Vance Lodune's page

Thank you for your responses! I want to keep things balanced/challenging for the players, but make sure everyone is having fun. So I have been avoiding third party materials as they have a tendency to be more unbalanced. I think he may end up taking a level of swashbuckler for the deeds and then sword saint samurai from there, but I will ask if that's what he wants to go with. I'm willing to give him a reverse blade katana the is used nonleathal normally and can be used with a -1 or -2 penalty for lethal due to it being awkward to wield the sword backwards to cut people with it. I don't want the penalty to be too extreme because nothing in his character motivations would cause him to have a problem with killing monsters and whatnot.

I am dming a game for some buddies and invited my brother to join. I asked him what sort of character he would want to play and he said he would want to use a reverse blade katana like Rurouni Kenshin and not want to deal leathal damage to people, due to his past. He has never played any tabletop before, however he vaguely knows some of the rules.

What would you think would be the best fit for this style of character, and what suggestions do you have to ensure he has fun with this choice? I have a few ideas, but I have a tendency to min/max characters, so I would like some other input.

Ok thanks guys! I really like the double cackle idea and the 5 foot step :)

I created a witch for our pathfinder campaign. He is going to be a support character for the most part. So the idea is to cast a lot of hexes on enemies and cackle. However I tried to use misfortune and then move while using cackle. My DM is saying that I can only use cackle or move. Is that a good call? I understand that whether it is by the book and he doesn't like it, then it's his choice anyways. I just want to know for a future campaign with a different DM.

Thank you both, none of this made any sense before :)

Oh I get it. So I would use command undead, and if I tell them to go into a fight that the odds are against them, or something else that they wouldn't normally do then I do a charisma check to see if I can convince it. Otherwise I would need to use the charm hex or control undead for it to actually do that thing.

Thank you, that makes a lot more sense now. So creating undead could potentially become a problem, is there a way to make it permanent, or is animate undead the only one that is really viable?

The concept I have for my witch is that his family along with his farm(or whatever) was destroyed by a plague(created by whatever benevolent being) and his familiar which is a raven teaches him to use witch powers. Around level 7 I want to get improved familiar and have it transform into an imp(still have to check with the dm), so the imp will attempt to compel me to do something that I wouldn't normally do every day. It actually works out rp wise as an imp can transform into a raven. So kinda like I don't know where this power comes from, and the imp is a liaison for the source of my power and is guiding me to become the way he thinks I should act.

I am not sure which alignment to pick though, but I'm thinking maybe chaotic/neutral good. Kind of like an innocent good guy that is just using whatever power he can for good.

I am planning on making a witch with the plague patron(Plague: 2nd—detect undead, 4th—command undead, 6th—contagion, 8th—animate dead, 10th—giant vermin, 12th—create undead, 14th—control undead, 16th—create greater undead, 18th—energy drain.), but I don't understand how these spells work (i.e. how many undead total I can have, using all of my abilities). I have read a few guides but they all say that plague is a terrible patron because you can't control the undead, but isn't that what command/control undead does?

I have a cool concept for the character rp wise, but I have never made a character like this or a spellcaster. Does having undead servants require me to have an evil alignment?