Filling out our party for Rise of the Runelords


Rise of the Runelords


Hello everyone, our group has decided to make our first foray into Pathfinder with the Rise of the Runelords AP and I was hoping for some insight to help me decide what I should play to round out our party.

So far we have an Aasimar cleric (no archetype) with the healing and sun domains, a gnome trickster bard, and the other player will be playing some variety of barbarian or fighter.

Myself, I've been going back and forth between sorcerer/summoner/magus since having some arcane ability seems like it would be the best way to fill out the party, and I've never played a caster type character in DnD before.

The questions I really have are, how useful/necessary is a caster in this AP? Will a bard be sufficient to cover the "rogue" slot as party face/skill monkey? Any other suggestions on classes that might work better? I'm open to playing anything really, those mentioned above are just things that have caught my eye so far looking through the classes.

We can use things from corebook/UM/UC/APG/ARG/ISWB.

Thanks in advance!


Casters are useful. Party of my players fully consists of them (inquisitor, witch, summoner and magus) and they are crushing down any resistance in their way. Summoners Eidolon even fills the rogue role with his skills. May think to take him, Eidolons are good at fight too. Or take magus. Sometimes, I'm not happy when I see how much damage he deals at one round, and your GM won't be either (if he's not prepared).

Dark Archive

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Bard will do fine as the skill monkey. The only thing you're missing out on without a rogue is the ability to disarm magical traps, which means you'll have to be creative when you run across one. (Forcing summoned monsters to trigger them is my favorite alternative.)

I think most people will agree that if you are going to play an arcane character, then wizard is the best pick for this AP for reasons that will become clear during play. Any of the others aren't bad choices - far from it - but wizard is an A+ choice compared to the others.

Honestly though, I would recommend you play the character that you would enjoy playing the most. That's the point of this whole thing, after all.

Dark Archive

Misroi has some excellent advice - play something that you enjoy. If you are not excited about your character, you will not have fun = everyone has less fun.

I wouldn't worry about never playing a certain class before. Remember, this campaign will take you from 1st - 17th level. By the end, you will be intimately familiar with the class you picked.

Good luck!


Oh, I'm not worried about not enjoying any character I end up playing. The group I play with are all close friends and we always have a blast regardless. I guess I'm just a little antsy about playing any arcane class, the options are just so completely overwhelming that I'm not sure how I'm going to wrap my head around it all. That said, that's for the input.


Honestly, my group ran paladin-sorcerer-barbarian-bard and it was INSANELY effective. They suffered a bit from the lack of cleric spells, but the sorcerer teleported them to major cities for their necessary Raise Dead spells and so forth.

Bard/cleric/fighter or barbarian is a great set. Honestly, if you want to make the party unstoppable, I'd add a paladin to that mix. But many people can't stomach playing paladins, and you really DO need an arcane caster just to get about (I don't know what my party would have done without Greater Teleport), so I'd second Misroi and suggest a wizard.

And now, a personal story, since it's a great description of the dichotomy between "playing a character I like" vs. "playing a character that supports the AP".

Leilani's tough tale:

I started an aasimar life oracle who'd been raised on the Celestial Plane and who started with no weapons and no equipment. My overall character concept was, "Insanely-opinionated peacenik focused on healing and protection."
She's the only divine caster in the party, and by 5th level her spell list reflected her character concept beautifully: Instant Armor and Spear of Purity at 2nd level, Protection from Evil, Sanctuary, Shield of Faith, and Endure Elements at 1st level, and a bunch of similar orisons. I was planning on taking Cure Disease at 6th level to keep up with the general thread.

Then we met the shadow demon. Her attack bonus was too crappy to hit it with Spear of Purity. She didn't have Align Weapon to help others bypass its DR. It kicked the living daylights out of the entire party, and she burned all her healing (both channels and spells) keeping the party upright long enough to force it to run away. And we had to run in spite of the fact that all the arcane casters had all their spells left because we were out of healing.

So I had to abandon my character concept a bit (we leveled up) and take Dispel Magic as her 3rd-level spell, and trade out Spear of Purity for Align Weapon to buff others to hit.

The shadow demon is going to rue the day it meets the ranger with Good-aligned arrows and discovers that its Deeper Darkness gets dispelled as quickly as it gets cast.

So I didn't have to choose a different class, I'm still playing a character I love; I just had to 'adjust' her a bit to deal with the realities of being the only divine support in the group.

You'll probably find something similar with whatever arcane archetype you come up with.

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