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The thing about the Sanctified Slayer is that it's both a great archetype and a not so great one. I've never played it, but maybe someone could tell me if they've reliably in combat gotten the sneak attacks off.

Animal domain with pack flanking

Rynjin wrote:

Pre-buffing is a thing.

Prebuffing is a gift that your GM gives you. My GM isn't always kind.

Heroism is a 10 minute/lvl buff so it should be up for every encounter.

Things like Magic Vestment can be precast before the day even starts with a lesser rod of extension and it will last for most of the day.

Granted your inquisitor did take Travel domain which means your damage will be lower compared to a feather or rage domain inquisitor. But there should not be a huge difference between your group's slayer and you.

As for scouting, I actually like to use stealth synergy and scout together with whoever has the highest stealth roll. With liberal use of detect alignment and high perception, you should have a really good idea of when combat is about to start.

How do you even get Sneak Attack off often enough for Sanctified Slayer to be worth it?

Break it down for me, if you could.

This feat

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/pack-flanking-teamwork

It basically says as long as you are adjacent to your animal companion, you are flanking anything both of you threaten. So if you grab the animal/feather domain, you and your buddy will be flanking things all day and get off consistent sneak attacks. You do need 13 int and combat expertise as feat tax but I think is well worth it. Plus you can get a roc or something and fly around. If you combo it with feat that grants bonus on AOOs, you will be hitting quite often with all the bonuses with multiple attacks a round.

Your single hit damage will not be as high as a raging inquisitor with a furious greatsword. But you will be stabbing things with the precision of a surgeon hooked up to a coffee machine.

Before ACG it was usually just good positioning with litany of sloth with a reach weapon. I usually carry a wand of expeditious retreat anyway so even with heavy armor, I still move at 50ft which is usually more than enough to get in good positioning.

Rodinia wrote:

I'm surprised you don't plan to carry a BF poleaxe, with a BF sword as backup. A reach weapon will sometimes give you extra attacks, which more than compensates for the slightly lower damage than a greatsword.

The problem is that inquisitors don't get martial weapon proficiency, so my options for a pole arm are very limited. I only have great sword access through the grace of my lady Szuriel.

As for the feat, I have Armor of the Pit now, but I saw this guy as more of a wrecking ball, not a turtle, so I'll probably switch it to Judgement Surge.

As for Sanctified Slayer, don't they only get 1 slayer talent at 8th? I'll have to look more into them, but they kind of feel like they lose some of the inquisitor flavor.

Honestly I feel like longspear is enough as a reach weapon, you can shoot for a glaive or something but is not that much of a difference.

You do only get 1 slayer talent at 8th, but you can also grab ranger combat style with them if you want if you wish to ignore some feat tax.

And yes, I do feel going Sanctified Slayer feels like losing a bit of flavor but the benefit is really difficult to ignore. My DM love to have multiple encounters in a day or split one encounter into 5 different parts so the day limit is really bad for me personally.
You can always re-flavor it a bit anyway. So instead of I declare judgment and judge you unworthy to exist, just skip to the I judge you unworthy to exist part and commence cleaving.

Have you considered Sanctified Slayer? I find the always available Studied Target + Sneak Attack + Talents to be better than the limited resource judgements. And it keeps Bane.

I will put my vote behind this as well.

The thing is that with the ACG, there is a new feat called Pack Flanking which allows you to flank anybody you threaten as long as you are adjacent to your companion.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/pack-flanking-teamwork

So with this and outflank in addition to Sanctified Slayer, you will be constantly flanking and dealing Sneak Attack all the time + you can get a roc or something and gain the ability to fly. Not only that, you can also try to go for broken wing gambit and stack AOO at a +8 each round while doing sneak attacks. The damage from SA should make up for the damage from destruction judgment.

If companion is not your thing, then standard rage dominion is probably the best if you just want to smash things really hard.

Feat wise, if you are taking tactics, then perhaps combat expertise since it is the prerequisite for many feats.

check out the Dragoon fighter Archetype. It is focused on the spear weapon group.

I actually did consider it but the thing is that only two things in the archetype appeals to me.

Spear training and spinning lance, the latter which is obsolete since the DM gave it to me for free. The +1 additional damage is nice but I can't justify missing out on a bonus feat since I feel a bit feat starved. I'd have to give up either iron will or furious focus for it I think. Also the campaign most likely will not go above level 12 but if it did, I would have definitely picked dragoon.

Mounted Combat was nerfed pretty hard by the DM too and I don't see myself going mounted anytime too soon. It is something I really thought about though.

Why do you have TWF? Longspears are, IIRC, two-handed weapons, you can't TWF with them.

Because the prestige class treat spears as double weapons.

A pikeman wielding a spear is as versatile as a four armed man wielding a longsword, a quarterstaff, and a dagger. He treats spears as 1d8/1d8 double weapons that can deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage.

I have always been a huge fan of spear fighters and when I first got into pathfinder, I was somewhat disappointed to see that the spears are in the simple category.

However I did manage to find this 3rd party prestige class

Link Link

and after some discussion with the DM, he agreed to let me play as one but the hit die must be d8, which I am fine with.

We are planning on doing a 18 point buy system, so my stats are

str-16+2(Human)
dex-15
Con-14
Int-8
wis-12
cha-7

I am planning on starting as a fighter, so feat choice is most likely

1 - Iron Will, Combat Reflex, Power Attack
2 - Furious Focus
3 - Weapon Focus(Long Spear)
4 - Weapon Spec(Long Spear) Dex + 1
5 - TWF
7 - Double Slice
8 - Dex + 1
9 - Improved TWF
11 - Two Weapon Rend
13 - Improved Iron Will
15 - Skill Focus(Heal, story reasons, not likely going to change it)
Rest is probably going to be crit

The DM allowed me to threatened adjacent with reach weapons so I didn't need to worry about that. The plan is pretty simple, stand in the front and smack anything that comes near. I am thinking of maybe losing furious focus and pick up quickdraw + buy 20 spears. So at the start of the combat I would be chucking spears and then switch to longspear when they get near and commence the stabbing.

Does anybody have anything better? I am mostly looking for a balance between damage and tanky.

Probably position myself to maximize AOO in the next round since I am playing a reach fighter.