The Totemist Handbook

[McPoyo]

Your point 3 mistakenly states "horizontal"

[InnaBinder]

"Minor correction: 5 foot horizontal is DC 5, or DC 10 without a running start. 5 foot vertical is 20."

Yes - and Landshark boots is a high jump - so DC 20. What's the correction?

Post #176 calls a 5' horisontal (sic) jump a DC 10.

[Bigtuna]

Ha - I read my post again when I say the correction - but only saw what i meant not what I wrote .-)

[CaligstroSmith]

I've just come upon this handbook while trying to wrap my head around what to do with a totemist I'm creating, and after reading through it I have 3 things:


1) Thanks so much for this handbook and all the great discussion about them -- so many ideas and options to consider now.

2) I discovered the weapon enchantment Prismatic Burst (+30,000 gp to cost, NOT an enhancement bonus cost).  I'd like to throw out there that you could make a really cheap Amulet of Natural Attacks with prismatic burst on it.  The cost of the amulet is (600 + the cost of the ENHANCEMENT BONUSES) times the number of weapons affected.  That means you're only paying for prismatic burst once but applying it to all weapons that the amulet affects.  That's a pretty huge deal, especially if you're counting the manticore tail as a single natural weapon... You get prismatic burst on every one of those needles you're shooting.     The minimum cost would be for a +1 Prismatic Burst Amulet of Natural Attacks = 32,600, and for what you're getting that's dirt cheap.  Of course if you're 20th level and have lots of gold, and make the amulet also splitting (and maybe vampiric, keen, and force...)

3) There's an interesting little item in savage species called Beast Claws.  It gives the wearer claw attacks with it (1D4/x2).  HOWEVER, if the wearer already has claws and wears these over top of them, he deals his normal claw damage + 1D6.  I'm just throwing this out there because there's discussion of having more claws being created by stacked melds than there's logical space to put them.  So by RAW there's at least a precedent for stacking claws on top of each other (and interestingly the damage increases to greater than the sum of the parts of the two claws, but we don't need to get into that if we don't want to).  Just thought I'd throw this out there if you want a little more to help convince your DM to let you stack claws, or in case it sparks any ideas in more experienced optimizers than I. 

I know that relies more on liberal interpretation of rules/precedents but... figured it was worth mentioning. 

[Brainpiercing]

I've just come upon this handbook while trying to wrap my head around what to do with a totemist I'm creating, and after reading through it I have 3 things:


1) Thanks so much for this handbook and all the great discussion about them -- so many ideas and options to consider now.

2) I discovered the weapon enchantment Prismatic Burst (+30,000 gp to cost, NOT an enhancement bonus cost).  I'd like to throw out there that you could make a really cheap Amulet of Natural Attacks with prismatic burst on it.  The cost of the amulet is (600 + the cost of the ENHANCEMENT BONUSES) times the number of weapons affected.  That means you're only paying for prismatic burst once but applying it to all weapons that the amulet affects.  That's a pretty huge deal, especially if you're counting the manticore tail as a single natural weapon... You get prismatic burst on every one of those needles you're shooting.     The minimum cost would be for a +1 Prismatic Burst Amulet of Natural Attacks = 32,600, and for what you're getting that's dirt cheap.  Of course if you're 20th level and have lots of gold, and make the amulet also splitting (and maybe vampiric, keen, and force...)

Hmmm... with the same logic the DM might deny that enchantment altogether. Well... YMMV

3) There's an interesting little item in savage species called Beast Claws.  It gives the wearer claw attacks with it (1D4/x2).  HOWEVER, if the wearer already has claws and wears these over top of them, he deals his normal claw damage + 1D6.   

Thanks for bringing those up. I had known about them before, but then forgotten, and they are just what I need for a character that I've just started playing.

[marcielle]

If I might suggest a pair of situationally useful races, my good sir?
The Leser variants of Earth and Water Genasi from Faerun Campaign Setting get bonuses to Con and penalties to dump stats.
Earth genasi get a bonus to STR too. Compared to the Orc he gets same total bonuses to key stats but no Int penalty.
Here are the situational parts. Both get free darkvision. Always good for dungeoncrawl heavy campaigns.
Water genasi get free water breathing. Really handy in aquatic campaigns. They will also never die of thirst, just in case you have a 'reality' enforcing DM.
No LA for lesser versions. All you lose is the outsider type.

