Valynn moorwyn's page

For those that are unaware, arguing in good faith is the first requirement of rhetorical debate. To argue in good faith mandates that you have to do everything in your power to ensure that you represent your opponent's position in the best possible light.

The reason why this is the first rule is really simple; if you don't follow this rule, you aren't actually having a debate, your just writing at each other. It's the rhetorical equivalent of flinging poop.

Just thought I'd send out this PSA into the aether... Enjoy.

Hey there!

I have sort of developed an idea for gish class with a kind of vampiric flavour that I would love some help fleshing out. I would appreciate any ideas or assistance in this endeavor, so thanks in advance to all you posters!

The basic premise of the class (I'm sort of leaning towards calling them the sanguinary guard atm, but its totally up in the air) is that of an order of warriors who use magic to empower themselves by using their foes blood as fuel. They don't actually consume the blood, they "simply" rip the remaining life force or whatever out of their dying enemies blood. This "pool" of blood energy lasts for one hour(the time is refreshed if another foe is slain) an grants the guard a bonus to his effectiveness in combat that are flavourful and hopefully representative of a gish emulating powerful undead.

The basic idea behind the blood pool is that it will be an active mechanic that the guard can only access after killing an enemy or using a specific spell that deals damage to himself to gain blood points (It may also work as a sort of reverse lay on hands, but Im not sure yet). The number of points that a guard may have at any one time is equal to half their level rounded down. At levels where the blood pool expands, the guard will gain new class features associated with that expanded pool limit.

In addition to the blood pool, the guard will have four levels of arcane casting. I'm not sure which spells would be most appropriate, but I was thinking that it would be furnished with some necromancy spells and the like. The thing is, I don't want the class to be immediately evil. More like a magical order of warriors that have a kind of pragmatic approach to the consequences of violence. If somebody is already dying because you just stabbed them, you may as well use the remainder of their life force to power you magic, right?

Anyhow, any thoughts on this idea and ways to improve it would be greatly appreciated. I like the idea of an active resource, but it will be difficult to balance against other powers because the sanguinary guard will probably be a slow starter. To that end, I thought that the bonuses from the pool resource should be pretty good.

The classes I'm looking at most are the barbarian and the paladin for inspiration.

I have been reading up on intelligent item creation for an ongoing campaign and I have a query regarding caster level. It doesn't specifically mention how you modify the caster level of the item. Is it somewhere less obvious and I have just missed it or something?

Hey there,

I'm planning on building a keep for my companions and I. The campaign is set in a forgotten realms home brew and I thought I would get some advice related to common magical countermeasures. Is there a list of must haves for a keep to stay relatively safe?

Hi there folks,
I'm looking for a figurine to represent my dervish dancing adventurer and I've run into an issue. After an hour or so of looking online, I can't seem to find a single male warrior wielding one scimitar... that is correct, not one male. Is there any resources available that you fine folks would be able to direct me to?

I've already checked all the stuff on the website I think, and the reaper mini site was no help either.

Thanks in advance!

Hey folks,
I am considering building a backup character for my current game as I have the impression I may get snuffed pretty soon. My current character is a generalist, but this time around I think I'll build a support character.

I had my eye on a Dwarf sensai monk with some qinngong powers and maybe hungry ghost to build up ki for buffing. Back story is a veteran with a somewhat sordid past(hungry ghost) who has taken his lumps and wants to help others as a sort of personal atonement.

I wouldn't mind some input on the character. He's a middle aged dwarf so there will be a little bit of adjustment on his ability scores.

Level 10
Ability array(adjusted for age and levels)
str 14
dex 14
con 14
int 14
wis 21
cha 6

I'm not sure if hungry ghost is the way to go, but it seemed like a neat concept in my head.

Hey there,

I am trying to build a backup character for a mid level game that is currently ongoing, and I thought a Hexcrafter might be fun. I don't have much experience with the Magus, but it appears to be an Int primary class, and I thought the Hexcrafter archetype suited my back story.

I was also planning on making the character a strength based character and taking two levels of the student of war prestige to add intelligence instead of dexterity to armor class.

here are my thoughts so far.

Character is built with a fairly generous 26 points. The race will be elf. Starting level will be above 8. The below statistics include racial modifiers

str 15
dex 13
con 14
int 18
wis 12
cha 7

(class)level.BaB sa/ve/s feats
(M)1.0 2/0/2 combat expertise
(M)2.1 3/0/3
(M)3.2 3/1/3 skill focus(knowledge arcana)
(M)4.3 4/1/4
(M)5.3 4/1/4 dodge
(M)6.4 5/2/5
(M)7.5 5/2/5
(SoW)8.6 5/2/6
(SoW)9.7 6/3/6
(M)10.8 7/3/7
(M)11.8 7/4/7

Any feat help would be great. Please note that the game does not have free traits, so if you are intending to suggest any, they will have to be taken with a feat.

