A good use for the Kirin Style feats


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


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I've seen throughout these past few months a few assorted threads on this forum about the kirin style feat chain and its uses, and beyond a Focused Shot Alchemist who throws one bomb for 4x his Intelligence per round or the Duelist who gets slightly more damage sometimes nobody seems to have been able to come up with much. I've been thinking how to optimise these feats however, and may have come up with an excellent application: The Charger.

More specifically, I am referring to the mounted lance-charger, be it a ranger, fighter, or cavalier (though fighter would definitely be easiest given the heavy feat requirements) in combination with the Combat Style Master feat. The problems with the Kirin feats are as follows: two swift actions to start up, kirin strike only works on one attack, and kirin path is only useful if you want to keep distance. I am of the opinion that a lance-charging mounted combatant with the Combat Style Master feat is able to sidestep these problems rather elegantly.

First, the CSM feat allows us to start any combat with kirin style already activated. While this doesnt negate the second swift action requirement, we can at least do something useful in that time by getting into position for a charge, firing off some shots with a bow, or making other identify checks with the lore warden or student of war class features. While the action tax isn't entirely eliminated, it is cut in half, and we can activate another feat such as janni style to help us a bit more with the upcoming charge.

Second, the issue with the restriction of Kirin Strike to one attack. Well, when lance charging we only really have one anyway. And look at that, Kirin Strike is added after the hit as a flat bonus to damage, which if I am correct means that it is applied to the damage doubling/tripling from the lance. This means that a lancer with spirited charge could be adding 6x his intelligence to his charges, which is no small modifier, and an even better bonus than he gets from strength.

Third, Kirin Path. One of the most unfortunate things that can happen to a lancer in my experience is being backed into a corner by an enemy or group of enemies. Kirin Path allows us to avoid this problem, moving behind any enemy that tries to box us in, ensuring that no matter how they advance we will always end up on the side of our enemy that allows us the most room to move our mount and set up further charges.

These facts together on top of the nice save bonuses that kirin style provides already make me believe that, at least in this case of a mounted combatant with enough of a feat progression, kirin style can be far better than its mediocre reputation, and may in fact when combined with such things as the Student of War prestige class make an intelligence-focused fighter not only possible, but a quite effective combatant, and I for one am quite looking forward to playing a scholar-knight in a campaign I'll be starting next week, assuming of course that this doesnt get the crane-style nerfbat because "style feats arent allowed to be good on non-monks" or "intelligence isnt allowed on martials" or something.


Small point: Isnt it three swift actions to get a damage boost? One swift to start Kirin, second swift to analyze the creature and on round three you can finally spend a swift to add 2x INT to damage.

You already point out that its something of a niche for a martial to have a high INT. Personally, i am hoping for a Swashbuckler archetype with canny defense and i havent seen the Student of War you mention but otherwise its a rare find so even with your x6 INT mod you are only looking at 12-18 extra damage on round two after investing three feats for Kirin, one more for a second style feat and a fifth for CSM. Plus the knowledge ranks but you would want those anyways for a Kirin user. It still seems like a lot of investment for an extra 18 damage once a round after level 9.


Who on earth with an int-focused build by level 9 only has 16 Int? Personally I'd want at elast 20 by that point, prefferably 24, for a bonus damage of 30 or 42. The damage will fo course be sub-par at lwo intelligence levels and isnt really worth it if you only have 14 int, but scales incredibly well with the attribute and if you break 26 Int will be adding very large chunks of damage to a charge. It's true that there is quite a feat tax, but the benefits are far more than mere damage, being knowledge of monster weaknesses, save bonuses, and positioning bonuses, all quite important to a mounted martial. The Student of War is a Prestige class that can, among other abilities, replace Dex with Int for AC and make a knowledge check as a move action to get bonuses to attack/damage.


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A Kensai sound a good candidate. Get a 1 handed weapon with brace (the Trident), ready your attack, and you get a lot of bonus for it. It's 2x damage instead of 3x, but you get a lot of bnng for your buck with high intelligence in a half-caster. You add your INT to initiative, you have Combat reflexes = your INT, you add your INT to AC and Damage, and you add your INT to crit confirmation. That's really a lot of things.


So how would your stats look on a point buy system?

prioritize STR, INT, DEX, CON, WIS, CHA?

Does a Student of War still use DEX for ranged hit mod? I love the idea of Kirin style and i love the idea of a smart fighter. I just hate trying to make those things work in D20 systems.

Its a lot of holding the line while waiting for that one big hit on round 2 or 3 of a 4 or 5 round combat, isnt it?


gustavo iglesias wrote:
A Kensai sound a good candidate. Get a 1 handed weapon with brace (the Trident), ready your attack, and you get a lot of bonus for it. It's 2x damage instead of 3x, but you get a lot of bnng for your buck with high intelligence in a half-caster. You add your INT to initiative, you have Combat reflexes = your INT, you add your INT to AC and Damage, and you add your INT to crit confirmation. That's really a lot of things.

You actually don't even need to use the trident...

Funny thing about lances on horseback, they can be wielded one handed. So if you are on horseback you can still use spell strike to put your shocking grasp on your lance. Yes you ahve to forgo the free attack, but you can easily go:

Turn 1: Bring up Kirin Style, Buff
Turn 2: Study, Cast Shocking Grasp holding the charge on your lance.
Turn 3: Charge, Use Kirin Strike. You now have:

Lance Damage
Stength Bonus
Int Bonus
Shocking Grasp Damage
Charge Bonus
Power Attack (because why the hell not?)

And if you REALLY want to get cheesy, you take a single level dip into Crossblooded Sorcerer to get dragonic and Orc bloodlines and get REALLY funny with the damage...


Torbyne wrote:

So how would your stats look on a point buy system?

prioritize STR, INT, DEX, CON, WIS, CHA?

Does a Student of War still use DEX for ranged hit mod? I love the idea of Kirin style and i love the idea of a smart fighter. I just hate trying to make those things work in D20 systems.

Its a lot of holding the line while waiting for that one big hit on round 2 or 3 of a 4 or 5 round combat, isnt it?

I was thinking it'd be STR=INT>CON>WIS>DEX>CHA. They do in fact use dex for ranged to hit, so it would suffer a bit in that regard.

Kensai does indeed work well for this too, given their eventual Int bonus to practically everything. It's not quite the buff it could be on a Kensai though, given that you'd lose Arcane Strike.


I'm playing a gestalt cavalier//wizard in an e6 campaign and you've hit upon one of the strategies I'm looking to eventually employ.

My first 2 rounds or so are usually tied up with battlefield control or buffing, but then I'm usually charging about and helping mop up, or rushing in to try to turn the tide with a dragon order challenge. The ability to cut loose with a charge adding +10 or more to damage would be pretty sweet.

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