6 centipede pet party?

[Malleable]

So I've finally settled on the perfect party for my play style. Fey Druid, Eccles cleric (air/animal), and four Sylvan Sorcerers. While I'm completely happy with the performance of six leopard pets, since they trip goes often and really tear stuff up, I've also wondered about the centipedes with poison.
I can't see them hitting as often as the leopards, or doing as much damage.
Does anyone have any experience with these companions? I think if I only had one or two pets the poison wouldn't mean much, but I think when any stat is reduced to zero the mob goes unconscious or dies, right? With six centipedes I would think I could drop higher hitpoint mobs quicker via dx reduction than through damage. And my Druid can cast pernicious poison on the mob to reduce it's poison resistance.
Comments and suggestions?

Thanks,
Mal

[Blood Flowers]

Enemies that reach 0 in any stat will die.

Here are some possible issues you may run into:

-Many enemies have poison immunity.
-Many enemies have stat damage immunity.
-It requires a hit in order to attempt to apply poison. Centipedes may not have very high AB (not sure).
-The DC of the poison does not scale (I think? I don't really recall, but I think I saw it being a flat value) meaning that enemies that succeed the save are not poisoned.

If you're trying to kill enemies via stat damage, you're almost always better off getting the advanced rogue talent that deals -2 STR damage on every sneak attack (though you're still probably more likely to just kill the enemy through straight damage).

[Eclipse]

Depends on difficulty I think. On unfair all enemies have high saves and toughness value (super owlbear like 45 or 50).

[dwarner]

If you play monster tactician, there are a few levels where you're summoning monitor lizards and they will poison things. Pets are better than summons and their poison scales with level so unless you're fighting things immune to poison (like undead) or with super high fortitude a party with six centipedes will have a good chance to poison a lot of things. Especially if your six toons are all casting pernicious poison with reach magic.

You can even create a Fey Druid/Sylvan Sorceror/Mystic Theurge who could hit level twelve in both with a full pet!

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Eclipse:

Depends on difficulty I think. On unfair all enemies have high saves and toughness value (super owlbear like 45 or 50).

But not Reflex and Will. Everything has a weakness.

[Malleable]

Originally posted by dwarner:

You can even create a Fey Druid/Sylvan Sorceror/Mystic Theurge who could hit level twelve in both with a full pet!

Dwarner,
Are you sure that the Mystic Theurge levels add to pet level? I thought they only increased spells gained. I thought the pet would cap out at 10th.

Mal

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Malleable:

Originally posted by dwarner:

You can even create a Fey Druid/Sylvan Sorceror/Mystic Theurge who could hit level twelve in both with a full pet!

Dwarner,
Are you sure that the Mystic Theurge levels add to pet level? I thought they only increased spells gained. I thought the pet would cap out at 10th.

Mal

They don’t. Take four with Boon Companion. You can only do this if you choose pet instead of Animal Domain on creation.

Pet will level like a full pet: start at 2, get 3 levels from each 4 player levels. Since both of your base classes are full pet classes you’ll end up with a full pet. So you can either go up to sixth level spells in both base classes or eighth in one/fourth in the other, etc...

You can do things like spontaneously cast lesser restoration without having to burn a spell pick on it, etc...

[Malleable]

Dwarner,
Sorry I still don't follow you. If I go 3 levels in Fey Sorcerer, and 3 levels in Sylvan Druid, Then I go another 4 levels in either Sorcerer or Druid. The total is only 10. If I get Boon Companion I could boost it another 4. But if the 10 levels of Theurgist do not increase the pet level I only have my pet at 14th.
Correct?

Thanks,
Mal

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Malleable:

Dwarner,
Sorry I still don't follow you. If I go 3 levels in Fey Sorcerer, and 3 levels in Sylvan Druid, Then I go another 4 levels in either Sorcerer or Druid. The total is only 10. If I get Boon Companion I could boost it another 4. But if the 10 levels of Theurgist do not increase the pet level I only have my pet at 14th.
Correct?

Thanks,
Mal

Take four levels in Theurge. 16 any way you like in the other two.

[Malleable]

ohhh, only 4 levels in Theurge! I got you. That makes sense.
Thanks,
Mal

[Veganleader1]

I ran with 2 centipedes in a group. It seemed weak. The rate at which the debuff applies is really low. It was so low I didn't consider it a feature but more like a slight benefit. This was on normal difficulty. It was just totally underwhelming, so I am back to leopards and bear (for the Claw of The Bear God).

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Veganleader1:

I ran with 2 centipedes in a group. It seemed weak. The rate at which the debuff applies is really low. It was so low I didn't consider it a feature but more like a slight benefit. This was on normal difficulty. It was just totally underwhelming, so I am back to leopards and bear (for the Claw of The Bear God).