Just out of curiosity, what happens to the cost of an ability score tome when you bypass the spell requirement? If you don't have to cast a wish spell, then the material component isn't consumed I would imagine.

Alternatively, how do you break down the cost of tomes? I know the component cost is added in, but I'm not super familiar with how many diamonds are required for each book. Diamonds of that quality are hard to find, so it would be great if I could bypass the requirement for them.

Hey there,

I have been thinking about hybrids for a while and have come up with a couple feats that may bring some parity in terms of effective trade offs. I would like some feedback regarding potential exploits if possible.

One caveat to be noted before any judgements are made is that with these feats, weapon properties like agile and guided would be unavailable.

Just a quick rules question,

If I take racial heritage(aasimar) on my human and the take fast learner, would I be able to take both favoured class features?

This isn't really about whether I can take the special favoured racial feature from Aasimar, which I think is pretty well spelled out by the feat, but whether the fast learner trait allows me to take both.

Prerequisites: Int 13, human.

Benefit: When you gain a level in a favored class, you gain both +1 hit point and +1 skill rank instead of choosing either one or the other benefit or you can choose an alternate class reward.

It seems to imply that the alternate class reward can be chosen in place of either the hit point or the skill point. That, to me at least, implies that I should be able to replace both, as they are both mutable. I realize this is a corner case and may not have an immediate answer.

hey there,

Sorry about the title, seems a bit pretentious, but it gets the point across.

I have been contemplating hybrid classes in general for a while now and I have come to a few conclusion. Of course, whether said conclusions are worth anything is up to you.

It's been my experience that, in general, hybrid classes can contribute either effective melee, or effective casting, never both. It should also be noted that they are not as effective in the chosen method of contribution due to a far less comprehensive suite of abilities in their chosen specialization. While I understand the reasoning behind that, I had hoped that the transition to pathfinder would make a hybrid that is a good caster at his niche suite of spells AND be able to contribute a fair amount in the melee arena. In my mind, that is the ideal of a hybrid, niche contributions that he/she is very good at, but not as good as focused classes.

The primary issue with this concept in the D20 system as I see it is in the arena of attributes. To be effective as a melee combatant, you need to be able to hit things. To do that requires a focus on hitting attributes. However, if your focus is your to hit attribute, your spell casting DC's suffer to the point that eventually, a great number of your already small suite of spells become ineffective, which essentially relegates the hybrid to buffing. Obviously, if you go the other direction, your potentials are reversed.

As a way of eliminating this disparity, hybrids are often given neat little tricks (versatile performance) that add something that makes the class more viable in some other way. while I totally appreciate this methodology, I have determined that perhaps it would be nice to be able to make a hybrid that doesn't necessarily get forced into the buffing corner with a little bit of clever mechanics.

The reason why casting and to hit attributes can't be the same is pretty obvious to most, it causes fairly large imbalances in class mechanics. Generally, if you make a class that has this feature, it is either too good in melee to be considered a true hybrid, or its casting potential gets broken pretty fast.

this is nothing new to most forum posters... The thing is, what if you were to change the parameters a little?

I'll give you an idea of what I'm thinking below. It's not fully fleshed out and I haven't done the crunch, but I hope it will allude to my meaning.

Lets go with standard hybrid stats.

D8 3/4 BAB 6+INT skills good fort and will.

Lets say this class is specialized in illusion and some self buffs like shield, similar to bard, but with fewer buffs and more mind effecting stuff. More specialized in stuff with saves, just for arguments sake.

It's primary casting stat is charisma.

Okay, so for this guys spell list to be any real use, as it has mostly spells with DC's, he needs his primary stat to be charisma. But we want this guy to be effective in melee as well. Doesn't really seem like it'll work right?

So lets add a class feature to this character that only functions when it is attached to an attack action(synonymous with standard action). Lets call it eldritch strike, like the warlocks ability, only it is a melee attack modifier. This power will work... 4 times per day plus charisma modifier at level one and one more time per day at each class level. In addition to this, the characters charisma modifier effects to hit and damage, but ONLY when eldritch strike is in use. this power adds 1D6 energy damage(choose between fire, ice, and electricity at first level) every two levels up to a maximum of 10D6 at level 19.

