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Since I think making spreadsheets is fun, I made one for the Pathfinder 2 beta character sheet. It's roughly based on the official paizo one, and should be usable either filled out & printed or directly from Sheets. Notes:
* Generally, things that are required have a red background, things which autocalculate have a grey background, and things which autocalculate but should generally be edited during character advancement have a green background. * During character creation and advancement, except for Ancestry, stat bumps must be entered manually on the Stats tab. * Skills must be chosen, though it tells you how many skill bumps you get based on class, Int, and level. Signature skills are automatically given based on class, however, additional ones from bloodlines or domains or other abilities should be added manually. * AC, saves, spell DCs autocalculate. Spells per day autocalculate based on class, although extras from bloodlines and specializations need to be added manually for it to give you the proper numbers. Spells known do not, because that's relatively easy and I wanted to keep the layout close to the official charsheet. That tab could probably be used with care and editing for spellcasting gained via feats, but there's no particular consideration for it. * The feat sheet lists what sort of feat you get at what level, and additionally provides a summary of class abilities and stat bumps. (It's meant more for planning than printing or use during play.) * The wealth tab is pretty basic and based on my PF1 sheet. It's got a set of hidden columns with the PF2 armor table on it, and will autofill the stats for the armor if you type it in exactly correctly. You can unhide the columns but of course need to hide them again if you print it out.
With respect to healing potions, this is a basic disconnect between the game design (each encounter takes its toll on the party) and PC behavior. Any sane, reasonably experienced group of adventurers would heal up as much as they can between encounters. I wish that games would take this into account. Tightening the resource management issues (especially for non-casting classes who might feel tempted to dump Cha) is going to either push more expectation that PCs who *can* devote class resources/spells to party healing do so, or very strongly encourage playing only classes with built-in healing, depending on the personalities at the table. Sure... any fighter could take the Cleric feats for a little extra healing... but mostly they're going to ask for healing.
You can cast False Life on it, which helps. Unless the DM actively wants to kill your familiar, the most danger they're in is from Area of Effect spells and breath weapons, so it's important to make sure your familiar is included in the Resist/Prot Energy spells that get passed around. (Being a wizard yourself makes this easier since you'll be providing some of them.) In addition, equipment that increases their saves and dexterity will improve their reflex saves. They get Improved Evasion, which is -almost- like getting full hps vs the things they're most likely to suffer from. When those AoE Fort-save spells come by... well... that's gonna cost you gold to bring them back. If your DM is actively targeting your familiar, either you deserve it -- I had Perlivash in kingmaker and a faerie dragon can be a very helpful member of the party -- or your DM is being a jerk. Share-spells Mirror Images can help absorb attacks for them just as it can for you. If you've got a wand-wielding improved familiar then they NEED a wand of MI.
I have a witch/barbarian from before Scarred Witch Doctor was changed. The catfolk ninja in the party was CG, and didn't want infernal healing but he DID want to run into combat and jump on ledges alone with monsters, and spent most of his time until level 10 (greater invis ftw) unconscious. My witch spoke no languages, so she didn't even have to hear him complain that he felt "icky" when he woke up. The best was when he was down to 3 hps and refusing healing, so she smacked him for nonlethal and then cast her spell...
Thanks. That's how it seemed reasonable to interpret it, but I wanted to run it by folks since I wasn't sure.
Desna does. She's the best. I've been meaning to play a Spherewalker since RotR, so that's where my brain went. But a Summoner would be a bad candidate for that.
Does this mean a 25 square foot area, ie, one 5' square? Or does it mean 25 feet on each side, ie, a 5x5 square?
Not really "easy," but one possibility is to take 2 levels of Barbarian. You get all martial weapons and depending on your archetype, some other nifty stuff like fast movement and uncanny dodge. For your rage power, take the one that allows you to let your mount rage -- and ride around on your Eidolon or summons. The rage will help bring them up to speed, and you get a nice boost too. I did this with a reach weapon wielding gnome riding around on a giant slug, and it was pretty fun. Why are you making a starknife-focused summoner, btw?
