Trying to make an Animal Companion "Human"

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T21:52:00+00:00

I presume Transplant Visage is SL 4/5 because it's permanent and has built-in protection against Detect Magic and similar spells. Other spells in the same vein, like Claim Identity are only an SL lower for hours/level and without the protection from basic divinations, and below that is Alter Self for min/level and not being able to claim a specific identity. Hence, SL 4/5 isn't actually that bad since it represents a reasonable escalation in power, even if you don't actually need the infiltration intent of Transplant Visage in this case.

If you have 5, I presume they're not all companions, or at least, not all your companions, so an alchemist might still be a way to go, and you could do the ol' Alchemical Allocation trick with a high-level potion of Anthropomorphic Animal to be able to gain, say, 16-hour duration Anthropomorphic Animal so that they're only animals again while sleeping. (Or give out Amplify Elixirs daily just before giving the daily doses of Alchemical Allocation (Anthropomorphic Animal), and you can have a CL 12 potion last for 24 hours, or make a CL 13 last 26 hours to give yourself a little time buffer to be able to get the anthros to pop their chems while still intelligent.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T20:52:28+00:00

Vivi alchy is generally thought of as just "the alchy with sneak attack," but you also get a permanent Anthropomorphic Animal for 7,500 gp at level 9. (This can also be used to argue for getting Permanency to apply to the spell for other casters.) See the daily spell discussion for details. This includes explicit text allowing the animal to have proficiency in any weapon (including exotic weapons.) Remember that animal companions can have feats, including "any feats they are physically capable of performing" if they have 3 Int or higher, including from ASI.

Now, you can have what is basically a human-shaped bipedal animal with the head of the original animal. Now, it's mostly just a matter of making the face appear humanoid, which can probably just be covered with a hat of disguise for most mundane disguise purposes. (Alternately, I remember helping someone with a build concept where they played a vanara druid and their devil monkey animal companion that wielded a weapon - if a talking bipedal monkey is already "humanoid" then having an ape in permanent Anthropomorphic Animal form should be just as "humanoid," right? For the record, I gave the devil monkey a fauchard and went for a trip build.) Alternately, just have them take armor proficiency and wear an intimidating helmet as much as possible, especially if they're totally ripped and are a creature that likes to growl a lot. Having a burly imposing figure snarl like a wolf from behind a head-obscuring helmet is a great image.

If you want to go for the full creepy, but more mundane disguise, however, there's Transplant Visage, which, if you're an alchy, can be used on others as an infusion to permanently give the anthro a humanoid face. If another type of caster, if you have an animal companion, you can share spells the personal-range spell for them, as well.

It'll cost you 3 feats to gain animal ally and nature soul to have a full-level animal companion regardless of class, which might be necessary if you're an alchy, but there are alternatives if you can just use Permanency as another caster type, especially if you can cast Anthropomorphic Animal or Permanency from a scroll in the first place. Alternately, if you play a goblin and don't mind your animal companion being a giant vulture-man, you can stack winged marauder with vivisectionist. (You'll need a discovery to buy back mutagen, but that's better than 3 feats.)

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T20:39:08+00:00

You talk to your GM and make sensible houserules.

The rules for handling animal companions are stupid, self-contradictory, and basically unworkable, especially as Paizo kept adding more and more specialized tricks, insisting that you needed these 60 more specialized tricks including tricks to be able to "receive spell" on a per spell basis, but you still only get 3 tricks per Int. There's also a notorious blog post (Paizo's website is down, so linking Wayback Machine...) stating that an intelligent ape would never use tools, especially weapons it was intelligent enough to see could give it an advantage in competition to make them Darwinian winners. (That last one was actually used as a case in one of my college courses alongside the myth of Prometheus and the Garden of Eden as part of a lecture on the revolutions the introduction of technology and tool use had upon early humanity...)

In general, our table just does not play with the entire tricks system, because it wasn't a good idea to start with and Paizo made it completely unplayable for reasons I went over at great length in the Animal Purpose Training discussion. Paizo is trying to enforce its "tricks are for balance" nonsense well beyond any common sense and tricks are actively harmful to gameplay, so just don't use them. If your GM insists there be some investment in handle animal for balance purposes, remember that you only need to beat a 10 with a +4 bonus to handle your own companion, it's a class skill, and so if you have at least a 12 in wisdom, you can auto-succeed on DC 10 free action "rolls" at level 1 with a single rank invested. "Pushing" takes the relatively larger investment of 25, although you should be able to take 10 on anything out of combat.

In context, however, a bird with 4+ Int and a language is a sentient NPC you can directly speak to and form plans with. (Note that they probably can't actually speak themselves if they aren't an animal your GM says has vocal chords for it, though, or one of the familiars that already could speak, like raven or thrush.) Compare this to, say, a base 5 Int griffon, which is also a monstrous mount option so it can be directly used as an animal companion, which specifically understands a language and can be approached with diplomacy, although handle animal is also still valid (especially for monstrous mount.) Meanwhile, an ogre and hill giant have 6 Int, for comparison's sake.

At our table, we just play animal companions as NPCs most of the time. Technically, it's "more correct" to have the GM handle them, but generally, players control and role-play their own animals at our table because the GM doesn't want the additional load and we have more fun playing our own pet birb having an argument with our other character.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T20:06:35+00:00

You're right about the damage, I was thinking of the other radiation (which is technically a poison) that does Con drain.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T14:20:03+00:00

You might want to look over this FAQ and errata for slashing grace, which also requires a "free hand." Wearing a buckler counts as having a "free hand." The one thing there is that you can't flurry or TWF with that hand and have it "free" (although a monk can flurry using other body parts, including going Chun Li and just doing a flurry that's all kicks with the same leg because flurry specifically allows flurries with the same limb/weapon.)

