Min/Max Boards

Hello everyone. I haven't played D&D in a while and pathfinder even less (maybe once or twice since it came out). But i recently started making a sorcerer, and found the Psychic Bloodline. This is when all sorts of problems and interpretations started.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/sorcerer/bloodlines/bloodlines-from-paizo/psychic-sorcerer-bloodline

The culprit is primarily,

Bloodline Arcana: Your sorcerer spells and spell-like abilities count as psychic instead of arcane. You use thought and emotion components instead of verbal and somatic components when casting your spells.

Some of my questions are:

1) Because verbal and somatic components are gone from spell casting, does this qualify me to wear armor without arcane spell failure even though i may not have the proficiency for such?

2) Because it fundamentally changes me into a psionic caster instead of arcane, do i still qualify for arcane caster PrCs? If not, does my caster level count as my manifester level and thus allow me to qualify for psionic PrCs?

Thanks in advance, tried using the search function for things with "Psychic Bloodline" in it but didnt get much in the way of results hehe.

Well, i think it'd be easier to just give yourself flight (either via the unseelie fey template or by some other means), and just bring a ton of http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#tree with you up into the sky. There aren't any stats, but considering theyre 60ft tall, 5ft in diameter and 40ft top diameter, they're bound to weigh a few tons each and provide more than enough weight to cause some damage. Simple, Cheap and best of all not complicated

Just imagine the battlefield when you're done, hundreds of fallen trees and corpses buried beneath them, -everywhere-. 

Edit: Yeah.. its a great oak, talk about the hurts.

I know this thread hasnt been posted in for a while but I would like to suggest a cheaper alternative to the whole liquid ambrosia approach by way of a psionic boon trap.

I bring to you The Pleasure Machine:

Inflict Pain is a 2nd level psion/wilder power and functions identically to the Symbol of Pain spell with some small differences. It lasts 1 round/level instead of 10 minutes/level and it is a lower level power in comparison. This all ends up being a very good thing, both for the person stuck in the machine and for crafting purposes.

Symbol of Pain lasts for a minimum of 90 minutes, that's a -long- time. Inflict Pain lasts for a minimum of 3 rounds, much safer to use in case the individual wants to eventually leave it (though why they'd want to is be beyond anyone's understanding). Secondly Inflict Pain is much easier to resist, meaning once a person is 'done' with the machine, they can mentally resist its effects (though its only partially resisted). This makes Inflict Pain just much more convenient and safer to use all around, especially if these pleasure machines are going to play an important role in your character achieving his/her goals.

Psionic auto-resetting traps cost 250gp*(power point cost)*(power point cost+2).

Inflict Pain costs 3 power, thus the cost of a Psionic auto-resetting trap of Inflict Pain would cost 3750gp by itself. This is so much cheaper than an arcane version it aint even funny. Nevermind the fact that you could use metapsionics to link it to other powers too, but this is ill advised. The cost for psionic traps scales exponentially, so its best to combine multiple traps into one area than multiple powers into one trap.

I've taken this a step further, but it also requires some things that others might constitute as cheese, but i'll explain it anyway in case it interests anyone:

In my case, by way of the thrallherd (which includes things like the Chameleon Crafting feat, southern magician, etc. and me being a spell to power erudite, i've gotten my hands on an arcane version of Lesser Restoration and have included it into the Inflict Pain trap. This way the individual doesn't get exhausted/fatigued/killed from the endless pleasure they'll be feeling with nipple clamps. This turns the aforementioned 6k psionic boon trap into an 8,000gp psionic boon trap that triggers both Inflict Pain + Lesser Restoration (paladin version since it is lvl1).

I have also created a second psionic boon trap in the same vicinity to include Grease linked to Distilled Joy via the same method, with Synesthete again as the trigger. In total it costs 15,000gp for the second trap, but its a hell of a lot cheaper than a spell clock and you get exponentially more ambrosia out of it than a spell clock could ever hope to give you. This happens if you agree with the idea that regardless of how long it takes for a spell to go off normally, it still goes off in the following round due to it being linked to the first. Thus, Distilled Joy's casting time of 1 day turns into 1 standard action simply because its being forced to go off in the following round.

Using 1 trap to pull this off, it would cost a total of 45,000 gp
Using 2 traps to pull this off, it would cost a total of 23,000 gp
Using 3 traps to pull this off, it would cost a total of 3750+750+15000 = 19,500 gp (cheapest possible)

In total, it will cost 19,500 gp to create a 'pleasure machine' like this, not including crafting cost reduction feats or additional materials (such as the actual device you're attaching these traps to). I feel this method is far easier to achieve than the one listed in the guide and so much more economically friendly.

Edit: cause i fail at math

Quote from: Michael9157 on August 21, 2014, 03:54:11 PM

This exact question came up in the campaign I'm dm'ing.  I ruled that a the blessing (note it's just a level 3 spell) wasn't intended to basically double someone's attacks even though it isn't clear in the reprinted version.  Using the thought that doubling attacks allowed for a level 3 spell, plus looking at the 3.0 text as a possible guiding thought for how the spell was intended, that's how I came to my ruling.  I did however allow the dual wielding of two handed weapons, but, I wasn't going to allow the wielding of 4 war maces which is what the PC wanted with independent attack rolls for each.

