Calling Hunters and Destroyers of Demons


Advice


Ok, a group of friends want to do a home brew similar in concept to Wrath of the Righteous. There will be tough fights against demons in upfront moderately large scale battles. Also finding and eliminating the demons that have escaped and are out amongst society. Securing allies will certainly be a goal. Clear through to exposing traitors working for the demons. So a large variety of skills and capabilities will be needed.

The intent is to make this quite difficult so well designed characters that are built to work as a team will be required. They don’t want this to be a random collection of dudes that happened to walk into a bar at the same time. It will be a specifically chosen team which will be assigned to combating the incursions from the World Wound. The first obvious thought was all members of the same church. So some archbishop or whatever selected and trained these 5 guys for the task. But it wouldn‘t have to be a church. Some nobleman or other organization could have done something similar.

I know these 3 GM’s. So there are few points that should be mentioned:
Characters really need to have multiple things they can do in and out of combat.
Sometimes the group gets split up due to time constraints. So you can’t have only 1 guy with social skills, only 1 guy with melee capability, etc… If you have only 1 face, sure as heck you will find yourself in a social situation with 3 characters with no ranks and 5 charisma.
Enemies (at least the intelligent ones) learn from the PC’s after repeated exposure or fame. If the PC’s repeatedly win by bogging the bad guys in a sea of mud and fireballing them until crispy. The enemy leadership will start sending flying creatures that are immune to fire. Things like that.
Yeah sure, builds need to specialize. But not to the point of predictability or inability in any other areas.
They don’t do magic item shops. So it is risky to make a build that relies on having a specific magic item.
Scouting is almost necessary. If you clomp around all the time, you will constantly get ambushed by prepared forces.
They don’t use lots of traps, but those they use are seriously dangerous. Not just a few points of damage per level. So I wouldn’t quite say Trap Finding is absolutely necessary, but it isn’t useless either.
Enemies will use tactics and care when appropriate.
Sometimes bad guys will try to run away when they are losing instead of everyone fighting to the death. I believe the GM’s have purchased the Chase Card deck to use for those occasions.
Decent sized group, so they don’t want a bunch of pet/summoning builds in the party.
A divine character is held to the standards espoused by that church/deity. So if you are a cleric of Shaelyn, you dang well better follow the agreed upon precepts of Shaelyn. Else you may not be granted the spells you want – or any at all. Not as severe as the paladin’s oath, but you are still supposed to be a good representative of the faith.

We do not know what if any house rules will be in effect. But they are usually relatively minor.

The 3 rotating GM’s have a bunch of killer ideas already. However, the group has never actively tried to make a purpose designed team before. The closest they have come is “Well we don’t have an offensive caster yet, so I’ll make one of those.”

So, the group would like recommendations on sets of characters that mechanically and thematically work well together for the purpose of combating demons and their supporters.

Grand Lodge

Well, the best situation team I can think of is something along the lines of:

Paladin, frontline fighter with social skills (also has minor HP healing and good condition removal)

War Priest, back up frontliner or striker type, really lacks skill points, but a human war priest with decent INT might be able to cover some of the missing skills

Cleric, there are tons of cleric builds around here, pick a few that mesh well

Oracle, similar to cleric but you can make more blasty type.

Inquisitor, skill monkey, hunting (tracking and social interrogating) with some good buffs. Can also be a good combatant (Bane always hurts, and Monster Lore helps to ID the demons).

To be honest, I would put more emphasis on Inquisitors in the group then Paladins and War Priests (still nice to have one or the other). The only issue is the Inquisitor gets to skate the fine line on the edge of the faith vs A divine Character is held to the standards espoused by that church. That is a GM question however.

As for other things to be mindful of, Everflowing Aspergillium. Demons can change tactics all they want, a smack from this thing is ALWAYS gonna hurt. Holy Water in general is gonna hurt. Cleric, Oracle, Inquisitor and War Priest are all able to make it.


If your GMs will actively try to shut down repeated tactics then you need to avoid pure martial characters and spontaneous (i.e. limited spells known) casters. That still leaves a fairly wide field, especially as you can probably get away with one or two of these in a party of five without limiting your tactics.

