Simple Build, by no means optimized... (bare-bones version of RageLancePounce)
Barbarian Lvl10; Greater Beast Totem Rage Power, Power Attack, Reckless Abandon
Give him a lance (say, +2), plus Rhino Hide Armor, and a +4 belt of Str.
Str can easily be 20 (at start) + 4 (item) + 2 (Lvl 4+8) + 4 (raging), totaling 30.
Attack pattern now is +27/+22, or +27/+27/+22 when hasted. Power attacking for 3 points, with the Reckless Abandon feat (+3 Attack for -3 AC) leads to +27/+27/+22, for 1d8+2+15(1.5xStr)+9(PA) = 1d8+26.
Now, since he has Pounce, he can deliver a full attack after charging, which (in case of a mounted charge) doubles the lance damage, and adds +2d6 to all damage codes, resulting in 2d8+52+2d6, for an average of 68 points per attack. At a pattern of +27/+27/+22.
Against an AC of 28 (average AC for CR13) , thats 95% / 95% / 70% to hit, or 64.6 + 64.6 + 47.6 = 176.8 HP (before DR, still not counting crits)
If you really want to overdo things, and have some feats to burn, throw Mounted Combat, Ride-By Attack and Spitited Charge into the mix (the latter resulting in doing triple damage on a mounted charge with your lance).
And I haven't even started on alchemical buffs, natural bite attacks and the like.
Lance only deals double damage on a mounted charge, and I'm not sure that can be combined with the barbarian pounce.
Lance only deals double damage on a mounted charge, and I'm not sure that can be combined with the barbarian pounce.
No one hinders you to do this stuff mounted, pounce states 'Full Attack after delivering a charge'.
RAI? Not likely.
RAW? Unfortunately, there's no wording against it.
Nothing stops you from pouncing for full attack after a mounted charge, and nothing stops you from multiplying the lance damage for every single hit. (the safeguard of only delivering one single devastating hit after charging being nixed by the too-open Pounce ability)
How do you get to +27?
I see + 10 BAB + 10 Str +2 Weapon +2 charge=24
And when does he haste?
And how does he use punce if his horse charges?
How does he get the horse in the dungeon?
And whats his damage on round 2?
Sorry, my bad. I mistakenly gave 1.5 x STR to attack, as well (and forgot the +2 for the charge, and the +1 for Haste), so 25/25/20 it is. (Or, 24/19 without Haste)
Haste? Don't underestimate the group. In groups with such a barbarian build, usually there's an Ini + AYK wizard, who will start things with a friendly Haste.
So, (my bad), we're down to a mere 156.4 points (or 91.8 without haste), plus crits, plus possible bite attacks.
About getting his horse into the dungeon? Dunno. Wasn't asked. Things might get a tad easier for a small barbarian on a medium mount (which, of course, will decrease overall damage due to size and lesser STR).
Damage on second round? How much will he need, after delivering quite some oomph to the 150-200 HP guy?
carn, you asked about lvl 10 character having easy game for lvl 13 challenge with "CR 13 encounters are normally not more than 150-200 HPs".
It is fair to assume that it's a party when one talks about CR and if you talk about 150-200 HPs one might think that it's one guy.
A CR13 with 4 people all having 150-200 HP that's one heavy encounter (see the summoner optimized encounter thread).
Perhaps you should be more specific about the parameters, for example
- no party
- x ennemies with y hp
- can't use mount (are the normal APs really constructed to screw the cavalier?)
IMO PF has come to the point where GMs should look out for munchkins and optimizers, with the new splatbooks the difference between a "strong" character and a "weak" are quite big and can lower fun. However the CR-system can just be as easily abused as character optimization.
Alchemist/barbarian can easily throw out that sort of damage at level 10. Between vivesctionist/beastmorph and frankly whichever barb you want you can have 4 claw attacks (2 on legs, if synthesists can do it, so can a alchemist) one bite, and one gore, for 6 attacks (7 hasted) all the claws dealing a 1 1/2 str (dragon style, feral combat), plus sneak attack, with something in the neighbourhood of about 34 strength, while power attacking.
