My previous character died, he was a lovely Marshall path Bard whom, in combat, only performed once every 3 rounds, and didn't have to do much else besides that. It was actually quite refreshing.
The Party is Level 9, Mythic rank 3, and so far consists of 3 people, one being myself who is caught without a character at the moment, and the other two a Champion Path Aasimar Paladin of Iomedae with an Oath of the Crusade, and a Trickster path Dervish Dancer Ifrit Swashbuckler.
Honestly, I am a bit demotivated after suffering two character deaths, but I'm trying to find a cool character concept to work with, both within the Crunch and the Fluff of the campaign.
I've thought of a few concepts so far, I'll try to keep it concise:
Human Hierophant Sacred Servant Paladin of Erastil with a deep rooted interest for the arcane. Mythic Eldritch Heritage: Arcane, Unsanctioned Kwowledge, and investment in spell penetration in order to reliably Smite with (Mythic) Magic Missiles. Has the Oath of Vengeance because his hometown got destroyed by a demon invasion and is out to now destroy all of the demons.
Half-Elf Trickster Druid 4 + Rogue 3 + Monk of the Mantis 2 with Shaping Focus and Boon Companion on a Falcon A.C. This allows me to Wild Shape into a Wind Elemental, add WIS to AC, and flank in the air with the speedy falcon. The few spells are there just for support.
Half-Orc Archmage Crossblooded Sorcerer with Fire Elemental Bloodline & Phoenix BLoodline, VMC'd into Wizard with Admixture school. The gimmick is to boost the Ray of Frost cantrip as much as possible to be able to reliably heal with just a cantrip. As Mythic 3, we can replenish all our HP with just an hour's rest and a mythic point anyway.
Shabti Hierophant Oracle with Heavens mystery, focussing on support casting and the use of Awesome Display with Colour Spray.
In the same vein, there's also the Archmage Witch with the Mythic Hex ability to abuse the Slumber hex. Not much more substance to this concept.
Human Champion Sohei Monk 1 + Cleric 8 of Gorum, War & Ferocity domains. Channel Negative Energy, Mythic Guided hand with a greatsword, focus on save or suck spellcasting, some support, and being hard to hit and hitting hard with WIS to AC, to hit, and damage rolls.
The last one currently being worked on is a Human Hierophant Oracle with Racial Heritage: Kobold, and Scaled Disciple in order to be able to prestige class into Dragon disciple.
Boyond the Cleric and the Paladin, I'm not sure there's a thematical fit for the other concepts.
So far we've had 2 Demon Hunter Rangers and a Magus in the party, and now my Bard being retired, so I'm trying to do something different. I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for in a character right now, but I'm hoping someone is able to inspire me towards something cool and appropriate for this campaign. I hope I'm not asking too much.
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Thematically, a lot of things can work. There are lots of reasons to want to stop demons
You have a distinctive lack of spell casters in the party. This AP is really dangerous in general unless your party has heavily min-maxed, in which case it's too easy. But having only 3 in your party, it's not surprising you've faced a lot of character deaths.
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Because of the prevalence of undead, mind effecting builds won't be as effective. So, the heavens oracle and slumber witch will be very hit and miss.
Thank you both for replying to this thread, it's much appreciated.
Thematically, a lot of things can work. There are lots of reasons to want to stop demons
You have a distinctive lack of spell casters in the party. This AP is really dangerous in general unless your party has heavily min-maxed, in which case it's too easy. But having only 3 in your party, it's not surprising you've faced a lot of character deaths.
We don't really have much of a cohesive party either. We started with two other people in the party who dropped out, and another two people stepping in, one of which has also dropped out. Our current composition worked for the most part, but the end of book 2 broke the camel's back. We do lack casters, but that also had somewhat of a charm to it. We got by with using our wealth to buy scrolls and having a ridiculous UMD when we absolutely needed specific spells at least, but with the Bard gone, that's out of the window. You are, of course, correct in saying there's lots of reasons for a character to want to slay demons. We're not allowed evil characters or worshippers of evil gods though, or I'd roll a cleric of Asmodeus looking to end the Demon's corruption (and pave the way for Devils to let their influence run wild). Somehow a religious or vengeful hook (or both) appeal the most at the moment, though the feelings of vengeance might actually be my own, and not the character's.
Because of the prevalence of undead, mind effecting builds won't be as effective. So, the heavens oracle and slumber witch will be very hit and miss.