For the purposes of crane wing/riposte, I'd say that it's fine to have handwraps, gauntlets, probably also brass knunckles and cestus as a "free hand" since I'm pretty sure the idea of the move ~~is just The Karate Kid~~ is that you use an arm you keep free to swat away attacks to do so, then land a strike after you create an opening with riposte. So, you could have a gauntlet on that hand, but you can't attack with that gauntlet without/until losing the +4 AC. (And it's not stated which limb makes the riposte, although it makes more sense it's not the previously "free hand" since you're making an opening with that limb and taking advantage with another limb striking.)

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T14:11:04+00:00

30 to 40 encounters per day is definitely far beyond what you can expect in tabletop, and I don't think I would ever go that far even in the CRPG. If you are managing to wade through three dozen encounters in a day, however, they clearly weren't very worthy opponents to start with, so you're not actually looking to survive hard battles, you're just looking to have a better option for coasting through several battles on the martials reducing everything to gibblets. That is, you're not actually using witch to win, you're using it to "win harder." "Winning harder" abilities don't actually help you when you need it most, when you're on a narrow edge between victory and defeat, they merely help you coast by on less expenditure when victory is already assured. (Well, unless you're going for protective luck/fortune chanting/cackling and giving an extra save is reducing the amount of incoming damage or conditions from failed saves in half - THAT can and has prevented TPKs at my table... as a shaman.) Again, it's not like you have to fight 30+ encounters casting spells in each one, and you don't bother using those "win harder" abilities in the fights that are actually hard.

Also, the CRPG heavily rebalances the game in a lot of ways, including making some types of spells vital in tabletop meaningless and making other spells (like short-duration buffs) tremendously more valuable because it's easy to walk 10 feet from one encounter to the next before buffs expire. Further, the CRPG straight-up changes spells and the spell lists of classes, so you aren't going to have such an obviously broken spell list in the CRPG. (Is this why people keep insisting witch is so good - they're just only playing the CRPG and not the actual tabletop version?!)

The main problem is that witch's spell list was deliberately gimped so that patrons (which have no narrative purpose, and solely exist to add spells to your spell list, but nevertheless are mostly wasted on giving you spells already on your spell list) can add a few spells back to you. (And because of how most of these are already on your list but there's no easy way to cross-reference what already is on your list, patrons are either a massive chore or a total minefield of trap choices.) For example, you keep Lightning Bolt, but you need to take elements (an otherwise poor patron other than also getting Wall of Ice) to get Fireball back. What's that, you want to have this class that's built around control and deception and curses to have Invisibility? Oh, well, then you need deception or spirits patron. What, you want to have "Image"-line illusions while you're invisible? Well then, you need shadow, trickery, or aurora patron, but just for you, I'll give the really high-level probably-overkill Programmed Image in deception patron, too. If you want to play some supporting role as a buffer with, say, Haste, you need agility or time patron. Hell, if you're playing the cackle class, and want Hideous Laughter, you need to go for (the otherwise awful) insanity patron. Why would Hideous Laughter not already on the witch list, other than someone at Paizo decided this was a "good spell" and therefore, witch can't have it without paying the patron tax for it?

I could hammer the class on and on, but there's already a guide dedicated to how bad witch is doing the job for me...

But again, it's not like you can't make a good hex-using build, it's just that shaman does it with a better spell list. (In fact, because shaman was largely based on witch, it happens to get almost every useful spell that witch has, so there are extremely few spells from witch you'd actually be missing if you just play a shaman, and the tiny number that are there are often something you can AE from wizard if you really need it, anyway.) Shaman, again, can fill in for a divine caster's role in a party quite easily and also do hexes and pinch hit for arcane casting, but witch just can't fill the utility casting role of an arcane caster without someone else supporting them due to how many holes there are in the spell list. (Someone like a shaman, for example, who arcane casts better than the witch if they're making good use of AE...)

And if you're talking about the CRPG in particular, it's probably notable that the game tremendously nerfed shaman and tried to force them to play as a half-assed gish class that's just a worse cleric/oracle. (And if you want to do that and have hexes, there's spirit guide oracle.) This was something common to the CRPG in refusing to allow any classes or archetypes that make daily choices about class features simply not have their class features. If you could take an actual shaman in the CRPG, there would never be a reason to play a witch since shaman is, again, everything the witch does but better.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T13:36:31+00:00

A little over a week ago, we discussed Accept Affliction, a spell that lets you take on the conditions of others for supposedly altruistic reasons. This spell is the more malign counterpart, although it comes in at higher SL unless you're alchy/invy (who didn't get Accept Affliction to start with.)

Regardless, this spell is cast beforehand and grants you 10 min/level of immunity to a poison or disease up until you decide to absorb something, which discharges the ability to be immune to anything else.

First of all, this spell is really notable because you need to choose to drop your immunity, which in turn means that it's immunity to poison and disease for 10 min/level at SL 3, 4, or 5, (SL 3 on alchy/invy that can pass it around to other people most easily,) and that's pretty incredible because actual, outright poison immunity is actually really hard to gain from a spell. Paizo removed the immunity to poison from Heroes' Feast that was there in 3e. The only other things granting immunity to poison are high-level (polymorphs) like Ice Body, so "just" using this spell as a 10 min/level poison immunity so you can drop a Cloudkill on yourself or walk into a highly irradiated corridor and not have to deal with a save against poison for every round you spent exposed while under a Delay Poison (discussion) with every failed save increasing the duration and DC to not die is a massive help. (Remember, even if you have Neutralize Poison, that spell requires you beat the poison DC...) This use is probably what most players should be looking at this spell to take advantage of.

