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Good guide. Thanks for putting it together

I have a ranger(2)/vivisectionist(9) beastmorph alchemist in a kingmaker game right now and he's a lot of fun. 4 arms with feral mutagen let's you have 3 Nat attacks after your iterative attacks (albeit at 1/2 strength damage). If your GM will let you take monster feats, you can take multiattack and reduce the penalty from -5 to -2 on the Nat attacks. All this on top of sneak attack. When you hit alchemist 10, you get pounce so you almost never have to go without a full attack. Hasted, that's 6 attacks per round. With power attack those can hurt. Get a helm of the mammoth lord and you get another gore attack. AoMF and the body wraps can help with the lower to hit bonuses on the natural attacks or, of course, you can always just forsake the iterative attacks and just use the natural attacks.

The other use for the 4 arms is to carry a shield and still use a two hander, which you'll be doing when you're not using your mutagen.

I like this guy because he fills all the roles of a ranger and a rogue for scouting, skills and damage. Basically, he started life as a ranger on the frontier. Eventually his study of the animals and magical beasts around him, led to his experiments to somehow distill the powers and abilities of these creatures into a liquid, consume able form. He runs around taking samples from every thing the party kills =). It drives them nuts.

@altus. Been contemplating something similar myself. If you're going to use aspect of the beast to get permanent claws, maybe look at the tattooed sorcerer archetype. You give up your first lvl bloodline for a tattoo familiar, but since you don't need the claw power, this is a pretty damn good trade, imo. Eschew mats is kind of moot, since you can carry a materials pouch anyway.

or for that matter, sohei+zen archer. get point blank shot and deadly aim for free.

i'd toss the sohei archetype in there along with MoMS for one or two levels. you get to act in a surprise round and you get a bonus to initiative that stacks with the gunslinger bonus.

that or monk of the sacred mountain. free toughness feat and natural armor +1.

...

Dot

Revisiting this awesome guide last night and saw the "Anything?-" entry under inevitables. Can anybody point me to the ruling you guys are mentioning and possibly explain why any non caster character can qualify now?

Thanks!

Thanks for all the ideas everyone. I'm still in the daydreaming phase. I am thinking about a concept, not class optimization. I never thought of the monk/magus idea. That might be really cool.

yeah, i think it would be cool to combine with the kensei archetype, since both eschew armor and add mental stat bonuses to AC. but my game is a 15 point buy, so it's pretty much impossible to make work. but i think thematically the two are kind of similar. or the staff magus archetype for similar reasons.

have fun daydreaming =)

Quote:

...add weapon finesse and you have your bomb thrower that can also do melee damage. goes well with vivisectionist....

Something is seriously wrong with trying to put these statements together as a complete thought. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure it out.

er, oops! ignore me, i haven't slept in three days. i mean, look at the rest of that crappy advice.

how about 1 level of master of many styles monk at level 3? crane style + crane wing, since you're required to have a free hand anyways. a second level gets you crane riposte.

or if you're going to focus on AC, i'm a huge fan of snake style + snake fang. it's a huge boon to any tanky character.

unfortunately mage armor isn't on the alchemist formulae list. but at level 8, you should be able to get a +2 mithral chain shirt for 5100gp. that's +6 AC. if you go the dex mutagen route, the armor gives you max +6 dex bonus. feral mutagen gives you three attacks at full BAB. add weapon finesse and you have your bomb thrower that can also do melee damage. goes well with vivisectionist. get a +1 darkwood heavy shield for another +3 shield bonus with no armor check. or do my personal favorite trick and use a vestigial arm to hold it and you can still full attack and never lose the bonus.

also, if all you're after is the alterego RP aspect of the MC or want the mutate at will ability, you could always just take a single level and then go back to alchemist.

trying to figure out how blowing three discoveries to get vestigial twin makes you a more effective melee character.

btw, barkskin and heroism both have 10min/level durations, just like your mutagen.

If the master of many styles loses TWF then yes, if not then no.

The master of many styles does loses Fob so he has to take TWF.

exactly. it's not that he loses TWF, its that he loses FoB, which isn't the same thing.

PS:I see what you mean now. It seems you have found another developer issue that was overlooked. That sentence is assuming FoB is being using, and it was overlooked for archetypes. That is another reason why they should have just give the monk the TWF feat tree. I think you should FAQ it so it can be fixed.

thanks, i'll do that. i got swatted down by my GM a while back for trying spend a ki point to get an extra attack during a full attack with a MoMS monk, since it specifies "as part of a flurry of blows" and not "full attack". that needs to be errataed as well.

My question is do the Improved-TWF and Greater-TWF feats grant additional attacks to the second/third off hands? Put another way, does the "special" section of Multiweapon Fighting extend to the other TWF tree feats.

there are a lot of threads debating how to handle fighting with two falchions for a 4-armed alchemist, but as far as multiweapon fighting goes, you can't apply it to a multi-armed alchemist, unfortunately.

