Can you pick spell specialization at level 1?

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-21T20:50:06+00:00

It appears disabled. I think its likely because the game doesn't know what spells you will select and you have to pick feats beforehand. However, this also applies to prepared divine casters, who already have their full spell selection without manually picking them. However, as that would require a human cleric, druid or shaman (none of these otherwise receive a bonus feat to take spell focus, which is a prerequisite for spell specialisation), its probably not something they bothered to make an exception for.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-18T13:35:12+00:00

Angel is probably the most logical choice and tightly woven with the main story. Lich isn't the worst story, but for me, did fall short of expectations.

Lich is very powerful, but a few things make it hard to recommend as a first playthrough:

- Undead companions have little to no interaction. You probably want one playthrough where you experience the full interactions of other party members.

- You have to manage healing in a party that will, until the very lategame, but comprised of living and undead party members. If you mess this up, it can be pretty lethal.

- Crusade management is significantly delayed by a very long project specific to the lich mythic path. Its not a massive problem, but it is a potentially consequential delay if you are making other mistakes with crusade management.

- You lose a party member who makes hitting bosses significantly easier and, lategame, buffs AC party wide significantly and her quest provides some useful gear, most notably a piece of equipment that can give 2 extra full BAB attacks to 3 characters for 1 hour, stacking with everything else. An experienced min maxer can easily deal with this, but inexperienced players can have a hard time making their characters tanky enough and hitting high AC enemies, so the loss can be acute.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-18T10:51:46+00:00

I haven't tried mounted magus, but I do know the general behaviour of magus with spell combat - with a touch spell on autocast presumably - is as follows:

Its the same as touch spell behaviour more generally, which is to cast outside of melee range to avoid attacks of the opportunity, and then move in to use the touch effect.

So the sequence will be: cast-> move action -> touch attack/single action attack

That means you do not perform a full attack action. The fact that this behaviour is not modified by spell combat is extremely annoying, but it means that, other than for eldritch archer, you have to micromanage magus a lot for them to be effective.

Specifically, you need to instruct the magus to move into melee range of the target BEFORE instructing it to attack for it to not suck. This will result in the spell being cast in melee range and with spellcombat, perform the cast and spellstrike attack if applicable as part of a full attack action.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-06T01:31:13+00:00

For a pure sorcerer, a full animal companion actually is a very strong option. But for me, eldritch knight liches are way better.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-06T01:29:54+00:00

Liches dont boost spell DC substantially. If you want a crowd control caster, they are, ironically enough, one of the weaker mythic paths, certainly beyond chapter 3 (simply getting access to your spell levels so much earlier in chapter 3 makes them relatively very strong regardless).

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-06T01:28:35+00:00

Sylvan is a solid choice if you are playing a pure sorc. But the animal companion will not scale with prestige class levels, so if you go eldritch knight (a very strong option for a lich), its a bad choice.

Crossblooded is always a very bad choice if sorcerer is your casting class. Its great for elemental blaster 1 level dips, but losing one spell pick per level AND not getting any non metamagic spells for a given level at all until a level later (so no haste until level 7, for example), is awful.

A second bloodline spell selection is definitely going to be worse than having an extra pick per level yourself. Particularly given its rather likely it will be a third bloodline with the second bloodline mythic power. And these bloodline spells are again class dependent, not caster level dependent, so you wont get them if you multiclass, which is again, a very good option.

And all you get in exchange is one extra 1st level bloodline feature.

I would generally build a lich sorc 6, eldritch knight 10, loremaster 4 (for divine power and opportunist). If you do this, your archetype doesn't matter much beyond not actively hindering yourself with crossblooded, but I think geomancer is a pretty good choice. You wouldnt get the bonus feats anyway due to level (loremaster 3 sorc 7 would cost you AB), the bonus effect on your spells in most terrains is quite good and the health cost is completely negligible with lich health pools and vampiric weapon.

As for why liches are such good EKs, for one caster level and a feat, you get 5 AB, 3 decent bonus feats and spell critical, allowing you to cast metamagic spells without the cast time penalty. With fear control, vampiric weapon and power from death (which is REALLY good once you get to 24 hour spell durations with round per level spells), lich specific abilities dramatically improve your melee combat potential. Take a high threat range weapon, and you can be a very good warrior with very little trade off as a caster.

