soupturtle's page

Inquisitor isn't that complicated. You get a couple of fairly straightforward combat abilities (bane and judgement - just pick to hit and damage for your judgements), some nice skill bonuses, and a manageable selection of spells. Just get a lot of strength, a two-handed weapon, and decent constitution and wisdom. Pick up heavy armor proficiency, and you're basically playing a cross between a combat cleric and a straight forward fighter, but with a lot more skills. The spells may take a while to pick, but if you've played a 3.5 cleric you'll recognize a fair few of them. Just pick some good buffs (divine favor, heroism), some combat utility (see invisibility, freedom of movement) and anything that sound like fun to you. Give the litany spells a second look, as they're swift actions.

I wouldn't recommend it to a total newbie, but you have played RPGs before, and even 3.5, so it's not as if you will continually be confused about what die to roll, what numbers to add, and how power attack works (by the way: you want power attack). As a combat inquisitor you can play a straightforward game in that the only thing you really have to do is cast a buff spell before the fight or on the first round, fight and choose when to activate your combat abilities, but the spells and skills mean you can do a lot more once you get into it.

Power attack is usually easily worth the penalty, especially in case of a single weapon used two-handed, but your attack bonus is indeed quite low. Let's do some quick damage calculations against AC 27, which is typical for CR12, assuming you're hasted (who isn't?).

Current: 1.1 [crit chance] x (2x0.6+0.35) [attacks at +18/+18/+13] x 19.5 [1d8+15] = 33.2
With power attack: 1.1 x (2x.45+.2) x 28.5 = 34.5
With improved critical instead of PA: 1.2 x (2x0.6+0.35) x 19.5 = 36.3
Power attack and heroism: 1.1 x (2x.55+.3) x 28.5 = 43.9
Improved critical and heroism: 1.2 x (2x0.7+0.45) x 19.5 = 43.3

So in your case, improved critical is going to buy you more damage than power attack, due to your low to-hit. But if you increase your to hit, power attack will win out and be a pretty good deal, especially when you consider it's also very useful against damage reduction. Are you sure you have exhausted the ways you could increase your to-hit? Just from the top of my head you ought have a base attack bonus of +9, a strength bonus of something like +6, weapon focus for +1, boots of speed or casting haste for another +1 and a +3 weapon, for a total of +20. That's before things like an item that gives a luck bonus, casting heroism, UMDing a wand of bless if you see a combat coming, casting a polymorph spell that increases your strength, summoning a monster with bard levels, or anything like that. If you can reliably get to +20 power attack will become the more worthwhile feat.

So my advice would be: get power attack, and try to use your spells and equipment to push your attack bonus up a bit. If the latter isn't possible, get improved critical instead, as you could definitely do with a feat that improves your damage either way.

Original question: no, not at all. It'd be nice to provide your players with a reason, but "it doesn't fit into my campaign world" or "it's third party" are both reasons that only a really entitled player would disagree with. Your player sounds like a trouble maker that you might be better off just not putting up with.

I don't blame the player for being somewhat upset by your ruling on planar ally though. Leaving is terrible form, but planar ally is suppposed to be somewhat less risky than planar binding. Quoting pfsrd:

Clerics and oracles find the job of summoning and binding outsiders much easier than arcane spellcasters do. A cleric calls upon her deity to send a like-minded creature by way of one of the planar ally spells. That outsider is in the service of the god, and its desires almost always align with the cleric’s goals, or at least run in parallel with them.

So on the one hand, that shows that planar ally gives you no control over the type of thing you call - your god picks for you. On the other hand, it's also pretty clear that the outsider serves your god, and as such probably shouldn't be picking fights with you, unless you gravely insult it or your deity or something like that.

Two weapon fighting has the highest potential damage, but there are some problems. You'll do minimal damage on the first round while you're still positioning (minimal enough that it might become worth it to debuff by dirty tricking or something instead - keep it as an option) and absolutely murder them on round two. IF you're flanking, or otherwise have some trick to consistantly get damage... and IF you hit.

