TRPG General Chat

DuckTapeAl

01:29

@Shalvenay Why shouldn't the druid dump Cha?

I didn't think they really did much with that stat.

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl Animal Handling.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl It's not because Cha is good, but the Druid is always going to be in the form of animal, so it can dump physical stats like crazy, so might as well have good Cha.

Shalvenay

a deep CHA dump will break that.

DuckTapeAl

...is Animal Handling good for anything?

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl it's table-dependent, but the DCs there can be rather high if your DM is making you roll Handle Animal checks frequently

DuckTapeAl

01:31

I get it, but what are you rolling those checks on?

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl in some games, it may mostly be your companion -- in others, you'll be rolling them to wrangle wildlife

@DuckTapeAl or do you mean what stat? in that case, Animal Handling uses CHA.

DuckTapeAl

Also: A Str and Dex dump is a decent strategy, but it gets a bit tough at low levels. You're not spending your whole day as an animal until 6-8 or so.

Are there worthwhile compainions in PF? I seem to remember in 3.5 that there were a couple of edge-case ones that were good, but otherwise they were a waste of time.

I've never seen a PF druid who took an animal companion in my time playing the game.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl ...You what?

I mean, sure, your animal companion only replaces the Fighter.

DuckTapeAl

Are they that useful in PF? In 3.5, most of the choices were godawful.

Also, 'replaces the fighter' is something that you can do with Summon Monster.

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl Sure, but you don't need a full-round action to get your animal companion.

DuckTapeAl

01:37

Wait a sec, wrangling wildlife? Doesn't Handle Animal only work on domesticated animals, or raising baby animals?

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl I suggested a STR/INT or DEX/INT dump if the DM was willing to let a low-INT high-WIS char talk in a normal fashion.

Miniman

@Shalvenay Dumping Int is never a good idea - no good having Cha for Handle Animal if you don't have any skill points.

DuckTapeAl

Honestly, I feel like the minor penalty you get from dumping Cha is way better than any of the other options.

It takes you slightly longer until you can pass your normal DC 10 Handle check on your compainion, and it makes your Wild Empathy a little worse, but neither of those are big problems.

2 skill points/level is a big problem.

After reading the rest of your answer, @Shalvenay, I only have two nits to pick: I really think Cha is the right dump for that character, and I think most casters can deal with a double dump without much trouble.

Here's a Q from the site asking about Handling wild animals: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/36482/…

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl for a shallow dump of CHA, I'd agree with you. I'm just concerned about a deep dump of CHA really putting the character in a bad way with that

and I agree that most casters can double dump without too much difficulty

Miniman

@DuckTapeAl @Shalvenay I'd suggest putting your final paragraph up front - it's kind of the most important part of the answer.

DuckTapeAl

01:47

Well, with two dumps, you have to give up something that you want. I agree with dumping one of Str or Dex, but you sort of need at least 1 to be decent until you can spend your day in animal form.

Miniman

Any optimizer will tell you never to dump Dex - Initiative is way too important.

DuckTapeAl

The other two options are Int and Cha. Dumping Int kills your skill point total. Dumping Cha means you have a harder time with your animal companion (if you take one), and you probably can't do the standard animal manipulation stuff.

Miniman

In PF, do skill ranks still vastly outscale attribute bonuses?

DuckTapeAl

Yes.

1 rank per level.

Miniman

Then dumping Cha shouldn't really be an issue.

DuckTapeAl

01:49

And a non-focused stat will rarely go above +3.

A Cha of 5 means that your starting Handle Animal when handling your companion will be +5.

Miniman

That's not too bad. 25% chance of failure is pretty livable.

DuckTapeAl

So you succeed 80% of the time when doing a normal handle check.

Miniman

Ah, yeah. 20%, not 25.

DuckTapeAl

Oh, lol. Looks like if you take the Animal domain instead of an animal companion, you get a bunch of extra spells, free Speak with Animals, and an animal companion.

The domain companion is at level-3, but still.

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl um, keep in mind that this is a caster druid I'm talking about here

not a shifter druid.

Miniman

01:58

@Shalvenay I don't understand the distinction you're making there.

DuckTapeAl

Yeah, there's no difference there.

A druid should probably be spending most or all of their time in wild shape.

Miniman

And spending most or all of their actions spellcasting.

DuckTapeAl

Exactly.

