Hey guys,
So I'm playing a level 8 musket master and using some fairly standard equipment. I'm trying to make myself as supporty as I possibly can and hope to have an inventory that looks something like this:
Weapon: +1 Merciful Lesser Designating Musket (which will later become Greater designating).
Ammo: Lesser Burrowing Bullets.
As you can see I'm trying to Debuff the enemy (via touch attack burrowing bullets [staggered]) and buffing my parties ability to kill the things around us (we have no bard). My question to you guys is how I can make myself a better team player and enhance my ability to just straight up be super useful?
The goal is to get free bleeding shots at level 11 (targeting is in there as well I suppose [seems pretty cumbersome for a full-round action]), debuff, bleed everyone, buff the party and go from there.
Other equipment:
+2 Mithral Chain Shirt
+1 Buckler
+1 Ring of Prot
+1 Amulet of Natural Armor
+2 Cloak of Resistance
Muleback Cords (slotless as per GM)
With more $$$ sitting in my pocket I want to get some support stuff (10k to spend)
So no bard. What's the rest of the party like?
So no bard. What's the rest of the party like?
Party's usually at least 2 Beat-sticks (Paladin/fighter), a healer (Oracle, Cleric, etc), a guy with 30+ AC (the "tank"), 1/2 the time another ranged DPS or 1/2 the time a flowing/grapple monk type guy, and myself the DPS/Debuff/Buff (takes'em alive) gunslinger.
We have solid team compositions its just we have a shifting party every time we play (with me and the tank being the only constants).
Bump :3
So no bard. What's the rest of the party like?Party's usually at least 2 Beat-sticks (Paladin/fighter), a healer (Oracle, Cleric, etc), a guy with 30+ AC (the "tank"), 1/2 the time another ranged DPS or 1/2 the time a flowing/grapple monk type guy, and myself the DPS/Debuff/Buff (takes'em alive) gunslinger.
We have solid team compositions its just we have a shifting party every time we play (with me and the tank being the only constants).
So no arcane anything - battlefield control, buff/debuff/save or something bad. That's rough. I like the idea of your Gunslinger trying to fill that role a little, but the class is going to have a pretty rough time of that.
My suggestion? Consumables. Tanglefoot bags, smokesticks, and enough lamp oil to make a Bruckenheimer film. If you can control battlefield positioning, you can make a nice little funnel into your tank, and then focus on shooting people in the face. I'd get a bandolier full of stuff like this - Alchemist's fire, etc. Don't worry about doing damage w/any of this - worry about changing the environment.
Focus on building a Batman-style utility belt full of one-off dirty tricks, and you'll not only be helpful, but do it with interesting flair.
So no bard. What's the rest of the party like?Party's usually at least 2 Beat-sticks (Paladin/fighter), a healer (Oracle, Cleric, etc), a guy with 30+ AC (the "tank"), 1/2 the time another ranged DPS or 1/2 the time a flowing/grapple monk type guy, and myself the DPS/Debuff/Buff (takes'em alive) gunslinger.
We have solid team compositions its just we have a shifting party every time we play (with me and the tank being the only constants).
So no arcane anything - battlefield control, buff/debuff/save or something bad. That's rough. I like the idea of your Gunslinger trying to fill that role a little, but the class is going to have a pretty rough time of that.
My suggestion? Consumables. Tanglefoot bags, smokesticks, and enough lamp oil to make a Bruckenheimer film. If you can control battlefield positioning, you can make a nice little funnel into your tank, and then focus on shooting people in the face. I'd get a bandolier full of stuff like this - Alchemist's fire, etc. Don't worry about doing damage w/any of this - worry about changing the environment.
Focus on building a Batman-style utility belt full of one-off dirty tricks, and you'll not only be helpful, but do it with interesting flair.
Totally forgot about that. Sometimes we do have a guy that comes in with a Wizard... or something (derp can't remember). He has some access to battlefield control like that. I do like this idea though.
The only thing that I'm concerned with is the relatively low DC on tanglefoot bag/bombs. We're fighting a lot of lvl 10-12+ stuff that will be sitting on (usually) +12 or higher reflex saves so it might negate a lot of what the tanglefoot bag can do (DC 15).
The smokestiks are really appealing, I can throw them ahead of the party and provide some decent cover moving forward.
The lantern oil I can see being fairly useful, but the fact that it only does 1d3 doesn't seem to intimidating for higher level mobs that will just shrug that off like nothing. Rather, it will change the environment but when something wants to charge us the fire might not be to much of a concern.
I'm going to probably look over a lot of that stuff, but I need to maintain the ability to change/alter things up to and including the 16th level or so (ie. fighting level 18-20 mobs).
