iroran paladin w / chakras?

[ohako]

Chakras. Aren't they great?

1. Spend your swift action every round.
2. Spend a ki point every round.
3. Succeed at both a Fort and a Will save every round or become screwed.
4. Do all that, and you get some pretty wacky powers: DR, flight, true seeing, fiery breath, mass manipulation of d20s, etc.

So. A challenge?

Say hello to Iroran Paladin

1. You get good Fort and Will saves, plus divine grace
2. You get a ki pool
3. You get a stack of powers that key off of Cha, and the chakra saves are boosted by your Cha (not sure if that stacks with divine grace).
4. At high levels you get aura of perfection, which if you manage to use it and have your crown chakra open, gives you 3 d20s to make good with.

Here's a feat list

1 Psychic Sensitivity
3 ???
5 Chakra Initiate
7 ???
9 Chakra Adept
11 ???

Psychic Sensitivity is kind of a feat tax, so you might want to roll human. On the other hand, you're going to need sky-high saving throws, so halfling or half-orc might make a better choice.

So there's 3 feats free (possibly 4). Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Extra Ki? Or something else? Maybe roll half-elf and grab an eldritch heritage?

EDIT: You can't actually take Chakra Initiate until you get a ki pool, which doesn't happen until 4th level. woops!

[Paladin of Baha-who?]

2 levels of Ninja would provide a Ki pool by 3rd level.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Why do you need Psychic sensitivity?

There are two basic challenges with Chakras:
- Getting enough Ki.
- Surviving crazy high DC Fort and Will saves (DC 38.)

I'd been toying with something like:
Cleric(Irori, Law Domain) 1/Ninja 2/Cleric X

With Cha as high as possible.

By the time you can open your last Chakra (14), let's say you've got a 24 Cha for 10 channels a day.
Cleric 12 is 6d6,+2d6 for Phylactery of Positive Channeling is 8 Ki points times 10 channels is 80 ki, plus ~8 to start with plus 5 from the Chakra feats.

For Saves:
+8 from Cleric 12.
+7 Cha
+3 Wis/Con (ish)
+5 Cloak
+2 Luck
+1 Competence

~ +26, still needs some work to hit a 38 reliably. I don't know where other good sources of saves are? One level of Paladin, Warpriest, and Druid would get another +6, but lose a die of channel/10 Ki. So +32.

From my reading of the saves, if you miss the Fort save, your Chakras are still open. So all you're really worried about is making the Will save to open the last Chakra. So Touch of Law the round before you open it will guarantee a 38. After that, you use Chakra Adept to skip the Will save. If you fail the Fort (~one in sixteen rounds with double-rolls) you take some damage but keep on chakra-ing.

[Skreeeeeeeeee]

Markov Spiked Chain wrote:

Why do you need Psychic sensitivity?

The initiate must also possess the Psychic Sensitivity feat or have levels in one of the occult classes presented in this book.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Doh. Maybe take a level of Occultist instead of Druid then.

[lemeres]

Doesn't it take a round to open each chakra gate?

I doubt you will find much use for anything past the second in a real fight.

Maybe the 3rd, if you have some special circumstance (such as swarms)

Still, a feat that lets you get some delayed fight for 2 ki +1 ki per round is nice enough. Some small amount of DR is nice too.

But mostly, this seems like it is just a way to bleed out ki. Too long for start up on most abilities, too much to maintain

So overal...no charkras aren't that great. Far, far to specialized and expensive to actually be good.

[Nocte ex Mortis]

Chakras are freaking terrible. It's a massive waste of your time to get them started up, failing your Fort save means you're going to take a minimum of 1d6, and a maximum of 7d6, which doesn't seem like much, until the Will save kicks in. Oh, did we forget to mention that the Will save, if failed, DAZES YOU and shuts off all the chakras? Oh, and it gets better! All those points you're sinking into opening your Chakras take your Swift action every turn! Better hope you don't need to do anything with it, ever, like boost your AC, or anything else!

Chakras are a massive, steaming pile of crap. They look cool at first glimpse, but the moment you start on the mechanics, it becomes crystal clear you need to build a character entirely around using them, and accept that you're going to be, at best, terribly sub-par at everything, and at worst awful at everything, all for the highly questionable ability to have 2 DR, and maybe piss-poor flight.

[lemeres]

Nocte ex Mortis wrote:

Chakras are freaking terrible. It's a massive waste of your time to get them started up, failing your Fort save means you're going to take a minimum of 1d6, and a maximum of 7d6, which doesn't seem like much, until the Will save kicks in. Oh, did we forget to mention that the Will save, if failed, DAZES YOU and shuts off all the chakras? Oh, and it gets better! All those points you're sinking into opening your Chakras take your Swift action every turn! Better hope you don't need to do anything with it, ever, like boost your AC, or anything else!

