I have an idea rolling around in my head. Nothing solid yet, just looking for tools to put in the toolbox.
I'm thinking of making an unarmed Magus that uses the Possessed Hand line of feats.
For Magus I'm thinking either Esoteric, Beastblade, Kensai or Hexcrafter. I kinda like where all of them could go. I also was thinking of taking a single level (or maybe two?) of Monk because Improved Unarmed Strike doesn't give all of the benefits of a Monk's Unarmed Strike and when you hand decides to go for a walk on it's own it would cut down on the number of hands you have to do stuff with. For Monk I'm thinking maybe Sohei? Or Master of Many Styles could be decent?
Heh... if you use Crane Style or such feats would your hand be considered "free" if it is like... actually free. As in free from your body and roaming on it's own? Or if you activated Elemental Fist and then detached your hand would it keep the bonuses?
I would definitely want to get all of the Possessed Hand feats except maybe Hand Knowledge. I think I would also want to go for Improved Familiar and give the hand a template. Celestial or Clockwork both sound like cool options.
I would also likely go Human for the number of feats required to make this work.
Has anyone considered anything like this before? Anyone have any suggestions or other ideas to throw into this kind of concept?
Ooo! Or Bladebound. Hmmm....
Actually, I'm looking over Hex Strike and think I must be missing something as I do not see a lot of good Hexes to apply on an unarmed strike. Am I missing something here? The best one I can find I think is Evil Eye.
KO them with slumber hex!
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Here's a Magus handbook. I would probably go straight magus instead of a monk dip though.
The Phantom Blade Spiritualist archetype in Psychic Anthology gives reduced monk -2unarmed damage when you harbor the blade in your consciousness. Worse soell list than Magus, though for many purposes.
Kurald: I value your advice. I have read your guide. It is one of the better guides. Why hack out the level of Monk? It seems like it would be advantageous for a few reasons:
1. When your hand goes walking somewhere else and you can no longer unarmed strike with it you need to have another appendage free to do so with. The Monk's Unarmed Strike doesn't have the same limitations as Improved Unarmed Strike allowing the character to hit with elbows, kneeds, head, etc. With this it would allow me to cast with my remaining hand and still strike while my other hand is off strolling around the battlefield.
2. Monk's Robes up the damage.
3. Other buffs work on Monk's Unarmed Strikes.
4. All the other normal reasons to go with 1 level of Monk: +2 to all saves, Stunning Fist, a bonus Feat. Flurry will go to waste as I will never use it as armor turns it off. But for the bonus feat Deflect Arrows never goes out of style.
Plausible Pseudonym: I already have an Ectoplasmatist that I am playing so I think I'm good on Spiritualists for the time being. Probably a fitting thematic pick though.
Here is what I have come up with for a build:
Dex 12
Con 12
Int 18
Wis 12
Cha 9
Traits:
Focused Mind
Magical Lineage
1st
Monk 1
Unarmed Strike, Flurry of Blows, Stunning Fist, Deflect Arrows (bonus), Possessed Hand (human), Hand's Anatomy (1st)
2nd
Magus 1
Arcane Pool, Cantrips, Spell Combat
3rd
Magus 2
Spellstrike, Hand's Detachment (3rd)
4th
Magus 3
Familiar
5th
Magus 4
Tandem Touch, Improved Familiar (5th)
6th
Magus 5
Rime Spell (bonus)
7th
Magus 6
Arcana: Arcane Accuracy, Hand's Sight (7th)
8th
Magus 7
Familiar Pool, Medium Armor
9th
Magus 8
Improved Spell Combat, Arcane Strike (9th)
10th
Magus 9
Arcana: Wand Wielder
11th
Magus 10
Fighter Training, Improved Share Spells (11th)
12th
Magus 11
Familiar Spellstrike, Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike (bonus)
13th
Magus 12
Arcana: Wand Mastery, Dazzling Display (13th)
14th
Magus 13
Heavy Armor
15th
Magus 14
Greater Spell Combat, Shatter Defenses (15th)
16th
Magus 15
Arcana: Bane Blade
17th
Magus 16
Counterstrike, Greater Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike (17th)
18th
Magus 17
Deadly Stroke (bonus)
19th
Magus 18
Arcana: Enduring Blade, Toughness (19th)
20th
Magus 19
Greater Spell Access
Gear:
AoMF: +1 Spell Storing, Cruel
Spellstrike Gloves
Robe of Runes? Bodywraps of Mighty Strikes
Spark Staff (after 8th level)
Ring of Arcane Mastery
+1 Brawling Mithral Chain Shirt
+1 Diminutive Mithril Chain Shirt Barding (worn on hand)
Amulet of Natural Armor (worn on hand)
Dustly Rose Prism Ioun Stone
Wayfinder
Barding for your hand. Sure, it makes sense in context, but the idea makes me laugh out loud.