So no arcane anything - battlefield control, buff/debuff/save or something bad. That's rough. I like the idea of your Gunslinger trying to fill that role a little, but the class is going to have a pretty rough time of that.
You're assuming the GM doesn't know his stuff, and isn't tailoring the encounters to let the characters show off their strengths -- or he does know his stuff, but he's malicious enough to build threats the party can never deal with.
You can have an entirely non-arcane party -- say, witch hunters -- and have a great time, with a GM who knows what he's doing and isn't throwing in threats that can only be handled by arcane characters. In fact, if the players play smart, you can have an entirely non-caster party and still have a great time, with the right GM. (Healing? Play smart in combat and use UMD with wands of cure light wounds out of combat.)
Don't assume that because they have no arcane caster, they will fail. They've gotten pretty far along with only a part-time wizard player, and the OP stated an intention to get to 11th level. Seems like they're doing pretty well so far.
Rather Legit Stuff
Oh, totally! I mean, one can always play to the strengths of the group, and that's hopefully what's happening. People surviving to level 8 is certainly proof of that! By no means do I assume that no arcanist = failure.
Rather, it makes for interesting challenges. Battlefield control without magic is tricky.
With lantern oil and such things, the point is more to see if you can claim control of the situation. Being on a ship, in a building, or in a forest, fire is about more than d3 damage. You can - hopefully - create some hazardous terrain, and since you're creating it, you can suit it to your needs.
Tanglefoot bags, yeah. You're going to be outpacing those fast, it's true. The basic idea is a pretty simple equation: get stuff, alter your environment, ????, Profit?
Right, that's the idea.
Just to throw it out there, when we gain money we generally get access to black market sort of vendors after a while where we can pretty much buy anything in the entire game (or at least the main books: APG, Core, Ultimate Equipment+magic, just no 3rd party stuff or anything from the offshoot books). If that helps with anything. I've already looked through a lot of stuff but was hoping for some extra input as to what would be useful! haha.
I'm also a little conflicted about the idea of having to spend a move to draw any of those items and a standard to throw them :/ I suppose that's on of the draw backs though.
I guess, in all, I'm looking for something that will give me some more utility/support capability consistently without having to rely solely on consumables to get the job done. Thus the reason why I chose to go with the Designating weapon and the burrowing bullets (that in itself keeps my party hitting the enemies, and the enemies from full attacking/moving and acting).
This is sort of the base idea that I've created so far for my 8th level, there are a few things that I'm a little curious about that I'll list afterwards. Remember, the idea is that this is a supporting/controlish/debuff character
LvL: 8
Class: Human Musket Master
HP: 65
STR: 8 (-1)
DEX: 24 (+7)
CON: 10
INT: 10
WIS: 18 (+4)
CHA: 15 (+2)
FORT 8
REFL 15
WILL 8
AC: 10 +ARM 10 +DEX 7 +NAT1 +DEF1 +DOD2 = 31
Weapon: +1 Distance Musket - +17/+12 1D12 +1D6 +8 (Rapid, deadly 14/14/9 1D12 +1D6 +14) 19-20 x4
Armor: +2 Mithral Chain Shirt, +1 Buckler
Feats:
Rapid Reload (Musket)
Point-Blank Shot
Precise Shot
Rapid Shot
Deadly Aim
Improved Critical (Musket)
Toughness
Stage Combatant
Equipment:
Muleback Cords (GM deemed slotless item)
Cloak of Resistance +2
Ring of Protection +1
Amulet of Natural Armor +1
+2 Dex belt
+2 Wis Band
Deadshot Vest
Bag of Holding
>>15x Alchemist Fire
>>15x Lantern Oil
>> 15x Smokestik
Ammo:
Burrowing Bullets, lesser x50
Alchemical; Flare x35
Alchemical; paper x50
So as you can see the idea with this is to get some battle field control through the use of the smokestiks and the lantern oil/alchemist fire. As well the Burrowing bullets will ensure that I can stagger at least 3 enemies a round and remove the threat of full attacks or at least having them not be able to move about the battle field and be threats to the party. The next benchmark in my opinion (12th level) will have me using the same general setup but with the use of a:
+1 Distance Lesser Designating Musket
for the ability to stagger opponents and also give morale bonuses to my party that does not have access to a bard at all times.
My final questions to the forum is:
What feats could I take (other than snap shot [have used it before and found it very ineffective]) that would make me a better team player? I'm dipping into Fighter for the last 9 levels after 11th, would Tactician be of any use [given the team work feats] or are there other classes that would be worth dipping into to make me a little more useful on the battlefield for more than DPS?