"(though a magical Evil baby/toddler who flies around attacking the party and cries when Mommy or Pop-pop gets dropped could be fun/terrible/sick)." It really makes players unhappy. Make sure that the kids are less of a threat and therefore less likely to be targeted and killed first. If it's high enough level for the Scarred Witch Doctor to have major hexes (10th level) she should probably be a double agent and, at least at some point, feed the PCs the proceeds of "Cook People."
People have issues because the "coddled" player tends to be the DM's girlfriend, and new to the game. It's not unreasonable to be a little forgiving with a new player who doesn't know the system... unless you're sleeping with her, in which case some people will explode in jealousy. If that's the situation you're in, my advice would be to have someone else run the game for a while. At the least, you'll have more time to help her with game mechanics as a player than you would as a DM. More generally, I've played in groups where perfectly platonic friends habitually favor each other when DMing. I've been in another game where we were like, "Dude, you're going overboard to prove you're not favoring your girlfriend's PC and we wouldn't care if you did, and if you keep this up she's just going to quit." I game with my boyfriend. As players, we often build characters who work well together, which some find cheesy. At a guess, I would assume that one group we play with would feel that he favors me when running, and the other groups wouldn't. It isn't a big issue either way. I'm not sure how the players feel when I DM. He plays the tank and actively wants to be attacked, so.
Since the bite is natural, the claws wouldn't become secondary because of it. You can have as many primary natural attacks as you can manage, and they don't become secondary unless you start making attacks with manufactured weapons. You'd have bite +7, claws x2 +7.
@Devilkiller, they could take the standard action to start a full round action which they could have completed on their next turn. That works for most things, but I don't think would work with a coup de grace, since CDG depends on a helpless victim. I would imagine the beginning of the CDG in the surprise round would wake him up, making him ineligible to be CDG'd with the first part of the first full round. I *think* the proper thing would be to delay until the top of the first full round. In practice, a lot of DMs don't call for initiative until after the surprise round, but RAW rolling for init comes first, so delaying until just before your enemy should be legal, even without the "refocus" holdover from 3e. Both of these feel kind of game-ish because it exposes the artificial divisions of rounds. Why do 3+3 seconds of cutting someone's throat do less damage than 6 seconds of cutting someone's throat? How do I know when the bad guy is going to stop being flat footed and act? Because rules, that's why. Fwiw, when I run a game I houserule that sleeping people delay until they wake up. I think it's stupid that you can miss your turn entirely because you got a higher initiative.
Oracle with the Heavens mystery, which I think we'll be my next character One of my favorite characters was (sort of) an Oracle with the Heavens mystery. She was a sorceress, but she started out her career with a level in Oracle and one in Diviner wizard. She almost always avoided melee. She was an old Varisian fortune-teller who couldn't find her keys (Haunted & Lame curses), had an animal companion from the Sylvan bloodline to pull her vardo, and spent most of her feats on crafting magic items because she wanted to eventually animate it and also create mechanical fortune-telling boxes that looked just like her. She was played in Kingmaker, and I think in a game with less than Kingmaker's almost infinite downtime, it might be better to focus less on crafting. But even if you choose different feats and a different sorcerer bloodline, I think the basics could still be pretty viable, and she certainly had enough different abilities that she could usually do something useful. Madame Violetta Dual-Cursed Oracle of the Heavens 1 (Lame, progressing & Haunted)
Diviner Wizard 1, with the Foresight alternate school; You only ever get +1 initiative, but that's not too bad and always acting in the surprise round is awesome for a caster. The Foresight school swaps Diviner's Fortune (which is useless for a level dip) for Prescience, which lets you roll a d20 at the beginning of your turn and use it for anything you want until the beginning of your next turn, 3+Int mod times a day. You get a familiar. You get a spellbook and the ability to prepare a small number of 1st level spells you might not want to bother knowing, like Identify or Comprehend Languages. You get Scribe Scroll. Feats:
1st Extra Revelation (Awesome Display) I took Improved Familiar at 7th; technically you qualify, because you have a familiar and an arcane caster level, although they don't come from the same source. Your DM may be squeamish about this, however, and prefer you get your familiar with feats or the alternate multiclassing rules. I took Craft Rods at 9th level; I really recommend metamagic rods for casters missing levels. I was only missing two, and the trait makes up for that in caster level, but the rods make up for that as far as higher level spell slots go. PLUS I made my faerie dragon a Rod of Wonder, and that's just wonderful mayhem. The Awesome Display+Color Spray combo works for quite a while (though it's not as godly as some make it out to be, because of the short range cone and the randomness of saving throws at low levels), and then after that the pickings are more sparse for Illusion Pattern spells. Still, the sorcerer spell list is better for that than the cleric one. Back when I was planning, I remember there being some interesting synergy between a Waves Oracle and certain cold-themed sorcerer bloodlines, too. (Entangle everything!)
