All Gish party


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


With the ACG there are now even more great 3/4 BAB, d8 HD, 6/9 casters. They can fill just about any niche competently. No, they're not as strong as a Cleric, Druid or Wizard but that's to be expected.

I was thinking about how best to create a 4-player party that uses these classes, trying to meet the usual anvil, arm & hammer roles with also having healing, out of combat utility and all the rest. It is actually pretty easy to come up with a powerful combo without the game-breaking power of a full caster.

How would you create a balanced and effective 4-person party using Bards, Alchemists, Inquisitors, Warpriests, Hunters, Maguses (Magi?), Investigators or Summoners?

*Edit* Anyone who suggests "4 Synthesist Summoners" or "4 Master Summoners" will make me shake my head sadly.


There are a massive number of combinations available here, to be honest.

Magus (Hammer, secondary Arm/Anvil), Summoner (Primary Anvil/Arm, secondary Hammer), Alchemist (Primary Hammer/Anvil), and Warpriest (Primary Arm/Hammer, secondary Anvil) would be my go-to.

The Magus' job is to front-line. At higher levels he can function in the more 'God'-like caster role with Walls, Haste, Fly, Black Tentacles, etc. At lower levels his ability to do this is limited, but he certainly shouldn't forgo those options. Still, the Magus is a beatstick at heart.

Summoner helps the Magus cover the front lines and throws out their awesome array of support spells. Fairly straightforward. Synthesist is actually a bad idea here, to be honest.

Alchemist runs his bomb arsenal, heavy on the debuffing options-- Curse Bombs, for example, are stupidly good. Alternately he can break out the mutagen to go straight melee, when more debuffing isn't needed.

Warpriest brings the Divine arsenal, meaning he can rock healing and the like just fine, but he's also a capable fighter who can provide buffing and control when he's not swinging his swords (or shooting his bow, I'd probably spec him as an archer).

Flexibility is going to be the name of the game for this party. Figure out when to throw damage and when to boost allies or set up control options, and it can do a lot.


I was thinking something along the lines of:

Melee beatstick Warpriest, Melee beatstick Hunter abusing Pack Flanking/Outflank/Paired Opportunists, Controller/Buffer Bard (possibly with Combat Reflexes and a Longspear or Whip), Bomber Alchemist or an Investigator as last spot.

Everyone has healing, buffing & control options, you've got access to a broad selection of spell lists and a huge amount of skill points across the party. It's really easy to substitute other equally-competent classes too - the Warpriest could easy be a melee Inquisitor for example. So much choice! Mechanically Summoners would be an option but I have an aversion to them.


Why does everyone need healing? Realistically, you need one who can access the Cleric list (or a willingness to burn some wealth on scrolls/wands), maybe a secondary healer for wand access, but one healer should work fine. Though really, most of the 6th level casters can heal off HP damage. I think Summoner is the only one who can't.

Which, to me, makes the Warpriest the least-replaceable class. You can do it, but it's more of a drain on the party to do it.


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The gish word is kind of loosing Meaning if it ends up being everyone that Can cast spells and figth.
If a bomber alchemist and a cleric are gishes then so is a figther with a ring of feather Fall.
And sorry if i Sound like a angry old man;)


There isn't really a succinct, one-word descriptor for 3/4 BAB, 6/9 Caster, sorry Darling. Gish is an imperfect descriptor, but I wanted something simple for the title.

The healing comment was more just indicating that all have a degree of self-sufficiency. Dedicated combat healing isn't something I advocate but can be a useful thing to have "just-in-case". Being able to self-heal when disabled can be a godsend, but is admittedly very situational. I'd agree that the Warpriest's prepared caster nature and full Cleric list does make it the strongest condition remover of the bunch.


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Corvino wrote:

There isn't really a succinct, one-word descriptor for 3/4 BAB, 6/9 Caster, sorry Darling. Gish is an imperfect descriptor, but I wanted something simple for the title.

