johnnythexxxiv's page

It's been a while since I've uploaded a class to the boards so I figured I'd pop in and present my latest creation: The Hemotheurge

It's a spontaneous divine full caster that uses its literal lifeblood to cast spells. In addition it can willingly bleed profusely to power up its spellcasting and unlocks a bunch of neat little tricks in the form of blood talents, many of which also get a boost from self mutilation. The class is a bit on the simplistic side and I'd like to add in a couple more blood talents so I'm looking for feedback on how to spice things up a bit and/or expand the options available slightly.

All in all though, it's complete enough for a first draft that I'm at a point where I'm comfortable with sharing with the world at large, so have a looksie and then feel free to tear me a new one ;)

So yeah, I'm not seeing one in the spell write up in the components section but since there are things in the components section it means that it likely isn't just a copy-paste from scrying and was intentionally left out. I'm kind of surprised if that's the case, you wouldn't have something to scry onto if the water (or more importantly the mirror) wasn't still part of the spell. I mean it could easily just make a one way portal in the air, but you likely already have the mirror anyway... Anyone want to help clarify that for me?

Evening everyone, I was just hoping to get some inspiration on how to play up the grand scale of a city with a massive (>1 million) population in comparison to just large cities. Most places adventurers go are fairly small hamlets to moderate villages with the occasional city thrown in there so there's a reasonable scale of small to biggish to work with, but for massive communities that span dozens of kilometers to a side how do you represent that kind of scale? I'm having a hard time figuring out a course of action for this so any advice is much appreciated.

So, working on a homebrew campaign setting where tech level is a little higher (still pre-industrial revolution) and as a result maps are very accurate and easily accessible. Since maps are reliable, means of fast travel are more reliable as well, be it overland flight, teleportation or what have you. For the most part though, vehicular travel hasn't sped up significantly, meaning that mundane travel hasn't been effected too much.

Knowing that the PCs can hop from location to location with relative ease, what's are some good ways of dealing with not wanting PCs to head to certain areas "until they're ready?" In your experience, what's an "appropriate" amount of globe hopping with this kind of setting at low levels? Mid levels? High Levels?

Thanks for any responses, each one will have me bang my head against the wall one less time.

So, simple thread premise. It takes time and effort to make a nice balanced homebrew class, especially if you want it to have a more professional feel. Sometimes though, you just don't have the time to write up everything all nice and purdy, or you would prefer getting feedback on a new mechanic or idea you haven't quite finished yet. This is a thread where you can feel free to throw up whatever you want and get it polished up before showcasing it to all your internet friends on its very own shiny new thread or where you can ask for direction before even starting writing up your ideas.

I am actually looking for advice for my example by the way :P

So I know a couple of ways to get ranged trip attacks off the top of my head - 11 levels in Archer Fighter, 7 levels in Shield Champion Brawler and using bolas, trip arrows (although trip arrows are bad) or any other ranged trip weapon - but was hoping to glean some info on other possible non-magical sources of ranged tripping (if a 3/4 or less caster can do it reliably through magic though, I'm still interested) and/or what methods people think are solid for doing so.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

As far as I can tell we haven't had one of these threads in a while and they're always fun. So I'll get started.

1. Soap as glowing signage. Cast light on a bar of soap and then draw designs on dungeon walls, doorways and anywhere else you can think of that would benefit from a little extra light or an obvious marker that you've already been down a certain path. Also works great for finding invisible foes that can't fly if you apply it liberally to the floors. I actually find this so helpful in so many different ways that I almost always specifically build my characters so that they have access to the light cantrip/orison from level 1, regardless of what class they are. There's half a dozen traits that give players the option of casting light as a spell like ability so it's pretty easy to squeak in.

2. Tents as makeshift parachutes/para-gliders. Stuck at the top of a cliff and the wizard didn't prepare feather fall? Worry not, your tent that you've totally been using while on the trail can actually come in handy. If it has rigid supports you can make a makeshift para-glider to help slow and aim your landing and if it doesn't, the extra drag from the tent's cloth should be enough to convince your GM to knock a couple d6s from your fall damage.

3. Sewing needle as compass needle. If you heat up a strip of iron until it's red hot it will polarize itself while cooling. If you align an iron needle north/south while doing this, you effectively create a compass needle, allowing you to continue to travel after losing your wayfinder.

What other neat tricks do people have?

What if the (original) rogue was intentionally designed to be sub-par because Paizo knew that people were natually inclined to dicks to their fellow party members as a rogue more than any other class so they needed to make sure that everyone else could shut them down with as little effort as possible?

Stingchucks count as splash weapons but I'm having a hard time visualizing how you get the bonus damage for them, especially since they have kind of weird phrasing on their mechanics.

On a related note, would raging brutality apply to splash attacks?

The idea behind this build is simple, never ever get into the thick of things alongside your allies, instead, you support them from the comfort of your home. By utilizing massive range buffs, scrying, distance healing and tactical maneuvering, you can safely have a significant effect on the battlefield or social encounters from a literal mile away.