Or: you could use a double weapon. Two hand it when you get a single hit only, TWF otherwise. If I were building the slayer concept I outlined on the last page (solo sneak attack through blade of mercy, enforcer and devastating strike) I'd make him a half-orc, using an orc double axe, and picking up power attack as my first feat, so I'd have two-handed as a fallback option throughout my career.

I haven't thought this through all the way at all, but have you looked at words of power? That should in principle enable you to make cone and line spells out of pretty much anything, thus giving you a pretty solid spell selection despite the banned schools.

The main disadvantage seems to be that it is rather limited in terms of buffs, so your ability to kill things with bullets and protect yourself from harm might be compromised.

You broke your old campaign by over-optimizing, so you decided the thing to do was make a paladin with a starting strength of 22 who works up to getting two additional natural attacks? You don't think your DM might like you to fight something evil for more than one round once in a while?

If you want to make a frontliner who won't break encounters on his own while protecting a party of casters and archers, the thing to do is probably a trip build with a reach weapon. With your point buy it should even work as a paladin, as all you need is 13 int. Also, if you're the person who's supposed to take all the hits, it might be a good idea to invest a bit in AC. 21 isn't that much at level 7. I would at least start with 12 dex. 14 is better of you go for the reach/trip build due to combat reflexes. And then spent a bit of your wealth on enchanting your armor and other protective items.

Actually, I just realized the topic title says its a point buy.

In which case, what is the point of this topic? "Look I deliberately nerfed myself, now how should I go about mitigating the drawbacks?" My advice would be: try to come up with an interesting concept for a character, rather than a concept for a set of numbers.

If I'm understanding this correctly, what your GM wants is on one hand to have you make difficult economic decisions to ensure you can survive a gritty winter, but on the other hand to play a standard heroic pathfinder game. This doesn't work very well in the pathfinder rules, because the sort of equipment you need to be a hero is incredibly more valuable than any sorts of common services and goods, which is why he ended up imposing a bunch of very arbitrary taxes and price increases.

My suggestion would be to rather than increase prices, give you responsibility (or at least possible responsibility) for the survival of many people. For example: an autumn storm destroys the grain storage in your hometown, which was crucial to getting all of the people in your home town through winter. Or you come across a village that wants to build a wall so they can defend themselves against a growing population of wolves, that tends to attack people in winter for lack of better food options. These kind of things give a legitimate way to make you spend a lot of gold on the perils of winter, while at the same time being a lot more interesting than 'GM fiat tax'.

8 strength +4 = 12

18 wisdom + 0 = 18
Nope, that doesn't add up.

What I mean is:

Since being SAD means the guided druid can afford a higher starting stat than the strength druid. And the fact that he has to pay for guided is balanced by the fact that he only has to pay for one single ability boost item. So you get a character who's almost exactly equal in combat to a strength build (and strength based wildshape druid are pretty powerful) while at the same time being just as good at spellcasting as a focused caster druid. That's what I call overpowered. Dip a level of monk if you're worried about AC and CMD, and you end up with an old-fashioned Druidzilla.

I say overpowered, on balance.

It's very overpowered for a druid. It's basically the return of the single attribute druid who is awesome at spellcasting and melee at the same time, because he only needs wisdom (and a bit of dex and con). He doesn't even need a little bit of strength for carrying capacity or power attack, because he doesn't need any heavy equipment and piranha strike is just as good for natural attacks. Also, he can get guided around level 4 or so, as an amulet of mighty fists doesn't need to be +1 before you can put a special property on it.

It's also rather overpowered for a monk (at least for a melee monk), who has the same amulet of mighty fists benefit, and the same attribute scores benefit. It probably doesn't make a monk better than (or even competitive with) a fighter, as monks are rather weak in general, but it would be a 'take this without thinking about it, always' option, which is a sure sign of being overpowered compared to other options out there.

For a cleric, there's a bit more of a balancing act going on, as a combat cleric tends to carry some pretty heavy equipment, usually makes good use of the 1.5 times strength bonus, and some of his better buff spells enhance strength (righteous might!). So for a cleric, it's definitely not a must have, and probably not terribly overpowered, as there's still quite a bit of balancing to be done.

