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Hello message boards! I've been lurking for a while now and finally decided to sign up. Good enough introduction I suppose. Anyway, I'm building my first PFS character, a Dwarven Ranger of the Guide archetype and the personality of Jane's father from the movie Tarzan. I'm for fluff over optimization (Only to a point, though. I like my characters to be decent at what they do.), and I was looking for some help choosing feats for his flavor. He works as a guide through the jungles of Garund if that helps. His ability scores are as follows, 20 point buy of course;
12 STR
14 DEX
16 CON
11 INT
16 WIS
12 CHA
I plan on using him with some sort of crossbow, though he won't really be a combat focused character. Thanks in advance!
That's a 23 point buy with the racial mods
Dropping the charisma to 10 would get a 20 point buy.
Also, you say that you like for your characters to be good at what they do...but what does he actually do? He lacks strength or dexterity, so he can't hit things or shoot things. And your primary stats are constitution and wisdom. This would be fine for a cleric (maybe even an inquisitor), but a ranger has little before level 4 other than killing things. He doesn't have much intellect either, so he is only so-so as a skill monkey.
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I did say decent. And oh, thanks for pointing that out, I'll change that right away. As for what I'd like him to do, eventually through the Guide archetype I essentially get to choose my favored enemy (single target, really) once per day, and eventually extend that to allies. I felt like this would make for a fairly decent support build, since I'd be aiding allies while also pumping out a medium amount of damage. I appreciate the input though, I think I'll re-arrange the wisdom and constitution a bit so that I can raise the dexterity up to 16. Any ideas for feats?
Edit: New ability distribution is: STR 12, DEX 16, CON 14, INT 12, WIS 14, and CHA 10. I think that fixes the point-buy problem, as well as gives him a bit more optimization.
Rangers get a lot of skill points so you might want to consider Having an INT of only 10. You are spread pretty thin and may need the points. Likewise having a CHA of 8 is perfectly normal for a Dwarf, and a 7 would not be that uncommon.
If you went that way, you would have a few extra points to bring up your CON and/or STR. A dwarf with a CON of only 14 is kind of sad. Play with it a bit and see what you get. You seem to want to have a lot of decent stats but I think you are spreading yourself too thin.
You could do STR 14, DEX 16, CON 16, INT 10, WIS 14, CHA 6. This would be the kind of ranger with twigs in his hair who understands people less well than he understands animals. Even though you've dumped a stat you are still not playing a super-optimized guy. Of course, your wild empathy will suffer.
The Jungle Guide trait makes sense.
There may be a feat somewhere that makes Handle Animal into a WIS skill instead of CHA which would make the above build better if you planned on using that skill. There may also be a feat that does something similar to this with Wild Empathy.
Other feat ideas would be to choose a feat that supports the combat style you intend to pursue.
The guide archetype is interesting but remember that Ranger's Focus only works on a specific creature at a time rather than a type of creature. Also abilities that allow you to share a favoured enemy bonus with allies would not work with Ranger's Focus, because it does not grant a favoured enemy bonus - it is something else entirely. Unless you GM will allow a houserule that will allow those abilities to affect ranger's focus as well.
Peet