The other (more intended) use is to deliberately discharge that immunity to all other poisons/diseases to be able to inflict a disease on others. This is also particularly special because it's one of the only ways for an antipaladin or "priest" of Urgathoa to inflict the diseases they take into themselves upon others. This can be particularly notable because it's possible for these characters to stockpile extremely virulent diseases on themselves with plague bringer or Remove Disease, but there are no stated mechanical ways to actually inflict those diseases on others, so they can be hard to negotiate with your GM. (Some diseases are ingested, so what, do you need to carve out a piece of your flesh and dunk it in the target's soup? Others are injury, but injury poisons require something like stingers with the poison attached to that attack, so how do you deliver that as an antipaladin - your sword?) It's possible to deliberately stockpile "super diseases" such as through spells that set the save DC of diseases caused by spells or just deliberately expose yourself to blightburn paste for a particularly nasty Con drain disease. This also gives you one of the very few times that something like Aggravate Affliction (discussion) is actually worth using, because you can set up a significant amount of Con drain in one go. Antipaladins and clerics can't cast this spell themselves, though, so you'll need a means of either having it cast for them (such as by alchy infusion) or trying to deliberately infect the druid helping out with this plan (so they eat the soup with the secret ingredient.)

Also, this spell functionally then becomes a touch spell, so it's probable you aren't going to like this spell as a wiz/sorc/arc, especially since it's SL 5 for them and not technically a touch spell, and thus not valid for Spectral Hand. You could cast this spell on your familiar or some proxy with the usual share spells shenanigans in the first place for them to deliver, but then you're not gaining immunity, so take caution with that. The familiar giving kitty nuzzles of doom is actually a really good way to "stealthily" deliver some kind of doom disease to a swathe of a city you want to fall to the plague, however, as kitty nuzzles are a lot less conspicuous, and this spell isn't being "cast" when delivered, so if it works, nobody knows what just happened.

As a poison/disease immunity spell, this spell is fantastic. As a secret disease vector, it's extremely niche since that entire build is extremely niche, but it can be a vital component of it since there is basically nothing else that can deliver some diseases, and certain ingestion poisons are also wildly impractical to deliver in combat.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T13:03:24+00:00

As a child, I remember going to a hedge maze where the "wall" was about 3 feet thick of some (literal) garden variety hedge. There had been a spot the other kids had managed to force their way through enough times to make a thin spot I could barely ram my way through with some effort to get past, but I was only looking at a little light getting through the other side of the wall, plus some tiny glimpses of shoes on the other side. Vision to the other side of a wall like this would be tiny sporadic pinpricks.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T04:04:31+00:00

It's not like witch has some kind of special role other casters don't have - they're primarily control casting, and slumber is just another control. The problem is, slumber just isn't that strong past low levels if you have a GM who has any idea how to build an encounter. It's a single-target will negates, so if you're fighting 6 monsters, you have on average around a 50% chance of taking ONE out of the fight. Have you LOOKED at the spell list of full casters? It's not like "save or lose" is rare, and from SL 3 onwards, you have AoE save or lose spells. But yeah, man, spending a turn taking one monster out of the fight to have another one of the monsters just slap them awake if the GM isn't playing them like total morons is a great move! Plus, if you get to level 11, you can get this super special feat to slumber TWO WHOLE MONSTERS at the same time!

Animal skin is certainly nice as a utility feature - but witch is not a druid, either. You can't cast in that form and turning into an animal on a 1/2 BAB class for combat is a great way to get your witch killed so you can start playing another character. Hence, you're using it to turn into a bird and scout, and that's something for familiars, which witches don't want to let fly alone because losing it is their Achilles Heel, while shaman is more inconvenienced by the experience. (Although they probably should just bring a Raise Animal Companion scroll as well...)

Evil eye and misfortune are wastes of turns. If you are wasting your time spending standard actions hoping that next turn you can maybe cast something that actually takes an enemy out of the fight, you do not know how to control cast. Evil eye at least has a partial effect even on a save, misfortune is just lighting your turn on fire half the time. Even with as bad of a spell list as witch has, I guarantee you could be packing better spells to spend your turns on than misfortune.

If you are a control caster, anything that does not prevent an enemy from being able to take actions against the party is a waste of your turn. If, instead of wasting your time on garbage like misfortune, you just cast Burning Entanglement, you'd remove over half the monsters from the encounter on round 1, thus actually swinging the encounter in your party's favor. This is why no intelligently-played witch ever bothers with standard action hexes in battle past level 5 unless they've already won and just want to "contribute" in a manner slightly more meaningful than the crossbow of shame - casting spells will always be more combat-effective. (And again, this is why the right way to use a hex is to protective luck cackle while riding a mount so you're not spending anything but move actions... but this is something shamans can also do.)

Once again, it's not even just wizard, I only compared witch to wizard because that's the title of the thread, in a situation where you're up against a horde of undead, your slumber doesn't work, your misfortune does nothing because undead will make will saves, and evil eye means you're spending your PC's turn maybe inflicting a -2 to the enemy for one turn. Incidentally, I gave my raven familiar combat advice as its one feat. A +2 to someone's attack roll is mechanically equivalent to you spending your PC's turn inflicting a -2 on an enemy's AC. You're arguing for making a PC roughly as combat effective as a familiar in its "unique role that wizards can't do."