The other two absolutely decimate undead, they don't really need me to help deal with those often. And still, as an Oracle or Witch, there's a whole plethora of tools that one can choose from. What would your thoughts be on the Blossoming Light archetype, though?
it looks both customized and mythic verging on a stylistic game... with only 3 players you'll be under the gun. You should use a stand-in to meet the standard party size of 4.
I don't think it's a spoiler to say you need to be good against undead and demons... thus cleric types come to mind. Wizards are a path to power so if you are familiar with the spell lists it is a good choice BUT you need to avoid becoming a target or trying to be a first line combatant. While I'm not big on Prestige classes Mythic provides a nice band-aid; Bloatmage, Magaambyan arcanist, and Pathfinder Savant. For wizards I'd suggest Diviner or Evoker, SR may be an issue so check out Sure Casting.
I'd use a Cleric of Pharasma as a stand-in.Paladins are poor casters. Rouges, tricksters, brawlers and monks will just be canapes on the demon's palate. Oracles and sorcerers aren't as good as wizards.
I agree with you, but our GM is... let's say stubborn. If you'll allow me to vent a little, he's using his newness to GM as an excuse to be annoyed when we have parts that we literally steamroll over, and blames players for being too insanely strong. As a matter of fact, the Bard was deemed the most powerful, only due to the amount of static bonusses it supplied to the two martials, and I have been threatened with character death ever since he joined the party at level 2. I'm actually looking for help on these forums because I don't like to be petty and make a character specifically to make his life a living hell, since I'd rather just leave the campaign at that point. The guy also has a penchant of acting as if all of his GM'ing shortcoming are the result of something someone else did. He's not very good at admitting his own shortcomings. Anyway, these are all issues irrelevent to the topic, and I'm sorry for putting those into the mix. I just needed a place to write this down. /vent
Allow me to elaborate on the classes I chose that you highlighted as poor choices:
The Paladin is actually dipped with a signle level of Orc Blooded Sorcerer with the Blood Havoc mutation. Sacred Servant and Magical Knack allow for a Caster level boost to 9th when it's bond is active. Using Hierophant's divine potency, this character gets 4 extra spell slots of 1st level. Next mythic tier, it will also recieve 4 more of 2nd level, in order to also have a bunch of Empowered Magic Missiles ready. At this level, at the cost of a smite and a mythic point, an avarage empowered mythic magic missile does 125 damage in total. The Paladin has a spell penetration value of 16 at this point and can roll twice on the check when needed, meaning most threats that the other two aren't equipped for are either one or two-shotted with magic missiles. At 4th mythic tier, at the cost of 2 mythic points, this damage is roughly doubled. It's extremely gimmicky, but I though it'd be hilarious. 15th level would add Spell Perfection in concert with Ascended spell, so all missiles will always be 'base' mythic, and the 2nd level ones will be empowered ascended spells.
As for the Rogue and Monk, I'll agree, they're merely mentioned as supplements to the Druid for it's Elemental Wildshape, as the Monk of the Mantis also gives a sneak attack dice and WIS to AC, and the Rogue allows for a pure DEX build without having to burn a mythic feat and adds sneak attack on top. Other than that, I'll admit there's not much to it, and doesn't really add to the party since it's just another 'martial'. Especially the Sohei is a useful dip into Wisdom based classes in my opinion due to the Wisdom to AC and still being able to wear light armor. That Cleric of Gorum is sporting 31 AC before any spells, but again, it's just a Martial with 9th level cleric spells at that point. Another point on the Brawler and Monk, our GM keeps forgetting about a certain slime coating on certain enemies, so that would hardly be an issue until he finally notices. I could also just make an oread character with the almost human racial, and a trait to increase the acid resistance to 7 when he does remember. But that would be character tailoring, and wouldn't be in the spirit of the game I think.
I also get that Wizards are generally more powerful than Oracle or Sorcerers, but they're absolutely terrible in my hands. I'm have a hard time managing prepared bookkeeping, so even the Arcanist and Witch just barely threads the needle since I can rely on other features than just spells. I have had somewhat succes with Druid and Cleric, but I usually end up just picking up the same spells each day. I feel like that's the wrong approach to playing the Wizard well. Hence why I like Oracle and Sorcerer (or other spontaneous casters), there's FCB's around that allow me to add additional spells to the list and there's no stress in chosing which spells to prepare each day.