I'm not gonna bother doing the math though, i'm lazy.
Did I mention every single one of those attacks are primary attacks?
(even if you argue that I shouldn't get claws on my legs, I counter with fine I monstrous physique 1 into a chadra.)
There's a lot of confusion over whether you can have multiple Totems, so I would not advocate it. Right now, you are advocating three totems.
Plus, that would need something like 7 feats, and even a human barb/alch can't get that.
Much safer to just use AMY. plus, she comes together at level 3 :-)
There's a lot of confusion over whether you can have multiple Totems, so I would not advocate it. Right now, you are advocating three totems.
Plus, that would need something like 7 feats, and even a human barb/alch can't get that.
Much safer to just use AMY. plus, she comes together at level 3 :-)
Eldritch heritage, IUS, power attack, feral, dragonx2 6 feats.
Just inside what a human can give by level 10
gore is gained from barb 2, nothing else from barb. feral mutagen as a discovery gives the bite and x2 of the claws.
You mean with AMY that alchimist monk build that tries against the rules to apply dragon style - applicable to unarmed strikes - to natural attacks - not being unarmed strikes?
Go ahead and read "feral combat training" which allows you to select a natural attack and apply anything to do with unarmed strikes to that natural attack.
You mean with AMY that alchimist monk build that tries against the rules to apply dragon style - applicable to unarmed strikes - to natural attacks - not being unarmed strikes?
Nope, I meant AMY the 99.9999% RAW and 100% RAI alchemist/monk/fighter.
Please read Feral Combat Training once more. I'm pretty sure I triple checked everything when making her, to ensure it was RAI, as well as RAW.
The only non-RAW bit is giving her two claws without feral mutagen. This is due to the player race option for Changelings mentioning only 1 claw attack. However, the fluff for the ability heavily implies two claws, and to seal the deal, the example Changeling has two claw attacks.
And really, if you're going to be a stickler about being 100% RAW, she's still just as effective, just marginally less so when not in mutagen form.
There's a lot of confusion over whether you can have multiple Totems, so I would not advocate it. Right now, you are advocating three totems.
Plus, that would need something like 7 feats, and even a human barb/alch can't get that.
Much safer to just use AMY. plus, she comes together at level 3 :-)
Eldritch heritage, IUS, power attack, feral, dragonx2 6 feats.
Just inside what a human can give by level 10
gore is gained from barb 2, nothing else from barb. feral mutagen as a discovery gives the bite and x2 of the claws.
Skill Focus (Perception), Eldritch Heritage (Draconic) (3rd level feat, I'm guessing), Weapon Focus (5th level if starting as Alch, 1st otherwise), IUS (1st or 5th level, depending on when taking Weapon Focus), power attack, Stunning Fist, Dragon Style, Dragon Ferocity, Feral Combat Training.
That's 8 feats. If you take a level of Master of Many Styles monk, then it's 5, due to getting IUS, Stunning Fist, and Dragon Style.
But you said barbarian / alchemist, so I assumed you weren't. Plus you only get your claws for about 4 rounds per day. Totally not worth it.
It is my experience concerning this thread, and ones like 'god wizard' etc that there is always rules mistakes or reading into a feat not how it is written, or ignoring content in one section that applies to combat rules etc.
Ragelancepounce(charge) really? never difficult terrain? always plenty of room to use that lance? carry it around? What about that kind of damage/impact damaging the weapon or breaking it all together?
Case in point, I specifically recall 1e rules governing what I was talking about in the above paragraph. (ie space required to wield said weapon etc) but there was one time in 1e where we had a situation where a spiderclimbing thief dropped off a ceiling to backstab a black dragon with a shortsword of dragon slaying. We had to bust out a yahtzee cup for him to roll all the d6s for the damage.
So the situation CAN happen, but not every combat and certainly not every attack in a single round.
