Class Abilities:
- Weapon and Armor Proficiency: All simple and martial weapons, light armor and shields. Pretty much everything you'll need.
- Inspiration: Inspiration is the signature ability of the factotum class. You can use your inspiration points to activate several of your abilities. The best point is that your pool of inspiration is updated at the beginning of every encounter. At low levels your pool will be limited, but hopefully after a few levels you will be able to expand it by using the font of inspiration feat.
Yeah, pretty much right...
- Cunning Insight (Ex): Add a competence bonus to an attack roll, damage roll or saving throw by spending one of your inspiration points. The bad news: this is a competence bonus, which is quite common and they don't stack. The good news: it's a non-action useable any time. It won't be that useful after a few levels, but the ability to apply your intelligence modifier to saving throws can be a life saver. The bonus to damage rolls can be exploited if used with ability damage rolls.
What? this is one of their best abilities?
Damage roll bonuses is awesome together with master thrower and the like, but the save bonus is just AWESOME...
- Cunning Knowledge (Ex): Basically, you can spend just level + 3 ranks on a single skill. This ability lets you add your factotum level as an unnamed bonus to a skill in which you have at least one rank once per day. This means that it's just two points less than max (level + 1 vs level +3). This ability is especially useful with skills that you won't be using a lot, like appraise or an obscure knowledge.
- Trapfinding (Ex): Yeah, you can do that, too.
- Arcane Dilettante (Sp): This is an awesome ability. First of all you get to use arcane spells which will give you additional versatility. The spells you mimic are spell-like abilities, but you lose most benefits of those. A good idea is to use buff spells with a large duration. Another point is that you get an arcane caster level equal to your factotum class level, which means that you are eligible to take my favourite feats: obtain familiar and improved familiar. Finaly, it might seem like a waste, but you can apply metamagic feats on these spells if needed.
These are okay...
- Brains over Brawn (Ex): Gain your intelligence modifier as a bonus on dexterity and strength checks. Remember that initiative is a dexterity check and this ability applies to that.
What? This is their best ability by far (together with Cunning Brilliance)... If you have 20 Int, for example, it means +5 Initiative, +5 Trip/Grapple/Disarm etc... And +5 on Hide, Move Silently, Tumble, Balance, Jump, Swim, Climb, Open Lock etc... Also, 20 Int is not even that high... If you have 30+ Int, you do just get sick bonuses to everything...
It is one of the best abilities in the game (behind spellcasting, manifesting and those things...)
- Cunning Defence (Ex): It's a free action! It's a dodge bonus, so that means that it stacks with other dodge bonuses. It's very nice when a single opponent threatens you, like a charger or a ray from a spellcaster. It also packs the element of surprise.
- Cunning Strike (Ex): It's a bonus of +1d6 sneak attack damage for a single attack, not even a whole round. Also, it doesn't scale with levels. It's ok for you if you just need an extra bit of damage, but one inspiration point for something like this is not a fair trade.
- Opportunistic Piety (Su): Heal or turn undead. It's not bad, but the uses per day are too low to be of any importance. You can probably use this to activate devices that require turn undead or the ability to channel positive energy (although, you can accomplish this with clever use of UMD anyway).
this is actually okay, for out of combat healing/when you face a undead with Rod of Defiance and Lyre of the restful soul
- Cunning Surge (Ex): This is an awesome ability, but it's a little unclear about how it works. If you can use it as many times as you want per round (at least if you have the inspiration points to spend) it's a dream come true. In the once per round case, it's still useful but more down to earth. This coupled with a form of attack that takes a standard action can be your main damage output.
You can use it any number of times per round, but generally, it is not worth it...
Also, it is their third best ability after BoB and Cunning Brilliance
- Cunning Breach (Su): Unfortunately this only works about yourself. Both can be handy against targets with high spell resistance and damage reduction.
This could probably be light blue... Hello, it kills dragons with Shivering touch automatic over 50% of the time... add in Spectral hand cast with a extra action, and voila, you did just beat that CR 26 dragon T1 at level 11
- Cunning Dodge (Ex): Well, it's like saying: 1/day cheat death. At least barring instant death effects and such. The cost is high, at four inspiration points, but at the level you will get it you won't have a problem, especially if you make use of the font of inspiration feats.
I think it just should be regular blue, but it is still very good...
- Improved Cunning Defence (Ex): Your most important attribute as a bonus to AC and most importantly, a dodge bonus. It's good for all the reasons its normal counterpart is, but more so, since you don't need to spend an inspiration point to activate it.
1. You don't get the bonus in anything but light armor (not so important since you are probably not going to use anything heavier anyways)
2. At the level you get it, your AC is going to be to low to matter anyways...
- Cunning Brilliance (Ex): It is very good to be able to mimic other classes' abilities, but unfortunately you gain this at 19th level, which is very high. As such, the majority of players won't be bothered with/create a character which revolves around this class ability. For those who are interested, more information will be available later.
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WHAT?
This ability is AWESOME... you can gain 9th level spells, maneuvers with no recovery mechanism, all the fighters feats, 10d6 SA, Wildshape, Manifesting, etc. for a minute... AND IT IS BLACK? it is together with BoB the best ability they get... This alone could get them to be Tier 1 for a minute 3 times per day?
Feats that are useful to factotums besides font of inspiration
well, it isn't good to take it more than 3ish...
Also, the Gnome Quickrazor is awesome with IF, so you should mention it... spend a feat or be a Gnome/Whisper Gnome
Also, skills you must have is generally UMD, Hide, Move Silently, and at least 5 ranks in Bluff...
Make use of your big skill list, and get a rank in every skill, and get most of the synergy bonuses...
Overall, a good guide