Shalvenay

@DuckTapeAl the druid's player is saying they don't want to spend most of their time shaped.

(which is weird for PF, if you ask me -- although oddly enough, it makes sense in 3.0 of all places)

DuckTapeAl

Also: Until you get enough spell slots to cast something every round, you need to spend your actions doing something, and attacking with a ranged weapon is a perfectly good thing to do at say, level 3.

Where do they say that? I'm not finding it.

The querent says that the player wants to spend most of their time casting spells, which has no effect on whether or not they're wild shaped.

Since PF Natural Spell doesn't cost a level.

Shalvenay

02:05

@DuckTapeAl ah.

DuckTapeAl

Well, I'm heading off. G'night!

Shalvenay

02:44

@Miniman -- I tend to put a low value on "winning init" myself -- I suspect that's because I don't play high-level chars tho?

Miniman

@Shalvenay I think it has more to do with the level of optimization you play at than the character level.

Almost none of the 3.5 optimization advice I've ever given has really applied to a game I've played in.

Shalvenay

@Miniman aaah. the only high-opt 3.5e table I've been in had to be aborted prematurely due to the DM not having time to run it

Miniman

(Of course, I'm more of a conduit for the knowledge of others than possessing any actual expertise myself.)

Shalvenay

03:39

@Miniman that makes two of us then

Forrestfire

04:34

there's that one xkcd about that

amusingly, in the last high-op game I've played in, winning initiative has been a lot less important than you'd think it'd be

(well, am playing in, pending it not dying over christmas)

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire come to think of it, maybe I should try to get in a (virtual) table with you folks (depending on how you set up)

Forrestfire

might be able to find one

I wish I could run more games

Miniman

@Forrestfire Now there's a sentiment you don't hear often.

Forrestfire

what are you talking about I hear xkcd referenced all the time ;p

Miniman

@Forrestfire Lol. I meant that my experience has always been that demand and scarcity for Dungeon Masters is incredibly high - you hear lots of people wishing they could play in more games, but this is the first time I've heard anyone wanting to run more.

Forrestfire

04:39

well, I enjoy playing and I enjoy DMing

don't let anyone tell you I'm a good DM though, they're dirty liars

is terrible

but I enjoy running games if I get the chance. Sadly

er, sadly my schedule killed all but one

Miniman

@Forrestfire Me too! But while I'm pretty certain I could find players if I wanted to run more groups than I already do, I'd find it a lot harder to find a DM if I wanted to play in more groups than I already do.

Forrestfire

I was running a second game (in Eberron ;_;) and was planning a several session "oneshot" with 4e

but then everything changed when the school schedule attacked

Miniman

@Forrestfire Ah, it sucks when real life gets in the way.

Forrestfire

I hope to do the oneshot in the summer

we had had the first session, mostly RP and setup, and were about to do combat

aaand then schedule

I would love to play in another high-op game as well

my favorite DM is running one currently (3.5) and it's absolutely hilarious

Shalvenay

@Miniman I actually wish I had the time to run more stuff myself, although I'm not the greatest at coming up with stuff short noticed

Miniman

04:45

@Forrestfire I'm not sure I would, it takes a lot of the fun out of things. I have a build I want to try (dual-wielding, Int-to-damage, Dex-to-damage, almost full BAB, almost full Sneak Attack). It takes a lot of op to make, but in a high-op game it'd be worse than useless.

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire yeah, I was in a high-op/high-entropy game once and it was shaping up to be absolutely hilarious

including a scene where my char (the party druid) summoned an owl and it spontaneously transmogrified into an owlbear

Miniman

@Shalvenay Wow, how'd you manage that?

Forrestfire

@Miniman you'd be surprised

Shalvenay

@Miniman basically, DM-driven chaos magic :) it was a theme in the campaign

or at least that stage of it

Forrestfire

the game I'm currently in has an interesting mix of high-op characters

two of which are all about the melee blender

any decently-made melee could take that place, especially a character with twice Stat to damage (one of them excessively easy to boost, too) and access to Craven

Miniman

04:48

@Shalvenay Aw, that's disappointing. A build that caused summoned animals to turn into owlbears ould be awesome.

