Way of the Wicked—Book #3: Tears of the Blessed (PFRPG) PDF

Cool. But if you have the priests cast freedom of movement you don't need to give them those nifty boots that the party will then have. Might be a bit cheeky to have those priests be sylphs with the Cloud Gazer feat, and they wont need items for that either :D

Cool. But if you have the priests cast freedom of movement you don't need to give them those nifty boots that the party will then have. Might be a bit cheeky to have those priests be sylphs with the Cloud Gazer feat, and they wont need items for that either :D

Freedom of movement as far as I can tell doesn't apply to natural terrain hindrances. :(

If you can move unhindered underwater or through Solid Fog I don't see why you could not move through snow. The spell states that you can move normally even under magic influenced conditions. If the spell would not help against non-magic conditions why have the word 'even' in there?

If you can move unhindered underwater or through Solid Fog I don't see why you could not move through snow. The spell states that you can move normally even under magic influenced conditions. If the spell would not help against non-magic conditions why have the word 'even' in there?

Damn, good call!

Anyone ever see this version of the Phoenix?

Go to Unique Phoenix.

I'm considering it only because I plan on throwing the storm giant before the mountain and I think i calculated my players are going to land about 280k experience (split 5 ways of course) and they will probably be sitting at level 12 easy.

I just saw it was Evil :( bleh.

Okay so my PCs killed Prince Gaius (yes, really) so that thread is snipped. TBF none of them were interested in becoming vampires anyway. I gave the Prince a ghast henchman who would also love the Sanguinary Chalice (he thinks it would turn him into a lich) but so far they're not biting. Okey doke. They're not super interested in any of the town quests or plot threads. They did one round in the arena, got some bad crowd response rolls, and started a riot, so that's probably not a thing any more. I can live with this, I guess. One of them did get a girlfriend, who'll be horribly murdered by Tiadora, probably next session. The "make an NPC likable, then fridge them" thing is a hoary cliche, but I haven't done it in a long time, so let's see how it goes.

Now they're meeting Fire-Axe again. We're playing 5e (I'm customizing on the fly), which hasn't been a major problem yet but is about to raise a few complications.

1) In 5e terms, Raiju is an ogre mage. 5e ogre mages are too weak to be useful to a 10th level party. I can customize him up to be useful, but is there another 5e monster that might fill the same niche?

2) Same issue with the medusa. (Dangit, 5e needs templates.) I'm keeping her a medusa but I need a cool way to give her a power-up. Again, I could just customize her, but figured I'd ask for suggestions first.

Thanks in advance,

Doug M.

1) In 5e terms, Raiju is an ogre mage. 5e ogre mages are too weak to be useful to a 10th level party. I can customize him up to be useful, but is there another 5e monster that might fill the same niche?

2) Same issue with the medusa. (Dangit, 5e needs templates.) I'm keeping her a medusa but I need a cool way to give her a power-up. Again, I could just customize her, but figured I'd ask for suggestions first.

Thanks in advance,

Doug M.

5e really does need some more templates. So far I've only seen the dracolich. Honestly, customizing them would be easier. Raiju has a samurai's heart, so give him that archetype. The medusa, increase her HD and give her demon powers. Or, take a succubus and give it medusa powers. Or, use the 3PP template that was in the Book of True Evil. Maybe give her straight levels of fighter to bump her up for an appropriate challenge. Hate putting work on you, but it fits the narrative better than just giving different monsters.

I bumped up the Peri a bit and changed some of her feats to be melee oriented. I also focused more on disarming (since my party has a few weapon using people).

THE-FLAME-THAT-SINGS , A PERI

Enjoy and I hope it tears up your players. (I was going to add the advanced template but didn't think it was needed)

Advanced Suchandra, also added Quicked Cure Critical Wounds ;) Suchandra, The-Fire-That-Never-Dies, a phoenix .

I removed the quicked cure crit wounds, because I forgot it had regeneration, but i noticed it doesn't have the grab ability so I gave her snatch :). That'll be very fun.

Any way of giving her quickened dispel magic to shut down the fly spells of those she snatches?

Any way of giving her quickened dispel magic to shut down the fly spells of those she snatches?

Probably the easiest way would be to swap it out with the quickened wall of fire spell.

So just curious to those GMs who have been through the garden of serenity...

When your players start to wander around at first, how do you roleplay that? Do you have a map drawn out that they can get lost on literally or do you mostly just say you're lost?

