Level Up: Chapter IX

[Mike]

Very nice.

And in doing a full review of my sheet, I've been shorting myself a third level spell. I get five of them a day now.

[Elle]

Crap, I have to make a decision in the next 8 hours about what new feats Dwyn should have. ARGHHHHHHHH DECISIONS

I have such an easy time with them when I know exactly what I want. It's all about how to get it and the powers may be deployed accordingly. But when I don't know what I want, I dither and it's complete disaster.

[Mrs.Darcs]

I'm sorry I've been absent from this thread, my mental space hasn't been that great....anyway, I can cast dimensional anchor just as a point of fact. Just need to pray for it on a particular day.

[Elle]

You have many a good spell there!

The link to Dwyn is mostly updated but I still need to figure out the feats situation. In the meantime, I didn't use any new feats or changes except for the obvious BAB increase that will accompany level 9. The reason I was talking about damage increasing is that Power Attack changes with every four BAB levels, so at BAB +8 you have a -3/+6 (or in my case, more due to two-handed wielding). I did not realize, back when multiple attacks in one round began, that Power Attack HAS to be employed through the entire turn, not just on a single attack, and Furious Focus accordingly applies to the first attack and no subsequent attacks or AoOs. So if you take -0 on the first attack, you will take penalties on everything subsequent but still retain the increased damage. Or you opt out of using power attack, if you think it will be very hard to hit the creature. This is what i should have done in a few past cases where the opponent AC was huge. My default is to assume I'm using it unless specifying not.

I have a question about ''Fortified Armor Training (Combat): If an opponent scores a critical hit against you, you can turn the critical hit into a normal hit. If you do, either your armor or your shield gains the broken condition (your choice)." I was thinking of taking this, since my AC at present is a bit disappointing and I finally started getting dinged with major damage, which made me realize that just one critical blow from a big bad thing could be really, really bad for health. But this fear sounds good only because lots of people (including me! but at Caster Level Poop) have a Mend spell that could cure a broken condition (or Make Whole would work). The problem is, the descriptions aren't exactly clear about what happens to your armor if it breaks due to Fortified Armor Training.

The Mend spell says:
"Magic items can be repaired by this spell, but you must have a caster level equal to or higher than that of the object. Magic items that are destroyed (at 0 hit points or less) can be repaired with this spell, but this spell does not restore their magic abilities."

This is also what it says about broken magical items under the "broken" description. However, it is not clear from the Fortified Armor Training description whether the broken item has half its former hit points, or none, or what. To be broken, normally something has to be dropped to more than half the total hit points. Yet broken armor results in 1/2 the AC bonus and double the penalties on checks. I was willing to exchange that risk for the promise of avoiding a critical hit, but I don't want to risk taking my magic armor to 0 HP and thereby losing its magical property even if it gets repaired. So how broken does it get, technically?

Then it seems I need to know the caster level of my armor, to see whether a particular friend's Mend spell can work, but I have no idea. Nor do I know how many HP need to be restored for armor to be unbroken again. In the "broken" description it just says back to 1/2 the HP or higher, so I'd need to know my armor's total HP. And does this mean that the Fortified Armor Training feat could be used again once the armor gets back to 1/2 HP?

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Then I have a question about Disruptive. It refers to spellcasters in my "threatened area", but if I have a reach weapon in my hand, presumably my threatened area is another 5 ft larger all around, and if I'm enlarged that round the threatened area is 15 feet in any direction. However, this feat simply gives enemy casters a -4 to the defensive-spell casting check, and the problem is I don't have a sense of whether that is significant at the level of combat we're now in. I assume most enemy casters are working with a very high number in that category, so -4 isn't a significant harm to them. Disruptive sets you up to get a later feat, Spellbreaker, that provides an AoO if the caster fails to cast defensively while threatened by you. If nobody is ever going to fail to cast defensively with that sort of penalty, then there's no point taking these feats.

