Character Creation Discussion Thread

[CRook]

@dalamb I know that feeling when it comes to character creation, the best advice I can give you is to remember that people can be surprisingly different from what you expect them to be, both in a game like this and in real life. People can have a good amount of varied interests that would not 'seem' to align with an individual's upbringing, or profession.

What matters isn't "oh this is suitable for X or Y class", but "this is how this particular character got here". If you can explain that, don't worry about whether they "fit" a particular general background - they just need to fit this particular character's background.

And remember, the multi-planar jumping nature of the adventure means there's every reason a character from say, a backwater low-magic fantasy setting could be charging their plasma rifle. "Fit" is a REALLLLLLLLLLY loose concept for this one.

[dalamb]

That helps a lot. I was stuck in the mindset of "trade tradition needs to be a coherent single thing, widely applicable as a sensible profession." But if I think of it as just "what has she done with her life so far" then that makes it a heck of a lot easier.

[namo]

Well, a Trade Tradition specifically is taken early in the career, so it's not a reflection of her life (I'm setting aside the rare case when you get it in two pieces, with the Adroit part coming later when you multiclass). But there's room for a lot of variety, and you also don't need to pay too much attention to the names of the vocation talents, i.e. you could in your head change the name to another one that fits the mechanics just as well, and meshes with your PC better; in the end, I doubt Saberfan will take a magnifier to this specific part of our PCs.

Edited January 15 by namo (see edit history)

[Saberfan]

Sorry for being absent the last two days, we had a winter storm roll through the area and had some power lines and trees go down as a result.

On 1/11/2024 at 4:03 PM, DnD_Jedi said:

No problem, mistakes are mistakes (how do you divide the quote up by the by? I can't figure it out...)

And, can you link this Sphere's Kineticist homebrew you are discussing? I am very curious to have a look at it and see what it does. Especially if it does link the Kineticist elements to more than just the Destruction Sphere. I can already think of a few examples: Aether and Telekinesis obviously, but also Air & Water might play with the Weather Sphere, Fire with the Nature' Sphere, Earth might go for Creation, Wood goes for Life, and Void goes for Death or perhaps Darkness as well.

Yes, I would appreciate it if you can link this homebrew for us to see.

Edit: Flavour question, considering that we have clear MTG inspiration here (Planeswalker vs Gatewalker, main base is a massive city as a plane, similar to Ravinca, Gatewalker's having a 'spark'), can I take it a bit further and have my character's spark 'awaken' during a traumatic event, leading to an uncontrolled, immediate shift to another plane? Something that can't be repeated, as it takes 3 minutes to make a gate otherwise. But it sounds like it has fun story potential. Plus, it feels like not every Gatewalker would be aware of their powers or their full possibilities, so it would be a nice way to introduce an isolated setting to the wider Multiverse.

Edit 2: I had a look at the Martial Contracts, and spotted the Light Body Technique optional rules, which feels extremely in flavour for the character I wish to make. Is there any trade I can make to gain the benefits of the Light Body Technique?

Edit 3: Though by RAW it does not apply. Can we make Cascade Failure also apply a penalty to CMD vs CMB checks from the Destructive Blast? I'm thinking of having Air Blast be my primary Destructive Blast outside of the normal Destructive Blast, and being able to pick up a way to nerf a creature's CMD against the Bull Rush from it would be deeply appreciated. Same reasoning with Empty Infusion as well.

Your character's first instance of Gatewalking in their backstory can be an instantaneous use, yes.

Light Body Technique isn't a thing we'll be using in this game, but you can take the individual components at your leisure.

The Spheres Kineticist alternate class allows Destruction and Kinetic Blast talents to be mixed and I see little reason why they can't with a normal Kineticist that's using the Spheres archetype.

On 1/11/2024 at 5:37 PM, dalamb said:

Sorry I missed the previous answer about knowledge skills, but I also don't quite understand it. It sounds like the basic "regional knowledge" skills are indeed useless but lore for single planets works?

Knowledge skills function more or less like they do in normal Pathfinder. I am allowing people to use a Background Skill to take a custom skill covering a range of topics for their homeworld so that they don't have to take a load of skills to be knowledgeable about their plane of origin.

On 1/12/2024 at 12:06 AM, TheRedGoat said:

So here's a question that may actually give me some direction on how to build a character, what does the linguistics skill even do in a game where we're always under the effects of tongues?

