Sorcery! Quest

[Nix]

[X] Hellfire Efficiency
[X] Hellfire Overdrive

We should be focusing on our strengths. Hard work, more spells, enthralling gaze, sin sight and fire master are all very appealing, but our strengths are hellfire and constitution based casting. Hellfire efficiency and overdrive are the strongest long term options. (I'm assuming overdrive lets us increase caster level for 1 or 2 hp per level up to a limit?)

As for spells, summon monster at lvl 1 lasts just 1 round.We should swap it out for grease or color spray, both should fit thematically. Are you doing that Pathfinder unlimited cantrips thing btw? If not what's the cost for hellfire channeling a cantrip? Also considering swapping out light for dancing lights and mage hand for message. Maybe Kelgore's Fire Bolt instead of the lesser orb?

 

[mc2rpg]

[X] Hellfire Efficiency
[X] Hellfire Overdrive
[X] Third Image

 

[Robotninja]

2nd image.
Genius of Hard work. -Because maxing out our skills will pay off in the end.

 

[ward201]

[X] Genius of Hard Work (Counts as two choices) – What you lack in wit, you more than make up for in sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness, staying up long hours practicing and studying. You use Constitution instead of Intelligence to determine bonus skill points.

[X] Keep going. You can keep this shit up for days. He'll tire of this before you do.

Third Image

 

[Nix]

Genius of Hard work looks super tasty, but spells win DnD, not skills. We have access to ANY sorcerer spells. Anything a skill can do in DnD a spell can do better. Admittedly we won't have enough spells known to cover all possible skills, but Sorcerers only have a handful of class skills anyway. We are human and have good int. Assuming we have 20 con and 14 int we'd get 8 skill points per level with GoHW, 5 without. Is what we could do with those 3 extra skill points really worth giving up the hellfire boosts?
With 5 points per level we can max spellcraft, concetration, bluff, and put a decent number of skill points in knowledge skills and some cross class skills like spot/listen and use magic device. With 8 skill points we can keep our two knowledge skills maxed and those 3 cross class skills at the cross class max, but we'd still have half the ranks a Rogue would. Is being an amateur rather than a dabbler at a couple of things really worth compromising our core strengths?

EDIT: Can we choose our feats? If yes how about the Able Learner feat instead of GoHW? It gets rid of the cost penalty for cross class skills (but not the rank cap), so with that feat we'd be able to get pretty much exactly the same skill ranks as with GoHW.

 

[Disminded]

Genius of Hard work looks super tasty, but spells win DnD, not skills. We have access to ANY sorcerer spells. Anything a skill can do in DnD a spell can do better. Admittedly we won't have enough spells known to cover all possible skills, but Sorcerers only have a handful of class skills anyway. We are human and have good int. Assuming we have 20 con and 14 int we'd get 8 skill points per level with GoHW, 5 without. Is what we could do with those 3 extra skill points really worth giving up the hellfire boosts?
With 5 points per level we can max spellcraft, concetration, bluff, and put a decent number of skill points in knowledge skills and some cross class skills like spot/listen and use magic device. With 8 skill points we can keep our two knowledge skills maxed and those 3 cross class skills at the cross class max, but we'd still have half the ranks a Rogue would. Is being an amateur rather than a dabbler at a couple of things really worth compromising our core strengths?

EDIT: Can we choose our feats? If yes how about the Able Learner feat instead of GoHW? It gets rid of the cost penalty for cross class skills (but not the rank cap), so with that feat we'd be able to get pretty much exactly the same skill ranks as with GoHW.

Click to shrink...

A few things.
1) GoHW is retconned into being. It isn't something you've suddenly developed, it's something that's been with you your entire life. Therefore, instead of 8 bonus skill points at first level from intelligence, it's 24 (you have a 22 Constitution when it comes to deciding bonus skill points. A racial ability bumps it up some when it comes to deciding HP and Fort saves).