Are you set on having your character have the Arcane bloodline? Aberrant could be useful, since having reach on your touch attacks would allow you to flank in melee while not having to cast defensively. (If the cleric and fighter flank an enemy, you could also attack from behind one of them for increased safety.) Perhaps your aberrant magic is the reason you were kicked out of your wizard family? Vanish is not Core, so your options for ranged sneak attack will be very limited and expensive. (Invisibility will get you one sneak attack for a 2nd level spell, and Improved Invisibility is a 4th level spell, coming online at 10th, the same level as your 1x/day Impromptu Sneak Attack from Arcane Trickster.) Before then, most of your ranged sneak attacks will be due to Surprise rounds, Stealth, and winning initiative. Therefore, I can't recommend Improved Initiative highly enough. Unfortunately, none of the Core familiars grant you a bonus to Init. Probably you're best off with Raven, since it won't be a 5th level familiar and will never get Speak With Master. (Or at least, not until you're 18th level or so.) The +2 from Aid Another on most of your skills is niftier than +3 to any single skill, plus it can carry messages, fly over the enemy camp to spy, all sorts of things. Remember, an arcane trickster gets spell progression like a caster but also gets base attack like a caster. You're going to have a hard time hitting most stuff in its real (non-touch) AC, and you're going to have a hard time hitting some stuff even in its touch AC. Think of your PC as a Caster-with-skills. Do NOT think of her as a Rogue-with-spells. You'll shine better as the only Arcane caster in the party than trying to compete in melee with an actual martial character. Spells:
Daze is boring. They get a save, and they just lose their next action. They can still make AOOs, so you can't use it to get away. It only works on some things, and even then it only works on them once per battle. Prestidigitation is lots of fun. I can't imagine an adventurer who's happy without it. I prefer Dancing Lights to Light, since it's hands-free and you can use it to light up places before you even go there. Detect Magic is pretty much required. Find treasure! Identify things with Spellcraft! Resistance is nice at low levels. It's just +1, but hey. 1st:
Chill Touch -- One of the few low level sorcerer spells that lets you make multiple magic attacks. If you go Aberrant, use this. Color Spray -- really nice early on. Doesn't scale well. Shocking Grasp -- melee attack spell. You get a bonus to hit enemies with metal armor, which is nice. Note that you can cast, 5' step, and then touch, so you don't necessarily need to cast it next to your target. Ray of Enfeeblement -- Nice for cutting down big melee monsters. If something hits your fighter too hard, use this on it. 2nd level:
Glitterdust -- One of the most useful spells around. Being invisible is your job, stop others from doing it. Mirror Image -- The best defensive spell in the game. (Certainly the best in Core.) Spectral Hand -- Unfortunately, it can't get flank, so you only get sneak attack if they're flat footed. Still pretty useful. 3rd:
Overall, I'm a bit biased against Save or Lose spells. But a sneaky, tricksy character with high Charisma would certainly want Charm Person (and later, Charm Monster).