The healing comment was more just indicating that all have a degree of self-sufficiency. Dedicated combat healing isn't something I advocate but can be a useful thing to have "just-in-case". Being able to self-heal when disabled can be a godsend, but is admittedly very situational. I'd agree that the Warpriest's prepared caster nature and full Cleric list does make it the strongest condition remover of the bunch.

Dont mind me.

I think kensai magus with a rapier for hammer/anvil, warpriest with a falchion, blade of mercy trait and enforcer feat for hammer/anvil/arm, a hunter and dino pet with all the reach AoO tricks in the book for hammer/anvil and a bard, pehaps archer, for arm/hammer. Would be both fun and fast paced.


Corvino wrote:

*Edit* Anyone who suggests "4 Synthesist Summoners" or "4 Master Summoners" will make me shake my head sadly.

3 master summoners, and one bard.


Why no Skald?


Entryhazard wrote:
Why no Skald?

Because they're just Bards in disguise.


Personally, I'd call any front line caster a gish, which keeps the cleric on the table. Keeping the cleric on the table really helps. It means having remove blindness/deafness, remove disease, and remove curse at level 5 instead of level 7 and restoration at level 7 instead of level 10. Most of the CRs for the monsters that make those necessary are based on the cleric schedule.

That leaves two cases: the GM does not use condition inflicting or stat draining opponents until the spells are available on the warpriest schedule, or we're drowning in cleric scrolls.

In the first case the alchemist list has the condition removers for everything except death on his list, but can't use scrolls. In this case skalds stack nicely with bards, though the bard can't get the benefits from the skald himself and should probably be a relatively casty build. Magus is out because they aren't compatible with skalds. Bard/Skald/Alchemist/Summoner looks strong but cheesy.

In the second case there is no substitute for a warpriest. No other 6 level caster can use scrolls of remove blindness/deafness natively. Warpriests don't play nicely with skalds so they're out. That, in turn, means magus is in. Bards are still bards and bards are what make medium BAB classes hit like full martials. I'm inclined to say a warpriest, magus, and two bards to stretch the performance rounds and compensate for the extreme novainess of the magus. I'd say arcane duelist for the second bard, but otherwise no archetypes needed.


Magi don't nova past level four, unless they're Kensai or Beastblades. Just saying-- Hexcrafters and baseline Magi actually have beautiful endurance. Spell Recall is awesome, and Hexcrafters can, well, Hex.

Beastblades aren't really worth considering unless we're starting in the mid-to-high levels (high enough that 11 is a realistic goal, not a capstone), so just don't run a Kensai and you're good.


Entryhazard wrote:
Why no Skald?

skald is not so great for archers and dex based melee dudes.


Cap. Darling wrote:
Entryhazard wrote:
Why no Skald?
skald is not so great for archers and dex based melee dudes.

I was pointing out that the OP forgot to mention him among the 6/9 casters


I did, as an oversight. Skalds should be part of the list but I cannot edit the original entry.

Silver Crusade

A combination of bards with different archetypes would make a good group. A pack of inquisitors with different spell and feat choices would work well too. Mix and match between the above two groups and you should be able to handle most anything, with the occasional need for UMD to handle occasional difficulties.

Generally, two very well designed, versatile classes.


There are several different combinations that can achieve pretty much everything you need.

My personal choice would be: Bard (buffs, skills, and healing), Magus (utility spells, melee combat, AoE magic), Warpriest (BDF that isn't so dumb, with healing access and more utility spells), and really anything else can fill the fourth spot. Hunters and Inquisitors come to mind for ranged combat, Alchemists can also do ranged and specialize in AoE so the magus doesn't have to, Summoners become redundant since you pretty much have all the buffs you need so he'd be there just to have another beat stick.

Skald is the worst one on the list because raging song makes it so the rest of them can't cast spells.


Cap. Darling wrote:
Entryhazard wrote:
Why no Skald?
skald is not so great for archers and dex based melee dudes.

Dex-based melee dudes I'll give you, but don't Adaptive Composite Bows mean that dedicated archers would actually love having a Skald buff their strength?

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