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Hi,


I guess I missed it while surfing through the thread pages but ...


How do I get an initiative number equal to my Arcana?


I see that SnS posted it on the first page.


Thanks for the answer.


Aribeth                

Jun 19, 2011 -- 5:41AM, Molitro wrote:

Feb 21, 2011 -- 7:40AM, crayne wrote:

The arcana familiar "coure attendant" gives +2 to arcana (untyped) and has lots of other nice features, like drawing/stowing items as free action (no limit), enemies grant CA with enc. power of familiar and the coure attendant has a fly speed 8 (which can be turned into a mount with familiar mount ritual).
 You should definately add it to the familiar list.

It is limited. Once per round.

True, but the coure attendant is still very good, for drawing and drinking potions as a single minor action. It just is not usefull for weapon/implement juggling, because you need at least two free actions, to stow one implement and draw another.

Edit: The coure attendant received errata at some point. The 1/turn text was added in the source dragons final issue, as well as difficult terrain aura was removed.

An alternative is just to rely upon rerolls to ensure a high result with Trick of Knowledge. This isn't 100% reliable, unlike pumping your arcana to +60, but as you'll see below it is very, very close, and I think the item requirements and build concessions are probably less steep.

I did some napkin probability tree math (actually, it wouldn't fit on a napkin :/) and found that with a +47 bonus (1-3: save at start of turn, 4-8: any 2, 9-13: any 3, 14+ any 4) and the High Imaskar background, you can have some decent odds.

I assumed the following decision algorithm:

• When Keeper's Prescience >= initial arcana check result, be liberal with High Imaskar. Use it, unless, of course, your initial arcana check was 14 or higher.
• When KP < initial arcana check result, be conservative with HI. Only use HI when you rolled poorly on the initial arcana check and therefore will more likely benefit than suffer by making a reroll (in this case, I set the bar at 8 or less, as with an 8, HI will yield a benefit 60% of the time and a detriment 15% of the time, while with a 9, High Imaskar will yield a benefit 35% of the time and a detriment 50% of the time).

When I say >= I don't just mean a greater or equal number on the die, I mean a KP roll which falls into the same or better outcome category. E.g. given that a 9 results in the same outcome as a 13, a 9 is treated as an identical result for the purposes of ToK - so if your KP = 9 and your initial roll is 13, you'd still choose to be liberal, following the algorithm above.

I ended up with the following ps:

• .9% Save at start of turn
• 5.5% Any 2
• 24.56% Any 3
• 69.04% Any 4

Not bad, and as I said, +47 is pretty obtainable with moderate investment, unlike +60, which seems to require going all-out and which, quite probably, would only be optimized in a theoretical rather than overall-build-effectiveness sense. Presumably people who are thinking of actually playing Sage of the Ages should be willing to optimize arcana quite a lot, but there's a limit. And I imagine that some of the wondrous items that yield an untyped bonus to arcana for mere possession might be taken off the table by some DMs. 

In case you were wondering, the above stats/decision algorithm yields a 22.79% chance of using up your Keeper's Prescience. This looks low, but consider that sometimes the KP roll is low and therefore useless. 21.29% out of the 22.79% mentioned occurs for 'potentially useable' KP rolls of 9+ (I'm setting the bar at 9 arbitrarily). 60% of the time, your KP on the first round of combat is 9+. .2129 /.6 = .3548. So, about 35% of the KP rolls that may have potentially been useable to make an attack hit will be used by Trick of Knowledge, if used this way.

An additional complicating factor is that you might choose not to use a KP result of 20 (or 19/18-20 if you have a high crit range) to improve trick of knowledge. Particularly if you have a daily that crits very big, you may prefer to use that result for an attack. A big crit right out of the gate is a very valuable thing, IMO. I haven't worked that into the probabilities above, but it would involve changing only being liberal with HI rerolls when KP>=initial roll AND lies outside your crit range. When KP falls within your crit range, be conservative with HI and unload a daily power crit on an enemy that turn instead. 

Also, I just noticed that you cannot opt to choose a lower result, e.g. if you roll a 51 and would prefer +2 to arcane attack rolls rather than saving at the start of your turn, the you're SOL. The math above results in a just under 1% chance of getting that annoying result and missing out on BOTH the +2 AC and the +2 to hit. This is probably an acceptably unlikely occurence for most people, but here's 2 solutions:

1. Maybe +50 and High Imaskar would be the sweet spot. 100% chance of at least 2, and the chances of getting 3 or 4 would be pretty high (I might do the probability tree later but I'm guessing 80%+ chance of getting 4.)
2. Perhaps even better than option 1, another option would be to get a single daily power (such as from an item) that allows you to recharge an encounter utility power. Most encounters (93.6% of them) you'll get 3 or 4 benefits. When you fail to get the 61+ benefit ('pick 4'), use the daily to recharge Trick of Knowledge, and use ToK again (next round). You'll probably get the "pick 3" or "pick 4" option, meaning that most likely, you'll end up with all 4 benefits. You're not very likely to need to use the daily more than once per day. The only ways you could end up with less than 4 are:

• 'Save at start of turn' result twice in a row: p = 0.0001 or .01 PERCENT (1 in 10,000 chance, i.e. not going to happen)
• 'Save at start of turn' result followed by 'pick 2' or vice versa: p = .005 or .5 PERCENT (1 in 200 chance, pretty unlikely)
• Two encounters in a single day in which you are unlucky and don't get the 'pick 4' benefit first try (there's a 20.96%, or a 1 in 5 chance of this happening each encounter). The second time in a day this happens, you have run out of recharge juice. Of course, you COULD get 2 such dailies if you really wanted to. Alternatively, you might choose to only use the daily recharge when you fail to get at least 'pick 3'. 

So, from a practical optimization point of view, which option (1 or 2) is better? And would a practically, rather than theoretically optimized Sage of Ages ever build for a +60 arcana bonus when they can just do this (and use their feats/item slots optimizing other aspects of their character?)

Tieflings are another good race, at the expense of a feat (that you'd spend anyway).

Buy Secrets of Belial, which allows you to poach a utility power from another class. Take Serpent's Cunning from HotFK Sentinel Druids - granting you +2 untyped to intelligence skill checks and +1 to intelligence attacks. They still lack a racial bonus, but this makes up for it.

The waist slot item "Cord of Elusive Thoughts" from psionic power has a useful property - it allows you to use Arcana instead of Acrobatics or Athletics to make escape checks. Its daily power requires the expentidure of a power point, but the property doesn't rely on that and the daily power is mostly redundant if your Arcana is really optimized.

Still looking for other things I can get from Arcana.