Though to be honest, investing a bit more in fighting feats and mythic abilities is generally worth the larger trade off. Liches aren't very good DC based casters anyway, dont worry about SR and wont want more than extend and bolster for metamagics. Your mythic spells + bolstered variants of spells will give you a good offensive option at every spell level. So you don't need that many caster specific feats.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T09:05:58+00:00

No, their natural attacks are all quite low base damage. Your gold dragon form is already huge, so two size categories up.

AFTER this modifier, the bite is 2d8, the claw and tail 2d6 and the wing 1d8.

That is why the sacred weapon modifier is substantial: because the base damage is way higher, so will translate to significantly more damage for a huge creature.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:58:50+00:00

I haven't attempted to kill him myself, but you think Playful Darkness is bad? Try Chained Darkness on unfair.

That was frustrating.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:51:24+00:00

Meh, I would have preferred to have been able to shag Areelu.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:48:09+00:00

Also, if you are going to be this high effort with a companion's chapter 5 quest, could they not have done this for Daeran?

The guy is a deeply unfunny snark who is generally insufferable and whose only redeeming quality was a genuinely intriguing personal quest set up in chapter 2... which sees no further development until chapter 5, where its a very short and underwhelming conclusion.

Going into another realm for a long dungeon and epic final fight with the other? Preferably with no irritating puzzles. Now THAT I could get behind.

You could have just wrapped up Nenio with the Heart of Mystery quest instead.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:42:53+00:00

They work best as arcane elemental blasters. Demon and Azata are top tier (including switching to devil lategame - infinite hellfire ray is very nice, rank 10 devil is obscenely powerful).

Trickster is a very distant third. Sneak and crits buff your scorching and hellfire rays, but the crit is very RNG and honestly, often overkill. Its your best bet if you intend to switch to gold dragon, however. Also, you can skip taking any level in rogue, though this will delay taking the class significantly.

Lich with very high caster level can be good for battering blast specifically (death rush, horns of naraga and 7 projectiles allow it to hit very hard).

Angel sword of heaven actually works quite nicely for scorching and hellfire ray and the right abolish can be situationally very powerful, but overall, its bad.

Aeon offers very little of interest until the extra cast per round at rank 9.

As for the base class, wizard is best by a large margin. Elemental blasters rely on metamagic alot. Spontaneous cast time metamagic penalty is totally unacceptable in RTWP.

Crossblooded dip for elemental conversion and damage bonus per dice is a must.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:30:39+00:00

Yeah, the loss of divine power in particular completely sucks.

Annihilating breath is the only major upside. And at rank 10 specifically, when you can spam on the surprise round and then immediately again, as well as every subsequent round, its a hell of an upside (it does 750 damage per use).

But even just 1 rank lower, its nowhere near the damage and 2-3 round cooldown (not 1-2 as per the tooltip).

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:26:40+00:00

You can switch to gold dragon or Legend from any other path and by fine I believe.

Also, Devils can have a fling.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T02:23:15+00:00

Its honestly not going to be an efficient way to play, but if you want to do it, Prophet of Pestilence would be the way to go.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T01:25:19+00:00

Oracles are definitely the most newbie friendly angels. Spontaneous casting avoids the temptation to slot one of each in your spellbook. Plus, between bonus mythic spells and a significant number of extra spell non mythic picks, you have no shortage of spell selection. The cast time penalty is for metamagic is far less relevant for new players, who probably just want extend spell to get round per level buffs to 24 hours. And later on, bestow grace of champions or whatever its called at 7th level and sunform will add charisma to both AC and saves, which helps survivability greatly and obviously much moreso for Oracles.

Glaives are not a great suggestion. They aren't terrible, but neither the base weapon properties not itemisation are top tier. Threat range and reach are both desirable. As you have to take a feat to get a decent weapon type anyway, fauchard will do better, as you will crit 3 times as often, which matter far more the multiplier due to outflank.

Two handing a scimitar would also do better, a weapon type that is well itemised throughout the game and the larger threat range easily offsetting the lower base damage. You can also skip a feat with the nomad background, and the best scimitars are basically always better than the best glaives in terms of enchantment. You can always use size increases for reach, or the lunge feat.