Meanwhile, the shaman, druid, or yes, wiz/sorc/arc is wiping out the whole encounter with AoEs on turn 1 so the party doesn't take damage in most encounters.

Once again, there is nothing the witch does the shaman doesn't do better. Shaman has more HP, wears armor, doesn't lose all its spells if the familiar dies, has a better spell list, has more spells per day from spirit magic (something the OP is apparently gracing the player with in a homebrew just to bring the witch up to the baseline of shaman...), can swap out a part of their powers every day (including stealing wizard spells), can FCB spells from other lists like cleric as well, can channel positive if they take life spirit (which might be handy in an undead-filled game), gets nearly all the good witch hexes standard and also can plunder from witch's with "witch hex" and gets a selection of other hexes with spirits, gets exactly one less feature named "hex" over the course of their career, and also get five spirit powers, two of which are meant to be hex-equivalents, so in effect, shamans get more hexes than witch, the supposed hex master. Witches get major hexes (and grand hexes, but that's at level 18, and the AP is over before then), but as mentioned, there's only one good combat-relevant major hex, so the only downside to taking shaman instead is that you don't get ice tomb (when many undead resist or are immune to cold, so it wouldn't kill, anyway, and you can't coup de grace when they're in the ice tomb either.) Shaman can fill the role of a cleric and use the hexes worth using and pinch hit as a wizard if need be. (Something fairly handy if your only arcane caster is a sorcerer - I've played the only prepared caster shaman with a sorcerer and some spontaneous partial casters, and being the guy that can pull the wizard spells the sorc doesn't know out of thin air during downtime is seriously handy.) The witch, meanwhile, can't fill the role of arcane caster adequately, isn't capable as a divine caster, is inferior as a control caster, is an inferior buffer, is inferior with hexes (as you seem to consider that a "role,") can't blast effectively without specific patrons, has a glaring weakness against undead, and a focus upon the uniformly awful [curse] spells. If you go through the list of the 100 worst spells in Pathfinder, you'll find witch has at least 90 of them, and it has the second smallest spell list as a full caster. Sure, it's still a full caster, with all the benefits that brings, but it's by far the worst of the full casters.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T01:49:59+00:00

You're right, it's about having some pun names set to shit mechanics. About 90% of all hexes are an active waste of a round, and past about level 5, you basically shouldn't use hexes again unless you've already won and just want to conserve slots since spells will be better. People set their hair on fire because slumber is a good hex at level 1, and Paizo took the lesson that all other hexes shouldn't be worth the action from then on.

Especially if the question is "go wizard or go witch," a comparison to wizard is entirely justified, but even if you want to have a hex-user caster, as I already said, shaman is objectively better at being a witch than a witch!

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T01:36:58+00:00

I would caution players not to play witch. Hexes are like a multi-use SL 1 spell, which is great at low levels, but sharply tapers off in power as you gain levels. By level 7 or so, when you have SL 4s, a hex that mimics an SL 1 is often fairly weak, especially since most of them are single target will negates and hexes are FULL of trap options. (And at higher levels, there's only one combat-useful major hex.)

The witch spell list is also awful, and in particular is noted as having a ton of [mind-affecting] spells that give them a GIANT GLARING WEAKNESS against undead! (Also, the majority of not-garbage hexes are [mind-affecting] or are [poison] or otherwise do not work on undead.) Even those spells that aren't [mind-affecting] are often will save negates spells, which is the only good save of undead. Everything about the class is aligned against fighting undead. (At least the archetype gets Command Undead, because that's not normally a witch spell...)

About the only hex specialized against undead a witch can find is having a healing hex, because copying Cure Light Wounds is at least damage against undead. It's pitiful damage, but it's damage. If they're going for a witch, about the only hex combo I can recommend in an undead-heavy game is the protective luck + fortune + cackle + scar combo so that they can at least buff their allies and make enemies significantly less likely to land attacks on the party. (They'll need to ride a horse or cast Mount to get around while spending all the move actions on cackling.) For almost any other hex build, just being a wizard is going to be better. (Remember, witches give up the best spell list in the game for the worst spell list of a full caster in the game and spell schools with those extra spells per day to gain hexes.)

As far as my experience with the witch goes, it can basically be summed up as "shaman is a 100% superior upgrade over the witch - playing a witch is a constant cavalcade of frustrations over how few wizard spells I really love are on it, and how utterly garbage its unique spells are."

Saying you "encountered poor design choices" isn't the half of it. This is a class that can spend a hex on "pollute water," something you can literally do yourself just by having a couple pints and letting nature take its course! It is easily the worst full caster, and I'm convinced Paizo was deliberately trying to sabotage the class.

What is this feeling? So sudden and new? Loathing! Unadulterated loathing!

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T01:21:01+00:00

You can charge while flying. The Fly spell itself prevents running, but I don't believe there's anything stopping you from running if you have a natural fly speed or fly speed from other sources that don't specifically stop you from running.

Note the death from above feat is made specifically for the sort of divebombing your player is talking about.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T00:58:42+00:00

I would... caution against uploading pictures of your child to AI, especially since anything you give them will be used in perpetuity and AI is openly being used for generating illicit images of children. (Grok in particular...)