Lazybones McGee
Human Geisha Bard 1/Oracle (Life) 1/Hedge Scarred Witch Doctor (Deception) 10/Oracle +3/Verminous Hunter (Worm) 1/Witch +4

20 Point Buy
Str 7
Dex 7
Con 20
Int 8
Wis 7
Cha 18

Progression:
1 Extra Performance, Extra Performance, Tea Ceremony
2 Life Link
3 Racial Heritage (Orc)
4 Healing Hex
5 Extra Hex (Scar Hex)
6 Spontaneous Healing
7 Toughness
8 Fortune Hex
9 Extra Hex (Ward Hex)
10 Empathic Healing
11 Endurance
12 Waxen Image
13 Spell Hex (Hex Vulnerability)
14 Healing Hands
15 Diehard
16 Fast Healing 1
17 Fast Healer
18 Major Healing Hex
19 Healer's Touch
20 Witch's Charge Hex

So, what does Lazybones McGee get up to? Well, he uses some heavy rules exploits and questionable readings to allow him to inspire greatness in his allies at level 1 from literally anywhere in the multiverse by hosting a tea party that no one else actually attends since Tea Ceremony doesn't actually say that the allies have to drink the tea or witness the setup to receive its benefits. 2 d10 hit dice should be enough of a boost to carry his allies through to second level where he can begin to heal them while staying at medium range, which keeps him well out of most combats. 5th level lets him heal allies from up to a mile away and 11th level lets him teleport over to his allies while invisible so that he can steal their poisons and diseases to have them effect him instead without most enemies realizing what happened. 12th level lets him move his allies around the field on his turn to set them up into better tactical positioning, 13th level lets him spam healing hex while 17th level makes sure he doesn't die from his life link with the other party members.
Basically Lazybones stays as far away from his allies as he can and uses scrying effects to keep tabs on them to see how they're doing. If their about to go exploring he'll throw them a tea party and then keep them healthy with hexes. If things start to go sour, he'll go invisible, teleport nearby and then give them buffs and emergency healing and might tag along for a while to heal them up with life links before teleporting back to safety. If done correctly, the party may never know what Lazybones actually is, since he should be invisible always from 6th level onwards and there is technically no reason for Lazybones to ever reveal the fact that he even exists.

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So, thoughts, opinions, advice? How would you spruce up this kind of a character? Do you have an idea of how to make a more effective buff-bot that likewise doesn't even attempt to stay close to their comrades? Etc, etc.

Let's look at a 5th level witch with a CL 2 wand of wand of hex vulnerability vs a regular ol' CL 1 wand of cure light wounds. Obviously the witch has the Healing hex.

CL 1 Wand of Cure Light Wounds
Cost: 750 gp
Amount Healed Per Round: 1d8+1 damage, average 5.5
Total Average Health Healed: 275
Price in Gold Pieces Per Hit-Point Healed: 2.72gp

CL 2 Wand of Hex Vulnerability
Cost: 1500 gp
Amount Healed Per Round: 2d8+5 damage, average 14
Total Average Health Healed: 700
Price in Gold Pieces Per Hit-Point Healed: 2.14gp

It only gets better as the Witch levels up, especially if she takes Major Healing Hex as well. At 20th level:

CL 2 Wand of Hex Vulnerability
Cost: 1500 gp
Amount Healed Per Round: 4d8+20 damage, average 38
Total Average Health Healed: 1900
Price in Gold Pieces Per Hit Point Healed: 0.79gp

Yup, it actually drops to under a gp per hit point healed. Expressed differently, you heal 1.27 hit points per gp. Talk about cost effective! But wait, it gets even better! Hex vulnerability is one of the few wands that actually gets more cost effective as its caster level increases. This is because it allows you more rounds of healing per charge; the numbers are as follows:

CL 20 Wand of Hex Vulnerability
Cost: 15000 gp
Amount Healed Per Round: 4d8+20 damage, average 38
Number of Rounds of Healing Per Charge: 19
Total Average Health Healed: 36,100
Price in Gold Pieces Per Hit Point Healed: 0.42gp

Assuming you can get in all 19 rounds of healing per charge, you heal 2.41 hit points per gp spent on the wand. Now obviously that's an idealized situation but it does show that as you raise caster level the cost per hit point decreases, so a CL 3 wand will be better than a CL 2 wand and should still see enough use to warrant the extra 750 gp. The additional cost does make it more prohibitive in the lower levels though.

So basically I accidentally came up with the idea of a merfolk riding around on an octopus, terrorizing (or protecting) the land, seas and skies (air walk/overland flight).
Currently I'm debating between Barbarian (RAGELANCEPOUNCE also lets octopus pounce with Greater Ferocious Mount), Cavalier (Dune Drifter lets me be a cowboy), Druid (for nature theme, great spells and guaranteed octopus) or Hunter (nature and teamwork theme, good spells and great octopus). Anyone got any advice? I'm open to other suggestions too.

Benefit: A jinxed target’s penalty on Fortitude, Reflex, or Will saves increases by 2 if you have the Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, or Iron Will feat, respectively. If you have more than one of these feats, the additional penalties apply to all of the corresponding saves.

Benefit: Your jinx’s penalty on saving throws also applies to the target’s initiative and attack rolls.

So... what happens when you only have one or two of the saving throw boosting feats?

So I was rummaging through some of the Pathfinder reddits and came across this gem:

amstrdm wrote:

True, I just find it hilarious you can (possibly) have a human with 15ft reach.

Racial Heritage is probably my favorite feat for sheer ridiculousness you can get away with with "RAW".

Super ridiculous. Especially when you look at half-orcs' Orc Blood racial: "Orc Blood: Half-orcs count as both humans and orcs for any effect related to race."

