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Theorycrafting a build based around throwing the Greatpick with Hand of the Apprentice + True Strike, my thoughts as current:
Ancestry: Human (Half-Elf)
Background: Any with +DEX or +INT, I use Martial Disciple (Acrobatics) as it provides a decent skill feat, though you could do Hermit as well
Class: Wizard
- Universalist
- Arcane Thesis - Any, but I like Spell Substitution
Stats
- STR: 10
- DEX: 16
- CON: 12
- INT: 18
- WIS: 12
- CHA: 10
- Put points into CON, WIS, INT, DEX.
Relevant Feats
- Class, 1st: Hand of the Apprentice
- Class, 4th: Bespell Weapon
- Class, 8th: Bond Conservation
- Ancestry, 9th: Multitalented (Fighter Dedication) - Absolutely sucks that Wizard is the only class not trained in all simple weapons, so you need to take Fighter Dedication to be able to be trained in the Greatpick unless you want to blow two general feats. The bad to-hit due to low STR doesn't matter as you never want to swing with it anyway, just throw it with Hand of the Apprentice.
- Class, 14th: Superior Bond (lets you use this trick twice per combat)
Use a Dagger or Rapier (if you want to use an Ancestry feat on Elven Weapon Familiarity, retrain it at level 9) until you can get to 9th level.
Some WBL should ideally be spent on upgrading the Greatpick, a +3 Major Striking Flaming Shock + Another rune (You might want to take Shifting so you can transform it into a usable weapon when required) should deal, by my calculations:
2x(4*6.5+3*3.5+7)+6.5+10 = 103.5 damage + 2d10 Persistent damage at up to 500ft away on a critical hit.
Maths:
- Greatpick = 4d12 (due to Fatal) + 1d12 on crit (Fatal) + 10 on crit (Crit spec)
- Bespell Weapon, Greater Flaming and Greater Shock = +3d6 on hit
- Intelligence Mod = +7 on hit
The biggest issues I can see is that this obviously blows a lot of your WBL on a weapon that isn't useful more than twice per combat. The shifting rune alleviates this issue somewhat (Only requiring you to spend your 12th level feat on Diverse Weapon Expert to bring the Elven Curve Blade a little up to scratch) but I feel like I'm missing something here regarding optimisation.
Any thoughts?
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Just to make sure I understand -
Question- Why does it only work twice? Bond conservation does not appear to work on SLOTLESS focus spells but still you should have the spell slots for truestrike and a large enough focus pool (with familiar focus) to do more than 2 times
I think I missed something because it does sound neat
I think OP meant Bonded Focus instead of Superior Bond. And Bond Conservation because why not? Though I agree that they would probably want Universal Versatility in this setup.
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Just to make sure I understand -
The basic premise is that you have a Flaming Shocking Greatpick and you use Hand of the Apprentice to smack people with it after applying truestrike? Sounds pretty standard
Question- Why does it only work twice? Bond conservation does not appear to work on SLOTLESS focus spells but still you should have the spell slots for truestrike and a large enough focus pool (with familiar focus) to do more than 2 times
I think I missed something because it does sound neat
Whoops there's supposed to be a Universal Versatility there at level 10 so you have 2 focus points/encounter at level 14.
The problem is that we can only throw the Greatpick with a decent attack bonus via Hand of the Apprentice (as it uses a Spell Attack rather than a weapon attack), hence we need to use a Focus Point every time we want to throw it. We can use the Shifting rune to transform it into a Curve Blade, then attack, but that would require us to be in melee with our squishy wizard AC & HP.
It's true you can get 2 extra focus points per day with both Familiar Focus and Linked Focus, but I didn't want to include those because they're once a day abilities. It's probably best to grab Familiar with the 2nd level class feat and Linked Focus with the 6th.
It seems like the main purpose of Half-Elf is bypassing STR req for Level 9 Feat? Seems kind of awkward.
I think Melee Weapon Mage works better with STR>DEX to be effective with regular attacks when not using HoA.
AC isn't really effected if you go Heavy (or just Medium at low levels), which Human or Half-X support w/ General Feats.
Just Trained Light and 12 DEX allows OK AC until getting Medium at 3rd, allowing Half-X or free Versatile General Feat.
Late game you would technically fall behind max DEX Unarmored AC by 1, although IMHO Fortification more than negates that,
but there are multiple Archetypes which expand Trained Heavy to Expert Heavy by that level, for better AC + Fortification.
