Just played pathfinder for the first time at a con. I couldn’t really find Rogue built like mine online, and I wanted to throw this out there for others who might be interested. I also would like feedback because there’s a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I played 5 sessions over the course of 2 days including my first scenario at level 2.
This Rogue Concept does these things:
Thrown weapons with GOOD damage
Unique “Right tool for the job” feel, where you pull out the right weapon to hit the right weakness, every round. This changes up gameplay quite a bit.
Helping the party get information about enemies with crazy high recall knowledge checks
Flexibility and Debuffing via Alchemy
Great for providing flanking to team (35 move speed)
Feeling like an actual mastermind rogue
Giving other players the spotlight and congratulating them when they do well. Good Job Fighter, you clobbered that dude for 15 Damage! (No need to publicly take credit that it was my flanking that allowed him to even hit the skelly). Sick Spellcast wizard man! (who cast that spell in particular *because* you asked “what’s the enemy's lowest save”). Nice grapple monk, (Who’s only alive because you threw a dagger over his head and killed the big bad that was about to clobber him, while I was providing flanking to the fighter 20 yards away). I honestly feel like I’m playing a support bard, or cleric, while constantly doing the highest DPR in my party. Knowledge is power and the best CC is DEATH.
I’m playing “Feng” a Grandma Elf who’s pissed she’s had to come out of centuries of retirement to handle BS. She’s not so much learning how to fight, as remembering how to fight, cuz old AF. This is a Pathfinder Society Organized play character, so earlier game power is prioritized, as groups for 8-12 are supposedly rare and PFS play entirely stops at ~12.
+0 Str, +4 Dex, +0 Con, +3 int, +2 Wis, +0 charisma. Being partially ranged, we need to survive less hits than the frontline.
Trained skills: Basically ALL of them, pick a charisma skill to be bad at checkbox everything else.
NO LOREMASTER
Loremaster conflicts with quickdraw/strong arm, so we’re never going to get it. Plus, Additional Lore gives us a net of +2 more on recall knowledge if we have an applicable skill due to the auto-increase to expert at level 3 (And +2 more at level 7 when they auto level to Master). Being able to roll lore (unspecific) is a -2 to the DC check of recall knowledge, for a net of Int +4 at trained, or Int +6 at expert.
Every Single Skill feat is Additional Lore, including our background, pathfinder hopeful. The Duplication of pathfinder lore from being in PFS organized play, should let us swap PFS lore from background to Undead Lore.
Additional Lore Targets.
I accepted that I’m kinda meh at nature checks and targeted my early Additional Lores at planar threats, First World (Covers: fey unspecific), Outer Rifts (Covers: Demon unspecific), Hell (Covers: Devil Unspecific). Obviously if I had a GM that allowed for “Lore: Fiend” I’d take that, but that’s apparently not specific enough. Hitting an “unspecific” lore lowers the DC of the recall knowledge check by 2 and allows you to use a normally wisdom based recall knowledge check with int.The Auto-scaling on “Additional Lore” provides another +2 at level 3 and 7, allowing for us to actually crit recall knowledge much more regularly, or almost always succeed to secure Offguard. When we Crit recall knowledge, we get +1 action per round until the target dies (since we don’t have to recast recall knowledge)
Tl;dr using Lore is +4 to +5 on Recall knowledge vs. using “Trained” in whatever non-lore version of the skill starting at level 3.
Not sure what to do after level 2 with additional lore, but I’m probably going to General feat additional Lore to get Abbadon + Animal lore at level 3. You could do the opposite and target “Animal” and “Plant,” picking up planar lores later.
Expertise Targets while leveling: Society->Occultism->Nature if I don’t go various nature lores at level 3 and 4. With this, we should have almost all Religion threats covered by lore skills and can leave “Religion” at trained.
Society for Recall Knowledge on Humanoids. Occultism over Aracana, cuz my roommate is a wizard and has Arcana covered.
Ancestry: Ancient Elf -> Alchemist Dedication.
By the time you read this, Player Core 2 is probably out and early Alchemist Dedication becomes way the heck worse, as it’ll take 2 actions and Quick Draw does not play nice with Quick Alchemy (Intentionally bad design, ugh). I’ll have a section on uses for Quick Alchemy later, as the utility increase becomes insane, making up for some of the combat decreases. If Quick Draw made Quick Alchemy 1 action, new Alchemist Dedication would be a direct improvement, talk to your GM if Homebrew is right for you. [insert American medication commercial side effect list]
Ancestry Feat: Nimble Elf. Provide ALL the flanking on rounds 2-3 with your 35 foot speed.