Did I miss something where it isn't the full effect? Will it matter to really learn other languages? Should I consider specifying extra languages learned are of the signed or braille variety?

Tongues only applies to spoken language, so Linguistics could be useful for deciphering written languages, sign languages, alien forms of communication like firefly glow communication, etc. Moreover, Tongues is only useful for the actual acts of speaking and understanding languages as they are spoken, meaning the intellectual understanding would still, at least theoretically, require someone to learn a language the normal way.

On 1/12/2024 at 2:18 PM, RedDingo said:

What's your stance on the Weapon Building system from the Weapon Master's handbook?

Weapon Building is fine, but I will need to clear specific weapons as normal.

On 1/12/2024 at 3:54 PM, Illogictree said:

Here's a really dumb question: do the classes in the gestalt have to be different? Could someone build an incanter//incanter if they wanted to get a ridiculous amount of talents?

The classes in gestalt do indeed need to be different.

On 1/12/2024 at 12:00 PM, CRook said:

Does having the benefits of a Martial Contract count as having the Conscript Combat Sphere Specialization for the purpose of raising the BAB or Skill Ranks to Conscript+1 for the chosen Sphere as per said class' feature description, or is it solely the abilities listed?

It only gives you the abilities.

23 hours ago, dalamb said:

Do the rules/shenanigans really allow caster level to go above character level?

They do and that's baked into Spheres design. It normally isn't a problem since a lot of things do not stack and taking things that boost your CL often cuts into what you can actually use that CL for. There are a few corner case shenanigans that people can get up to, usually only in gestalt games, but only rarely encroaches on the sorts of abuse you can engage in with the standard Sorceror or Wizard from Paizo. Spheres is generally much better at keeping things balanced, the broken Sage class aside.

2 hours ago, dalamb said:

That helps a lot. I was stuck in the mindset of "trade tradition needs to be a coherent single thing, widely applicable as a sensible profession." But if I think of it as just "what has she done with her life so far" then that makes it a heck of a lot easier.

You needn't worry as much about crafting deep links between Trade Traditions and your background. If you want to, that's awesome and I like to see that sort of thought put into things, but it's not really necessary. Your overall background is much more important than smaller minutiae like that. CRook and namo are right on the money with their advice on the matter.

[DnD_Jedi]

15 hours ago, Saberfan said:

Your character's first instance of Gatewalking in their backstory can be an instantaneous use, yes.

The Spheres Kineticist alternate class allows Destruction and Kinetic Blast talents to be mixed and I see little reason why they can't with a normal Kineticist that's using the Spheres archetype.

Thank you, I am glad to hear that.

That being said, you seem to have misunderstood my question again. I'm asking if abilities that debuff enemies to saves vs Destruction Blasts/Kinetic Blasts, or buffing the saves of those abilities. Can also apply to CMD/CMB for the Destruction Blasts/Kinetic Blasts that work on CMB and not saves? CMD already scales far, far faster than saves do, especially at the higher levels, and having these abilities will be rather necessary just to keep up, IMO.

Edited January 15 by DnD_Jedi (see edit history)

[ahyangyi]

Ah, I start to work on my character! I decide that one side will be a Dissident of Fantasy and Reality.

 

And man... I didn't expect it to be a double pet class (getting a phantom on one side and a robot on the other side). It sounds fun though, and I'll see what I can make out of this.

 

EDIT: @DnD_Jedi, or, perhaps they just mean the Scion?

Edited January 15 by ahyangyi (see edit history)

[DnD_Jedi]

On 1/15/2024 at 2:40 PM, ahyangyi said:

EDIT: @DnD_Jedi, or, perhaps they just mean the Scion?

No, they had specifically been discussing a Sphere's Kineticist that links the Kineitcist's elements with other Spheres. The one I've found, however, is not something I find myself a fan of in the slightest (makes Kineticists Low Casters for no reason at all and nerfs Kinetic Blade hard). So I'll be sticking with just the Scion.

Edit: And now I've found there's an update of that very same homebrew to make it more balanced and focused. Can I play with this instead of the Scion?

Edit 2: Is the Tinker Sphere on the table at all? Specifically, I'm looking at the Augmentation: Spring Boots. Thanks to the build I've got, I have a very high Acrobatics check, and have abilities that make me jump further beyond just modifying my acrobatics check. So, I'm going to very quickly run into the limitation of not being able to jump further than my speed allows, and the Spring Boots Augmentation is, without a doubt, the more flavourful option to help me get past that little issue.

