Kraken Throttle build advice.

[Cwethan]

I'll preface this by saying that my GM has approved a fairly nasty interpretation of the suffocation question, so hopefully this thread won't devolve into that discussion.

That said, I'm looking to put together a strangler, drawing heavily on the Thuggee-inspired Deceivers from Glen Cook's Black Company series. This will be for a Rise of the Runelords campaign. I'm not set on any particular class, because frankly I haven't built a grappler before. Here are my wants:

-Be able to grapple just about anything huge or smaller with judicious use of Enlarge Person
-I'd love to use a rumal, garrote, bladed scarf or something similar, though if it's not mechanically viable I'm happy to just flavor my unarmed attacks as using a small bit of cloth.
-Have viability against targets that are inappropriate for suffocating. I don't mind losing a fair amount of ability against other targets, but I don't want everyone else to be peeved that I'm napping on the job vs. an ooze or something.
-Bonus points if I can have good stealth and bluff/diplomacy, though I'm happy to use traits on that.

Thanks for any help!

[Third Mind]

While I've yet to read any of the unchained material, I'd still suggest the Tetori Monk as probably one of the better if not the best grappler around. They eventually gain abilities that even make it so you can brutally hug ghosts and keep them in their upright and hugged positions not to mention buggers who attempt to use freedom of movement.

[Trekkie90909]

Well if you're looking to shore up weak points I recommend the Tetori Monk. One of the biggest problems with grapple/pin/suffocate builds is that anything with Freedom of Movement is immune to it. Tetori Monk bypasses FoM. EDIT: Ninja'd

The Strangler Archetype for the Brawler adds some damage to grapple, it has the advantage of getting scaling damage with any close weapons (i.e. garrote etc).

There are a few archetypes for bard/magus which focus on bladed scarves, although I'm not terribly familiar with them.

Stealth is pretty situational - spell casting and magic items are the only way to be guaranteed to use it at low levels so maybe talk to the rest of the party about that.

[Cwethan]

Tetori does look good. I had been thinking about some spell-stored dispels for Freedom of Movement at higher levels, but having a built in solution is nice.

I'd been hoping for a non-monk solution so that I could splash MoMS for very quick Style feats. I'd looked at Strangler, since it's clearly a theme match, but since I'm getting pretty quick suffocation via Kraken Throttle, I'm not particularly wowed by its damage boosts.

I still haven't been able to track down a weapon that's particularly useful while grappling - the whole -4 penalty for not using both hands really hurts things, and I haven't seen a way around garrotes being unusable without significant setup.

Thanks for the great advice so far! Hopefully there's even more to come ;)

[Third Mind]

Cwethan wrote:

I still haven't been able to track down a weapon that's particularly useful while grappling - the whole -4 penalty for not using both hands really hurts things, and I haven't seen a way around garrotes being unusable without significant setup.

If you're looking for ways to drop that -4 to one handed grapples, I may have found just the thing HERE.

As for other classes, I feel like Fighter has to have some sort of archetype that goes along with grappling. One that's not focused on grappling that could still be good if you want to multiclass however, might be the Unarmed Fighter archetype for the fighter. That's another "free" style feat and you're dipping into a full BAB class with numerous weapon proficiencies.

[Vengeful Triceratops]

A method you might want to try is going up 4 levels of druid, taking shaping focus at level 5 and going up the rest of the way tetori monk. You can take growth domain instead of an animal companion so you can cast enlarge person on yourself, and being a huge animal than can become gargantuan with stupid monk bonuses to grappling can be very very nice. I'd recommend being something with multiple attacks that can grapple and has the ability to rake. Another thing you could do is find an animal with pounce and take the monk archetype Maneuver Master so you can pounce on a target, then grapple and pin them on the same turn.

[zook1shoe]

I've got a Dex-based Strangler Brawler/MoMS Monk/Unarmed Fighter for PFS.

I recommend using the MoMS Monk and Unarmed Fighter to get your style feats before the normal time, since they both ignore prereqs for them.