need help with a vulpine pounce build


Advice


so I heard from someone that theres a really awesome lore warden build you can make that focuses on the kitsune's vulpine pounce feat, but looking up some stuff online it looks like you could also use the rogue scout to use scouts charge and then vulpine pounce to do some major damage.

my problem here is that I haven't been playing pathfinder for that long and I don't know enough about the game to form my own optimized build for something like this.

so my questions are:
1. do you think the scout or the lore warden would be more effective

2. could someone who sees this possibly supply me with a list of what order of feats to grab to make this effective (or just give me a full build if you want to)

Sovereign Court

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Well, let's take a look at the feat.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/vulpine-pounce-combat

Vulpine Pounce:
(Combat, Kitsune)
You can change shape mid-charge and pounce on an opponent in the same round.

Special: A kitsune may select this feat any time she would gain a feat.

Prerequisites: Swift Kitsune Shapechanger, base attack bonus +10, kitsune.

Benefit: When you change shape into your kitsune form and use the charge action in the same round, you can make a full attack against your opponent.

And here's the prereq:

Swift Kitsune Shapechanger:
You can change shape more quickly than most kitsune.

Special: A kitsune may select this feat any time she would gain a feat.

Prerequisites: Dex 13, base attack bonus +6, kitsune.

Benefit: You can assume human or kitsune form as a swift action. If you have the Fox Shape feat, you can assume fox form as a swift action as well.

Normal: A kitsune’s change shape ability is a standard action.

Which dovetails with this feat:

Fox Shape:
You can change into a fox in addition to your other forms.

Prerequisites: Cha 13, base attack bonus +3, kitsune.

Special: A kitsune may select this feat any time she would gain a feat.

Benefit: You can take the form of a fox whose appearance is static and cannot be changed each time you assume this form. Your bite attack’s damage is reduced to 1d3 points of damage on a hit, but you gain a +10 racial bonus on Disguise checks made to appear as a fox. Changing from kitsune to fox shape is a standard action. This ability otherwise functions as beast shape II, and your ability scores change accordingly.

So to use these feats to the fullest, you'd need:
-Full BAB (otherwise it will take you a while to get the last one)
-at least 13 Cha
-at least 13 Dex
-A solid full attack
-Gain utility from shapeshifting
-Don't need a swift action

And of course, let's remember that Kitsune give +2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Str, as well as a bite attack.

Hmm... Considering the -2 Str, this is pretty tricky. In my opinion, though, your best bet would be a Ranger/Ninja (scout archetype) multiclass. Here's why:
-Aspect of the Beast as your 2nd level Ranger bonus feat gives you a pair of claws to go with your bite, giving you a full-BAB 3-attack routine from the early levels.*
-Ranger's full BAB helps you reach that +10 sooner.
-Sneak Attack means you don't need a lot of Str to deal damage - I would try for a 10 or 12 Str and use Weapon Finesse.
-Ninjas can spend Ki to make extra attacks on a full attack, which is awesome with vulpine pounce.
-Turning into a fox has a lot of value for a sneaky type.

Anyway, I'd suggest looking at some of the ninja, rogue, ranger, and fighter guides in the sticky at the top of the advice forum, and keep an eye open for things that work well with the pounce. Good luck!

*Two Weapon Fighting is not as good for rogues/ninjas as you'd think - the -2 per attack really hurts when you've got a 3/4 BAB and not many ways to buff yourself. Natural weapons get you more attacks at a higher attack bonus, which is vital for landing sneak attacks.


Reynard_the_fox wrote:

snipped

So to use these feats to the fullest, you'd need:
-Full BAB (otherwise it will take you a while to get the last one)
-at least 13 Cha
-at least 13 Dex
-A solid full attack
-Gain utility from shapeshifting
-Don't need a swift action

And of course, let's remember that Kitsune give +2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Str, as well as a bite attack.

Hmm... Considering the -2 Str, this is pretty tricky. In my opinion, though, your best bet would be a Ranger/Ninja (scout archetype) multiclass. Here's why:
-Aspect of the Beast as your 2nd level Ranger bonus feat gives you a pair of claws to go with your bite, giving you a full-BAB 3-attack routine from the early levels.*
-Ranger's full BAB helps you reach that +10 sooner.
-Sneak Attack means you don't need a lot of Str to deal damage - I would try for a 10 or 12 Str and use Weapon Finesse.
-Ninjas can spend Ki to make extra attacks on a full attack, which is awesome with vulpine pounce.
-Turning into a fox has a lot of value for a sneaky type.
snipped

bolding mine. just wanted to point out that the spending a ki point is a swift action, so won't work with the pounce.


Using the Lore Warden build would take a long time and many levels to accomplish to greatest effect. Not sure you'd even be able to do it in PFS play (so I hope this is a home game).

It would involve two of the Lore Warden's key abilities, Maneuver Mastery (to get greatest effect from your CMB/CMD) and Know Thy Enemy (which you can eventually use as a swift action for even more bonuses).

Using this build pretty much locks you into the Fighter class, which wouldn't be bad, except that you're a fighter in Light Armor as soon as you use the Lore Warden template. Not to mention you lose some of the key reasons to be a Fighter in Pathfinder, notably Armor Mastery. It would also prevent level dipping to get Scout's Charge, as you wouldn't be able to use any of this together to fullest extent until level 16+.

I recommend if you want to use a similar mechanic, take a look at some options that won't cripple you as much, and will still be fun to roleplay and effective in combat even in early levels.