Still, if you like to have a consistent set of rules in your home games, you have to ban it or you'll be sorry when the day comes that one of your players makes a druid with it. (Personally I'd make a druid with a single level master of many styles monk dip, to get wis to really do everything)

I concede: don't dump illusion, it has much more useful stuff than I initially remembered offhand.

I'd dump evocation and one of enchantment and necromancy. If you don't go scryer, definitely dump divination, and one of the previous three. Abjuration, conjuration, illusion and transmutation are all too valuable to lose.

Don't all the prestige classes say 'ability to cast X-level spells'. As in, spells plural? Daylight is only one spell.

I will mirror the suggestion to get power attack. You really need to do some more damage, especially since attacking with your weapon seems to be the main thing you want to be good at (rather than combat maneuvers). Just drop your wisdom to 12 and get that 13 in strength. Piranha strike doesn't work with a scimitar, sadly.

I'd also reconsider your thoughts on combat maneuvers. It is what lore wardens are really good at, after all. I personally like dirty trick a lot, and trip is pretty good in pathfinder society, as many enemies are humanoid, and you don't go up to the really high levels where CMDs get stupidly high.

If you decide you want to try some combat maneuvers, and you like the idea of picking up kirin style, I would suggest considering a single level dip in maneuver master monk. you can pick up the improved feat for one combat maneuver, and you get to add one free combat maneuver (with a -2 penalty) to every single full attack you make. So that means you don't have to choose between maneuvers and damage anymore. You also automatically get improved unarmed strike, which is a prerequisite for kirin style.

You can make a character with an insane intimidate score, and basically ruin all the NPC interactions in the game. Everyone will help you, period. Half orc inquisitor, conversion inquisition, intimidating prowess, skill focus intimidate. Dip a level of thug rogue and make it awesome in combat as well, as you make pretty much anything frightened. Probably skip the dazzling display feat line (although they are nice, but you don't get that many feats) and instead get cornugon smash and cast blistering invective a lot.

Off course, this isn't really the adult solution. But it's much more fun to try to come up with a character that'll break a game than it is to give sensible and responsible adult advice. ;-)

I don't like take-10 or take-20 rules either. Unless there is some kind of risk I don't see why PCs should have an easy ride with anything. Part of the fun is rolling the dice and seeing what comes up.

Take 20 isn't actually a seperate rule. It's exactly the same as continually trying again until you succeed on something that has no consequences if you fail the check (and you cannot take 20 on things that have consequences). It's just a lot faster and less tedious than waiting for someone to roll a D20 until he gets a 20. If you don't like rerolls at all, that's a legitimate opinion, but otherwise it's pretty silly to oppose take 20.

Take 10 is a seperate rule. I personally like it, since I feel the huge variance of the D20 system is ridiculous in some cases. Like a first level commoner failing a knowledge check to identify a horse as being a horse. Or failing the perception check to notice someone standing 50 feet away.

It depends on what kind of druid you're playing. If you're playing a caster, you indeed do not need many items. Metamagic rods are much better than you are giving them credit for though. Rime and elemental are worthwhile if you like blasting. Quicken has to be expensive, because it's incredibly powerful. Dazing is also incredibly good, and a bit cheaper than quicken. Beyond that, it's just the usual stat and save boosters. Maybe a handy haversack full of things like tanglefoot bags and alchemists fires.

If you're a wildshaping melee druid, you really need the amulet of mighty fists (and it isn't wildly overcosted, it's just the price of two weapons). Wild armor is nice at some point, but until then some wands of mage armor work pretty well.

Where you're seeing absurd pricetags, I'm seeing items that would totally break your game if you were able to afford them at low-mid levels, so it's a good thing you cannot afford them anytime soon.

I think there are two main things wrong with your build, that will have you seriously suffering in terms of being able to do relevant damage to your enemies.

