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Is there an equivalent of the Monkey Grip feat in Pathfinder? If it exists, I have been unable to locate it so far.
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Sep 23, 2011 17:35
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Acceptableloss posted:Is there an equivalent of the Monkey Grip feat in Pathfinder? If it exists, I have been unable to locate it so far. Unless it was in Ultimate Combat, no.
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Sep 23, 2011 19:01
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In general, Summoners do physical damage with a side of mostly buffing spells. They can be pretty effective at this, with some form of Summoner typically scoring well in damage per round comparisons in addition to the handy buffs. A well-built Summoner should be perfectly capable of keeping up with well-built damage-dealing classes. Witches do virtually no damage. This is perfectly fine, because they are outstanding debuffers. Their spell list is fairly narrow, but it has a lot of gems in it (like perennial favorite Black Tentacles). There are also some excellent choices for hexes. Sleep, in particular, is fairly egregiously good. Personally, I like Misfortune for sharing my terrible dice-rolling skill with my enemies.
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Sep 23, 2011 20:04
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:In general, Summoners do physical damage with a side of mostly buffing spells. They can be pretty effective at this, with some form of Summoner typically scoring well in damage per round comparisons in addition to the handy buffs. A well-built Summoner should be perfectly capable of keeping up with well-built damage-dealing classes. Yeah, it looks like a Summoner goes from buffs and "don't get hit because I've got Grease and Mage Armor" to "don't get hit because I have an extraplanar army and if we are on the same plane of existence something has gone terribly wrong". As a dude who plays/played Save or Die Wizards in 3.5 Vanilla (and talked our group out of terrible situations a lot), a Witch with Charm and Slumber is literally The Best Thing for me.
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Sep 23, 2011 21:13
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:Personally, I like Misfortune for sharing my terrible dice-rolling skill with my enemies. Theres also the Fortune+Cackle gimmick but that'd probably get old fast. Can you stay cackling all day?
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Sep 24, 2011 06:30
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veekie posted:Theres also the Fortune+Cackle gimmick but that'd probably get old fast. No errata I can find says no to cackling all day, if you spend the move action to keep doing it. I've been doing more reading, and thinking about what's been mentioned here. I was looking more towards mixing it with Evil Eye since it still hits for a round, even if they succeed on the save, and then I can keep extending it. Then, once it hits, and I say reduce saves, then it'll be even easier to drop a Slumber or Misfortune on them. The fact Evil Eye doesn't have a limit on how many times you can hit someone with it in a day gives some more room to play, I think. And after examining how putting together a Synthesist would work, I find the Witch a simpler choice. Take Extra Hex to get me all four of those hexes, and then take a look at all the other choices, and find some things that fit. Planning on Halfling for race, since it fits my concept and doesn't seem to hurt the build at all. I keep looking at metamagic feats, and I keep thinking they don't seem to add up here, for this level. Should I avoid them, or would it be worth my while to take something there?
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Sep 24, 2011 11:12
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At level 4, metamagic isn't going to be too much use since you don't have the spell slots to really utilize it. As a low level Witch you want to go into a fight knowing that you're going to drop a bomb (fight-ending spell) first round and then spam your guns (hexes and low-level spells) the rest of the fight. One thing to remember is that as you level, your low-level power spells like Sleep become less and less effective compared to your hexes (which level up with you), so start prepping more utility spells in those low slots while relying on your highest two spell levels for the bombs.
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Sep 24, 2011 12:53
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As Prufrock says, at level 4 you simply don't have the spell levels to make effective use of metamagic. A little later on, though, you might enjoy sticking some poor Misfortuned bastard with a Persistent save-or-suck. Having to succeed on four saves'll just ruin his day. As long as you meet the requirements for Cackle you should be able to keep it going indefinitely. Be careful about relying on multiround set-up times, though. Evil Eye -> Misfortune -> save-or-lose is tempting but often it will be more important to try to cripple the target earlier. If your group is caster-heavy, though, they should love you for using Evil Eye's save penalty anyway, so it's less likely to go to waste.
