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I'm interested in getting my Kuthite Hungry Ghost Monk an Amulet of Mighty Fists that grants her attacks the vicious property. However, that is of course a risky thing to do, especially since she's not the most resilient Monk out there. The amulet's magic can't be suppressed, can it? Barring that, are there any particular tricks or tools I could employ to take it off in combat in as easy, safe, and graceful a manner as possible when I start to feel like I'm in too much jeopardy?
You're safest when your opponent is dead. The Vicious damage boost is a big help with that.
If you're at the point where you can't afford to take 1d6 damage, maybe you should be retreating, going Total Defense, or similar.
I've wondered about that. I wanted to make a character who had a set of Bane amulets for different types of opponents and would switch to the correct one at the start of a battle.
with quick draw you can draw a "weapon" as a free action instead of as a move action. You can draw a hidden/secured weapon (see the Sleight of Hand skill) as a move action.
A character who has selected the quick draw feat may throw "weapons" at his full normal rate of attacks (much like a character with a bow). I take this to mean Matthew Downie could throw all of his bane amulets like daggers. (only half joking)
[sidetrack] Wait, why does that actually sound cool?
If I make a reference to disc-golf would anyone get it? Take out foe w/ a staccato of Frisbee's?
Ah, the rub. MELEE only for vicious. [/sidetrack]
only Alchemical items, potions, scrolls, and wands cannot be drawn quickly using this feat.
Normally without quick draw feat, you may draw a "weapon" as a move action, or (if your base attack bonus is +1 or higher) as a free action with part of movement action. Without this feat, you can draw a hidden (secured) weapon as a standard action.
see if your GM will allow you to apply quick draw toward items.
I actually asked my GM recently what kind of action it would take to take my Mnemonic Vestment off and put my backup Mnemonic Vestment on (in case I need two unusual casts in a single combat for whatever reason). I thought, since it's a robe, it should take the same actions to don/remove as an Armored Coat. He ruled that in the unlikely event I need to do this, a full round action would be sufficient to swap them.
Vicious is better used when you are a char that do a lot of damage per hit but few f
Hits per round. That is: the opposite of a monk.
But if you make a lot of attacks, like, say, 4 attacks, or 6, you take 4d6 or 6d6 damage per round.. 1d6 per turn for your vicious Lance in a cavalier is susteinable (especially with fast healing or similar options). I'd rather do 100 damage in one hit, and take 1d6, than do 25 damage per hit 4 times, and take 4d6 damage.
If I were asked on changing an amulet? I think it's somewhat similar in effort to loading a crossbow or readying a shield, but just awkward enough that you're at a disadvantage. Move action, provoke attack of opportunity sound fair? It's not as simple as a weapon, but you're not undoing plate armour either.
As far as dealing with Vicious? I forgot how that wreck of a thread ended up. Worst case, keep an eye on your HP.
I've only used Vicious once. In 3.x when I made a bounty hunter. They had a Holy Vicious Merciful greatsword, so they could roll lots of d6. Because of merciful, all damage done by the weapon was subdual, including the backlash from Vicious.
Outside of that circumstance, or an extremely generous DM who ruled that DR/- blocked the backlash, I doubt I'd ever use it.
The only method I've heard is through DR. Invulnerable barbarians do a good job with that.
It's disruptive negative energy. DR doesn't help against energy damage. Being inmune to negative energy (like a undead) would help, though.
This feat could help: necromantic affinity, depending on your GM read on it (and/or his read on vicious weapon negative damage)
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How about dipping Unbreakable Fighter, snagging Fast Healer as a feat, and throwing on some Boots of the Earth?
It's generally considered to be untyped energy damage.
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Yeah, my reading is that it can't be resisted.
I should probably save it as pipe dream for much higher levels when her Hungry Ghost powers can help compensate for the backlash, or maybe I'll hand the matter over to my Magus or Cavalier (I've also got an idea for a Fighter for whom it would work well, but the character concept requires I be able to make a Tiefling).
Hmm, doesn't explicitly say 'negative energy' in the description as far as I can tell. If it were, then presumably Death Ward would make you immune to the damage.The only method I've heard is through DR. Invulnerable barbarians do a good job with that.It's disruptive negative energy. DR doesn't help against energy damage. Being inmune to negative energy (like a undead) would help, though.
