Actually, the issue is that I didn't realize that the character loses all its KoSS abilities if not bound to the patron vestige (silly mistake, as it makes all the sense in the world). I'll probably go with Focalor, then - tenebrous or other high-ish level vestige would require delaying entry into KoSS, of which I'm not very keen on, because right now we are not sure of the length of the campaign.
I'm not too keen on the breath weapon being fort based, if I'm going to play beatstick for the most part, but oh, well.
IMHO the breath weapon is the least useful part of Focalor. It's situational (you need a target whose
one-turn impairment is worth losing your whole action), the target must be subject to blindness, and even if you succeed it's quite possible for a boss-monster to have area attacks which aren't impaired. Plus it's a Fort save, as you note. It's an ability that I would trade out on an Anima Mage, for example.
The Aura of Sadness is solid gold for a melee character, and it makes you even sticker (foe -2 Tumble) & tankier (foe -2 Attack). It's the primary reason for your melee-centric character to bind this vestige. Aura of Sadness is a force multiplier for your allies who force saving throws, which is very sexy.
The lightning strike is like a free [Reserve] feat which gives you an option for when you can't do your melee thing. Options = power, so it's good even if it's not ever going to be your first choice.
The water breathing is nice when it's relevant, which is usually not that often in my games, but a nautical game would probably differ.
Anyway, other good targets for KotSS include:
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Ahazu (a web vestige; level 3) - requires Ignore Special Requirements feat to be usable.
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Karsus (level 3) - more useful than usual in a T3 game where you don't have a Wizard to use those items. Give this guy serious consideration if your group lacks a UMD specialist.
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Dantallion (level 5) - then go into Scion of Dantallion.
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Naberius (level 1) - brilliant in combo with Tenebrous Apostate for quick recovery of Corrupt spell damage.
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Tenebrous (level 4)
One combo for Tenebrous would be Divine Crusader, an accelerated caster who is usually ignored in favor of Ur-Priest, and then into Tenebrous Apostate. The requirement of BAB +7 is going to be relatively easy for a Crusader hybrid. Tenebrous grants access to the Chaos, Death, Evil, and Trickery domains -- of that list, I think Death is okay (for
Animate Dead and
Death Ward, then at higher levels
Create (Greater) Undead). You're a prepared caster, so you can use Corrupt spells at spell levels where your Domain spell is awful.
Your build might go like:
Crusader 1
Binder 1-5 -- access to Tenebrous via Improved Binding at level 5
KotSS 1-2
Crusader 2 -- gets you up to BAB +7
Divine Crusader 1
Tenebrous Apostate 1-5
KotSS 3-5
(level 20 is free) Crusader 3 maybe?
Completely forgot about the extra feat at level 4 -_-. Besides, my mistake, as mentioned above. KoSS hard-binds the character to the patron vestige, so certainly taking IB with dahlver-nar is useless before EBL 8. If I take focalor I'll have to take it, though.
Yeah I honestly don't even consider KotSS before EBL 8, for exactly that reason.
Being perma-bound is painful if you don't have two vestige binding slots.
(IMHO the 2nd vestige slot should have come online at level 5, not level 8, but that's just me.)
If I were to move Crusader to lvl 5, how'd you do it, feats and class progression wise? Binder 4/Crusader 2? Admittedly, getting +Cha to will early is interesting, but I wanted to use the Crusader 2 stance to get thicket of blades or another lvl 3 stance, and getting weapon focus at lvl 6 means delaying Imperious command to lvl 9 (I'm still partial to 1-4, but I'd like to see alternatives).
Yeah Binder 1-4 and then Crusader 2, but you're starting at level 3 so that's just Binder 3 with light armor & simple weapons.
That's rough.
EDIT: unrelated, but one of the characters is a Mongol-esque duskblade (mounted archer/lancer). How dangerous would it be to allow her to channel through ranged attacks? Rules wise it would be the same as right now - can channel touch attacks through a ranged weapon as a standard attack, and at lvl 13 she'd be able to channel as a full attack action, but each target would only be affected by the channeled spell once. I was thinking of restricting it to duskblade spells only. Would it be fine?
The problem spells would be stuff like Dispelling Touch / Touch of Idiocy / Vampiric Touch which is supposed to impose a risk due to range.
Also, there's probably an assumption that a Duskblade would handle ranged combat by using her ranged spells (Kelgore's Fire Bolt / Scorching Ray / Ray of Exhaustion / Channeled Pyroburst / Polar Ray / etc.), or just take a [Reserve] feat. They're not helpless at range, and they don't need free Arcane Archer on top of their casting -- but you could suggest two levels of Arcane Archer as a way to get the desired ability. Duskblade / Arcane Archer is probably one of the better uses for Arcane Archer.
In any case, I would certainly restrict channeling to Duskblade spells only, that's consistent with my reading of the intended use.
