There’s a project to level party members that are behind.
I haven’t adventured with Jubilost at all outside of his NPC quests and he’s lvl10. The rest of the unused NPCs are a similar level.
Oh right, I forgot about that project. They showed up in the original release of the game even if you had xp sharing enabled.. Not sure how much I'll get out of it switching, at level 8. That could work, since I'm rolling with Linzi this game. That has gotta be the only thing that really pissed me off ...
that they take Linzi away in the last chapter, regardless of if you did all her quests. So I'll have to have a replacement ready.
Wow, after playing for like an hour or so just doing side quests and exploration, my charname's already about 2,000XP above the active party doing all the persuasion and traps. Ya, I can probably hit level 19 or 20 still. Works out well for this build, since I was getting a little disheartened about falling behind with number of attacks since I took those 3 rogue levels.
Edit: So after getting in a few hours, my main is like 10k above the nearest active party member, and like 13k above the furthest behind. I'm advancing pretty rapidly now. Everyone's level 9, and my main's nearly to level 10, and I'm about to start the hunt with the Embeth Travelers.
I've been really thinking about doing a thundercaller archer at some point. I don't normally go for archers, but with the songs, spells and thunder might make it more fun. Just can't quite get the point spread to work out, since I'd want like 14 str, 18 dex 18 cha. Maybe have to accept a really low wisdom to get the points. I can't quite decide on race, elf would get longbows and the dex bonus, but human would make a better skill monkey and I could burn a feat for martial weapons, while a plume kith would get a bonus both to dex and cha.
For my own shield basher build I was leaning towards flamewarden. I think freebooter loses the favored enemy. I can't decide on a barbarian archetype, either invulnerable rager or armored hulk.
I think both Invunerable Rager and Armoured Hulk have less survivability than a default barbarian, since they lose Uncanny Dodge. Armoured Hulk is okay for a 1/2 level dip because proficiencies. Damage reduction is only useful if you can stack lots and lots of it, which IR can only do by staying single class or making Stalwart Defender it's only multiclass.
Mad Dog is the weakest animal companion class, since it has no way to buff the AC of the companion by itself. It's only really viable as part of a vanilla ranger multiclass.
The main thing I see with regards to Freebooter/Flamewarden is the Flamewarden has abilities that key of wisdom, whereas the freebooter does not (if you don't care about spells). So Freebooter is the way to go if you want to make wisdom a dump stat.
@Fardragon, can you perhaps help me understand the conditions where flatfooted AC is used? To my basic knowledge, I think that you are flatfooted if you in the beginning of combat roll a crappy initiative and the enemy can hit you first. Also you are caught flatfooted if you are stuck because of spells or perhaps some abilities that make you hold, parazyled, webbed etc. Are there any other situations where the flatfoot AC is used for rolls?
The reason I ask is that my current char will be heavily dependent on DEX and INT to AC and probably naked armor or perhaps light armor. Even if I reach good AC for touch and normal attackts, my flatfooted AC will be absolute crap. Due to incredibly high initiative from feats and class abilities that scenario will be very rare, but what other scenarios must I therefore be wary of?
Thanks guys. I had contemplated taking 2 levels of barb or not, which I think is the quickest way to get and keep up the BAB, or Rogue. Though in my mind I had planned to not use rogue at all and the question is if it's worth losing 2 levels of Magus only for Uncanny Dodge. I'm unsure..
Somebody earlier had asked about sneak attacks. I've noticed a lot of plants like the giant fly traps are vulnerable to it (oddly enough they're also vulnerable to boneshatter). It also seems like at least some Worgs are immune to it. I think it's a rage effect that's making them immune.
Personally I wouldn't do a 2 level dip just to get uncanny dodge, but it's up to you. One thing that's great about dodge bonus AC, is it works on ray attacks and things like specters. The Big Stick build I did could just tank the specters without having to worry about getting hit with level drains.
In 1.1.6d Ranged Legerdemain gives a single character multiple chances to pick a lock. At least two chances anyway. I’ve never failed more than once.
EDIT: Looks like you can fail at least twice. I’ll have to experiment with this earlier in the game. I never had Octavia enable RL until The House. The run I lost to the Curse was an Arcane Trickster. I might have to try that again.
