Okay, I will be playing in a kingmaker campaign in a few weeks. I am working through many character concepts. The rest of the party is also undecided; we will have 4-6 players (I know 4 have committed, there are 2 more thinking about it).
As I am unsure which role(s) any of the other players may hope to gain, and what classes or builds they will be grabbing, I am trying to come up with ideas that can easily fill 2 or more roles.
Also, I was hoping to be a craftsman style character; a humble smith or artisan who rises to greatness, but is still a craftsman at heart. Both mundane crafting and magical item crafting. I am not familiar with KingMaker, beyond the intro handout; will there be enough downtime in a typical campaign to do any crafting?
So given that, what race/class/build would you recommend for me?
I had a 3.5 character who was at his core a bard, but focused mostly on self buffing and combat. He had levels of fighter, rogue, and a custom prestige class which replaced bardic performance and spellcasting with minor supernatural abilities (as well as rendered him mute).
So far, the Archaeologist Bard works well for the self buffing/whip wielding bit.
A level or three of fighter and/or rogue could still be grabbed to enhance his fighting prowess.
But is there any way to dump some or all bardic spellcasting and gain Su type abilities in its place? (Harder yet, is it possible to do it and stay PFS legal?)
I considered an alchemist as one possible solution. Focusing on mutagens to have or simulate Su abilities... not sure how that might play out.
I also was considering a major retool of the character, and going bard/magus (specifically, either archaeologist/spire defender, or archaeologist/hexcrafter). Which could work well, if the bard had any spellstrike capable spells at 1st or 2nd level. But, I am not seeing any...
More character specific info:
Without going into tons of detail, by the time he was retired, still pre epic levels, he had 4 bard levels, a couple rogue levels for sneak attack dice and added skills, and a couple fighter levels for feat prereqs and free feats. It was either 2 rogue/2 fighter, or 1 rogue/3 fighter. Then he had 7 levels in a PRC which forced him to be mute (magically silenced him, though one of its prereqs was to remove his tongue, so...) and forced his bardic performance into physical forms (dance/acrobatics/etc.) Each performance would grant him a single spell-like or supernatural ability chosen from a small list; he also gave up his spellcasting abilities in exchange for spell resistance and a 'silence' aura. I look back and see how overpowered it was, and am not trying to replicate all of that. But I got a wild hair today and decided to try to create a fairly balanced PFS character based on his general style. So - no spells, no music, but a whip wielding performer who can surprise you with some spell-like or supernatural powers.