2) You aren't actually married to the DnD Sorcerer's skill list. Instead, I decide your class skills based on what skills seem most relevant to your character. As a demon-blooded sorcerer who grew up in the world's greatest (currently anyway) magical academy, I'd expect you to have access to magical skills (Use magic Device, Spellcraft, Concentration, KNowledge: Arcana), academic skills (any of the knowledges, speak languages), some stealth skills to represent your ability to duck your minders, trouble-making little hell-spawn that you were (Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Listen), and maybe some social skills (Intimidate or bluff. You can be remarkably scary when you wish and have a penchant for lying).

That's just what i can justify off the top of my head. If you can offer a compelling argument for a skill, it suddenly becomes a class skill. If you spend six point on a non-class skill, it also becomes a class skill (though you don't retroactively regain the points).

3) Yep, you can get able learner, or any other feat you meet the prerequisites for, really. EDIT: Assuming you mean the "Feat" option under finishing touches. Otherwise, nope. Your points for first level are already allocated, save for those.


Other things:
4) Cantrips are free. They use such little energy that you only need a wisp of hellfire to power them, not enough to really hurt you, even if you cast them for hours.

5) If you have an alternative spell list, please post it as a vote. You can use the same format I used above. Otherwise, I assume everyone is okay with the default.

6) Please don't forget to vote on your action regarding seeing the Old Man.

 

[Vindictus]

[X] Genius of Hard Work

[X] Well. You could be clever. Or you could view this as training! Endless staircase run, gogoGOGOGO!!

 

[Bloodshifter]

[X]Genius of Hard Work

[X]1st Image

So no one wants to take a crack at our limited spell list?

 

[Nix]

A few things.
1) GoHW is retconned into being. It isn't something you've suddenly developed, it's something that's been with you your entire life. Therefore, instead of 8 bonus skill points at first level from intelligence, it's 24 (you have a 22 Constitution when it comes to deciding bonus skill points. A racial ability bumps it up some when it comes to deciding HP and Fort saves).

Click to shrink...

I was assuming it would apply from the beginning, otherwise the math wouldn't have made sense (couldn't have kept 8 skills maxed). So it's actually 36 skill points instead of 20 at first level, potentially 9 maxed skills instead of 5.
We could spend 1 point to DOUBLE the usefulness of hellfire, or 2 points and not even come close to double the usefulness of our skills. The 6th through 9th best skills are a lot less valuable than the five best skills.

Can the people who are voting for Genius of Hard Work please explain why, if skills are that important to them, they DIDN'T vote for Arcane Heritage which would have had that advantage for free? You couldn't have known that you would have the opportunity to get that advantage with a different origin, at the cost of all remaining character options. I'm sure you aren't deliberately trying to gimp our character, so there must be some sort of thought process behind those choices and I'd like to understand it.

Other things:
4) Cantrips are free. They use such little energy that you only need a wisp of hellfire to power them, not enough to really hurt you, even if you cast them for hours.

5) If you have an alternative spell list, please post it as a vote. You can use the same format I used above. Otherwise, I assume everyone is okay with the default.

Click to shrink...

That sort of depends on our character options chosen, for instance hellfire overdrive would make spells that scale with caster level a lot more appealing.

Anyway, for now:

[X] Prestidigitation, Detect Magic, Dancing Lights, Mage Hand / Lesser Burning Orb, Color Spray

Dancing Lights can do everything Light can and much more, the only downside is shorter duration. Since we have infinite cantrips and can recast dancing lights all day that downside vanishes.
Summon Monster takes 1 full round to cast and lasts just 1 round at lvl 1. Color Spray can knock out whole groups of people (or monsters), as long as they are close enough to us and each other and lvl 5 or lower (they get a will save to avoid, but with 22 in our casting stat that save is pretty hard to make).

6) Please don't forget to vote on your action regarding seeing the Old Man.

Click to shrink...

That depends on the options avaibable to us. Not having detect magic seems unlikely though.

[X] Detect Magic. Is the infinite stair well effect conjuration (includes teleport type magic), illusion (messing with our perception), enchantment (messing with our mind), transmutation? Is there a divination effect visible (can the Old Man see/hear us. If he is using a Scry/ Clairvoyance type of spell instead of a magical sensor like arcane eye we couldn't tell though)

 

[Vindictus]

I didn't vote for Infernal Heritage, though.

