EMR's page

If I was fighterman and a social challenge started bypassing my bard buddy to try to weasel info out of me I'd quickly escalate that into a problem more befitting my skill set. So there'd be a lot more stabbing and a lot less Rude NPCs around.

That's an idea for a product line if ever there was one!

Use the leasership feat and stat the cohort as an Eidolon as if the PC were a Synethist summoner of their class level. Rather than summoning you have to physically get into it. Start them out Large sized for Escaflowne style Mecha progressing to Huge for Gundum.

This approach:
Uses existing mechanics to give a suit.
The suit has special abilities bake in with a progression already integrated with PF mechanics
Is easy enough to add the Construct type to an eidolon and thus allow it to need repairing as one.
Imposes a mechanical sacrifice to get such a sweet ride in line with an existing feat (leadership).
The mech can be equiped as need as well.

Also later divine classes still have that restriction such as Warpriest. Oracle if it does not have that restriction is under no hinderance in their spellcasting.

Synth summoner or Magus. I love the spell combat mechanic and find it really fun. They have a sweet list as well. Synth summoner on a Samsaran is basically Vegeta so that gets instant approval by me.

I think OP, that you're 100% correct. The Ranger and Paladin are not only easier to build right out of the gate, but expose the new player to the entire game. When the campaign ends and they're ready to move onto a new character they can use their experience to decide what side of the game to focus on, or to play a similar gish character again. It's a gentle progression into how the game works on solid classes that have no trouble dealing with anything the game throws at them.

That being said, I don't feel the Fighter hate everyone's tossing around here is justified. Lets take the most recent (I think lol) archetype from Occult Adventures, the Senate and make a fighter that can DO things.

Human because feats are what we're here for.
Stats:
16 14 14 13 10 8 - basic point buy elite array for PCs so we'll make our character have:

STR 16
DEX 16 (+2 racial here) (Sensate gives up Heavy Armour after all)
CON 14
INT 10
WIS 13
Cha 8

Now the 10 INT is going to hurt... a LOT, but we can put our favoured class bonus in skill points, we're human, and as mentioned many times regarding the skill system: the DCs are relatively static in many skills so we don't need to be Bard level monkey here, just pretty good at them to feel we have a reasonable chance to succeed.

This gives us: 4 skill points at 1st level from human and favoured class bonus. We can take 2 skill based Traits to give us a boost in some skills that aren't on our list and to make them in class as well.

Sensate gets a different skill list: Acro, Climb, Craft, Perception, Prof, Ride, Sense motive, Survival and Swim. All in all a nice list to get things done. We have 4 points so lets go with: Perception, Sense motive, Survival and Acrobatics for jumping around.

Feats: We want to be as versitile and interesting as possible so I vote we focus on getting the most options we can from our feats.
1)Iron Will
1BF) Dirty Fighting
1BH) Improved Grapple

So our Fighter ends up looking like this:

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Sensible Stan
human Fighter 1 (Favoured Class bonus Skill)
Init +5; Senses Perception +5

Defense

AC 20; Touch 13; Flat-Footed 17; (+5 armour, +2 Sheild, +3 Dex)
HP: 12
Fort 4+; Ref 3+; Will +3
Defensive Abilities ; DR ; Immune ; Resist ; SR

Offense

Speed 20ft (30 w/o armour)
Space 5ft; Reach 5ft, 10 w/ Guisarme
Melee
Light Flail +4 1d8+3/x3 (Disarm, Trip)
Guisarme +4 2d4+4 /x3 (Reach, Trip)
Grapple +6 1d3+3 (+10 when flanking)

Ranged
Chakrum +4 1d8+3 /x3 range 30ft
Shortbow +4 1d6 /x3 range 60ft

Special Attacks
Dirty Fighting - When flanking can forego the flanking bonus to make a combat maneuver check without provoking an attack of opportunity
Statistics

Str 16+3, Dex 16+3, Con 14+2, Int 10+0, Wis 13+1, Cha 8
Base Atk +1; CMB +4; CMD 17 (10+3+3+1)( 19 vs. Grapple)
Feats:
1) Iron Will
1B) Dirty Fighting
1BH) Improved Grapple

Skills
Perception +1(rank)+3(trained)+1(wis) = +5
Sense Motive +1(rank)+3(Trained)+1(Wis) = +5
Acrobatics +1(rank)+3(trained)+3(dex)-6(AC penalty w/ armour and shield) = +1 (+3 w/o Shield)(+7 w/o unarmoured)
Survival = +5 (same as other WIS skills);