Since we're talking word rulings, you can potentially count as a human to take Racial Heritage. If you want to get even MORE ridiculous, take kitsune as the heritage, and grab Swift Kitsune Shapechanger and Vulpine Pounce. Play a wanderer monk.
At level 13, you can pounce with full flurry of blows, have eternal freedom of movement, and your half-orc can turn into a fox-man. Because why not.

What other zany things can we come up with?

Lesser Astral Totem (Su)
Prerequisite: Spell Sunder rage power
Benefit: Once per rage, the barbarian can spend 2 rounds of rage to sunder reality as a move action, allowing her to slip between spaces as if using the spell dimension door. Her caster level for this effect is equal to her barbarian level. She may sunder reality one additional time per rage for each other astral totem rage power she has.
Special: This rage power counts as the abundant step class feature for the purpose of feats and for feat prerequisites.

Astral Totem (Su)
Prerequisite: Barbarian 8, Lesser Astral Totem rage power
Benefit: While raging the barbarian gains the Dimensional Agility feat as a bonus feat and an enhancement bonus to land speed as if she were a monk of her level -3.

Greater Astral Totem (Su)
Prerequisite: Astral Totem rage power
Benefit: While raging the barbarian gains the Dimensional Assault feat as a bonus feat and may ignore the effects of any afflictions (such as diseases, curses and poisons) she is currently suffering from.

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So, thoughts? Opinions? Any glaring problems besides its lackluster name?

Been toying around with the idea of how to effectively build around Hex Strike for a long while now and only recently noticed that shamans have 3/4 BAB (no clue why I thought they were still at 1/2, but I digress) and got excited over making what I felt would be a fun and effective combo of Cornugon Smashing (with a cruel weapon of course) into a Malicious Eye. But, since my creative juices were a-flowin', I decided that instead of simply making a fun debuffer I would try to take that debuff to its logical extreme and see how badly I could gimp someone on a single standard action. The results are silly to say the least.

Morgan Oliver Lester
Halfling Blood Conduit Bloodrager (Fey Bloodline) 1/Hexcrafter Staff Magus 19
Stats Assuming 20 Point Buy
Str 13
Dex 12
Con 13
Int 16
Wis 12
Cha 9

Alt Racial Trait: Halfling Jinx

Leveling Highlights
1 Improved Unarmed Strike, Iron Will
2 Quarterstaff Master retrained to Versatile Jinxer
3 Bolster Jinx
4 Evil Eye Hex*
5 Cackle*, Malicious Eye
6 Power Attack
7 Accursed Strike*, Cornugon Smash, Slumber Hex*
8
9 Hex Strike
10 Misfortune Hex*
11 Arcane Strike
12 Blooded Arcane Strike,
13 Flamboyant Arcana*, Riving Strike, Lingering Pain*
14
15 Great Fortitude
16 Disruptive*
17 Sluggish Jinx
18 Weapon Focus (Club) retrained to Lightning Reflexes
19 Arcana Deeds (Precise Strike)*, Infected Wounds*, Worst Case Jinx
20
*either a hex or arcana

So, Morgan has a +X Cruel Viridium Cestus, while all of his other gear is currently superfluous. As a standard action he attempts to spellstrike major curse with a cestus punch. He lands the punch making the enemy shakened, sickened, penalized by Riving Strike and in danger of catching leprosy. For funsies he also crits, exposing the opponent to the effects of greenblood oil and potentially confusing them for a round. Before they get to roll their saves major curse resolves and Hex Strike goes off too. Morgan uses Hex Strike for evil eye (targeting saves), with the -10 they have against it currently, the opponent will probably fail the save, letting Malicious Eye activate for an additional -3 to saves, attack rolls and initiative as well as Worst Case Jinx making their life even less enjoyable. Finally they get to save against the leprosy, greenblood oil and confusion with a hefty -15 (or maybe -17 if your GM rules that since Morgan's weapon is magical its disease and poison are magical as well) to the save, but the opponent probably still passes since the save DCs are so low, but they might not.

Alternatively, the opponent has a -10 to Morgan's Slumber Hex. If he uses that instead of evil eye, that should be enough of an advantage that he can shut them down with just that. Trivializing an enemy into a standard + swift action at 9th level (still a -8 to their will save even then) makes my Scarred Witch Doctor so very very sad.

In case people don't know, Horizon Walker is a full BAB prestige class with very easy entry requirements and at third level has the option of giving you dimension door as a spell-like ability or a host of other good things. This opens up access to the Dimensional Dervish feat line, which is a very powerful feat line for martial characters, especially when you add in Dimensional Savant and/or Dimensional Maneuvers to make it even better.

This feat chain makes the rogue not suck since he can flank with himself, lets the monk actually get the full Dimensional Agility feat family without retraining any of his other feats, lets melee fighters be a threat against flying foes and enemies behind walls or difficult terrain, lets the barbarian choose something besides beast totem, keeps certain combat maneuvers relevant for longer and lets archers bypass cover and wind walls. Coupled with the fact Horizon Walker will also grant you a second favored terrain that isn't space and comes on a full BAB, 6+int with solid class skills chassis, why wouldn't you dip into it? Note: Responses are free to be as straightforward or silly as you want, I promise I won't mind which way the thread turns :)

This FAQ doesn't cover SLAs gained from feats or traits. I imagine that they follow in suit to everything else but I can't find an official ruling, so if anyone has a link it would be appreciated.