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Sep 24, 2011 17:52
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I've got a question about natural weapons, as I see a lot of rules that reference natural attacks/weapons, but no concrete basics for them. In an upcoming campaign, I want to play a race with two natural weapons on top of having hands capable of wielding manufactured weapons (A Karkanak from the Cerulean Seas Campaign Setting if anyone's read it, basically a big upright crab) who has 2 natural claws. When attacking with a weapon (the claws are empty and free to act as secondary weapons), do I just get two extra attacks at -5 to hit?
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Sep 25, 2011 06:42
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Bear Enthusiast posted:I've got a question about natural weapons, as I see a lot of rules that reference natural attacks/weapons, but no concrete basics for them. You get two extra attacks at -5 and half Str bonus to damage, and your weapon attacks take at least a -2, as though you were fighting with two weapons.
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Sep 25, 2011 07:13
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pawsplay posted:You get two extra attacks at -5 and half Str bonus to damage, and your weapon attacks take at least a -2, as though you were fighting with two weapons. Rules source for convenience.
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Sep 25, 2011 07:37
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Thanks to the both of you, hopefully I'll find some sort of build that can take advantage of those sweet sweet extra crab attacks.
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Sep 25, 2011 07:53
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pawsplay posted:You get two extra attacks at -5 and half Str bonus to damage, and your weapon attacks take at least a -2, as though you were fighting with two weapons. Is it the same for Animal Companions, at least until they get Multiattack?
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Sep 25, 2011 07:54
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Magic Rabbit Hat posted:Is it the same for Animal Companions, at least until they get Multiattack? You mean animal companions wielding actual weapons? Yes, I suppose. Gorilla with club?
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Sep 25, 2011 10:11
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pawsplay posted:You mean animal companions wielding actual weapons? Yes, I suppose. Gorilla with club? I was thinking with their natural weapons, like a Big Cat. Do all of their natural attacks count as primary weapons?
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Sep 25, 2011 17:41
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Magic Rabbit Hat posted:I was thinking with their natural weapons, like a Big Cat, or something that doesn't get Multi-attack for free starting out. Do all of their natural attacks count as primary weapons? Animal companions are a special case. quote:animal attacks are made using the creature's full base attack bonus unless otherwise noted. Animal attacks add the animal's Strength modifier to the damage roll, unless it is its only attack, in which case it adds 1-1/2 its Strength modifier. Natural weapons never use the TWF rules if you are using only natural weapons. The rules spell out which accounts count as primary or secondary for monsters, but animal companions' attacks are always primaries.
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Sep 25, 2011 17:45
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I might be starting in a Pathfinder game soon, and I've been reading through the rules. It looks like bards might actually be a sensible thing to play, at least when there's a rogue in the party. If I'm not misreading this, Dirge of Doom is a level 8 ability that makes all enemies within 30' shaken with no save. If the rogue then takes the Shatter Defenses feat, they get to count shaken as flat-footed and sneak attack everything within 30' with a bow. On top of that, since the bard won't really be using high-level performances, they get to branch out into a prestige class like arcane archer with very little opportunity cost. Does this sound reasonable? And to what extent is the cheesiness of all this balanced out by the fact that it involves playing a bard?
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Sep 26, 2011 22:32
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pumpinglemma posted:I might be starting in a Pathfinder game soon, and I've been reading through the rules. It looks like bards might actually be a sensible thing to play, at least when there's a rogue in the party. If I'm not misreading this, Dirge of Doom is a level 8 ability that makes all enemies within 30' shaken with no save. If the rogue then takes the Shatter Defenses feat, they get to count shaken as flat-footed and sneak attack everything within 30' with a bow. On top of that, since the bard won't really be using high-level performances, they get to branch out into a prestige class like arcane archer with very little opportunity cost. By the time you hit 8th level, a lot of the things you'll fight will be immune to fear effects.
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Sep 26, 2011 23:07
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pumpinglemma posted:Does this sound reasonable? And to what extent is the cheesiness of all this balanced out by the fact that it involves playing a bard? Conceptually, it should require a save, but in terms of balance, it's a problem easily solved by a single arrow or cone effect.