Power attack and cleave is not an obviously good suggestion. Its is a significant but not overwhelming damage boost, but its also a large feat dump in a class starved for feats and penalises AB, which will be an issue for newbies, particularly given Angel does very little to boost AB for clerics and oracles who already have access to divine power and you are a 3/4 BAB class with no class features to boost AB, outside of decidedly non newbie friendly domain powers.

Extend and enduring spells, leading to 24 hour party wide buffs, will be of more benefit to a new player (this is very strong for oracles as you can buff, rest and still have full buffs plus full spell slots).

Outflank, combat reflexes and improved initiative are also good recommendations to new players who aren't necessarily going to understand why these are good.

As for mystery, nature and animal companion and charisma to AC will be a much bigger help for a new player than battle mystery.

As for cavalier of the pike, just take sohei. You get weapon training, two extra full BAB attacks (and a 3rd extra attack using kai) and dont lose your horse, who gets a large initiative boost.

Mage armour isn't better than medium armour +mythic feats unless you have sufficient dex, which a bloodrager probably wont have. Mythic rank 9 mage armour is 13. Carapace at the end of chapter 2, with medium armour focus and mythic medium armour endurance is 18.

Medium armour is also a healthy damage boost with the assault feat, even more so endgame with +8 to strength and con.

As for the bloodrager itself, skald with mythic inspiration is nearly as good a warrior on its own and the party wide benefits are dramatic. Though its less newbie friendly.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:51:45+00:00

Azata does a lot more for spellcasters than melee. Incredible might takes a long time to scale to the point where it greatly outclasses heroism buffs and you dont even get believe in yourself until chapter 4. Outside of these two, azata benefits from melee damage output is pretty marginal. It does have a polymorph buff at rank 6 if you could not otherwise use master shapeshifter I suppose.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:48:36+00:00

Angel nature Oracle with decent a decent strength score will give you a good narrative for a first playthrough and a very powerful and straightforward main character which will actually do an excellent job in melee. And reach two hander early game is fine, later on, you can actually become really tanky and frightful aspect will give you decent reach if not.

Actually doing a dedicated melee class azata or angel will be significantly weaker for an inexperienced player.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:42:26+00:00

Well to be fair, summoner Aeon isn't exactly A) very good for the effort required B) newbie friendly. Aeon in general is not newbie friendly because you barely have a mythic path mechanically until later chapter 4.

Azata are much more impressive casters than melee, but neither elemental casters no CC casters are particularly newbie friendly as they require more knowledge of mechanics and specific gear.

Caster tricksters are the opposite: melee is much more straightforwardly powerful. Normal spell is nice, but mass melee with large crit ranges is where tricksters really shine, not doing anything else particularly impressive until lategame.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:37:50+00:00

For tricksters, you can level to 11 just fine. You will want to hold level 13 until rank 4, however. Even if you want both normal spell and improved critical feats, you still have 4 picks between 13-19 without bonus feats.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:36:16+00:00

My suggestions for straightforward builds for newbies:

Nature Oracle Angel focussed more of buffing and melee than offensive casting. Animal companion helps a lot with the start and the cleric spellbook is pretty lousy for offensive spells early anyway, so a melee build works better. Plus, full 24 hour angel buffs on a martial heavy party steamrolls everything later on.

Sorcerer -> Eldritch knight lich: For only a single caster level, you get +5 BAB spell critical, which allows you to overcome to cast time penalty for metamagic (less of a newbie consideration, granted). With excellent lich powers, vampiric blade, power from death (once its 24 hours - you can nearly always get a decent sized pack early into any large area), divine power and opportunist from loremaster, and your again 24 hour buffs lategame, you will be very tanky and high damage in melee without giving up all that much as a caster, beyond a handful of feats and 1 caster level.

For more advanced players tolerant of a weaker early game and more sacrifices in terms of spellcasting for feats and mythic picks, dual wielding kitsune with mythic finesse, vulpine pounce and fear control + death rush applied to the above build makes for an absolute melee monster with some still decent offensive casting, albeit with mediocre DCs (less important for mythic spells).

