MordredofFairy |
Heya...
The text for skill sage reads:
Skill Sage(Ex): As a free action, the ranger can roll twice on any one skill check and take the better result. He must have at least 1 rank in that skill to use this ability.
Now, the daily limit is 1/2 ranger level+WIS modifier.
Still it seems weird that you can use it for basically any skill(mostly would do so if you don't have time to take 20, or you can't take 10...that kind of stuff.)
Basically it feels a lot better than blowing a rogue talent for a once/day +1/5 levels reroll limited to one fixed skill(charmer e.g.)...a rogue blowing a talent on this can get 3 diplomacy(e.g.) rerolls at level 10.
A Ranger can get 5+Wis rerolls on any skill he wants.
Now, i was wondering if a ranger "dip" would be nicer with those archetypes.
Going in for 5 Levels you can pickup skill sage, 2 times per day an instant favored enemy at +4/+4 from guide, terrain bond, +5 BaB(for potential prestige classes...horizon walker works nice with terrain bond), plenty of skills and HP, and one combat style feat(going to level 6 means +1 all saves and another combat style feat).
The "instant favored enemy" would add well into later levels and skill sage, while probably limited in its daily uses to about 2-4 applications, will often last for the day.
It feels like quite an ideal jump-start to many of the prestige classes that would otherwise feel poorly because so many class abilites are designed to scale with leveling(think weapon/armor training, or good rage powers, etc...). These abilities seem good, contained in themselves, and well applicable no matter what path you go down.
So far i've tried an arcane archer build, an assassin(skill sage on stealth helps...), dragon disciple, duelist, eldritch knight, horizon walker, master spy(again, skill sage rocks...), chronicler, shadowdancer and stalwart defender.
While not always OPTIMAL, they all turned out to be pretty solid builds with a good bonus from the ranger goodies.
Obviously not for casters, but if you ever wanted to play a one of the above-mentioned...
whats peoples opinions on this? Any other favorites for playing around with not staying core class? (as i see it, "one glove fits all" in that you want boni that stay useful and take them with you into whatever prestige class you go to. A Barbarians Rage, e.g. can be useful, as can sneak attack. in both cases, not going for powergaming, i was less impressed than with the ranger, though. Maybe the abundance of skill checks in our games makes me biased, though. And as always, the usefulness of "x times per day" skills depends a lot on the adventure/DM)
Sorry for the unstructured post, i'd elaborate on my thought process, but it's quite late/early and i'm getting rather sleepy.
StabbittyDoom |
I'm pretty sure that the main difference is that the Skill Sage ability shares its use pool with all other skirmisher abilities, whereas the rogue talent gets its own pool.
My personal favorite multi-class option is Druid X/Monk 2. Get evasion, unarmed strike, some good saves, great AC boost, etc from the monk levels, then still get 9th level spells at high level. On top of this, you get to add your main casting stat to your AC while wildshaped (which already tends to net you very nice AC). Then again, you're stuck firmly at Lawful Neutral.
Funny enough, you could iterative unarmed strike then throw in natural attacks on top of that (treating the natural attacks as secondary and taking TWFing penalties for the unarmed strikes).
Phasics |
Currently Looking at a mix of
Guide Ranger for 11 levels
Cleric for 1 level (for domain powers)
Horizon Walker 3+ levels (for ddoor maybe more)
and 5 more levels of something above or another dip
Guide Ranger 11 looks like a nice sweet spot for the class varient, 10 also works as does 15 and 16. (and 5 is also a good break point, hell even 1 level dip for +2 attack dmg as swift aint bad either)
the best part about this build is that you don't need to spend speific weapon feats to improve attack/dmg meaning you can readily use looted weapons and be very effective.
some stand outs from cleric domains that do not need cleric levels to be good
+10 land speed
swift enlarge person 3+WIS/day
immediate 10 foot teleport when attacker misses 3+WIS/day
Horizon Walker imho should be taken for 3, 6 or 9 level since the dominance powers are by far the most powerful part of the class. capstone is bleh.
so yeah ranger and horizon walker make great level fillers for multclassing