I recall rules in the current rule book tat govern such situations, but I prefer not to waste time sitting here arguing over what it says on page 62 vs 137.
Suffice it to say, those situations are always an abuse of the rules as intended or a misuse (or lack of use) of the rules as written, and often times both.
However, if thats your thing, and you like to monty hall your camapaign, and every one is having fun, cool.
Won't see it at my table tho (dropping off the ceiling backstab happened in 1990.... a near similar situation happened last week, with a crit roll on a leaping charge off a bridge, thats twice in 20 years....)
There's a lot of confusion over whether you can have multiple Totems, so I would not advocate it. Right now, you are advocating three totems.
Plus, that would need something like 7 feats, and even a human barb/alch can't get that.
Much safer to just use AMY. plus, she comes together at level 3 :-)
Eldritch heritage, IUS, power attack, feral, dragonx2 6 feats.
Just inside what a human can give by level 10
gore is gained from barb 2, nothing else from barb. feral mutagen as a discovery gives the bite and x2 of the claws.
Skill Focus (Perception), Eldritch Heritage (Draconic) (3rd level feat, I'm guessing), Weapon Focus (5th level if starting as Alch, 1st otherwise), IUS (1st or 5th level, depending on when taking Weapon Focus), power attack, Stunning Fist, Dragon Style, Dragon Ferocity, Feral Combat Training.
That's 8 feats. If you take a level of Master of Many Styles monk, then it's 5, due to getting IUS, Stunning Fist, and Dragon Style.
But you said barbarian / alchemist, so I assumed you weren't. Plus you only get your claws for about 4 rounds per day. Totally not worth it.
Aaaaaaand that's why I shouldn't post late at night.
All the same, dropping the extra half of my strength added to claw attacks isn't a huge difference, pity though.
A few clarifications on Pendagast's posts:
ragelancepounce uses Dragon Style on the mount to get around difficult terrain. That style lets your mount charge through difficult terrain.
I'm 99.999% certain there are no rules about needing the space to use a weapon. The designers were more interested in allowing different combat styles and making them all fun than being simulationist. At the very least, searching the combat chapter for "size" and "too small" and reading the surrounding text of all such occurrences shows no rules of that.
There are rules for squeezing into space too small for your character, and they inflict a -4 penalty to hit. It makes no mention of your character's weapons, so ruling that it takes into consider your weapon is in the realm of house rules.
There are no rules for weapons breaking due to damage inflicted.
It is my experience concerning this thread, and ones like 'god wizard' etc that there is always rules mistakes or reading into a feat not how it is written, or ignoring content in one section that applies to combat rules etc.
Ragelancepounce(charge) really? never difficult terrain? always plenty of room to use that lance? carry it around? What about that kind of damage/impact damaging the weapon or breaking it all together?
Case in point, I specifically recall 1e rules governing what I was talking about in the above paragraph. (ie space required to wield said weapon etc) but there was one time in 1e where we had a situation where a spiderclimbing thief dropped off a ceiling to backstab a black dragon with a shortsword of dragon slaying. We had to bust out a yahtzee cup for him to roll all the d6s for the damage.
So the situation CAN happen, but not every combat and certainly not every attack in a single round.I recall rules in the current rule book tat govern such situations, but I prefer not to waste time sitting here arguing over what it says on page 62 vs 137.
Suffice it to say, those situations are always an abuse of the rules as intended or a misuse (or lack of use) of the rules as written, and often times both.
However, if thats your thing, and you like to monty hall your camapaign, and every one is having fun, cool.
Won't see it at my table tho (dropping off the ceiling backstab happened in 1990.... a near similar situation happened last week, with a crit roll on a leaping charge off a bridge, thats twice in 20 years....)
The only mistakes in this thread so far, is that I forget about the prerequisites for two of my feats. It lowered my overall calculations by about +6 damage per attack (maybe +7). I can see you aren't interested in arguing, so I will say simply over 2 threads with close too 2000 posts I'm sure some-one might have noticed some of those rules you vaguely recall reading at some point.
