Character Submission Thread

[OperationMaximumBear]

I was going to go with acid splash, but after some thought I decided daze was the better choice. I know, I know; let me explain:

With acid splash, Emily has a ranged touch attack at +2 dealing an average of 2 damage. That gives her a 50% or 60% chance to hit (or 30% to 40% if she's firing into melee), for expected damage of 1 or so. The crossbow is a bit better on average, but higher-variance. Both become much worse if Emily has to fire into melee.

With daze, Emily has a spell that forces a DC 15 Will save. Essentially, she trades her attack for a chance to cancel her opponent's attack. It only works once per foe. Consider a standard Orc: has a will save of -1, attacks at +5 for an average of 9 damage (well, slightly more because they crit a lot, but never mind). Here, daze gives Emily a 4-in-5 chance of preventing the Orc from having a 1-in-2ish chance of of inflicting 9 damage. Multiplying that through, we get an EV of 3.6 damage prevented.

Well, maybe that's an unfair example. Normal Orcs suck, after all. So I did the math again for an Orc shaman: better Will and worse attacks, so the EV comes out to about 1. I put it to you that even that is better than a 50% chance to deal 2 damage, especially if the party outnumbers its enemies (which is otherwise the worst case for daze​).

In any case, the effective difference between the two is not very great; Emily will always prefer to summon 1 of her 8 monsters or throw one of her 3 grease spells. Her choice of last resort only matters if she has a monster out (in which case she's contributing anyway) or if she's completely tapped.

tl;dr daze is pretty terrible, but its potential replacements are not so great either, and anyway it only matters on the margin.

 

[elecgraystone]

Non-lethal: Cool, I missed that. But I guess for low level, most of the time lethal vs non-lethal isn't a big deal.

Editing: Again cool.

Cart: Wagons just give a weight they can carry so I assumed a cart would do the same. I don't think a wheeled vehicles fall under the normal push/drag. In Ultimate Equipment, they just list number of creatures pulling it and the weight it can carry with nothing said about creatures STR. Maybe I'm missing something. And as I said above, I never expected to ever need to have unbuffed rose moving the cart. Though I'd count wheels as favorable conditions (x2 weight) so even rose would be able to drag it 5' on a road.

I planned: At the point My eidolon was 'dead', I'd be pretty much dead (hp -> temp hp and all spell gone). If beaten that bad 6 summon monsters seems like a good stop gap. And to be honest, I'd think my time would be better served using aid other on my summoned crreature or other party members (ac10) than trying to uselessly flail about with a melee weapon. I think the party would be happier with giving the party melee fighter +2 AC than my doing 1 non-leathal damage with my spear. I'm going to have to disagree with you that I need a good weapon to help the party when my chance to hit with it is so low and the damage would also be quite low. Making sure the barbarians greatsword hits sounds viable to me.

Shield: With the option to spend 900 gp at first, any fighter can have as good an AC (stone lamelar + tower shield = ac22 for 530gp). Heck, I didn't exploit it much at all by buying a uni-tool and a clothes changer instead of the best armor I could. As for as the inferior results, they really weren't for me. When I got some swag, I could have sold back that shield for the full price and I can't do that with used scrolls. I went for the best result with a full refund. I took superior long term for inferior short term if you want to look at it like that. For me, I only saw the possibility that it might not be liked because it was a corner case. (it's something that wouldn't have been an issue in my old group). It's why I added it to tactics to make sure it'd be OK instead of it being an issue buring play. I didn't expect 2 and 3, but I understand 3.

Stats: [scratching head] this confuses me a bit. It's ok to spend 17 points to get a 20 cha but it isn't to get a 16?... 16 gets me all levels of spells and bonus spells for the first 3 levels of spells. It means that I've already got the first 10 levels of casting taken care of and can focus on combat instead. Instead of that +2 cha item, I'd rather pick up a physical stat item to help in combat or a defensive item. As a hybird type caster a 16 casting stat seems fine to me. I'm not getting why playing against type is an issue... On one hand your annoyed I'm a bit optimized (AC) and on the other your annoyed I'm not optimized (spending 17 points on a 16). So do which do you want...

Optimal: [scratches head again] I'm afraid I don't see the 'dodgeball' part. Lets compare emily and rose. +3 bonus dex, +1 bonus con, -2 int, -3 wis, +2cha. So stat wise emily has +1 stat bonuses. +1hp(human), +2ac (humanoid), -3ac merged, +1save(human), -4save(merged), -1 or 2 attacks(merged), +1 spell. So I'm better in merged form and worse in human form. So do dodgeball rule apply more to merged form or human form?

Rose: Thanks! She's removed from needs approval category.

Emily: Daze could work for a few levels but plan to relearn it for some other cantrip as you level up. Once you're only meeting 5+ hd monsters, it's of no use. Also as I said above for me, don't be afraid to pull out a longspear and aid other. It's only an AC 10 so even with a 7 str, you've got a good chance to so it, and who doesn't need a +2 hit or AC?

Also gratz on the approval. Hopefully I'll get a character around before you go off and catch an adventure.

Satin Knights, do you want to move this (if there is anything else) to private messages so we don't take up anymore room here?

 

[OperationMaximumBear]

Yeah, daze starts being terrible at level 2 and only gets worse from there. But I should have other options by then--like a longspear, for example. I don't like it yet (Emily hits AC 10 less than half the time, so guidance is better than Aid Another), but its time will come. And Mother definitely needs some tools for fighting black puddings and such, even if neither of them know it yet.

 

[elecgraystone]

Don't forget bonuses to hit bonuses like flanking and higher ground help you hit that AC10 easier. Your summoned creature can flank for someone else and you can get behind either one of them to get a +2.

EDIT: guidance is a solid action too. A lot of variety adding to saves, hit or skills. Aid has a bonus to AC though so it's good for those monsters with good hit and poor AC's. If your guys most likely going to hit, might as well see if you can help him avoid a shot.

 

[OperationMaximumBear]

But not with a reach weapon, right? Or is that just in 4th?

More importantly, where are you all finding your character portraits? Just Google image search? I have a few plausible candidates for Emily, but I don't know what I'm going to do about Emily+Mother.

 

[elecgraystone]

You just have to threaten, so reach will work. I know it can be a bit confusing with the changes (either 3.5 to pathfinder or 4th to pathfinder) I'm still finding things out.

For pictures, I have a HUGE file of them on my hard drive (several gigs). Whenever I find a cool pic, be it photobucket, deviantart , zerochan or some other site I snag a copy just in case. So most times I give a quick look there. If that's a bust I first try deviant art. Even odd ball searches will get a lot of hits and a good bit of them are top quality. If you are looking for someone from an anime/cartoon/game zerochan is worth a look. They have sections for each series AND the characters themselves. Photobucket is an option if you strike out in the others (or they come back with a huge amount and you're intimidated by 50,000 hits). Web searches are my last option.

If you aren't having any luck, let me know what you're thinking for her looks and I can give a look for you.

 

[OperationMaximumBear]

Emily has pictures! It took some work, and I now have "renfaire teenage brunette" in my search history, but it all worked out in the end.

Thanks too for your help, elecgraystone. I'd have PM'd you back, but your inbox is full.

 

[elecgraystone]

Oops, sorry about that. I cleared out a lot of old PM's so it should work now.

 

[Grayn]

I'm looking over Emily Halten for the second approval. It looks like you are missing some skills.

Are you still purchasing things and working on your spells?

 

[Satin Knights]

The player removed the skills that cannot be used untrained from the list. It feels weird at first, but it is alright to do it like that.