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Looking at restarting after a while out of gaming, and new to PF.
I was wondering if anyone could give me an assist in a 25 point build for a cavalier that will be good on both foot, and mounted, along with being a face.
I've got the stats done, but just wondering about the feat progression for an order of the dragon cavalier.
Order of the Dragon is an excellent Order. It pairs best with the Honor Guard archetype. Rather than focusing on charging around the battlefield, you crowd around the enemies on the battlefield. This makes the greatest use of your teamwork feats and your excellent Challenge ability which allows allies that mutually threaten a challenged enemy a +1 bonus (+1 per four levels.)
This also maximizes your ability to aid another your allies with huge bonuses you get from the second ability. It works with either mounted combat or unmounted combat, and if you have a maneating attack horse it will get your bonuses too.
Required feats: Combat Reflexes and Power Attack
Strongly Recommended: Mounted Combat and In Harms Way
At your option: Ride-By Attack and Spirited Charge (good, but not your main focus should you follow this route), Combat maneuvers (why not take trip or reposition with Combat expertise or Overrun to get into flanking positions and provoke AOO's when you take the greater version at 6th)
Reach weapons are still your friend, as you can stay adjacent to more allies and still threaten to give bonuses. If you have a large mount, the number of allies you can be adjacent to increases as you occupy a large square. Threaten over their heads and aid-another at your leisure.
This also allows you to invest in at least one huddling teamwork feat that gives you bonuses for adjascentness. I like the saving throws one personally. Your mount is always an ally and always next to you if you're on it.
The Mounted Combat Trick: Get your mount some smarts and teach it the feats Bodyguard and In Harm's Way. If you get hit or take in harms way, your mount can take the hit from you and if you have Mounted Combat can then negate the hit. This can also be used to soak attacks with ride checks that you In Harms Way from your allies.
For skill ranks, take your Diplomacy to 11!
If you're new to PF, one thing to know is that the feat power attack is almost a req for a good martial character. Weapon focus on w/e weapon you're using (lance, heavy flail, etc) is another good choice. Asides from that, take a lot of mounted combat feats. Stat wise, despite being the party face, make sure you prioritize STR and CON. I'd go: STR>CON>CHA=DEX>INT=WIS. Thats in an ideal world of course.
Pharmalade, thanks for the advice, but how would I stat up a man eating attack horse ?
Most of my previous exp was with AD&D, 2, 3ed. Never went 4, and never played anything with a companion.
Artaxerxes, I figured from lurking around a few days, that power attack was a given, along with furious focus if I wanted to be really nasty on the charge.
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In my personal opinion, the best orders are Order of the Dragon and Order of the Cockatrice. Both lend themselves to incredibly fun, versatile builds.
Aid Another Cavalier — Order of the Dragon
Order of the Dragon's key ability is the buff to the bonus you provide with the aid another action.
• Swift Aid will let you use sid another as a swift action, but it reduces the standard bonuses by half. Luckily, your Order of the Dragon bumps this up as much as the standard action version.
• Although more feat-intensive, Team Up allows you to perform aid another actions as a move action. Gang Up isn't terrible either, especially in a melee-focused party.
• Bodyguard is probably the most powerful option, as it allows you to bolster your allies with attacks of opportunity. There is even an archetype that gives this ability to the cavalier for free, the Honor Guard. The real draw is that the Honor Guard increases the bonus your aid another provides to an ally's AC by +1, which stacks with your Order of the Dragon Bonus. Bodyguard also upgrades into In Harm's Way, which is the ultimate "save my friend" trick.
• Prestige Class (whose name is changed on the PFSRD for the sake of copyright infringement) increases the base bonus to attack rolls or AC that your aid another bonus grants to +4; if you can bare through two levels of other less-than-helpful abilities.
• If you feel like multiclassing bard, the Battle Herald lets you add the class's scaling benefit on aid another actions and the benefit they apply to all allies who witness your performance.
• Although it is at a much slower (and smaller) progression than the other two, the Golden Legionnaire provides a small bonus to your aid another bonus, as well as most of the previously mentioned feats as bonus feats as you level up.
• Although its not great in terms of the bonus, the Bellflower Tiller improves the bonus you give to people in your "group" by +1 and has other team-based benefits.