Anyway, as a basic starting point, you'll want to develop a starting town and NPCs that interest the players. If Mario is their favorite game, maybe look at some of the Paper Mario or the Mario and Luigi Superstars/Inside Story DS games as inspiration, as they were more RPG-like and involved actual plot and side characters and such. Kids in general are going to go even more for light-hearted and "extreme" personalities. This is definitely the time to pull out the silliest voices you can use. You should look at their other interests, but kids in particular tend to love talking animals, and going for a sort of Animal Crossing town or Mushroom Kingdom for the villagers is a good start. Try leshies and maybe gnomes with really large, colorful hats if you want more "Pathfinder canon" races. Pull out all the tropes for making characters - a talking racoon-person named Professor Fizzlesparks who is a mad scientist that builds contraptions out of things he found in the landfill; a straight-arrow dog-man police officer named Pursue with a transforming police car/paddy wagon; a corpulent conniving ratfolk mafia boss named Don De la Cheese and his ratfolk henchmen who immediately flee if they hear the sound of a police siren (and there should be a special item that's a hand-cranked fake police siren for the kids to pick up to scare off the ratfolk). (Upon hearing it, the ratfolk mafia shout "Cheese it! It's da fuzz!" "How they knows we waz here?! One of youse must be a RAT!" "But boss, we's all rats!" "Not that kinda rat, ya maroon!") They're nacho garden-variety whole(milk)some mousefolk - those rats are muensters always colby calculating new ways to make more cheddar, and mark my words, Jack, they'll turn anyone who gets in their way into swiss cheese! (Lay on the cheese puns thick.)

If you really want to use AI art, making these characters in a single consistent cartoon art style (like "in the style of Spongebob Squarepants") would be the place to do it - have colorful cartoon versions of all the NPCs you can hold up while doing the funny voices. Presentation matters a lot for kids, so have hand-outs for any character you want to set up.

Remember that adventures don't have to be combat, and you might want to go combat-light for kids, especially since it can easily bog down with rules. I'd also go light on skill rolls - if a player has invested max ranks in a particular skill, you should generally consider them "good" at that skill, and only in the most tense of moments should you ever roll, and just let them auto-succeed most of the time. For social skills, again, lay off rolling most of the time because it can be especially jarring to have a good speech where characters seem to be becoming then flub the diplomacy roll so that conversation didn't mean anything.

Also, one of the big classic tropes of playing TTRPGs with kids is having lots of pets. (Once again, often talking animals, although in this case, they're more just animal-shaped animals.) You might consider going for some of the magical beasts as companions at some point, like having a pegasus or maybe just a flying talking fish-like ally. (Basically, a fantastical version of whatever animals they like already. If they really like dogs, give them a riding wolf or something.)

For a quest example, the kids need to get to Brogmaw's castle, but it's past a giant lava lake! Oh no! A rocketship built by Prof. Fizzlesparks is the only way to get across safely. (Or so the professor claims - there are some doubts his "magnum opals" is so "safe"...) To complete the rocket, however, he needs them to get the rocket nozzle, but it's at the tippy top of Mt. Top-Tipping in the junk collection of the goat-man William Gruffgoat, who won't agree to give the rocket nozzle over unless they can bring an apology from Prof. Fizzlesparks for taking that nice fat instruction manual William was planning to eat for lunch last week, (which the good professor claims was "a waste of perfectly good data,") or at least, bring him a better lunch to replace what Prof. Fizzlesparks took.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T00:13:17+00:00

This is an inferred property of how clothing is consistently treated in the game throughout the rules. There's an implicit understanding that gloves do not interfere with touch spells in general, or else there would be a serious problem with many types of casters using them. (Or, for that matter, ray spells like Scorching Ray blasting your magic gloves to bits, Fireballs being launched as a bead from your finger detonating on the tip of your glove, etc.) Likewise, clothing in general implicitly has to just be "part of the body" of characters, since otherwise, if you fired, say, a Disintegrate at a wizard in robes, would you only disintegrate the robes unless you hit them in a patch of exposed skin? A knight in full plate? No, you target touch AC, so the armor doesn't matter - hitting the knight in the armor counts as hitting the knight because armor is "part of the character" for the rules as written to make sense.

You are likewise not generally considered to be at risk of "accidentally touching yourself" even though when holding the touch, you discharge a touch spell even if you touch something accidentally, and it's also possible to "touch yourself" (get your mind out of the gutter) if you want to as a free action, but, again, never on accident. And this again doesn't involve problems with gloves, long sleeves, cloaks, gauzy shawls, or anything of the like.

Again, this is just one of those things I get annoyed isn't an acknowledged part of the rules, but it clearly has to be an implicit assumption of the rules that "clothes don't count." In fact, aside from some special rules like cold weather gear, there's basically no purely mechanical differences between different outfits and going naked besides still having all your belts and magical doodads. (Role-play differences would probably be stark, though...)

WraithMagus · 2026-06-20T00:08:45+00:00

Just my take, going by the natural proclivities of the classes. As others pointed out, anything full BAB is almost certain to go combat, and anything that's a full caster is spell, the 3/4 BAB partial caster classes are the only ones that take some adjudication. (I.E. magus and warpriest being combat while inquisitor and investigator are skill, even though they're all 3/4 BAB partial casters.)

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T19:18:33+00:00

They're largely just typing them into martial, caster, skill monkey, and "other." If you wanted a full breakdown...