Not exactly the best out there but I thought that they might be worth mentioning. Also, both of them smell better than orcs.

[Sinfire Titan]

If I might suggest a pair of situationally useful races, my good sir?
The Leser variants of Earth and Water Genasi from Faerun Campaign Setting get bonuses to Con and penalties to dump stats.
Earth genasi get a bonus to STR too. Compared to the Orc he gets same total bonuses to key stats but no Int penalty.
Here are the situational parts. Both get free darkvision. Always good for dungeoncrawl heavy campaigns.
Water genasi get free water breathing. Really handy in aquatic campaigns. They will also never die of thirst, just in case you have a 'reality' enforcing DM.
No LA for lesser versions. All you lose is the outsider type.

Not exactly the best out there but I thought that they might be worth mentioning. Also, both of them smell better than orcs.

The odds of those races getting approved are slim to none. They are "Lesser" versions of a race printed in a 3.0 source, which makes me very hesitant to recommend them.

[Lycanthromancer]

I find that simply taking totemist 2 in a manifester build (psion or psywar) can be incredibly powerful, especially once you have access to Psionic Open Chakra.

Since manifesters are fully capable of augmenting powers for higher level effects, all you need to do is boost the hell out of your manifester level and reduce augmentation costs by stacking various effects (such as Practiced Manifester, Midnight Augmentation/Psicarnum Infusion, Overchannel, a torc of power preservation, binding a metapsionic rod to your hands, and so on), and then you can bind high level melds several levels before any other class can. My favorite soulmeld/bind for this is the phase cloak bound to the shoulders at or before level 10.

[Shiki]

Lol wow seriously, this should educate me into reading the full text of something (example be, in this case: NOT only reading the brief description in powers per class list and freaking read the full text of the power). Psionic Open Chakra is simply AMAZING. Edit: Anyway... carry on.

[Lycanthromancer]

Lol wow seriously, this should educate me into reading the full text of something (example be, in this case: NOT only reading the brief description in powers per class list and freaking read the full text of the power). Psionic Open Chakra is simply AMAZING. Edit: Anyway... carry on.

While you're at it, check out Soul Crystal as well. See what happens when you combine that with Quintessence, a bunch of high level self-only buffs, and various party members.

[Shiki]

^Oh that's pure Awesome^TM interaction right there aswell, although that one I already knew about it. Never add the opportunity to try it though.

To add more to this: although the above is surely awesome, unless you have a versatile array of powers your options are a bit limited (whatever that might mean). The cheese is when you add your favorite trick no negate xp loss (like a thought bottle) and PsyRef into the mix. Then Erudite is just gravy.

[Sinfire Titan]

^Oh that's pure Awesome^TM interaction right there aswell, although that one I already knew about it. Never add the opportunity to try it though.

To add more to this: although the above is surely awesome, unless you have a versatile array of powers your options are a bit limited (whatever that might mean). The cheese is when you add your favorite trick no negate xp loss (like a thought bottle) and PsyRef into the mix. Then Erudite is just gravy.

Except that, by RAW, Erudite 20 gets 99 UPD. Not like you can have that many without StP.

[Shiki]

^Oh that's pure Awesome^TM interaction right there aswell, although that one I already knew about it. Never add the opportunity to try it though.

To add more to this: although the above is surely awesome, unless you have a versatile array of powers your options are a bit limited (whatever that might mean). The cheese is when you add your favorite trick no negate xp loss (like a thought bottle) and PsyRef into the mix. Then Erudite is just gravy.

Except that, by RAW, Erudite 20 gets 99 UPD. Not like you can have that many without StP.

Point is to give those Soul Crystals to your party members/cohort(s)/thrall(s)/followers/believers, and (I should have mentioned CStP in the other post since I was already thinking about that) since you have, like, every spells/powers, this is just... sick. But yeah, intentions on UP/D numbers are iffy or perhaps just that. We'll never know(?).