Catfolk can also get claws and a bite attack, and a multiclass Ranger/Rogue with the Scout archetype can do the exact same thing with the "Claw Pounce" feat. They can also stack their claw damage feats to get 1d8 claws and have a racial Rogue talent to do 1d8 sneak attack with claws. That's quite a bit of awesome in one package.

Downfall: It revolves around natural weapons, which eventually get outclassed by manufactured magical weapons. Very limited options to improve upon them.

Like the Lore Warden build, it takes you 14 levels to get maximum effectiveness, but at least this way you're combat capable from level 1.


thank you guys so much for the help and I think the ranger/ninja with the scout archtype is looking cool. so my final question would be how many levels of ranger and how many levels of ninja. Also if one of you could give me like a straight up level by level order of feats to grab that would awesome (obviously I could see that giving me a feats order list could be tedious, so if you don't want to don't worry about it)

also by the way I am making this character for PFS, I got the vulpine blooded boon from paizocon

Sovereign Court

Well, you can certainly build towards it for PFS, but you'll have Pounce at most for a level or two until you have to retire the character.

I think two levels of Ranger is probably plenty. That gets you the bonus feat, martial weapon proficiency (which you probably won't be using much but longbows are nice to have in a pinch), favored enemy, and wild empathy. If you want, 4 levels gets you favored terrain, an animal companion, and level 1 spellcasting, but your AC will not scale with you and your spellcasting is Wis-based, so I'd stick with 2.

As for feats... maybe something like this?

1 Weapon Finesse
2 (ranger) - Aspect of the Beast (claws)
3 ?
5 Fox Shape
7 ?
9 Swift Kitsune Shapechanger
11 ?
13 Vulpine Pounce

You can look at the ninja or rogue guides to decide what feats you want in those slots. Toughness, Improved Initiative, and Weapon Focus: Claws are decent choices, but you could probably do better.

Stats should be Dex > Con/Cha > Str/Wis > Int. You could maybe build it as a "brute" build with focus on Str instead, but ninja/rogue is really the one place you can get away with a weapon finesse build, and I like the bonuses to stealth, acrobatics, etc.


Make sure and take the Underhanded Rogue talent. When you attack in the surprise round with a weapon that was hidden, you get max sneak damage instead of rolling.

I would be hard pressed to argue against the natural weapons that appear after a swift action shapechange not qualifying as hidden for this, and you can charge your base movement in the surprise round and still get the full pounce.

Start first level rogue, take weapon finesse, the take 2 level of ranger, choosing natural weapon style and taking Aspect of the Beast as your 3rd level feat, and


While sneak attack can be nice with pounce (particularly if you are of the scout rogue archetype...which might be applied to ninja legally depending on interpretation), I am going to go with a different track and suggest the brawler archetype for fighter.

As we all can agree, the best thing to have when you have pounce is a large number of attacks that get extra damage from each hit. A fighter using TWF seems like an excellent choice for this since fighters have:

-Full BAB (a lot of the builds that involve ninja will delay getting the +10 needed for vulpine pounce)
-The feats to spend on the large number of TWF feats (plus actually having a free combat feat at level 10 when you get vulpine pounce)
-Access to tons of nice juicy weapons
-Weapon training, which gives you bonuses to your attack rolls and damage rolls. (the main reason to TWF

Now, why do I suggest brawler? This is because they offer you the one of the best versions of weapon training as soon as possible. At 3rd level (which is 2 before almost every other fighter), you get +1 to attack rolls and +3 to damage . That more than makes up for a modest strength score, no? With power attack alone you can do +5 damage per hit even if you only have 10 STR. These bonuses eventually adds up to +5 to attack and +7 to damage, and this is before doing feats such as weapon specialization and greater weapon specialization (which both add +2).

Now, Brawlers only get these advantages with close weapons, but they are almost all finessable. The cestus (a cross between a boxing glove and a spiky oven mitt from hell, although the fluff description makes it out to be more like just a spiked glove)in particular stands out since it has the same stats as a dagger, but you can still use your hand for holding things. Another rather funny option would be wooden stakes, which are free and can be thrown as well as daggers. It would make a funny but effective back up weapon with a TWF build at least since you still get your version of weapon training on them. Now, another problem with DEX base TWF builds is that you pretty much restricted to light armor. But that is not as much of a problem for brawlers. You see, at level 7, you get a scaling ability that lowers enemies' attack rolls and concentration checks just because you are standing there by up to -4 to attack and -7 to concentration at later levels. That is like +4 AC for everyone around that opponent.

My favorite part of the brawler, however, is the fact that they can hold an enemy down and stop them from getting away without doing anything during your turn. You see, they can combine the feat stand still (which can stop enemies in their tracks if you get an AoO on them for some kind of movement) and the brawler's ability No Escape (which basically give you an AoO if enemies try to move out of your reach). Combined with vulpine pounce, you can immediately get into the battlefield, do a ton of damage, and set yourself up for keeping an enemy locked down and debuffed. That evil sorcerer that was about to use a save or suck to TPK your party? Lets see if he can do that when you are smashing his face in and stopping him from getting a single spell out. That large beasty that was going to one hit your wizard or archer? You are holding him down far away from them so that they can pick him off at their leisure. This makes you a major asset to the party for something other than raw damage (although you will be doing that a lot with all the bonuses to your damage and the fact that you can always full attack as long as something is within charging range)

Now, after level 10 things do get a bit stale with fighter since you only have a bit more to your bonuses and feats to look forwards to. Switching to ninja/rogue/etc then would be a perfectly reasonable move to help further boost up your damage per hit.

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