This feat could help: necromantic affinity, depending on your GM read on it (and/or his read on vicious weapon negative damage)
You are right, I re-read it and it says "disruptive energy", untyped. So it's not easy to gain inmunity to that
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To me, the vicious enchantment exists for characters with fast healing or temp hp buffers. Inquisitors can make great use of it in combination with the Healing judgement, as can Unchained Barbarians now, and it's nice on certain models of eidolon or familiars.
For everyone else, the idea behind vicious is the same as the Come And Get Me barbarian or the Broken Wing Gambit team: you take a little extra damage on purpose to save yourself a lot of extra damage on enemy attacks. If +2d6 damage lets you kill that orc one round sooner, that's one round less of 1d12+4 hits, so the 1d6 you deal to yourself is a net gain.
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Your monk could always attack with a weapon instead of making unarmed vicious attacks. If you've got the coin get yourself a defending temple sword. Mix up vicious unarmed attacks with sword attacks. Benefit from defending AC boost as long as you make at least one sword attack as part of your flurry.
But if you make a lot of attacks, like, say, 4 attacks, or 6, you take 4d6 or 6d6 damage per round.. 1d6 per turn for your vicious Lance in a cavalier is susteinable (especially with fast healing or similar options). I'd rather do 100 damage in one hit, and take 1d6, than do 25 damage per hit 4 times, and take 4d6 damage.
Except Vicious scales perfectly with the number of attacks you make. You'd be dealing 107 (with vicious) and taking 3.5 yourself in one hit, or, you'd be dealing 32 four times (128 damage) and 14 yourself in four hits.
The damage is proportional. More attacks means you take more damage, but also that you deal more damage.
In my game, the vicious damage is not resistable. (I seem to recall that this was a feature of the 3.5 version, but I'm too lazy to look it up) Otherwise it's simply too good a choice for anybody with DR/-.
+1 to supervillain's idea of having vicious on a monk weapon.
Wouldn't merciful make the damage from vicious enchantment no lethal damage to the enemy though?
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Wouldn't merciful make the damage from vicious enchantment no lethal damage to the enemy though?Yeah but you still get dropped if you take enough nonlehal equal to your hit points. From what i remember you can also turn it on/off.
There's the real question; can I will it to "turn off" when I want, and how much effort would that take?
There's the real question; can I will it to "turn off" when I want, and how much effort would that take?Wouldn't merciful make the damage from vicious enchantment no lethal damage to the enemy though?Yeah but you still get dropped if you take enough nonlehal equal to your hit points. From what i remember you can also turn it on/off.
It takes a standard action and a command word to suppress merciful.
But if you make a lot of attacks, like, say, 4 attacks, or 6, you take 4d6 or 6d6 damage per round.. 1d6 per turn for your vicious Lance in a cavalier is susteinable (especially with fast healing or similar options). I'd rather do 100 damage in one hit, and take 1d6, than do 25 damage per hit 4 times, and take 4d6 damage.Except Vicious scales perfectly with the number of attacks you make. You'd be dealing 107 (with vicious) and taking 3.5 yourself in one hit, or, you'd be dealing 32 four times (128 damage) and 14 yourself in four hits.
The damage is proportional. More attacks means you take more damage, but also that you deal more damage.
But 3.5 in 107 is roughly 3% damage back, while 14 in 128 is roughly 11% damage back. You deal more, but you take back proportionally much more
But 3.5 in 107 is roughly 3% damage back, while 14 in 128 is roughly 11% damage back. You deal more, but you take back proportionally much moreBut if you make a lot of attacks, like, say, 4 attacks, or 6, you take 4d6 or 6d6 damage per round.. 1d6 per turn for your vicious Lance in a cavalier is susteinable (especially with fast healing or similar options). I'd rather do 100 damage in one hit, and take 1d6, than do 25 damage per hit 4 times, and take 4d6 damage.Except Vicious scales perfectly with the number of attacks you make. You'd be dealing 107 (with vicious) and taking 3.5 yourself in one hit, or, you'd be dealing 32 four times (128 damage) and 14 yourself in four hits.
The damage is proportional. More attacks means you take more damage, but also that you deal more damage.