In the most recent giant rogue hate thread there was mention of how barbarians can be effective skill monkeys. I'm looking through rage powers at the moment and I'm not seeing anything that makes him above and beyond the normal in skills with the exception of intimidation getting a tonne of extra mileage and FCB on trapsense making them better at trapfinding than rogues since they can just barrel through most of them unharmed (dwarves are apparently the only rogues that even have a bonus to trapsense as a FCB option while humans, half-elves, halfings, and gnomes all have it for barbarians). I mean there's the dragon totem line to get +3 to perception, chaos totem gives +4 to escape artist, primal scent gives 1/2 level to survival and perception and raging climber, raging leaper and raging swimmer add +level to climb, acrobatics and swim checks. [sarcasm]I just can't see how a barbarian can be good at skills[/sarcasm]
But in all seriousness, with the exception of intimidate bonuses and perception bonuses, the barbarian doesn't really get bonuses to skills that matter (the survival bonus is limited by rage rounds so you can't really use scent to be awesome at berry picking, and getting delicious food and fresh water is literally only a 1st level spell and a pair of cantrips away anyway so survival is a weak skill to start with, climb and swim are not important enough to blow a rage power on, etc.) so I am curious as to how he can be a good skill monkey since he's kind of replacing the essential skill monkey skills (knowledges and social skills mostly, although UMD never hurts either) with much more circumstantial ones.

Or rather, the spell can't decide how much strength damage you should be taking for making limited wish -> geas free.

Blood Money

School transmutation; Level magus 1, sorcerer/wizard 1, witch 1

CASTING
Casting Time 1 swift action
Components V, S

EFFECT
Range 0 ft.
Effect 1 material component
Duration Instantaneous

DESCRIPTION
You cast blood money just before casting another spell. As part of this spell's casting, you must cut one of your hands, releasing a stream of blood that causes you to take 1d6 points of damage. When you cast another spell in that same round, your blood transforms into one material component of your choice required by that second spell. Even valuable components worth more than 1 gp can be created, but creating such material components requires an additional cost of 1 point of Strength damage, plus a further point of damage for every full 500 gp of the component's value (so a component worth 500–999 gp costs a total of 2 points, 1,000–1,500 costs 3, etc.). You cannot create magic items with blood money.

For example, a sorcerer with the spell stoneskin prepared could cast blood money to create the 250 gp worth of diamond dust required by that spell, taking 1d6 points of damage and 1 point of Strength damage in the process.

Material components created by blood money transform back into blood at the end of the round if they have not been used as a material component. Spellcasters who do not have blood cannot cast blood money, and those who are immune to Strength damage (such as undead spellcasters) cannot use blood money to create valuable material components.

Emphasis mine. The example should read either 500-999 gp costs a total of 2 points, 1,000-1,499 costs 3, etc. or 501-1000 costs a total of 2 points, 1,001-1,500 costs 3 points, etc.

So I want to try out a Suli monk and play off the elemental theme as much as I can but I'm having a hard time deciding which of these three to use as my base. MoMS lets me run all 4 elemental styles at the same time but loses flurry of blows, MotFW makes elemental fist not terrible and flavorwise fits extremely well but doesn't have easy access to style feats, and Sacred Fist Warpriest is the strongest chassis of the three and still has easy access to the style feats but loses out on the favored class bonus, can't cast blood crow strike as frequently since it doesn't have access to free ki leech and adds more religion to the character which isn't something I felt like exploring in this particular character.

Of course if MoMS and MotFW could stack it'd be a no brainer, but they both replace perfect self so that's a no go. If Gestalt was on the table then MoMS/SFWP would be the definite go to, but there's no guarantee that I can find a gestalt campaign anytime remotely soon so if anyone is willing to share their thoughts to help me choose that would be great.

First question is pretty straight forward, can you combine pummeling style and blood crow strike to create a Kamehameha instead of a series of hadokens? Second, if you're a Suli and using elemental assault while using a blood crow strike, is that extra elemental damage converted into half fire half negative energy or does it stay whatever element it was?

EDIT: Third, can you gain ki back using blood crow strike with ki leech running?

Since the create demiplane line of spells aren't instantaneous duration they seem to be free game for Spell Sunder, which means that the barbarian can destroy an entire plane of existence simply by hitting it hard enough. And people wonder why I love barbarians.

With that being said, how does one target a demiplane with Spell Sunder and more importantly, what happens to the wizard currently inside the demiplane?

So fairly simple question, curious as to what other people's lists would be. For me it's:

Envy: Rogue - Good at backstabbing, lying and thieving. "What's yours is mine" or "I want what you have" are very easy themes to pull off with this class.
Gluttony: Alchemist - If they want to do something productive outside of throwing bombs, chances are they're going to have to drink a mutagen or extract first. Bonus points if one of your traits is Blessing of the Feast or Restless Hunger.
Greed: LITERALLY ANY ADVENTURER EVER. Seriously, most can amass more wealth than a kingdom in a matter of months and likely murdered hundreds of sentient creatures in order to do so.
Lust: Juju Oracle - They have high charisma, access to plenty of minion making spells, can charm and dominate people, can control more zombie slaves at once than any other class and can even turn living creatures into zombie mind slaves. Very strong "dance for me my pretties" feel.
Pride: Paladin - Hands down the most self promoting class in the game. Yeah, I know, that's technically not part of their class description, but it's about the only way to play them to make sure that they don't end up falling. They basically have to be "holier than thou," so I see that superiority complex as the closest thing to pride a class gives.
Sloth: Master Summoner - Like the Oracle, a minion making master, but his minions can do a lot of things that he can't, or at least can't be bothered to. Since summons tend to have decent SLAs he can kind of just sit around while they do nearly everything for him. The ultimate "too lazy to do it myself" class.
Wrath: AM BARBARIAN!!!!! Might be a little cliched but getting angry is a key element of their class. Runner up of the Skald, since he makes everyone angry, but not quite as angry as the barbarian makes himself.