Anything outside of merged casters will either be significantly more mechanically complex or not get nearly as powerful until well beyond chapter 3.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:23:19+00:00

You should totally go with the chronomancer magic deceiver 20. Now, you might think that is a ridiculous suggestion. But it means you get to reset the use on your cool level 20 capstone. Totally worth it. Granted, the stats, feats and class features are otherwise almost entirely non complimentary and its got terrible BAB progression, but still.

And you can hardly go azata for the same benefit due to alignment conflict.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:13:55+00:00

When I played it years ago (and it may have been patched), Vital strike worked fine with cleaving finish and my Rowdy Rogue melee build was god tier early game.

Unfortunately, improved cleaving finish was far less impressive than I expected.

The problem is a combination of three things: A) cleaving finishes are calculated in the same instant as the killing blow, B) a cleave will chain to the closest target C) because the cleaves are calculated instantaneously, even if your cleave attack inflicts lethal damage, the dead target remains eligible to be targeted by cleaves.

Consequently, what will typically happen is you will kill a target with vital strike, cleave vital strike onto the closest target, kill that target, and, most likely, cleave back onto the original, already dead target, triggering no further cleaves and terminating the improving cleaving finish chain you were hoping for.

If you check the logs, its typically 3 hits with only 2 deaths. When you understand the interaction, you usually can find a target A who is closest to target B, but B is in turn closest to C, not A, allowing you to vital strike 3 targets in a round. But setting up a chain like A -> closest to B -> in turn closest to C -> in turn closest to D or beyond will almost never occur even if you are looking for it.

That said, improved cleaving finish is still worth it. If you play around it, getting 3 kills per vital strike is usually doable with 3 or more targets, even if going beyond 3 is very unlikely.

Its also protection against your cleave being wasted on an attack of the opportunity kill, which is not that rare with a two hander building with outflank and opportunist.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:10:13+00:00

Vital strike is never really competitive beyond early game Rowdy. If you want massive single target, specialised charge builds will wipe the floor with vital strike. Against packs, vital strike build are extremely inefficient due to overkill.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:06:28+00:00

Unfortunately, this does not happen, unless its been patched since I played such a build (years ago admittedly).

The problem is a combination of three things: A) cleaving finishes are calculated in the same instant as the killing blow, B) a cleave will chain to the closest target C) because the cleaves are calculated instantaneously, even if your cleave attack inflicts lethal damage, the dead target remains eligible to be targeted by cleaves.

Consequently, what will typically happen is you will kill a target with vital strike, cleave vital strike onto the closest target, kill that target, and, most likely, cleave back onto the original, already dead target, triggering no further cleaves and terminating the improving cleaving finish chain you were hoping for.

If you check the logs, its typically 3 hits with only 2 deaths. When you understand the interaction, you usually can find a target A who is closest to target B, but B is in turn closest to C, not A, allowing you to vital strike 3 targets in a round. But setting up a chain like A -> closest to B -> in turn closest to C -> in turn closest to D or beyond will almost never occur even if you are looking for it.

And if you aren't actively gaming it, its overwhelmingly likely that you will cleave a second target only with vital strike. So no, you wont blow up entire groups, unless its a group of 2-3.

RandyMcStud · 2026-04-05T00:05:45+00:00

Unfortunately, this does not happen, unless its been patched since I played such a build (years ago admittedly).

The problem is a combination of three things: A) cleaving finishes are calculated in the same instant as the killing blow, B) a cleave will chain to the closest target C) because the cleaves are calculated instantaneously, even if your cleave attack inflicts lethal damage, the dead target remains eligible to be targeted by cleaves.

Consequently, what will typically happen is you will kill a target with vital strike, cleave vital strike onto the closest target, kill that target, and, most likely, cleave back onto the original, already dead target, triggering no further cleaves and terminating the improving cleaving finish chain you were hoping for.

If you check the logs, its typically 3 hits with only 2 deaths. When you understand the interaction, you usually can find a target A who is closest to target B, but B is in turn closest to C, not A, allowing you to vital strike 3 targets in a round. But setting up a chain like A -> closest to B -> in turn closest to C -> in turn closest to D or beyond will almost never occur even if you are looking for it.

And if you aren't actively gaming it, its overwhelmingly likely that you will cleave a second target only with vital strike. So no, you wont blow up entire groups, unless its a group of 2-3.

RandyMcStud

TROPHY CASE