The Gaming Den

So, if Cleric beats out wizard so soundly now, lago, what about between cleric and druid, how do their respective magic mojos compare?

Scrivener wrote:While hold person and sleep/deep slumber have uses, they are all more limited by minions and artificial constraints (and save every round in hold person's case). I actually cannot think of a better save or die at any level than the slumber hex.

First off, I gave advice that's going to be bunk in most campaigns. Full disclosure: I never play in any 3E D&D games that start out below 5th level these days, it's a total dealbreaker for me. If you are organically raising a shaman from zero-to-hero then you need this hex like yesterday. My experience, where you get to play a Pathfinder character above level 5 for a few levels, applies to like 10% of campaigns at most. Now, keeping this caveat in mind:

Having a single-target SoD that doesn't consume spell slots and auto-level scales is very good, don't get me wrong, but:
[*] Sleep and slumber specifically is easy to foil by a bunch of common conditions. The number of critters flat-out immune to mind-affecting conditions is not small.
[*] Slumber is auto-cured if someone else has a standard action to burn. Which is why I said the effect isn't super-special awesome in mob fights.
[*] Keeping the above two caveats in mind, is it really the best option for a single-target SoD at every level? I mean, let's take a look at the shaman list: Charm Person, Scare, Stinking Cloud, Feast on Fear, Dominate Person, in addition to whatever spells a shaman gets from plundering the cleric list as a human or from their spirits.
[*] Finally, even if it was always the best option all of the time you still need to keep opportunity costs in mind. A spell that does 100 penis points of damage is better than a spell that does everything the same except for 99 penis points, but is is better than a spell that does 99 pp and comes packaged with Iron Will? The slumber hex does not consume spell slots, which makes it extremely useful at low level. But at mid-levels it's subject to action clog.

I'd like to emphasize that it's not a bad or even merely a decent pick. And you get more than enough hexes as a straight shaman that you'll probably be picking this as your third or fourth hex. But if you're going for something like Speaker of the Past Shaman I'd either pick it up with extra hex or forgo it and sit pretty with an item creation and metamagic feat.

Yeah Lago, you really should put that caveat in your posts.

What would be a good domain to have as primary for an Ecclesitheurge cleric? And what domains go well with Void or Travel?

Any suggestions for a goblin arcanist? I'm leaning toward Occultist + enchantment spells because the concept has to do with personal power and control over others (something something proving he's not just a weak underling to the orcs something) but that's rather flexible. Any specific things I should be looking at?

Archmage Joda wrote:What would be a good domain to have as primary for an Ecclesitheurge cleric? And what domains go well with Void or Travel?

Protection, with or without the Defense subdomain, is full of spell that you want to cast all day, every day. Flotsam (Water) is a fantastic domain if you don't have to use the crappy spells.

momothefiddler wrote:Any suggestions for a goblin arcanist? I'm leaning toward Occultist + enchantment spells because the concept has to do with personal power and control over others (something something proving he's not just a weak underling to the orcs something) but that's rather flexible. Any specific things I should be looking at?

Since you said that you're going Occultist, I'll give you some advice that applies to every 3.5E D&D summoner: be extremely mindful of the CR gap. Your opposition rises in badassitude faster than your summons do. A hound archon or celestial dire lion is usable out of the box at the level you get it, but even a badass cloud giant might not be able to keep up. If you're serious about summoning and you plan to get into level 12+, you need to invest in game effects that will improve the competence of your summons. Here are some things you want to consider:

[*] Summoning as a standard action. This is such a huge deal that wizards remain a competitive summoning option even though Sacred Summon clerics have a better chassis for it. You're an occultist so you don't have to wonder whether picking up a school specialization with an exploit qualifies, but keep this in mind for future builds.
[*] Look into the Aug. Summoning + Sup. Summons feat chain. The extra +4 to strength and constitution is a big help.
[*] Strongly, strongly consider the feat Summon Good Monster if you're in it for the long haul. It has some very good options at mid and high level. You don't need it right away (and certain builds don't need it at all, hello Abyssal Bloodline) but eventually it gets so boss that makes Naked Snake and The Joy cry tears of pride at around the Summon Monster V level.
[*] If you can swing it, Rods of Empowering gives your summoning a much-needed shot in the arm, especially in conjunction with the Sup. Summons line. Summoning five Wood Giants with SM6, assuming you have Summon Good Monster, is a nice 'fuck you' to the opposition despite the CR gap.
[*] Evolved Summoned Monster can really help you drop the hammer on enemies. A lot of monsters get their CR based on having one really badass attack. If you pick Claws or Wing Buffet, you can make it three. You're goddamn right I want to summon a celestial ankylosaurus with three smiting attacks + daze.
[*] Consider reserving a few of your spells for buffs. You're an arcanist, so this is a little bit harder for you, but you have (Greater) Scale Spikes, (Mass) Dazzling Blade, and Haste, so what more do you want?

Sacred summons is terrible. On most levels you'll probably won't even have a single summon options with a subtype that matches your aura.

Ah, dammit, I didn't see that note about Sacred Summons not working on *-templated monsters. Who came up with that shit?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:stuff

Much appreciated. I really like Evolved Summoned Monster, but it seems to pull in opposite directions to Superior Summons, and I don't know which is better (or if I can afford both). I'm also considering Superior Summons (and possibly the abyssal bloodline ability? maybe? the game will definitely have died by then though) because - and I should have mentioned this initially - it's a solo game, so I don't have to worry about hogging screen time when I throw down a bunch of tokens (and I don't have any convenient party members to distract enemies from my squishy body).

How do you get 5 Wood Giants out of SM6?

momothefiddler wrote:How do you get 5 Wood Giants out of SM6?

Summon Good Monster + Superior Summons + Rod of Empower + rolling a 3 on the 1d3.

As far as Evolved Summoned Monster/Superior Summons go, they run off of the same feat chain. And though you (sadly) can't apply evolutions to every monster you summon, you can have one monster whom it applies to. It's still extra attacks.

Alternatively, you might want to consider grabbing a rod of Familiar Spell and loading up your Familiar with spells you may want to cast. Haste fucking rules as a buff for summoned monsters. Familiar Spell is a bit of a pain to set up, though, since you need to worry about a spell component pouch/eschew materials and a way to verbalize. I'd go with a monkey and a Circlet of Speaking, myself.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

momothefiddler wrote:How do you get 5 Wood Giants out of SM6?

Summon Good Monster + Superior Summons + Rod of Empower + rolling a 3 on the 1d3.

SM7, then?

Whoops, you're right. I thought it was a SMV option. Man, I'm just sucking today. More than usual.

No worries. So build resources-wise, you'd focus on summons vs other things (say, increasing the DCs of enchantment spells, or whatever) and then cover the extra ground with spell selection?

Are there any arcanist exploits that modify summons at all (other than +1 CL, which only changes the duration that's plenty long enough anyway)?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with other wizarding builds. Summons do have significant disadvantages over calling and mob charming and undead armies and animate object whoring. If you're allowed to specialize in any of the previous ways to throw tokens onto the battlefield you should go with those. However, DMs tend to ban or stealth nerf calling and thrallhordes. I've never had nor heard of a DM nerfing any summoning build that was not a synthesist.

Hell, I think that you should also look into ways to throw down with animate dead as well, since you're flying solo. Pathfinder also boosted the utility of necromancers by giving both clerics and wizards ways to create undead hordes at a lower-level and allowing them to slap templates onto their undead critters. Animate dead does get subject to in- and out-game nerfs (mostly concerning peoples' reactions of you and the availability of certain corpses) but not as many as called or charmed critters.

Huh. I just realized that the dead controlled cap is based on caster level. Does that mean things like Mage's Tattoo(Necromancy) and whatever fucking ioun stone it is increase your permanent corpse slave cap? Hell, does spending an extra 5sp when casting give you an extra 4HD controlled?

Mob charming: which spells are best for this? I presume only ones that have lasting effects (hypnotism, charm person maybe, charm monster, geas... other ones at 5+, so, far away).