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Sep 27, 2011 00:24
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pumpinglemma posted:I might be starting in a Pathfinder game soon, and I've been reading through the rules. It looks like bards might actually be a sensible thing to play, at least when there's a rogue in the party. If I'm not misreading this, Dirge of Doom is a level 8 ability that makes all enemies within 30' shaken with no save. If the rogue then takes the Shatter Defenses feat, they get to count shaken as flat-footed and sneak attack everything within 30' with a bow. On top of that, since the bard won't really be using high-level performances, they get to branch out into a prestige class like arcane archer with very little opportunity cost. PF bards honestly aren't half bad. I'm not really sure where bards get their terrible reputation other than "lol fruity". Shaken is an okay debuff when it works, so Dirge of Doom isn't all that bad, but you're definitely overrating how hard it is to get sneak attack. Don't get me wrong, the plan you're suggesting isn't a bad one, but it's hardly something that should be the focal point of your build (or, for that matter, can be made such). Since Dirge Of Doom is a standard-issue ability that doesn't really need any feats or special tricks to bolster it, you might as well focus on what else you can build your bard to do and keep this in mind as a trick you've got in your pocket.
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Sep 27, 2011 16:48
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Is there any way to get Pounce ability other than wild-shaping or taking ten levels in Barbarian?
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Sep 27, 2011 18:52
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Pounce is pretty skinny in general, Pathfinder especially so. Pretty sure what you said is the only way in Pathfinder alone. There's always Catfolk Pounce from 3.5 if you can dip in from 3.5 and don't mind playing a cat-man. Or Anklet of Translocation which is basically pounce within 10 ft.
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Sep 27, 2011 19:04
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OK - thanks for the advice! I'd completely missed fear immunity as a consideration... I'm still kind of interested in playing a bard, but there are quite a few other nicely overhauled classes too so I guess I'll wait and see what other people want to play. 
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Sep 27, 2011 23:27
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There's also a monk variant (Tiger style I think) that gets Pounce a couple times per day at level 17. Whoo. Making it harder to move and full attack is I think one of the cases where Pathfinder aimed a nerf at the wrong place.
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Sep 28, 2011 04:02
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I am making a mid-level sorcerer for the first time. He is Sorc 7 / Ninja 2 for thematic reasons, with the Shadow bloodline. My question is about feats. I have a good idea of what spells to pick as my role will be primarily debuffs with a nuke or two each level, but the metamagic feats confound me and they all seem like bad ideas. How are these supposed to be used effectively? And what feats would you recommend, in general, for a sorcerer? I tried to find a guide on pathfinder sorcerers but had some difficulty finding information about this specifically.
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Sep 28, 2011 14:48
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Porkness posted:Is there any way to get Pounce ability other than wild-shaping or taking ten levels in Barbarian? Synthesist 1. Quadruped Mode Eidolon only, two point drop. Put it with a Scout Rogue/Ninja with a full Ki Pool with TWF and watch the dice pile up. Metamagic is kind of a sucker's game for Sorcs unless you took the Arcane bloodline, but I think there are feats that allow you to get "free" castings of certain metamagics. If you want to be up front, putting that on Silent/Still (I think) allows you to dodge the casting defensively check. There aren't a lot of good feats in general for anybody in PF, so follow your bliss. Making Dimension Door one of your learned spells and taking that Dimensional Assault chain can help you get your Sneak Attack on more/get the hell out of Dodge.