If I was making a duellist I would be more inclined to dip into rogue than dip into vivisectionist. Mutagen is nice and all, but unless you intend to abuse rest the duration is a bit short if you only have a couple of levels. Uncanny Dodge is on all the time, and you can save yourself a feat by not needing Slashing Grace.
If I was making a Barb from scratch, rather than MCing Amiri, I would go for a dex build and qualify for the duel wielding feats without needing ranger levels. But fighter is pretty much flat out better than barbarian anyway.
Holy crap, the last update to the 1.2 beta seriously reduced the load times, I'd say less than half of what it was before. Most of the time it's maybe 3 seconds for a load on this system.
I decided if I'm going to play a game with xp sharing off, I should do it right and up the difficulty and start a fresh character. Doing an elven vivisectionist, with a single level dip in fighter, so far. A lot of the reason for the dip was just to get persuasion as a class skill without hurting my attack bonus, plus free feat. I'm trying to soak up all that xp from the persuasion and trickery checks. I was tempted to do a vivesectionist with 3 rogue levels, just so I could do elven curve blade, but didn't want to take that much away from the alchemist levels.
You don't need to use dex for an elven curve blade. A strength based vivisectionist is perfectly effective - I don't think their spells are ever affected by armour.
And I think it's Persuasion that matters. Some difficult Persuasion checks allow boss fights to be avoided. And the xp that you would have got for defeating the boss spread across the whole party is dumped on a single character (depending on settings).
The xp from Trickery and other skill checks is fairly modest in comparison.
I know you don't have to use dex for the curve blade, but it works a lot easier point wise if you can use strength as a dump stat and max dex to give you great attack and damage and boost AC. I actually didn't get very far with the vivesectionist anyways. I wasn't really digging it and started up a thundercaller. I might be pulling too much XP on my main, now though, doing all the trickery and persuasion. I'm a couple levels ahead of 3 party members, will be 3 levels, soon and I haven't killed the stag lord, yet.
I know you don't have to use dex for the curve blade, but it works a lot easier point wise if you can use strength as a dump stat and max dex to give you great attack and damage and boost AC. I actually didn't get very far with the vivesectionist anyways. I wasn't really digging it and started up a thundercaller. I might be pulling too much XP on my main, now though, doing all the trickery and persuasion. I'm a couple levels ahead of 3 party members, will be 3 levels, soon and I haven't killed the stag lord, yet.
I feel like charname hit 20 at just the right time, but everyone else is a little too far behind. Octavia hasn’t yet hit 18 and everyone else is only lvl15. I guess that’s not too bad considering most folks that share XP are hitting the endgame at lvl15 or 16 for all chars.
My current charname is a fey sorcerer and 9th circle spells bolstered by Grandmaster’s Rod certainly help against the Wild Hunt.
My current charname is a fey sorcerer and 9th circle spells bolstered by Grandmaster’s Rod certainly help against the Wild Hunt. Have the Wild Hunt been changed much in 1.2?
I'm not exactly sure when these changes crept in, but when I finished the game under an earlier version of 1.2, it was a lot easier than the first time I finished, but I didn't do the optional chapter at the very end last time. There was a bug with earlier versions where the wild hunters flanking bonuses stacked repeatedly, giving them insane attack bonuses, that they fixed. I also didn't have as much trouble with my freedom of movements getting dispelled as the first time I finished the game. They nerfed greater shout a lot, but I didn't find I needed to abuse to deal with the monarchs. The wildhunt scouts also use more hit and run tactics, so you have to be careful they don't party members into rooms with more mobs. With defaults on normal difficulty I hit level 17 at the house at the edge of time, so turning off xp sharing isn't necessary to get that high.
I've got the difficulty at challenging now, and the game's sometimes kicking my butt again, sometimes. I finished the trolls, and my main's been level 9 for awhile, almost level 10, but the rest of the party only just got to level 8. The ones that weren't my starting party from the very beginning are pretty far behind, even Harrim, who I got at the ancient tomb in chapter 1.