A wizard or arcanist can pick up the spell Aram Zey's Focus to be a backup trapfinder. For the primary, an investigator with the empiricist archetype is best IMO.

A cleric with the evangelist archetype is a solid buffer, and as a prepared caster they can switch between some other roles too.

A warpriest or alchemist is a more flexible beatstick than a pure martial or a magus. The alchemist may be able to be a secondary scout.

Finally, a paladin really is handy when dealing with demons.

With the exception of the warpriest any of these can do a bit of talking, though the int-based casters may need a trait devoted to it. Make sure the primary casters each take a crafting feat if magic item shops don't happen.


The GM's aren't trying to shut down a particular PC's capability. They try real hard to approach it from the point of view of the bad guy.

If the last 3 hideouts are smoking holes in the ground full of charred bodies. And the only survivor is hysterical about walls of fire trapping them in the basement then rolling down the stairs in a continuous stream of fire. At that point it makes sense for the bad guy to procure a few potions of resist fire and your sorc with umpteen fire spells may find things more difficult.
If fights are being won by hordes of monsters popping into and out of existence, there will probably be a couple of archers with see invisibility assigned to pin cushion the summoner.

But it also depends on what info the badguys could reasonably get. If the players are very careful to not leave evidence, not brag about their success, have things like mind shielding, and vary their tactics; it will be much more difficult to prepare for them.
We once had a group that fought public duels/battles with one specific tactic being very common. But we had a couple of very different tactics for secret/critical battles. The GM's loved it and had the BBEG prepare for our public tactics, making the final fight easier.

I don't think we have to eliminate spontaneous caster and martial characters, they just need to have some versatility.
If the only thing your martial guy ever is ever seen to do is disarm with a whip, you can expect to get grappled by a guy with armor spikes (or something equally disruptive). But if your guy fires a bow at the foe he can't get to, disarms someone when close, then switches to hacking them to pieces with a greatsword. There isn't a weakness to exploit.

I had forgotten about Aram Zey's Focus. Excellent point that needs stuck in someone's list or book.

We do have a guy that has been talking about running the evangelist archtype.

I really like the warpriest, they have some excellent capabilities. I haven't been too impressed with the alchemist yet. But most of the ones I've seen have been run by ... Oh let's say players with less system mastery. So we'll talk about giving that a try.

I know paladin's are very effective against demons (or other evil outsiders), but that is a point of contention in this group. They have a lot of experience with Jerk-GM's and Jack-Hole Players to show that paladins are just problems.
Although it isn't my favorite class, I may volunteer to run a paladin just to show it can be done well.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

here's one option:

Evangelist Cleric- go for a reach build to add some damage through AoOs and have your turns free for spells/channel/performance. full caster, great buffer, heals/status removal, some melee, probably some face skills.

Ranger- take divine tracker (its great for the theme, and a solid archetype), stack that with Trapper if you're really worried about traps or Demon Hunter if not; build as a switch hitter (enjoy evangelists buffs). melee and ranged, great skills (including scouting), either trap finding or some spell support.

Paladin- take oath of vengeance, use an angelkin (they make awesome pallies), dip bloodrager[celestial]; use a simple 2hander build (enjoy evangelists buffs). solid melee, face skills, some healing/status removal.

Inquisitor- take the sacred slayer archetype (losing judgements hurts, but studied combat has no limit on uses/day, and evangelist buffs will help) and conversion inquisition, take the slayer's trapfinding talent. great skills (face, scouting, traps), decent combat, back up caster.

The last slot is tricky... a warpriest would be cool/interesting, and would get a lot of mileage from the evangelist buffs, but then you only have one full caster (and no arcane)... A celestial sorcerer (possibly with the seeker archetype to spare the ranger from taking trapper) would be a strong option (and an emberkin aasimar would be good for that, they already got most of what you trae away at 3rd level).


Divine Tracker is perfect for the theme if we go with a religious group. I'm not finding a Demon Hunter archtype for the ranger. I'll check the d20 site tonight.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Sorry, it's demonslayer, not hunter...

It's on d20pfdrd... I think it's from inner sea combat (where it might have a different name).

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