Odds and ends

[Anastasia]

For chatter, questions, coordination or anything else. If you need somewhere to talk something over here you go.

[Anastasia]

First question: Any idea what you guys are going to play yet?

[Ebiris]

Human cleric/ranger. Possibly taking fey heritage feats for fun.

[Corwin]

Human. A sorc on the one side and working towards Divine Crusader on the other, following Ilmater and doing the healing/punching thing. Vow of Poverty!

[Anastasia]

First ruling: Cor can take human paragon before level six. It's not really a PrC and it's designed to be taken at any level.

[Corwin]

It seems that the best way to get where I want to be is a mix of paladin and human paragon, adding in a bit of monk to handle that punching thing. Would I need to worry over being allowed to advance in paladin afterwards if I leave it for the paragon or the monk for a level?

[Anastasia]

No, feel free to go back and forth. That rule's one I never cared for.

[Corwin]

Metamagic Specialist, PHB2 p62. Why does the sorc feature go off Int, anyway? Also, I considered taking it since the Vow of Poverty doesn't let me get a familiar. Am I right in that?

EDIT: A question about the Intuitive Attack exalted feat. Does it affect touch attacks and/or grapple?

[Anastasia]

I'd say it's int + 3 because you're acting all wizard-y. It's not a good reason as designed, I'd have made it charisma times or day or house-ruled sorcerers, but that's another thing altogether.

Vow of Poverty doesn't directly stop you from having a familiar, though the 100 GP of components is an issue.  RAW you can expend XP to compensate for expensive components.  It's a 1-5 trade, so you'd spend 20 XP for this. Since we don't use XP this is a little trickier. I'd normally assess you a monetary value to compensate for XP costs, but this make no sense with VoP. In this case I'll just waive the price, in game if something like this comes up I'll deal with it another way.

Intuitive attack works with those.

[Anastasia]

Yuth was asking about Air Genasi. I have no problem with them but I'd like to avoid LA in a gestalt game. The two just don't mix very well, you know? So I dropped it to +0 LA and removed the +2 intelligence bonus from the class. This brings it closer in line with the high end of LA+0 like aasimar.

[Corwin]

You said to ask you if there were feats that allow to combine class features and do something cool beyond that. I'm asking about http://dnd.savannahsoft.eu/feat-127-ascetic-mage.html and whether it is eligible. It does four things: allow multiclassing between sorc and monk if your alignment is retained, which isn't an issue; stack sorc/monk levels for the monk AC bonus; sacrifice a spell to give a bonus to attack/damage that round, Arcane Strike-lite style; use Cha instead of Wis for the monk's AC bonus.

[Anastasia]

I'd allow the arcane-lite strike and using charisma in place of wis for the AC bonus as a toned down feat. The multiclassing is irrelevant and I won't allow the sorc/monk stacking for the monk AC bonus.

[Anastasia]

Yuth had some questions to me in PM. I'm going to answer them here for the sake of reference.

Will you enforce the rule where monks cannot benefit from their AC bonuses if they carry a medium or heavy load?

Yes.  I'm not an encumbrance freak, so as long as you're not carrying something obviously heavy for you I'm not likely to crack down.

2. I have bonus feats from both the fighter and monk classes. The bonus feats for fighter are broad, while the monk feats are restricted to a choice between two feats (such as deflect arrows and combat reflexes). Shall I take both sets of bonus feats, or only one?

These bonus feats are class features. You get all the class features from your classes in gestalt, so you get both the fighter and monk bonus feats. So at level one you get a fighter bonus feat and the normal monk bonus feats for that level.

Does the Flurry of Blows class feature for monks benefit from the increased BAB from the fighter class?

Yes. In particular, read from: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/monk.htm#flurryofBlows , it states the following:

When unarmored, a monk may strike with a flurry of blows at the expense of accuracy. When doing so, she may make one extra attack in a round at her highest base attack bonus, but this attack takes a -2 penalty, as does each other attack made that round. The resulting modified base attack bonuses are shown in the Flurry of Blows Attack Bonus column on Table: The Monk. This penalty applies for 1 round, so it also affects attacks of opportunity  the monk might make before her next action. When a monk reaches 5th level, the penalty lessens to -1, and at 9th level it disappears. A monk must use a full attack action to strike with a flurry of blows.

You don't need to pay attention to the table attached to monk, this assumes pure monk levels at medium BAB. A flurry is resolved as a full attack with an extra attack in exchange for a penalty to hit. In other words, treat a flurry of blows as a normal full attack with the stated penalty and the extra attack at full BAB. Notice these conditions change as you gain monk levels.

4. Will you be using the rule of Flat-Footed
A character who has not yet acted during a combat is flat-footed, not yet reacting normally to the situation. A flat-footed character loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) and cannot make attacks of opportunity.

Yes.

Furthermore, if a character is flat-footed and carries the Dodge feat, does the feat still apply, or is it negated like the Dexterity bonus?

The dodge bonus to AC is lost whenever a character is flat-footed, as noted in it's description. To quote:

Dodge [General]
Prerequisite: Dex 13
Benefit: You gain a +1 dodge bonus to armor class. This is active at any time you are not flatfooted.
Special: A fighter may select dodge as a fighter bonus feat.

[Anastasia]

1. How are you guys coming on concepts? I know Cor's looking to play an exalted monk/sorc, while Eb's playing a CN cleric of Auril. How compatible is the party going to be?

2. This goes to everyone but Yuth, as all three of you are playing characters with a code of conduct. Two paladins and one cleric, no less, assuming Merc goes with palabard like discussed. I'd like each of you to choose your deity and write up your own codes of conduct according to the power you serve.  I want these to be guides, not shackles to make you fall at my whim.

[Ebiris]

As my currently posted sheet hopefully implies, my PC isn't evil at all, but he glows that way to paladin-o-vision and he's entirely devoted to making people swear their souls to an explicitly evil and cruel deity, even if he does so in a friendly and fun manner that actually makes their lives better.

Besides, you can't like, put rules on nature! That's just, like, your opinion man!

Also, when we level up enough, I totally want to make undead minions.

Personally I don't think it's a very paladin-friendly concept, but I'll wait for feedback from the two paladins before I consider scrapping it.