I apologise if I'm coming across a bit aggressively, I've just spent a lot of time telling people who seem to think they know better, that they in fact do not, and it gets tiresome.
I would challenge you to find an a situation where you can use a lance to make multiple attacks on the same target in the same combat action.
I could see say, in a charge hitting more than one target in the same line of travel (there is a feat for that i think?) But making multiple attacks on the same target, with a lance, in the same 4-6 second instance? That would be abusing rules, as intended, for a feat specifically and originally designed for a cat-like monster leaping into combat and hitting with claws and teeth (or a swooping dragon or bird or whatever).
I specifically stated that space requirements for weapons were in the 1e rules set. (thats first edition if youve never seen it).
But if you think you barbarian is going to wander in and out of cities, doorways, dungeons and every nook and crany with that lance? That's not going to happen at my table. (thats like the amazon player who ALWAYS said she was wearing her gauntlets of ogre power even when sleeping and bathing, ALWAYS. she ended up getting hit by a rod of withering in a battle but never knew it (old school 1e rules the bracers gave you a constant 18/00 str) so the one time the group was captured and the item was taken from her deliberately, she had a 3 str do deal with, because she never got the withering state magically repaired.)
What about hardness and Hp of a lance? IRL lances broke on impact all the time, when you are leaping off the battlement of a castle and smacking that lance into say a plate armored ogre or the hide of a dragon or whatever you are smacking into and rolling that kind of damage, there ARE rules for weapon breakage. 100s of points of damage? yea you are gonna snap that lance. Do you have a page following you around with more lances? RL knights did.
Your crawling on your hands and knees, here come a band of goblins in your face, do you really expect to wield that polearm? This is however a roleplaying game, you interact with the world around you, that could be goblins, or the fact that you are crawling in a 4' diameter tunnel and you have a 7' long weapon..... or it could be you are battling on a slippery and muddy hillside during a rainstorm?
The rules for all these things were written by Gary Gygax in 1977, however people like Bulhman and others have decided that, in the better part of not charging us an extra 20$ for the 40 more pages of rules set that have been already printed elsewhere and rarely used, they instead wrote the most important rule, and put it on page 9.
IF you want to do 100 damage with your ragelancepounce, thats fine, I'm going to see that lance take damage and either break or be in need of repair, or laugh while your collect hirelings to follow you through dungeons carrying your replacement gear (not like players havent done that before) But my point is, it's all in good fun.
Last session my barbarian player made a leaping charge (has beast totem) while raged from a precarious rope bridge, in a cross wind, I had him make his acrobatics check with the appropriate check (i think I ruled he needed a 27) then had him make an attack roll which he critted. We pulled a card from crit deck which stated hand amputation.
The barbarian had been using one hand to hold onto the rope bridge and the other had a rope of climbing in it, so his attack was a charging bite (he's toothy).
I also ruled however since he was leaping/charging that he had to continue the movement, and the target had been standing on an outcropping with his back to a cliff, so the player had three choices.
a) make a backflip (acrobatics) to do a "jackie chan" style run up the wall and land on the outcropping alongside the bad guy, b) make a grapple check and try to run off the cliff with the bad guy and both would take fall damage, or c) slam into the cliff behind the target, take damage from impact and make a fort save vs amount of impact damage to avoid dizziness/stun, however, target would take additional damage from impact/tackle and have to make a fort save as well.
Player opted for c.
Regardless of any feats that the player had, there was still a mountain he was going to run into. I gave him choices on how to deal with it, he ended up smacking his face into the mountain and failing his fort save and falling off the cliff face (the enemy made his save) and getting caught by the witches web spell.
All good fun.
Had he been using a lance, I would have calculated damage for it running through target and into wall behind, and I bet you that would have broken said lance.
My wife spent two game sessions running around with two rusted katanas due to a battle with rust monsters.
It's all part of the fun, but her damage wasnt optimized either.
thats all Im saying.
Holy. Crap.