So this thread reminded me of the existence of Roll With It and I wanted to see how much mileage I could get out of the feat, so without further ado, may I present....

Busta Doggy Dogg Mixx Doggy Dogg Mixx-E or "Badoomdoom" (His name is kind of a long story and involves a random name generator claiming it was on the fantasy setting)

Goblin Inspired Blade Swashbuckler 1/Invulnerable Urban Barbarian X
20 Point Buy
Str 8 (10)
Dex 20 (16) Level Ups all go into Dex
Con 12
Int 14
Wis 13
Cha 8 (10)

Alt Racial Trait: Tree Runner
Other Traits: Cliff Jumper, Restless Hunger

Progression
1 Swashbuckler 1 (Daring-Do, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (Rapier)) // Roll With It
2 Barbarian 1 (Controlled Rage)
3 Barbarian 2 (Invulnerability, Rage Power (Animal Fury), Uncanny Dodge) // Endurance
4 Barbarian 3
5 Barbarian 4 (Rage Power (Intimidating Glare)) // Diehard
6 Barbarian 5
7 Barbarian 6 (Rage Power (Dragon Totem)) // Stalwart
8 Barbarian 7
9 Barbarian 8 (Rage Power (Dragon Totem Resilience)) // Combat Expertise
10 Barbarian 9
11 Barbarian 10 (Rage Power (Dragon Totem Wings)) // Improved Stalwart
12 Barbarian 11 (Greater Rage)
.
.
.
From there if you wanted to continue the build you would take Improved Damage Reduction as your next three rage powers and snag Acrobatic and Skill Focus (Acrobatics) as your next two feats. After that the build is free to do whatever it wants but should stay in full BAB classes to maximize the benefit from Combat Expertise. I'd love to be able to throw Fencing Grace into the build at a reasonable level, but unfortunately Barbarians get very little in the form of bonus feats (read: none) so unless I wanted to push everything back even further I'm kind of out of luck.

Relevant Equipment: +X (Courageous) Keen Rapier, Belt of Incredible Dexterity +4-6, Boots of Elvenkind, Headband of Vast Intelligence +4-6, Ring of Ferocious Action, Ring of Freedom of Movement and possibly a Thorny Ioun Stone to shore up a feat slot and if you have the money (ie, really late game) a couple Manuals. Getting the Ring of Ferocious Action as soon as possible makes using Roll With It much less painful, and at only 3000gp shouldn't be too hard to track down.

So what does this build do and how potent is it? Well, by combining high DR, high acrobatics and a high crit range weapon (for recovering panache easily), we create a goblin that has HUGE damage reduction potential, as long as he's okay with flying around the battlefield.

Let's look at the numbers:
At Level 1: Roll With It can be activated as an immediate action after being successfully hit to negate all damage we could ever reasonably be expected to take from one source at this level. We have a +14 (+5 Dex, +4 Race, +3 Class Skill, +1 Skill Rank, +1 Trait) to Acrobatics, meaning that we automatically ignore 15 damage and ignore 24.5 on average. If we want to use Derring-Do, it bumps our skill check up by an average of 4 (minimum 1, maximum 30) but nothing should be doing enough damage to warrant spending panache on that yet.
At Level 9: Our little Goblin has DR 8/- which increases to DR 11/- if fighting defensively or using Combat Expertise, and DR 13/- if using total defense. Controlled Rage can boost Dexterity, which equals a higher Acrobatics check and therefore even more damage reduction. While raging, we can get a +32 to Acrobatics (+10 Dex (including a +4 belt), +9 Ranks, + 5 Competence (Boots) +4 Race, + 3 Class Skill, +1 Trait) giving us a potential additional 33-52 damage reduction. We should have the Ring of Ferocious Action by now, meaning that that pesky staggering clause of Roll With It became less of an issue. Adding in Derring-Do gives us an extra 1-60 (average 4.1) on our Acrobatics check, meaning that if we're rolling with the blow and using Derring-Do our minimum reduction to damage (assuming that we beat the DC for the ability) is 42 and our maximum is 125.
At Level 15: DR increases to DR 15/- which can be bumped to 21/- if fighting defensively, DR 23/- if using Combat Expertise and DR 25/- if using total defense. The bonus to Acrobatics is now sitting at around +51 (+15 Ranks, +13 Dex (including +6 belt and +1 from +2 Courageous Keen Rapier), +6 Skill Focus, +5 Competence, +4 Acrobatic Feat, +4 Race, +3 Class Skill, +1 Trait) giving us an extra 52-71 damage reduction and Derring-Do gives us 1-84 (average 4.15) meaning with everything running our minimum effective DR is 68 and our maximum is 178. Ring of Freedom of Movement could be argued to work like an infinite charge Ring of Ferocious Action since staggered clearly limits your ability to perform actions, so we should try to have enough pocket cash to grab one to ensure we can always Roll With It.
At Level 20: Baseline DR is DR 18/-, rising to DR 24/- if fighting defensively or DR 28/- if using Combat Expertise or total defense. Bonus to Acrobatics is now around +60 (+20 Ranks, +17 Dex (+8 Morale, +6 belt, +5 Manual), +6 Skill Focus, +5 Competence, +4 Acrobatic Feat, +4 Race, +3 Class Skill, +1 Trait) meaning we can ignore between 61 and 80 additional points of damage before we factor in the 1-102 (average 4.18) extra we get with Derring-Do. Grand total by level 20 we can expect to have effective DR between 80 and 230 (although getting above 116 would be EXTREMELY unlikely)

So what are people's opinions on the build? How can we make him even more entertaining? Will our little Goblin friend be able to successfully survive the horrors of the battlefield by being catapulted around or will he succumb to his pathetic Will save long before damage could be an issue for him?