Chakras are a massive, steaming pile of crap. They look cool at first glimpse, but the moment you start on the mechanics, it becomes crystal clear you need to build a character entirely around using them, and accept that you're going to be, at best, terribly sub-par at everything, and at worst awful at everything, all for the highly questionable ability to have 2 DR, and maybe piss-poor flight.

I am not sure if the iroran paladin needs the AC too much (by adding their dex and cha, they can get fairly good AC in light armor without actually investing much in either, leaving room for str)

But then again...one of the few paladin abilities they keep is lay on hands, which is a fantastic swift action. And their replacement to smite also still takes a swift action. Which means it might take until turn 3 before you get anything good....

[Nocte ex Mortis]

Nope. Guess what? It's a swift action every turn to keep the Chakras going, so go you on your DR 3/- or your 2d8 non-typed single-target breath weapon, pick one?

Chakras are freaking terrible.

[lemeres]

Nocte ex Mortis wrote:

Nope. Guess what? It's a swift action every turn to keep the Chakras going, so go you on your DR 3/- or your 2d8 non-typed single-target breath weapon, pick one?

Chakras are freaking terrible.

..nope what? I am agreeing with you- paladins tend to have other priorities with their swift actions, and this system takes up swift actions.

I am not sure anyone with ki has much room for more types of swift actions. Heck, I am unsure anyone with these kinds of pools (such as magus with their arcane points) has room for swift actions.

All of the pool abilities seem to use swift actions. Which is typically fine, since a lot of people don't use swift actions.

Except even the fighter likes swift actions- Cornugon smash going into hurtful- a free attack.

[Nocte ex Mortis]

Oh, whoops, 30-foot 2d8 cone of non-typed damaged. Go you on killing six closely-packed, half-dead orcs.

[Nocte ex Mortis]

lemeres wrote:

..nope what? I am agreeing with you- paladins tend to have other priorities with their swift actions, and this system takes up swift actions.

I am not sure anyone with ki has much room for more types of swift actions. Heck, I am unsure anyone with these kinds of pools (such as magus with their arcane points) has room for swift actions.

All of the pool abilities seem to use swift actions. Which is typically fine, since a lot of people don't use swift actions.

Except even the fighter likes swift actions- Cornugon smash going into hurtful- a free attack.

Sorry, I was going "Nope, you never get anything worth the time/actions you spend on Chakras." I should have been clearer on that.

[Heretek]

It's a shame Paizo wasted pages on arguably the worst design decision since Sacred Geometry, and not on actually fixing the kineticist according to the feedback received.

[ohako]

Markov Spiked Chain wrote:

Why do you need Psychic sensitivity?

There are two basic challenges with Chakras:
- Getting enough Ki.
- Surviving crazy high DC Fort and Will saves (DC 38.)

I'd been toying with something like:
Cleric(Irori, Law Domain) 1/Ninja 2/Cleric X

With Cha as high as possible.

By the time you can open your last Chakra (14), let's say you've got a 24 Cha for 10 channels a day.
Cleric 12 is 6d6,+2d6 for Phylactery of Positive Channeling is 8 Ki points times 10 channels is 80 ki, plus ~8 to start with plus 5 from the Chakra feats.

For Saves:
+8 from Cleric 12.
+7 Cha
+3 Wis/Con (ish)
+5 Cloak
+2 Luck
+1 Competence

~ +26, still needs some work to hit a 38 reliably. I don't know where other good sources of saves are? One level of Paladin, Warpriest, and Druid would get another +6, but lose a die of channel/10 Ki. So +32.

From my reading of the saves, if you miss the Fort save, your Chakras are still open. So all you're really worried about is making the Will save to open the last Chakra. So Touch of Law the round before you open it will guarantee a 38. After that, you use Chakra Adept to skip the Will save. If you fail the Fort (~one in sixteen rounds with double-rolls) you take some damage but keep on chakra-ing.

Neat!

How do you turn your channel energy into replenishing all your ki?

[ohako]

Nocte ex Mortis wrote:

Nope. Guess what? It's a swift action every turn to keep the Chakras going, so go you on your DR 3/- or your 2d8 non-typed single-target breath weapon, pick one?

Chakras are freaking terrible.

You are correct. The chakra system is indeed incredibly timid. The design decision apparently was 'anyone occult can do it', which necessitated all the checks against it.

I think space could certainly have been saved by just making a cool occult unchained monk archetype that used/manipulated chakras. Instead, we have to create special builds to get to the same result.

I started this thread because it didn't seem like there was a lot on the Advice forum re: optimizing a chakra-user. That's allowed, right?