Languages Common
SQ
Traits: Reactionary (+2 init), World Traveller : Diplomacy (+1 always class skill)

Combat Gear
175gp
Kiko Armour (30gp)
Heavy Wooden Shield (7gp)
Guisarme (9gp)
Light Flail (8gp)
Shortbow (30gp)
20 Arrows (1gp)
20 Blunt Arrows (2gp)
Chakrum x4 (4gp)
Leather Armour (10gp)
74gp left for Alchemists Fire, Tanglefoot bags, basic adventuring gear, maybe a horse depending on campaign, food, etc.
Other Gear

---------------------------------

So what can Stan do?
Well out of combat he can watch and call people on their b~&&%@$~ while the party face is doing the talking an negociating due to his decent Sense motive. He's more than capable of guiding the party through the wilderness and tracking their quarries. He's an effective spotter at +5 and when he does spot danger he can react quickly at +5 to initiative.

In combat he has a slew of options that he's very skilled at. He can lead in with Flail and Shield if tanking is more what's needed at that time and knock people about due to Dirty tactics. 20 AC is really potent at this level and so he'll be able to take a few attacks.

If he wants to he can play the role of trip monkey with his Guisarme proning people from reach, and due to Improved grapple can drop the Guisarme and just wrestle anyone that comes too close (assuming he can't just back up)

Chakrums make him a strong ranged attacker at 1d8+3 damage.

Against casters his grapple mods will shut them down in their tracks with a +6 to the roll vs. their generally terrible CMDs and once they're grappled they're screwed since the check is 10+6+level of the spell for a minimum of DC 17 to cast. Which is pretty tough to manage at level 1.

So our fighter has good defenses, decent saves, a good selection of skills, albeit small, but they give him useful things to do outside combat. His stats and BAB and slew of feats gives him the ability to freely adopt any of 4 different combat styles all of which he can execute quite competently.

At level 2 he gains some further Will save enhancements, can broaden his skill set some more, or focus on a mainstay like say Power Attack or Deadly Aim, spend some points to pick up Diplomacy and advance his other skills.

At level 5 he gains a +1 insight bonus to attacks, damage and will saves pretty much all of the time that increases every 4 levels and weapon training as well, bolstering his offense and defense nicely.

This is not a bad level 1-5 character by any means. This guy is more than capable of pulling his weight in any party or adventure path and is a fighter with only 1 archetype and not even maxed out wealth and gear and whatnot.

However he definitely was not quick to make, and I had to know what I was doing. He is NOT a character for a new player IMO, unless that new player is receiving this guy as a pregen.

So personally I don't think Fighter is as terribad as everyone's saying and hope that my example of Stan here proves that well enough.

People really need to stop slammig 3pp as if its some universal answer. The 3pp in question is Dreamscarred Press for crying out load, which is 3pp of incredible quality by any measure. Additionally this rerolling ability on the stalker is nothing compared to what a prd only Magus could toss out.
Level 1: 18 dex + chain shirt + sheild = AC 22 for important fights, spiked to AC 24 by fighting defensively while spamming control cantrips.
Level 3: take Hex Magus arcetype and extra hex and now you're tossing around misfortune hex and cackle giving a far superior reroll take the lowest ability that isn't linked to a limited resource. Plus you have magic. And a +3 AC now from fighting defensively if you want.
Level 5: you get blur... So now you can rock AC 24-28AC, 20% miss chance AND reroll take the lowest while again tossing out magic or smacking people down as you please.

So yeah, taking jabs at 3pp is poor form, and pretty disrespectful to the hard work of these people. Especially since we're playing a system that IS 3pp of 3.5 anyway...

Since you have a ki pool, you can multiclass magus and go the unlimited spells route: take ki - arcana so you can use your ki as arcane pool points, then take spell blending: ki leech and you've got the ability to crit / kill people for ki which you then spend on spell recall to recharge your spells. It requires 7 levels of Magus to do, but for what it is, waiting until level 9 isn't so bad.

One thing I've done to help with this HP thing is to allow players to spend Mythic Power defensively on additional surges. So a Mythic Fighter attacks, the opponent is hit, he doesn't want to be so he uses his surge to add 1d6 to his AC, rolls a 2, not enough, spends another point to increase it by another 1d6, rolls a 6 yay! But this is the first attack of a full attack so it still hits, speds another point rolls a 6 again forba miss. Defender now keeps this new AC for the rest of the round. Defeder is down 3 Mythic Power and the parties continue to fight. Same system applies to saves.

