Aveldaxis's page

Okay. One bump, then I'll let it die if it's gonna die.

I've finally settled on what I'm going to bring to the table this coming weekend (level 7 game, GM has declared it to be PFS-legal only). I'm going with a human "Oath of Vengeance" Paladin, wielding a Falchion two-handed. Since that's all relatively cookie-cutter, I'm just getting it out of the way.

Now, what I actually need advice on: feats, stat spread, etc.

At present, my starting ability scores are looking like 18 Str (+2 race), 10 Dex, 14 Con, 7 Int, 7 Wis, 17 Cha. At 4th level I'd throw a point onto Cha, of course.

For feats, I'm thinking of Power Attack and Cleave at 1st level, Extra Lay On Hands at 3rd, Great Cleave at 5th, Lunge at 7th.

The key strategy for this character is to charge into a mass of enemies and just start handing out beatings like candy. While my DPR isn't going to outshine any of our true damage dealers, it should be significant enough that at least some of our foes waste their load on my respectable AC/HP, amazing saves, and swift self-healing.

Thoughts, suggestions, observations, blatant personal insults?

As of 8/16/12, you will also be able to add aasimar, tiefling, and tengu to that list as well.

That is great news. I'm happy about it and I imagine a lot of people will be. Those three races are basically the ones I wanted to play!

Do you have a source for this information?

With the vast majority of what I play these days being Society organized, it matters immensely to me what I will actually be able to use from this book, specifically new races.

The Pathfinder Society Additional Resources page states the following:
"To create an aasimar, dhampir, fetchling ifrit, kitsune, nagaji, oread, sylph, tengu, tiefling, undine, or wayang character, you must have a Chronicle sheet that opens the race as a legal option at character creation."

And also: "In Chapter 3, nothing from the changelings, duergar, gillmen, gripplis, merfolk, samsarans, strix, sulis, svirfneblin, vanaras, and vishkanyas entries are currently legal for play."

So my question is this: what races in this book, if any, are legal for use in PFS without a special chronicle sheet? I would really appreciate knowing before I buy it.

To be fair to our Fighter advocate, Fighters DO have a lot of amazing tank benefits exclusively available to them that more than make up for their lack of auras and partial casting. Why bother pumping the party's saves vs mind effecting when you can just stand next to the enemy caster with a reach weapon and the Disruptive feat and passively make it impossible for him to do anything for the rest of the fight, just by being there.

The key thing that turns me away from them is their saving throws, and really just their saving throws, because most of the Fighter's contributions as a tank require him to get within melee range of the enemy, which he cannot safely do without surviving the first couple of spells that get lobbed off during his initial approach.

Admittedly, lay on hands might be the best tank ability in the entire game and means that a Paladin has higher effective HP than anyone in the party while still making full use of his turns. But it's often sort of overkill, since you're already invincible with a full plate and divine grace.

The one area in which the Paladin truly suffers (and so does the Fighter) is Touch AC. I have never had a Paladin build whose Touch AC was anything short of awful. Having insane saving throws helps a lot, since most touch spells/attacks provide a save to halve or negate the effect, but it's still a point that hasn't been made yet. That's one reason I feel the Monk is good competition for a Paladin in the tank arena. Monks have almost-as-good saves, almost-as-good AC (which is all touch ac), and are much more adept at combat maneuvers (the bread-and-butter of any "crowd control" build).

I'm not seeing why a Fighter would have a higher CMD than a Paladin. It's just Str+Dex+BAB, and both classes have full BAB. A Fighter and a Paladin with the same stat spread will have the same CMD at every level. The only exception being if the Fighter were to give up class features for a Maneuver-specific archetype, such a Lore Warden, which takes away most of his proficiencies and all of his armor training in exchange for a bonus to CMD at those levels (3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th). Your Barbarian example is even more ridiculous, because most Barbarian builds are going to have the same Str as a Fighter and a higher Dex (because they need Dex more to make up for their lack of heavy armor), which means that the average Barbarian has a superior CMD to a Fighter of the same level.

Basically, if you could please just provide a source for why a Fighter with the same ability scores as a Paladin just has more CMD by way of being a vanilla Fighter, I would be very interested. Because it's not there from what I've seen. You appear to just be making stuff up wildly.

You seem pretty upset, so I'm going to lead with an apology. To be clear, I do not think Fighters are bad at all. But this thread isn't about making a good character. It's about making a good tank. There are two things that prevent your character from getting taken out of the fight: Armor Class and Saving Throws. The Fighter has one of these and lacks the other pretty severely. A Paladin has as much AC as a Fighter and also superbly better saves. This does not mean the Paladin is a better class. But I feel it does mean the Paladin is a better tank, which is what this thread is actually about.

As far as tanking the Giant you've described, you should know that any kind of Full Plate a Fighter can afford and wear, the Paladin is also proficient in and likely wearing. Thus, they are physically on par in defenses. The Paladin's defense is not any weaker than the Fighter's physically, and is much better against effects which require a saving throw. As far as building a tank goes, playing a Paladin vs playing a Fighter isn't a trade of magical defenses for physical defenses; it is strictly adding magical defenses to physical defenses without a defensive loss.