If anything, to use Half-Elf Multitalented at 9, I would focus on STR early grabbing General Armor Training Feats,
and later retrain to General Martial Proficiency/ others and use Multitalented for Champion/Expert Heavy without CHA.
General Feats can also allow better weapons earlier, just Simple enables Longspear for 1d8 Reach,
although if you have good STR just Wizard weapons Club and Staff offer decent damage w/ only 1H requirement to free offhand.
If not "needing" Half-Elf for Level 9 Multitalented, (Half-)Orc Weapon Familiarity has better weapons IMHO.
(including nice 1H advanced weapon if you later get martial and want convenient non-HoA melee option)
If you do want to focus on DEX, I might consider how just Simple Weapon Proficiency gets you d6 Spear
which you can throw using DEX as normal attack despite not being Finesse weapon, while still being melee weapon for purposes of HoA.
Elven Curveblade is Finesse option, but there is plenty of normal 1H Finesse Martials just one step down in damage that may be more usable
(no worry about Regrip action if you want to cast material spell and then weapon attack).
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It seems like the main purpose of Half-Elf is bypassing STR req for Level 9 Feat? Seems kind of awkward.
Main purpose is indeed bypassing the STR requirement for the multiclass, but the other thing to consider is what we'd be getting out of picking any other ancestry - I think Human is the best by far as otherwise the only stat we could really afford to flaw would be Charisma, meaning we'd have to play a Dwarf.
Dwarves aren't bad per se, but I don't think they offer much by way of Ancestry feats, whereas Half-Elves offer quite a lot of good stuff.
I think Melee Weapon Mage works better with STR>DEX to be effective with regular attacks when not using HoA.
AC isn't really effected if you go Heavy (or just Medium at low levels), which Human or Half-X support w/ General Feats.
Just Trained Light and 12 DEX allows OK AC until getting Medium at 3rd, allowing Half-X or free Versatile General Feat.
Late game you would technically fall behind max DEX Unarmored AC by 1, although IMHO Fortification more than negates that,
but there are multiple Archetypes which expand Trained Heavy to Expert Heavy by that level, for better AC + Fortification.
If anything, to use Half-Elf Multitalented at 9, I would focus on STR early grabbing General Armor Training Feats,
and later retrain to General Martial Proficiency/ others and use Multitalented for Champion/Expert Heavy without CHA.
I am taking Fighter Dedication more for the Greatpick proficiency here, and I believe that the ancestry feat is worth a lot less than the two general feats you'd otherwise need.
It's a possibility to do what you suggest here, but I think our AC will be rather lacking until we pick up our second general feat for Medium Armor and then our melee weapon attacks will be rather lacking once we retrain.
Not to mention the opportunity cost of those general feats - I think that Fleet, Ancestral Paragon (Nimble Elf), Canny Acumen, Incredible Initiative & Toughness will do more for our survivability than the +1AC we'd get from Medium Armor. Heavy Armor has its own issues with -Speed which will make it difficult to get out of melee if we ever find ourselves in melee.
The distinct advantage of increasing strength early, as I see it, is to do a lot more damage at low levels - however, low levels is where we struggle the most with survivability, due to not having any armor available and low enough hitpoints such that a highroll will knock us out of the fight.
General Feats can also allow better weapons earlier, just Simple enables Longspear for 1d8 Reach,
although if you have good STR just Wizard weapons Club and Staff offer decent damage w/ only 1H requirement to free offhand.
If not "needing" Half-Elf for Level 9 Multitalented, (Half-)Orc Weapon Familiarity has better weapons IMHO.
(including nice 1H advanced weapon if you later get martial and want convenient non-HoA melee option)
Greataxe->Falchion isn't bad, and the Greataxe's crit specialisation can certainly be useful even over the Greatpick's crit specialisation, but I don't believe two General Feats and STR investment for the Necksplitter is really worth it.
If you do want to focus on DEX, I might consider how just Simple Weapon Proficiency gets you d6 Spear
which you can throw using DEX as normal attack despite not being Finesse weapon, while still being melee weapon for purposes of HoA.
Elven Curveblade is Finesse option, but there is plenty of normal 1H Finesse Martials just one step down in damage that may be more usable
(no worry about Regrip action if you want to cast material spell and then weapon attack).
That's a good idea actually, the thing with the Curve Blade specifically is the fact that it's two handed, so you can use the Shifting Rune to transform from the Greatpick into the Curve Blade. I was thinking about using an Ancestry feat to pick up Rapier, but it's probably better to just take weapon training at 3rd for the Spear, then retrain out of it once we have Fighter Dedication.