By physically pushing your friends away from the threat. Why make a maneuver check against that orc barbarian when your friend's wizard is a much more easier target? Bull Rush requires very specific positioning, whereas the Pull and Reposition maneuvers are more likely to give you the ability to place an unconscious comrade back safely behind your own party lines.
It makes me a little sad when I don't have the carrying capacity to do stuff like this. I once pulled out a portable ram about two years and twelve levels into a campaign. I'd been carrying it the whole time... it just hadn't come up.
That reminds me, I saved Evil Lincoln talking about a houserule for small grapplers, a post on an alternate maneuver "Cling" a while back. Obviously, Sharky would be clinging on with his teeth, causing constrict damage and not being grappled, but I thought it looked cool. Even without that, though, you should feel free to grapple big things if you want -- if you try to move them it might be silly, but just holding on and doing damage isn't undecorous. (Not for a goblin, certainly!)
Sorry for the thread necro, but I thought I'd point out that the language on the PRD has changed to, "If you have the poison use class feature (such as from the assassin prestige class or the alchemist base class), you do not risk accidentally poisoning yourself when applying poison." I guess this means that Poison Use is explicitly not meant to negate the exposure on a 1 rule.
Ah, Sharky, I see your request to find special pickles... perhaps refreshingly chilly and crisp, no refrigeration needed? As to the Mask, and goblin pregnancy: -- I assumed conception was a given. It's magic, and the Demon Mother is into fertility (an "unexplained" pregnancy may be a sign of favor or disfavor, anyway). If you're a worshiper and wearing the mask and attempting pregnancy, you're going to get it. -- Childbirth will, of course, be miserable and dangerous. Lamashtu isn't very nice in pathfinder, and she's even worse in the original source material. I'd probably go with a series of fort saves (probably with Con damage for failure). -- I'm against the chance of spell failure for pregnancy. I guess the idea is that it's like wearing armor, but I'd consider that it should be more like the Bloatmage feats and prestige class, which have penalties similar to ones incorporated into that list and also include an armor check penalty but not ASF. If anything, I think there's an idea that it would be a more mystical time, and if you're carrying baby demons I think it would definitely affect your magical power positively. -- I don't think the babies would necessarily age supernaturally quickly, but a spell could certainly be researched that would do it. Devilkiller don't read:
In the real world, the size of hybrid offspring is dependent on the size of both parents, not just the mother. Often, the offspring of a larger mother and smaller father will be larger than either species. ETA: I also don't like being constantly flat-footed, mostly because it negates aspects of the game instead of just penalizing them, and I think that's less fun.
There are existing rules for most of what your players want to do, but unfortunately these particular rules are some of the worst in the game. There are rules for a glider in Ultimate Combat, or on the prd. The glider itself isn't bad, but the vehicular rules in general are super deadly. Unfortunately, crafting in pathfinder takes forever, so it's not really viable to craft things without magic in most campaigns. Assuming a glider is as complex as something can be, it would probably take about 2-3 months of dedicated work to build. There aren't rules for substituting adventuring stuff for the base cost of crafted items, but it seems reasonable and exactly what your players think would be fun. As to the baby spiders, there are rules for rearing wild animals, assuming that your players wish to do that rather than smuggling the eggs into their enemies' clean laundry or something. Incidentally, we don't know whether you meant they have spider egg sacs, which would contain a lot of tiny spiders, or the individual eggs. If it's the first, you could use them as a swarm, which have their own rules.