Benefit: The alchemist gains a new arm (left or right) on his torso. The arm is fully under his control and cannot be concealed except with magic or bulky clothing. The arm does not give the alchemist any extra attacks or actions per round, though the arm can wield a weapon and make attacks as part of the alchemist’s attack routine (using two-weapon fighting). The arm can manipulate or hold items as well as the alchemist’s original arms (for example, allowing the alchemist to use one hand to wield a weapon, another hand to hold a potion, and the third hand to throw a bomb). The arm has its own “hand” and “ring” magic item slots (though the alchemist can still only wear two rings and two hand magic items at a time).

so, you can hold 4 weapons, but you can still only attack with 2 of them. if you want to get more attacks, take the feral mutagen discovery, since you can combine natural attacks with normal attacks at a -5 penalty (-2 with multiattack).

so... i have an odd question.

At 1st level, a monk gains Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. A monk’s attacks may be with fist, elbows, knees, and feet. This means that a monk may make unarmed strikes with his hands full. There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed. A monk may thus apply his full Strength bonus on damage rolls for all his unarmed strikes.

If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon...

so, for a master of many styles, is it necessary to take two-weapon fighting to reduce the penalties for making two unarmed strikes during a full attack? it seems like that would have to be the case. otherwise, what would the penalties be? natural attacks are at the full attack bonus, but unarmed strikes are specifically separate from natural attacks.

the other thing that kind of muddies the waters is that the "unarmed strike applies full strength bonus on damage rolls", which either equates them to natural attacks or gives the monk the double slice feat (albeit circumstantially applied only to unarmed strikes).

any help? i'm sure my logic is ridiculously flawed.

what about cleric with a level in monk for the wis AC bonus? alternately, you could just house rule mage armor as a divine spell and let the player run around with a wand of mage armor. or if you went the oracle route, give them UMD as a class skill and they could UMD a mage armor wand.

later, of course, there's always the bracers of armor.

The main advantage to vestigial arms, I believe, is that it explicitly states that they can wield weapons. There was a thread here a while back discussing vivisectionist builds that suggested using vestigial arms in conjunction with feral mutagen to get 5 attacks per round at level 2. The vestigial arms get the normal iterative attacks, while the extra set of limbs gain claws (along with the bite attack) for 3 natural attacks at -5.

vivsectionist thread

Then there's also people who are trying to figure out if 2 x vestigial arms will let you dual wield 2-handed weapons.

You could use the Vestigial Arm to hold a Heavy Darkwood Shield so you can still bomb, shoot with a bow, etc...

is there anything in the description of the tentacle that indicates it couldn't do that as well?

(i read your original thread on that tactic, btw. good stuff.)

You could always take the Shadowrun approach to magic and spirits and reverse it. In that game, all sorts of magical traditions are based in world religions and try to use the tenets of divinity and gods to explain arcane magic. This character could be an atheist that believes that all divine magic is just another form of arcane magic that entire religions have misunderstood as being granted from non-existent gods.

Or then there's always the good old "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" option. Clearly these aren't gods, but rather very advanced alien beings.

Ki can be used for other things. Check out the Ki diversity feat, it's awesome.

yeah, I'm basically using it to boost AC, since I have snake fang. this toon is rogue 2/monk 4 and my plan was to be using the extra attack with stunning fist at the full bonus to generate sneak attack opportunities. so much for that...

this came up at my game tonight when I tried to spend a ki point to get an extra attack during a full attack with my master of many styles. GM ruled that it wasn't allowed because MoMS no longer has the flurry of blows feature. The problem I have is that the ninja class states it can spend a ki point for an extra attack "when making a full attack". Anybody think this is an oversight on the monk description. I know RAW, this is how it works, but it's still disappointing.

Semantics are fun and always lead to a better, more thoughtful discussion.

/sarcasm

Wow, you guys sure are reactionary. He's not making a semantic aguement or trolling. Paizo made the unfortunate decision to have both "Racial Traits" that are race defining features like Orc Ferocity and Toothy" and "race traits" that are a category of traits like faith traits, magic traits, social traits. It's unfortunate that they decided to use the word "trait" to cover two separate game mechanisms, but they did.

There's examples of this all over the boards. it's caused quite a bit of confusion, but they are definitely two different things.

Edit: stupid autocorrect!

i want an AP called "ANGRY BARDS" that revolves around the kidnapping of somebody's kid (how about a tengu's egg) by a bunch of pig-faced orc boar-shaman druids that hole up in a fortress. it should involve siege engine combat.

just sayin'.

Cheapy wrote:

Where you left off :)

So basically, a PrC prevents you from gaining the 20th level payoff ability in a class?

yep, works just like multiclassing into any other core or base class.

Broken Zenith wrote:

I humbly submit my own build, the Crit Fiend. He's a fighter, easy to play, and while he might not be broken he's probably a step up from what you have now.

Also, there are a multitude of guides to be found here.

What level are you? That's a pretty big factor.

