sigilbaram's page

Looking at the gloomblade it seems really cool but I'm curious what giving it a weapon group would do.

Currently the leading line of thought seems to be that they can use the AWT feat with options that aren't associated with a select weapon group. While there are some nice options there I'm wondering what might break if there was an alternate option for gloomblade to select a weapon group at level one to be the weapons the gloomblade can summon, and later when they receive shadow weapon training it is with that weapon group.

This would limit their versatility somewhat while opening up the group specific AWT options, and some weapon groups are still pretty versatile. This could make something like Archer from Unlimited Blade Works, where they summon an array of weapons of a given type and are more skills with weapons of that type rather than summon any weapon at all.

Thoughts?

EDIT:
Also considering many feats still apply to a given weapon I feel like many gloomblades would devolve to using a signature weapon anyway? So their current versatility seems somewhat limited when going beyond face value or even worse than a standard fighter who can use AWT to apply these feats to whole weapon groups?

While looking at options for an NPC party backup/gap filler for a run of Carrion Crown (only 3 players who aren't minmaxers) I was intrigued by the Tatterdemalion Witch archetype but felt it a bit to back-line to quite fit the party makeup. The thought crossed my mind that the summoner might be able to make good use of the themes while being a little more front-line. This is also something one of my players might be interested in too, though, so I figured I'd give putting it together a shot.

Basically I looked at what spirit summoner traded for hexes and threw the Tatterdemalion stuff in it's place. It seemed pretty 1 to 1 though some of the levels are different. I wasn't sure if that was something worth addressing or if it could be left as is.

I then gave them a little template for the summons along the lines of fiendish/celestial to make them stuffed animals and some Eidolon adjustments to match. My hope is that these changes aren't huge ups or downs in total power...

I also didn't like the way the Tatterdemalion was like "give up 3 out of 4 of your cantrips to do not cloth specific things", so I thought maybe a single cloth specific cantrip that had a few more options but all of which were limited to cloth might work... and probably over killed it... I'm slightly corrupted by the more powerful cantrips in 5e... heh

Also, pretty iffy on the weapon and armor situation. All simple seems like too much random non-thematic stuff, but there are only so many soft/rope/cloth weapons. And only padded armor seems really awkward, but they should have something for defense probably because summoner normally does. Maybe something-something bonus while unarmored but clothed? @.@

Also, a more inventive name would be neat. haha

Cloth Summoner

My friend who is GMing our campaign seems to think "flesh" in the Spirit Animal ability of the Heavens spirit refers specifically as skin.

I, however, had assumed this was just an odd choice of words on Paizo's part and that it was meant to mean that the familiar's hair, fur, scales, etc, not just skin and the wording was meant to prevent items and equipment the familiar was wearing from being affected and maybe give them normal eyes.

I would say this is just an aesthetic issue, except, according to our GM, if we actually wanted to make use of, say, a cat spirit's star-chart-flesh we would have to shave it or it would need to be a hairless bread? To me that kind of defeats the purpose or would lead to very disgruntled spirit animals...

Spirit Animal: The flesh of the shaman's spirit animal accurately reflects the stars that would be visible in the night sky, no matter where the animal is or the time of day. It can thus be used as a star map. In addition, it gains a fly speed of 5 feet; if the animal already has a fly speed, its fly speed increases by 10 feet. While the animal is flying, a small nimbus of light surrounds it.

Me and some friends are starting to get into pathfinder society and I had an idea for a pyromaniac gnome archivist with a dip in sorcerer for fire music and a cute pet. The PFS point buy system is a bit less generous than I am used to from my home game experience so the Archivist's reliance on knowledge skills for Naturalist (it's version of Inspire Courage) feels like a rather heavy skill tax. I've never felt so split on were to put my abilities or like I NEEDED more skill points just to keep a major class feature working.

I suppose I could use my favored class bonus for skill points to make up for the skills a little bit, but for the most part it feels unforgiving without hurting spell casting or general combat survivability. I don't really picture it being skill crazy and doing flips while making dweomer cats jump through hoops or anything, but there are 6 monster related knowledge skills plus a perform or two, spellcraft, maybe disable device because of their class feature for it, and maybe a craft or profession for extra flavor. UMD is always nice to have too, though I can't think of anything in particular this character would want it for at the moment.

So what I'm wondering is if anyone has any feat or trait suggestions or some ability prioritization tips or "that knowledge skill is junk, don't bother with it" sort of things. I'm not expecting anything spectacular due to the corny concept and possibly needing to sink points into Int just for skills, but it would be nice to get it at least "acceptably useful" rather than "Wow!!! You made a whole knowledge check! *sarcasm*".

PS:
Is a perform skill even required on a pathfinder bard? 3.5 used to have it as prerequisites for bardic performance, but I don't see that in pathfinder... I was going to use oratory for this one, but if that can be dropped that is another point potentially freed up, though it would be kind of boring and anti-intuitive to do so.