I ask because I have this map completely done on roll20, and I was thinking of literally allowing the players to walk around and then swap them off the page after about 5 mins (real time). I didn't check myself but is the maze actually able to be completed by looking at it top view or is it all dead ends?

I think it could be fun to watch them scatter around looking for the way out.

Weird, I thought I'd replied a week ago - guess the board farted.

My party has a few fliers, so I described the hedges in the distance as constantly shifting. When they scouted ahead they approached the party from behind, so they decided the trick was to follow a path on foot.

After that I just had two or three large drawings of mazes to drop on the table in various orientations and use for the maze encounters (like the blink dogs and the LN Labyrinth Minotaur that I added Inevitable traits to.)

For the kirin I had a meadow and a collection of My Little Ponys. They kicked ass :D

Did you buff the kirin up? Because I can not see a bunch of CR 7 magic horses being a very tough encounter for level 10+ PCs with probably a gaggle of minions in tow.

Did you buff the kirin up? Because I can not see a bunch of CR 7 magic horses being a very tough encounter for level 10+ PCs with probably a gaggle of minions in tow.

I've never considered them to be a tough encounter. More of a speed bump. However, I did note in one my updates that the kirin have been hit with an errata that this book didn't see at the time (powerful charge should be 2d8+10 not +14). In addition, I suggested giving them magic horseshoes (GM's choice). If they were considered too weak, then making them emperor kirin would be a good idea or using the Forgotten Foes stats instead (CR 13 each).

My party sent a scout ahead, who encountered them in a semicircle opposite him. He wasn't a great liar, and detected as evil, so they gave him one chance to leave. He threw a bomb instead, so they attacked. Three flyby fire breaths and three or four lightning bolts made quite an impression, especially as they were now all flying and out of reach.

The party retreated, rested and buffed before coming back. Also before scouting again, which was a waste of some good buffs (the ponies were gone.) They regretted that when they met the Oracle and Master a few hours later :)

Did I ever mention how my party finished off Ara Mathra? I'd given him 5 greater stained glass golems as (meat) shields, and bumped his SLAs with Greater Invisibility and Firestorm. Did he already have Quickened Mirror Image and Blade Barrier? If not, them too.

Anyhow, after a lengthy battle he ended up on one side of the blade barrier, menacing the party cleric when the necromancer cast harm, and delivered it by throwing his graveling familiar through the blade barrier, followed by a critical touch attack!

240 damage!

Even after his save, Ara Mathra was on 1 hp, so he necromancer commanded his minotaur skeleton to hack him down. Which it did, by reaching through the blade barrier!

Awesome finish, and thoroughly wicked.

Ara Mathra also tried twice to plane shift the vampire hexblade off to heaven, but he saved twice :-)

In the ten or so rounds of combat over two nights the amount of magic reached record levels:

Firestorm, repulsion, greater teleport, mass resist energy, greater invisibility, quickened mirror image, heal, harm, three cloudkills, black tentacles, spirit wall, two holy words, two greater dispels, two banishments, dispel good, panacea, mislead, stone body, two offensive plane shifts, true seeing, spectral hand, forbiddance, (3.5) undead torch, spectral hand, and some sort of sonic damage on a weapon.

I probably missed some!

Damn, that sounds like an epic fight! The fight took 2 nights in RL?

I can't find greater stained glass golems on Nethys or d20pfsrd. Did you just slap an advanced template on a normal golem or what?

I can't find greater stained glass golems on Nethys or d20pfsrd. Did you just slap an advanced template on a normal golem or what?

They’re a suggestion I made on my blog. You can either take a standard glass golem from Bestiary 2 and make them Advanced, or you can purchase the Construct Codex from Legendary Games which has the stained glass and greater stained glass golems (knights), or you convert and advanced the HD on the 3.5 version from Forgotten Realms.

For anyone interested, there are 3 Stained Glass golem pawns in the Hells Rebels pawn set. And one ordinary glass golem in Bestiary 2 pawn box.

WagnerSika wrote:

I can't find greater stained glass golems on Nethys or d20pfsrd. Did you just slap an advanced template on a normal golem or what?

They’re a suggestion I made on my blog. You can either take a standard glass golem from Bestiary 2 and make them Advanced, or you can purchase the Construct Codex from Legendary Games which has the stained glass and greater stained glass golems (knights), or you convert and advanced the HD on the 3.5 version from Forgotten Realms.