I'd rather use Kukris, wakizashi is only an average of 1 damage more than a kukri, and that feat can be used for something more useful. Also, your build lists weapon spec at level 3, which is impossible.

i wouldn't recommend two-weapon defense either. waste of a feat when you can just buy the ring of force shield for 8500g or get a blocking weapon (which granted you need to fight defensively with).

having looked at that matrix before, i'm pretty sure they're all mutually exclusive. the only one that you might be able to combine with something else is the gladiator archetype because it doesn't replace armor or weapon training at any level.

that's it though... =(

James Jacobs' post here makes it fairly clear that the shield is still getting in your way and taking some of your concentration. A non-proficient monk would be taking the armor check penalty to his attacks, so it makes sense that it would affect anything else that gets limited by a shield.

Grick, do you think it matters if the monk is proficient? I would think even with a level of fighter, the penalty would still apply.

edit: and by penalty, I mean that he'd lose flurry, ac bonus, etc...

i don't think it needs to be sustained, does it? it just has a duration of 1 min/level.

Now, this may be an error in the text, but per RAW, there is nothing that changes this for a staff magus. Per the rules, they can only enchant one side of the staff at a time.

Also remember, they are not always using the staff with 2 hands due to getting the feat "Quarterstaff Master" for free and needing to keep one hand free for casting. So, the idea of only enchanting one side has some logic with a staff magus.

this. i think the expectation is that you'll be fighting with the staff as a one-handed weapon and leaving your off hand open for spell combat. and if you're not using a full attack, you may as well be swinging it with 2 hands anyways.

i don't know about contact poisons or diseases, but there's at least one monster i've found in the bestiary that does contact damage with hit with natural attacks

Remorhaz

An enraged remorhaz generates heat so intense that anything touching its body takes 8d6 points of fire damage. Creatures striking a remorhaz with natural attacks or unarmed strikes are subject to this damage, but creatures striking with melee weapons are not. The heat can melt or burn weapons; any weapon that strikes a remorhaz is allowed a DC 19 Fortitude save to avoid taking damage. The save DC is Constitution-based.

Davick wrote:

AvalonXQ wrote:

Why is it problematic that a rogue talent is not as good as a feat? Is the design intent that rogue talents are supposed to be superior to feats? I thought it was pretty clearly the opposite.

Agreed. If talents could always be combat feats, that would be saying a rogue is a superior class than the fighter, as they'd get the same amount of feats on top of SA and such. Of course, what does that say the problem is?

thats true a rough would get as many feats as a fighter at the cost of his rough talents and he doesn't have a full BAB either and I realized what the ninja trick said before I made this post I was just wondering based off of raw if this would work because I think that the ninja tricks are better than the rough talents(and I'm sure that some people agree with me on that) and since the ninja trick "Rogue Talent" and the rough talent "Ninja Trick" are pretty much the same thing if they meant to have them worded the same way that is what would have happened but I think its very possible they worded the rough talent "Ninja Trick" as they have so that can take combat trick a second time if not more than twice

or you could just take the swashbuckler archetype and get take the combat trick talent twice.

If you replaced bastion stance then you would have a conflicting archetype, as they both "replace or modify the same class feature." Thus, the archetypes would be incompatible. Don't replace any class feature that one of your archetypes modifies, then QG is compatible with any archetype, even one that changes every class feature (though there isn't much point in being a QG at that point).

sir, you're not allowed to make that much sense on the internet. you should go into law =)

but that looks exactly right, thanks for pointing that out to me.

Huh? QG isn't required to replace features at all.

But you can only replace matching features that you actually have.

It's quite the OP "build your own" class

i agree that it's optional, for sure. what i'm wondering is if it stacks with other archetypes that replace standard monk abilities, particularly BECAUSE its optional. RAW says you can replace slow fall at the 4th level, but the MoSM is already trading slow fall for bastion stance. so the way i read it, you shouldn't be able to replace bastion stance with, say deny death at the 4th level.

edit: whoops, they both replace slow fall, so yeah, they don't stack

yeah, that's how i read it too, but since you have the OPTION at each level, i wasn't sure. thanks!

ok, then by that same reasoning, you could not combine the quinggong monk archetype with the monk of the sacred mountain archetype because you can't trade a class ability you don't have (slow fall) for a ki power at level 4, for instance. if you give up slow fall for bastion stance, no ki powers for you!

agreed?

sorry, but i couldn't find this anywhere.

if a master of many styles monk with a level in, oh i don't know, say fighter, wears armor with which he's proficient, does he lose the fuse styles class feature?

my thought is yes. even though in the monk description it specifically says, when wearing armor... a monk loses... flurry of blows abilities," since fuse styles replaces flurry he would lose that as well.

on the other hand, under archetypes it says "A character who takes an alternate class feature does not count as having the class feature that was replaced when meeting any requirements or prerequisites." so if you give up flurry for fuse styles, should he be able to wear armor?

i'm trying to figure this out at a generic level for any class, it just happens that the monk has some pretty specific limitations when he wears armor. anybody know the answer?

thanks!