1. Master of many styles. For a single classed monk, it just isn't very good. Giving up flurry means giving up your only way of doing significant damage. So you better get something really good back. Taking a few AoO's when your enemies try (and fail) to hit you isn't something good enough if (a) your damage sucks and (b) your enemies are intelligent enough to figure out that they're much better off killing the rest of your party.

2. The dex build. I know an agile amulet of mighty fists makes it look almost equivalent to a strength build, but it really isn't You spend a feat (which could have been weapon focus) and a +1 equivalent property, so effectively you're +2/+1 behind on every hit. Additionally, you cannot afford a +2 equivalent AoMF for quite a while, so for a long time your main weapon will not be magical, which makes it difficult to hit many enemies. Finally, you cannot combine it with dragon style, which is pretty much the only way to do significant unarmed damage in the first place.

If I were you, I'd make my monk strength based, and in addition to that do one of two things:
- If you want to play a qinggong monk, ditch master of many styles. Either go temple sword + crane or snake style, or go unarmed with dragon style.
- If you want to play an unarmed damage dealer with a bunch of style feats, take 2 levels of MoMS and then flee into brawler fighter. Forget wisdom, prioritize strength, get good dex, get the two weapon fighting feats and the dragon style feats and wear light armor with the brawling property.

There are basically two ways to make this archetype worth playing:

1. Get out of it after level 1 and into another full casting class (I recommend sorcerer). You get all the benefits of the class, for the price of delaying your casting by one level.

2. Change your mindset. You're not a wizard, you're a gun blaster. You're not as powerful as a wizard, you're not as versatile as a wizard, but you can still be a fun and worthwhile character. Keep the schools with the best ray and line spells and terrorize the enemies with them. Leave the fancy battlefield control, summons and utility magic to someone else.

edit: I forgot the third way: multiclass it with gunslinger into eldritch knight to create a versatile gunslinging damage dealer who can shoot save-or-sucks from his gun with a solid DC.

I must say you've managed to talk it together pretty smoothly, but to me, it's definitely a bit over the top. Thinking about good heroes in any sort of fiction I like, none of them have a backstory even half that unlikely.

A halfling from a family that has passed a medium sized lucerne hammer along for many generations despite the fact that none of them can use it, who then takes up the weapon in a noble quest: that's an interesting hero.

Someone fighting alongside the possessed ghost of their deceased sister, that's an interesting, if somewhat creepy hero. I would be a bit bothered by the huge difference between outsiders and spirits, as well as by the restrictions on when an eidolon can be present not fitting very well with a spirit, but you could get that houseruled somehow.

Both of those at the same time though, and it just sounds like an unlikely story made up to get a bunch of ill-fitting mechanical options together. If I was in a whole party with those kinds of stories I would definitely wonder what kind of ridiculous anime I'd ended up in.

So you're saying that your eidolon, a powerful outsider, has had a nonmagical lucerne hammer passed to him from generation to generation in his family? And on top of that, he was adopted by halflings?

Sometimes I wonder what kind of game people on these boards are even playing...

Edit: back on topic: I really like Tark's build. I think his way is better than using your eidolon to flank, as you really want to be adjacent to your eidolon, rather than flanking with it, to make the most out of shield ally. But a flanking build could work as well, in which case you should definitely get both of them outflank.

I wouldn't add any extra powers or versatility to the Eidolon: that would make the class more powerful when the eidolon is out than it is already, and it is already one of the most powerful classes in the game when the eidolon is out. So instead, I'd focus on having the eidolon out somewhat more reliably so that you don't need the backup summoning power. I think to do that, you need two things.

1. Allow the Eidolon to stay on the material plane when the summoner is asleep/unconscious. But maybe make it default to protecting the vulnerable summoner at all costs, so it cannot keep watch/go scouting/whatever.

2. Give a way for the Eidolon to return if it's been wiped out for the day. Maybe something like "once a day you can drain your own life force to renew that of your eidolon", which causes the summoner to lose d4 x level nonlethal damage and become fatigued, in return for recalling a killed eidolon (with 50% hp?).

Together, that should eliminate the need for the 'back up' summon monster ability.

