looking for help with teamworking ratfolk

[Tayse]

I'm back. a few weeks ago i was here looking for help with some ideas for a ratfolk sohei and a sanctified slayer. I've since scrapped those ideas and have moved on to a Vanguard (Slayer) and a Kensai (magus). I'm looking at maybe a 25pt build and maybe a house rule allowing an additional 1st level feat, but those details havent been decided yet.

a little bit of the character fluff is that the 2 ratfolk brothers (not yet named) were the only children on a trade caravan that had just pulled one over on an evil lord and he dispatched a squad of his best samurai to eradicate the vermin. one of the samurai was a tiefling that instead of killing the children adopted them, raised them and trained them. (havent decided if it was for personal gain or a change of heart). after leaving their adopted home they were all each other had and would give their lives to save the other one.

Kensai 18/Lore Warden 2

Traits Adopted (tiefling [suicidal]), Magical Lineage (Shocking Grasp)
L1 Intensified Spell, Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Tetsubo)*, Weapon Focus (Tetsubo)*
LW1 Power Attack (?)
L3 Bodyguard (?), Combat Expertise*, Combat Reflexes*
L5 Outflank
MA5 Enruned Great Weapon (3PP spellcombat &spellstrike w/ 2 hand weapons)
L7 Extra Arcana (Flamboyant Arcana), Paired Opprotunist*
MA8 Arcane Deed (Swashbuckler Initiative[?])
L9 Lookout
L11 Critical Focus (?)
L13 Extra Arcana (Arcane Deed [Evasive])
MA14 ??
L15 In Harm's Way (??)
MA17 ??
L17 ??
L19 ??
K19 ??
MA20 ??

i need to sneak arcane strike in here somewhere

Vanguard 18/Lore Warden 2
traits Adopted (tiefling [suicidal]), Armor Expert
LW1 Weapon Focus (kukri), Weapon Finesse*
LW2 Combat Expertise, Butterfly's Sting*
V1 Combat Reflexes*
V2 Outflank
L5 Pair Opprotunist
L7 Bodyguard
ST6 Rogue Talent (Combat Trick [Improved Critical])
L9 Lookout
ST8 Ranger Combat Style (Two-Weapon Fighting)
L11 Extra Slayer Talent (RCS [Improved TWF])
ST10 Advanced Rogue Talent (Evasion) (?)
L13 Coordinated Charge
ST12 RCS (Greater TWF)
L15 EST (Studied Ally)
ST14 Poison Use
L17 EST (rogue talent [swift poison])
ST16 Advanced Rogue Talent (Opportunist)
L19 ??
ST18 ??

a lot of the vanguard hinges on what weapons I can afford. if I can manage to swing Agile Keen Kukris life will be perfect and i can start grabbing the TWF feats earlier

* = bonus feat
(?) = unsure
?? = no clue

the set up is the vanguard to be critfishing for butterfly's sting and outflank giving that auto crit AoO to the kensai to spend 2 arcane points and smack the enemy with a charged x5 impact tetsubo

[boring7]

Nice build, looks like it works. Here are my potential complaints.

Exotic weapons are rarely worth the proficiency. Probably a martial weapon that's "good enough."

How many arcane points do you get? x4 to x5 (or even x3 to x4) seems like it would often not be necessary. Especially since you're going to be burning a lot of those points on the Enruned weapon, unless I'm mistaken.

You might consider reach weapons, provoking more AoOs and reaching enemies with reach is useful.

Make doubly sure enruned weapon works, it is poorly-written.

Arcane Revitalization instead of Magical Lineage, I mean you don't even have metamagic feats.

[Tayse]

The exotic weapon is a freebie from the kensia archetype
At level one the Magus has intensified spell it's pretty standard for a Magus using shocking grasp
My DM suggested enruned great weapon because he didn't like the grip/regrip weapon idea. It last 10 minutes per level my DM and are under the assumption it takes a swift action to activate but I think that's long enough not to burn too many points.
But I'm now considering changing the adoptive family to halflings and taking the helpful trait for a +4 on aid another actions

[Snickersnack]

boring7 wrote:

Exotic weapons are rarely worth the proficiency. Probably a martial weapon that's "good enough."

I hate this comment the most out of all of the comments I ever see on the forums. Everyone builds for optimization down to the smallest detail and doesn't stop to consider that the game is more than just the battles. What about the RP aspect? What about someone disarming you and trying to use your own weapon against you without the proficiency? Live a little on the wild side. Sacrifice ONE feat to make your character more unique. I don't see what the point would be of having all of the different weapons in the game otherwise.

[boring7]

@Snickersnack: The question was for build advice. I thought about but didn't bother adding the sentence fragment, "But if you're doing for RP then that's cool."

