Hail of... Blades?

[Rylden]

Hey guys, looking for some assistance in creating a character Ive wanted to try to emulate for some time now. I'm looking to create Gilgamesh, the King of kings, from the Fate anime series.

For those who don't know who this character is, hes a "spirit" brought back to fight in a tournament of sorts. Hes very brash and arrogant. First appears in heavy plate armor, wields a black one handed "sword/lance/thingy" as his weapon, but his "primary" attack is the ability to summon nearly infinite amounts of blades, polearms, chains, and hurl them at opponents. he later loses the armor completely in favor of plain clothes.

Mechanic wise, Im starting the game at around lvl 10. I found Storm of Blades which seems to replicate the ability to "summon" weapons, and hurl them at targets. Cleric, Magus, Sorcerer, and Wizard can cast this as a second level spell, third for Cleric. Magus seems the best choice for this, as I could Bladebound the character, and have the black weapon he has in the anime, and still cast this spell. Wear heavy armor eventually. To get around the component to cast, False Focus worth 100gp, covering the cost of any sword I wanted to use, including a few with increased size.

So how do I build it? If anyone has experience with the spell, what feats should I lean to? Any Archetypes to help build it? Here's what I came up with so far myself.

Aasimar Peri-Blooded, or Angel-Blooded
Myrmidach Bladebound Magus

lvl 1 Weapon Focus: sword
lvl 3 Point Blank shot
lvl 5 False Focus, Deadly Aim
lvl 7 Arcane Strike
lvl 9 Precise Shot

Assuming a Dex of 14, and +7 BAB, and Weapon training

+10x5 to hit, +9 to damage. To me at this level thats far to low.

[Torbyne]

What i would suggest is sit down with you GM and go over all aspects of the spell before play to make sure you two are on the same page. There are a ton of questions about how Storm of Blades works and most signs point to "not well".

The 100GP limit means the weapons you create arent going to be magical or made out of any special materials so DR will be a problem.

Since the spell is a standard action to cast and of instantaneous duration you can not boost your created swords with Magic Weapon, Lead Blades or benefit from the Clustered Shots feat.

As a ranged weapon, but not a thrown weapon, you can not add STR to damage.

On the plus side Weapon Specialization may apply.

Lets assume you go with Bastard Swords since its an option for a blackblade so you can double dip feats towards your melee and spell created weapons.

Your spell at level 10 would create 5 Large bastard swords (work out with your GM if you can create larger than that with the 100gp limit of false focus)

Each sword would deal 2D8+2 (average damage 11) and be subject to virtually all forms of DR in play at that level.

Accuracy would be an issue, 7 BAB +1 Weapon Focus +1 PBS +4 DEX because lets assume you have a belt to help you out. that gives you a +13 to hit.

Monster statistics by CR says you should be facing minimum of 24 AC, likely up to 28 AC.

That means you hit with 2-3 swords per casting for 11 damage a pop before DR.

Going with Deadly Aim would drop your accuracy to +11 to hit, meaning you hit with 1-2 swords for an average of 15 damage a pop.

You may find yourself fighting lots of human enemies in which case DR is far less common... but AC could potentially be much higher with armor, shields, magic items and spells that human type enemies tend to have.

I love the theme of the spell. I hate how it works. I will be watching the thread though to see if someone else chimes in with a way to make it viable in addition to fun.

[Rylden]

I was going over Magus Arcana and with the class functioning on the premise of high Int gives more spells, and more Arcane points I could take Arcane Accuracy, swift action, apply my Int Modifier to all weapon attack rolls for the round, spell combat, attack with sword in hand, and cast Storm of Blades. This should assist with some Accuracy, with a minor drop due to the Spell combat -2 applied.

This is of course assuming I dont use Arcane Strike to give the blades more damage, in favor of using my swift to give them more accuracy

[Torbyne]

Rylden wrote:

I was going over Magus Arcana and with the class functioning on the premise of high Int gives more spells, and more Arcane points I could take Arcane Accuracy, swift action, apply my Int Modifier to all weapon attack rolls for the round, spell combat, attack with sword in hand, and cast Storm of Blades. This should assist with some Accuracy, with a minor drop due to the Spell combat -2 applied.

This is of course assuming I dont use Arcane Strike to give the blades more damage, in favor of using my swift to give them more accuracy

That is an option to boost accuracy or damage and lets the spell swords count as magic which is nice. Be careful casting a ranged attack spell in melee, it provokes a separate attack of opportunity aside from casting that you cant mitigate with a concentration check.

Arcane Strike is probably a better choice than deadly aim, it is too bad that it doesn't count as a scaling enhancement bonus to get around more types of DR.

What kind of Int score are you looking at? i would expect your going for STR/INT/DEX/CON with a neutral WIS and dumped CHA?

It may not be worth a pool point to add INT mod if that is just going to be a +2 after the spell combat penalty.

[Rylden]

Id like to be sitting around 18-20 Int after racial mods, problem with Arcane Strike, and Arcane Accuracy is they both eat a swift. So Im looking at one or other and with such a small +to hit at 10th, Arcane Accuracy looks mean appealing for landing hits dealing smaller damage, then a barrage of misses.

