So I'm wondering what I should cross my Strength ninja with... Fighter or Paladin.
With 3 ninja/ 3 Two Handed Fighter I would get Vanish, 2d6 Sneak Attack, Overhand Chop (Double Strength on single hit), 3 extra feats. Level 6
With the 3 ninja / 2 Pally I would get 2d6 Sneak Attack, Vanish, Smite Evil and Divine Grace (Charisma to all saves). Level 5
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Paladin does some gross stuff for a ninja if you have a decent amount of charisma.
Paladin does some gross stuff for a ninja if you have a decent amount of charisma.
That's What I was thinking too. With a 15 point buy... possibly Half Elf...I'm so thinking about it.
15 point buy? You don't have the points to do anything fancy, I'd probably recommend any single-stat class. I don't like 15 point buy, because I always feel heroes/villains should have heroic/villainous stats, and the PCs are supposed to be the heroes/villains. Being slightly better than a peasant and significantly worse than the NPCs is not what I would want to play.
|
@blue star
i agree. PCs are supposed to be the heroes/villians. and they should be signifficantly more powerful than thier less signifficant kin.
traits and favored class aren't enough because NPCs get those too.
i think the advanced creature template should have been renamed the "Hero" array and given to all PCs. alongside a 25 point buy and at least 4 traits.
And 4 extra feats!
Try monk. 3 levels monk will net you 2 extra feats (3 including unarmed strike) and a ki pool if you take it to monk 4. A ninja advanced trick will let ninja and monk levels (-4) stack for unarmed strick damage.
Try monk. 3 levels monk will net you 2 extra feats (3 including unarmed strike) and a ki pool if you take it to monk 4. A ninja advanced trick will let ninja and monk levels (-4) stack for unarmed strick damage.
True, but I want to keep my BaB as high as I can. I kinda wanted to mimic a sort of Blade Master style/tricks of fighting as in Warcraft 3. The wind walk, the clones, the high burst damage. With the fighter I could go the whirl wind feat chain plus specialization. But with the Pally, I get so many Cha based abilities plus spells later.
Check out a Guide ranger then. Bursts of damage, high bab, spell stuff. Great stealth. Free feats.
True, but I want to keep my BaB as high as I can. I kinda wanted to mimic a sort of Blade Master style/tricks of fighting as in Warcraft 3. The wind walk, the clones, the high burst damage. With the fighter I could go the whirl wind feat chain plus specialization. But with the Pally, I get so many Cha based abilities plus spells later.Monk gets full BAB when using Flurry or Maneuvers. The sneak attack synergises well with the extra attacks a monk gets and the flanking bonus makes it easier to hit. Your biggest problem with Ninja / Monk is going to be the ultimate MAD situation as the Ninja relies a fair amount on the Monk's only dump stat of Charisma. 15 point buy isn't going to do you any favours here either.
When you get the monk's ki pool, you choose between Charisma and Wisdom as the ki ability. This will open up the posibility of cha being a dump stat again since it won't affect your ki. You can still use flurry with monk weapons and it nets you better saves plus Evasion (Ninja's don't have that) and that crucial momevent speed bonus.
You can get mirror image by taking a 4th level of Ninja, and for your 7th level feat take Endurance and dump 6 skill points into Knowlege Geography. Then you qualify for Horizon Walker, a Full BAB Prestige class that will get you dimension door By Level 10.
The Whirlwind Feat chain is peanuts compared to the Dimensional Dervish feat chain. Check it out, I think you will like.
@blue star
i agree. PCs are supposed to be the heroes/villians. and they should be signifficantly more powerful than thier less signifficant kin.
traits and favored class aren't enough because NPCs get those too.
i think the advanced creature template should have been renamed the "Hero" array and given to all PCs. alongside a 25 point buy and at least 4 traits.
Actually the fact that you were a mortal like any other and achieved what you did makes you far more heroic than being au über-specimen in many people's eyes. The game allows you to build such species, but I don't think that this should be game's norm, unless we're emulating something like the setting for Exalted.
OP: Depends on what you want to build... can you describe what you'd like to be doing in game a bit more?
|
|
i don't see it as a group of uber specimens.
i see it as your standard Hollywood/Wuxia/Anime/Greek Theater trope of highly trained protagonists who are able to take on challenges the average person cannot because of thier high levels of expertise in thier field.
how many notable "mortal" protagonists were ordinary people who lived normal lives and worked mundane professions?
most cinematic protaganists, even the most "mortal" ones, were at least either highly trained or highly gifted. and the greek ones were outright demigods. the lives of most of said protagonists encourages the need for enhanced levels of expertise.
so if we did such a thing that encourages the highly skilled heroes i reccomend, i would reccomend using appropriate challenges.