I like a lot of the options available to Fighters, especially the two feats Disruptive and Pin Down, which I sorely desire. But as long as there is not a good option for mitigating a Fighter's crippling fragility vs spells and effects (and blowing a bunch of feats and traits on it isn't really a solution), I'm inclined to look elsewhere for this particular build.

I do like Sacred Shield and hadn't noticed the archetype before. Its 4th level ability is very similar to simply having Bodyguard turned on at all times.

However, I do need to point out that Stand Still must be used against an adjacent enemy and thus does not benefit from reach weapons or lunge the way that half the forum seems to think it does. Source.

Yeah, but you also don't see Paladins failing all of their saves except for Fortitude. That Fighter-in-a-Can is all shiny and tough until he's hit by a single compulsion, then the Big Bad has a new recruit.

Along the line of getting more up into people's faces, ala' Tripping (or Stand Stilling), no matter how many angles I look at it I can't get over the fact that Fighters just have more and better options, from Disruptive to Pin Down to the Brawler archetype (which seems to be the quintessential Lockdown archetype). This leads me to ask: is there a way to pump a Fighter's saves without too much sacrifice, such that he can tank half as well as a Monk or a Paladin?

The saves are the big selling point for me. It's significant enough that a lot of optimization builds dip 1 level in Paladin if they have any Charisma at all. As long as you didn't dump Cha, dipping Paladin essentially gives you a free Cloak of Resistance that stacks with the actual CoR, plus smite (or an oath) and an extremely useful 1st-level spell at-will (Detect Evil). The second level is almost as good, granting Lay on Hands (which is basically Fast Healing Xd6 where X is your Cha mod +1, amazing for a tank).

I could easily see dipping 1 or 2 levels of Paladin as a solution to any other build's saving throw issues when building this sort of guardian character, especially with Oath of Loyalty giving you a gravy superbuff for boss fights. Assuming, of course, that the build did not dump Cha.

The 3rd level of Paladin is a boring, barren wasteland, and the 4th gives another use of your smite or oath as well as some pretty underwhelming spellcasting, and then it just goes downhill from there (at least, for a tank build). I think 2 might be the magic number with Paladin here.

@Truesight

This is a lot more like it. You make the MVP (probably our local cookiecutter Treantmonk wizard) almost impossible to kill, and you are also impossible to kill, and the baddies are left wondering what to do.

A note: you can take Helpful as any race with the Adopted trait, and you still get your other trait. Source.

I guess the one thing that bums me out is I love the Lucky Halfling feat in combination with Paladin so much, but it's 1/day and there is no way to use it any more than that. I really wish there was a way to make saves for my allies (or aid another their saves ala' Bodyguard) more than one time.

@Truesight

This is nothing short of fantastic work. I really like it a lot. I guess the only two things I'd like to address are: 1) as you already mentioned, the saves are relatively vulnerable without a lot of sacrifice; and 2) as with any build that heavily optimizes Bodyguard, this suffers from the line "When an adjacent ally is attacked" in the feat description.

I'm afraid that reach weapons do not allow you to Bodyguard your allies from farther away. You have to be right up next to everybody in order to make use of your huge Bodyguard bonus, and the people who need it most (squishy casters and archers) aren't going to be anywhere near you while you're in melee doing your thing. On the other hand, if you hang back in order to protect them, then you just become a walking Mage Armor +.

The reason I'd mentioned trying this with an Oath of Loyalty Paladin is that you can still get a lot out of Bodyguard and pump people's AC even more (and their saves!) with your Loyalty Oath. Plus, as a Paladin, you have the best saves in the game, just as much AC as the Cavalier, and you can do more while you're sitting around with the casters because you are eventually a semi-caster yourself.

An interesting way to go would be to combine 4 levels of the above Paladin (for 2/day Loyalty Oath) with your Cavalier build, except Order of the Star (so that 1/2 your Cavalier level counts as Paladin levels).

Thoughts?

@kaisc006

I don't really want to argue with you because it isn't going to help me with this at all. I've already explained why that isn't a direction I want to go. Sorry :/

Another sort of interesting option is going for Oath: Loyalty on a Paladin with Bodyguard and the Helpful trait for a +4 to ally AC per Aid Another AoO and a +4 to their AC and +4 to their saves 1/day at first level. The "be unkillable and then make everyone around you also unkillable" approach I suppose. Enemies would either continue to get intercepted by all the defensive bonuses you're giving your allies, or realize that you're the source of it and try to aggro you down (unsuccessfully).

Any thoughts on this?

@kaisc006

But in sacrificing damage output for defenses, I immediately stop being the priority target. Any enemy with a brain, or even without, is going to realize that the ranger behind me is doing twice my DPR (or more) and has a fraction of my AC and HP. Just by looking at us. Clever NPCs will see our party approaching and immediately establish that, in fact. It'll only become more obvious as the fight goes on.

You can't say "DPR draws aggro" and then say "sacrifice DPR for defenses." Why would they hit me instead of the guys who didn't sacrifice DPR for defenses? They wouldn't.