I'm starting to think that setting it so the skill check user gets all the XP makes the game harder, depending on your party. The rest of the group is fairly far behind where they'd be with xp sharing/shared skill xp. My main's been doing all the persuasion, trickery, lore nature and mobility checks for the group, so that's a lot of xp on one character, so char name's pretty far ahead. It probably wouldn't be as bad if I didn't have so many skills on my main.
I'm also realizing how badass this thundercaller is. Doing a lot of archery, so I've got manyshot and using the devourer of metal, with the ring of plentiful hunts and those bracers. I've saved the rest of the party from getting wrecked by stun locking mobs with my thundercall, too. I pretty much always walk around with heroism up. I went with 14/18/10/7/10/17 to start, since I should be able to get to level 20 and get 5 attribute point bumps. The character's extremely versatile, great buffs and debuffs, can wreck things with a bow and stun groups of enemies, and even with a 7 intelligence I still get 4 skill points a level.
So it seems there must have been a update that removed the option for building my weird glasscannon build. Apparently elven curve blades are no longer an option for slashing grace, it seems, making it impossible to add Duelist on top of both Piranha strike and power attack at the same time since (to my knowledge) ECBs were the only weapon category that could benefit from both while still being a light weapon eligable for Duelist's precise strike. I have finesse, focus and 18 DEX, but it still says "no appropriate weapon" when I uncheck the "Show unavailable feats".
It's correct I assume, though I have to admit I think the way they seem to have implemented is a short-cut. Even though Piranha strike clearly state that it doesn't work together with power attack, removing ECB from the list of "appropriate weapons" for Duelist's Precise strike and for slashing grace is odd.
My restartitis made me wanna start all over again as a pure 2-handed fighter -> Duelist with maybe barb level 2 for uncanny dodge and +20 walk speed, but now that build is shot down. I had wanted to see if it was possible to reach 100 damage with all those stacking boons after finding +STR items, power attack, piranha attack, precise strike, cleave and all cleave-feats on top of all the crit feats with full BAB. Ah well.. guess I have to go back to my current playthrough (which already seem less appealing).
Perhaps 3 levels in Rogue could still do it, but that was less appealing. Nope, just tested and it doesn't work either, so apparently CVBs as a weapon have been removed from all ties to Duelist. I guess a one-handed weapon which can be used twohanded is perhaps still applicable but neither has the dualism of the ECB, or rather what it had before. Potentially a dueling sword could work, but their crit range is less appealing and it would be more feat taxing. I'm gonna try just for fun.
OK tried dueling sword and it doesnt work either. Even with aldori mastery it doesn't add all the damage bonuses at the same time, even though I have all the necessary feats. The base +damage is 12, which I assume is +7 STR*1,5 + weapon specialization, so 7 + (7/2 rounded down to 3) + 2 = 12. The piranha strike adds 12 and power attack adds 18, but the precise strike from duelist is no where to be found. I've checked the combat log (and I tried wearing both no and light armor) and it's just not there, oddly enough.
So, oddly enough instead of just removing piranha to work with power attack (which I think would be the best way to handle this, and I think, aligned to the core rules), there's some other kind of change (bug?) that stops this from working.
It says light or one-handed for both slashing grace and the aldori defender feat, which was applicable to the ECB as the only (to my limited knowledge) that was 2-handed (martial) as base and still treated as light (edit: I mean the only slashing weapon). I know for a fact it worked a week ago or two, as I wrote in a post earlier in this thread while just playing around with Amiri.
I don't think it was intentional that elven curve blade worked with those feats. It's neither a light weapon or one handed and weapon finesse has an exception mentioning it. It would be nice if it did, though.
Actually you guys have made me curious about maybe a barbarian/vivesectionist, just go for great axes and strength. There's some big potential with stacking rage and mutagen. Just have to make sure you have enough Int so you don't lose your spells after quaffing a strength mutagen. That might be what I try next if I either finish the game or get bored with my thundercaller.
I've experimented with barbarian (armored hulk) vivisectionist. You are right about the loosing spells drawback, but mutagen strength buff is great. Rage buff is meh though, not really worth the AC penalty.