So what does this do? It makes the above class capable of the high DC's required to make his/her specialized casting suite effective AND it gives him/her an effective means of skirmishing with combat feats that are used somewhat infrequently due to everyone trying to hit iterative attacks all the time.

If you were to add invocations to the eldritch strike feature, it would also make for interesting debuff mechanics and add flexibility to the above while still maintaining a relatively stable sustained damage throughput that is worth doing without taking the shine away from focused melee classes. Basically, we want this class to shine as a melee skirmisher with some interesting mechanics that he can add to eldritch strike by way of invocations... no extra damage, just change the energy type or add a debuff. If we follow the warlock trope, lets say there are invocations and greater invocations, adding an invocation increases the cost of that particular attack by one point from your eldritch reserve, greater invocations would cost an extra two points.

I would love to hear peoples thoughts on this, pardon the wall of text.

So I am building this bard....

I have developed a melee focused bard with eldritch heritage (arcane) so that I have a familiar and some new sorc/Wiz spells at 11th 13th and 17th levels. The only issue is... Im not really that certain where to go with the spells.

I have a charisma score of 18 and I dont think it is going to be getting any of my level bumps. I was thinking of taking beast shape 3 at 13th and making my familiar something pouncy but I dont know if that is worth the two feats to make target self spells effect fuzzykins....

I am not certain if having, at best, a casting score of 24 will be high enough to make save spells work effectively.

Are there any ways to make my bard more effective in the dex department? I notice most spells that effect fighting are big on strength.

Anyhow, kinda all over the place here, help would be appreciated.

Hey there,

Im making an arcane duelist archer and I would love some input on my build. Its not optimized and Im not really trying to munchkin it or something, Im just confused about a few rules questions and whatnot.

Stats
STR 14
DEX 17
CON 14
INT 14
WIS 15
CHA 18

The stats are pretty high, but my DM rolled them after I rolled something like 3 stats below 6.

My race choice was Aasimar because they have some nice bonus stats and they have a few alternate traits that I chose for flavour. Also, with bard as my favoured class, I can add 1/2 my class level to my performances which I thought would be fantastic. The problem is, I didn't notice that bladethirst caps at +5. does that include epic levels?

If that's the case, should I prestige out into something else at some point? I'm not sure what to do.... I would really like to work with prestige performances, I think that's a neat feature for a celestial singer.

Also. I had planed on taking two levels of arcane archer at some point so I can imbue my arrows with thinks like confusion, is there an optimal level to do this at? I took magical knack so I wouldn't lose caster levels for the prestige.

Anyhow, any help would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. just hit level 5. first feat was skill focus knowledge (planes) to qualify for eldritch heritage. second feat was eldritch heritage (arcane bloodline) to get a familiar. I'll start working on archer stuff next. 11th level feat has to be improved eldritch heritage for the extra wizard spells at 11, 13, and 17. I was thinking of getting some of the AoO archer feats... is this a good idea with combat reflexes, heck, do I even have the feats...?

Hi there ladies and gents,

I have been trying to come up with a melee character class for some time that tackles the dependence upon casting assistance to accomplish its role successfully as it gets higher in the levels without immediately tacking on some spell progression.

To that effect, I just discovered the summoner class recently and fell in love with the evolution mechanic that their companion has. I also noted that the summoner could co-opt some of those points to evolve as well.

As soon as I had grasped the concept, I realized how effective this could be for a purist class. If I could remove the at will summoning and the spell progression and replace those values with a companion focused melee character that had a larger capacity to evolve I might have something really special.

I read further into the details of the summoner class and found a conversion for a "synthesist". The problem with that particular class was that it stripped quite of the summoners output and didn't really replace it with anything, not to mention that it did not make the character the melee oriented spell-less mo-fo that I was looking for.

So I guess here is where the question comes in. I was thinking of replacing the spell-like summons for full BaB and a second good save. I am also going to strip the casting progression and replace it with a more elaborate evolution "pool" that both the player and the eidalon(sp?) tap into. I was also thinking of adding a combat special progression similar to the rangers choice at level 2 that would give some options for the build, something like a mounted feat progression or a co-operative combat feat progression... Kind of a way to define how the warrior and eidalon would work together.

Is this too much? I know that the summoner can make up for 3/4 bab with one feat more or less and that whole summon six quintillion times a day thing seems like it would be worth something pretty solid.

What would you guys suggest?

P.S. sorry.... kind of a wall of text.