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Post by Alex Newall on Nov 27, 2015 20:55:02 GMT
Deck of many things leads only to sadness.
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Post by grumblyarcher on Dec 1, 2015 9:27:49 GMT
I have some suggestions for Lydia/Sasha as well if she starts feeling like she is lacking in combat ability. It takes some investment in feats and a few of her Rogue Talents but will be worth it. The chain of feats needed is as follows: Acrobatic > Combat Expertise > Two-Weapon Feint > Slayer's Feint Making it to Two-Weapon Feint lets her give up her first attack when performing a full attack to perform the feint action which renders her target flat-footed to her next attack and then she can get her sneak attack damage in. The problem is that it uses Bluff, a Charisma-based skill and poor Sasha is about as charismatic as a slightly discolored patch on the wall. Still, feinting against mooks should be pretty easy. How many flunkies have skill ranks in Sense Motive? The lynchpin is the final feat, Slayer's Feint, which will let her use Acrobatics to feint instead of Bluff. Acrobatics is, of course, something she is very keen on already. If I am guessing her build right, she'll be able to get this together by about level 7 using her next three character advancement feats and one Rogue Talent. The Rogue Talent could be either at fourth or sixth level without an appreciable difference. Improved Two Weapon Fighting and Improved Two Weapon Feint are icing on the cake later down the line. I wanted to dig this back up because there were some other suggestions I had after some thinking. Gang Up is another decent Sasha feat, especially if she is picking up Combat Expertise already. It lets you count as being flanking an opponent if at least two other allies threaten it. It will give Sasha a bit more freedom with positioning. Press to the Wall is another one. It lets you treat any hard, solid object (trees, walls, doors, etc) as a flanking partner. It does require Step Up as a bonus feat but that can be useful from time to time. The Shadow magic armor ability (also comes in Improved and Greater variants) is something that is easy to forget but really useful all the same as it provides a good boost to stealth checks while not taking up any potentially vital magic item slots. A great way to ensure no one sees you. Ever. |
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Post by Alex Newall on Dec 1, 2015 23:12:33 GMT
Ooooooooooh, I didn't know about press to the wall!
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Post by Brave Sir Robin on Dec 1, 2015 23:50:08 GMT
Again, press to the wall looks excellent. Not sure there's enough melee combatants to make gang up worthwhile.
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Post by grumblyarcher on Dec 2, 2015 7:33:13 GMT
Press to the Wall seems really thematic for Sasha as well. Depending on how she feels in combat going forward, my recommendations could go either way. If I were building a rogue like this, I'd try to nail the two-weapon stuff down first, then work on Press to the Wall and some other Talents and Feats to make combat positioning much easier.
Things that might work well with Press to the Wall in no particular order:
Feats: Agile Maneuvers, Dirty Fighting, Improved Reposition, Quick Reposition
Talents: Manuever Mastery
Getting her dexterity to combat maneuvers, treating her rogue level as her BAB for one maneuver, and knocking the action needed to reposition foes down to being able to replace one attack per round would give her the ability to position foes where she wants them. Once again, it's a pretty decent chunk of feats and talents but the end result should be pretty great.
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Post by grumblyarcher on Dec 2, 2015 7:35:23 GMT
Oh! Following Step as well. Since she would be taking Step Up already these two feats would allow her to stay on fleeing foes more easily.
Now that I think about it, a combat maneuver rogue would be hilarious and surprisingly effective.
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Post by Brave Sir Robin on Dec 2, 2015 14:11:58 GMT
I don't know if we're heading in an exclusively combat direction with Sasha - there's a bit of the tinkerer to her. We may expand on the bomb building into similar stuff. Also, Rogues don't get quite so many feats to play with as Fighters, so don't know how many feats ahead it is worth looking.
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Post by Oneiros on Dec 2, 2015 19:23:40 GMT
Yup, pretty much any D&D campaign I ran post-uni would include my repurposed Deck of Many Things - the Plaques of the Seldarine (or Erevan's Deck) - for which I had a specific prop: a gilt-edged set of Arabic playing cards. If anyone's interested in the details I can send my notes on it to them, or post the item in the forum if preferred. I would actually like to see this, as I quite like the deck of many things and would love to see what someone else has done with it Okay, now posted to a new thread in the Roleplay Talk forum :-) |
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Post by grumblyarcher on Dec 2, 2015 20:03:33 GMT
I don't know if we're heading in an exclusively combat direction with Sasha - there's a bit of the tinkerer to her. We may expand on the bomb building into similar stuff. Also, Rogues don't get quite so many feats to play with as Fighters, so don't know how many feats ahead it is worth looking. Yeah, that's always the big concern with rogues. Lack of feats often stymies their direct combat capabilities. Once again, these feat and talent trees are mostly something to work on if she starts feeling that she is lagging in combat. A clever player can get a lot of use out of some smokesticks a good stealth check and a decent acrobatics bonus. I could also recommend she pick up the Additional Traits feat and grab Pragmatic Activator with it. She would be able to use her intelligence in place of charisma for the purposes of Use Magic Device. It would fit in with her training nicely and giver her some light spell access in the form of wands and scrolls to play around with. There are some nifty things for rogues going that route. I'm not sure there is any further bomb support with rogues but I do know there are some fun things they can do with skills if you guys want to get into skill unlocks. It is material from Paizo's recent Pathfinder Unchained book that is intended to give far greater functionality to various skills but the system can be pretty daunting to get into. |
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Post by Alex Newall on Dec 3, 2015 0:39:10 GMT
Pragmatic activator is not a bad idea...
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Post by grumblyarcher on Dec 3, 2015 8:36:41 GMT
Yeah, there are a few traits like that. Bruising Intellect, Clever Wordplay, Student of Philosophy, Precise Treatment, and Cunning Liar are some more in a similar vein. It really opens up available character concepts. I don't think I've gone without at least one of them for the past five or so characters I've built.
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Post by Brave Sir Robin on Dec 3, 2015 12:55:07 GMT
I always liked Zen Archery for funsies, but could never find a character to go with it.
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Post by Alex Newall on Dec 4, 2015 1:01:10 GMT
I have been reading up on Alchemists. I have decided I officially frigging love them to death. They just sound so much fun.
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Post by grumblyarcher on Dec 4, 2015 7:01:45 GMT
Alchemists are great. They have such an absurd number of options available to them and I think the slight alterations to casting that alchemy uses is a bit more intuitive and easy to picture then what you get with most other prepared casting classes. Their inherent flavor keeps drawing me back too. I like the idea that they don't have the raw arcane power that other casters do so they have to be much smarter when figuring out how to supplement and use that power. Sort of a working man's magic supplier.
Also, a hilarious bit of rules nuance that sometimes gets overlooked. Alchemists can copy and adapt spells into their formula books from wizard spell books but wizards can't make heads or tails of an alchemist's formulae so they can't copy from a formula book.
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Post by Alex Newall on Dec 5, 2015 2:26:47 GMT
Implying that alchemists understand what wizards do, they just choose not to bother because chemicals are fun and books are for nerds! AMIRITE!?
Although as far as I can follow the RAW, the alchemist can only use a spell book to learn a spell that is in the formulae list but not yet known to him/her.
Alas, chemical wish remains elusive.
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