Just realized I forgot to add the variant link for Pathfinder's glass golems to make them stained glass. Doesn't increase the CR at all, just makes them stealthier.

Have to drop a few guys with this bloodline in the vale somewhere! The solar bloodline should make an appearance somewhere too.

Have to drop a few guys with this bloodline in the vale somewhere! The solar bloodline should make an appearance somewhere too.

I haven't really had a lot of time to scan through Heroes of Golarion. I was mostly fixated on the new variation of the wyrwood and what it's racial point value was.

Those are solid ideas though. Gonna take some work to build though. Best of luck.

I was thinking a couple of these guys behind the shield archons and maybe replace two of the clerics with two sorcerers. Both cast flaming sphere and use their move actions to heal one guy per round. Cast offensive spells with the standard. Hell, they could cast one sphere each round until they run out of level 2 slots so each warrior has his own 3d6/2 per round healing sphere. Thats like having fast healing 5.

The Flame-who-sings should have couple of these guys/gals as her companions.

Here are my suggestions for pawns to use in Book 3.
Key:
VC=Villain Codex
NPC= NPC codex
HV=Hells Vengeance
HR=Hells Rebels
WotR= Wrath of the Righteous
MC=Monster Codex
B1,B2,B3,B4,B5,B6=Bestiaries
RoA=Ruins of Azlant
IS=Inner Sea Box
PFS=Pathfinder Society
SM=Summon Monster
SA=Strange Aeons
RoW=Reign of Winter
CotCT=Curse of the Crimson Throne
WftC=War for the Crown
II=Ironfang Invasion
GS=Giantslayer
RotRL=Return of the Runelords
SS=Shattered Star
S&S=Skulls & Shackles
MM=Mummys Mask
IG=Iron Gods
All entries are (or should be) in format of
NPC name; Pawn name(source),Pawn name (source)
or for monsters
Monster(amount); source(amount of pawns) or alternate pawn with name of monster (amount of pawns)(source)
For example Tritons(4);B2 (2),Merfolk warrior (B1),undine(2) (B2)

Act 1

Oops, noticed that one key is missing. H&V refers to Heroes and Villains pawn set. It does not have any labels or numbers on the pawns which makes identifying them difficult.

Small update since I acquired Enemy Encounters

Act 2

Tyrants grasp set is out with a few decent pawns for this book.

The time for us to continue on the Way of the Wicked is approaching as we prepare to

I like the character of Raiju the Exile. He is said to be full of stories and tales from exotic lands. He loves to tell audacious tales about his travels. Half of which are just fabrication. Did anyone use this aspect of him? I would love to hear your take on his stories.

"Ah my lords, did I ever tell you that it was I who actually caused the Kingdom of Five Rings to collapse? It is true. You see I was hired to assassinate this minor daimyo of the Blue Lotus clan. Everything seemed to go smoothly. I infiltrated the daimyos summer palace,asameshi-mae. What? Oh, it means roughly easy as pie. Gaseous and invisible I crept past dozens of samurai. Strangely, all the samurai were female. I did not think much of this at first. I entered the bedroom and saw the noble couple engaged in rather exotic tantric exercises. *Sigh* Yes Grumblejack, I mean sex. Baka. Anyway, I solidified and struck at the man on top. Unfortunately he moved aside just as my blade was about to pierce him and I killed the woman instead. The man jumped to his feet with an alarmed yell and quick as lightning drew his sword in a masterful feat of iajutsu and cut a deep gash in my leg. At that moment I realized that it was not actually the daimyo at all, but the lord of a rival clan having an affair with the wife of my target! The samurai at the compound were the personal bodyguards of the lady. Just before they rushed in I went invisible and flew to the ceiling. The samurai, seeing their mistress slain and a man with a katana still dripping blood standing there, rushed him and cut him to pieces. Then they committed seppuku for failing their mistress. Of course the whole thing blew into a huge scandal that eventually caused the civil war that consumed the Kingdom. The war still rages to this day you know."

Meet Touched-By-The-Phoenix, a human phoenix bloodline sorcerer.

Sounds like a viable plan. Having that many clerics with the same utilitary spells isn't much of a challenge. This will definitely up the difficulty, or at least balance it out.