Calling: The Occultist does get the Planar Ally line. I can't tell if this is better or worse than Binding. The inability to choose which (Sp) I get is aggravating, for one.... Anyway, I'm pretty sure the game will be dead before this comes online, so I'm not too worried one way or another.

I'm interested in how the "animate object whoring" version of minion mastery goes. Is it just "Cast animate objects, ????, profit, or is there more to it than just casting that particular spell?

Using Blood Money + Permanency also, so that you have as large an army of objects as you feel like.

One thing that's not super-clear is how the Construction Point system works with materials. The spell description seems to pre-date it, so it's not clear what happens if you animate something made of Adamantine that's too small to pay for it. Personally, I'd say it does gain the hardness, just can't take any other abilities.

Speaking of Permanency - you can make Invisibility permanent on objects. So do that before animating them, and you arguably have permanently invisible minions.

Ice9 wrote:Blood Money

I'm regularly reminded how much i love this terrible, terrible spell

Ice9 wrote:Using Blood Money + Permanency also, so that you have as large an army of objects as you feel like.

One thing that's not super-clear is how the Construction Point system works with materials. The spell description seems to pre-date it, so it's not clear what happens if you animate something made of Adamantine that's too small to pay for it. Personally, I'd say it does gain the hardness, just can't take any other abilities.

Speaking of Permanency - you can make Invisibility permanent on objects. So do that before animating them, and you arguably have permanently invisible minions.

You can spend more CPs than your size allows, it just increases CR, which doesn't matter at all for the spell.

rasmuswagner wrote:You can spend more CPs than your size allows, it just increases CR, which doesn't matter at all for the spell.

I have to assume that CP was put in after the Animate Objects spell, or they would have specified that you get the normal amount for an animated object of that size. It is a bit silly for a 6th level spell to make a creature that moves infinitely fast and makes infinitely many attacks at infinite reach for infinite damage.

Ice9 wrote: Speaking of Permanency - you can make Invisibility permanent on objects. So do that before animating them, and you arguably have permanently invisible minions.

Shouldn't the invisibility still end on an attack?

The duration is changed to permanent, but the cavat of "the spell ends if you make an attack" does not go away.

Also animating the object would presumably make it no longer a valid target for the spell, which I would imagine would make it fizzle. There may not be an explicit ruling on permanency and invalid targets, but I would imagine that to be the most common ruling on the case.

edit: or rather, no longer a valid target for permanent invisibility. So it would seem that the construct would only be invisible until it attacked, and then invisibility goes away as normal, and doesn't come back, because the permanence fizzled.

Pixels wrote:It is a bit silly

Pretty sure you just described Pathfinder.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm a huge fan of Nature Fang. It's everything the ranger class should've been.

Archmage Joda wrote:But then, which do I want for my cross-list Sage caster, a Cleric or a Shaman, and why?

Frankly, I don't see why you want to be a cross-class list caster so badly. It's not like 3.5E D&D where playing pre-blasphemy blaster clerics required a bunch of primping and scraping up expansion options like the Illusion domain and Doomtide. Unless you have a grab-bag of specific spells in mind like dominate person + contingency + shadow conjuration + planar binding or you want to abuse a specific spell, I think that both the shaman and cleric lists are more than sufficient to replicate the big casting tricks of a wizard. Hell, with stuff like the Ecclesitheurge cleric available I'm struggling to come up with a reason as to why you should play a wizard over a cleric.

I think I'm just gonna scale down my attempts at wizard list plundering to use of Dreamed Secrets and domains. But in my quest to make a "wizardly" cleric (namely, mechanically a cleric class, but thematically and for all intents and purposes a mage like the wizard, but possibly armored), I just have difficulty picking two domains.

I had thought of Travel, Void, Darkness, Artifice (Construct), as possibilities, but I can't seem to pin down a good, complementary pair of domains for a casting focused (ideally mostly battlefield control, buffs/debuffs, and occasionally just outright winning an encounter) cleric.

What would be some good pairs of domains for the kind of cleric I'm going for, and are there any feats or items (not archetypes) to get more uses of domain spells per day?