Early game melee tends to have high Fortitude, which is why things like Stunning Fist seem bad too. Later on some of the strongest enemies have low Fort.

As with any other effect, debuffing saves and targeting weak ones will significantly improve your performance.

You can control pets (you can’t with summons) so send them charging at casters and archers who nearly always have low fortitude.

D10 on Claw is nice, but it’s really not that much damage. Other pets still get d6, and Smilodon for instance gets five full attacks. Play the Bear if you like it, not because of the item.

[Veganleader1]

Originally posted by dwarner:

Originally posted by Veganleader1:

I ran with 2 centipedes in a group. It seemed weak. The rate at which the debuff applies is really low. It was so low I didn't consider it a feature but more like a slight benefit. This was on normal difficulty. It was just totally underwhelming, so I am back to leopards and bear (for the Claw of The Bear God).

Early game melee tends to have high Fortitude, which is why things like Stunning Fist seem bad too. Later on some of the strongest enemies have low Fort.

As with any other effect, debuffing saves and targeting weak ones will significantly improve your performance.

You can control pets (you can’t with summons) so send them charging at casters and archers who nearly always have low fortitude.

D10 on Claw is nice, but it’s really not that much damage. Other pets still get d6, and Smilodon for instance gets five full attacks. Play the Bear if you like it, not because of the item.

Interesting observations. I did not pair the pets with any other real stat debuffs to maximize the strength of the poison, it just felt weak. Would it be a better return on higher difficulty levels?

Also, I am just using bear because my last run with a blight druid with fang was insane, thus I'm trying it out with my Sylvan Sorc offtank. The blight druid still seems to be utterly broken with bite trip combo and gets in about 10 bites per round. With the claw proccing its damage bonus on every bite, she would do several hundred damage per round in human form. It seemed like it might work out in a fun way with the Sylvan Sorc who so far does not seem to be broken with bite attack from motherless tiefling. Bear also gets rend which a smilodon does not, so we'll see how it goes. My point here isnt that smilodon isnt the best thing which everyone seems to believe, it was that I didn't notice a difference in the game play from using centipedes or monitor lizard. They didn't apply it every round, was like once every so many rounds, maybe 2 times over a full fight, which to me felt piddly.

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Veganleader1:

Originally posted by dwarner:

Early game melee tends to have high Fortitude, which is why things like Stunning Fist seem bad too. Later on some of the strongest enemies have low Fort.

As with any other effect, debuffing saves and targeting weak ones will significantly improve your performance.

You can control pets (you can’t with summons) so send them charging at casters and archers who nearly always have low fortitude.

D10 on Claw is nice, but it’s really not that much damage. Other pets still get d6, and Smilodon for instance gets five full attacks. Play the Bear if you like it, not because of the item.

Interesting observations. I did not pair the pets with any other real stat debuffs to maximize the strength of the poison, it just felt weak. Would it be a better return on higher difficulty levels?

Also, I am just using bear because my last run with a blight druid with fang was insane, thus I'm trying it out with my Sylvan Sorc offtank. The blight druid still seems to be utterly broken with bite trip combo and gets in about 10 bites per round. With the claw proccing its damage bonus on every bite, she would do several hundred damage per round in human form. It seemed like it might work out in a fun way with the Sylvan Sorc who so far does not seem to be broken with bite attack from motherless tiefling. Bear also gets rend which a smilodon does not, so we'll see how it goes. My point here isnt that smilodon isnt the best thing which everyone seems to believe, it was that I didn't notice a difference in the game play from using centipedes or monitor lizard. They didn't apply it every round, was like once every so many rounds, maybe 2 times over a full fight, which to me felt piddly.

I was mostly joking about Pernicious Poison, though it could be a fun thing to play around with to get around spell resistance. I was mostly talking about things I’m already doing to lower saves like Archon’s Aura and Dirge of Doom. Any other effect that lowers CON (like Touch of Slime) also lowers Fortitude.

There’s a Wild Hunt archer on Depths VI with some very nice gloves who will light you up at range if you don’t have a plan to attack him. I’d imagine a Centipede rush could give him some headaches, especially with Feybane fixed.

[Nono]

Good luck with wild hunt gazes completely nullifying your pets frontline.

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Nono:

Good luck with wild hunt gazes completely nullifying your pets frontline.

Worked with my Amiri Defender of the True World and her Leopard. Maybe Jub gave Okbo and her Leopard Echolocation?

Was doing that already in Womb so that was probably it. Freedom of Movement should probably do it too.