Lately, I've been working on a character that would do well in any city-based/political/low-combat campaign: Ymiko the geisha.
The character has a fairly traditional "geisha" style backstory: childhood poverty, kidnapping, growing up to manipulate people to survive. I've got a more elaborate one, but I'm here for advice.
I'm trying to kit her out, and I'm not sure what items would be best for her type of build. Any help would be appreciated. I'm fairly new to pathfinder (and RPGs), and most items I find are really geared for the dungeoneering type.
I'm going to be maximizing the following skills:
Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Perception, Sleight of Hand, Sense motive, Stealth, Perform: Dance (for flavor)
As much as I can of points:
Acrobatics, Escape Artist, Craft: Calligraphy (also for flavor)
A bit of points:
Knowledge (nobility,local), Linguistics (probably a couple, depending on local languages)
Any advice for enhancing the usefulness of those skills (No feats please) would be cool. To give an idea of how I'm kitting her, I've put the first 10 levels planned (although that could change). And to add some more flavor (and some damned useful skills), I gave her eldritch heritage: rakshasa.
Name : Ymiko, Human
AL : N
Str 9 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 12 Con 13 Cha 15
1 Ninja - Skill Focus (disguise), Weapon Finesse,
2 Monk: Martial Artist- Dodge
3 Ninja- Eldritch Heritage (Rakshasa) ; Ninja trick: Rogue talent: Deft palm
4 Ninja- +1 Cha
5 Ninja- Crane Style; NT: Vanishing Trick
6 Martial Artist- Feat: Crane Wing
7 Ninja- Iron Will
8 Ninja- NT: Rogue talent: Underhanded +1 Wis
9 Ninja- Osyluth Guile
10 Ninja- NT: Darkvision
Any help Would be awesome. And if anybody knows someone running a campaign where this sort of character would be useful (like on roll20), I'd love to know.
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It may break your history/storyline for the character a bit but you could start off as a monk and get to 4th level first then go ninja. This would base your Ki pool off of Wisdom instead of Charisma and would give you a higher Wis AC bonus.
Then again if you're more interested in being a social player you may wish to dump wis, but it is the "common sense" stat and another lower than 10 would hurt your will saves and make you more dumb than the common villager.
You may wish to go something like: Str9,Dex14+2race=16,Con14,Int12,Wis15,Cha12
I noticed your stats read 14con and 13con but I believe the second one is supposed to be 13wis. Anyways, you'd still have a +1 to Cha skills, still got the +1 skill point a level from 12int, and with 15 wis you have +2 ac and once you get your 1st stat point at 4th level you can make that +3ac just from the wis bonus while giving a nice +3 will save. Hope this helped a little.
EDIT: Btw, I believe your stats are off if you're doing a 20pt build and you placed your +2 from human into Dex taking it from 14 to 16. I believe your build is a 22pt build atm.
To Strayshift: Focused study would be an excellent choice. Thanks for mentionning it. Silver tongued, on the other hand, I will be gaining through eldritch heritage. Dual talent is NOT worth it though in my opinion.
Kysune: Thanks for noticing the 20 point error. However, you are forgetting that ninjas get a charisma based ki pool, that makes going to level 4 in monk unnecesary. Plus, there's a feat (osyluth guile) that, combined with defensive fighting, adds Cha bonus to AC. Combined with crane style, this can work quite well.
After fixing the scores, I get this:
Str 8 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 12 Wis 13 Cha 15
I'm aware it's a very MAD character, but I guess I'm trying for a build that gets AC from as many sources as possible except armor.
Thanks for the help. Any other ideas?
Edit: Decide to write up the backstory:
Name : Ymiko, Human
Born of silk merchants in the far east, this girl was born far from her homeland. At a fairly young age, her parents were killed by bandits, and she was thrown to the streets by her parents creditors. Eventually she was taken in by a wealthy madam (high class brothel-owner) who saw the advantages of having such an exotic creature working for her. Trained to be a high class Geisha, Ymiko gained all the skills a proper lady should have. However, the madam saw inside her a fierce spirit that would ill befit a humble geisha. Rather than break her, she was trained in other things: the way of the ninja and the martial artist. How to disguise onself, how to sneak, how to kill a man with your mere hands, and how to deflect any blow. And she developed her own technique, using her natural charisma to befuddle and confuse her opponents. After saving the madams life, she was given her freedom. She was hired as a (disguised) cabin boy on a ship going west, and now she returns to the strange and violent lands of her ancestors.
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Ki mystic gets your ki based off Wisdom at lvl 3 btw... or you can just not worry about changing the bonus.