Edited January 16 by DnD_Jedi (see edit history)

[TheRedGoat]

I don't know that I will try this, but I realized a dumb quirk about having multiclassing. Say I start out as Scholar//Blacksmith. At the next level up, I clearly can't take Hedgewitch on both sides, but I can take it on say the scholar side, and then on the blacksmith side I can take scholar at 2. Then for level three I can take Blacksmith 2 on the Scholar side, and hedgewitch 2 on the Blacksmith side. And as an aside to all of that, I could take features that needlessly stack saying each of those levels counts towards having a familiar, although I believe that does nothing here. That exact set up would only result in a 3rd level familiar, not a 6th level one.

 

Right?

[ahyangyi]

1 hour ago, TheRedGoat said:

I don't know that I will try this, but I realized a dumb quirk about having multiclassing. Say I start out as Scholar//Blacksmith. At the next level up, I clearly can't take Hedgewitch on both sides, but I can take it on say the scholar side, and then on the blacksmith side I can take scholar at 2. Then for level three I can take Blacksmith 2 on the Scholar side, and hedgewitch 2 on the Blacksmith side. And as an aside to all of that, I could take features that needlessly stack saying each of those levels counts towards having a familiar, although I believe that does nothing here. That exact set up would only result in a 3rd level familiar, not a 6th level one.

 

Right?

I don't think you can take the same class on both sides of a gestalt at all. So no juggling classes around.

(And even if you can, your first level of hedgewitch on both side would be Hedgewitch 1, and all the redundant parts, which is everything but talents, get thrown out)

19 hours ago, Saberfan said:

The classes in gestalt do indeed need to be different.

 

Edited January 15 by ahyangyi (see edit history)

[Taggerung559]

To my knowledge there's no rule stating that a class must exclusively stay on one side of the gestalt, just that you can't take it on both sides at the same level. Going scholar->hedgewitch->blacksmith on one side and blacksmith->scholar->hedgewitch on the other should work, getting you the total class features of 2 levels of each (a class wouldn't start back at level 1 just because it's now on the other side).

[ahyangyi]

TBH, none of the written rules (neither the 3.5 SRD one nor the Spheres of Power one) clarified on the topic of multiclassing, besides saying that you can't use the dual-class prestige classes.

My previous GMs generally require each side to stand on their own, except feats which are still shared. But yeah it's not a standard ruling, and there isn't any standard ruling anyways.

I guess I'll wait for our GM to clarify on this.

[TheFred]

The gestalt rules are an incomplete bit of homebrew so any appeal to "RAW" is a little ill-conceived. That said, gestalt doesn't have any concept of "sides" in the first place; you don't take Blacksmith on one side and Scholar on the other, then Scholar on the Blacksmith side then Hedgewitch on the other but, rather, you just take Blacksmith and Scholar, then Scholar and Hedgewitch. There's no concept of ordering, that's just an extra thing people have made up (presumably because it makes it easier to write things).

[TheRedGoat]

To be fair, I know that three-way multiclass is a bad idea anyway, as I am sure I am right about the familiar bits not stacking, but I just cannot help but ask for curiosity sake.

What I feel like has really gotten me going now is a build I am working out that I was inspired by from regular pathfinder: Sniping people with a greatsword for fun and profit. Basically I noticed how the sword binder got really good range on their ability and tried searching around for what worked well with that, and as it turns out having more range can make it very easy to hide from people you stab at a distance with magic.

I already have a clear(-ish) idea of how to translate the features of the sword binder into the spheres system (telekinesis sphere does most of the work), and now I recently stumbled on a really dumb idea: Spirit Blade Armorist.

I just launch myself at people and use warp or some other magic to disappear before they wonder who threw a sword at them.

[Ulysses Dare]

The general rule on gestalt is that identical class features don't stack when taken at the same level. So, for example, Rogue 3//Ninja 3 doesn't get double the sneak attack. As far as stacking your familiar level goes, I'm not sure how the rules on familiars are worded but I suspect that rule probably applies here. Never hurts to ask the GM if it's at all vague though.

[Sundust]

Conjuration: is there a limit to the number or type of summons (or other "pets," like animal companions and familiars) we can have?

I started building my character and realized that I could have a healer, an alchemist, a crafter, and a beastly warrior all on demand, with little more than Extra Companion a few times. It's practically a whole character in 1 talent.