It's also an open complaint that Exotic Weapons should just be better, you're burning a FEAT, you should get something that is better than a martial weapon, not the same or worse (and they're often worse).

@Tayse: Well if it's free then go to town, though to be honest I'd still go for an exotic reach weapon unless you just really want that oni-tradition Hanbo.

Enruned weapon will last the whole fight, but it becomes a question of how many fights you get into. At level 6 you get (with 20 int) 3 false-starts where the enemy runs away, 3 real fights where you smack stuff down, and (with 20 int) 1 shot of that crit-booster. Not to mention I'm pretty sure there is at least ONE other tasty little arcane-point-using magus ability you'll want to use, it's one of their major class features.

But I only say that because I'm used to long-running adventure days where stuff happens, then happens again, then happens again because you're racing against the clock or sleeping will just get you ambushed all night. If your sessions don't have that many battles or places to burn points you should be fine.

[Tayse]

reach weapons are typically my first go to for weapons, but to best utilize ratfolk's swarming ability and buttfly's sting there arent a lot of easy crit reach weapons and i cant think of any big crit reach weapons.

(after looking) i might think about switching the weapons to a Fauchard and a Naginata except doing this i think i'm loosing crit chances, damage output, and chance to hit because i'll giving up weapon finesse and agile weapon potential and twf.... it does create a better battle image in my head though. this might let me be able to slip in the step up feat chain

i'll need to look deeper into some more rules i dont typically use; delay action, readied action, and aid another, but the way i'm thinking about it right now is the kensai will spend his turn aiding the vanguards attack, they trip the opponent (it should crit), and then the butterfly's sting autocrit and outflank AoO trigger and they wallop away on the guy on the ground

the last time i was a player in a game with the DM i'm playing with i think 4 encounters per day are about his average.

i'm still also trying to figure out the best way to maximize their aid bonus without deviating too far from being useful alone (if ever one of them dies or they get separated)

[boring7]

Well inquisitors get that "teamwork feats as long as you have an ally" thing, don't remember the details of how well that all works though, plus the whole cost of level-dipping.

Reach will be weaker, but after x4 or 17-20 (after your improvement specials) you're pretty good to go. Anything less than the main Big Bad Boss Guy is going to drop from those big-arse hits and the extra reach means they might not even be able to hit you back on the first round. I seem to recall you can trip during an AoO...

Reach + trip + TWF lies in the Meteor Hammer, or so the weapon table and weapon description on the d20PFSRD tells me. Of course you still can't Agile/finesse that.

Anyways, if you wanna make sure they're still useful alone, just stop doing teamwork-focused stuff. They're already hellaciously dangerous as a pair, just start playing some of their other tricks like ranged options (enemies fly) or more generic combat things.

[Tayse]

that would take a 3 level dip into inquisitor to get solo tactics and that would be an overall ouch to my characters i think

i cant give up on the teamwork and aid another abilities because that would be counter productive to my overall theme and goal for the character(s). i'm intending to optimize character theme and combat usefulness without making it funny

thank you boring7 you have given me new inspiration to reoutline my builds using the reach weapons

and i just realized if the vanguard doesnt get a keen weapon and if i dont want it to pick up improved critical i can have the kensai cast keen edge

[Snickersnack]

Even though you burn a feat to wield an exotic weapon with no penalty, you can be sure no one else will use it against you very well unless they also have the feat for it. If there were only the weapons: bow, crossbow, dagger, longsword, axe, staff, and club in the game everyone would pick their weapon from the type of damage they want, crit range, etc. If all weapons, including exotic weapons, were free to use without a feat I don't see why anyone would pick a shortsword anymore as their weapon. Everyone would go for the cool weapons or the ones that deal max damage. There wouldn't be much diversity. The feat makes you roleplay your character a little more instead of optimizing down to the very last minor detail to get that 1 extra damage per round (which is what WoW is for). Think of the game in its entirety, not just as a combat pen and paper game.

[boring7]

Eh, I might. Shortsword was a classic weapon for the Romans and for a lot of eastern medieval combat. Sometimes you needed something you could slip between an enemy's armor plates that could still cut through his minions' with relative efficiency.

Recent demo of Tephra I was in I got a look at their weapons. They have completely generic weaponry rules, your light, medium, and heavy weapons have a base set of rules and after that you can have anything from an auto-crossbow that shoots mini-tridents to a Totally Original Mineral Material Impellment gun. How you describe it is irrelevant, their stats are the same.

Different styles, both work. In role-play vs. roll-play it really doesn't make a lot of sense to say, "these exotic weapons are much harder to get, harder to use, and when you do you end up doing either the same or less damage with them." But them's the breaks.

My barbarian who's gearing up to run Rappan Athuk is using a Dorn-Dergar though, so there's that. Just wish he could use those kyton-themed spiked chain feats...