My group and I are about to start Rise of the Runelords and I am in need of some help deciding on the right character to best round out the party. There are only 3 of us and the other two are going dexterity fighter and standard rogue. Neither of them tend to worry a lot about optimization. So i feel like i need of be some sort of caster to round out the party. I rolled 16 16 16 15 14 13 for my stats. I was leaning towards oracle so i could heal if necessary and cover casting but the group is worried about damage.
So any help/suggestions on class / build would be greatly appreciated (i am fairly new to table top gaming)
Yeah, a caster is a good plan. There's no bad choice with those stats, so Oracle is solid. You could also go Paladin; you can still use wands of Cure Light Wounds and such. Or go Oracle/Paladin (the 'Oradin' super healer) if you want to be especially great at keeping everyone alive, including yourself.
You could also go druid which gets you a pile of buffs and useful non-combat features. Or if you want to make your GM cry and protect your other party members by being so much better that they can just take naps during combat, be a synthesist summoner.
Depending on your GM's rules about the racial archetypes, an orc/half orc Scarred Witchdoctor is amazing as a combat spellcaster.
Your spellcasting becomes dependant on Con, so you have good HP for a spellcasters as well as access to a natural armor buff, and the Prehensiles Hair hex lets you cast your melee touch spells, which do decent damage, from a safe 10ft away.
I would go Scarred Witchdoctor with the Elements patron theme and the Prehensile Hair -> Evil Eye -> Cackle hex, Healing hex if you feel you need more of that beyond your spells.
I cannot recommend cleric of Desna strongly enough, as a cleric you can switch your spells out to fix the problem of the day for the party. 8th level liberation domain power will also be amazing at keeping your party in the fight. Travel gets you the all important teleport among other amazingness, and you get channel without being a life oracle. If you really want to do everything, take eldritch heritage arcane on top!
I would hate to 'waste' those stats on a Bard, but an Archer Bard would increase the group's combat damage significantly through his buffs and archery, give you needed 'face' skills and provide the option of healing when needed. We had one in our run through the AP and he was incredibly effective.
Just throwing this out there: RotRL is a tough AP, meant to be played with 4 at a minimum and it sounds as if your party is far from optimized - that's perfectly fine, but its going to require your GM really walking a fine line to keep from overwhelming you guys, especially if you are all relatively inexperienced.
Feel free to drop me a line if you need any help putting a build together and good luck!
In terms of specific builds, an 18 strength will probably be enough to do fine keeping up with the party. Take human and the skill focus racial archetype, with weapon proficiency or selective channel or extra channel.
While bards are awesome, they will not keep your party alive through everything. You really want to bring the full might of remove___, heal, break enchantment, channel, teleport death ward, breath of life, etc, etc. Etc. Even for things that bards can also do like haste, healing, etc. You want the extra spells per day and the ability to change them out. Go cleric and never look back.
Go Oracle or Witch. Either can both heal and do offensive spellcasting (the two absent roles).
If worried about damage, sure, go Oracle.
I'd go with Heavens Oracle and stats something like this:
Str 16 Dex 13 Con 16 Int 14 Wis 15 Cha 18 (with the Human +2 in Charisma).
Grab Heavy Armor Proficiency and Spell Focus (Illusion) at 1st (With Awesome Display as your Revelation), Power Attack at 3rd, and then additional casting-focused Feats at 5th and up. Wield a Longspear and Armor Spikes, but never put too much money intothem, focusing on casting instead.
Heavens Oracle is an optimized spellcaster classic, and with 16 Str and Con you can be very solid in melee as well.
The GM will have to work hard to prevent that group from being destroyed. RotRL is a challenging AP. DEX Fighter and Rogue are just about the weakest builds possible within the game system. Whatever PC the OP decides on will be in the un-enviable position of trying to pick up the slack for the other two weaklings. That's fine and can be entertaining, so long as everyone understands that's how it's likely to go.
An Arcane caster will be able to set the other two up to inflict some damage, but won't do much to help the group survive.
A Divine caster will help the group survive, but won't help the other two inflict damage.
Regardless of what the OP chooses it will be a weak 3-PC team trying to handle a challenging AP. Good luck!!!!
I would advise a druid myself, as I'm doing a game as a human Druid with a Tifling Ninja, two man trucking most of ROTRL with my sentient, armored, scythe using T-rex companion. Totally legal, I swear.
For you'r rolls, I would say. 13 Str, 16 Dex, 16 Con, 15 Int, 18 Wis, 14 Cha. As human. Dwarf, Half Elf or Half Orc would also work, but not be as flexible feat wise.
If your GM allows featured races, Aasimar can be optimized to do most anything beautifully, as can Tiflings to a lesser degree. Tengu are also fun, especially if you get an elf curved blade (scimitar crit range with d10s) as long as you don't mind being a bird.
What you want to set yourself up as is a support caster, one part healer, one part buffer, one part debuffer and one pert magic item maker. The range of druid spells and relatively few feats needed to be effective makes it very easy to fill all these rolls (ROTRL gold starves you, so the ability to make your own magic items at 1/2 price effectively doubles your party wealth).
The big key for this one is your animal companion. I like the T-rex because, well, its a T-rex and has one massive bite attack with monster stats at the cost of teny tiny arms. But most dinosaurs or other combat focused companions, such as big cats, wolfs or trents, will do just fine. Animal companions progress nicely on their own, but they become much, much more effective when you give them items, such as armor. An armored dinosaur is all but impossible to hit with mooks and makes a wonderful meat wall and flanking partner for your dex based team mates.
In addition I would suggest improving the anamal's Int with the level up stat boosts. While a few points in dex, str or con is nice, putting those points into int allows you to actually talk with your companion, removing the limitation of tricks (Albeit only simple instructions as int 3 is still rather dumb). In addition, it lets you give them any feat they like rather than just the animal ones (My rex has weapon prof scythe for example) and lets them advance their skills like any PC would (Still likely 1 per level as they have sad int scores).
Finally, there are two spells that I have found all but essential in this endeavor. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/atavism gives the advanced creature template which is a massive buff that improves every aspect of your companion. The arguably more important one, depending on you companion, is http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/anthropomorphic-animal . This not only lets your companion talk, but also lets them use shields, weapons, doors, cheaper armor and and most other tools while retaining the ability to use a fair number of their natural attacks. Even better as the effect can be made permanent for 7500 should you find a level 11 caster with the permanency spell.
With that fine stat array I think it would be a huge waste not to with something that has at least 3/4 BAB, so Oracle, Druid, and Bard are all good choices there. If you really want arcane magic for whatever reason you could even go Eldritch Knight or Dragon Disciple- though overall divine will probably be much more helpful.
I vote magus.
Do you have a preference of race? What level are you starting out at?
Bard is also a very good choice.
Bard more so because he gets healing, magus because he gets offensive spells. Both would be great choices for the party.
Or you could cheese up a wizard or witch.
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