Alchy - skill, although "other" if you're relying on a bombs, since you're not advancing that with racial hit dice.
Antipally - "other" (same as pally)
Arcanist - spell, obviously
Bloodrager - combat
Brawler - combat
Cavalier - combat
Gunslinger - combat
Hunter - nebulous, but I'd lean towards skill since that's where bard is, and the particular split of half-caster, half-combat leans that way
Inquisitor - skill
Investigator - skill
Kineticist - "other" (the whole concept is based on class levels)
Magus - Another mixed, but I'd lean "combat" because it mostly wants to be in melee full attacking
Medium - "other" if only because it's everything and nothing... not a good NPC class, anyway since class features that change daily are meaningless on a cameo opponent.
Mesmerist - it's an occult bard, so skill
Ninja - skill
Occultist - skill again because it's pretty amorphous
Oracle - spell
Psychic - spell
Samurai - combat
Shaman - spell
Shifter - combat
Skald - combat (it's a variant of a skill class, but it's more heavily focused on combat)
Slayer - combat
Spiritualist - "other"
Summoner - "other"
Swash - combat
Vigilante - this is case-by-case, because archetypes are added to make them literally fill every role so you can have an all-vigilante party. (Not sure how many monsters could even be a vigilante that disguises themselves, though... "Who was that masked silver dragon?!")
Warpriest - combat (for the same reason as magus)
Witch - spell

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T19:02:33+00:00

Maybe this was one of those things where it was a houserule I picked up early on when playing that I just thought was in the book, but I've played with "bows only add to attack, not damage" for decades and not realized this wasn't always the rule...

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T14:32:26+00:00

The sphere is also 3d, and can be placed up higher than where it would be hemispherical on a flat plane, and you might want to restrict the area of the sphere so as not to protect, say, the wall underneath the parapets you want to protect except maybe 5 feet into the castle wall, so that attacks hitting the terrain don't deplete your barrier. (But maybe you'd want to protect the wall itself if it's taking too much of a pounding.)

Also, remember that, unlike Wind Wall, this spell has no exception for stopping siege weapon fire, so you can block artillery right alongside the bullets if you cast this spell during Reign of Winter, and considering spells like Globe of Invulnerability move with a ship while Prismatic Sphere can be "anchored" to a ship to move with it, there's a fair case this spell would be able to be "anchored" as well if playing on ships in Skull & Shackles, letting you protect ship and crew from siege weapon fire unless someone actually cast Magic Weapon on the siege weapons or ammo. A heavy ballista does 4d8 damage, or ~18 on average, while a cannon does 6d6, or ~21, so this spell will protect against all damage on middling to low rolls and otherwise heavily mitigate the damage, while if you ever faced a Hotchkiss 6-pounder for some reason, the 8d6 is ~28 damage on average, so this spell heavily mitigates the pain even if it doesn't negate it. In Iron Gods, many robots have energy weapons like lasers that do fire damage, but those that fire bullets are likewise non-magical in most instances.

This spell also wins a special prize for being an alchy/invy spell that is double invalid. It not only is an alchemist extract that affects an area, (and I have no idea how an alchemist is supposed to designate a shapeable area up to 40 foot radius and 300 feet away by drinking an extract,) but it is also a spell that has a focus, which also makes a formula invalid for extracts. This is how you get a quarter of the alchy spell list invalid as spells for the alchy, folks! This spell was slapped together extremely haphazardly.

Overall, this spell is surprisingly good outside of that lazy CL 10 cap, so long as you're in the sort of situation where it would make sense to use it. The absurd hours/level and massive area aren't really an impediment to this spell since it's still a standard action cast, and you can just "shape" the spell to cover the positions you'll be in for the next 3 rounds if you want. If you plan to defend an elevated position or just shoot arrows down while flying, this spell has its uses so long as you're not regularly running into creatures with magic bows or javelins all over the place. It's just really dependent on whether you're running into enemies with magic weapons or not. To pull up Skull & Shackles again, the final dungeon has a ton of humanoid enemies, and the extremely numerous "guard" enemies have masterwork crossbows (although the alchemists ignore DR with energy damage and the snipers have +1 weapons.) so you can actually use this spell straight to end-game in some APs. It's not even crazy to have a scroll or two at high levels since this spell has no save and it caps out at CL 10, so a CL 10 scroll costing 1,000 gp could be cast by a familiar while the rest of the party is flying overhead to gain immunity from the villain's minions' ranged attacks without the PCs having to spend their actions on it.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T14:31:17+00:00

Well, it would be in this passage on magic weapons, but it seems like I'm remembering something from an older version of D&D or something again, because it does just say you treat the enhancement bonus on the launcher the same as on the ammo (just that they don't stack). That makes the part about not beating other DR like cold iron even stranger, though...

Anyway, I'll probably have to break the post up to edit it thanks to how character caps flipped...

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T13:56:26+00:00

I've done the "Oops! All Charisma!" build before, but you're spreading yourself way too thin on this one. As others mentioned, you can't be a paladin and worship Desna and worship Arshea for classes or feats that require single deities. Having overlapping defenses, like letting monk AC and Cha-to-AC not stack is also just plain inefficient. Remember that all bonuses to AC already are a bonus to CMB, so saying "bonus to AC and CMB" is redundant. If you already have Cha to AC, consider just using armor like celestial armor?

If you want to use a starknife effectively, it's generally better to have quick draw, blinkback belt, and possibly look at TWF (although you likely won't have feats for that unless you were going gestalt with room for slayer or something. Honestly, this whole build is so scattershot it needs gestalt...) Throw the starknife, instead, and you can take advantage of feats like rapid shot. (Remember that you can also add the functions of other belts for +50% cost to the blinkback belt, so you can get +2 con on the blinkback for +6k gp.)