If you are looking at vicious, you should look at damage done BY vicious and damage received FROM vicious only. Damage done by other sources has 0 impact on damage done/received by vicious.
It is 2d6/1d6 for one attack and 8d6/4d6 for four attacks. Hence, it is always proportional to (roughly) 50% of the damage dealt.
What I think the argument meant was that if you have a single/few hit/s that do a lot of damage, Vicious is decent since you will not receive much damage but increase the chances of dropping the enemy. If you have many low-damage attacks, Vicious is a bad investment since it'll kill you both.
Edit: right, sort of reonforcing your comment here, the use of the word proportionally threw me off.
Exactly that.
The vicious enchantment itself does you half the danage it does to the enemy, regardless of number of attacks. Bit if you do a lot of small hits, a higher % of your damage come from it, and thus a higher % of your oponent health is reflected to you.
As an example, exagerated to make it more obvious, imagine some build that does 20 attacks that do only 1 damage per hit. Vicious would do 140 damage to the enemy (+20 from normal damage), but 70 damage to you. That's more damage than a single attack doing 107 and 3.5 to you, but it's not really desirable . To kill a 300hp dragón, you would kill yourself as well (not even counting the damage the dragón itself does). Doing 10 attacks at 8 damage each would mean roughly same damage to the enemy, but 35 to you.
Frankly, if you're a build that can land 20 hits but only deals one damage per, you'd better get vicious on your attacks and find some way to deal with the damage, because you'll never cut it otherwise.
...literally or figuratively ;)
I think, actually, the enchantment is the more desirable the less damage you do otherwise. But then, that's true of most damage boosts.
I'm interested in getting my Kuthite Hungry Ghost Monk an Amulet of Mighty Fists that grants her attacks the vicious property. However, that is of course a risky thing to do, especially since she's not the most resilient Monk out there. The amulet's magic can't be suppressed, can it? Barring that, are there any particular tricks or tools I could employ to take it off in combat in as easy, safe, and graceful a manner as possible when I start to feel like I'm in too much jeopardy?
It'd be better to get a Body Wrap of Vicious (3000 gp) so it does it 1/rd or based on BAB when BAB grants more.
That was how I dealt with it when I played Vitalist Monk.
Using Steal health (1/rd) I pay for vicious easily. Later when I have multiple BAb, I'll need Steal health to maintain health as vicious will start hurting.
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My CaGM barb uses vicious to nasty effect. Of course having a raging Con of 30 helps to mitigate the in combat issues. My feeling has always been that the quicker I can end combat the better everyone is. As long as I survive, I am willing to trade HP for less combat rounds.
In the end, the best way to handle vicious is with a big stinking pile of CLW wands.
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I'm interested in getting my Kuthite Hungry Ghost Monk an Amulet of Mighty Fists that grants her attacks the vicious property. However, that is of course a risky thing to do, especially since she's not the most resilient Monk out there. The amulet's magic can't be suppressed, can it? Barring that, are there any particular tricks or tools I could employ to take it off in combat in as easy, safe, and graceful a manner as possible when I start to feel like I'm in too much jeopardy?It'd be better to get a Body Wrap of Vicious (3000 gp) so it does it 1/rd or based on BAB when BAB grants more.
That was how I dealt with it when I played Vitalist Monk.
Using Steal health (1/rd) I pay for vicious easily. Later when I have multiple BAb, I'll need Steal health to maintain health as vicious will start hurting.
I just really saw and 'got' this. This looks ideal. Thanks!
In PF you can mitigate the Vicious enchant with Vampiric. Total of +3 bonus.
In 3.5, I had finally got something lie this for my weapon. Then the campaign ended. Sigh. I could sacrifice 10 hp to do and extra 5d6, as well as some other buffs for more d6 damage. The Wrathful Healing (+3) enchantment healed me of 1/2 damage dealt. Definitely worth it.
/cevah
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In PF you can mitigate the Vicious enchant with Vampiric. Total of +3 bonus.
I know. That would have been great in 3.5, but Pathfinder's version is a pathetic mockery of 3.5's Vampiric property. 3/day will hardly do.
Bear in mind this is for a Hungry Ghost Monk, who can do vampiric healing/temporary hit points her own way (or will soon enough).