Just over the weekend, I had the pleasure of playing a scenario of PFS with a rather large variety of people. We had a kind-hearted Nagaji Paladin, a whimsical Halfling Bard, a sword-and-board secondary Paladin, a switch-hitting Ranger and his fuzzy wolverine, and even the iconic Ninja everyone knows and is ambivalent towards.
Oh, and me, the Samurai/Hellknight.
But by far the most useful member of our party was the quiet Musket Master. Sure, his damage output was great. And sure, he did his job quite well. But the crowning moment of awesome was when he said that he was going to ready an action to shoot the scary Summoner at the end of the scenario when she began casting.
When he took her down to nearly dead with just a single Ready Action, it got me thinking: is it possible to do the same with a melee PC?
I'll admit, my PF-fu is fairly weak. All I can think of would be to create a character with Lunge, Patient Strike, and Vital Strike. By RAW, it seems like the attack action you ready with Patient Strike can reap the benefits of Vital Strike. Couple that with a high damage weapon, and I figure it might be a fun little Counter-focused build.
Anyone willing to offer their two cents on this?
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It's doable, but the feat you're looking for is Step Up and its line. Also, you're going to be better off taking the Disruptive line than trying to focus on readied actions. If you do choose to go with readied actions, start thinking up what your condition is going to be, because if it's simply "if they cast a spell I attack" then there's a whole bunch of ways that becomes a wasted action.
A Barbarian with the Superstitious/Witch Hunter/etc. rage powers is probably perfect.
It's doable, but the feat you're looking for is Step Up and its line. Also, you're going to be better off taking the Disruptive line than trying to focus on readied actions. If you do choose to go with readied actions, start thinking up what your condition is going to be, because if it's simply "if they cast a spell I attack" then there's a whole bunch of ways that becomes a wasted action.
A Barbarian with the Superstitious/Witch Hunter/etc. rage powers is probably perfect.
I actually noticed that line of Feats the first time I was thinking of the concept. But after reading the text on a Ready action, I found that you were able to include a 5-foot step as part of the Ready action if you hadn't previously taken a move action that round.
And as for condition, I'm thinking of taking ranks in Spellcraft so that even though he wouldn't be able to use Detect Magic to notice a spell, he'd be able to notice the spell and what's being cast by a roll. Amazingly enough, there's no mention of what type of action it is to identify a spell being cast, so I'd imagine that there's an argument for it being a free action.
As such, the condition for this character would generally be:
"I ready an action to attack if I recognize they're casting a spell."