Yeah rage is really too weak in comparison to other buffs, ie the mutagen. I think it's level 15 before it's updated from +2 to +3 and level 20 IIRC for the +4 update. The only good thing is that at level 2 Barb you get +2 to AB +1 from STR (Rage) to off-set the negative AB from power attack and an additional rage power as gravy on the top (I prefer speed, +10 from barb level 1 +10 from rage power = +20 which in combo with Mobility and light armor can make you stick and move and not risk AoOs), you also get uncanny dodge at level 2 Barb and can keep take a few feats of more Rage if you want to. So for a barb/vivi I'd rather dip into Barb and pump vivi than the opposite.
I don't think it was intentional that elven curve blade worked with those feats. It's neither a light weapon or one handed and weapon finesse has an exception mentioning it. It would be nice if it did, though.
Actually you guys have made me curious about maybe a barbarian/vivesectionist, just go for great axes and strength. There's some big potential with stacking rage and mutagen. Just have to make sure you have enough Int so you don't lose your spells after quaffing a strength mutagen. That might be what I try next if I either finish the game or get bored with my thundercaller.
Yeah, I agree that's probably why they did what they did. But I still think it was cool to have the ECB as a 2-handed martial weapon being considered light. Remove that and ECB bring less interesting things to the table since they are not otherwise superior to ie Falchion. Though ofc, the benefit are that they are martial for elves so they can save a feat if they want to use them (and they look cool!).
A completely different question: Does anyone know Pathfinder in regards to the "double" weapons, ie double-bladed axes or swords? Are they considered twohanded (and eligable for ie boons from the fighter archetype two-handed fighter and/or the 1.5 STR bonus to damage) but also subject from maluses from dual wielding? So to use them should you go down the route for dual wielding or is 2-handed fighting enough?
I haven't tested it in game, but in PnP rules a double weapon is treated as two light weapons rather than a two handed weapon, so it shouldn't benefit from two-handed fighter.
Comments
I haven’t adventured with Jubilost at all outside of his NPC quests and he’s lvl10. The rest of the unused NPCs are a similar level.
that they take Linzi away in the last chapter, regardless of if you did all her quests. So I'll have to have a replacement ready.
Edit: So after getting in a few hours, my main is like 10k above the nearest active party member, and like 13k above the furthest behind. I'm advancing pretty rapidly now. Everyone's level 9, and my main's nearly to level 10, and I'm about to start the hunt with the Embeth Travelers.
I've been really thinking about doing a thundercaller archer at some point. I don't normally go for archers, but with the songs, spells and thunder might make it more fun. Just can't quite get the point spread to work out, since I'd want like 14 str, 18 dex 18 cha. Maybe have to accept a really low wisdom to get the points. I can't quite decide on race, elf would get longbows and the dex bonus, but human would make a better skill monkey and I could burn a feat for martial weapons, while a plume kith would get a bonus both to dex and cha.
Mad Dog is the weakest animal companion class, since it has no way to buff the AC of the companion by itself. It's only really viable as part of a vanilla ranger multiclass.
The main thing I see with regards to Freebooter/Flamewarden is the Flamewarden has abilities that key of wisdom, whereas the freebooter does not (if you don't care about spells). So Freebooter is the way to go if you want to make wisdom a dump stat.
The reason I ask is that my current char will be heavily dependent on DEX and INT to AC and probably naked armor or perhaps light armor. Even if I reach good AC for touch and normal attackts, my flatfooted AC will be absolute crap. Due to incredibly high initiative from feats and class abilities that scenario will be very rare, but what other scenarios must I therefore be wary of?
Thanks!
Personally I wouldn't do a 2 level dip just to get uncanny dodge, but it's up to you. One thing that's great about dodge bonus AC, is it works on ray attacks and things like specters. The Big Stick build I did could just tank the specters without having to worry about getting hit with level drains.
EDIT: Looks like you can fail at least twice. I’ll have to experiment with this earlier in the game. I never had Octavia enable RL until The House. The run I lost to the Curse was an Arcane Trickster. I might have to try that again.
If I was making a Barb from scratch, rather than MCing Amiri, I would go for a dex build and qualify for the duel wielding feats without needing ranger levels. But fighter is pretty much flat out better than barbarian anyway.
