Right now, I have a player who's got the Magical Child archetype of the Vigilante class at level one. Her role seems to be party face, buff spells, and the rat familiar as a scout. But what do Magical Children do in combat?
So, do you have advice on feats to take for this character build? Do you do an intimidate build and depend on Dazzling Display and Signature Skill: Intimidate for fear effects, even though she doesn't have sneak attack or melee ability? Something to boost spell casting?
The PC dumped strength, has high DEX and CHA, is an aasimar, and took Noble Scion as her first level feat. The character has a lot of background hooks for that feat, so she can't really retrain out of that.
Unchained summoner spellcasting isn't worth focusing on IMO. Sure, glitterdust, haste etc. are still there, but with few castings and all at the full spell level on a 6-level caster they're going to be worse than a full caster doing the same job. There's just nothing special there to focus on.
Intimidating for other party members benefit is doable. So is specialising in a combat maneuver - e.g. With the favored maneuver talent at 2 & the expose weakness talent at 6 a vigilante makes a useful dirty tricks person. She'd need the agile maneuvers feat or possibly weapon finesse at 3 of course.
Does she have planned out how her familiar is going to evolve at 3rd, 5th & 7th levels?
Does she have planned out how her familiar is going to evolve at 3rd, 5th & 7th levels?
Nope. This was a spontaneous choice for fun concept mere hours before game play, rather than be forced to play a cleric, which she wasn't that interested in doing. She's excited by this, so I'd like the mechanics to enable her passion for it. Suggestions? Improved Familiar seems to be all about access to special abilities. She's CG, so it would have to be CG, CN, or NG.
Oh, and this will be in Hell's Rebels, so social and stealth elements are more prominent and there's less dungeon crawls.
Is not it better to take a courtly hunter?
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Ultimately faerie dragon has to be the best form for CG. Especially when stealth matters.
At 3rd though she has to get a celestial or entropic version of a normal familiar as the vigilante form - maybe a size small one so it can handle a stray servant in one-to-one combat if necessary (e.g. goat), or a peacock if she gets really into intimidate and wants a familiar to assist, or a monkey or raccoon if she wants something which can use door handles, or even a skunk because its musk will actually be useful in combat sometimes.
At 5th a sin seeker? There's not a lot of options in that corner of the alignment box at that level, unless you go by the text in the improved familiar feat rather than the text under the individual improved familiars. Anyway, while a flying mini-pig may be embarrassing to have around it's not short of special abilities.
I'm thinking that intimidate would be the most useful way for her to contribute in combat, it could start about now. The cunning feint vigilante talent would be useful from 8th level but she'll want something which works earlier. Dirty trick could work from 3rd level.
Ultimately faerie dragon has to be the best form for CG. Especially when stealth matters.
Yeah, she'd love a faerie dragon but, honestly, there's a lot of great choices for the 7th level slot. Probably the best contender against faerie dragon would be the Lyrakien Azata, with commune, immunities and resistances, great senses and skills, awesome flight, and some emergency minor cure and condition removal.
At 3rd though she has to get a celestial or entropic version of a normal familiar as the vigilante form - maybe a size small one so it can handle a stray servant in one-to-one combat if necessary (e.g. goat), or a peacock if she gets really into intimidate and wants a familiar to assist, or a monkey or raccoon if she wants something which can use door handles, or even a skunk because its musk will actually be useful in combat sometimes.
Monkey wouldn't be bad given it could use magic items; same deal with raccoons, which would fit in the urban center more. Peacock would actually work for her vigilante mode. I hadn't thought of suggesting that each form have a different specialty, so I suppose blending in could be the regular familiar's job.
At 5th a sin seeker? There's not a lot of options in that corner of the alignment box at that level, unless you go by the text in the improved familiar feat rather than the text under the individual improved familiars. Anyway, while a flying mini-pig may be embarrassing to have around it's not short of special abilities.
Yeah, if she'd been neutral good, 5th level would have been the earth, mud, or magma elemental for their burrow ability to get the party directly into basements. Or the aether elemental would be possible.
But, with the CG alignment, I think it comes down to Sprite and Sin Seeker. I kind of like the moral progression from rat to monkey/racoon to Sin Seeker: teaching humility, flexible thinking, and honesty.
I'm thinking that intimidate would be the most useful way for her to contribute in combat, it could start about now. The cunning feint vigilante talent would be useful from 8th level but she'll want something which works earlier. Dirty trick could work from 3rd level.
Intimidate would at least be interesting in terms of role-playing. Dirty trick is awesomely fun creatively as well. Unfortunately, the latter requires melee, and thus her weaknesses of BAB and AC come into play, but it at least gives her something to do in early levels.
The best at 7th is probably Chuspiki. It's got a scales-with-level air blast power (scales-with-level familiar abilities are uncommon) and it's nice and chaotic. I also like Tidepool dragon for it's number of water spells.
Huh. The Chuspiki does viable ranged damage: 4d6+5 by 7th level and it would scale. Does BAB keep up?