Personally, I have never been on the DM side of this -- the game I'm running now and the games I've run in the past weren't particularly lethal. (I love my players having hero points, and I agree with wraithstrike that if your PCs are dying too much, tone it down.) I have been on the player side of things. I keep saying it, and some other people have said it as well, but there's a power differential there between organic PCs and popped-into-existence-at-15th-level PCs, and that makes the game less fun for the other PLAYERS. The very best case is that the DM is running homebrew and has the time and inclination to tilt the game towards the original PCs' strengths, but that's a lot to ask even when it's possible. I've played the melee PC in a party where suddenly a summoner (not the class, this was 3.5) showed up and swift action summoned things just flat out better than me. Not so much fun, and there was nothing the DM could do that would challenge the summons but not murder everyone else while drinking tea. All that's a digression from the original post, though. Honestly, he really seems like he wants character continuity and is upset that the game (for various reasons) encourages replacement characters instead. The very simple solution to that problem is just "no replacement characters." ETA @wraithstrike: I love planning new characters, too. It's a lot of fun and a large part of why I sometimes hang out here -- I can tell other people what to play and pretend they'll listen. :)
... if Jack has been through half a dozen characters and is playing a character of notionally similar power as Jill who is still on her first? In contrast, there will be many players who find it downright annoying to have to roll up a new character with objectively less scope of action. The thing is, "similar power" is what we're arguing for. A PC built at 10th level is going to be more powerful than one built at 1st and organically leveled to 10th. Having perfect equipment alone does it. If you add in having perfect feats, and that repeated character change favors optimizing for a given level, and greater knowledge of the campaign... there's no reason to keep your character alive besides "story."
Our groups tend to run under the law of evaporating equipment. For a while we had a player who made new PCs every three months or so, so that group in particular tends to be strict on such things. It might be an interesting house rule that the new PC has the same equipment as the old PC. It's limiting, yes, and it would encourage players to continue filling the party niche that they had previously filled. Whether that's good or bad is up for debate.
That's not how EXP works in Pathfinder. The people a level ahead will always STAY a level ahead. There isn't anything that allows a lower level character to "catch up". This is a pretty common misconception. The XP needed for each level increases so drastically that a character who is behind catches up in levels without catching up in XP. Here's an excerpt of the XP track:
Imagine that the party is 2nd level, at 2200 when Bob dies and is replaced with Bill, who gets set back to 1st with 0xp (the minimum). Bill catches up to 2nd level at +2000xp, before the rest of the party reaches 3rd level (+2800xp.) They may continue to level just before Bill does, but it depends on how big the chunks of XP get; his missing 2200 xp becomes less and less likely to make him fall just out of range as the numbers get bigger and bigger.
You've got several really good stats, which makes me want to multiclass. Depending on how long you'll be playing this guy: Fib The Temporary
1 Weapon finesse (Alchemy, Flying Beast Tamer, Sneak Attack 1d6, Brew Potion, Throw Anything)
-Stealth is +19 (+4 ranks +3 class +4 size +4 racial+4 chameleon, with potentially +4 from ki point) at full speed. -Despite being Small, goblins move at 30', which is nice. -Goblins are all psychopaths He's temporary (unless you progress in vivisectionist) because eventually the animal companion will become too delicate to survive adventures. In the meantime, though, having a flying companion who can carry you around is nifty, and if you're both on the ground he can instead provide flank. I'd probably take the dire bat over the vulture -- the vulture is a better fighter, but the bat has blindsense which is pretty awesome.
The groups I play with usually start the new PC off a level lower (or, if they're using XP, at the minimum for the lowest level in the party). But we've been discussing something else. As a rule, we feel there needs to be some penalty for a new PC because they're usually significantly more powerful than original party members. One of the main reasons has to do with wealth by level; when you're a PC being leveled, a lot of your wbl is taken up by random things you've found, or DM thought would be cool, or items that were the best things you could afford when you bought them... even in games that have well-stocked MagicMarts on every corner. ...but a high level PC gets exactly what it wants; it can afford the big-ticket items without having to spend no gold for six levels. It can buy custom magic items without having to leave its belt in town for three adventures. It can also skimp on very common items that it knows will turn up immediately. So we've been discussing having replacement PCs join at the regular party level but with NPC wealth (since they've been NPCs until now). So far it's only been a threat, so we don't know how well it would work in practice.