Also, I'm a huge fan of whips for rogue type builds, it's just soo strong, and a single feat of whip mastery lets your do physical damage vs ac and from there your sneak attack routes are the normal routes.
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Sorry, I wasn't familiar with the osyluth guile feat. The reason I mentioned Monk level 4 is because if you already have a Ki pool based on Wisdom and then you pickup the Ninja Ki pool you can base it off of Wisdom instead of Charisma. That would save you 1 feat but would make you more Wis focused than Cha focused.
If the ninja possesses levels in another class that grants points to a ki pool, ninja levels stack with the levels of that class to determine the total number of ki points in the combined pool, but only one ability modifier is added to the total. The choice of which score to use is made when the second class ability is gained, and once made, the choice is set.
A backstory I think would be interesting to incorporate is a young girl that was picked up off the streets by a brothel-owner. The young girl is trained to serving and learning the arts of a Geisha. Once she reached an appropriate age a respected client paid for her services, the client tried to force himself upon her and rape her and as the girl panicked she drove the chopsticks from her hair into the client's neck. Knowing she would be severely punished, if not executed, she ran from the brothel and went from town to town to evade those that were searching for her. Discovering that killing was easier than earning an honest living she found employment with an unknown individual through a shadey individual that pays her for each successful job she completes.
Kind of like Memoirs of a Geisha but taken a little further. If you like your backstory the way it is already then just ignore the above though. :)
I think I'm gonna stick with what I have Kysune; I would tend to make the character you suggest Evil, and I tend to avoid playing evil characters.
I also preferred the Cha Build for 2 reasons: Better possibilities for deception (Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise), the high Cha works well with the job (a geisha that manipulates people through her sexuality) and I wanted a test character for Osyluth Guile. I was thinking the combination Crane style+Osyluth guile could mean a very defensive Character.
Still, why the desire to base Ki of wisdom? While I admit its useful for sense motive and perception, and boosting will saves, I dont see many uses otherwise. Still, for a "pure sneaky" ninja, with no social aspect, I admit it would be much more useful to have high wisdom.
You will have to change the alignment to Lawful Neutral if you want to add levels of monk.
Im sorry, I read the title as "ass-diplomancer", and immediately heard "Butts, tell me you secrets..."
Yep, My plan was to take levels in martial artist. I love the archetype for that.
And just for you AndIMustAsk, I will try to build an ass diplomancer. Or an assomancer. Powerless only against creatures without buts. They'll be in the same party as Ronaldo, the nude dwarf monk.
martial artist (and every other type of monk, besides the Master of Many Styles) are confined to their specific list of bonus feats, so you cannot take crane wing for martial artist 2.
Crap, forgot about that. I'll have to change that. Still, with those monk levels, the will saves should be a bit better, so I can remove iron will. I guess I could put deflect arrows or combat reflexes? Which one would be more useful?
I guess it will look more like this:
1 Ninja - Skill Focus (disguise), Weapon Finesse,
2 Monk: Martial Artist- Dodge
3 Ninja- Eldritch Heritage (Rakshasa) ; Ninja trick: Rogue talent: Deft palm
4 Ninja- +1 Cha
5 Ninja- Crane Style; NT: Vanishing Trick
6 Martial Artist- Feat: Combat Reflexes
7 Ninja- Crane Wing
8 Ninja- NT: Rogue talent: Underhanded +1 Wis
9 Ninja- Osyluth Guile
10 Ninja- NT: Darkvision
BTW, does anybody have any idea what items would be useful for this type of build? Dont forget, this would not be for traditional dungeon diving, but for infiltration/assassination.
Just for kicks, I went to check out the unarmed fighter, and they can get style feats as bonus feats without prerequisites! Not what I want for my character, but still, a funny coincidence.
unarmed fighter only gets the no-prereq style feat at 1st level, not for any bonus feat (and it specifically has to be a style feat, so you could take crane style, but not crane wing, for example)
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I had thought about lotus geisha, but I'll have to check the archetype a bit more. The main reasons I went for monk were flavor and crane style.
Edit: I went to check out the lotus geisha, and the problem is, I cant see how to make both the ninja part and the bard part work well together. Either I would lose out on a bunch of ninja advantages, or on bard spells. I admit that flavorwise, it's exactly what I wanted, but I dont think enrapturing performance alone is enough to cover up an assassination. I feel like if I take the bard, I'll loose most of the assassination advantages.
From what I've seen, in pathfinder, multiclassing isnt useful except for small dips (1-3 levels), and I dont see either Ninja dip Lotus Geisha or vice-versa giving much to the other.
Thanks for the help anyway