T O's page

So there aren't too many ways of building a front-line melee character who's also a competent face. In Core, which I'm most familiar with, basically it's just the paladin, or maybe an appropriate cleric build. But I don't know the non-core material too well (the Cavalier class is easily a thousand words), so I could use general advice, and specific suggestions too. Everything is welcome, provided you please be civilized.

Which leads to the concept: A noble warrior, a guy who's refined, educated, capable of courtly intrigues and diplomacy, yet reliable in melee, most probably an armored swordsman. In terms of the character's race and personality, I have three directions I could go, and I haven't made up my mind. The first, and my favorite, is an elf; the other two would be humans I guess (though I'm open to suggestions):

• a high elf-lord: more Elrond than Legolas
  
• medieval ideal of lordship: mature, wise, commanding presence
  
• rich man's son: irresponsible escapee from the noble life
  

These have implications for the build: An elf-lord needs at least a little arcane magic and has to work around difficult racial attributes. The middle concept, the true lord of men, is probably easier because he's a human who doesn't have to be magical. The third is easiest, I imagine, because you can build in flaws as part of the concept (for instance, dumping wis).

A couple of factors are non-negotiable:

• Level 9
  
• Neutral or Good alignment
  
• ability scores are rolled already (see below)
  
• any general-purpose Paizo rulebook is permitted
  
• 3.5 feats, pending case-by-case GM approval
  
• starting wealth or magic items might be low; dunno yet
  

We've got two options for sets of ability scores (I'm fairly certain we go with the second but just for completeness); note I don't have to assign them in order:

15, 15, 15, 13, 12, 11 <-- or --> 17, 17, 16, 15, 11, 8

In addition, the GM's house rule is that I can add +1 to any one ability score at character creation.

To give you an idea of the style of play, we're not really optimizers, but that said, the GM tends to use 20 as the default skill DC, and will absolutely throw level-appropriate encounters at us from the Bestiaries. So the build does have to work well, just not truly optimally.

So for the elf-lord I had the idea of playing a melee-capable bard, or else a magus with social skills somehow (dip?). I've read that melee bards aren't front-line fighters, but maybe for our non-optimizer table a relatively optimized elf bard melee build would be adequate for the purpose. For the other two, Cavalier is obviously jumping out at me. In any case, I could use some help choosing between the three concepts in terms of feasibility.

I'm playing a dwarf cleric, whose Artifice domain grants this ability:

Dancing Weapons (Su): At 8th level, you can give a weapon touched the dancing special weapon quality . . .

This isn't all that great given Dancing weapons seem to usually miss due to low attack bonus:

As a standard action, a dancing weapon can be loosed to attack on its own. It fights for 4 rounds using the base attack bonus of the one who loosed it and then drops . . .

A preponderance of forum posts here seem to agree that it's BAB + not much else while a weapon is Dancing. So for instance Strength, Weapon Focus, etc, don't seem to apply. This is lame when it's hitting for very low damage for our level; it's sort of a fun visual without really being useful.

But then I realized my cleric also gets Fabricate, up to ten cubic feet per level of any material I have handy. And I've got ranks in Craft (Weapons). And a weapon is a weapon, no matter how big it is. And if I don't get the bonus for, say, Weapon Focus, I don't see why I'd get penalized for non-proficiency nor the size of it being wrong.

Where's the PRD version of the d20 SRD table for weapons larger than Large?

Also, Magic Weapon and Greater Magic Weapon seem to apply, but it's not clear what other buffs would. I mean, I can't say giving my dancing Colossal Greatsword a morale bonus, but on the other hand, I feel like a Luck bonus to my cleric would be appropriate, given that it would be a stroke of luck if the thing actually hit something. :]

Also, suddenly I really want to know if our wizard can cast Shrink Item . . .

This seemed like an interesting combination to me. It's sort of a ruggedized James Bond. :'] Favored Enemy + Art of Deception seems nifty, as does Sneak Attack + Ranger's stealthiness.

Another interpretation might be bounty hunter -- no matter where they go, no matter where they hide, in the wild or in the city, such a guy can hunt them down.

The saves dovetail too, which I dig.

So first of all, I've heard Rage Prophet is on the weak side. I'm not interested in taking up the debate, and truthfully I don't have an opinion either way.

Instead I'm interested in sharing my character who's picked up Rage Prophet in kind of a nifty way which is also totally sweet and awesome.

So there's this guy, Laughing Aurochs. He's kind of a standard barbarian -- came from the northern steppes, something of a wandering mercenary, into wine, women, and song, that sort of thing. He's a giant of a man, almost seven feet tall, and carries a two-handed sword.

Laughing Aurochs and his friend Kyris, a duelist, recently tangled with a couple of winter wolves, and killed them. 'Ochs, still caught in the war-fury of his people, raised one of the white corpses above his head and howled in victory. Its blood rained down, onto his face, and into his screaming mouth.

That night, strange white dreams came to him. In the morning, his friends told him his eyes glowed blue, like a winter wolf's eyes. A few days later, he started to feel unusually warm. Lately he's finding that his old friends ale and tavern brawls hold less and less interest for him, and unusual thoughts and images appear in his mind from time to time.

So he was Bbn 6 when he encountered the winter wolves. He then gained a level of Oracle, which the GM let me modify somewhat because none of the curses and mysteries seemed to line up with the winter wolf possession concept quite right (the newish Possession curse isn't that close either). He's now got vulnerability to fire and low-light vision, and the Flame Breath revelation from the Flame Mystery, modified for cold. Rage Prophet I think can be taken pretty much as-is; I just got level 1.

It's really neat having this surprise hard right-turn from the character's original concept, which was intended to let me roleplay a simple, easy, fun character that could really help out in combat. Now I'm starting to acquire weird powers and spells, to let me contribute substantially to events outside combat, and the roleplaying opportunities are changing too. The APG wasn't even published when I made the character!

Here's a house rule I want to try out in my own campaign if my players are interested:

Basically, it's critical hits, but for combat maneuvers. The idea is that if you get lucky on your attack roll you get a free chance to pull off a combat maneuver on your opponent. Every now and then, melee battles result in opportunities for performing what Pathfinder calls combat maneuvers, without the combatants specifically attempting such maneuvers intentionally. For example, defender could dodge an attack but lose footing and fall to the ground, just as if they'd been tripped.

To simulate this, when a melee attack roll results in a natural 10, it causes an opportunity to perform a randomly-determined combat maneuver, which is resolved after any damage caused by the attack itself. Combat maneuvers performed this way never provoke attacks of opportunity, and never require any kind of action. To determine what kind of opportunity presents itself, roll d6 and then consult this table:

1 - Bull Rush
2 - Overrun
3 - Trip
4 - Grapple
5 - Disarm
6 - Sunder

The attacker may then perform the maneuver as normal (including the need to make a Combat Maneuver roll against the target's Combat Maneuver Defense to be successful). If the attacker has any of the Improved feats for maneuvers (such as Improved Trip or Improved Overrun), the attacker may roll d8 instead; on a result of 1-6, use the table above, while on 7-8 they may choose any maneuver from those they have Improved.

In case you're curious, I picked "10" as the "threat" number so it would be (very) unlikely to overlap with Improved Critical and keen weapons. : P

In addition, I could also see making a feat called Improved Maneuver that causes a combat maneuver opportunity on a 10 or 11, and Greater Maneuver on a 10-12.

There are downsides to these extra rules though. The first would be extra complexity and bother. The second would be that, like critical hits, they actually make the game harder for the PCs rather than easier. This is because, in general, the PCs have to receive many more attack rolls than they dish out, even if in general PCs have better odds when it comes to defending against a maneuver.