[BadBird]

How are you planning to solve the problem of triggering an AoO for every thrown attack? It might be easier and more effective to do this with a build that uses Storm of Blades as a ranged attack option, instead of trying to make a non-touch ranged attack work with Spell Combat on a Magus.

[FiddlersGreen]

Combine with a sword with the sharding property, so you will be throwing swords with your full attack as well as with your Storm of Blades spell. If you can get a few castings of twilight knife in before hand, you can have alot of blades flying about.

[lemeres]

...no look at aether based elemental annihilator kineticists?

Their primary ability to to have tons of items floating and shooting out at opponents.

[Rylden]

Flavor wise kineticist doesn't really fit. The idea is they just appear. Yeah the idea of AOO have crowded my mind. I'll eventually have the improved feat to prevent them but until then, ID be a bitpre careful with it. On top of the setup I plan on picking up flamboyant arcana to help with incoming attacks.

[BadBird]

It seems odd to be trying to fit a ranged attack spell into Spell Combat melee; you're giving up the advantage of range to take on the problem of AoOs when you could just use a melee touch spell for the same purpose. Even if you're determined to use a Magus, you could just use level 1s for Spell Combat and level 2s for ranged strikes.

If you were to use a Champion of the Faith Warpriest, Storm of Blades attacks could be set up with some huge bonuses - Divine Favor, Destruction Blessing, and the potential to Smite and completely ignore all DR. A level 10 Warpriest could be adding 19 damage and 4 accuracy to each blade throw while ignoring all DR against 2 targets a day.

[Rylden]

True enough, a warpriest build seems decent and smite adds a nice bit of damage. I'm not sure I want to go a divine direction, and end up turned into a heal bot but I can definitely see the appeal. I'll try a build and see how it feels. Likely the same feat usage, seeing the end goal is the same. Storm of blade as often as possible. Only issue I can see is I'll have to dip an arcane class in order to have false focus and not have to carry around 900 swords.

[Torbyne]

Rylden wrote:

True enough, a warpriest build seems decent and smite adds a nice bit of damage. I'm not sure I want to go a divine direction, and end up turned into a heal bot but I can definitely see the appeal. I'll try a build and see how it feels. Likely the same feat usage, seeing the end goal is the same. Storm of blade as often as possible. Only issue I can see is I'll have to dip an arcane class in order to have false focus and not have to carry around 900 swords.

I know there is this stereotype of heal bots out there but please believe me, there is absolutely no need for a dedicated healer in Pathfinder. it is actually a far better use of actions to use a divine caster to kill/disable/buff/debuff than to cast a healing spell in almost every imaginable combat situation. The Warpriest in particular is great at rapidly self buffing and destroying things in combat. Healing is best done out of combat by use of cheap wands. And a huge number of classes are capable of using those wands so it often occurs that they can be spread out among 2-3 party members with the GP cost shared by the whole group and no loss of spells per day.

[BadBird]

Rylden wrote:

True enough, a warpriest build seems decent and smite adds a nice bit of damage. I'm not sure I want to go a divine direction, and end up turned into a heal bot but I can definitely see the appeal. I'll try a build and see how it feels. Likely the same feat usage, seeing the end goal is the same. Storm of blade as often as possible. Only issue I can see is I'll have to dip an arcane class in order to have false focus and not have to carry around 900 swords.

Using a Warpriest to sit around and cast half-assed cure spells is particularly ridiculous. "I could invoke Smite and throw Storm of Blades for a hundred points of damage, or I could just full attack for multiple 30+ two-hander strikes... but nah, I'm gonna spend a spell slot and a turn to heal someone for a little over 20."

The biggest issue with the Magus is that with the nature of Storm of Blades, you're adding practically nothing to damage. You've got Arcane Strike for a +3 by 10 and Deadly Aim for a +4, and you're dealing with a -2 attack for Deadly Aim and another -2 if using Spell Combat. So the total is +7 damage, -2 or -4 to hit.

Without using Smite, a Destruction Blessing Warpriest at 10 can be adding +4 Divine Favor and Fate's Favored, +5 from Destructive Attacks and +4 Deadly Aim, and they get a +4 to attack from Favor to counter Deadly Aim; so their total is +13 damage, +2 to hit. If using Smite the damage bumps up to a +23 per attack with no DR. Plus, the Warpriest has so many feats available that grabbing things like Deadly Aim hardly makes a dent in what else they can do.

You can use Storm of Blades maybe 4 times per day, so you don't need to be hauling around a massive stockpile of swords. Mundane swords typically aren't a hard thing to get.

[chrislafeken]

I thought of making gilgamesh once...It's very hard without 3rd party content. Even then, some of the flavor might have to be tweaked. The clsoest I came was focusing around a Magic Missile build and the RGG Magic Missile feat "Halo of stars" Allowing magic missiles to follow you after casting until fired with a standard action. I figured reflavoring the missiles to "Weapon shaped" would be what would have to happen. Halo of Stars. really is an awesome flavor feat though, and a good way to manage resources. Take it a step further and use illusion magic to actually make them appear as weapons maybe?

Plenty of metamagic that you can stack on to magic missiles...