Ok, it's a MAGIC lance. NOT just a stick.
Do you just hate fun or something? as far as I can tell everything you've mentioned is basically "Oh your not a caster? WELL in that case you must follow all these arbitrary rules I've made up so that you'd be following the physical rules of the world I exist in where magic doesn't exist"
Not only do these require a level of verisimilitude ruining accuracy than I would ever put up with but you aren't even taking something simple like, oh I don't know, making everyone feel like they are useful?
As for space rules, look I can tell straight up you have probably tried to move house at some point, so here's my answer to that. How fun is it trying to fit your wardrobe through a door and upstairs? Oh it's not? Then why are yo including it in a game for fun?
I get it, people rolling lots of dice can skew the perception, I actually banned people getting sneak attack on anything except the first attack till some-one made me do the math. Maybe you should just trust the people getting PAID to do this might possibly, know more about what works, and what doesn't, than you.
EDIT:- I almost feel I should delete this post. I was talking on the spur of the moment, but I don't believe in pretending mistakes didn't happen so unless I'm told it isn't appropriate I will leave it here.
Further edit:- removed inappropriate references.
A few clarifications on Pendagast's posts:
ragelancepounce uses Dragon Style on the mount to get around difficult terrain. That style lets your mount charge through difficult terrain.
I'm 99.999% certain there are no rules about needing the space to use a weapon. The designers were more interested in allowing different combat styles and making them all fun than being simulationist. At the very least, searching the combat chapter for "size" and "too small" and reading the surrounding text of all such occurrences shows no rules of that.
There are rules for squeezing into space too small for your character, and they inflict a -4 penalty to hit. It makes no mention of your character's weapons, so ruling that it takes into consider your weapon is in the realm of house rules.
There are no rules for weapons breaking due to damage inflicted.
So the mount has dragon style, or you're somehow making Dragon Style also count for your mount?
Pounce.
I wasn't going to bring it up before, but come on man. You rail against deliberately ignoring sections of the rules to allow for builds such as ragelancepounce. And then you make up two rules for why it doesn't work? (not having room to use it, and shattering on impact)
In Pathfinder, there are no rules for weapons taking damage when attacking, except against a few rare monsters such as the Black Pudding. If you want to break the weapon, you sunder it.
No sane GM would allow ragelancepounce. But it is an exercise in breaking the game with RAW.
And it does that fabulously.
And NeverNever, there's no reason to call out someone's age.
Pounce.
I wasn't going to bring it up before, but come on man. You rail against deliberately ignoring sections of the rules to allow for builds such as ragelancepounce. And then you make up two rules for why it doesn't work? (not having room to use it, and shattering on impact)
In Pathfinder, there are no rules for weapons taking damage when attacking, except against a few rare monsters such as the Black Pudding. If you want to break the weapon, you sunder it.
No sane GM would allow ragelancepounce. But it is an exercise in breaking the game with RAW.
And it does that fabulously.
And NeverNever, there's no reason to call out someone's age.
Yes I apologise, I was trying to reference he was mature enough to have experienced the horror of trying to move a large object through a small space. I should have been clearer about that.
Back in the late 90s, I used to rule things like "no you cant ragelancepounce" but another player brought up to me at the game table, why dont you just come up with a difficulty and allow him to TRY doing the insane thing he wants to do. Ever since then, instead of saying "no" i've simply added in the factors of why it would be insanely hard to do what it is the player is trying to accomplish.
So magic weapons dont break? Where did you get that amazing revelation?
I occasionally play DDO(dungeons and dragons online (which uses essentially 3.5 rules) heck my magic weapons are breaking ALL the time there (usually swords hitting skeletons).
I believe I mentioned fun several times in my posts, and not to mention, when the cavalier was being play tested, I was the one who was riding my mount INSIDE dungeons, upstairs and other things, as well as proving you can leave your horse behind and still be quite useful in combat. (it was a half orc on a horse, on a halfling on a dog).