In direct response to Serisan's request in this thread I have a rules question that I came up with that would be actually be nice to have a little clarification on. The paladin is fighting on a cliff side with some baddies and our friendly wizard readies an action to cast stone shape if the paladin gets bull rushed off the cliff. The paladin then gets bull rushed.

Since extending the length of the cliff side wouldn't cause him to fall, would the spell negate it's own trigger meaning that it wouldn't be cast? Secondly, stone shape makes a pretty thin layer of rock. Even if the trigger did succeed, would the paladin still fall if the platform wasn't thick enough to logically support his weight?

So what's the best way of going about this? Do you get a high strength character (at least 32 Strength so that he never has to worry about botching the Strength check) to carry around an arbitrary number of them and have him be a 20ft range turret of if my opponent has no DR then they're screwed otherwise I'm completely useless death, or use a ring of telekinesis to float a group of them around the battlefield for better mobility but only having a maximum of fifteen operable (and likely substantially less)?

I mean, since aiming the decanter doesn't look like it requires any kind of action, if you strapped half a dozen to the fighter's chest he could theoretically get an extra 6d4 (12d4 if the opponent has the fire subtype) damage in per round for "free." Yes, it would look ridiculous, and if you had a modicum of respect for real world physics or didn't want to break everyone else's immersion, then you wouldn't even consider the idea. However, free damage is free damage, so I'm curious to see what people can come up with for ways of turning this into an even remotely plausible tactic.

For reference:Decanter of Endless Water and Ring of Telekinesis

Yes I know that crossblooded and wildblooded don't stack, courtesy of this FAQ, but for argument's sake (and the fact that a LOT of home games do let them stack) let's let them stack. How would an Empyreal/Sage crossblooded sorcerer cast spells? Would they be based off of both their Wisdom and Intelligence? What happens when those values are different?

Curious as to what other people think

Relevant bits:
Crossblooded Archetype
Empyreal Bloodline
Sage Bloodline

Everyone knows that the land of RAW is either a terrifying or hilariously counter intuitive place where logic is thrown out the window in favor of "dem'z da roolz" and where nearly anything that shouldn't be possible is.

Some of my favorite things in this land are a 5gp pouch that gives you access to infinite food supplies (I'm sure I missed a couple) and the fact that dipping your hand in hot (but not even close to boiling) water does nearly as much damage as wading neck deep in lava

What are some of the other great things that happen in this mystical place?

So last session I was playing in I got the honor of finally putting my bard to rest in a manner that I could be truly proud of.

The Cast:
The Opposition
Howdy: The BBEG, he was a huge three legged gunslinging turret of death with a giant laser rifle, missiles, an 80ft move speed and was a super super CR inappropriate encounter simply by himself
Doody: His tough as nails robot sidekick. A melee bruiser through and through, he hit with enough of a wallop that he could create cone attacks from smacking the ground.
Other Robots: Yeah, they're not that important to the story, just know that there were about six of them and they were specifically designed as an assassination force, so imagine robot ninja mooks

The A-Team
Willifred: Human fighter, looks like Ryan Gosling but is a brutal loan shark. Very much an Evil BSF and liked to get on Sven's case for always looking for a safe spot to fight from.
Renalin: Half-Elf monk, Wuxia as can be due to a healthy dose of DM fiat (basically any acrobatic stunt was free game, regardless of whether or not the acrobatics skill could even cover some of the more crazy things she came up with). Her colleague Grook -a Half-Orc monk- was supposed to be guarding the exit to the mansion we were infiltrating and letting us know if anyone was coming.
Grook: The aforementioned Half-Orc monk, he was definitely not guarding his post as we found out rather quickly
DRAX-1473: Along with Howdy and Doody, one of three sentient robots created by Harold DaVinci, one of the founders of the capital city and whose house we were currently raiding. DRAX joined up with us to destroy some of the corruption in the capital, specialized in assassination like the mooks we were fighting (indeed DRAX was a rogue working towards the assassin PRC).
And lastly Sven: Human bard, played by me. Had a penchant for trying to come up with overly complex battle plans that never came to fruition until after all the enemies were taken care of. Also liked mixing explosives whenever he had the chance.

The Story
After successfully grabbing the McGuffin everyone but Grook was heading over to the balcony on the second floor of the mansion to rappel down and make our great escape when suddenly we hear voices come from the other side of the mansion. Howdy and Doody break down the door and come after us, ordering us to stop in the name of the law. Naturally we panic, but being the semi-seasoned adventurers that we are, we decide that we can take on the opposition and leave no witnesses behind in our crime (I swear, we weren't actually an evil team, horror campaigns make you do things you aren't proud of) and begin to prep for battle. Being almost entirely melee we start to approach the staircase so we can engage with our enemies when Howdy unleashes a giant laser blast from his rifle, blowing up a massive chunk of the landing we're on and one of the staircases leading up to the landing. Even being twenty feet away from the blast and making my reflex save, I still take enough damage to bring me down to 2 HP. It's at this point that I realize that someone isn't making it out of here alive, so I set out to make sure that Howdy focuses all his attention on me so that he'd ignore my teammates and pray that the dice would be on my side for long enough to ensure everyone else's survival.