Given that Paizo first made a widely-hated ruling about free actions, and then nerfed weapon cords in order to deal with the problem of TWF pistoleros (1) when an interpretation of the rules that interleaved primary and off-hand attacks would have sufficed... I really don't think they intend that primary and off-hand attacks to necessarily be interleaved. (1) They made all their attacks with one hand, reloading with the other, then switched -- it was important that they could do the whole routine with each hand before switching because they recovered the gun as a swift action.
- It can be reasonably important to have good perception. DMs will often tell you that you don't get AOOs because you don't know the monsters are there until they hit you. (Those goblins were all hidden in side tunnels ready to ambush you, and now they'll just 5' step up as you kill them.) - lemeres is correct about Lunge, but only if you can reliably stop them getting adjacent to you (with stand still, or tripping) or push them at least 10' away. Stopping them is the better bet, because with intelligent enemies the DM is perfectly justified in having them say, "Forget that, I'll go attack someone else," if you push them out of your threatened zone. I'm currently playing a PC who has the phalanx soldier (shield slam & polearm) tactic Scott Wilhelm mentions above. (This also works for mounted characters of any class, who can use a lance one handed while mounted.) In practice, I've done as much "slam them into a wall to knock them over," slams as I've done "slam them away to create room," although the occasional glorious "slam them back off a cliff," is, well, glorious. It's hard to say how she compares, though, since she's in a mythic game where Everything Is Broken. Magda, I was upwind in Pittsburgh, but March 28, 1979 is my birthday.
- Becoming Large increases your reach, including with polearms. A wand of Enlarge Person will double your reach. - Effective use of AOOs is dependent on cooperation from the rest of your party. You can be a size Large polearm fighter who threatens 20', but if the greatsword barbarian in your party always charges the enemies when they're 30' away, it won't do you much good. -On the other hand, if you get a couple party members interested in taking AOOs when you trip the baddies, you can make a devastating team. I know an orc who trips his victims, kicks them on the way down (Vicious Stomp) for nonlethal damage that intimidates them (Enforcer) provoking another AOO (Hurtful) plus the AOO from Greater Trip. My orc is only too happy to add two more attacks (Vicious Stomp and the regular GT one). - If you use a reach weapon, you don't need any trip feats to consider substituting a trip on your AOO. If they can't reach you, it doesn't matter if you provoke, so if you think you can beat their CMD, go for it. Even if you don't have Greater Trip to make them provoke, you'll still get an AOO when they stand back up, your friends might too, and it'll be at AC-4 for prone.
You can also go into Mammoth Rider later if you want a really big (huge) cat.
The best thing I had as a player was way back in 1E, when our DM liked to make up custom spells and scrolls for us to find as treasure. Our low-level party is confronted with a vampire -- such a hassle to kill permanently until I remembered one scroll of "Orbit," a spell that makes the victim take a turn around the planet... including the sunlit side. Spoiler for We Be Goblins Too:
My goblins decided to set the ogre house on fire to flush out the inhabitants, rather than carefully exploring the rooms. Personally, I feel that "KILL IT WITH FIRE!" should predictably be a first or second option for goblins -- especially ones who've already got gourds of fire burping -- but that didn't seem to be what the module was written to expect. When making my own material to run, I like to put in ways for the party to gain unfair advantage, so I'm not too worried if they come up with things I didn't think of.
Mine is sad her mammoth gave up share spells. :P Good ruling, though.
I have a (non white-haired) witch who plans to grapple people with her hair. She'll have feral combat training for her hair, to allow Hex Strike -- would she be able to use hex strike while grappling with her hair?