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Finally, I consider taking Improved Overrun so that I can overrun opponents. However, I don't want to run through someone's square and end up "adjacent" to them; I want to leave a 5 foot gap for using my reach weapons. The advantage here is obvious: you might knock them prone if your check exceeds their defense by 5 or more. Getting up from Prone usually provokes an AoO (perhaps from more than one of us), and being Prone is NOT good for them. However, would that ever happen? For this to work I would have to be fighting some kind of weaklings, it seems. My own CMD is so much higher than my CMB, and I assume that's going to be true for almost any creature I try to Overrun! I would hardly ever be able to knock myself prone! Nor do I want to leap out in front of the line and away from Hal and the rest if there is very little chance of ever knocking the enemy down. It's not bad as a flanking strategy, but I'm not sure it's the best way of moving people around a battlefield.

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Tl;dr version of this: I'm stuck on feat selection because everything that seems awesome on the surface also appears to be useless in the end. What to do? I remain livid pissed that I didn't understand how things work with Combat Expertise long before agreeing to be stupid, however much that fits the player.

[Tahlvin]

I'll have to defer to others, who may be more familiar, but here's my take on using Mending with magical armor.

The Mending spell will repair the armor, but not restore the magical abilities of that armor. What that means, at least to me, is the following: Say you have a +2 breastplate that is reduced to 0 hp and considered broken. The mending spell can be used to repair the armor, at which point it becomes a regular breastplate. If you want the +2 bonus added back to the armor, that requires a spellcaster with the craft magic arms & armor feat.

If the +2 breastplate is damaged but not yet broken, then the Mending spell can repair it while keeping the +2 bonus, but only if the caster casting Mending has a higher caster level than the magic armor.

This is admittedly based on a hurried reading of the description of the Mending spell, so I'll be the first to admit I could be completely wrong.

[Elle]

That is my impression too. It's not clear to me whether the armor breaks all the way to 0 hp with the Fortified Armor Training feat, or what the caster level or HP of my armor might be. I would love new armor anyway, but then the same questions will arise. It seems clear that I couldn't mend my own armor, as my caster level is so low. But if someone had enough CL juice to make +1 magical armor, say, even if they didn't have that spell, I presume they could also mend it?

[Mike]

If what Tahlvin is saying is the case, then repairing it and restoring the +1 would take a day of work from Anna, plus some fraction of the enchanting cost, so maybe 250-500 gp each time? I could look it up, but I'm out of time.

[Elle]

That sure would be worth it to avoid death, but how do we know if it goes to HP 0? Because I would still be hit and damaged myself, but just not as a critical. So how many HP are lost from armor?

There is also some kind of human/racial feat that gives you a "lucky" reroll of a critical hit, but then, it could still be rerolled. Not a bad option though.

Other options would be Cornugon Smash. Basically, intimidate people when you hit em. Most people i hit without killing are unlikely to be intimidated by my paltry intimidate roll, but ok, not bad.

[Elle]

Okay, so in my dithering I have now gained an even more solid roleplaying reason to pick Disruptive. So I'm picking that.

And then, I wanted something that could protect Dwyn from taking full critical damage because, honestly, she's still a bit squishy at AC 23 to be in the center of everything. It's just not hard for any of the bigger enemy we are facing now to hit her. But what would that be? The luck feat for humans? This defensive armor feat (and does it leave it merely broken or automatically destroy the armor down to 0 HP on the assumption any critical hit does major damage)? I would have thought the latter except that you still take damage yourself - just regular and not critical damage.

Another question:
What does haste do for me? Is it just 60 ft move vs 30? I thought at some point it gives you an extra hit too, but so far I'm only able to move plus hit once, or stay still and hit twice. That's my normal unhasted though, yes?

[Tahlvin]

Haste increases movement, as you mentioned. It also adds +1 to hit, AC and Reflex saves. It gives you an extra attack, but only when you can do a full attack action. So moving more than 5 feet in a round means you can't take a full attack action, so you don't get the extra attack from haste. However, if you do take a full attack action, you get the extra attack in addition to all of your regular attacks. So when Eldthor takes a full attack action, he gets two attacks normally, one at the normal bonus and one at -5 of normal. If he's hasted, he gets a 3rd attack at his normal bonus. And if he's using his rapid shot feat while hasted, he gets a 4th attack at his normal bonus (but all 4 attacks are at -2). Dwyn should have at least two attacks per round when making a full attack action, so she should get a 3rd attack when hasted.