I lure Howdy underneath a giant chandelier hanging from the roof and shoot an arrow with a vial alchemists fire basically duct-taped to the side at the chandelier, causing the arrow to explode on contact and dropping the chandelier on Howdy. While he's still entangled I climb back up the stairs and grease them (man I love that spell) only to find him climb up the wall instead. So I grease the wall, causing him to fall back dowm, then quickly retreat to what's left of the balcony and then mirror image myself before repelling down the rope and hiding out just beneath the balcony where I get to work prepping explosives around the perimeter of the underside of the balcony.

Meanwhile, Doody is having a field day with the rest of the party (sans rogue, who escaped as soon as possible), thrashing them around and being an awesome engine of melee destruction. Everyone is getting thrown around as they're desperately scrambling for the exit.

Once Howdy get's back on his feet he leaps up onto the balcony (a solid 20ft up from the ground floor) and guns down the mirror images, buying me enough time to go and set the fuses on everything. As the bombs go off I scream "SEE, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I HAVE ENOUGH TIME SAVE YOUR SORRY @$$ES!!!" and both Sven and Howdy die in a massive fiery explosion, of which the other PCs escape in the cloud of ash created.

So, on that note, what are some of the more epic, or at least memorable, PC deaths that you've had at your tables?

Running skill checks for Profession(gambler) will ALWAYS net you a positive income. In fact, you can make just as much money in the average day as a LAWYER (barrister) or any other seemingly well to do profession. Why do you guys think people are so fantastic at betting in Golarion?

A couple months ago in another thread I showed everyone the Regenerator class that I was working on, but after making some significant changes (version 1 vs. current version) I didn't get any response.

So rather than resurrect a dead thread, I figured I would start a new thread to request some critiquing as I haven't heard anything from anyone since I made the changes.

For those of you who don't know, the Regenerator is a class that uses a sybiotic relationship between the PC and his brain slug (essentially) to allow the PC to 'surge' the chemical processes in his body, allowing him to perform a variety of interesting things (heal, grow wings, gain reach, grow a protective exoskeleton and so on) that can all be amplified by expending 'surge points,' the abstraction used for all the chemical goodness that goes on when these things happen.

In addition, the symbiote acts as a mentor for the PC, imparting wisdom, tactical knowledge and a variety of skills to better handle the adventuring world.

So once again, here's the new take on my Regenerator class, please let me know what you think :)

So the other day my party was running around, prepping to go into a dungeon when we decided that it would be safest to "hire" (read "frighten into submission") a commoner to serve as our trap-setter-offer. Somehow, the commoner survived and we've decided to keep "Lucky" as a sort of pet for the team. "Lucky" (I think his name was actually George, but there's little chance our party will ever call him by his real name now that he's earned a nickname) was a general goods clerk and he's very sad about the fact that he's away from his store, so he tries to pass the time by acting as a merchant and street vendor whenever he has the opportunity. This series of events led me to wonder what his life will be like as he continues to travel with us and slowly grow accustomed to his new adventuring lifestyle.

With that in mind I sat down and started writing up The Professional, a base class that keys off of the some of the more adventurer-y sides of the profession skill. The document is rather long since Pathfinder has given out a list of the 30 most common professions, meaning that there are 30 subsets of skills and perks to pick from based on what profession skill(s) you have trained. After working on it for a while, I've come to the conclusion that it will take forever and a day to finish it on my own, so if anyone wants to hop in and help me finish off the perks, they can add comments to the document directly or just chat about it in this thread.

The idea is for the perks to be weak but to provide interesting and unique options that by mixing and matching a variety of professions, you can build basically any concept you want, but have it poorly executed and weaker than a multiclass mashup for that concept. I want the professional to have options, LOTS of options, as many answers to any given problem as a tier 1 class, but staying firmly rooted in tier 5 or even 6 and all of his solutions being based around doing the job he used to do before he started adventuring.

So just double checking the ruling on something seeing as it'll be pertinent fairly soon in an upcoming campaign. The Arcane Trickster's capstone ability lets them sneak attack with any spell that does hit point damage if the opponent is flat-footed (useful for first turn fireballs) and Icicle Dagger creates a masterwork (or +1) dagger that deals additional cold damage. If you're able to sneak attack with the dagger and your opponent is flat-footed, you DON'T get sneak attack damage twice since the spell doesn't directly deal damage, correct?

Currently I'v completed 3 classes and I want them to be viable options for melee characters in an upcoming home campaign. They were designed to be stronger than pure martials, set at about the strength of 1/4 casters who had time to pre-buff. The idea was that if you didn't have a full caster in the party, you'd still be okay at dealing with the Big Bad. With that said, may I present....

The Aggro Able to take a beating and keep enemies focused on him instead of your swishies. Honestly, this guy is basically just a cherry pick of all the full BAB classes thrown together, not particularly proud of it.
The Manipulator A monk alternate class that manipulates the elements to not rip off Avatar, I swear..... also the name may be changed to Elementalist, still haven't decided on that one.
The Regenerator Uses enhanced chemical and metabolic activities to perform amazing deeds. The homebrewiest of the three, I'm particularly concerned with balancing the archetypes on this one since some of the trade offs are very powerful.

