Northman77's page

With Thief, choose any of the obvious weapons and you'll be fine - just learn to use Sneak Attack efficiently and you can't really fail to contribute in combat. Anything else you pick after that will pretty much work. Highly recommend Gang Up though, just less of a headache in combat overall.

Unless you got someone else in the party that can do it, I would always go the Thievery route for all the disarm trap skills as it is hard to come by otherwise. Between locks and traps and everything else you will always be great out of combat. Stealth is a given of course.

I would then think about choosing the WIS or CHA route on top of the Thievery/Stealth route - WIS works well with being a (great) Medic and got good synergy with Perception and finding traps. The bonus to Will saves is also very good. You can also go Nature/Survival/Religion here.

With CHA you can go feint/Deception route and/or demoralize/Intimidation route. Both also good and got synergies with class feats. Obviously also makes you more of a face character which is great if your party doesn't have one. Even if party got another one, it is still nearly always good, especially in Paizo campaigns.

For Ancestry, you can get by with most of them - they all got some useful things. Nothing stands out as truly amazing nor truly bad, just comes down to preference and how you envision your character.

I would try to start with CON 14 although it isn't a must - you are running around a lot to get your flanks in so might get hit by AoOs and just generally being in combat.

Caster Classes

Only seen a bomber in action. This class has been highly useful in our campaigns. Mist elixir causes a surprising number of attacks to miss when all the martials have it on. Cheetah Elxir adds mobility. Juggernaut Elixir can add a nice hit point buffer. Bomb damage tends to add up round after round. The alchemist adds some good riders to the bombs like flat-footed or slowing movement.

Just to second this and what Watery Soup said - Mist Elixir is a godsend in terms of defense. The amount of crits it saved us through-out AoA was enormous. Everyone's first action in harder fights was to drink a potion.

Other useful things about Alchemist was ability cheaply deal with swarms, getting your Striking weapons for free (so if you are finding them piecemeal like in Paizo campaigns, you need to find one less since you get yours when you level as opposed to everyone else that has to find/buy theirs) and even if perhaps not relevant for this thread, the ability to give +2 or more to most skills also very cheaply, something that is very hard otherwise.

In terms of monk, I think people undervalue mobility in relation to their action economy and how if affects damage. Ki Rush, Abundant Step and just the base movement meant that on a battle field with lots of difficult terrain or that is just hard to move around, I would always get my Flurry in. Most other martials struggled to get in more than 1 hit, even sometimes ever other round - that on top of maybe some bad rolls and they struggled. In these type of fights, Monk DPR was outstanding. Similarly if you are fighting a very mobile enemy using strafing or hit and run attacks. I think Monk have a cool niche here that fits well.

Our party of Bard, Barbarian, Druid and Rogue has remained incredibly efficient throughout the levels. Can deal with most problems and some very good combos and synergies in there.

Another great combo for party composition is anyone that can cast Magic Weapon and a Barb/Fighter. Basically a cheat code for first 5 levels.