Sure it required some decent ride checks (which the cavalier has decent ride checks) and yes there were several situations where my horse wouldnt fit or go (there was something we had to climb and go inside of). I was also the one, through two judicious uses of spiderclimb (courtesy of another party member) who rode up a wall and charged a giant bat.
All of that fun.
Had the situation been different, and an enemy caster was about to cast dispel magic on my spider climb, that could have been quite disastrous. (and also fun)
In truth most of the APs ive played from Pathfinder have had TONS of room in almost every situation for a horse, you don't think there is, until you try it. (My samurai rode all over the place in Serpents skull)
btw as a side note kiting enemies with mounted archery, and horse movement his tons of fun if you havent tried)
Also (in serpents skull) the samurais horse was killed by an oracle, and then turned into a zombie at which point he used the samurais horse (now undead) to make a getaway with.
So what Im trying to point out is thing like ragelancepounce are not automatic (can't kite enemies with no horse) or usable in every situation and preventable depending on enemy and terrain.
Your definition of "fun" is how do I take rules to make an "i win" button, and by further definition, any DM who counters that is unfairly "making up rules" to ruin your fun.
Again I turn your attention to page 9 of the core rulebook, and the most important rule, as well as draw your attention to the copious amounts of information on hardness and hp of items and substances like steel, wood, and stone. All of which have been written, and quoted on these forums by people who get paid to write the rules for the game.
I also may add that all of these fellows are around my age, have played the game as long as I have, recall and remember these rules of older editions that I mention, and use them at their own tables. It is for this reason, that i remember during the Beta of this game. That JB included the rule on page 9, specifically BECAUSE he didnt want to charge us extra for an already lengthy book, simply to reprint already existing rules that were already on most of the players shelves.
And for those of you who aren't "old" enough to recall, those players who run rampant through a book looking for rules to exploit, and have a hissy fit when the DM tries to assert things like gravity, space to wield a weapon, or weapon breakage; are called rules lawyers, and most people won't play with them.
It is the job, responsibility and privilege of a DM to make calls and use adhoc rules from some dusty tome that the people at paizo had the brilliance to NOT charge us to reprint, mostly due to the fact that they don't come up often enough to ding our pocket books for.
But item breakage is most definitely a rule they did include in pathfinder, so read the whole book. Not just the parts you like.
Back in the late 90s, I used to rule things like "no you cant ragelancepounce" but another player brought up to me at the game table, why dont you just come up with a difficulty and allow him to TRY doing the insane thing he wants to do. Ever since then, instead of saying "no" i've simply added in the factors of why it would be insanely hard to do what it is the player is trying to accomplish.
So magic weapons dont break? Where did you get that amazing revelation?
I occasionally play DDO(dungeons and dragons online (which uses essentially 3.5 rules) heck my magic weapons are breaking ALL the time there (usually swords hitting skeletons).
I believe I mentioned fun several times in my posts, and not to mention, when the cavalier was being play tested, I was the one who was riding my mount INSIDE dungeons, upstairs and other things, as well as proving you can leave your horse behind and still be quite useful in combat. (it was a half orc on a horse, on a halfling on a dog).
Sure it required some decent ride checks (which the cavalier has decent ride checks) and yes there were several situations where my horse wouldnt fit or go (there was something we had to climb and go inside of). I was also the one, through two judicious uses of spiderclimb (courtesy of another party member) who rode up a wall and charged a giant bat.
All of that fun.
Had the situation been different, and an enemy caster was about to cast dispel magic on my spider climb, that could have been quite disastrous. (and also fun)
In truth most of the APs ive played from Pathfinder have had TONS of room in almost every situation for a horse, you don't think there is, until you try it. (My samurai rode all over the place in Serpents skull)
btw as a side note kiting enemies with mounted archery, and horse movement his tons of fun if you havent tried)
Also (in serpents skull) the samurais horse was killed by an oracle, and then turned into a zombie at which point he used the samurais horse (now undead) to make a getaway with....
Btw I play melee characters, I don't get to play casters. So no, I dont favor casters.