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Sep 28, 2011 18:11
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I may start playing Pathfinder soon, and I'm looking for help. Ideally I'd play a minion-summoning necromancer (I hardly know anything about the system, but I read somewhere that Bone-mystery Oracle was good) but I'm concerned that, in a group of powergamers (some custom classes like Erudite who aren't even on the PFSRD!) who I don't really want to ask for help, I'll be left far far behind. Can I do a viable minion necromancer, or should I do a necromancer-specialised caster? Help and advice on statting appreciated. I played around with PCGEN (very helpful recommendation from IRC) and statted an Aasimar Bone mystery Oracle but it doesn't look like much. Edit: preliminary advice was that the non-minion necromancer was more use. Whispering Voices fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Sep 29, 2011 |
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Sep 29, 2011 01:15
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MadRhetoric posted:Synthesist 1. Quadruped Mode Eidolon only, two point drop. Put it with a Scout Rogue/Ninja with a full Ki Pool with TWF and watch the dice pile up. You're stuck using the Eidolon's BAB though, so you've got to take a bunch of Summoner levels or you'll never hit anything.
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Sep 29, 2011 01:35
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Whispering Voices posted:I may start playing Pathfinder soon, and I'm looking for help. Ideally I'd play a minion-summoning necromancer (I hardly know anything about the system, but I read somewhere that Bone-mystery Oracle was good) but I'm concerned that, in a group of powergamers (some custom classes like Erudite who aren't even on the PFSRD!) who I don't really want to ask for help, I'll be left far far behind. Can I do a viable minion necromancer, or should I do a necromancer-specialised caster? Help and advice on statting appreciated. I played around with PCGEN (very helpful recommendation from IRC) and statted an Aasimar Bone mystery Oracle but it doesn't look like much. A bones oracle is pretty good for an animate-focused necromancer. Honestly, any oracle or cleric will do fine as long as they take Animate Dead and preferably Desecrate; so will a sorcerer or wizard but they take a few more levels to learn Animate Dead. Picking an option that gets Command Undead is nice but not strictly necessary (evil/neutral cleric, bones oracle, necromancy specialist wizard.) Some general advice about necromancy: skeletons are almost always better than zombies. Zombies are meatwalls but that's about all they have going for them, and their Staggered quality sucks. There are a few weird exceptions that depend on technicalities in monster abilities but it's usually not worth making a zombie when you can make a skeleton. The special skeletons you can make in Pathfinder are pretty nice; they count as twice their HD during the initial animation but not towards your control limit, and some of them have handy abilities. Acid or Blazing Skeleton can add a bunch of damage to anything with a pile of natural attacks, Mudra Skeleton is pretty solid on giants and the like, and Blazing Skeleton rats are fairly cheap harassers and suicide bombers. Good necromancy depends to a significant amount on good corpses. Part of that depends on the DM; as a general rule, you'll be animating the corpses of the things you kill. (Some people recommend skiving off whatever quest you're supposed to be on and going off to hunt pyrohydras or something for corpses. Have fun selling that to your gaming group and DM.) Part of this also depends on your own knowledge of what makes a good corpse; you'll want things with high stats and strong natural attacks relative to their HD. The "extraordinary special qualities that enhance melee or ranged attacks" wording is a little weird, but it can generally mean that things with poisonous attacks and especially things with pounce/rake/rend (big cats, for instance) make good skeleton minions. Obviously, anything that relies on magical-type abilities to be badass is not going to retain as much value as an undead minion. Various beasts and giants are obvious choices, as are melee-focused outsiders. At high levels, you may be tempted to use Create Undead, and it's true that you can make some pretty badass stuff that way. The problem is that it creates pretty badass stuff that is not actually under your control, so unless you've got a reliable way of controlling whatever you bring up, all you'll achieve is to make a generally-evil badass who may or may not be inclined to actually help you get poo poo done. Maintaining an undead army can get expensive. There are a variety of ways to get Animate Dead for free in 3.5, most of which are not available in Pathfinder. Oh Well. If you can get Animate Dead as a spell-like ability somehow, you should be able to cast it for free; Bones oracles get this at 20 but actually getting to level 20 is pretty uncommon in most games. If someone is submitting a frigging Erudite to the game, you might talk to the GM about letting you use the Corpsecrafter feats from 3.5 Libris Mortis (a line of feats that enhances undead you create with spells). If not, eh, whatever. The most important thing to bear in mind about a necromancer, after all's said and done: this is one or two spells, maybe some feats. You're still a full caster with a full arsenal of spells and tricks. Just because you have an undead hammer, don't let everything look like a delicious flesh-laden nail.
