Greetings all,
My gaming group is enjoying a mythic homebrew campaign. We have a GM who is a pretty good min maxer as a player, and pretty knowledgeable of the system, so he also has pretty good mastery of it. At the start of the campaign, he asked what difficulty we would like the game to be, the higher the difficulty the more mythic tiers and higher point buy we would have. We ended up with a pretty tough game allowing us 28 point buy and the chance to become tier 8, while fighting enemies up to 7 CR above us.
I'm playing a reach cleric hierophant. We also have a paladin and Zen archer champions, and lastly a fetchling twf ninja trickster.
Over the past couple games our ninja has fallen behind in combat. The player, who I don't believe comes to these boards, is becoming a bit unhappy with the build. Despite a heavy focus on min maxing, our campaign has had some really rich and immersive roleplaying, so I know he doesn't just want to scrap the character.
He has some good house rules going in his favor, though. After breaking stealth, a target is flat footed to all of his attacks. In addition, he picked up a homebrew path ability that lets him do half sneak attack/critical damage to targets otherwise immune.
I don't know his full build, but he uses mythic weapon finesse and arcane strike (going into mythic arcane strike). In addition to a high stealth, he has vanish and invisible blade talents. I recommended pirahna strike to help increase his damage as he only has strength 10, bit the GM is very reluctant to allow Softcover or 3p materials, so declined it.
I hate seeing a fellow roleplayer, who is a lot of fun to game with, feel so unhappy with his character. Can anyone offer some advice on how he might be able to contribute more in combat? Whether its standard, mythic, or just tactics... We are currently level 10 and tier 3, and have the option of retraining from UC.
twf, imp twf, Arcane Strike, weapon focus, dazzling display, shattering defense.
Max Intimidate, Bluff, Perception, Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Use Magic Device, Disguise and Diplomacy out become the party face :)
Take fleet charge for your mythic champion strike. Take mythic precision for your mythic abilities (take the champion path, not the trickster).
Talents: Pressure points, Minor Magic (Prestigitation), Major Majic (Vanish), Finesse Rogue, Forgotten Trick
his mythic feats are good to go for this build also :)
Remember Ninja = Champions not tricksters, leave the trickster path for bards and only bards.
I too have a mythic 1/ ninja 9/mysterious stranger 1 and it has quickly fallen behind the rest of the party, the trouble with rogues/ninjas generally is that they are not full BAB and require good party tactics to be effective. Guns being touch weapons, and with the 30ft sneak attack range and double pistol double shot can fit well with a ninja who vanished immediately after.
If strength is low I suggest mythic finesse, sticky poison?, and they grab 2 keen/improved critical feat, wakizashis (15-20 threat) 1d6 + poison? +bleeding sneak (1/sneak dice) +DEX damage +sneak, both are light and with TWF that can add up to a lot of damage coming out of vanish against flat footed creatures. (Bleed requires a AOO check or AOO healing to stop). Poisons can be really useful as well, with TWF that is 2 saves against Drow poison, or extra ability damage +2 for +1/2 as many rounds. Ninjas can strike then vanish until he target collapses or is severely weakened. Use poisons that counter the targets dump stat for maximum effectiveness (or go CON damage poisons and watch each successive save get worse).
The strengths of Ninjas really shine when the party can create flat footed or flanked foes, or have your party work with the Ninja to set up the battlefield before hand (Ninja can scout very effectively and with message can set up the battlefield to your advantage). If the party can assist this way the Ninja's damage should go way up. Also if the Ninja scouts the cleric can prebuff the party to fight whats ahead (Ninjas should be able to get 1 rank in every knowledge to identify threats).
Use the Ninjas natural stealth and skill ranks to plan ahead, use ghost sound or ventriloquism to lure foes where you want them, create simple trip traps or lay down contact poisons and caltrops then have the Paladin make some noise (while the Ninja waits behind the enemy in the shadows). Get tangle foot bags, with high DEX ninjas should be able to hit what they want and set up sneak attacks (as well as limiting flying monsters).
I chose trickster for the ability to select what I needed, I chose Impossible speed, sudden strike, and fast stealth ninja talent so I could keep up with the party (Ninja needs to keep moving). Plus with ki attacks and mythic points being swift actions you want more passive mythic abilities to preserve an already difficult action economy (initiative, surprise strike + poison/tanglefoot bag, vanish, move, wait, full round vs FF, vanish, move, wait...). My ultimate goal is to get assassinate, a nicely OP Ninja ability.
As for ninja talents, don't get roped into minor and major magic, the cloak of the hedge wizard is cheap (2500gp) and gives 2 cantrips (1 is Prestigitation) and 2 1/day 1st levels of each school. Plus with a Ninjas usually high charisma and UMD class skill, wands almost always work and can be cast more often (darkness might be a really handy one to get for shadow step and non vanished stealth set up).
Forgotten trick is a really useful talent regardless of what kind of Ninja they want to play (face, debuffer, backstabber).
Thank you guys for some very sound advice! I'll try to respond in order to the bits a can:
-I know he has forgotten trick, certainly has helped.
-I'll pass on that maybe he might like to look at retraining to champion, some of the path abilities do look impressive. He might even choose dual path.
-The cloak of the hedge wizard does seem like a solid alternative to minor/major magic. Either one of these options should prove helpful.
-Poison is an area I haven't seen his PC use in game. I'll recommend its use to help debuff and damage!
-He does have a few options to get sneak attacks in. Our GM lets all attacks following a successful stealth or invisibility break count as sneak attack. He has vanish and invisible blade as well. I've also said my reach cleric would be happy to take outflank with him, we both could use the additional bonus to attacking, heh.
-He has a solid UMD as well, but darkness could prove difficult because to of the party members don't have any kind of darkvision.
I'll pass along the advice, and thank you guys again for the great responses!
also the agile enchantment is like gold for him. Agile > Keen in terms of many things over a prolonged period of time. Especially if you don't use a crit generator. Solid damage is always a preference of mine.