Battle of Saintsbridge is over. The fight was long and streched the partys resources to the limit. One PC dropped into negatives, Grumblejack dropped into negatives, one Nessian warhound was killed but brought back with breath of life (have to retcon this though, I just realised that outsiders can not be brought back to life with that spell). Artephius was destroyed. In the end, I did not use the phoenix sorcerer as that would probably been a TPK. I tried to kill Izevel but she turned those attacking her to stone :(

The Master of Serenity supported by Sambaethe kicked my groups asses pretty bad. They did eventually bring them down but the fight was a long one. I built the master up as flowing/qinggong monk using crane style. Every time someone attacked him he tripped them and then kicked them in the face. It was just so great seeing the frustration on the antipaladins face when he was constantly being kicked around like a bean bag lying on the ground. Archer of the group almost nailed the Master doing over 100 damage AFTER the manyshot volley was deflected by him. He used the flame to heal himself and Sambaethe cast wind wall which pretty much neutralized the archer for the rest of the fight. Holy ward was used efficiently and it kept the party mage off for many rounds. When she came online she turned the tables by managing to Boneshatter the Master to exhaustion. This one fight took about 5 hours real time :D

All the major fights have been long and hard but fun. The phoenix would have killed them, but during the fight they stumbled on his nest and realized they could threaten the eggs to get him to back off.

The Master of Serenity supported by Sambaethe kicked my groups asses pretty bad. They did eventually bring them down but the fight was a long one. I built the master up as flowing/qinggong monk using crane style. Every time someone attacked him he tripped them and then kicked them in the face. It was just so great seeing the frustration on the antipaladins face when he was constantly being kicked around like a bean bag lying on the ground. Archer of the group almost nailed the Master doing over 100 damage AFTER the manyshot volley was deflected by him. He used the flame to heal himself and Sambaethe cast wind wall which pretty much neutralized the archer for the rest of the fight. Holy ward was used efficiently and it kept the party mage off for many rounds. When she came online she turned the tables by managing to Boneshatter the Master to exhaustion. This one fight took about 5 hours real time :D

That's crazy.

You'll have to remember to share that monk build when you get time.

Embarrassingly, I took a closer look at him now and realized there were some bad mistakes in the build. I gave him Greater trip even though he should not qualify for it AND it makes him have one feat too many. Well maybe it is a miracle from Mitra! His hp were a bit too high since he had toughness in the original version. Also, his speed was left unaltered from 70 since flowing monk loses fast movement. In the heat of the battle I forgot to use the feature that replaces it, so it was a wash :D
Only the mistake with Greater trip had any relevant effect on the battle though.You could ditch Blind fight for Dirty fighting and lose Lightning Reflexes to to make him legal I guess. To be honest, he never used his Blind fight feat and had to make like two reflex saves. Important feats for him are Crane wing feats, combat reflexes and tripping stuff. Snatch arrows was to make him live a bit longer against the archer inquisitor, if your group does not have one it is safe feat to drop. Greater bane on an archer with manyshot is sick. I countered his use of greater invisibility with Invisibility purge from Sambaethe. Almost everyone failed their will save vs Sambaethes Sanctuary spell so she was relatively safe for the most of the fight.

But lessons learned, I have to be more careful when building up high level NPCs. Maybe I should get some PC builder stuff like HeroLab or something but I'm not sure I'm willing to lay down so much money :D

Every time he was attacked in melee he used either Redirection to trip and then AoO twice or elusive target to ignore damage. Almost every round only one character attacked him in melee so the swift action limit was not that bad. Sometimes he managed to trip one character with redirection and second with crane riposte. Soon they just tried to attack him lying prone on the ground :D Only after getting tripped twice and almost being kicked to death did Grumblejack remember that he does not need to land to fight. But since, apart from the party cleric, Grumble was the only one to succeed his will save against Sambaethes sanctuary, he concentrated his attacks on her.

Here is the slightly illegal Master of Serenity

I just had a look of Earnan MacCathlain and he is going to be a pushover with all of his 67 hps. One round of arrows from the inquisitor is all that is needed. I think that dropping his str to 10 and raising con to 14 and giving him a belt of con +2 should keep him in the fight for a bit longer. Also he is going to cast a few walls of stone on the way leading to his ritual chamber to give him some time to cast spells before combat. I'll have to go through his spell selection and feats to give him a little edge.