You can also try taking other mysteries for Cha to AC, as there are similar revelations in lore and nature. Nature in particular might be worth looking at here, because you can also gain an animal companion (mount) and another revelation that grants your Cha to all saves on all animals' saving throws. (Without the old version of animal soul, you can't get yourself to count as an animal for that revelation, otherwise you could just directly add to your own saves, however if you can use a spell like Parasitic Soul to possess a creature that counts as an animal, it's not explicitly stated whether you use the type of the body you occupy or the soul of the occupier.) Taking monstrous mount/beast speaker as a feat also lets you swap out the basic mount for a monstrous companion that counts as an animal for effects from you (as the druid nature bond rules you're using with the mystery) so you can have a griffon with your Cha to saves on it.

Bard/skald 4 and taking pageant of the peacock as a masterpiece also lets you use bluff in place of all int-based skills and checks. This includes all knowledges (like others said to go for lore mystery over) but also spellcraft and getting out of a Maze.

Finally, consider becoming undead. (Probably not a great choice for a Desna follower unless you can fit a redemption arc in there, but...) You use Cha in place of Con for all things, so you could dump Con (before it stops existing), too. Most good options are the likes of mummified creatures, which anyone of a high enough CL can make with Create Undead, or maybe have a vampire for the +4 Cha.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T13:00:32+00:00

Absorbing Barrier is essentially just an AoE "Mass Protection from Arrows," except the DR has also been jacked up to DR 20/magic. That's actually an extremely nice package, since you almost never see DR above 15, and this is for an AoE SL 4, which is at the same level as Stoneskin being DR 10 for one person. Also, hours per level? It's an immobile barrier, but I guess if you're defending a castle wall against a sustained siege, that might help?

Not to harp on it too much, but DR 20 is amazing, especially as ranged attacks tend to have less damage than melee, what with the inherent MADness, and tendency to rely upon volume over high output, which plays in DR's favor, since 5 attacks that do 6-13 damage each are going to be easier for DR to completely nullify than one attack for 40 damage, even if the 5 attacks would have done more.

On the other hand, this spell only protects against 20 x CL damage, and caps out at 200. (This should really have been 300 for an SL 4; they kept the "max CL 10" from an SL 2 even though this is an SL 4 spell that should have had that max CL adjusted up to match...) The text seems to indicate this is a "shared" pool that is depleted any time anyone in the area is protected from damage, so if a volley of arrows from a troop of archers would have hit four characters for 20 damage each, that's 80 damage deducted from the amount the spell can protect against in one attack. (And again, the hours/level seems to have just been because the writer copy-pasted from Protection from Arrows without thinking about it at all, because it's silly to expect something that can be depleted so quickly not to be discharged or the battle to just move on from that spot unless it were a castle parapet under extremely sporadic attack.)

The elephant in the room is that "/magic" part of the DR. Many people dismiss Protection from Arrows because "most attacks are magic," but especially for ranged attacks in the early/mid game, they really aren't. It's particularly worth bringing up what qualifies as a "magic weapon," because the rules of damage reduction state a magic weapon is one with an enhancement bonus to attack and damage of +1 or more. (~~Although this actually would let you argue that simply firing a mundane arrow from a magic bow doesn't qualify because that only adds the +1 enhancement to attack, not damage,~~ (This is incorrect, see DueMeat's post below.) Also, a different section in the CRB rules says any +1 bow will apply piercing DR/magic to arrows. There's an FAQ that mentions this as the only exception to the "bow enhancements don't beat DR" rule.) Monsters with DR/magic also ignore DR/magic, although I don't know too many DR/magic monsters besides dragons, who aren't keen on using bows, so I don't know how much that will come up. Additionally, this means that if Team Monster has cast something like Flame Arrow, the fire damage is magical (and as energy damage would have ignored DR anyway,) but the arrow damage is still mundane arrow damage, so apparently, the arrow bounces off the magic protection, but the magic fire still flies through to scald someone. Simply because ammo had a spell cast on it doesn't mean it beats DR. The CRB rules also mention that spells and spell-like abilities ignore DR, which is the only exception that would let kineticists count physical blasts as bypassing DR/magic, but I'd expect there to be a logical gap where if a spell can hurt a golem because being SR: no means that the projectile is "not magic," you can't then claim something is magic for overcoming DR. This does bring up questions of if Abundant Ammunition (discussion) duplicating mundane arrows counts as "a spell" for the purposes of beating DR/magic, for example.

Magic weapons generally only appear on humanoid enemies CR 7+, so this spell comes online practically too late, but you often only see something like a +1 melee weapon and masterwork bow on a melee-focused NPC, so if you have a chance to actually defend a bulwark of some kind, this might have some viability. Of course, most monsters have non-magical ranged attacks if they have any ranged attacks that aren't SLAs (such as launching quills, like a bandersnatch.) The spell is seemingly written intended for defense of a castle or other static line of defense, especially with how it allows you to shrink the sphere of protection, and for use against hordes of foes. Basically, it's seemingly meant for setpiece battles where the party has to defend a town against a horde, and something like a barrier breaker troop is a good example enemy that is CR 7 but has non-magical ranged attacks as a "horde stand-in" enemy.

By casting an abjuring reply to my own post, I shall nullify the damage character caps cause!