I decided if I'm going to play a game with xp sharing off, I should do it right and up the difficulty and start a fresh character. Doing an elven vivisectionist, with a single level dip in fighter, so far. A lot of the reason for the dip was just to get persuasion as a class skill without hurting my attack bonus, plus free feat. I'm trying to soak up all that xp from the persuasion and trickery checks. I was tempted to do a vivesectionist with 3 rogue levels, just so I could do elven curve blade, but didn't want to take that much away from the alchemist levels.
And I think it's Persuasion that matters. Some difficult Persuasion checks allow boss fights to be avoided. And the xp that you would have got for defeating the boss spread across the whole party is dumped on a single character (depending on settings).
The xp from Trickery and other skill checks is fairly modest in comparison.
My current charname is a fey sorcerer and 9th circle spells bolstered by Grandmaster’s Rod certainly help against the Wild Hunt.
Have the Wild Hunt been changed much in 1.2?
I've got the difficulty at challenging now, and the game's sometimes kicking my butt again, sometimes. I finished the trolls, and my main's been level 9 for awhile, almost level 10, but the rest of the party only just got to level 8. The ones that weren't my starting party from the very beginning are pretty far behind, even Harrim, who I got at the ancient tomb in chapter 1.
I'm starting to think that setting it so the skill check user gets all the XP makes the game harder, depending on your party. The rest of the group is fairly far behind where they'd be with xp sharing/shared skill xp. My main's been doing all the persuasion, trickery, lore nature and mobility checks for the group, so that's a lot of xp on one character, so char name's pretty far ahead. It probably wouldn't be as bad if I didn't have so many skills on my main.
I'm also realizing how badass this thundercaller is. Doing a lot of archery, so I've got manyshot and using the devourer of metal, with the ring of plentiful hunts and those bracers. I've saved the rest of the party from getting wrecked by stun locking mobs with my thundercall, too. I pretty much always walk around with heroism up. I went with 14/18/10/7/10/17 to start, since I should be able to get to level 20 and get 5 attribute point bumps. The character's extremely versatile, great buffs and debuffs, can wreck things with a bow and stun groups of enemies, and even with a 7 intelligence I still get 4 skill points a level.
It's correct I assume, though I have to admit I think the way they seem to have implemented is a short-cut. Even though Piranha strike clearly state that it doesn't work together with power attack, removing ECB from the list of "appropriate weapons" for Duelist's Precise strike and for slashing grace is odd.
My restartitis made me wanna start all over again as a pure 2-handed fighter -> Duelist with maybe barb level 2 for uncanny dodge and +20 walk speed, but now that build is shot down. I had wanted to see if it was possible to reach 100 damage with all those stacking boons after finding +STR items, power attack, piranha attack, precise strike, cleave and all cleave-feats on top of all the crit feats with full BAB. Ah well.. guess I have to go back to my current playthrough (which already seem less appealing).
Perhaps 3 levels in Rogue could still do it, but that was less appealing. Nope, just tested and it doesn't work either, so apparently CVBs as a weapon have been removed from all ties to Duelist. I guess a one-handed weapon which can be used twohanded is perhaps still applicable but neither has the dualism of the ECB, or rather what it had before. Potentially a dueling sword could work, but their crit range is less appealing and it would be more feat taxing. I'm gonna try just for fun.
OK tried dueling sword and it doesnt work either. Even with aldori mastery it doesn't add all the damage bonuses at the same time, even though I have all the necessary feats. The base +damage is 12, which I assume is +7 STR*1,5 + weapon specialization, so 7 + (7/2 rounded down to 3) + 2 = 12. The piranha strike adds 12 and power attack adds 18, but the precise strike from duelist is no where to be found. I've checked the combat log (and I tried wearing both no and light armor) and it's just not there, oddly enough.
So, oddly enough instead of just removing piranha to work with power attack (which I think would be the best way to handle this, and I think, aligned to the core rules), there's some other kind of change (bug?) that stops this from working.
NB is there any way to become proficient in hand crossbows or repeating crossbows?
Actually you guys have made me curious about maybe a barbarian/vivesectionist, just go for great axes and strength. There's some big potential with stacking rage and mutagen. Just have to make sure you have enough Int so you don't lose your spells after quaffing a strength mutagen. That might be what I try next if I either finish the game or get bored with my thundercaller.