As for the stand-in, the GM has a somewhat cheesy GMPC flying Gathlain Arcanist running around. He's often reluctant to throw the perfectly chosen spells onto our enemies, but luckily it isn't always needed. This GMPC is also not always around to help us either, but it's the closest thing to having a stand in. We sometimes get to take the Cleric of Shelyn with us. The Cleric of Pharasma actually sounds as cool enough a concept to work with to try out myself. I'll be looking into that, as well as the prestige classes you mentioned, thanks!
there's always Gunslinger and Zen Archer... both work best when just within 30ft or when there's some distance to the target. Weapon Blanch
That's a really neat item, I'm going to jot that down. Gunslingers (including the Bolt Ace) has been banned. Playing an optimised ranged character is highly frowned upon in our gaming group, even though at the start of the campaign it's encouraged as something we need. Even now when trying to decide on a new character, it's been brought up again that we need something kitted out for range, even though the Demon Hunter Ranger and the two Gunslingers (one a Bolt Ace) from different campaigns are still frequently brought up by the same people. I have been contemplating an Arsenal Chaplain VMC Fighter just to prove a point about the optimisation of all those previous characters... But I don't feel like solo-ing the campaign.
In a party of 4 or 5, letting the other guys handle a certain kind of enemy that you can't is usually fine. In a small party, that can be a big problem. What happens if one of those enemies manages to incapacitate the character who was supposed to defeat it in the first round?
I feel the witch suffers more here than the oracle. Witch just doesn't have many good options that aren't mind-effecting. The oracle though could offer some pretty good support when facing such enemies, if you choose their support spells.
In a party of 4 or 5, letting the other guys handle a certain kind of enemy that you can't is usually fine. In a small party, that can be a big problem. What happens if one of those enemies manages to incapacitate the character who was supposed to defeat it in the first round?
I feel the witch suffers more here than the oracle. Witch just doesn't have many good options that aren't mind-effecting. The oracle though could offer some pretty good support when facing such enemies, if you choose their support spells.
You make a very valid point, I hadn't really though about that. I'm definitely going to keep that in mind.
Hey, thanks for the reply and the help. I've been looking at the Skald, it was one of the first things that appealed to me (though it felt like somewhat of a repeat of the bard).
The GM is definitely a stickler for RAW, so
This is metagamey, but here we go:
--First, both of your friends benefit considerably from skald rage.
--Second, you probably want to be close to your allies, Demons are highly mobile, if they play smart, they lock down your frontline with expendable troops and then send elites on the backline.
That's true, but our GM doesn't really play them smart.
Suggestion:
A Ragebred (or human, depending on how specfic your GM is with rage power savage intuition) Skald
Yeah, the GM's a stickler for RAW, Human's not going to cut it unfortunately.
with a legendary item Bardiche.
Forgot to mention he banned the Legendary Item ability.
He is a Kellid, who looks to rekindle his peoples tradition and free his Sarkorian homeland from the demonic invaders.
Bad-ass intro, I like it!
This is a more optimized, more aggressive, and probably also defensively stronger version of the bard/marshall you played.
His long exposure to Demons may or may not have led him to increase contempt of them, but also to increased familiarity. I do think WOTR is much more fun with at least one morally dubious character in the party, but your swashbuckler may already be that.
The swashbuckler player tries not to play morally dubious, but he just can't help it. :P It's a cool concept, though.
--You Bardiche should be upgradable, and have spellcasting X2, pick Alchemist or Bloodrager. This gives you access to shield, longarm, enlarge person, and probably monstrous physique I.
--Evil Outsider Bane, Furious, Bloodsong and Holy are all excellent choices. As a Skald is a character level = caster level class, arcane strike and mythic arcane strike are pretty good choices. Pick up Savage intuition rage power from an extra feat and automatically start performing.
--Grab mnemonic vestments, to further increase your already formidable spell diversity via scrolls.
--For totem, Celestial Blood is worth a single investing, I went world serpent tree to considerable increase my parties AC, saving throws, make them immune to prone, and have all weapons count as all alignments.
--You are tpyically large, with a Bardiche, and long arm, and should be able to attack without eating full attacks in the process.
--Prioritize mythic heroism and mythic haste for spell casting.
These are all solid suggestions, thanks! The bard also had Mythic Heroism and Mythic Haste, so I know those two are baller.
Wat are your thoughts in regards to Metamagic Rager Bloodrager, picking up ascended spell, and eating up Bloodrage rounds to make myself Huge through the use of Ascended spell?