I really doubt this is what'll get answered in FAQ, but I hit the button since I came here to see if anyone was asking the same thing. I will note that my druid is of the mountain archetype, which means she'll eventually be turning into giants. Certainly the other Viking (he's even got the fighter archetype) will take me up on it, but we're a rather melee-heavy party overall and I could see the whole party taking me up on it if we get that many tiers. It would definitely affect overall party power much more than if it were limited to animal or even elemental forms.
It would get its own enhancement bonus and such. (The base +1 and anything you got with greater magic weapon or such.) it also attacks from your square, and unlike some other affects, doesn't say it can't flank, so that's possible, plus the bonus for being on higher ground, potentially. But it's only considered wielded by you for maneuvers and affects which target items (which it can't make on its own, so only defensively), so no strength or morale bonuses.
Menacing is great in a party with summons, since summons sometimes have trouble hitting, or are summoned into flank anyway. Though yeah, much cheaper on a spiked gauntlet. (A +1 menacing, dueling spiked gauntlet's a little expensive but really nice to wear.) If you're having trouble with incorporeals, a ghost touch weapon you can grapple or pull with is useful, especially since your falchion can't crit anyway. It might be more useful, since you have full BA and probably an acceptable CMB, to keep the ghosties from running away into the walls. As far as the falchions go, I think you should consider when you'll be using your backup weapon. I'd consider making the adamantine falchion golem bane, since those are the times you'll be wanting to overcome that DR. Alternately, dancing and called would let you use both weapons at once, though whether the action economy there is worth it is up to your game. Lastly, you've already planned a pretty powerful build. If you think a frost burst shocking burst falchion sounds like fun, you should do it. Just make sure you're not just upgrading a weapon you won't be using once your special item levels up, because no weapon is fun if it just sits on your hip.
Many folks are strictly against tactics. They like low AC, high DPR, rushing in headlong, and trusting in the dice. Exhortations to control choke points or fight in an organized manner are seen as attempts to control their PC and ruin their fun.I'd find this funny if this wasn't an attitude I ran into all the time. "It's no fun unless you're bleeding out!" to quote a player/a killer DM Devilkiller and I know and suffer under.
I think this is very significant. When one small set of rolls affects your PC so much over the course of years... it's a real drag. I don't as much mind rolling if it's a one-shot or a very short game -- where whether I roll beautifully or terribly, it'll all be over soon. I'm convinced that "haha, you rolled 3 Con!" is the reason folks want to roll. The inequality is what makes it fun for them.
Thanks, folks! I thought it seemed reasonable, but I figured I'd check that I wasn't missing something.
Can a character who can physically speak but has no known languages still cast spells with verbal components? "Feral orcs without additional languages due to high Intelligence scores or ranks in Linguistics can only communicate with grunts and gestures." That seems too fun to resist, but I might have to if my scarred witch doctor otherwise has to memorize most of her spells Silent Spell'd.
My sorceress has been killed/mauled by black dragons several times, and having just gotten access to Contingency, cast a Mirror Image contingent on being within 100' of a black dragon. Contingency states that the triggered spell occurs whether I want it to or not, so I assumed my knowledge was irrelevant. My DM is unsure. What do you all think? The conditions needed to bring the spell into effect must be clear, although they can be general. In all cases, the contingency immediately brings into effect the companion spell, the latter being “cast” instantaneously when the prescribed circumstances occur. If complicated or convoluted conditions are prescribed, the whole spell combination (contingency and the companion magic) may fail when triggered. The companion spell occurs based solely on the stated conditions, regardless of whether you want it to.
You'd need a Summoner or Summoner-flavored scroll to teach it to the ring, but a ring of spell knowledge would work. (Expensive though.)
Neither I nor my craft-happy boyfriend use the restrictions-to-make-things-cheaper rules when crafting custom items as PCs. It doesn't seem reasonable to take the benefit when it's so trivial to avoid the drawback.