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Sep 29, 2011 06:05
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Excellent! Thanks, Benly. Guess I'll try and stat a specialist necromancer (for lots of nasty save-based stuff) with a few feats on Minioning.
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Sep 30, 2011 20:05
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Whispering Voices posted:Excellent! Thanks, Benly. Guess I'll try and stat a specialist necromancer (for lots of nasty save-based stuff) with a few feats on Minioning. I like necromancy in general and this gave me a chance to get some of my thoughts on it wrt Pathfinder in one place. While I mentioned that maintaining an undead army can get expensive, I forgot to mention that in Pathfinder one option to mitigate this is the Bloody Skeleton. A Bloody Skeleton is twice as expensive as a vanilla skeleton, but will recover its own damage and will reassemble itself when destroyed, barring unusual measures that most enemies won't bother to take. In my personal opinion, the extra investment is frequently worth it given how fragile skeletons tend to be; if a bloody skeleton is taken down once, the upgrade has already paid for itself by avoiding the need to replace it. This is especially so with high-quality skeletons; a hydra or dire lion skeleton is probably worth more than whatever you could scrounge up to replace it on short notice. You can combine advanced skeleton templates, so your bloody skeletons can also be flaming or acid or whatnot. By one reading of the rules for this in the SRD, multiple templates costs the same as one template, so if your DM accepts this reading then obviously any templated skeletons you make should also be bloody. Of course, if the DM allows this reading and you decide to make acid burning bloody mudra skeletons all over the place, he will probably revoke the ruling and possibly hurl things at you. If not, then by the usual PF/D&D rules for multiple doublers a bloody acid skeleton will cost triple - kind of spendy, but possibly worth it to protect the investment (and an acid lion skeleton with that bonus damage on its claw/claw/bite/rake/rake is a pretty nice investment indeed.)Bonus: bloody burning skeletons explode on death and reassemble themselves an hour later. Repeat-use suicide bombers!
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Sep 30, 2011 21:35
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Paineopticon posted:I am making a mid-level sorcerer for the first time. He is Sorc 7 / Ninja 2 for thematic reasons, with the Shadow bloodline. I really quite like Reach Spell (from the Advanced Players Guide), it only takes up one spell slot higher to up the spell's range increment by 1 step (touch->short->medium->long) and you can apply 1:1 for additional range increments. For example, you could take a 1st level touch spell and make it a medium range spell for the cost of a 3rd spell slot. I've honestly never had a shortage of spells in high level slots due to using it and it makes your touch spells a lot more versatile. The Advanced Players Guide is definitely worth a look. Especially since it adds a favored class bonus that allows you to Add one spell known from the sorcerer spell list that is at least one level below the highest spell level you can cast (assuming you're human that is).
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Oct 1, 2011 03:13
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Is there any way to do spell-like abilities with range: Touch (e.g. Death's Touch fron Bone Mystery Oracle), as a range touch attack?
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Oct 1, 2011 09:41
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Regarding undead minions, or minions in general, I would recommend making a gentleman's agreement with the GM not to have more than one actively take part in normal combat. That way your turn goes by way faster and the others players won't start to hate you. Of course the additional minions could still come into play if a big mêlée mess breaks out and there are dozens of combatants (or more) on either side, or if a monster jumps in front of your face and Zed the Zombie is right beside you as a meatshield. I played an osirian necromancer in one game and this worked wonderfully. I had one skeleton taking hits on the front lines and if it went down, one of my pack mules would step up in its place. Meanwhile I could do my spellcasting from a distance and it never felt like I was actually "holding back." Something to consider.
