Hi y'all!
I've been mulling over a 20 point buy Half-Orc War Drummer + Totemic (Tiger) Skald for a while now, but I'm sort of unsure where to go with it beyond the obvious strength stacking. (War Drummer mainly because getting Craft Magic Arms & Armor seems handy with a Valet Familiar, and because the AC of a raging tiger seems awful without Wild armor)
Thinking about doing a point buy a bit like
15+2 / 12 / 14 / 8 / 13 / 14 (+1 to Strength at L4 and beyond).
Traits: Community-Minded + Fate's Favored
L1: Wasp Familiar
L3: Amplified Rage
L5: Natural Spell
L7: Arcane Strike
L7: Craft Magic Arms & Armor
L9: Power Attack
L11: Planar Wild Shape
Questions:
#1: Arrowsong's Lament - would it be worth it? I'm mainly considering it for getting flight on a flightless class, but paying 15 rounds of raging song to cast fly out of a 5th level slot seems like a pretty bad deal, all things considered...
#2: Rage Powers - has there been any new and exciting ones released over the last year that I've missed?
#3: Natural Spell - it seems like something that makes it viable to stay in Wild Shape'd form for most of the adventuring day, but 13 Wis is pretty steep on a class that could care less about wisdom - are there any decent alternatives?
Any suggestions or thoughts? Comments are greatly appreciated :)
Look into taking the master performer, and grand Master performer faction feats.
They each grant a +1 to any bonus your bardic music gives allies, and since raging song counts as bardic performance for feats AND the totemic skalds animal focus is a bonus granted by your raging song, each feat effectively grants you +1 to your raging song AND animal focus.
The same is true for your rage powers as well since they are granted through raging song and some of them geant sweet bonuses like superstition.
Those feats all have a prestige requirement that makes them impossible to take without GM approval.Look into taking the master performer, and grand Master performer faction feats.
They each grant a +1 to any bonus your bardic music gives allies, and since raging song counts as bardic performance for feats AND the totemic skalds animal focus is a bonus granted by your raging song, each feat effectively grants you +1 to your raging song AND animal focus.
The same is true for your rage powers as well since they are granted through raging song and some of them geant sweet bonuses like superstition.
While I definitely agree with you on that point, technically every feat requires GM approval unless your playing in PFS, so I definitely see them as worthy of asking a DM for.
And honestly, its a 3 feat chain that, while really good, is not destroying games with its brokeness and I usually waive the prestiege requirement anyways.
And a week later, I finally find the time to reply to my own thread. Wow, talk about suckish.
@ Deadkitten: Interesting proposition. I was initially thinking that due to the weirdness of raging song, getting a total of +2 Strength & Con for three feats seemed a bit steep for too little compared to what a bard gets, but increasing the benefit of rage powers might very well be worth it. Any suggestions for rage powers other than Superstitious?
@ Marlow Spiked Chain: Also, while having an undersized mount-familiar seems pretty hilarious, I'm not sure if it will even be able to carry a tiger, let alone a warcat. Is there a way of getting a Mauler familiar to get teamwork feats w/o prereqs?
@ Rage Powers: ..So, say if I choose Lesser Beast Totem as my 6th level rage power, does that effectively mean that I can run around with a natural attack routine of Bite/Claw/Claw/Claw/Claw?
It seems to be permitted as per this faq, unless I am mistaken? Sure seems awfully delicious, if that is the case.
if you already have claws you can't get more claws unless you had extra hands to put them on.
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering about.
If you are a quadruped (or have more than four legs), you can have claws on your feet. If you have claws on all of your feet, normally you can't use all of those claw attacks on your turn unless you have a special ability such as pounce or rake.
By this, it seems kosher to me to get the extra rage-claws on your feet while raging, provided that I've already wild shaped into a quadruped.
Of course, if I'd be in regular orc-shape, then I'd get claws on my hands, full stop.
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Oh, and Savage Dirty Trick looks really neat, thanks for pointing that out!
If you turn into a wolf and gain claws they can go on your feet. If you're a tiger and gaining claws on your back feet you need a special ability to attack with them.