rarzor's page

OK. I used to think that familiars gained racial hit dice because the wizard entry says their HD equal to yours for related purposes. I have been corrected in that manner.

I do pose the question, why do familiars gain increased intelligence? They don't get new skill points. Is it just for role playing purposes? Is your raven familiar supposed to go on Jeopardy when you are level 18 and beat out the humans with its superior int?

AoO's happen when the action starts -- not in the middle of the action.

If you aren't there when the wizard starts casting you don't get your AoO.

I would agree with you if it was a standard action to cast the spell but its a 1 round and that means he is vulnerable during the entire cast. Isn't the arguement that spellcasting in melee provokes and AoO because the wizard is waving his arms around and muttering to himself? I would think that since a wizard is still doing that during a 1 round spell that if anyone moves within threatened range, his continued gesturing would provoke.

bump

Does the spell's zone of control move with the caster for the duration of the spell or is it stationary where the caster originally finishes the spell? If it does move with the caster, then wouldn't the caster be stuck in whatever awful weather they try to inflict on someone else?

With regards to the Weather Control Witch Hex, does the hex function exactly like control weather but it takes an hour to cast? Can a witch change the weather after a first type is chosen by spending an extra 10 minutes dancing? Does a witch retain control of the weather for 4d12 hours?

Yeah, Veneth reminded me that he is absolutely right about greater harm. To go up 1 spell level just to go from touch -> range close is fine. But to change the damage from 10 per level to 1d12 is terrible. No one wants to trade a solid 10 for an average of 6.5 damage.

So anything you would add or subtract from this spell list to get a more "Pathfinder" feel?

I have really wanted to play a dread necromancer for a while & since my friends and I have basically switched over to pathfinder, I went and wrote my own update for the class. Feel free to take anything you find interesting.

d6 HD -> d8 [ this happened to every class that got a d6 ]
change spells per day at 20th level from 5 -> 6 [see the sorc spell progression]

Skills: bluff, craft, disguise, intimidate, know. arcana, know. religion, linguistics [maybe], profession, spellcraft, stealth

@ 1st level change rebuke undead to: you gain command undead as a bonus feat usable 3+ cha modifer times per day.
@ 1st level: a Dread Necromancer gains Mother Cyst feat as a bonus feat [ Libris Mortis page something ]

@ 3rd level change the radius of negative energy burst to 15 feet.
I felt this is a compromise between the current ability [which is better than current channeling because it injures living things & heals undead] and channeling which can do only 1 at a time.

@ 6th level scabrous touch Change to the DC for subsequent saving throws against the disease is the same as the Dread Necromancer's scabrous touch DC [ although this shouldn't happen often except with regards to fleeing villians ].
@ 11th level, you may infect targets with: life blindness, sound sickness, and melting fury.
@ 16th level, you may infect targets with: deathsong, faceless hate, possession infection, and warp touch.
The diseases listed @ 11th & 16th level are found in the Book of Vile Darkness.
If you like the mother cyst idea, then add: a Dread Necromancer may expend a use of scabrous touch to infect the target with a necrotic cyst. If the subject is affected by a "protection from....." spell, roll an opposed caster level [counting only your Dread Necromancer levels] check to ignore the protection.

@ 7th level Lich body, add: a Dread Necromancer gains Tomb-Tainted Soul as a bonus feat [ Libris Mortis page 31 ].
this feat changes it so the Necromancer is healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy.

@ 8th level Undead Mastery, add: Intelligent undead no longer receive new saving throws per day to break free from a Dread Necromancer's command. This ability counts as the corpsecrafter feat [Libris Mortis page 25]

Now on to the spell list which I gutted - sorry this won't be in alphabetical order. There are spells printed at unusual levels or printed twice in the original so I've made some calls where the spells should really go.
You could argue to add suffocation at 5th and mass suffocation at 9th but the class already gets every death spell in the core rulebook - it just seems a bit redundant.
I could list a few more spells I have jotted down to fill in for advanced learning slots but its hard to make a case to put the spell on the spell list vs making the player get it through advanced learning. If you are interested in these spells, let me know I'll post the names and books containing them [all printed by wizards].