A level 2 fighter with 15 point buy could fight 10 1st level commoners armed with daggers and win.
You are already epic heroes by the game's baseline assumption just from having class levels.
|
'Rixx is merely stating that you don't need a high point buy to be a hero. For a 15 point-buy, ninja/paladin is one of the few multiclasses that is quite excellent. For a strength build, I would go
Str 16, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 14
Your will save at first level ninja will be terrible. Just try to survive to first and second level paladin, as that's when everything clicks. All your saves come up, and the charisma synergy is just glorious.
Keyword - highly trained. That's the stuff represented by high level.
@blue star
i agree. PCs are supposed to be the heroes/villians. and they should be signifficantly more powerful than thier less signifficant kin.
traits and favored class aren't enough because NPCs get those too.
i think the advanced creature template should have been renamed the "Hero" array and given to all PCs. alongside a 25 point buy and at least 4 traits.
That seems more than a little excessive, way to blow my post completely out of proportion though. The NPCs run on 15 point buy and making the PCs 20 or 25 point buy is the way to show they are heroic, anything beyond that, and you strip what little challenge is left in the game.
Though the most challenging DMs I've played with (in that they consistently made me felt like my character was in danger, not in that they frustrated me, though one of them also frustrated me) basically had us on the slow XP chart fighting opponents well above even the epic rating on the Encounter design table in the Game Mastering section of the CRB.
Exactly. 25 point build is already well within young Hercules level of power IMO.
Just from experience, everything above 20 point buy and even dicing stats lets you have too high scores, so you most times have to raise CR and its not so much challenge and fun anymore. Roleplay also suffers.
If you want to do a special build, its much better to houserule some feat requirements.
Anyway, for a sword STR ninja there are 3 good ways i think.
1. The paladin route is really nice, especially with the bonus on CHA. This lets your saves get ridiculous high. A good thing to consider then are any tricks that have a CHA based DC for the ninja and you can pump CHA too.
2. With the monk you loose +1 BAB, but you gain a lot of nice other stuff, look into the archetypes there too. Guess its probably better for unarmed though. You can go to level 3, after that take the ninja talent and monastic legacy, wear a robe´s monk and choose WIS for Ki Pool stat.
Get high AC and very high unarmed damage. Then take sap adept, sap master and knockout artist and just knock everyone out. Outflank and gang-up help with hitting.
3. Fighter. Lore Warden archetype level 3. More feats, high BAB, Combat Expertise for free and your CMB and CMD get higher.
|
|
i guess i should start using static arrays from now on. but even if i do utilize the advanced creature template, i will simply use more opponents to compensate. i usually do use lots of smaller but still meaningful foes. if each of the 20th level PCs can solo a CR 24 encounter. then i start including 16 CR 16 foes per PC to compensate. i like to suspiciously (As a DM) give the PCs all sorts of crazy boons, because, even with all these boons, my encounters are still Challenging and i simply take 20% of thier new resources. which tends to be a lot more than 1 round of full attacks.
i have had entire groups of 1st level PCs with 35 point buy, advanced creature template, gestalt, 4 traits, 4 extra feats, 3 hero points, a DM boon and doubled starting budget who still felt challenged by Kobolds. yes, i did have to use some extra kobolds, but they felt challenged. they were cautious around kobolds until about 5th level.
Errr... it sould be that level 20 GROUP sould be able to do CR 24 encounter, but not without being badly mauled or having several dead.
Single monster level equal to that of a single hero is a normal challenge level in 4E, but in PFRPG the challenge is defned a bit differently.
|
With a 15 point buy you really have limited option. Ask yourself this, as a Str Ninja, how likely am I going to need to range attack? Ninja's get quite a few neat ninja tricks that require a ranged attack, but if your not worried about it then you should focus on 3 core stats and let the others fall behind. I give the paladin route a +1, but consider taking 1 level into Oracle of Lore or Nature. You can take a revelation with either of these classes that will allow you to use your Charisma in Place of dex for AC. Lore allows you to also add your charisma for your reflex save, while Nature adds it to CMD. Either of these could greatly help your character's longterm defense, + access to a few cantrips and 1st lvl cleric spells can only help.