (costs 50 gp or I suppose you could have found it?) if not then you don't get a +1 from healer's tools. You have it right on the DC check to heal 2d8 and then if you keep treating them for the rest of the hour it doubles which I believe is technically whatever amount you rolled for the 2d8 doubled instead of rolling 4d8, though your group could go with the 4d8 if they want.

I've actually noticed that battle medicine doesn't even require healers tools, so I would say you aren't using it unless your DM lets you (I personally might allow it if they held the tools). Keep in mind that the healers tools require two hands free to hold, which would make it kinda hard to use in a battle anyway unless you tend to keep your hands free. Battle medicine heals the same as treat wounds, except I don't think it will remove wounded status.

As for boosting your rolls, allies could use aid on you, though this would be harder to succeed at lower levels. There are spells that could boost your skill checks, like the guidance cantrip, though I don't know what all is available in that regard. If you failed a check that you really needed to succeed, you could reroll it with a hero point to try for better.

Valestrix wrote:

prototype00 wrote:

vestris wrote:

I think the mobility crane stance grants has been underestimated here especially with skill feats like quick jump.

I appreciate mobility as much as the next guy Vestris, but does that really warrant bumping up crane style? I’m not so sure, especially since I don’t think IIRC stances can be used in Exploration mode?

Mobility is important in combat too, the ability to leap over difficult terrain can make a big difference in how much distance you can travel in a turn as an example.

This could be good if the enemies use difficult terrain, or even if your party creates difficult terrain to make movement difficult for enemies. You could possibly leap over enemies instead of attempting a tumble too or such things.

I agree with all of this, but:

1. It seems kind of situational, and doesn’t excuse at all the bad damage.
2. Monks were already pretty great at Athletics?

I just can’t in good conscience say that Crane is on par with Tiger, Wolf or Tangled Forest. But that’s just my opinion.

Yeah it is absolutely situational. Though as I mentioned, you could potentially use it in tandem with your party if people want to make use of spells to create difficult terrain, so there is a tactical value there.

As for Monks being already pretty good at Athletics:

Crane adds 5 feet to the long jump on top of reducing the long jump dc by 5. Essentially any actual long jump is 10 DC less to make. As monks get higher and higher move speeds, they need to hit a higher dc to have a long jump match their speed, which crane makes into a significantly easier check.

An example Lvl 3 monk: 35 move speed requires a dc 35 check to make a full jump, or a dc 25 check for crane. At this point a monk could have expert athletics, so +11 with max possible str mod. Crane monk can make a full jump if they roll a 14, while a non-crane monk can't make a full jump even if they rolled a 20.

They could both take dancing leaf for another 5 ft. added to their jump if they wanted, which makes a 35 ft jump require a dc 30 check without crane, so now they would need to roll a 19. With crane they could make a 35 ft jump with a dc 20 check, which means they only need to roll a 9.

That said, as athletics skill increases and upon acquiring some later skill feats for it, this benefit could eventually become obsolete. Cloud Jump in particular, though you don't have access to that until level 15. This does mean that the whole mobile aspect is definitely something more valuable at lower levels than later.

I won't argue that it is on par with those other stances, but having essentially a -10 on all long jump DC's is pretty significant for someone who might want a very mobile monk regardless of the situation.

Edit: Though thinking on it a bit, I do question it a bit, cause it says when you leap you can add the 5 feet horizontally, I am considering that the intention there may be that you don't actually add this to a long jump, but only to a regular leap, which would just mean you could do a regular leap for 20 ft with no DC check. Though it does say you leap in the long jump action itself. Yet Dancing leaf specifically calls into mention both long jump and leap with it's +5.

I'm not sure :P

vestris wrote:

I think the mobility crane stance grants has been underestimated here especially with skill feats like quick jump.

I appreciate mobility as much as the next guy Vestris, but does that really warrant bumping up crane style? I’m not so sure, especially since I don’t think IIRC stances can be used in Exploration mode?

Mobility is important in combat too, the ability to leap over difficult terrain can make a big difference in how much distance you can travel in a turn as an example.

This could be good if the enemies use difficult terrain, or even if your party creates difficult terrain to make movement difficult for enemies. You could possibly leap over enemies instead of attempting a tumble too or such things.

It's situational, but there might be something to be said about Crane stance in terms of mobility.

I don't know how often it would come up, but you can leap over difficult terrain to avoid the negatives of it. A monk using crane stance and built for mobility purposes could have a much easier time negating terrain difficulties in combat.

Though this benefit would probably become less over time if other monks invested in athletics and picked up some other mobility options.