I voted for Demigod Crowley. And I'm still disappointed it didn't go through... As is Uncle Al.

 

[Nix]

I didn't vote for Infernal Heritage, though.

I voted for Demigod Crowley. And I'm still disappointed it didn't go through... As is Uncle Al.

Click to shrink...

Wouldn't have had the skill point advantage either. If skill points are that important to you why didn't you vote for Arcane Heritage or Child of the Hunt?

 

[Vindictus]

They aren't, really.

But I like the Genius of Hard Work shtick. I'm a bit of a sucker for it, TBH.

 

[Nix]

So people are voting for the name alone even though it doesn't make any sense for us mechanically?

Please reconsider, the result doesn't even look much like someone who works really hard, just someone who dabbled in lots of different skills only tangentially related to their core competency. The hard work archetype usually works really hard on a select few things that are really important to them, not a loose collection of things that strike their fancy.

As for what we would be giving up:

We should be starting out with 10 hit points. Assuming we aren't willing to end up with less hp than the average squishy wizard (4hp) we can cast 5 lvl 1 spells normally per day, 6 with hellfire but not hellfire efficiency (7 max), and 8 with hellfire efficiency (10 max). And that's at the point where hellfire efficiency is least useful, it will become even better at higher levels since hp increase faster than top level spells. (which are by far the most valuable. There is a a very good and popular feat that allows you to trade 2 spell slots for 1 spell slot 1 level higher).

As for overdrive, the mechanics haven't been explained, but assuming its a straight caster level boost, and that we'd choose Kelgore's fire bolt instead of the lesser orb if we go for overdrive (because it scales faster), we could be looking at something like 3d6 damage (at CL 3) instead of 1d8. Or 2d8 instead of 1d8 if we stay with the lesser orb.


Can't we just say we worked really hard on the one thing that makes us special, and hellfire efficiency and overdrive are the result of that? Doesn't that seem much more like what a magical Rock Lee type would end up like anyway?

 

[Robotninja]

Skills are useful, and we can get everything else later.

 

[Ct613hulu]

[X] Genius of Hard Work
[X] Well. You could be clever. Or you could view this as training! Endless staircase run, gogoGOGOGO!!
[X] Third Image

 

[Bloodshifter]

[X]Nix Spell list.

 

[Pipeman]

[X] Genius of Hard Work
[X] Well. You could be clever. Or you could view this as training! Endless staircase run, gogoGOGOGO!!
[X] Third Image

 

[Nix]

Skills are useful, and we can get everything else later.

Click to shrink...

Useful, but MUCH less useful than what we could get instead. And if you think skills are that important why didn't you vote for Arcane Heritage/child of the hunt? Where is it stated which of the options we can get later and which we can't?

 

[Pipeman]

Useful, but MUCH less useful than what we could get instead. And if you think skills are that important why didn't you vote for Arcane Heritage/child of the hunt? Where is it stated which of the options we can get later and which we can't?

Click to shrink...

Could you please just stop complaining about the fact that not everyone is as ridiculously obsessed with minmaxing in a quest as you are?
The flavor text makes it appealing for roleplaying purposes and it sounds like it could be fun to have.
That's all that's really needed for picking it.

 

[Robotninja]

The fact that Genius of Hard work is retconned into being strongly implies we need to take it at level one. Skills are very handy in solo games.

 

[Nix]

Could you please just stop complaining about the fact that not everyone is as ridiculously obsessed with minmaxing in a quest as you are?
The flavor text makes it appealing for roleplaying purposes and it sounds like it could be fun to have.
That's all that's really needed for picking it.

Click to shrink...