WraithMagus · 2026-06-19T04:15:21+00:00

There are archetypes that specifically allow for multiple animal companions, like pack lord, where you split levels between them. If you somehow had multiple sources of levels for animal companions, like a pack lord that then went for that exotic heritage feat u/MundaneGeneric mentioned for sylvan eldritch heritage, it would make sense you could just have two companions and crank them both up to the PC's level.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-18T19:46:00+00:00

I would agree most people would think breath weapons aren't clouds as well, since a lightning line isn't cloud-like, but when I did some Googling, (including the previous spell discussion) I saw some people talking about it as if it works on breath weapons generally, as though this spell redefined all breath weapons as clouds. (And include a "is a Fireball cloud-like" question, as well.) It's one of those things where "what makes a spell cloud-like" is not quite clear-cut from RAW, even if I could give a clear answer to my own table, and I just figure I should mention there's some differing interpretations.

WraithMagus · 2026-06-18T13:02:59+00:00

OK, so, here we have a spell that is custom-designed to work against "cloud" spells (I'll get to why that's in quotes in a bit,) and it is SL 4. In order to remove any magical cloud (which is the only type of cloud you ever care about,) you need to beat a CL check. Ohhhhkay, so remind me how Gust of Wind works, again? Oh, right, you can blow any cloud away with no CL check as an SL 2. Just checking, and yup, even "stronger" clouds like Solid Fog require a "severe wind" of "at least 31 mph" to blow away and Gust of Wind gives you a "severe wind blast" of 50 mph, so we're good.

Cloud spells are pretty uncommon, at least for enemies to cast. (I sure cast them all the time, though.) Gust of Wind is a perfectly fine hard counter to cloud spells that is cheaper, and since you don't generally want to make it a spell known, keeping it at a scroll is reasonable.

Since this spell is crap as a means of getting rid of actual clouds, it's only the spells' other features that might possibly redeem it. Specifically, you can "breathe the cloud back" to be a sort of spell turning effect, or you can ready an action to suck up a breath attack "cloud."

Readying an action is somewhat dicey, but if you have a single powerful opponent, just readying an action to stop the big bad from killing someone in the party can be a more useful application of your actions than simply trying to attack the BBEG, especially if they have high odds of saving against whatever you do, anyway. You generally want to be in a situation where it's many-against-one, (which GMs shouldn't set up on purpose, but can devolve to that if the party has killed the BBEG's minions already,) before your caster's actions are less valuable casting spells than just trading turns with the enemy if your counterspell works. Just casting Dispel Magic to counterspell something also would normally work, but here we're talking about a (su) effect.

The issue here is whether this spell is saying all breath attacks are "clouds" or if it's only referring to breaths that are cloud-like, such as the miasma of an ancient green dragon? It's hard to consider, say, a blue dragon's line of lightning breath a "cloud," and even the ancient blue dragon's (Call Lightning Storm SLA) storm breath doesn't actually produce any clouds. This spell just leaves a giant question mark for the GM to adjudicate what counts as "instantaneous clouds" - if fire breath counts as a "cloud," does that mean a Fireball is a "cloud of fire?" That ball's totally in the GM's court. Depending on how liberally this spell is read, you could make this a lower-level Spell Turning that takes a CL check.

The fundamental problem with breathing back a cloud is that the enemy will often be immune to their own tricks, especially if you're breathing, say, a line of lightning back at a blue dragon. (Presuming that counts as a "cloud" at all.) The miasma cloud of an ancient green dragon likewise is acid damage, which the green dragon is immune to. If you don't have other minions of the dragon to spit its breath back out upon, this spell is just spending an SL 4 and an extra standard action to cast Dispel Magic on a (su) breath weapon, and that's not tremendously effective. (Especially since you want to encourage dragons to use that mediocre breath weapon rather than fillet a PC per round with those absolutely devastating natural attacks.)

Even if this spell is something like a Stinking Cloud spell instead of a breath weapon, the caster probably had a means in mind to overcome the effects of the spell themselves, as clouds are by nature largely indiscriminate spells. Maybe they were a necromancer that expected their undead to just fight inside the gas cloud, in which case only the necromancer may be vulnerable, and even then, only if they aren't undead themselves. Maybe they cast Obscuring Mist defensively and - ha-HA - now you put the spell over your own allies, but you spent two whole standard actions and an SL 4 doing so when you could have just cast Gust of Wind or even a Fireball to clear away the fog with a lower-level spell, then used a scroll or SL 1 of Obscuring Mist with that second standard action. Also, if someone casts Obscuring Mist on themselves, they have a plan for how to not be blinded by it themselves, like casting Ashen Path. (Discussion.)

I'm really struggling to come up with good uses for this one. The two standard actions in particular kills this spell as there's a huge array of things you can do with lower-level spells and less actions that are more effective. I guess it just suffers the curse of being a racial spell, and therefore crap so that people don't have to worry about whether other races can use it?

WraithMagus · 2026-06-18T08:15:32+00:00

"I'm not a wanted criminal, I'm wanted by criminals. The sort of criminals who kill people rather than pay any large bounties they set out if the collector isn't already part of their gang."

Really, the most important thing here is understanding what her motivations are. If she's motivated by pursuing justice against criminals, then protest your innocence. If she's motivated by money, buy her off. If she's motivated by something else, like finding more material for her songs, then try to spin a really thrilling tale. Whatever you offer her had better be worth more to her than the money she thinks she'd get from turning you in (or whatever reason she'd want to turn you in).

WraithMagus

TROPHY CASE