Michael Serra's page

Thank you so much folks!

Let us know what gets settled on, I'm curious.

I've never understood this. If the GM wants you dead due to his machinations, you're dead. It would take a master of the rules to perfectly balance encounters when there are so many variables involved at that point, and so much magic would have to be restricted or changed.

I forgot to mention this last time, but also make sure the player is taking into account the rest of the group when figuring out how he wants to go about supporting. Freebooter is much more useful with, say, a rogue partner than a bunch of spellcasters and archers.

Guns: Carting around black powder is a pain and they only do well in long-range scenarios where they aren't being swarmed. Like a 'properly-built monk,' they're just not a strong option in comparison to many other things.

As the others have mentioned, come back and tell us what you found out!

This thread has taught me that I'm a terribly jaded person these days. Just between you and me, internet, I was actually rolling my eyes as I popped into this thread, thinking, 'Oh, great. Another angry female gamer complaining about stereotypes whilst simultaneously adopting the label.'

I'm deeply humbled by how wrong I turned out to be. Lamontia, you talk a lot about role models - I'd honestly say you're one of the best ones I've heard from in this hobby.

Kingmaker is my recommendation, for all the reasons already mentioned above. Council of Thieves also has a lot of potential for this, if your players are of the right mindset.

I'd also suggest a Freebooter Ranger. With a moderate amount of optimization you could transform it into a mean flanking machine - and those untyped bonuses go a long way into playing well with any of the other bonuses that the group might acquire over the course of many levels and adventures.

Of course, this is all irrelevant if the player has actually proposed a character concept beyond just martial support. My advice would be to ask what, specifically, appealed to him about Scholar and try and focus on that moreso than the idea of not being magical. Bard is clearly the obvious choice otherwise.

Also, speaking as someone who's actually had a Scholar at the table, your hesitations are unjustified. Banning 3rd-party material is obviously your call, but the class itself is underwhelming at best. I'd maybe drop it down to a step lower on the BAB progression scale, given how it can still be optimized to be a strong melee combatant with the right magical items in the campaign and a good UMD score, but either way it would undoubtably lag behind the others in the group. Short of several strong knowledge skills (on par with, say, a Pathfinder Chronicler) it brings nothing unique to the table. And how useful those skills actually are in the course of the campaign is ultimately your call.

Good luck with the tough concept!