I'm not particularly obsessed with minmaxing, and I'm not a minmaxer at all in the sense of someone who always picks the most powerful set of abilities regardless of whether they make sense and fit together thematically (though if you call someone who picks the mechanically best representation of a particular concept a minmaxer I will happily accept the label). It's not that I choose mechanics over flavor, it's that I reject that whole framing as a false choice, and that I'm philosophically opposed to role playing by label. IMO you don't have to have a class called fighter to play a warrior, a class called wizard to play a wizard, or class called monk to play a monk. It's enough that your character is skilled at fighting with weapons, casts spells found in tomes on scrolls and such without requiring divine help, or is part of a monastery order and obeys his vows. There is no such thing as a class or a feat inside the game, and how your abilities are labled should not matter even the tiniest bit to your character, only how they work and interact with other parts of the game. If your character has 8 different classes that doesn't mean he's trying to be 8 different things at once, just that there are 8 different places in the books his mechanical representation gets class abilities from. If those class abilities mesh well with each other and make sense in game rather than leading to nonsense like being able to lift the moon or being immune to all damage there shouldn't be any problem.

Likewise you shouldn't need an ability labeled Genius of Hard Work to roleplay someone who works hard. Mechanically speaking the choices under consideration are either a boosted special ability relating to using magic or points for the various things represented as skills in DnD (and since spellcraft will be maxed either way nothing gained will noticeably relate to using magic). It's simply not the case that the latter option is more suited to represent the results of a student at an academy for magic having studied really hard. There is no reason for "Genius of Hard Work" to be more suitable for roleplaying a hard working student of magic than hellfire efficiency + hellfire overdive other than the label. There is no reason for the flavor choice to be entangled with the mechanical choice like that. Unless Disminded rules that no, we couldn't have gained hellfire efficiency and overdrive through hard work and picking them automatically makes us a lazy slacker of course.

Arguing for one choice over an other based on mechanical advantages doesn't mean I only care about mechanical advantages; flavor is inherently subjective and arguing about which flavor is better isn't particularly productive.

 

[Nix]

double post

 

[Disminded]

Hellfire efficiency and overdrive are the strongest long term options. (I'm assuming overdrive lets us increase caster level for 1 or 2 hp per level up to a limit?)

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Sorry. I missed this question before.

Overdrive actually allows you to increase the effects of a spell in a number of ways. For 2 hp (at your current level. Another level of hellfire efficiency would lower these costs) above the spells base casting cost, you multiply the spells effects by 150%, so it's half again as powerfull as before. For 4 hp, you can maximize all variable results. For 8 hp, you can double the spells effects. There's a step beyond that, but you can't power up your spells that much yet.

So, for 2 hp a 1st lvl magic missile would do (1d4+1)x1.5 damage. For 4 hp, it would do a flat 5 damage. For 8 it would do 2d4+2.

Sound familiar?

If you want a higher caster level:

[X] Hellfire Potency - The energy you draw upon, while volatile, is incredibly potent, increasing the power of your spells.
[X] Hellfire Ascendant - You stoke the sick, deathly fires that fuel your magic to their highest peak, increasing the potency of your spells and making them more difficult to resist for a time. Of course doing so takes a toll on your body, and you are exhausted when this state lapses.

One offers a smaller static bonus. The other is quite a bit more powerful, but also far more likely to kill you.

Voting ends sometime this evening.

 

[Nix]

Sorry. I missed this question before.

Overdrive actually allows you to increase the effects of a spell in a number of ways. For 2 hp (at your current level. Another level of hellfire efficiency would lower these costs) above the spells base casting cost, you multiply the spells effects by 150%, so it's half again as powerfull as before. For 4 hp, you can maximize all variable results. For 8 hp, you can double the spells effects. There's a step beyond that, but you can't power up your spells that much yet.

So, for 2 hp a 1st lvl magic missile would do (1d4+1)x1.5 damage. For 4 hp, it would do a flat 5 damage. For 8 it would do 2d4+2.

Sound familiar?

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Wow, that's quite a bit more powerful than I expected. Easily Incantatrix level, but cheaper. If I thought this option was winning I'd consider asking you to turn this down a bit. If this was a conventional DnD game I'd definitely ask you to turn it down a lot, but then there is no need for our character to be balanced with normal DnD characters. I just hope we won't have to face the sorts of opponents we would need this abiility against without it. That would not look pretty.