Actually, an Oracle with the Heavens mystery would be pretty good. I would go human for the extra spells, feat and skill points myself. Dealing with undead is fairly simple if you take Faiths Reach to be able to use cure spells at range. Take the Blackened curse for some fire spells. You don’t need to focus on Awesome Display, instead focus on summoning. With the extra spells from being human you can easily afford to take all the summon monsters. Take Mighty Summons and the feats Augmented summoning (which requires spell focus conjuration) and Summon Good Monsters to expand out your list of monsters.
VS undead you cast the appropriate cure wound spell at range and damage them with positive energy. Your Mystery and curse will give you a decent amount of combat spells and you can take a few more to round out what you need. You also have the option of summoning creatures. Might summon gives all your summons DR 5/epic. It also allows you to summon more creatures or summon a single really tough creature. Superior Summoning would mean you summon even more creatures. Getting 2 extra creatures on each spell is pretty good.
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I agree with you, but our GM is... let's say stubborn. If you'll allow me to vent a little, he's using his newness to GM as an excuse to be annoyed when we have parts that we literally steamroll over, and blames players for being too insanely strong. As a matter of fact, the Bard was deemed the most powerful, only due to the amount of static bonusses it supplied to the two martials, and I have been threatened with character death ever since he joined the party at level 2. I'm actually looking for help on these forums because I don't like to be petty and make a character specifically to make his life a living hell, since I'd rather just leave the campaign at that point. The guy also has a penchant of acting as if all of his GM'ing shortcoming are the result of something someone else did. He's not very good at admitting his own shortcomings. Anyway, these are all issues irrelevent to the topic, and I'm sorry for putting those into the mix. I just needed a place to write this down. /vent
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You might want to bail now: My GM told tales of running WotR and being slightly annoyed that his 'bad guys' only got to act twice in entirety of the last two modules, and this was with a non-maximized party (described as 'solid but not min-maxed')...
Mythic takes high level rocket-tag and just makes it worse: Supercharged PCs will slaughter foes before they even get a chance to react, and your GM will need to come to terms with this. Honestly, it kinda seems like any mythic campaign is the last thing your GM should be running, and WotR is a particularly bad option once the PCs start to stack the obvious anti-demon stuff (cold iron holy weapons, Paladin Smites, Holy Smite spells, etc.).
Actually, an Oracle with the Heavens mystery would be pretty good. I would go human for the extra spells, feat and skill points myself. Dealing with undead is fairly simple if you take Faiths Reach to be able to use cure spells at range. Take the Blackened curse for some fire spells. You don’t need to focus on Awesome Display, instead focus on summoning. With the extra spells from being human you can easily afford to take all the summon monsters. Take Mighty Summons and the feats Augmented summoning (which requires spell focus conjuration) and Summon Good Monsters to expand out your list of monsters.
VS undead you cast the appropriate cure wound spell at range and damage them with positive energy. Your Mystery and curse will give you a decent amount of combat spells and you can take a few more to round out what you need. You also have the option of summoning creatures. Might summon gives all your summons DR 5/epic. It also allows you to summon more creatures or summon a single really tough creature. Superior Summoning would mean you summon even more creatures. Getting 2 extra creatures on each spell is pretty good.
Not that I'm stuck on the Shabti per sé, but I'd like to make a few points in favour of the race:
Terrific ability score bonusses for the Oracle, which will realistically add up to an additional hitpoint per level and an additional Fortitude save (because we were going to put the bonus into CHA anyway ;) ). Which is worth about a feat and a trait.Darkvision out to 60 ft, I know it's just bookkeeping, since conjuring light shouldn't be much of a problem, but it's handy nonetheless.
Resist level drain, which will help with not having to spend as much resources on things that either resist or heal level drain, which is a thing Undead and even some demons are able to throw at us.
Finally, the FCB, I agree that the human's is pretty good, but the Psychic spell list has a lot of overlap with the Wizard's/Sorcerer's and offers in additioned to being Blackened a slew of useful spells, like Haste, Emergency Force Sphere, Deep Slumber, or Knock to name a few.
I worked out how I'd do the feats, there's enough space for 3 summoning feats, which are fine. We got a bonus feat somewhere along the way through story means, so the rest were filled up with:
Abundant Revelations: Interstellar Void
Steadfast Personality
Heavy Armor Proficiency
Any of these feats could be swapped out for the Good Summon Monster Feat.