I just had a look of Earnan MacCathlain and he is going to be a pushover with all of his 67 hps. One round of arrows from the inquisitor is all that is needed. I think that dropping his str to 10 and raising con to 14 and giving him a belt of con +2 should keep him in the fight for a bit longer. Also he is going to cast a few walls of stone on the way leading to his ritual chamber to give him some time to cast spells before combat. I'll have to go through his spell selection and feats to give him a little edge.

Could always just give him the Advanced template.

I don't want to raise his CR though. I will have him summon some meat shields while the party is breaking down his walls of stone.
Funny thing is, he could use Greater planar ally to summon a planetar or even a gate archon to lay smack down on the evil doers. The planetar would be tougher than Ara Mathra. It would only cost him 4200 to get one for 15 minutes. A worthy cause like this could mean the planetar would work for free. Unfortunately that would cheapen the fight against Ara Mathra. I think Gary should never have made him able to cast 8th level spells. Hmm, maybe I should knock him down a level and toughen him up with a template or something else.

The group acquired Robert the Rapier as a minion and I'm rebuilding him as an Unchained rogue as you suggest in your blog kevin. I noticed the he has +30 disable device in his description and I'm not sure how he gets it. 11 ranks + 5 trap finding +5 dex + 3 class +2 mw tools gets us to 26. Maybe Gary had him have the Deft hands feat but removed it later but forgot to alter his skills? Also he has disguise at +22 but I get it to 20 with 11 ranks + 2 cha + 3 class skill +4 deceitful. And he has used 1 skill rank too many, even with all favored class bonuses put to skill points.
I think I will go with Acrobatics 11 ranks, Bluff 11, Diplomacy 10, Disable device 11, Disguise 10, Escape artist 10, Intimidate 5, Knowledge local 3, Knowledge nobility 4, Linguistics 2, Perception 10, Sense motive 10, Sleight of hand 2, Stealth 11. That should be 110 points used.
I will ditch his Vital strike feat and give him some more archery skills. He also had bleeding attack rogue talent but bleed is not very useful so I traded it for Stand up to help him get out of sticky situations.
1 Weapon finesse (B), Deceitful, Iron will(H)
2 Rogue talent(Stand up)
3 Point blank shot
4 Rogue talent: Combat trick: Precise shot
5 Stealthy
6 Rogue trick: Resiliency
7 Rapid reload
8 Rogue talent: Trap spotter
9 Deadly aim
10 Rogue talent: slippery mind
11 Improved critical (rapier)

Should I change light crossbow to short bow? That would free one feat for something else. Any suggestions?

PS I will use the phoenix sorcerer in the crypts and replace one of the clerics with him. No sense wasting a generated character :)

The light crossbow can be shot one-handed (-2 penalty of course) whereas a short bow is always two hands. I’d leave it.

As for Ara Mathra, Gary messes up on that build. Add the Advanced template, but don’t increase the CR. It should be about equal to an actual monster of that level. At the same time, you could just do what others have done, and swap his stats out entirely for The Sunlord, which is still CR 15. D20pfsrd has the stats.

Sunlord is cool, but like you said in your blog, he is just not the guy on the front cover :).
I'll tweak his feats some, maybe replace cleave and great cleave with quicken SLA (mirror image) and Iron will to shore up his weak will save. I'll probably give him two stained glass golem minions. As you suggested, I'm giving him the shield and armor he is wearing on the cover. I'm thinking +1 Arrow Deflecting mithril heavy shield and +2 warding mithral breastplate. The warding will annoy the antipaladin and inquisitor who have to renew their smite and judgements on him. It might be some rounds before they even notice :D
Now his AC should be 39, which makes him nearly unhittable by the group if they do not buff like crazy.
But knowing them, they will buff like crazy.

Sunlord is cool, but like you said in your blog, he is just not the guy on the front cover :).

I'll tweak his feats some, maybe replace cleave and great cleave with quicken SLA (mirror image) and Iron will to shore up his weak will save. I'll probably give him two stained glass golem minions. As you suggested, I'm giving him the shield and armor he is wearing on the cover. I'm thinking +1 Arrow Deflecting mithril heavy shield and +2 warding mithral breastplate. The warding will annoy the antipaladin and inquisitor who have to renew their smite and judgements on him. It might be some rounds before they even notice :D
Now his AC should be 39, which makes him nearly unhittable by the group if they do not buff like crazy.
But knowing them, they will buff like crazy.

True. I also mentioned that the archangel template from Tome of Monsters would be a huge benefit too. For convenience, I copy/pasted it from the book to my Google Drive.