Forrestfire

I have one of those

(my group really likes owlbears)

Shalvenay

@Miniman hahahaha. the chaos magic themes were awesome as heck for a high-power/high-op universe. we also had a DMPC cameo from a mute (IIRC) tiefling paladin

Forrestfire

this one is actually fairly high-op itself

Imbued Summoning + prepared Sanctum Spell polymorph

Shalvenay

a deep dragon encounter early in the game

Miniman

@Forrestfire Problem is, the damage it deals is orders of magnitude lower than an actually-optimized melee character. (Charge barbarian)

Forrestfire

04:49

followed by dropping out 1d4+1 celestial badgers that spontaneously each polymorph into whatever you want

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire cleric build?

(the celestial badgers were the giveaway ;)

Forrestfire

well

that's just my preferred level 1 summon

works for cleric with some domains

wizard, sorc

well, not sorc

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire ah, but not Druid.

Forrestfire

druid too.

Shalvenay

oh?

Forrestfire

04:51

as long as you can get polymorph on your list.

any prepared caster.

feats needed: Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augmented Summoning, Imbued Summoning, Sanctum Spell

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire ah. sounds like it'd be a good thing to plug in instead of Greenbound Summoning, or perhaps alongside it

Forrestfire

if your DM allows Extra Spell to pull from off-list spells, you qualify for it at 9

it only functions because Imbued Summoning has a loophole with prepared spells that lets you Sanctum a 4th-level spell onto them.

Shalvenay

(using Greenbound to bridge the gap at lower levels until you can start dropping owlbears on folks head)

Forrestfire

I have also used it on NPCs to summon piles of greater invisibility'd shocker lizards on a party

@Miniman depending on what buff support you have

and items

multiple attacks dealing +level +sneak attack +twice stat +other bonuses adds up pretty fast

although things with no anatomy can wall you.

an artificer being on hand would help a lot.

Miniman

@Forrestfire Yeah, that's its biggest problem.

Shalvenay

04:54

@Forrestfire: while you're at it, rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/72382/… << mind giving my answer a final once-over?

Forrestfire

both because of truedeath and destruction crystals

and because if you're looking for high-op damage

artificers can hand out Persisted wraithstrike to their allies

@Shalvenay where's your recommendation of lesser vigor wands for healing?

healing belt is good but not very cost-effective for anything outside of emergency heals

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire I've never worked with lessor vigor wands

Forrestfire

good answer though otherwise.

(11 hp per charge, 750gp for 50 charges)

(heals over 66 seconds. Most cost-effective healing in the game)

(for both 3.5 and PF, although PF's is tagged as [evil])

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire healing belt is per-day AFAIK, so it's much more useful long-term than having to deal with stuffing spells into a wand over and over and over

@Forrestfire ...that's a problem.

Forrestfire

done the math on it

Miniman

04:57

@Shalvenay You buy wands.

Forrestfire

you don't run out of wand by the time you buy new wands

per the encounter guidelines, expected WBL, and level ups

a wand lasts you about a level at low levels, and then several get you by later

Miniman

Also, the healing belt not being in PF makes it not really a good option to suggest to someone playing PF.

Forrestfire

it's a drop in the bucket

oh yeah, that. How'd I miss that.

Shalvenay

@Miniman ah, it was deleted from PF? o.O

Forrestfire

it was from the Magic Item Compendium

it's not OGL

Miniman

04:58

@Shalvenay No idea. But your answer specifically says it's from 3.5. If it's in PF, you should say that.

Forrestfire

it was never added to Pathfinder. Wands of cure light wounds and/or infernal healing are the way to go

for the higher-dollar option at later levels, a boots of the earth provides unlimited Fast Healing 1, for 5000gp

archivesofnethys.com/…

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire ah. IMO, there's nothing stopping a DM from forwardporting it

Forrestfire

that is true.

but many DMs won't, so it's very worth recommending items that are actually "kosher"

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire do realize I'm talking to the DM in the answer here :)

Forrestfire

I do. Regardless. (Boots of the Earth is also a better purchase than, say, 4-5 healing belts to cover the party, outside of emergency healing)

(and the mental image of the party passing around the pair of magic healing boots is too good to pass up)

... I need to type slower. This chat client keeps smacking me for it.
@Miniman it actually occurs to me that for converting to higher-op, that build could use some item-mancy to get the tricks it needs to keep up.

Shalvenay

05:02

@Forrestfire yeah, I edited those in as well

Forrestfire

cool.

good answer, in any case.