Demoralize Cavalier — Order of the Cockatrice
Order of the Cockatrice's key ability is the fact that you get Dazzling Display for free as a move action and gain a bonus on attack rolls against creatures you have demoralized; because demoralize gives a –2 penalty to AC, effectively you get a +4 bonus to hit someone you have demoralized (2 for your bonus, 2 for their penalty).
• If you go Order of the Cockatrice, do not stick with a single-class cavalier. It is not worth it because all of the strong demoralized-based abilities are in other classes and the Order of the Braggart is part of the puzzle.
• You are going to want to be a multiclass Rogue / Cavalier; probably with more levels in Rogue. Rogue gives us the Thug archetype, which does so much for you its astounding. You automatically demoralize enemies for 1 additional round and if you get 3 or more rounds, you can trade all of your rounds of shaken for rounds of frightened for 1 turn. Its very good! If you continue to take levels in rogue, you get the ability to trade sneak attack dice to inflict the sickened condition on your opponents; sickened is another –2 to everything your target does, so between shaken and sickened you have severely hampered your opponent.
• Dazzling Display upgrades into a feat called Shatter Defenses, which causes demoralized enemies that you strike to become flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn. In addition to making it even easier to hit your enemies, it also has amazing synergy with the rogue's sneak attack because your foes are going to almost always be flat-footed against you. The feat chain concludes with Deadly Stroke, which is like a Vital Strike that adds bleed damage to your attack. This chain requires Weapon Focus, which you can luckily pick up as a Rogue Talent if you multiclass.
• The Boar Style feat chain is notable for two reasons. First, it allows you to rend your enemies for a significant amount of bleeding damage (which would stack with Deadly Stroke) but more importantly later feats in the line work with demoralize very nicely. Boar Ferocity allows you to make a free Intimidate check against anything that you successfully deal bleeding damage to with Boar Style and Boar Shred allows you to make Intimidate checks as a move action (the only other way to do this is with a specific rage power) and it increases your bleed damage from Boar Style by 1d6, to a whooping 3d6 damage. And again, if you spend one round to make a Boar Style shred and the next to do a Deadly Strike, all of this bleed damage stacks. And lucky for you, you can pick up Improved Unarmed Strike (Boar Style's only prerequisite aside from ranks in Intimidate) as a rogue talent and you can take a Style Feat once as a rogue talent as well!
• If you buy a merciful weapon, Enforcer is one of the nastiest things that you can to do someone. This is the easiest way currently in the game to rack up a massive number of rounds of shaken, which basically means a never-ending bonus on attack rolls for you!
• If you go two levels into Urban Barbarian (so the rage is less of a penalty), you can pick up Intimidating Glare as your rage power, which has the potential of adding a bunch of extra rounds to your shaken condition and is one of two ways to Intimidate as a move action (the other is Boar Style).
•In People of the North, a new Viking archetype was added. Although this class will reduce the action required to use demoralize more than any other class in the game, you need a significant investment in the Fighter class to get it, and at end game level I'm not convinced that a swift action demoralize is worth all of the levels you'll invest.
• Hobgoblins have TONS of feats that revolve around demoralizing with the whip. Its worth mentioning, but its not really worth using as a cavalier because you won't have the feats to invest in effective whip combat. Having whip proficiency does have the benefit of allowing you to qualify for ...
• Aspis Agent. This one is tricky, because you're not going to be able to get into it if you take the Thug archetype, as you'll be trading the prerequisite Trap Sense for it. This means that you'll need to be able to cast detect secret doors and taking the rogue's minor magic talent will not be enough for this task. Your best bet for this one is to multiclass bard, or ignore the Thug archetype (personally, I would rather pick up a few minor spells than take Trap Sense). Bard also has the advantage of giving you free proficiency with the whip, which is required for this class. The jewel in this class is the ability to ignore the penalty for Intimidating something larger than yourself, which is normally a –4 penalty. This is not a huge bonus (and therefore can easily be skipped) but it is available if you want it.
Pharmalade, thanks for the advice, but how would I stat up a man eating attack horse ?
Most of my previous exp was with AD&D, 2, 3ed. Never went 4, and never played anything with a companion.
Artaxerxes, I figured from lurking around a few days, that power attack was a given, along with furious focus if I wanted to be really nasty on the charge.