The Summoning Feats are: Spell Focus: COnjuration, Augment Summoning, and Superior Summoning, as per your suggestion.
Level 11 I'd think taking Abundant Revelations again, but this time for the Dweller in Darkness revelation.
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I agree with you, but our GM is... let's say stubborn. If you'll allow me to vent a little, he's using his newness to GM as an excuse to be annoyed when we have parts that we literally steamroll over, and blames players for being too insanely strong. As a matter of fact, the Bard was deemed the most powerful, only due to the amount of static bonusses it supplied to the two martials, and I have been threatened with character death ever since he joined the party at level 2. I'm actually looking for help on these forums because I don't like to be petty and make a character specifically to make his life a living hell, since I'd rather just leave the campaign at that point. The guy also has a penchant of acting as if all of his GM'ing shortcoming are the result of something someone else did. He's not very good at admitting his own shortcomings. Anyway, these are all issues irrelevent to the topic, and I'm sorry for putting those into the mix. I just needed a place to write this down. /vent
...You might want to bail now: My GM told tales of running WotR and being slightly annoyed that his 'bad guys' only got to act twice in entirety of the last two modules, and this was with a non-maximized party (described as 'solid but not min-maxed')...
Mythic takes high level rocket-tag and just makes it worse: Supercharged PCs will slaughter foes before they even get a chance to react, and your GM will need to come to terms with this. Honestly, it kinda seems like any mythic campaign is the last thing your GM should be running, and WotR is a particularly bad option once the PCs start to stack the obvious anti-demon stuff (cold iron holy weapons, Paladin Smites, Holy Smite spells, etc.).
Yours is likely the best advice of them all, and not something I haven't thought about myself. It's also not as if our group didn't collectively warm him for what would happen when you're running even a 'normal' high-powered game. He is a friend, though, and even though he's not good at it, I'd like to at least try and help him try to become an ok GM. There's also the other two players whom I don't want to leave hanging. At level 9 it also feels as if we're about halfway through, so I'd like to see the campaign through if I possibly can.
It's all excuses, though, since I've often thought about quitting this game. No pathfinder is better than bad pathfinder after all.
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To be fair, GM-ing is a bit like riding a bicycle:
- When you watch someone else doing it, it seems really easy.
- When you first try to do it yourself, it seems outright impossible.
- When you get some practice, it can become second-nature.
@OP
The other issue is the ivory sanctum at the end of act 3 having literally 800K in loot, including some highly desireable stuff, which massively increases the parties power at that point.
I am currently playing it and having fun, here are some thing to assist in this:
--I statted up several NPCs as antagonists or frenemies and gave them to the GM to play with. Although, hilariously enough, the most powerful of them may actually be a very occassional ally rather then a player character abduction machine. Paying Mrs. "Succubus Dirty trick specialist bounty hunter with a NPC only feat called "charismatic maneuvers"" to abduct Sosiel (who was imprisoned in the Ivory Sanctum) was genius.--I liberally throw cash at "plot issues" such as logistics, bribery, paying ransoms for NPCs etc, regeneration scrolls for maimed NPCs, giving normally to be sold loot to newbie soldiers hat have proven themselfs etc. .
--I and the GM had a Mantra. Mine was "The Gm knows that I can build a character that one turns Baphomet as written, and has enough DPR left over to make quite a dent in Deskari as written, I have nothing to prove", the GMs was "The player knows that I could throw the Succubus Speznaz at him and make his live hell, I have nothing to prove". Use these Mantras!
I could've done without that particular spoiler, but that's alright. I would've heard about it sooner or later from the GM before being halfway through the module anyway because he can't keep silent.
Just for curiosity's sake, though, how would one go about one-turning Baphomet and tapping Deskari in the process?
To be fair, GM-ing is a bit like riding a bicycle:I guess I'm trying to say that learning to ride a bike is a lot more difficult when someone has removed the brakes and strapped a rocket booster to the frame...
- When you watch someone else doing it, it seems really easy.
- When you first try to do it yourself, it seems outright impossible.
- When you get some practice, it can become second-nature.
This is quite close to what I specifically told him before the campaign. But as with most things he tries to be good at, he tries to Dunning Kruger his way through. He just can't really BS his way through it when 3 of the 5 players who've sat at his table have been GM's for literal years.
I do agree with you completely, and I couldn't have said it better myself, that's why I try so hard not to give the guy too much flak and would like to see him develop the skillset.