Level 1 Combat (Skip to Level 2 Combat to see how this build plays longterm)
Enter combat with Daily Bomb + Dagger or Dart. If enemies go before you, GOOD! Now they’re within your range increment. Recall Knowledge to get them Off-Guard and Sneak attack BOMB them. Follow it up with a dart at only a -4 penalty (-2 if you include off-guard). Congrats, you just killed or seriously debuffed something and did 1 damage to your fighter. I promise he won’t be mad.
Now you’ve unarmed, WHO CARES! Go give your fighter flanking (thanks to your glorious 35 move speed) and sneak attack with PUNCH. If an enemy humanoid is already on top of you, Roleplay that you just slap them across the face. My first punch was a “slap” that Crit for 18 damage. Grandma’s got a mean backhand. The enemies should be glad that my Elf doesn’t have “Quick Draw: Throwing Shoe” heritage feat.
Since you spent the first round not in melee range (and took no damage), it’s now much safer to be in melee range with your +0 con.
Level 2:
Expertise Society (For humanoid recall knowledge checks)
Additional Lore (a lore that continues to replace whatever wisdom skill you’re focusing)
Quick Draw (Our style defining feat)
Buy 4 Chakrams (1d8 damage, best first non-bomb weapon to throw, but only if slashing works)
Buy 4 Light hammers (1d6 Agile for MAP, Blunt weapon)
Have 1-2 daggers (Finesse, slashing/piercing melee strikes)
Buy 2-4 darts (Better thrown range than dagger, agile piercing)
Buy 16 slings for 0c each (however many it takes to hit your 4.9 bulk)
Have 4 daily bombs from Alchemist Dedication (RIP After Player Core 2 Giga nerfs this, dang it)
Have a batch 4 bombs you started crafted at level 1 with your very first downtime (Thunderstone, Nightmare Ampule, or Blight Bomb are all good)
Wishlist:
You want a Cold Iron Star Knife
You want a Silver Star Knife.
Both of these will let you hit resistances *and* can be used as melee weapons when their weakness damage matters. Don’t buy these if it’ll keep you from buying a Thrower’s Bandolier the moment you hit level 3. If you want to go Expert Crafting (and not get Horizon Hunters reputation), your first downtime activity at level 2 should be “Craft Cold Iron Starknife.” It’s a level 2 task which will maximize downtime $$, but it requires expert in crafting to use precious metals. Between levels 2 and 3 you’ll save/make ~6 extra gold compared to people stuck with Level 0 tasks.
When you recall knowledge, you can quickly find things Weakness/resistances. Throw the weapon that will do the right damage type. Remember, your second weapon thrown needs to be agile so that your MAP is -4 instead of -5.
Okay but why so many slings? You can store Slings LOADED. Quick Draw to draw a sling and strike with it. Instead of ever reloading, you can just free action drop and draw another sling. For the final boss fight of my first level 2 scenario, due to the 50 foot range of the sling it made more sense for me to never move and just keep quick drawing slings.The boss had Piercing/slashing reduction, so it managed to actually be better than if I had used a bow. At Level 3 you’ll only carry much less slings on you as they won’t benefit from the runes on Thrower’s Bandolier. (unless you could argue that you use a sling as a improvised thrown weapon…. But like… I don’t think anyone’s gonna let that slide)
New Player Core 2 Alchemist Dedication stuff:
If you’re fighting swarms and have Player Core 2, you can take a 2 action Quick alchemy to do 1d6 acid + 1 splash damage to hit splash weakness, every round, without using up a consumable. It feels worse than the older Alchemist Dedication that let you quick draw 2x level daily bombs that do splash *and* provide a debuff (like poison/flatfooted), but you can do this every round. Because you can’t do precision damage to swarms *and* they’ve got weakness to splash damage, this actually pretty action economy efficient.
New Player Core Quick Alchemy also incentivizes you to get EVERY recipe you can. I’m a total newb, but I remember one GM saying during a skill challenge that “if you think of a useful consumable or spell slot, you get 2 automatic successes.” Well, if you have every alchemy recipe, you can Quick Alchemy to Auto-double crit success a lot of skill changes. If that was only that GM and not a general rule, it’s not as good.
Level 2 - The moment you hit Horizon Hunters 20, switch to Grand Archive Rep. Immediately acquire Horizon Hunter’s Quickpatch Glue Recipe. This is such a good target for Player Core 2 Quick Alchemy during Exploration. This is in-universe duct tape (10 minute duration when crafted with quick alchemy). If you can’t think of ways to solve problems with duct tape, y’all need to go visit a redneck, or watch some youtube. Probably get a wayfinder so you can use the Horizon Hunter Boon (and later the Grand Archive boon). Start making that big downtime $$.
After Horizon Hunters friendly, swap to Grand Archive for the Recall Knowledge boons.