I agree with previous posters: don't bother with improved initiative. Get one of the key ranged feats instead (point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot and deadly aim). You really want those 4 feats (plus rapid reload) as soon as possible.

I'd also strongly recommend to take the pistolero archetype, unless you really, really want to be able to use large firearms as well. The archetype gives you your dex bonus to damage from level 5 onwards, which is a great boost to your damage output, and apart from that it swaps some deeds around, which doesn't matter too much.

As for the ammo: you can make normal ammo for 10% of the cost and alchemical cartridges for 50%. That makes normal ammo reasonably cheap, so make sure to use normal ammo whenever you have time to load, especially at low levels. With rapid reload (and before you can shoot twice in one round) you will regularly be able to load as a move action and shoot as a standard. You should get a few alchemical cartridges as well though, for when you want to move and shoot in the same round.

Yes, I would play these stats.

I don't see what the problem is, to be honest. If you play with rolled stats then you have to accept the possibility of low rolled stats. Rolled stats that are perfectly fair do not exist. Yes, many people prefer point buy, but if the rest of your group prefers rolling then rolling it is. And it doesn't make a blind bit of difference who rolls the dice, since it's, you know, random. Unless you don't trust that the stats were fairly rolled, but that's quite a big leap of assumptions from what you've said so far.

Also, you can make a perfectly playable character out of those stats. A summoner (or summoning focused caster) would do fine, as would any form of support caster. An archer ranger would probably catch up to the rest of your group in terms of damage by about level 6.

Basically, if you're not prepared to plya with lower stats than the rest of your group, don't join a game that uses rolled stats. Don't expect to be the lucky one with high stats and then throw your toys out of the pram if you're not.

edit: Two more things.
One: the game system is d20, as in, you roll a D20 and add some modifier to determine whether you succeed. If the modifier is two lower than you would have liked, you do not suddenly never succeed, it's still mostly in the dice.
Two: What's up with all the passive aggressive 'make a character that is doomed to die quickly' advice. Seriously, people. Do you really suggest you go into a game with that kind of attitude? That's bound to ruin it for everyone.

If you let any character fall for performing an action that wasn't their own, willing, choice, you suck as a GM. Seriously. The rules on 'falling' are there to signify that your powers come with certain guidelines you should strive to live by, and that they can be revoked if you stray too far from the 'right' path. They're not an ultimate vulnerability to be exploited by your enemies.

A druid 20 has a BAB of 15. A fighter 1/monk 19 has a BAB of 15. If you combine 15 and 15 to be anything other than 15 you're just misusing the rules for the sake of doing so.

Or do you really feel that a 1 fighter/19 wizard : 20 sorcerer should have a BAB of 20? Because there is no single level in that progression where neither of the classes gets a +1 to BAB, but it is patently ridiculous to give that character full BAB.

Back to topic, the gestalt character I'd personally love to play is a monk/inquisitor. You get the TWF at full BAB of a monk, which you can do with a single weapon, and the bane, judgement and buffs of an inquisitor to add up to huge single weapon damage with up to 8 attacks per round. The only slight worry is armor class, but with the to-hit bonuses of an inquisitor crane style seems like a no-brainer, and decent dex and wis, crane style and a wand of mage armor should see you through. In addition, you get the awesome skills of an inquisitor.

I'd personally be tempted to make the monk a martial artist to be able to follow a non-lawful deity, as I tend to find those more interesting, but a weapon adept or hungry ghost would likely be stronger.

edit: And to get back to my first point: if you'd do the same weird 'take the best bonus at every level' thing for saves my hypothetical 1 fighter/19 wizard:20 sorcerer would have base saves of +14, +12, +22. Not to speak of something like a 20 monk:1 ranger/19 cleric.

So with arcane mark you can basically get two melee attacks a round at low levels at -2 to your attack rolls. Incredibly overpowered indeed. It's almost as good as flurry of blows!!

edit: I like how the text of spellstrike even mentions "If the magus makes this attack in concert with spell combat", and the OP is still pretending everyone else is an idiot for thinking you could use the two abilities together.