Shalvenay

btw, what book is lesser vigor from?

Forrestfire

Complete Divine, then iirc Spell Compendium

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire aah. no wonder I didn't think of it

Forrestfire

I'm one of those people who wasted his life reading D&D books cover to cover

2

:V

Shalvenay

05:03

(my 3.5e knowledge is scattershot as heck -- it works well enough for the tables I'm at, but I haven't stepped out of CoDZilla yet)

Miniman

@Shalvenay There are very good reasons why inexperienced DMs should stick to the vanilla version of whatever system they're using before they think about doing this sort of thing.

Shalvenay

@Miniman for something with a significant amount of complexity like a monster stat block or a class, I'd agree with you.

Forrestfire

I'm gonna shamelessly plug my own handbook, because the advice in it can be applied to any character with UMD and two open feat slots (no prerequisites), you can get the buffs you need to make the jump from "decently built" to "holy shit what did you DO?"

giantitp.com/forums/…

Miniman

@Shalvenay The thing is, even something like the Belt of Healing is gateway complexity. Sooner or later a player is going to see something they like in 3.5 and ask for it, and you won't have a good reason to say no.

Shalvenay

@Miniman and by that time, my thinking is that the DM and players will have some experience under their belt, and will be better able to handle the ramifications of something more complexity

Forrestfire

05:08

that's... a dangerous assumption to make

a whole lot of groups have been playing for years and don't have the knowledge to pull off mashing stuff in

(or, really, to pull off handling things within the same system. Just look at people claiming the monk or fighter is overpowered in PF)

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire ...yeah

I've seen a very high-op Monk build in 3.5e and while it was good at making a mess of foes, it just didn't have the sheer versatility that either the cleric or the druid in our party had

Forrestfire

heh

speaking of high-op monks

... I think the highest-op monks I've seen were actually just theorycraft

there was a challenge on Giant in the Playground: build a build with as many monk levels as possible that could solo each of the Elder Evils in turn

giantitp.com/forums/… found it. Some hilarious abuses of the rules in there.

Shalvenay

heheh.

although, I really need to hit the sack -- I managed to give myself a terrible headache while RPing -- blame RPed Faerunian politics for that one.

Forrestfire

hah. Have a good night

Shalvenay

(worst of RL politics, blended with the "cosmic battle" theme of FR, and well, add a lack of data to fact-check things against, and you have the polar opposite of a headache remedy for a policy wonk like me)

Forrestfire

05:23

most of the time I like playing the "hey guys, shut up so we can save the world" card in D&D politics

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire that really doesn't work in a persistent world (NWN server, to be precise)

Forrestfire

ah.

fair enough.

Although honestly, I think that fantasy politics and maneuvering is second only to fantasy technobabble conversations in general level of fun while RPing

(in one session a couple months ago, we spent like an hour and a half discussing "magic theory" and various things with an NPC)

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire I find the technobabble side rather interesting at times, especially when you are working with a well-fleshed-out setting

Forrestfire

setting was Planescape/Greyhawk-within-Planescape, so there's a pretty well-established set of fluff things

Shalvenay

but the politics man...especially when they're world-spanning (i.e. druid groves, temples, etal are expected to be active participants in the political sphere, not just official gov't functions)

Forrestfire

05:28

yeah. Fun as hell. Messy, though.

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire not fun for policy wonks -- you have to keep in mind that in most RP of this sort, there is no verifiable ground truth, just sides.

Forrestfire

isn't that what makes it fun?

it's basically like a debate club, except you're RPing fantasy politicians or other major players

Shalvenay

@Forrestfire wonks are the engineers of government. they are the folks who pore over statistics and studies and debate the details of what works and what doesn't or can't.

Forrestfire

ah. I did not know that.

mind, occasionally there is verifiable truth

it just depends on if your character would know it, I guess

I can see that being annoying though.

Shalvenay

the problem is wonkishness is extremely intolerant of moral polarization -- wonkish decision-making styles don't fit well into pithy soundbites, and wonks make poor leaders themselves because they have trouble seeing the forest for the trees at times.

Forrestfire

05:36

hrm. I should probably sleep too

have a good night, all.

Shalvenay

on top of that, my political views are hard to disentangle from modern political thought -- I'm very constitutionally/judicially oriented, which doesn't work so well in Faerun :P

BESW