Dreamscarred Press has AMAZING quality. I highly recommend Path of War. There's nothing in there that remotely touches what full casters can do in PF, instead the options are fun and amazing for fighty types. Their Psionic rules are sweet as well.

Problem with the phrasing of the acceptance of Burn. Since it's listed as simply being non-lethal damage is temporary hp, it's going to deal damage, that isn't reduced or mitigated by anything, to Temp HP first.

Temp HP, doesn't reduce, it doesn't redirect, it doesn't share, it's just another HP pool that you have that functions exactly like real hp except it doesn't stack with itself.

So what this means is that the Force Ward can be stacked patiently to insane levels because the temporary HP it grants will continue to soak the burn, allowing you to burn your ward to close to collapse, let it regenerate and then repeat resulting in a pool of temp hp that blocks out the sun.

And at higher levels persistant spell can be used to really impede saving throws anyway. There are heights of power available within the system sure, but what many people who decry these builds seem to forget is that pathfinder doesn't require the cutting edge of optimization in order to have a successful character. An EK is more than powerful wnough to tackle anything the game will throw at them. If something rears it's head that would give an EK pause, it's going to slaughter half the other classes in the game.

For me I've found Mystic Theurge to be a very viable route. The focus is on having a vast number of useful spells so that you're able to contribute markedly your entire carreer. People tend to focus heavily on comparing the MT to the overall power of a full caster and their ability to produce those high level effects, while ignoring that often those effects are overkill. The 6/9 casters are viable casters in their own right and with how powerful spellcasting is at all, even lower level spells (colour spray, glitterdust, web, haste) are game changers. I'm playing a character aiming for MT right now and to further push the issue I'm using an Oracle / Crossblooded Sorcerer split. This means I don't get my first actual 2nd level spell until sorcer 5 (character level 6)! On the surface this looks terrible, but at Sorc 3 / Oracle 1 right now my character has around a Dozen spell slots a day. 6 on the Sorc side and 5 from Oracle (yay 18 Cha).

Here's what I did:
Waves Oracle 1 / Crossblooded Borial / Marid Sorcerer 3

Curse: Deaf, all spells cast as silent spells.
Revelation: Freezing Spells. Any cold spell that deals damage and allows a reflex save slows the enemy for 1 round.

Sorcerer: bloodline arcanas: +1 DC on cold spells, change any element to cold.

Feats:
1) Spell Focus Evocation
3) Spell Specialization (Burning Hands)
5) Rime Spell

This first series of feats allows you to at 1st level play the straight Oracle role of party support and healing. I ha a great Dex so I could plink away with a shortbow as well. Level 2 was a straight upgrade with Burning Hands allowing me to toss a strong debuff on multiple enemies at once which was great.
Level 3 meant spell specialization kicked in which raises my Burning hands damage to 4d4 which makes for a very nice AOE spell. DC 10+1(lvl)+1(bloodline)+1(feat)+4cha= 17 for 4d4 cold damage and be slowed for 1 round. It's no scorching ray of course but that ms nothing to sneeze at when you can catch 3 enemies in it.
Level 4 (Sorc 3) meant more spells keeping the same strats, supporting the party with buffs and healing while unloading on enemies when they cluster around the melee using a warhorse to augment my mobility. As soon as I hit level 5 Sorc I change my Spell Spec to Scorching ray allowing me to toss out 3 rays which is comparible damage to a full caster with the spell.

Anyway I've found the sheer breadth of options and volume of spellcasting to be invaluable. It's a different type of caster for sure, but absolutely one that is a valuable addition to any party.

EMR wrote:

Imbicatus wrote:

EMR wrote:

Did you really just claim that a rogue would do better in combat than a tier 1 full caster? Because it really looks like you just did.

At mid levels, using chill touch via major magic for touch sneak attacks, with a valet familiar outflank buddy sharing your sneak attacks, yes.

And if you are relying on full casting, then all of the resources you spend on EK are wasted.

As opposed to the Eldritch Knight blinding an entire encounter with pyrotechnics or glitterdust before beating the crap out of everything as an enlarged unhittible monstrocity.

Yeah... Rogue has nothing on the EK.

Save or sucks with the low DCs you have for devoting build points to STR and less access to higher level spells because you are a full spell level behind? Good luck.