Questions though. Why so high an intelligence score? 16 is more than enough for a magus, many take 14. Your physical stats aren't amazing, they could use a little boost. The touch spells which use rime spell don't have saves.
By 18th level there are a lot of arcana better than enduring blade. Flamboyant arcana, ghost blade, reflection, devoted blade or spell blending at a glance.
Fair. Do you recommend switching Int and Str?
I'll take a look over your arcana suggestions. I'm no master of the Magus. I trust your suggestions over mine.
yes, if you're going for weapon I'd swap them.
Yeah. It'd mean you'd want a +2 headband by 7th level, +4 by 10th, +6 by 13th just for the bonus spells, but all of those are doable. You could alternately go with 17 Str & 14 in either Con or Dex.
For Spell Blending, Echolocation, Siphon Magic and Geniekind are worth considering IMO. Or if you go for the one 6th level spell option it'd be hard to beat Contingency.
I guess the only thing I was thinking of with the higher Int rather than Str is that because I'm not going to be generating a bunch of crits like most magi I could at least do my best to make sure my spells stick. But I was corrected in my thinking that Frostbite doesn't target saves and I'll have a fair level of debuffing so Int is less of a concern.
As for the Monk level I was trying to find something good that swaps out flurry but Master of Many Styles is less than attractive for this build as there isn't a really good option for a style. If there was something else I could give up flurry for I would be happy to entertain the idea.
I also considered Brawler. But, I honestly dislike Brawler. I also considered Snakebite archetype but honestly didn't feel it brought as much as Monk. I don't own Unchained or would have considered UMonk.
If MoMS - Dragon Style sounds good with a high strength. Or Crane Style, you mentioned that above. Monkey Style if your GM likes tripping, Panther Style to get an extra attack (at the cost of triggering an AoO). MoMS still bypasses most prereqs on the first feat in a style, so there are several decent options.
I guess Dragon Style wouldn't be bad with the Str being higher now and lessened negatives with the Hand feats. Or Crane for that matter. The point is that the negatives are easier to deal with on both. I like Panther but it is difficult to capitalize on.
I think I'm going to back burner the idea and think on it for a while. Still seems fun. Thank you all for the ideas though, it did help.
I have been thinking more on this concept lately. I think I would like to go with a bit of a Full Metal Alchemist style of concept here with a bit of Strider Hiryu (from the Strider video games) mixed in. Of course I want this to fit into the Golarion universe so I am really only using those for inspiration jumping off points.
Originally I had misread the Clockwork Familiar as being a template due to how it is listed with the other Improved Familiar options. It is right with the rest of the template options like Celestial and Fiendish. I was going to go with the Familiar Arcane Talent and then take Improved Familiar to apply a template to the detatched hand. It just seemed really cool to have a clockwork hand. Alas, it doesn't seem to be an option. Or is it?
Inevitables are Outsiders and I would think that they would match the Resolute Familiar template nicely. They also fit the bill for a bio-organic hand. Plus, Inevitables could have a good reason to want to possess the hand of a reasonable host.
The Improved Familiar templates leave a lot of creative license in the player's hands. Just as it seems reasonable to have a Celestial Familiar take on characteristics of an Azata, Eladrin, Angel, etc. it seems just as reasonable for a Resolute Familiar to take on the characteristics of an Inevitable. I doubt I would get a lot of pushback on this as it is really only descriptive. I think NPCs would react just as similarly to having a mechanical hand pop off and have it's own personality as a glowing feathery hand (or whatever you would imagine a celestial familiar would look like).
What do you all think about this? Even with playing a character like this in PFS do you think I would run into much resistance in my creative description?
So the question here is what to go with for a backstory, origin, homeland, etc? I was thinking of trying to fit in the Technologist feat so Numeria seems like a good starting place. After reading up on Axiomites and Inevitables I think I have a start of a good backstory:
The character's love interest could have been equally interested in technomancy and have died prematurely after getting too deeply involved in it. The Axiomites could have seen this as an opportunity to collect a soul to use in one of their crystals but something could have went awry before it was able to be placed into one of their preconstructed bodies. Meanwhile this character could have been deeply distraught by the loss of his lifelong companion, found some device in some buried spacecraft in Numeria and while testing a portal by placing his hand it it it briefly merged the two planes (Prime material and, what is it now?... Mechanus?). This could have all happened as his former mate's soul was about to be placed into a host body but instead was redirected to a more suitable host: this hand reaching through this gate.