Level 3
Enjoy Task level 3 earn incomes + Expert in Lore(s).
Skill Feat Additional Lore
General Feat Additional Lore
Sure, take fleet or whatever if you’re in a campaign that only fights 2-3 mob types. But in PFS I need to prepared for ALL THE THINGS.
Expertise: Occultism
Magic item: Thrower’s Bandolier.
Do I even need to explain how good this is? Potency/Strking And Cunning Rune on all the things. You can your weapons on the floor in a dungeon to free up 2 Bulk you carry away, then Envision to summon them before the end of your next daily preparations. You want this. It gud. (Runes do not work with Bombs, but you can still recall bombs to the bandolier if you had some very specific need, like entering a weapon free zone “unarmed”)
You should definitely be aiming to get Cold Iron/Silver starknife after this Bandolier. After both of those, you should look to replace all of your Daggers/darts with starknives.
Level 4
Grand Archive Wayfinder Boon: turn a crit fail Recall knowledge into a fail (allows you to keep using recall knowledge on a boss for off-guard)
Grand Archive Boon +1 bonus to 1-2 Lore skills. Juicy.
Expertise in Nature (Or religion if your additional lores targeted Nature things)
Striking Rune
Class Feat: Strong arm, or Advanced Alchemy.
By this point you’ll know which class feat is better. So far (in my 6 scenarios) there was only a single combat where by the time my initiative came up, I was more than 30 feet from an enemy. Due to PFS using printed maps, you usually are 25-30 feet from at least 1 enemy at the start of combat. +10 yard throwing range would allow us to double throw with no range increment penalty on turn 1 in most encounters. 60 yards at -2 with a bomb vs a off-guard target could also be really good first round action, if you’re targeting their back line caster with bomb that CC’s, or starknife that has a non-tempoary poison applied.
Speaking of poisons, by now you should have 2-3 non-tempoary poisons applied to weapons and/or 2-3 non-tempoary bombs to target specific threats/weaknesses. What’s good about poisons on thrown weapons, is that if they miss, they don’t lose their poisoned status (unless crit fail). If you’re party is in a bad spot and you NEED to pull off a miracle, having an option to quickly throw “the good stuff” might save your life.
Level 5
Cunning Rune is possibly god tier, we may be able to use it 2 times PER ROUND, instead of the per minute cooldown it’s supposed to have.
Cunning Rune allows you to get a free action recall knowledge once per minute vs an enemy that can leak blood/other vital fluid (oil?) after you hit it with a strike. We want this for both more information on targets and for crit fishing. When we crit recall knowledge we effectively get hasted until that target is dead, as they stay off-guard to us for a minute (no recall knowledge check needed).
The way we could get around the 1 minute cooldown is the “Replication” words used on Thrower’s bandolier. If this counts as a new rune when replicated onto a thrown weapon and that COPY procs Cunning Rune, the original rune is still off-cooldown. When that original rune is replicated again, the new rune is not on cooldown and can immediately be proc’d again.
Obviously, a GM could just say “Yeah… uh…. They share a cooldown, that’s broken.” And that’s… sad, but fine. Once an encounter, free recall knowledge is still handy for a level 5 rune, but competing with ghost touch… I’m not sure it’ll be worth it. It may be that we have to buy this rune, slap it on a weapon, Attune it to the Bandolier then store that weapon outside the Bandolier. We’d do this so we could still return the weapon to the bandolier with the Envision action, but we’d store it outside the bandolier so that it’s rune doesn’t get overwritten when we quick draw it.
Some of you may have noticed that Cunning Rune requires “A slashing weapon,” and you could foolishly make the argument that it won’t be able to be applied to Thrower’s Bandolier as it’s a “Thrown Weapon” and not a “Slashing Weapon.” There is no rules difference that would allow a slashing rune to be applied to “Handwraps of Mighty Blows” yet “Handwraps of mighty blows” has a spelled out condition requiring it to be enchanted with a slashing rune. So, Rules as Intended, you 100% CAN use a slashing rune on a non-slashing weapon, it’ll just do nothing. Otherwise, you could never fulfill the condition of placing a slashing rune on Handwraps of Mighty Blows. Since you clearly *can* put a slashing rune on handwraps of mighty blows, even though they are not a slashing weapon, you put a slashing rune on Thrower’s Bandolier (it will just do nothing when used with a non-slashing weapon/slashing attack.)
I might update this plan more with time. I’d love to hear feedback. If you know any major synergies I missed let me know.
This character is meant for PFS play, but if you have suggestions for a non-PFS version of this character feel free to share them. Just let me know which parts of your feedback are towards the PFS version and which parts are for the non-PFS version.