Amazing. Wizards go from dominating the game from level 5 onward to being worse in combat than a ROGUE the moment they go 1 spell level behind and choose to support a secondary stat that has hundreds of ways to buff it through the roof. Who knew?!

Slower access to spells hasn't hurt the Sorcerer and it certainly doesn't hurt the EK. By mid levels the EK has more than enough game breaking magic at his disposal that he'll tear apart any combat he wants to. He is a full caster first and foremost able to leverage his powers as a Wizard(the strongest class in the game) to augment his melee prowess.

EMR wrote:

Did you really just claim that a rogue would do better in combat than a tier 1 full caster? Because it really looks like you just did.

At mid levels, using chill touch via major magic for touch sneak attacks, with a valet familiar outflank buddy sharing your sneak attacks, yes.

And if you are relying on full casting, then all of the resources you spend on EK are wasted.

As opposed to the Eldritch Knight blinding an entire encounter with pyrotechnics or glitterdust before beating the crap out of everything as an enlarged unhittible monstrocity.

Yeah... Rogue has nothing on the EK.

Did you really just claim that a rogue would do better in combat than a tier 1 full caster? Because it really looks like you just did.

Edit: In response to this (should have quoted)

"And even if a rogue only has a better BAB at four levels, a rogue has a better BAB at four levels. You can make a combat-optimized rogue using the elf FCB to have chill touch available every fight, delivering touch-attack sneak attacks. Such a rogue would perform better in combat than an EK in most situations."

For the DBZ style magic monk synethist dors this tremendously well especially if you play a Samsaran and dump one level into crossblooded sorcerer for orc and dragon bloodlines. You snag scorching ray, fireball and something else for your spell list and can power up (summon eidolon) fly, punch with the force of greatswords, and kamehameha via scorching ray 4d6+8 per ray so 12d6+24 damage baseline and if you get high enough you can empower that for 18d6+36 from a 4th level slot.

Flight, great AC, a big ol' nuke and fist beatings = DBZ to me lol.
Samsarans are just the Saiyans of Pathfinder.

Seriously.
Or a million other things a level 20 sorcerer has over whatever the crap mooks are going to be using detect magic on you. They're lucky you're showing up in person at all and not just nuking the whole city state from orbit.

I vote for ignoring the "no spells active rule" and go full on with everything. After you've reduced him to ash you're going to be ruling the country anyway so who's going to call you on it?

I was going to say the same thing. Your guide has people choosin their name before their race, picking their stats before they even know what class they are and thus what stats they'll need. Seems backwards to me. Especially for new players I tend to find working from Class to Attributes to race to name and background. Basically ask "what do you want to do? How do you want to do it? Where did you come from? And who are you?

Picking your name first means Elfy McGroverson is going to be erasing a lot when he reads the race section and class section and decides to actually play a dwarf warpriest.

Just my 2c.

My Sylph multi-class Monk (Zen Archer) takes the Cloud Gazer racial feat to see through the fog she creates between herself and her enemies with her horn of fog. She has total concealment from them, while they have no concealment from her. Does she get to apply her SA dice to her attacks while within 30ft after the surprise round, as long as she maintains the total concealment?

Since the thread went into all sorts of crazy pretty quick I'll post an answer to the OP.

You may SA to your hearts content. Total Concealment means you're invisible to them, as you are totally concealed. If you are attacking while invisible, targets are denied their dex bonus to their AC and therefore you may sneak attack them.

None of the stealth rules and crap matters in this case, and indeed you aren't stealthing at all but full attacking with your arrows. All that matters is that they can't see you (total concealment) and therefore you are an invisible attacker and can SA.

Go for wizard 2 OP. As you've said you get 2 spells for free, so you'll be starting your new spellbook out of leaves, wood, bark or monkey leather. You'll be able to then prepare your empty slots with the new spells and be able to do your magic mojo again.

Keep in mind as well that cantrips do NOT need to be prepared each day. So you still have all your original cantrips in your head. Which probably means you can toss Daze around like a crazy person on each enemy each turn which is significant battle control for this level until you can get your full book back and toss out real spells like sleep and colour spray.

I'd buckle down through it, and come out swinging.
I'd also talk to the GM outside the game about what the crap is going on. 3 sessions without being able to play your class is extreme.

Alternatively, I don't know what you're wisdom is like, but if you must multiclass, go cleric and that way you can mystic theurge down the line for all sorts of castery goodness.