Over time the hand becomes more deeply possessed (as I take more of the possessed hand feats) and eventually takes on more external traits of it's possessing personality's intended body (first in the form of metal barding / gauntlet for the hand, and then more when I take the Improved Familiar trait and add the Resolute Template).
The real question begins about how to do the barding and gauntlet thing. As far as I am aware you can use a gauntlet to deliver an unarmed strike thus I should be able to obtain a +1 gauntlet of spellstoring, correct? I should also be able to get a +0 Amulet of Mighty Fists of Spellstoring. I'm not suggesting activating them both at the same time but they should both be usable as far as I can tell. And both could be used in conjunction with spellstrike if I went with Esoteric Magus.
Spellstoring Barding would also be an option for a familiar. I would have to go with armor with a +0 ACP but that is easily doable. Mithril Chain Shirt barding is fairly inexpensive. I'm not thinking of punching with the hand and delivering a spell from the spellstoring barding. But due to the way spellstoring works in PFS it allows for more spell storage between games. I could also get a +0 AoMF of spellstoring (ring?) for the familiar. It seems like this could work fairly well for action economy.
The question becomes whether I can wear a gauntlet over my hand which is separately wearing barding? I suppose I could just wear the gauntlet on the other hand. I could even have the RP reason for it to be trying to make both of his hands look similar so that someone might just mistake his possessed hand as being an odd gauntlet. Or maybe I could make the gauntlet attach to his forearm and when the hand pops off the gauntlet folds away like a with a little door.
Any other ideas for this concept? Suggestions for mechanics to include? Equipment? Anything to help flesh out his back story and help him fit into Golarion?
Just want to point out that any humanoid can unarmed strike with other appendages (unless I missed an FAQ), so the monk level is not necessary for that (although I do think the level of monk is good).
From the PRD:
"Unarmed Attacks: Striking for damage with punches, kicks, and head butts is much like attacking with a melee weapon, except for the following:..."
In terms of PFS and "descriptions with no benefits", I've only ran into a concern once myself. I have a Human Alchemist that I decided was going to be shorter than the average human (dwarf height roughly) until she drank her mutagen where she would "increase" in size to the height of a half-orc, but still fall under the medium category for any effects and purposes, purely description. Just like how a room is flooding will force the 3'8" gnome to start swimming two rounds before the 3'9" dwarf, even though there is only that one inch difference.
Anyways, most GMs have been okay with just hand-waiving it (as it provides me no benefit or anything), with only one GM at a con stating that he's "pretty sure" my character is illegal, because my character's height would have to fall under the random height and weight chart.
As a many time GM for PFS, I don't care how you describe yourself or your gear/creatures, as long as your description isn't attempting to get you any bonus that you would not be allowed otherwise.
Example: My character was mutated from some sludge in Numeria, I have an extra eye on the back of my head. <- This I'm fine with
It allows me to have all around vision. <- If you don't have an ability from an item/class/feat/etc. that says it can, I'm not fine with this.
I like the character story you've got so far (a little weird having your soulmate stored in your hand, but maybe that's the joke?), although I don't think you can bard a familiar (Not sure, but from looking at barding, it's for large and medium animals. Note that as armors get smaller than small, they become less effective).
Anyways, onto stuff. If you do decide to take a level in monk, is it because you searched for some sort enlightenment or a sense of calm for losing a loved one? It looks like you have your story of how you got the hand pretty well thought out. So maybe focus on non-handy stuff. Sadly, I don't have many suggestions on gear. Can the "familar" wear a glove of storing? Might be nifty.
Huh. I was almost certain that Monk's Unarmed Strike was different than Improved Unarmed Strike.
Huh. I was almost certain that Monk's Unarmed Strike was different than Improved Unarmed Strike.
Oh! It is! Just in the statement that a Monks is considered both Natural and Manufactured for spell effects and abilities. Where as an Improved Unarmed Strike is neither and is typically considered a natural attack for spell effects and abilities (not always!).
You can cast Magic Weapon or Magic Fang on Monk's.
You can only cast Magic Fang for non-monks.
Yeah, so then I read the terribleness of whether gauntlets work with unarmed strikes or not. I think I'll take a pass on that. I think I will just be sticking with an AoMF.