 

[Disminded]

It's balanced (as muchas anything is balanced) out by the fact that, while you have a deep reservoir of power to draw upon in the form of your HP and Reserve pool, it doesn't regenerate all that fast (The reserve pool refills at a rate of 4/day while your HP comes back at a rate of 1/day per level. Magical healing that doesn't involve limited wish or wish just doesn't work on hellfire damage).

This is ameliorated at later levels where your HP regens a bit faster, but it never really goes away.

So yeah, when you really try you can nova like a champ. Hell, at higher levels you can slag entire cities with a single spell. Epic levels? You're a one woman Exterminatus. But there's always a price to pay. Use your power carelessly, and you'll leave yourself vulnerable to attack, if you don't save your enemies the trouble and accidentally kill yourself.

As to what opponents you'll face... that's largely up to you. *Shrugs*

 

[Disminded]

Vote closed. Winners:
[X] Nix's spell list.
[X] Genius of Hard Work.
[X] Third Image
[X] Well. You could be clever. Or you could view this as training! Endless staircase run, gogoGOGOGO!!

Winning Stinks​

You bared your teeth in what could pass as a grin and start back up the stairs. You were no stranger to exercise. You'd long ago learned that the fitter you were, the less your magic hurt. If he wanted to play this game, you'd play.

Challenge accepted.

You took the steps two at a time, establishing a steady rhythm. He wasn't going to win this.

Minutes melted into hours and you began to feel the first stirrings of exhaustion. You started jogging up the stairs instead of taking them to at a time.
You kept going, focusing always on the next step. Hours marched by in single file, and still you climbed. How long had it been? Hours, at least. Days?
Sweat poured down your face, your hair a wet, clinging plaster. Your heart pounded in your chest. Your throat burned as air ripped in and out of your lungs. Your jog slowed to a trudge. Days, it'd been days, you're sure.

Finally, you were forced to your knees. Still, you continued, dragging yourself up hand over hand, never looking behind you for certain knowledge you'd see the bare stone at the foot of the stairs.

And then you were there in the Old Man's chamber. Which was odd, as you never passed door, or, you were half sure, made it past that eighth step. You were simply there and then here, with no real transition between…

You regarded the Old Man with mixed suspicion and disdain. His look in response was more enigmatic, his black eyes glittering in the wild tangle of yellowed white, the monstrous union of his uncombed beard and hair. He wore stained, ragged, shapeless robes, but bore them as if they were a king's raiment. He didn't smell, at least, which you put down to frequent applications of prestidigitation.

"So, I see you've finally learned your place," the Old Man observed.

You suddenly realized that in your exhaustion and surprise you were kneeling before him like a knight before his lord. You grabbed a nearby table and wrenched yourself up, grimacing as you felt your sweat soaked robes cling to your form. You straightened them as best you could in a huff. "Hate you," you growled at him. "Hate you. So. Much."

"And yet you've spent the last day and a half climbing my tower stairs to see me. Do you normally strive so mightily to see such a bitter enemy?" he asked, and you were suddenly reminded why you went for long stretches without talking to the Old Man.
"Good training," you said, unwilling to admit he may have had a point.

"It certainly smells like it," he agreed amicably. You resist the urge to sniff yourself. You wouldn't give him the satisfaction. "Now, to what do I owe the…" he hesitated briefly. "pleasure of your company."

You suddenly remembered the reason for you're visit.

"I want…" you started, then paused. What was the source of your restlessness, really? What did you want?

[X] To grow beyond my limitations.
[X] To find others like me.
[X] To see new lands.
[X] Money and Power!
[X] … Friends.
[X] Something Else


Note: Man, I'm out of practice writing. I can't even stay in the correct tense! *cries*

If you don't like the skills I've put the points into, speak up and I'll change them. This offer expires next update.

 

[Vindictus]

[X] … Friends.

 

[iamnuff]

hmmm.


interesting.


on my watch list now.

 

[mc2rpg]

[X] To grow beyond my limitations.

 

[Bloodshifter]

[X]Money and Power!