| Brightsaber |
Hi! This is my very first post. If I'm doing formatting, etc. wrong, please tell me how to fix it.
I'm a newbie to Pf1 coming from 3.5. I like the creative directions 1st ed. Pathfinder has taken, but I'm overwhelmed with all the choices available even after consulting some of the guides. I'm asking for help to make 4 characters to be as powerful as possible within the restrictions and character ideas below. I'm only looking at Paizo products; no 3rd-party, please.
I want to create two separate NPC adventuring duos as acquaintances and non-violent-rivals to the PC's. They represent other people in the adventuring business, so the PC's will encounter them from time to time, and the duos might complete some side-quests that the PC's don't pursue (a.k.a. "you snooze, you lose"). This is intended to give the players a feeling that life goes on for the rest of the world even as their PC's pursue their own quests and goals. The other reason for making these duos acquaintances is so they can be used as ready-made characters for drop-in players.
With half the numbers of the baseline 4-character party, I'm assuming that the adventuring duos have exceptional qualities to enable them to survive. For the first duo, that means near-perfect starting ability scores. For the second duo, I'm thinking that a 30-point buy would be appropriate (and no ability scores below 10). I don't want gestalt, but I think that some amount of "cross-training" would be appropriate, probably through archetypes and VMc and such. For example, some of the things mentioned in https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42moy?heal-skill-non-magic-healer will be used for recovering from injury.
I also want to try the evangelist prestige class from Inner Sea Gods, so both duos will be X5/evangelist 10/X+5 even though that loses any 20th-level capstone of their main class.
The main house rule is that I dislike magic-marts. In general, the NPC's' crafting philosophy will mirror that of the PC's—if the PC's are depending on others to make magic items for them to buy, so will the NPC's, which results in very few makers of magic items. However, the more item creation feats that the PC's take, the more NPC's will choose to become makers of magic items, which increases the availability of magic items for purchase. I don't mind PC's buying the magic items listed in a settlement's stat block, but, beyond that, I mostly consider buying magic items a reward for good gaming/role-playing or extraordinary success on a quest.
The first duo are an emberkin aasimar and a grimspawn tiefling best friends with the Unscathed basic magic trait. Both are neutral good blade adept arcanist VMc magi; I think a guide mentioned that VMc magus was needed to make blade adept work. I think of blade adepts as being like Jedi consulars in that they're willing to swing their trademark weapon but usually rely on their magic. The aasimar is a devotee of Sarenrae (sword bond to scimitar; spell resistance & remove disease variant abilities from Blood of Angels, pg. 19), and the tiefling is a worshipper of Iomedae (sword bond to longsword; spell resistance & see in darkness variant abilities from Blood of Fiends, pp. 16–17; prehensile tail alternate racial trait).
- aasimar - tiefling
Str - 18 - 18
Dex - 16 - 15+2
Con - 14 - 15
Int - 18+2 - 18+2
Wis - 17 - 17–2
Cha - 17+2 - 17
lvl 4 - Cha 20 - Cha 18
lvl 8 - Wis 18 - Wis 16
lvl 12 - Int 21 - Dex 18
lvl 16 - Int 22 - Con 16
lvl 20 - Int 23 - Int 21
Feats - aasimar - tiefling
1 - incredible healer - incredible healer
5 - deific obedience - deific obedience
9 - pathologist - spell penetration
13 - acupuncture specialist - healer's hands
17 - leadership - leadership
Arcanist Exploits (same for both?)
5 - potent magic
7 - metamagic knowledge
11 - greater metamagic knowledge
13 - quick study
15 - dimensional slide
17 - metamixing
19 - school understanding (void)
VMc Magus Arcana (same for both?)
7 - empowered magic
15 - quickened magic
19 - reflection
evangelist 1: which 2 skills?
evangelist 10: spiritual form +4 to which ability?
The second duo are rivals to the first duo, and they trained at a rival school. My thoughts for them are less developed, but they will be neutral worshippers of Gorum and Nethys. Should they use variant multiclassing? Compared to the first duo, is this duo slightly more specialized and slightly less concerned about being multi-role generalists? That could help differentiate between the 2 duos. I have no clue what races this duo should be and what traits they should choose.
I'm thinking the Gorum worshipper should be a primalist steelblood bloodrager with an aberrant bloodline, but one guide suggested that the destined bloodline fit well with steelblood, so I'm not sure which to use. (I don't want to use the arcane bloodline, since my playing group is planning a ifrit bloodrager with it.) With primalist, which bloodline powers should be swapped out, and which rage powers should be swapped in? Because of Gorum, I'm thinking greatsword and spiked full plate.
I'm drawing a blank when it comes to the Nethys worshipper beyond a 9/9 arcane caster. Inner Sea Gods mentions Gorum and Nethys as martial and magical counterparts, so the Nethys worshipper ought to be the arcane complement to the Gorum worshipper. If the Gorum worshipper remains a bloodrager, that means he has a bit of magical ability, so perhaps the Nethys worshipper has little more martial ability than the usual arcane fullcaster? Maybe a tengu with swordtrained, claw attack, or exotic weapon training or maybe one of the races with weapon familiarity?
- Gorumite - Nethysian
Str - 17 - ?
Dex - 14 - ?
Con - 14 - ?
Int - 10 - ?
Wis - 12 - ?
Cha - 14 - ?
lvl 4 - Str 17 - ?
lvl 8 - Str 18 - ?
lvl 12 - Str 19 - ?
lvl 16 - Str 20 - ?
lvl 20 - Con 15 - ?
Feats
(no idea what they should take except for Deific Obedience at 3rd level)
evangelist 1: which 2 skills?
evangelist 10: spiritual form +4 to which ability?