EDIT: Just noticed the template link still works on my blog. Wayback Machine for the win. Well, now it's in two locations just to be safe. XD

So it looks like my advice for Ara Mathra might have been a bit high in scale for the rules of 1e Pathfinder. Still, I know some of your will scoff at it because your players can bypass it rather easily. Just shows that power levels don't scale very well in this system.

Slowing getting back into things, so I thought I'd play around with my own advice. Here's the new Ara Mathra and his questionable CR of 16.

Seems to vary a lot between groups. The builds presented by John Hawkins and others would have decimated my group.

The new Ara Mathra is kick ass. Shouldn't his AC be even higher since his breastplate and shield should both become +2? The AC line lists
+6 armor, +6 Dex, +19 natural, +2 shield (+4 deflection vs. evil). It should be +8 armor and +4 shield I think. For a total of 47 and 51 against evil. On top of that the bad guys probably suffer from his aura of menace, further making him harder to hit.
Also his 4th iterative attack is missing.

I am afraid he would be too much for my group who struggled with the leonal and the peri who I used as written in the module.

This version of Ara Mathra would hit any of them with three attacks each round easily. That would be around 90 points of damage each round. Plus they would all be blinded and deafened continually from his Holy Word.

Seems to vary a lot between groups. The builds presented by John Hawkins and others would have decimated my group.

The new Ara Mathra is kick ass. Shouldn't his AC be even higher since his breastplate and shield should both become +2? The AC line lists
+6 armor, +6 Dex, +19 natural, +2 shield (+4 deflection vs. evil). It should be +8 armor and +4 shield I think. For a total of 47 and 51 against evil. On top of that the bad guys probably suffer from his aura of menace, further making him harder to hit.
Also his 4th iterative attack is missing.

I am afraid he would be too much for my group who struggled with the leonal and the peri who I used as written in the module.

This version of Ara Mathra would hit any of them with three attacks each round easily. That would be around 90 points of damage each round. Plus they would all be blinded and deafened continually from his Holy Word.

No, the template only gives +2 to weapons. As per the second sentence "Any other weapon Ara Mathra wields becomes magical". It's a weird title. I'll change it to say weapon instead of equipment, but that was the title given by the template.

Ah, you are right. The book version of Ara has 18 hd so I assumed your version did also. I should have read the stats more carefully, sorry.

Ah, you are right. The book version of Ara has 18 hd so I assumed your version did also. I should have read the stats more carefully, sorry.

All good. Truth be told, it really shouldn’t have 18 HD. Bare bones, Ara Mathra should have the Advanced template for stats and natural armor and increased HD until he has around 230+ hit points. One theory I had was his gear is illusionary or spells. Maybe the wizard or sorcerer template for the shield and instant armor spells. Or a ring of shield. It’s also a thought. Gives the party a chance to dispel the AC boost in that scenario.

WagnerSika wrote:

Sunlord is cool, but like you said in your blog, he is just not the guy on the front cover :).

I'll tweak his feats some, maybe replace cleave and great cleave with quicken SLA (mirror image) and Iron will to shore up his weak will save. I'll probably give him two stained glass golem minions. As you suggested, I'm giving him the shield and armor he is wearing on the cover. I'm thinking +1 Arrow Deflecting mithril heavy shield and +2 warding mithral breastplate. The warding will annoy the antipaladin and inquisitor who have to renew their smite and judgements on him. It might be some rounds before they even notice :D
Now his AC should be 39, which makes him nearly unhittable by the group if they do not buff like crazy.
But knowing them, they will buff like crazy.

True. I also mentioned that the archangel template from Tome of Monsters would be a huge benefit too. For convenience, I copy/pasted it from the book to my Google Drive.

EDIT: Just noticed the template link still works on my blog. Wayback Machine for the win. Well, now it's in two locations just to be safe. XD

Funny enough, on my Google Drive where I put Ara Mathra, I put down what was likely supposed to be Gary's intended build. Even with how powerful mine looks, I realized it's actually not that powerful because of the Great Cleave tactics. At no point is Ara Mathra supposed to attack the same opponent twice. That's wild to me. With armor and shield, Ara Mathra is actually better off with just four levels of fighter, armor, and shield.

Stats would be +4 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con, +0 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha. For armor, it might only look like breastplate, and could actually be +1 ceremonial silken armor.