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Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-29, 05:06 PM
1. How do you determine the unarmed damage of a character with multiple levels in different US granting classes? E.g. Monk 1/Swordsage 1

2. Can you retrain the MWP feats that being an elf gives you?

EDIT: Additional questions :smallredface:

3. What is the cheapest way for a Wizard to gain new spells in his spellbook?

4. Can you choose to be flatfooted against an attack?

EDIT2: 5. Superior Unarmed Strike from ToB. Does it apply to Unarmed Swordsages the same way it does to monks?

EDIT3: 6. Does Weapon Focus (unarmed strike) add to your grapple check to do damage?

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-29, 05:09 PM
1. How do you determine the unarmed damage of a character with multiple levels in different US granting classes? E.g. Monk 1/Swordsage 1I'd say the levels stack(assuming Unarmed SS). It seems more reasonable than saying they don't, since the ability is identical between the 2 and already underpowered.
2. Can you retrain the MWP feats that being an elf gives you?Not without Embrace the Dark Chaos+Shun the Dark Chaos+the 'Dodge thrown books' feat.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-29, 08:41 PM
But what if you use, say, Fist of the Forest, or something else that doesnt use the same progression? They should stack, but in what way?

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-29, 11:22 PM
Added 2 more questions to the initial post.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-29, 11:34 PM
3. What is the cheapest way for a Wizard to gain new spells in his spellbook?Collegiate Wizard, Complete Arcane. means you learn 4 spells at levelup instead of 2. Also, spell trading with every Wizard you meet. If you were Filesharing during the mid-90s, it's like that.
4. Can you choose to be flatfooted against an attack?Yes, being flat-footed means you're unprepared for the attack, and don't avoid the wound as well. That's doable even if you're prepared. The question would be...why?

Keld Denar
2009-05-29, 11:56 PM
3. Find other wizards. Kill them and take their stuff. Repeat.

Gah, thats been the universal solution to every problem since...forever!

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-29, 11:56 PM
Collegiate Wizard, Complete Arcane. means you learn 4 spells at levelup instead of 2. Also, spell trading with every Wizard you meet. If you were Filesharing during the mid-90s, it's like that.

Sorry I wasnt clear, I meant how much does it cost to trade spells...I thought it might have been in some rulebook or something.


Yes, being flat-footed means you're unprepared for the attack, and don't avoid the wound as well. That's doable even if you're prepared. The question would be...why?

My spellthief steals a cure light wounds spell and sneak attacks his injured party member with it :smallbiggrin: I guess you could do it with Lesser vigor for awesome amounts of healing, too.

tyckspoon
2009-05-30, 12:00 AM
Cheap ways to acquire spells depends on your DM's cheese tolerance/adherence to RAW/how much he hates wizards.

Keeping in mind that there are two components of a spell's cost, getting access to the spell and scribing it:

Spell access can potentially be made free/very cheap by trading spells or favors to other wizards. This is particularly accessible if your DM likes to have wizards participate in colleges. Remember to acquire some good but lesser-known spells as trade bait; it does you no good to have other wizards to trade with if every single 5th level wizard picks Haste and Fly. The Collegiate Wizard feat, as mentioned, can double your free spells (and also helps reduce the scribing costs, since you get to write those for free as well) but it does cost a feat, which can be far more valuable than gold depending on your build.

Actually buying scrolls should be the method of last resort. Pay the going rate for access to other wizard's spellbooks if you have to.

For copying spells, the standard technique is a Blessed Book. Costs 12,500 gp (craft it yourself, it's worth the savings) but costs nothing to scribe in. Saves money on a suitably large spell collection, and it makes your spells much more portable to boot as it has 1000 usable pages compared to a mundane spellbook's 100.

The next method is to be a Geomancer Geometer. Takes some sacrifice to get into the class, but they gain the ability to scribe any level of spell onto a single page. Doesn't negate scribing cost entirely, but it's pretty good- combine with a Blessed Book and your portable spellbook can be the PHB plus the entirety of the Spell Compendium with room to spare.

The unorthodox technique that requires the most GM latitude is the Secret Page spell, by way of this line: "Secret page alters the contents of a page so that they appear to be something entirely different. The text of a spell can be changed to show even another spell. " So take a blank spellbook and cast Secret Page at it a lot until you have a full one. Cost: nothing beyond an empty spellbook. Or double up spellbook capacity by layering Secret Page spells on top of normal written ones. Good deal either way for basically no sacrifice.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-05-30, 12:03 AM
Sorry I wasnt clear, I meant how much does it cost to trade spells...I thought it might have been in some rulebook or something.There's the scribing cost of 100GP per page, one page per spell level. Other than that, it's up to the DM. Generally the cost is 50 GP per spell level, unless you swap. Basically, if I'm 5th level and took Fireball and Fly, and the Wizard I just met took Lightning Bolt and Displacement, we might copy both spells from each other, leaving both of us with Fireball, Fly, Lightning Bolt and Displacement. It's a net profit for everyone. Then you meet someone with some obscure 3rd-party spell, who wants both Fly and Fireball for it, which you give him because now you have an obscure 3rd party spell almost no one has ever seen that can be traded for multiple spells from other Wizards.

Information is the only game in economics where there truely is a free lunch.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-30, 12:05 AM
Allright, thanks, I was just wondering if there was a hard and fast rule for it. Thanks anyway though...

EDIT: 1 more question!
EDIT2: 2 more questions :smallredface:

I am not very knowledgable about this kinda stuff...my DM usually just makes stuff up for it...but I am doing Test of Might. So, yeah.

