Combining Archetypes

[The White]

Is it possible to combine the Holy Gun and Divine Hunter archetypes? I'm questioning this for two reasons
1: Divine Hunter replaces Heavy Armor with Precise Shot and Holy Gun only gets Light Armor but doesn't actually replace it with anything so I'm not sure having the Holy Gun lack of heavy prevents me from also being a hunter.
2: They both replace Divine Bond but they replace it with very similar abilities. Hunter requires it to be with a ranged weapon and gun requires it to be a firearm (just a more restrictive choice that isn't actually breaking the rules for hunter) so I don't see that being an issue. Hunter grants the ability to choose returning and gun grants reliable so that may be an issue.

I suspect the answer is "RAW says no but because they are so similar, ask your DM, he might say OK"

[Cheapy]

RAW says no but because they are so similar, ask your DM, he might say OK

[The White]

I see what you did there

Also, out of interest, which parts are actually against RAW? I'm guessing that all of issue 1 forbids it and that the last half of issue 2 (one giving returning and the other reliable) but what about the first half of #2 where one replacement is just an extra restriction that doesn't conflict with the other archetype?

[Cheapy]

They both modify the weapons and armor proficiencies for one.

They also both modify the divine bond ability.

To be honest, you are better off taking a single level of gunslinger, then going the rest in divine hunter paladin. Holy Gun is a sweet name, but its smite evil is vastly inferior to the normal paladin's smite evil. Which, by the way, works just fine with guns.

I wouldn't recommend the Mysterious Stranger archetype for the gunslinger though. While the ability to base grit off of Charisma is nice, the lose of Quick Clear really hurts.

[Tyki11]

By Raw, the Holy Gun 'changes' armor proficency and weapon proficencies.
While the Divine Hunter 'removes' heavy armor proficency.

By Raw, they change or remove the same ability, so that means no-no.
(They both interact with Divine Bond as well.)

Personally, in our game, we have some leeway, if it's such a minor thing, or the dm might offer a player to drop one of the new features gained.

On a side-note, while Pfsrd is not official, it's still an easy charter to see which archetypes can mix by marking the features they interact with with a C for change, or X for remove.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin

Each class got such a charter on bottom of their page for easy overview on what can be mixed and not.

[Daryl MacLeod]

From SRD:

Quote:

A character can take more than one archetype and garner additional alternate class features, but none of the alternate class features can replace or alter the same class feature from the base class as another alternate class feature. For example, a fighter could not be both an armor master and a brawler, since both archetypes replace the weapon training 1 class feature with something different.

Emphasis is mine. RAW would indicate reason #2.

[The White]

Yea, the idea was never meant to be an optimal build, just a kind of fun build that wouldn't be horribly ineffective and also trying to reduce the number of stats a pally needs (playing 15pt buy) and I'm not a huge fan of multiclassing.

Pretty much answers as expected, thanks for help

[Tyki11]

The White wrote:

Yea, the idea was never meant to be an optimal build, just a kind of fun build that wouldn't be horribly ineffective and also trying to reduce the number of stats a pally needs (playing 15pt buy) and I'm not a huge fan of multiclassing.

Pretty much answers as expected, thanks for help

I'd still suggest running it by the DM.

The combo isn't any much stronger, infact, you'd be trading smite power and armor ac down for fluff, so it's a valid point that the Dm might let slide by.

[The White]

I'll run it by the DM tonight for the lulz, if he says no I'll just run one of my other fluffy ideas