However, reach weapons and trip is a good direction that you took, and your point about there being a minimum of untrippable PFS enemies is true.

@kaisc006

I feel like there's way too much of a focus on damage output here. These builds are definitely durable, and the reach helps a lot with the problem of casters just 5-foot stepping out of your useful zone, but I feel that feats like Power Attack are just not in the right direction and could be spent on more lockdown options. We have DPR, every party always has tons of DPR, I specifically don't want to compete on that stage at all. I'll certainly never make myself a more appetizing target with my damage than, say, our optimized archer.

@oneplus999

Very good ideas, thank you. I definitely like the idea of a Dex-based Monk with Agile and Stand Still. That's a lot of AoOs and a lot of enemies not going anywhere. In fact, focusing entirely on Combat Maneuvers, one could dump Strength and just never bother to properly attack anything.

However, such an AoO-focused build without reach is quickly defeated by an opponent simply 5-foot stepping away and then doing their business as usual, and it seems like Fighter has the only solutions for that (Pin Down and the Brawler archetype), unless I've missed something.

Then there's the issue of creatures Huge+ that are immune to your trips and repositions entirely, and flying creatures which can just focus your allies from above. Bodyguard seems like a good fall-back for those situations, especially with the Helpful trait (with adopted) for that +4.

I'm looking for build recommendations on a character who spends all day protecting squishies and otherwise keeping his party alive by being in the way.

The traditional "tank" role in online strategy games is generally defined by two key elements: being able to survive everything your enemies can throw at you, and forcing them to throw it at you instead of your allies. The latter is significantly easier in video games where you're often fighting programmed NPCs with predictable behavior which can be taken advantage of just by standing closer to them than your wizard. In Pathfinder, it takes a bit more work.

Right out of the gate, I would like to firmly discourage Fighter builds, for the simple reason that no matter how high your AC and HP are, a failed save is a failed tank. As a result, I feel like Monks (perhaps Flowing or Many Styles) and Paladins (Oath of Loyalty and/or Divine Defender?) are much more appropriate options, as they can both withstand physical attacks relatively well while also sporting excellent saves across the board.

However, making an indestructible character isn't very difficult. The challenge is having all that defense help the party, either directly (by actually forcing enemies to attack you) or indirectly (by being so much of a bother to enemies that they have to deal with you if they want to move/cast/etc at all).

I already have a general idea that feats like Stand Still and Step Up are going to make an appearance in this. Disruptive would be fantastic if it weren't Fighter-only (which I'm hesitant to play for aforementioned reasons).

Really just anything you can think of and why. The ultimate goal here is A) to make enemies have to deal with you and B) to have enough defenses (including saves) that they can't.

Luffy from One Piece is a good example. People follow him even though he's an idiot.

I also like this explanation a lot. I'd never thought of that. Especially a Paladin, one of, if not the only class to get away with a 7/7/20 mental spread. He's indestructible, fearless, unwaveringly just and fair, and a complete moron.

You have fake knowledge. Confidence is practically synonymous with charisma. I remember charisma has also been described as follows: a person with high charisma can convince others that they are very knowledgeable, but they faulter when faced with a true expert.

Your character has probably bluffed him/herself into believing that they are intelligent and wise as well. They act with extreme confidence, though they often draw bad conclusions. Just because you can convince people to do something, doesn't mean that you convince them to do the right thing.

This makes perfect sense and is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

I have a general understanding of the divide between Intelligence and Wisdom, and their roles in the way that a character is portrayed. If I remember right, the way Gygax put it, the Int guy knows why smoking is bad for him and the Wis guy chooses not to smoke. But what happens when you dump both, yet you've got so much Charisma that you can convince anyone to do almost anything for you, sway the hearts and minds of millions, and bend leaders to your whims with but a word?

Mechanically, max Cha allows you to manipulate those around you with extreme success, but this has a thematic assumption that the character in question is also relatively clever and experienced- he would have to be, otherwise how could be make such a strong case in any debate the way he does with those 20+ Diplomacy roles? So when you take a character who has the Charisma to win every argument, haggle any merchant, and inspire armies to greatness, but is as smart as a brick and as wise as a goldfish, how do you roleplay that? There seems to be an in-built contradiction when presented with this stat spread.

While I realize the easiest answer is "you're pretty," that doesn't feel adequate to explain the kinds of things you can do with maxed out Diplomacy. Especially if the character is interacting with NPCs of the same sex, who are significantly less likely to be influenced by your looks. Unless you're in the Kingdom of San Francisco.

The bonus from Bardic Performance shouldn't be underestimated, and after the standard action to get it rolling, it floats around for free. I've found that as an Archivist (whose performance adds to saves, AC, and attacks vs identified creatures- a.k.a. all of them), I can be extremely useful to the party without even fighting. In fact, I've gone about searching a room during combat, opening barrels and checking drawers, because I knew we had it under control and I was buffing everyone with free actions.

The beauty in bard is that even when you miss all your attacks and don't have a spell for the occasion, you can still flip your performance on, take a seat, and be passively useful to everyone. Not many classes have that luxury.