[Sinfire Titan]

But yeah, intentions on UP/D numbers are iffy or perhaps just that. We'll never know(?).

It's more clear-cut than I once thought:

Unique Powers per Day: An erudite manifests psionic powers, paying for each manifestation with an expenditure of power points. Unlike a psion, an erudite is limited to manifesting a certain number of unique psionic powers of each level per day from the repertoire of powers he knows, according to his class level. Thus, a 1st-level erudite can manifest one unique power per day; however, the total number of powers he can manifest per day is limited only by his daily power points (that is, the erudite could manifest the unique power as many times per day as he has power points to pay for it). An erudite simply knows his powers; they are part of his repertoire. He does not need to prepare them, though he must get a good night's sleep to regain all spent power points the next day.

The "each level" part is the key: It either means the level of the power in question (resulting in 99 UPD) or the Erudite's class level (resulting in 220 UPD). 

[Shiki]

That's better than I thought.

[Lycanthromancer]

Also, Soul Crystal is good for storing up manifestations for later days on your days off, and for when you have a bunch left at the end of the day.

Good times!

[Midnight_v]

Well I sat down today to make Wolverine.
I was on gitp, and got annoyed. . . I remebered sinfire being the only person in the world who understood incarnum, and here I am.
I wrapped my mind around the fact that Totemist can get sphinx claws at level 2.
Barbarian 1
Frenzied Berserker 4 (deathless frenzy)
Can these guys gain regeneration?
I've been torn between taking this guy to W Warblade/Swordsage/Master of 9 from there or not because he'd lose 9th level things... though they don't seem to be too important other than feral deathblow, for thematic reasons.

Do you think he'd come off better as a totem rager/Fb?

[Bigtuna]

I have be trying to optimize a Thi-Kreen Build. With a 2 level totemist dip or going all in.

So I made the build - and first you get the totem chakra - great! - been looking through them all - picking Garilion arms - as they just stand out!
Then what else?
Looking at the soulmelds one by one seemed pointless - you have to rate all the totem binds - all the crown binds, the feet binds and so fort.
So I make a list -
Totem binds - great stuff here.

Hand-feet-Crown (gained at lvl 5, just before you get the next chakra bind) - a few okay options - but I'm not really going WOW.

Arms-brown-Shoulds (gain at level 9) - now I go WOW! Great stuff! hard to pick one of the shoulder and arms binds - Rend!, Flight!, Phase cloak! Shadow mantle...

level 11 gives us the double totem bind - the main reason to stay in totemist instead of Totem Rager - Garillion soul meld to arms and Totem, plenty of arms, rend! - nice.

level 14 - for once we get the ekstra chakrabind along with the new chakras (Throat, waist) - but WTF! Spring attack? This late for a class that's all about plenty of attacks? This a level 14 ability! And there is nothing good other than bind it to a lower level chakra (which could be nice enough).

Level 15 +1 capacity to the Totem bind - have to have the double bind feat by now - what else to bind?

Level 17 - Heart - again - only thing I see is a blink shirt - and it's not even greater blink - so a get to miss with 1/5 of my attacks???  

They do give more essentia - but really shouldn't you take 15 levels to totemist and then bail out?

[kurashu]

If I might suggest a pair of situationally useful races, my good sir?
The Leser variants of Earth and Water Genasi from Faerun Campaign Setting get bonuses to Con and penalties to dump stats.
Earth genasi get a bonus to STR too. Compared to the Orc he gets same total bonuses to key stats but no Int penalty.
Here are the situational parts. Both get free darkvision. Always good for dungeoncrawl heavy campaigns.
Water genasi get free water breathing. Really handy in aquatic campaigns. They will also never die of thirst, just in case you have a 'reality' enforcing DM.
No LA for lesser versions. All you lose is the outsider type.

Not exactly the best out there but I thought that they might be worth mentioning. Also, both of them smell better than orcs.

The odds of those races getting approved are slim to none. They are "Lesser" versions of a race printed in a 3.0 source, which makes me very hesitant to recommend them.

If it makes you feel better, I only allow the lesser versions of Planetouched.