But the spell explicitly lets you make four claw attacks... I think you could either wield 4 weapons, or make 4 claw attacks, but not 2 claws + 2 weapons (because the text also explicitly forbids that for some reason).

This is correct, RAW it does not prevent you from wielding four weapons instead. However RAI im not sure it was intended to allow you to wield four weapons, otherwise they'd have probably explicitly mentioned wielding additional weapons with your new arms, such as like in Battlearms. But when it comes to RAI, its basically anyones interpretation and thus, gm decision

If you're wanting a spell granting extra attacks, get a hold of Battlearms from Dragon Magazine #356, pg. 48-49. Its like Girallon's Blessing + Divine Power combined into one spell, only it grants you additional attacks as well as the ability to wield weapons and attack with them. You'll want to pick up some supporting feats somehow though.

4th level cleric/blackguard spell.

EDIT: I'll throw in the spell text in case you don't have the Dragon Magazine Issue its from.

Battlearms
Evocation
Level: Cleric 4, Blackguard 4
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration 1 round/level

Calling upon the power of Hextor, you imbue yourself with skill in combat and create extra arms. Your base attack bonus becomes equal to your character level (which might give you additional attacks), you gain 1 temporary hit point per caster level, and you grow a pair of extra arms from your torso. You may use these extra arms to make unarmed strikes or wield weapons. If you use these extra limbs to attack, attacks with your primary hand are at -6, the three other hands are at -10. If you have the two-weapon fighting feat, the penalty on attacks with all of your hands drops to -4. At 12th level, you grow an additional pair of arms.

These extra arms cannot cast spells. You cannot cast a spell and make an attack with these arms in the same round. On the round you cast this spell, each new arm may draw one of your weapons as a free action. On any later round you must use a move action to equip weapons in one or more of your extra hands. The arms are a neutral gray color and barely human. They cannot hold any items other than weapons, help climb or swim, or engage in any activity other than combat.

So, a friend is playing a binder1/archivist3/anima mage 4 at the moment and has been granted one unlawyered wish. Neither of us have any idea what he should wish for, since his character is still low-mid level and really, aside from a blessed book, there isnt a whole lot his character would need to be survivable. The campaign seems to be more rp heavy as well rather than the usual hack n slash type campaign. That, and the campaign itself is random as hell with plenty of cameos and references to other popular fiction (like a portal opening up to the empty void of space with some x-wings and tiefighters duking it out in the background ;p )

Anyway, with all that said, what would you guys pick at this point in the game? Currently the players are building a settlement so the whole found a city is probably on its way already, possibly with an empire to follow, who knows with how random this campaign is. The GM seems to be ok with most things as long as it isnt too overpowered/gamebreaking.

thanks ahead of time.

PS. Characters Neutral Evil

Well, you certainly didnt hold back when making that summoner druid, making use of GBS and venomfire XD. But, at least you aren't casting conjure ice beast

In truth though, if you're getting 'those looks' that means you're showing off way too much and should just cut back on your more powerful aspects of your character. Do you reeally need a fleshraker with venomfire on him? Do your greenbound summons really need to use wall of thorns and entangle repeatedly? Just cut back on the cheese and you wont have to change anything. When playing a powerful character, its the player's responsibility to wait things out and gauge the overall power of the rest of his group, then unleash the appropriate power to match. Those who don't tend to end up in the emergency from a critical hit with the DMG.

Its not a farce or a stretch?

Text from the book:

 "An Erudite manifests psionic powers, paying for each manifestation with an expenditure of power points. Unlike a Psion, an Erudite is limited to manifesting a certain number of unique psionic powers of each level per day from the repertoire of powers he knows, according to his class level.

This means the unique power limitation is per power level. Thus, a 4th level erudite is limited to manifesting 3 unique 2nd level powers and 3 unique 1st level powers and so on. Emphasis on the "of each level per day" part of the text. If the Erudite's unique powers were in regards to his entire repertoire, there'd be no need for that text to be there, it would simply say "unique powers per day from the repertoire of powers he knows".

Aha, looks like i need to catch up with the times lol

So after doing some research on this build, ive realized the Tainted Sorcerer just isnt viable, even if it is allowed. There's a clause in its class feature 'Tainted Metamagic' that specifically states "A tainted sorcerer cannot enhance a spell to a level higher than she can cast by this means. For example, a tainted sorcerer must be at least a 9th-level caster to cast an empowered vampiric touch spell (or at least 10th level, if the character is casting as a sorcerer), since the empowered spell requires a 5th-level spell slot."

So going with the Tainted Sorc you'd only be able to persist 3rd level spells and lower, which is worse than DMM Persisting. With that said, decided to drop the level of Tainted Sorcerer and trade it in for a level in Death Delver for turn/rebuke for the sake of DMMing. Though doing so makes this an inefficient (as far as min-maxing goes) build since the character loses a caster level. This change also makes the binder half of everything redundant and the characters probably better off (min-maxing-wise) just going archivist+PrCs heh, but i think it should be fine either way. The Archivist is powerful enough to not feel weak even with 9th level spells at 20, especially with binder/anima mage supplementing it.