tottreson's page

PREFACE EDIT: I have not yet played many of these parts, the concerns listed here are from a theoretical/gamefeel standpoint.

The starting equipment guides for parts 2-6 seem.. off. I think I get what they intended to do by making it based primarily off a handful of different level items, but considering some items of the same level vary wildly in price -and- some item levels just don't provide very meaningful item choices depending on your class... I'm looking at part 4 for a monk and I can't find any great 7th level item choices. Bracers of armor (What I would hope would be my second best item after my handwraps) Have a weird gap where they leap up in item level so I either have to make them my singular 8th level item or underutilize one of my 5th level item slots.
and most of the level 7 items seem to be unique armor or weapons
I think it would make alot more sense to just give a gold total and restrict the max amount we could spend on a single item.

Monks have a strangely low amount of signature skills and skills trained with only the arcane casters having less signature skills than them, and no one having less trained skills than them. (I know wizard/alchemist technically have less, but their primary stats are int so they never actually will unless someone is making a very poor monk.)

For what was once a class that gave above average skills/level and one that focuses on perfecting themselves it's an extremely odd choice to me.

Off-hand, the most glaring thing that I can't fathom is why they don't have Medicine as a signature skill. Eastern Medicine has always been used along with martial artists as a strong trope in movies and literature. Even in as realistic a setting as the original Karate kid, Mr. Miyagi used strange healing techniques to make his student battle ready again. It also plays into their desire for wisdom.

But, that's not the only skill they're missing. Much of their abilities play into the idea of being a ninja, so why wouldn't they have stealth? Their class description even notes how some monks will take up a craft and seek perfection within it, so why not craft as well?

As it stands, they've taken a martial class that previously had great defensive abilities, and could function as a light skill monkey and transformed it into a class with unfortunate low-level AC, and few skills.

So... I'm making a Swarm monger PC and while it's questionable whether I'll ever even get to 12th level I'm really curious about how this works. It says it works like Swarm Skin except you can't split into more than one contiguous swarm, and you don't leave things behind, being able to reform as normal for wildshape. I have a few of questions here:

1) What can I turn into? I have to remain a contiguous swarm so does that mean I can only choose 1 option and only get 1 swarm out of the deal? In which case the best I could be is one group of army ants. Or, does it mean I get to split myself up into a bunch of swarms, but they have to remain adjacent to one another?

2)What are my stats? It's not a polymorph spell so I don't have that easy rules reference of "it only changes your ability scores exactly how it says it does." Do my swarms all have my stats? Do I gain the normal stats of the swarms? In that case do I become intelligenceless??

3) It says my gear morphs into me, but does that imply I retain static bonuses like I do with my other wildshape options? If I do does it apply to all of my contiguous swarms, or just one?

EDIT Bonus Question:How does my hp total work for everything involved both before during and after the transformation?

If anyone has seen anything that clears this up I would be grateful.

Let us say an item named Y's description contains the text "When used as an improvised weapon Y deals damage as X." X being a specific weapon.

If you had feats/class abilities that modified/improved the damage you dealt with Weapon X would those modifications apply to instances of Y being used in such a manner?

Ok weird title, I know. But I was bored and am ashamedly too happy with it to change it :P.

I'm designing a cohort for a 16th level character and want to use a Dapsara angel with class levels. I like the idea of my cohort being a party buffer and advancing it's Bardic performance abilities, but I feel like if I I simply take levels in bard to advance it I would run into two main problems:

1)While taking bard would make the effective level for it's bardic performance 5+the X levels it gains, it's spell-casting would still only be that of a level X bard which when taken in comparison to party level would be almost useless.

and

2)I'm already going to be using summon spells on my main character and I don't want to complicate turn order -even more- by making my cohort also have a whole spell list that I would have to keep track of and etc etc.

So my question is this: would the Exemplar brawler stack with the inherent monster's bardic performance abilities for purposes of determining it's inspire courage performance bonuses?