Note: I meant "+2 from Str" from raging, of course. Just a reminder that that bonus will be twice as big as well as being more universally applicable. Raging Vitality has nothing to do with casting -- that's Moment of Clarity. Raging Vitality raises the Con bonus from raging by +2 and allows you to maintain rage while unconscious. Given that getting dropped while raging otherwise means death... pretty good feat. He'll be wanting to spend several rounds at a time raging because once he drops rage, he'll be fatigued... harder to keep someone grappled then unless they're total mooks. From what I see of his build, the idea would be to substitute a trip attempt into his full attack to make the victim prone, use natural weapons, and then grapple them with the bonus maneuver from flurry. (Grapple last so you can use both claws.) He gets full base attack on the one bonus maneuver he'll be getting from Flurry, but FoM replaces Flurry of Blows, so his trip attempt would be at regular base attack (with the -2 penalty from FoM as well). On subsequent rounds, yes, the only maneuver he'd be doing would be grapple (or pin). If I'm wrong and the trip attempt and grapple attempts are to happen on different rounds, then he doesn't need the third level of monk and might as well stop at the first. I'd probably switch the second two levels to Unarmed Fighter, take Dragon Style and Improved Grapple as bonus feats. Or do the barb thing, which has the bonus of spending the first level or two as barbarian, which always rocks.
Third level monk gets him Maneuver Training, the ability to treat his monk level as his base attack for the purposes of maneuvers. Trading that +1 from bab for +2 Str while raging might not be a bad deal since it will increase his damage, saves, and CMD as well, but then he has to track rage and/or fatigue, pick up Raging Vitality, can't cast, and so on.
Your smart, charismatic deinonychus companion could take eldritch heritage and have a deinonychus familiar. (This would be a bad, if amusing, idea.)
A few of my PCs do -- mostly stuff they've crafted themselves, although one PC had Blackrazor. It never comes up, but Queen Violetta named her mithral buckler "full moon," although she calls her animal companion "the stag" and her talking vardo "the vardo." Until story reasons forced him to switch, her bard/paladin husband wielded the "Cruel Sword of Justice," an adamantine keen cruel longsword. Tsunade the barbarian/summoner created "the Demonkiller," a furious, evil outsiderbane, elfbane bardiche. (It had the demonbane before the elfbane, and anyway, "Elfkiller" seemed kind of rude.) Other PCs of mine barely have names... I've yet to come up with anything for a catfolk shadowdancer better than "Simone Simon," let alone anything for her claws or wakizashi.
I made a DPR calculator that my boyfriend calls "the depressing spreadsheet," because it tells him things like "take weapon focus, not power attack," and "enchant your sword for pluses, not flaming shocking acid." Like others, it can't tell you what ACs your DM will throw at you, how you're doing with AOOs, or, for that matter, whether you're able to get full attacks or if you're usually limited to single attacks, all of which are usually more significant to DPR than whether you should take Power Attack or Weapon Focus for your next feat. I would like a spreadsheet that could graph DPR vs a small range of target ACs, in order to better compare "I can hit ANYTHING!" builds to "I can pounce lowish AC guys to DEATH!" type builds. But I haven't figured out how to do that with google docs. PS: My spreadsheet agrees with Kkazrandir that power attack helps a 2WF ranger at first level... also 5th level.
Not about building, but about playing: My magus had a LOT of things that affected her attacks, and I ended up making an index card with her more common attack routines and their damages. It was a lot easier than remembering adjustments from arcane pool enhancement, haste, polymorph, spell combat, power attack, using the sword 1-handed or 2-handed, arcane strike and... so on, for each attack.
Ignore that toad at your peril! Around the community where I live, toad familiars have really gotten a raw deal. The first 3E toad familiar "Churra" was killed by the DM I think twice at least (oh no, it gives you +3 hps!). Batrachio the toad was later eaten by the owl that his master was upgrading to, in a game run by the player of the first toad's PC. That player is now playing a summoner whose eidolon is a toad called Churra -- he's big and nasty and ready to avenge the spirit of all the murdered toad familiars!
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