Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Jacksonville
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I like my Dirty Trick fighter. Quick Dirty Trick (Blind, Superior), then it's whatever the party needs. Goon is vulnerable to sneak attack, I can do a trip/disarm/whatever (no shield slam due to tower shield) and I have sunder/imp sunder as options.
I notice the 40+ point power strikers don't go on about how 'useless' my character is with my bastard sword ('Bard Beater') anymore with my 'mere' teens to thirty point hits.
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That seems really easy.
So, thanks to the change, we can now destroy a +1 adamantine longsword with "only" 38 points of damage from a non-enhanced weapon.
It is easy, or at least, easily attainable. You do need to build the character around it. Support from the party makes it more realistic with less specialization.
That said, that's 38 points of damage dealt to the item INSTEAD of just attacking the creature. That's the main drawback to sunder, as your basically giving the enemy more HP when you choose to attack their armor or weapons instead of their bodies.
It's also vs CMD, instead of AC, which can be a bigger issue with higher level opponents.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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IMO a disarm specialist is un-fun if it's your primary shtick. It generally results in one of two outcomes:
1. You disarm the weapon-using bad guy. Fight over, everybody else sits this one out.
2. You can't disarm the natural attack monster/spellcaster. You sit this one out.
Can be fun as a nuclear take-the-kid-gloves-off secondary tactic, but I wouldn't put more than 1 or 2 feats into it unless you somehow have feats to burn.
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I have a fighter that sunders; he is level 11. I found that as you advance levels, there are less opponents to sunder/disarm in general, and that your toughest opponents don’t have anything to sunder/disarm. So you're making already easy opponents too easy, and your feats count for nothing against the challenging opponents. Also, I find that it's actually better to just kill mooks instead of sundering them since it's faster. So if I could go back, I probably wouldn’t have wasted feats on this tactic.
Spellcasters don’t need all their spell components in one pouch, it can be all over their body. I think sunder/disarm/steal in general would be too powerful if that were the case, with or without feats.
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I have a fighter that sunders; he is level 11. I found that as you advance levels, there are less opponents to sunder/disarm in general, and that your toughest opponents don’t have anything to sunder/disarm. So you're making already easy opponents too easy, and your feats count for nothing against the challenging opponents. Also, I find that it's actually better to just kill mooks instead of sundering them since it's faster. So if I could go back, I probably wouldn’t have wasted feats on this tactic.
Could always retrain, but I also had a character like this (non-PFS) with the same general issue.
There are a few options that make sunder more viable, but it's mostly a waste for a fighter. Disarm seems like a similar one.
That said, there are some nifty non-fighter types that can capitalize on sunder or disarm. I mean, the fighter-type is better off just killing them if they are that close, but a caster in melee range that destroy or disarms the opponent's weapons will really make any flankers think twice.
The Battle Mystery is pretty awesome in that it allows a single combat maneuver to use the oracle class and CHA for CMB, instead strength and BAb. Plus, I think a more non-combat character would actually get more mileage out of disarm or sunder, than a fighter or barbarian would. If you do go with Sunder, the Wrecker Curse is pretty amazing on that end.
With a Brawler I once disarmed a Gunslinger, taking his loaded Musket from him. I then proceeded to use Martial Flexibility to pick up Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Musket) so I could shoot him with it. Fun times.This is why I love my Brawler, or more specifically the Martial Flexibility class ability.
There's also tons of combat feats out there that most people wouldn't ever take because they are so situational, it'd be a waste to take them as a regular feat. Having the ability to swap them in and out on the fly is awesome.
A Disarm build is fine. Just make sure you have a backup option. My Trip build Magus was great until she hit the 4-5 tier and things started having flight. At that point, I needed to up her damage output. So just make sure you can still do some damage when disarming either isn't possible (natural attacks) or isn't practical.
Really, it's not that hard to just build a general combat maneuver specialist, able to do several CMB based attacks fairly well, rather than just focusing on one of them. And yes, you need to have a backup plan in case CMB doesn't work.
-j
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I'm tinkering with a Lore Warden (Fighter) that is going to eventually have all the "Improved ___" Combat Maneuver feats, and a couple of the "Greater ___" feats for the 'specialties', it is also going to be a good beat stick...
Hopefully it will be well rounded enough to hold its own when not doing the Maneuvers... Also... 7 Skills a level for a Fighter...
2 (Fighter base)
2 (Lore Warden bonus, must be Int skills)
1 (Human)
1 (Int mod)
1 (Fast Learner feat)
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7 (total)Any suggestions on traits?
One of the ones that lets you use Int for a Cha skill. Won't let you spend the Lore Warden skill points on it, but still...
Pragmatic Activator, for instance, for Int for UMD, or Clever Wordplay for Int for Diplomacy...
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I'm tinkering with a Lore Warden (Fighter) that is going to eventually have all the "Improved ___" Combat Maneuver feats, and a couple of the "Greater ___" feats for the 'specialties', it is also going to be a good beat stick...
Hopefully it will be well rounded enough to hold its own when not doing the Maneuvers... Also... 7 Skills a level for a Fighter...
2 (Fighter base)
2 (Lore Warden bonus, must be Int skills)
1 (Human)
1 (Int mod)
1 (Fast Learner feat)
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7 (total)Any suggestions on traits?
My Lore Warden/Maneuver Master mostly trips in combat, but also can do other maneuvers. Reach really helps in that you don't need all of the Improved feats.
I found that fighting defensively with Crane Style to be very helpful, and so the Threatening Defender trait worked very well for me.
I think this is the most fun of all my PFS characters.