Keld Denar
2009-05-30, 01:01 AM
SUAS increases an UA Swordsage's UAS damage just the same as it would a monks, sincen a UA Swordsage actually uses the monk damage progression. Since your UAS damage is that of a monk equal level to your UA Swordsage, adding SUAS would increase the level of monk you are emulating with UA Swordsage.

Weapon Focus: UAS does increase the touch attack made to initiate a grapple, since that is clearly an unarmed strike. It does NOT affect your grapple check, since that is NOT an unarmed strike, but rather a grapple check.

kjones
2009-05-30, 01:17 AM
Just for the record, spellthieves can "steal" spells from a willing target with a touch without having to make an attack or anything.

Keld Denar
2009-05-30, 01:31 AM
I don't think thats the issue. The issue is not getting the CLW spell, its attempting to abuse his sneak attack damage to increase the potency of the CLW spell. Normally, if you sneak attack with a touch spell, the sneak attack damage takes on the "flavor" of the touch spell. So, SAing with a Shocking Grasp would give you a few extra d6s of electrical damage.

What hes trying to do is thusly. If the CLW spell carries positive energy, then the SA dice associated with discharging a touch spell would also be positive energy, and he would end up with 1d8+5+3d6 or so healing. In order to qualify for that SA "damage", though, he would need his foe to be flatfooted, flanked, or otherwise unaware. This is tough, since you don't normally threaten your allies.

I'd actually be inclined to say no to this under the grounds that attacking with a weapon, but not using it as intended, prevents you from dealing SA damage. You can't attack with a dagger for subdual damage and get SA from it. Its not intended to be used that way, and thus isn't optimal for the task. Same with CLWs. Its not optimal to "goose" someone back to full health, so trying to do so would no result in any extra dice. This is a Rules As I Interpret Them (RAIIT) judgement extrapolated from RAW. Take it for what you will.

Curmudgeon
2009-05-30, 07:49 AM
But what if you use, say, Fist of the Forest, or something else that doesnt use the same progression? They should stack, but in what way? No, they don't stack. Fist of the Forest uses either its own damage entry (if larger than the character's existing unarmed damage), or it advances to the next unarmed damage step on the Monk table. There's absolutely no stacking of levels with Fist of the Forest, regardless of the number of FotF levels the character has.

Douglas
2009-05-30, 07:49 AM
I believe the official stance on Cure spells + Sneak Attack on living allies is that the bonus from sneak attack is not extra healing, it's positive energy damage which, even on living targets, is still damage. Congratulations, you just reduced your healing. That, or you have to actually be dealing damage for sneak attack to apply in the first place, and a Cure spell on a living target doesn't deal damage of any kind. If you try to get around this by, say, delivering it with an unarmed strike instead of a touch, you get the sneak attack on the unarmed strike instead of the cure so it's still damage instead of healing.

Darrin
2009-05-30, 07:54 AM
SUAS increases an UA Swordsage's UAS damage just the same as it would a monks, sincen a UA Swordsage actually uses the monk damage progression. Since your UAS damage is that of a monk equal level to your UA Swordsage, adding SUAS would increase the level of monk you are emulating with UA Swordsage.


Not by RAW. Well, not exactly. From Superior Unarmed Strike:

"Special: If you are a monk, you instead deal unarmed damage as a monk four levels higher."

If a straight Swordsage takes this feat, then RAW takes a look at your class levels, doesn't see any monk, and gives you unarmed strike damage per your character level... which, unless you're a tiny-sized Swordsage, would already be better.

RAI, most DMs would be unreasonably dense to stick to RAW that way. I would expect most people just hand-wave it as "If you have the equivalent of a monk's unarmed strike, you can consider yourself a monk with whatever levels confer that ability."

There are some conditions where the RAW interpretation can work in your favor, though. If you're dipping into a class such as Swordsage, Fist of the Forest, or Shou Disciple to pick up a Monk's unarmed strike without taking any Monk levels, you can use Superior Unarmed Strike to keep scaling up your unarmed damage while you focus on some other class that doesn't advance unarmed strike. Another quirk to Superior Unarmed Strike is that if you don't have monk levels, the damage doesn't change according to your size, which can create some RAW headaches if you're using Improved Natural Attack, Enlarge Person, or Expansion to increase your unarmed damage. On the other hand, tearing apart a large creature with a fine-sized sparrow (Hengeyokai in OA, +6 Dex bonus and +8 size bonus at ECL 1, no LA) could be very satisfying, although the -5 Str modifier is a little problematic.

kjones
2009-05-30, 10:03 AM
I believe the official stance on Cure spells + Sneak Attack on living allies is that the bonus from sneak attack is not extra healing, it's positive energy damage which, even on living targets, is still damage. Congratulations, you just reduced your healing. That, or you have to actually be dealing damage for sneak attack to apply in the first place, and a Cure spell on a living target doesn't deal damage of any kind. If you try to get around this by, say, delivering it with an unarmed strike instead of a touch, you get the sneak attack on the unarmed strike instead of the cure so it's still damage instead of healing.

That sounds about right to me. Positive energy != healing on living targets, necessarily.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-30, 03:00 PM
But the thing is...the damage is the same type as the spell. So the SA should do extra healing. Would you be contesting this if I was using it to attack a vampire with?


And yes, I know that this is definitely not RAI, but, yeah, anything to keep my 13 hp wizard on her feet as long as possible.