Pathfinder General /pfg/

Why regular wizard over school savant arcanist? Arcanist seems to do everything that a wizard can other than the spell progression thing, which might not be a big deal apparently.

Why is Foresight so strong? Is it better than Conjuration (teleportation) if I'll be using a lot of spells from various schools but with a skew toward conjuration?

Foresight is so strong because you can rig d20 rolls.

Conjuration (teleportation) needs a feat (Dimensional Agility) to be good.

Winning initiative is really important, especially in high-optimization games. The other divination school abilities are kind of lackluster, but foresight replaces them with better ones.

When can you declare the d20 replacement?

Are there good divination spell choices to prepare at each level? Some of these seem strange and unwieldly.

Does everyone play tieflings just to dump Charisma and use Intelligence swap traits/Orator for social skills?

Ears of the City, Detect Thoughts, Seek Thoughts, Arcane Eye, Insect Spies, Scrying, etc.

I want to fuck a tiefling boy!

>Why regular wizard over school savant arcanist?
Spell progression can be very important. It can be the difference between ending an encounter at level 5 with a well placed fireball and having a long, painful battle because you don't have 3rd level spells yet. There is a lot of debate in whether it's enough to let the Wizard outclass the Arcanist, but in the end it's effectively close enough to be a judgement call on the player's preference.

>Why is Foresight so strong?
Initiative is probably the most important single d20 roll you have to make in any given encounter, since if you can move before an enemy, you can prevent them from moving at all.

Before a roll. The idea is that you roll the d20 in the beginning, then decide whether it's good enough to use as a replacement, then use it whenever you don't want to take a risk on a different roll.

Divination has a lot of good utility, like Comprehand Languages Identify, Detect Thoughts, Tongues, Scrying, etc into high level Divinations that only get more useful. You won't find many useful spells for combat, but the whole reason the Wizard is good is because he can be useful in any situation.

But what if you go first and the enemies make their saves?

Then you quicken cast another save or die.

Depends on which spells you use. If you throw a Fireball, that could be a problem, but if you hit 4 people with Create Pit and 2 of them make their saves, that's only 2 people you have to worry about going forward rather than 4, and the rest of the party gets to take down those remaining 2.

You won't be solo-ing encounters often, but you'll be making things much much easier for the party to finish encounters.

Also, find some spells that only allow partial saves rather than half or negation. That way, when you go against things with crazy saves you can still have a use. If that fails, touch attacks are always a great option.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should try to target poor saves on enemies. To keep from being accused of metagaming, as a rule of thumb keep in mind that the larger an enemy is, the worse its Reflex save becomes. If something looks small or frail, target its Fort save. Animals and other typically low-mental stat enemies tend not to have great Will saves.

Target Fort for other arcane casters, Will for most martials, and Reflex for divine casters. Against a Paladin, run away or target touch AC.

>quicken
Real expensive.

That is why metamagic rods exist.

Metamagic rods of Quicken are the most expensive rods of them all.

Is it just me, or of all the animal races, only gnolls embrace it? Catfolk don't love cats or sleep in boxes, but gnolls treat their hyenas better then they treat any non-gnoll and live just like them.

Alternatively, Dimensional Slide doesn't require a feat to be good.

Because they are savages that embrace animal living over civilized life, where most the others attempt at least to be civilized and mesh with society at large.

I usually take a variant to get a boost to my charisma and play them as sexy succubi.

I need some help has anyone ran CoCT Skeletons of Scarwall?
I am having a bit of problems finding maps that would be of use while running through Roll20

Check the trove, they have the PDFs with all the maps for the APs

So the occultist archetype arcanist is quite broken desu. I just ended a campaign in which I ran as one.

> standard action summoning
> greater metamagic exploit gives me ANY meta I want that day
> spell list potential of a wizard, but repeatable spells like a sorcerer
> access to planar allies and summon monster spells without taking up spell slots

It might well be the 0th tier caster, seeing as it lacks the need of foresight that a wizard must take.

I need a different experience after that. Thinking of an alchemist, ninja, or unchained rogue.

Fuck that, play regular occultist, with a different set of implements. Every one is different.

Every Occultist is for summoning a big Skeleton and then making it get bigger

explain further please.
That's exactly the type of necromancer I want to play, fuck that horde shit.

>occultist arcanist

What is the most optimal martial character you could build with Paizo only material? I'm thinking in terms of both survivability and reliable damage dealing, level for level. I'm thinking it's probably a two hander barbarian invulnerable raged with iron will and superstitious etc for defense and power attack, beast totem and reckless abandon etc for offense.

I'm talking about something that mostly accumulates as much +X to hit and damage, as well as to fort and will saves and has a ton of hp as a back up. Mechanically effective but without a lot of variation (mostly just "I pounce" and then "I full attack")

Am I mistaken in that assumption, given point buy generation and average WBL? Is human the most optimal race choice for the bonus feat and FCB to increase superstitious' bonus?

The other thread is much more active than this one. It would probably be better to take it there

You're right. Barbarian or Bloodrager would be the most optimal classes for what you want to do.

Spiritualist/Brawler Gesalt, 25 point buy, should I or should I not?