All three of these classes are quite combat-central as well, so any suggestions on how to make them less one trick pony-y would be appreciated.

Seeing as black tentacles gets a size bonus to its grapple check, I was wondering if anyone else house-rules that this bumps the size bonus up as well as the area of effect. I figure if they're willing to blow a 7th level spell slot on it, sure they can have an extra +1 to the grapple checks, by the time you're 13th level it will probably only be good for the mooks and humanoids anyway since enemy CMD starts to climb steeply right around then.

Say I wanted to build a tripping focused Lore Warden and it was somehow essential to have Improved Trip from level 1, so I grab Combat Expertise as one of my level 1 feats. What happens when I reach level 2 and receive it as a bonus feat? Since Combat Expertise only replaces Bravery 1 and not Bravery as a whole, do I just get the full Bravery line since nothing is being replaced? Also, if that is the case, would archetypes where the only conflicting area is that both modify Bravery be able to stack?

Thanks for any input!

I enjoy playing melee characters since it's easy to visualize my character, or even myself potentially, run up and hack and slash my way to victory, as opposed to say casting a fireball (What would that actually feel like as the arcane energy left your body? How hot would the blast feel from your location? How does the mental crunch and focus of creating the spell effect tax your mind? Does it tax your mind? etc), but the problem with most builds is that you're either only good at using weapons (I run up and hit it with my pointy stick for damage) or a single combat maneuver (I grapple the dragon because that's what Tetoris do) and very few can blend both effectively. Another problem with melee builds is that even if they can blend them well, they still aren't very versatile and you quickly end up doing either ACTION #1 or ACTION #2 the entire combat.

Now I understand that it's largely up to the player to role play anything interesting they want their character to do, but they are limited to what their build can actually effectively accomplish. So I was wondering how people would create someone like the prince from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, someone who is capable of creating fluid, dynamic, and everchanging combat options.

So in one of my campaigns I'm playing as a level 14 merfolk urban barbarian who owns a restaurant that specializes in regenerating food (ie hydras, trolls etc) and his frequent contact with all of these regenerative fleshy bits has started to affect him physically. Basically he took all the "standard" fast healing things that he could find (celestial totem, regenerative vigor, fast healer feat, ring of regeneration and periapt of wound closure) to emulate this and it's been working for him quite well. The ring gives him magical healing each round, emulated by a 7th level spell effect, to give him "not fast healing" fast healing 14 while raging thanks to lesser celestial totem, actual fast healing 2 if he activates regenerative vigor, has 24 constitution (30 while raging) which gives a +3 to all forms of healing while not raging and +5 while raging and the periapt of wound closure doubles all of this healing meaning that while raging he has fast healing 52(1+13+5 +2+5=26x2). If he's not raging it's only fast healing 8(1+3=4x2) though.

While perfectly fine for any game ever, I feel like it's just not good enough. It can get even more ridiculous. How high can we theorycraft fast healing?

I've had the pleasure of reading through dozens of threads dedicated to unique uses of some of the more versatile cantrips like prestidigitation, ghost sounds and mage hand, and now I'm set on attempting to build a usable character that has a heavy focus on using cantrips to accomplish as much as they can. Unfortunately I can't come up with a way to make a viable build out of this concept, let alone optimized, so I'm turning it over to the boards to see if anyone can figure out how to make it work.

As I said before, I can't think of a proper build to set this up in. The basic idea is to use cantrips as effectively as possible (in this case using prestidigitation to make hot rocks spawn inside the opponent's lungs to both deal decent damage - 1d6 fire per turn and 1d6 nonlethal every other turn if they fail their save - and provide a source of fast healing) and then use martial might to clean up what 0 and 1st level spellcasting clearly can't. I would like to make this PFS legal, but that isn't a necessity

Butterfly’s Sting (Critical)

You can forgo a critical hit in order to pass it on to an ally.

Prerequisite: Combat Expertise.

Benefit: When you confirm a critical hit against a creature, you can choose to forgo the effect of the critical hit and grant a critical hit to the next ally who hits the creature with a melee attack before the start of your next turn. Your attack only deals normal damage, and the next ally automatically confirms the hit as a critical.

So does this mean that if my first attack in my full attack is a critical and I choose to use Butterfly's Sting to reduce it to a regular hit, my next attack (since I'm my own ally) is now a considered an auto-crit, and therefore I can apply Butterfly's Sting to this hit as well to shuffle the critical back to the next hit?

That seems almost too good to be true for any blender build since that would allow you to guarantee that all of the rest of your attacks would hit for the round (since a confirmed critical is guaranteed to beat AC) and you could make your last attack a critical to boot. Throw this onto some two-weapon fighting/natural attacking monstrosity and have them quickdraw a scythe for their last attack...

I've been searching through the forums and have yet to find an answer as to whether a character can make natural attacks in between iterative attacks or not. Say I had a level 6 Aberrant Aegis, they'll have two iterative attacks (+6/+1) 4 tentacle attacks and a sting attack on a full attack. Would they be able to go tentacle/tentacle/tentacle/tentacle/sword/sword/sting or tentacle/tentacle/sword/tentacle/tentacle/sword/sting or any other combination like that where natural and iterative attacks were mixed together or would I have to do both sword attacks before (or after) all of the natural attacks?

If anyone can clear that up for me or point me to another thread that does it would be appreciated.