Sprite is a natural for chaotic people- it's got hands and speech so it can use magic items and do a variety of others useful things. Sin Seeker is available to anyone, looks ugly, but has at-will Detect Good/Evil/Lawful/Neutral spells, blindsight, and telepathic communication.
Yep, it's Sprite or Sin Seeker at that level.
Also? Look into Familiar Archetypes. There's a debate on whether or not Magical Child familiars lose the 'speak with others of it's kind' ability since their familiar merely comes from the improved list and they don't have the full Improved Familiar feat which says they lose it, which would mean you could take almost any archetype for most of them (Emissary and Protector are two I like most, though Pilferer, Decoy, and Valet have arguments for them)....
Yeah, I'm thinking about allowing that. It would make the pet in the pet class more viable.
Infiltrator familiar archetype doesn't work well for this, does it: familiar can't really scout and the communicate what it saw until 5th level. Scrying doesn't work, because the Magical Child doesn't get that spell.
Nope. This was a spontaneous choice for fun concept mere hours before game play, rather than be forced to play a cleric, which she wasn't that interested in doing. She's excited by this, so I'd like the mechanics to enable her passion for it. Suggestions? Improved Familiar seems to be all about access to special abilities. She's CG, so it would have to be CG, CN, or NG.
Depending on what is it that she likes about it, she might be able to have the same concept with better mechanics. Duettist bard is something that immediately came to mind that would probably do all the things she wants to do better, and be more useful in general.
That said, the dazzling display option isn't a bad one it is actually a pretty good debuff and if you build to pull it off it is fairly reliable.
Sprite isn't an option for CG usually - under the sprites description it specifies CN masters only.
The chuspiki does look good for combat. It's even got precise shot. Whispering wind could be useful for a scout too. I still like the faerie dragon's ability to fly, swim, turn invisible, and to use wands without a UMD check, but there is a viable alternative there.
Good catch. Missed that.
With feats and talents, the player's looking at something like:
1: Weapon Focus: Composite Longbow or a finessable weapon, Social Grace: Diplomacy
2: Lethal Grace
3: Dazzling Display, Renown
4: Social Grace adds Intimidate, Loses Vigilante Talent for spell casting
5: Signature Skill: Intimidate, INSERT SOCIAL TALENT HERE
6: Inspired Vigilante
7: INSERT FEAT CHOICE HERE
8: Social Grace adds Bluff, Loses Vigilante Talent for spell casting
That's if she goes the intimidate route, but she's concerned about having interesting things to do in combat. Feats are thus fluid right now. She may want to go archer, which I'm not sure how viable that is in this class.
Pure archer - with a 3/4 BAB class with no accuracy or ranged damage boost in class abilities, a PC with low strength, no bonus feats relevant to archery, and buff spells poorly suited to the role (haste excepted) - is not viable.
If getting close enough to do dirty tricks seems too dangerous, she might consider spells like shield, barkskin or displacement. Added on to light armor and a decent dex that should be sufficient.
For accuracy - improved dirty trick from the vigilantle talent gives a +2 bonus, agile maneuvers (or just weapon finesse if the trick can be described as using a weapon) adds dex to the CMB, and that should be enough to get started. Add Dirty Fighting later for a +4 bonus when flanking perhaps.
It looks from the above that she will change her level 1 feat from Noble Scion?
Pure archer - with a 3/4 BAB class with no accuracy or ranged damage boost in class abilities, a PC with low strength, no bonus feats relevant to archery, and buff spells poorly suited to the role (haste excepted) - is not viable.
Yeah, I'm not sure that's going to work well at all.
If getting close enough to do dirty tricks seems too dangerous, she might consider spells like shield, barkskin or displacement. Added on to light armor and a decent dex that should be sufficient.For accuracy - improved dirty trick from the vigilantle talent gives a +2 bonus, agile maneuvers (or just weapon finesse if the trick can be described as using a weapon) adds dex to the CMB, and that should be enough to get started. Add Dirty Fighting later for a +4 bonus when flanking perhaps.
Her concern is that dirty trick maneuvers don't seem to fit her conception of a magical girl character type. Can disarm work?
It looks from the above that she will change her level 1 feat from Noble Scion?
That's on the table, now, yes.
On 'dirty trick' maneuvers, I'll note how they don't have to be *flavored* as dirty. Sailor Mercury famously uses blinding moves. Sailor Mars would paralyze foes with her talismans. The main thing about 'dirty trick' is it inflicts status effects.
Those examples could be very helpful.
Disarm can definitely work, especially with a familiar to grab the weapon and run - but vigilantes don't get a talent to make it better like Expose Weakness does for dirty tricks, and many more enemies are immune to disarm (because they're casting spells, because they use natural/unarmed attacks, etc.)
Are there any good prestige classes to build towards with this archetype? Ordinarily, prestige classes are a step down in power, but with this archetype, maybe they aren't.