Personally, I don't have Power Attack on my Order of the Cockatrice Samurai. I don't need it; I spend most of my actions debuffing enemies before making wicked sneak attacks against my foes. :)
Power Attack is a mathematically good feat. But in terms of gameplay, it is a BORING feat. You will forget to announce that you are using it. All the time. And it only adds a very passive number to your damage rolls; it isn't a feat that really promotes team play.
Both of the orders you highlighted are better at team play than being damage-dealing machines, and more often then not you are going to find yourself locked out of your Cavalier's Charge ability, such as when you're fighting underground, indoors, or anywhere else that a horse cannot reasonably hope to follow you.
Furious Focus isn't as important as you might think; it gives you a penalty-free first attack, but as a full Base Attack Bonus class, most of the time you'll still hit even if you take that penalty.
Some more points that I am going to have to consider, thank you.
Well, it turns out that I am looking at being the only full BAB combatant in my party, and just wondering what feats I would take to be capable both on and off the mount.
edit, not probably
For a man eating attack horse, use both feats and items. Amulet of Mighty Fists gives your horses attacks bonuses to hit and/or other weapon bonuses you may find interesting. You can also take the feats to allow heavy armor proficiency so it becomes a tank in combat. This isn't light on the gold at quadruple cost and it also eats feats and slows you down, but your horse will be scary, hard to take down, and as effective in combat as you could hope for. (You can even take the Trample feat, which is one of the most satisfying feats you could ever hope to use.)
Your horse will have a bite (1d4 primary) and two hooves (1d6 2ndary) to smack people down. If you are mounted and using a lance, you can five-foot step between attacks with your lance and your horses full round of attacks to press loads of damage. Take a more conventional sword or other weapon if you'd rather keep your five-footer available.
That's the man-eating horse in a nutshell.
Feat suggestions: Power attack, Light Armor Prof (bonus), Medium and heavy armor prof. Multiattack. Improved overrun. Toughness.
Put your stat bonuses into INT if you want to get more interesting feats, and strength or constitution otherwise.
Also, if you have teamwork feats that allow for AOOs (such as Broken Wing Gambit) as a part of your Tactician ability, Combat Reflexes ensures your mount can take the attacks even if no allies are nearby.
You could take the Beast Rider archetype, to get an exotic mount, and take teamwork feats on both yourself and your mount.
The advice is appreciated, thank you.
Another hot tip is to get your mount up to INT 3 and focus on the overrun and trample feat trees for it, allowing you to make charges that deal damage with little to no hassle with the horse. Getting a caster to get you some freedom of movement buffs would be a worthy move as well.
For yourself, if you go mounted, the vital strike tree is a helpful damage booster, especially once you get the feat that adds +2 damage per vital strike die, which IS multiplied by charge and critical factors. It's a +18 damage on a regular hit at the end of the tree, but is even an impressive +6 for the first one.
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The Mounted Combat Trick: Get your mount some smarts and teach it the feats Bodyguard and In Harm's Way. If you get hit or take in harms way, your mount can take the hit from you and if you have Mounted Combat can then negate the hit. This can also be used to soak attacks with ride checks that you In Harms Way from your allies.
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Be careful trying to pull this one off in PFS, it isn't actually legal. In Harm's Way allows your mount to take the damage from an attack that successfully hit you. Mounted Combat negates an attack against your mount. Since your mount was never targeted by an attack, and Mounted Combat doesn't allow you to negate attacks against yourself, this combo doesn't pass rules muster and you may find you burned a lot of feats for nothing if you sit down at a PFS table with a savvy GM.
I haven't been in a situation that I could use the teamwork feats yet.
The fights have all been over before there is a chance to use it.
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I love cavalier personally. Also, you don't realize how useful teamwork feats are until you use them. I often run a supporting tank cavalier that helps the fighters. When fighting things with reach, run up to the first area they can reach and stop, pop escape artists and now your melee fighters can charge past you, not bothering about attacks of AOO, then use Bodyguard to give them increased AC whent hey get targeted.
Shield Wall plus bodyguard can turn a caster into a tank if they find themselves in a bad spot. At level 3 I can grant a +5 to their AC with shield wall active. With 3 ranks in Acrobatics I can sit with full plate and a tower shield, taking full defense, happily at a 30 AC, 17 touch, and 23 flat footed. If someone has a shield active, then I am at 32. At level 3.
I often ignore the mount. I will buy it some barding and shoes of the zephyr, but besides that, most riding abilities are fairly built in.