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Oct 1, 2011 10:47
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Quill posted:Regarding undead minions, or minions in general, I would recommend making a gentleman's agreement with the GM not to have more than one actively take part in normal combat. That way your turn goes by way faster and the others players won't start to hate you. Of course the additional minions could still come into play if a big mêlée mess breaks out and there are dozens of combatants (or more) on either side, or if a monster jumps in front of your face and Zed the Zombie is right beside you as a meatshield. I played an osirian necromancer in one game and this worked wonderfully. I had one skeleton taking hits on the front lines and if it went down, one of my pack mules would step up in its place. Meanwhile I could do my spellcasting from a distance and it never felt like I was actually "holding back." Something to consider. Having one or two big minions for fighting is also fairly sound strategy - one dire lion or giant is going to make a lot more difference in a fight than a small army of skeleton goblins. The exception would be something like swarm tactics using burning rat skeletons, but (a) that's kind of cheesy to begin with and (b) even then, from a game flow standpoint they're all doing the same thing anyway so they're functionally one allied swarm.
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Oct 1, 2011 11:20
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Discovered last night that in Pathfinder rather than providing a percentile miss chance, incorporeal now just halves corporeal sources of damage. This, coupled with some incorporeal baddies having tricky DR, seems incredibly powerful--but I am unclear on how the order works out. Does it function like old school mummies where you halve the damage and then apply DR, or do you apply the DR first and then halve the damage? Pertaining to corporeal damage, do elemental damage effects from spells constitute corporeal damage as well--i.e. fire from a fireball, etc? An encounter with three shadow demons in the Harrowing module--three CR 7 enemies--was kicking the butt of a party of three 12th-level characters and it got me to pondering if all was square. The party at the time was a Sorcerer, Oracle and Samurai w/ kitted out Mount--but between deeper darkness, incorporeal and heavy elemental immunities/resistances, the shadow demons were incredibly durable despite having only around 50 hit points. The Samurai is a dual-wieldy guy who front-loads a lot of his damage on critical hits / bleed effects (he swings five times, threatens crits on 15+ and applies something like 2d6 bleed when he does crit.) The table in general seemed to agree that an incorporeal creature is not susceptible to bleed damage, but was susceptible to critical hits--but without crits, the guy's damage was failing to penetrate incorporeal + DR (DR 10/ cold iron + magic; he has adamantine katanas). I realize in retrospect the oracle was getting full damage off of the holy damage portion of flamestrike--but technically, as 'spell damage', that also should have been halved by Incorporeal. At best, he was wrangling 4 - 8 damage on a good crit hit against a shadow demon when he finally managed to catch them in the deeper darkness and get past 50% miss from concealment. The sorcerer shat out huge chain lightning (single target, unable declare other targets due to lack of visibility) only to discover they were immune to electricity; the oracle, with a frosty mystery, blew out a bunch of cold damage only to discover they were immune to cold damage. The horse was unable to do anything at all to the shadow demons. Apart from the factor that they were a 3 man party instead of four, how else might they have managed to get through it without it being so brutal? The Shadow Demon 2 claws + gore with 1d6 + 1d6 cold really started adding up in a hurry, despite the Oracle having cold resist to ignore the second half of their damage throughout. The Sorcerer dispelled the deeper darkness a few times, but there were multiple shadow demons with the ability to cast it At Will.
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Oct 1, 2011 18:11
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Your samurai should be carrying a spare set of non-magical cold iron and silver weapons as well as a half dozen oils of bless weapon.
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Oct 1, 2011 18:31
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On the topic of noticing differences in Pathfinder. Elves no longer trance, correct?
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Oct 1, 2011 18:45
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I'm doing a lot of houseruling in Pathfinder in which I essentially rewrite a large part of the system to give non-casters a bit more of a bonus and power down casters a bit (while still giving them bonuses to compensate for lack of spells, so, for example, sorcerers have bard-like casting, but two bloodlines). The problem I'm running into is with the gunslinger. I can't figure out how to buff them up or anything without essentially giving them ranger combat trees. Everyone seems to have a fix for this, so I wanna hear your guys' suggestions on the gunslinger. Thanks.
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Oct 2, 2011 06:15
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I think Gunslingers are in a decent place. Most of the changes I would make are minor things like getting rid of the feat tax for the Rapid Reload Tree. Maybe give them a better gun or more diverse ammunition.
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Oct 2, 2011 11:10
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