Min/Max Boards

Check out the Cooperative Crafting feat from the Advanced Players Guide. Prereq is 1 rank in a Craft skill and one Item Creation feat. Anyone who has the feat and helps when making a magic item gives a +2 to Craft or Spellcraft to make an item, anyone involved can satisfy prereqs, etc. But the real gem is anyone using this to help you craft doubles the gold value of what you can craft that day.

Take the Leadership feat, and fill your ranks with level 1 Humans with this feat(or some other race with a flaw), and suddenly crafting takes no time at all. This should also work with a Dedicated Wright in 3.P, as it shares your feats and skills(so in this case you'd have to take the feat as well).

Edit: Any crafting Wizard should also take the Valet familiar archetype, as it acts as if it has the feat for purposes of crafting.

I have not read the books, nor do I plan on seeing the movie unless it gets a Rifftrax, but I nevertheless thought it would be a fun thought experiment to try and create the eponymous Christian Grey from the series. So far, this is what I have managed to come up with.

Class: Sadistic Life Leech Soul Thief Vitalist. A guy who loves inflicting pain, can push you into a contract-er, collective without your consent, and is just plain not a nice bloke? Seems right.

Race: I was thinking either Elan, or for REAL fun, a Khymer from the Obsidian Apocalypse setting. An aberrant sentient pool of blood that occupies corpses and slowly burns them out just fits the mold too damn well. The stat bonuses and special abilities don't hurt either, and the abilities of the Vitalist balance out their lack of natural healing. It also provides a nice counterpoint to the #NotmyChristian hashtag, as I can always occupy a prettier corpse.

Now I need ways to optimize this guy. In particular, any ways of making the save versus being forced into the collective more difficult for enemies, while still keeping him viable in party support. I am thinking Expanded Collective and Psionic Meditation for feats as starters. What other feats and traits would work for this guy?

Time to send my foes to the Red Room of Pain.

I once played in a campaign where we were allowed some free LA and the ability to swap monster HD for character HD, so I played a Dark template Quickling(ToH version) with levels in Rogue, Jaunter, Teflammar Shadowlord, and Blade of Orien.

Little dude was a master of shadow-pouncing and battlefield control(he would often go first in a round, shadow pounce, then benign transposition an ally base-to-base with the enemy).

But the most fun I had with him was just experimenting with him. Because his dexterity was through the roof and his Jaunter abilities were based on it, he once snuck up on a deep dragon and dumped him in the Plane of Shadows for grins.

That was how that campaign got known as "Shadow Dumpers."

Warshaper and Thayan Gladiator are good options.

Also, if you have LA buyoff, the Feral template can be a good choice in some instances(though the best benefits require racial hit die).

Also, consider those shards from Eberron that increase natural attack damage(I cannot recall the specific name,of the shard or the book, sorry).

Much obliged!

It would still be a useful combo if you're an archivist or cleric malconvoker, though

Very true. Is the Initiate of Obad Hai feat in the Archivist handbook? It may be worth mentioning if not.

Quote from: Sagroth on August 02, 2012, 02:29:56 AM

1. Am I correct in thinking that taking both the Southern Magician and Initiate of Obud-Hai feat(edit correction: first from FR and second from Dragon) can allow a Wizard to spontaneously cast Summon Nature's Ally spells(which further allows for Greenbound Summoning and other like feats)?

Depends, does this correct your interpretation of the feat's interaction with requirements?

Quote from: FAQ

Can a wizard with the Southern Magician feat qualify for prestige classes that require you to be able to cast a divine spell?
The Southern Magician feat does not allow you to cast divine spells per se. It only allows you to change the spells into divine spells once they have been cast. Thus, you won’t qualify for prestige classes that require you to be able to cast a divine spell. The Southern Magician feat only gives the bonuses specifically listed in the feat’s description.

If not, then maybe probably.

One the one hand: damn. I had not noticed that bit of errata.

On the other hand, that only specifies with PrCs requirements, not feats. Not much of an argument, I'll admit.

I think so, as the only prerequisite for Initiate of Obad Hai simply the ability to cast 3rd level Divine spells.

There's some issues in wording when it comes to the other uses of the feat(it mentions that you can do the conversion "as well as to Cure spells" when neither use we've proposed would allow us spontaneous healing), but the prerequisite requirements are no problem.

Edit: whoops! Wrong link. Here's the feat.

So I've been checking out the various summoning handbooks(Practical Demonkeeping, Mastering the Malconvoker, etc), but there's a couple ideas I've had that I haven't seen in those threads, and some questions I wanted to ask. Basically, I'm hoping to see if we can't come up with some new summoning tricks that haven't been mentioned yet, both in 3.5 and Pathfinder.

Some things that come to mind:

1. Am I correct in thinking that taking both the Southern Magician and Initiate of Obud-Hai feat(edit correction: first from FR and second from Dragon) can allow a Wizard to spontaneously cast Summon Nature's Ally spells(which further allows for Greenbound Summoning and other like feats)?

2. Malconvoker trick the 1st: Celestial summons getting Malconvoker summon benefits. Corrupt Summons feat(Dragon) plus Celestial Summoning Specialist(Planar Handbook). Celestials are already outsiders. Corrupt Summons makes them evil(by giving them the evil subtype), which means they qualify for Malconvoker goodies like Infernal Horde etc. could this also be applied to Planar Binding?

3. Malconvoker trick the 2nd: the Pathfinder Feat from UM called Superior Summoning should work with Infernal Horde, correct? Which means 3 critters instead of 2.

4. I've been speculating if there would be any way to get Infernal Horde to work with elementals, perhaps with using #1 as a starting point. But first, I don't think elementals qualify as outsiders always, and secondly, IIRC, Malconvoker specifies using Summon Monster with most of its abilities.