0 Level [ in case you want to add one in ]: bleed, detect poison, read magic, stabilize, disrupt undead, touch of fatigue

1st level: add sculpt corpse [APG]

2nd level: add fester [APG], vomit swarm [APG], desecrate

3rd level: remove death ward - add deeper darkness & dispel magic

4th level: remove dispel magic - add Rest eternal [APG]

5th level: remove greater dispel magic, lesser planar binding, oath of blood, and undeath to death - add disrupting weapon

6th level: remove geas/quest, planar binding, and waves of exhaustion - add swarm skin [APG], greater dispel magic, mass fester [APG], and Undeath to death

7th level: remove song of discord - Add blasphemy, Dictum, Word of Chaos, and waves of exhaustion

8th level: no change

9th level: no change.

Try inverting the # rolled. Example: declare "this throw is inverted" /rolls a 3, invert the # into a 17. Now you are god mode. If you only roll high #s now, then you know god hates you.

As a side note, my buddy Chris has d6 that roll a 1-2 90% of the time. Sometimes it is good to have awful dice. Total concealment? I hit on a roll of 10 or below [or 1-3 on a d6]. You'll always hit :P

I hate to say but Moox is actually wrong T_T. I was one of the PCs in the darkshroud game and the Conch shell problem was actually this:

it was a 3 PC game - There was a big conch shell in the middle of the board and our DM had said, "Yes there is an opening leading inside it." The other 2 PCs weren't paying attention or didn't remember so when a lackey we should have killed ran inside the conch shell and set off an alarm spell [because we didn't want to alert the stupid powerful sea dragon], they raged at our GM saying, "well you can't see an opening in the shell on the board so it doesn't exist zomgbbq rage rage rage rage rage."
The moral of the story is what Moox was getting at though: he knew the shell opening was there, he thought the PCs knew, but they were being dumb.

All the other PCs I play with in every game give me a lot of s$~@ for running away from fights. If I were you, I would make perfectly clear that an NPC cast rez spell is out of the question until level X [that the PCs will still have to pay for] and that if your PC dies, you arn't rolling a new one. Its harsh but suddenly players will stop acting like f-tards all the time.

Party just hit 7th level and I'm having a blast playing my witch. Granted, my damage output is ~0 but I've never had the opportunity to play a character that has such strong debuffing capabilities. Party is a Cavalier, Alchemist, Ranger, and Witch - playing the Kingmaker modules. I don't have much trouble with the 30 foot hex range.

One more thing that hasn't been pointed out is that the witch is the most resilient spellcaster versus spell resistance [Hexes aren't affected by SR and don't provoke AoO]. Not having to take the spell pen feat is pretty big as it frees up 2 feat slots to say, augment your AC or saves.

I'm rather squishy - my HP is lowest in the party even with taking the extra hit point every level so keep an eye out for that.

With regards to all the Boohoo against witch that I've just spent 30 minutes reading....DEAL WITH IT. Every class has weaknesses and its up to you party to cover up for yours. Party fights a swarm, go make a sandwich while the alchemist does 724928792847529 damage with bombs - party fights a troll, slumber and watch it get coup de graced in the same turn by the delaying cavalier.

And about non being able to spontaneously cast cure spells: so what? Your party will take damage and relying on gaining your level in HP per rest generally won't cut it. Cure spells will be cast at minimum every night you adventure so what does it matter if you have to prepare them ahead of time or not - they still get cast either way. I could argue that my fellow PCs have to play better because they know they only have a limited amount of healing to work with instead of with a cleric that can drop all spells into cure - but then why would you even need to do that as a cleric when you could just channel positive energy and heal your whole party at the cost of 0 spells.