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Which Bloodrager Archetype?

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I really like reach weapons and I was unsure which archetype to take with BR.

It is for PFS and I really wanted to be an angelkin aasimar bloodrager since I have two characters to make aasimar out of. I also really like reach weapons so that is something to consider.

The archetypes I was looking at are

Spoiler:

Blood conduit - Free touch spells and improved trip make this seem awesome. Unclear if this would let me trip people with my reach weapon and then touch them.

Blood Rider - Lance type charge build could work but probably not good if you're not human for the feat.

Crossblooded rager - INSANELY STRONG but the -4 to will saves is just colossal and i'm not sure I could live with it. Literally.

Metamagic rager - Seems overpowered for humans weak if I want to be angelkin.

Primalist - is banned

I didn't like the other archetypes.

As for bloodlines I am waffeling between elemental, arcane, aberrant, celestial, and abyssal. Abyssal seems cool with a reach weapon as does aberrant while elemental and arcane are great damage (at different levels) and celestial gives you wings.

I'm rarely overwhelmed by options but in this case I feel like I could build the BR like 5 times and be happy with all of them.
The Exchange

If you like reach weapons then the best build is crossblooded with aberrant at level 4 and abyssal at level 8 (you use that order because you can cast enlarge person before level 8). With that you get a 25' reach. Take greater trip and smile while people ooh and aah.

I made an aberrant build during the playtest for a friend, and it was already overpowered like crazy. Giving her the ability to enlarge at the start of rage instead of spending an extra round to do it is just that much better.
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Undone wrote:
Crossblooded rager - INSANELY STRONG but the -4 to will saves is just colossal and i'm not sure I could live with it. Literally.

Lol, no your teammates can't live with it literally:) I don't think its worth it.

I had planned on taking the primalist for my guy but its banned. It was really the only archetype I really liked, metamagic rager MAY be really strong, haven't done enough number crunching but it seems like it had some potential.
The Exchange
Under A Bleeding Sun wrote:
Undone wrote:
Crossblooded rager - INSANELY STRONG but the -4 to will saves is just colossal and i'm not sure I could live with it. Literally.

Lol, no your teammates can't live with it literally:) I don't think its worth it.

I had planned on taking the primalist for my guy but its banned. It was really the only archetype I really liked, metamagic rager MAY be really strong, haven't done enough number crunching but it seems like it had some potential.

There are plenty of ways to get around a low will save. Clear spindle ioun stone inside a wayfinder comes to mind as a relatively cheap, always active option.

There is literally zero downside to playing a Primalist. You only give up those bloodline abilities you think suck for TWO rage powers. It's my opinion that a Primalist Untouchable Bloodrager is just a Barbarian only better!
Undone said wrote:
Crossblooded rager - INSANELY STRONG but the -4 to will saves is just colossal and i'm not sure I could live with it. Literally.

Where does it say you get a -4 on Will? Taking a close look at it, since I made a crossblooded/untouchable rager, all it says is a -2 for being crossblooded, and even then it'll cancel itself out by level 20, and as long as you don't have a really low Wis score, a -2 isn't really as bad as a lot of people may think. In the current campaign that I'm in, my character has a really good Will save and has rarely used it so far, mostly ends up using Fort and Ref. If it's really a problem for you, the Abberant, Celestial, Arcane, and Undead bloodlines give you Iron Will as a bonus feat that would negate the penalty by level 7.

DekoTheBarbarian wrote:
Undone said wrote:
Crossblooded rager - INSANELY STRONG but the -4 to will saves is just colossal and i'm not sure I could live with it. Literally.
Where does it say you get a -4 on Will? Taking a close look at it, since I made a crossblooded/untouchable rager, all it says is a -2 for being crossblooded, and even then it'll cancel itself out by level 20, and as long as you don't have a really low Wis score, a -2 isn't really as bad as a lot of people may think. In the current campaign that I'm in, my character has a really good Will save and has rarely used it so far, mostly ends up using Fort and Ref. If it's really a problem for you, the Abberant, Celestial, Arcane, and Undead bloodlines give you Iron Will as a bonus feat that would negate the penalty by level 7.

You take a -2 penalty on will saves, and lose out on the +2 bonus you normally get while bloodraging.

To me, that just means you're not getting an extra bonus that isn't in the normal class save progression and the only penalty is the -2 for being crossblooded. Just the way I see it in my opinion.

And I think that the Untouchable Rager can be a lot better than some might think. Bloodragers, imho, get crappy spell progression, both in spells known and in spells per day, so I myself would love to have the spell resistance, especially since it's with your full level and not 1/2 like a lot of spell resistances I've seen out there. But that's with my play style, and I know that there are/will be a lot of really epic builds who properly utilize their spell selection.
DekoTheBarbarian wrote:

To me, that just means you're not getting an extra bonus that isn't in the normal class save progression and the only penalty is the -2 for being crossblooded. Just the way I see it in my opinion.

And I think that the Untouchable Rager can be a lot better than some might think. Bloodragers, imho, get crappy spell progression, both in spells known and in spells per day, so I myself would love to have the spell resistance, especially since it's with your full level and not 1/2 like a lot of spell resistances I've seen out there. But that's with my play style, and I know that there are/will be a lot of really epic builds who properly utilize their spell selection.

You are -4 compared to a non-crossblooded bloodrager in most combat situations, so it is effectively a -4 penalty. And if you are not untouchable, it is unlikely you will be able to boost that will save easily, bloodragers are very MAD as it is, adding WIS on top makes it untenable. (Strength primary stat, need moderate to high con, dex, and cha).

The reason untouchable is being downgraded some is that if you are going that route, you would probably be more effective as a human superstition barbarian. As for the bloodrager spell selection, it has proven to me to be surprisingly useful to me in the couple of sessions Ive played with it. First, do not select many(if any) attack spells. I picked up magic missle just to have it as a ranged weapon of last resort that is unstoppable. Unless you are a spell conduit, all the touch spells are just not worth the action cost, especially with the low save dcs. Instead, you should be focused on buff and immediate action spells. Stone shield for example I found to be a very useful 1st level spell as an emergency tool to avoid really bad things, like allowing a bloodrager to avoid really bad special attacks or turning barely confirmed crit into a hit. The bloodrager also gains access to some of the best buff spells with his third-level spells: haste, fly, and heroism. Don't try and play a bloodrager like a magus, your damage is your 2-hander, not your spells. Use your spells to increase the odds of you delivering that damage and surviving.

The spell conduit is the exception to this, you want all those multi-instance touch spells, and then you want to maximize your chance of delivering them. For example, Im working on a spell conduit draconic bloodrager that picks up feral combat training and pummeling style to focus on natural attacks. Feral combat training lets me get the swift action attacks when I use that specific natural weapon(haven't decided between bite and claws) and the rest of my natural attacks deliver the additional charges. Pummeling charge lets me get pseudo-pounce along with the swift action spell casting, and delivery of one charge. There are definitely lots of ways to take advantage of even the bloodragers limited spells.

Untouchable and crossblooded can't be stacked, both modify bloodline spells.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the untouchable archetype at all. Spell Resistance can easily be a double-edged sword by blocking friendly spells, which the untouchable bloodrager needs a lot more than other bloodragers since he gave up a lot of his ability to self-buff by taking the archetype.

I'd say the superstition-barbarian is a lot better at filling the same niche. You can always rage-cycle/wait to rage to get around the friendly spells issue, while Untouchable Bloodragers eventually get always-on SR.

wait why is primalist? A primalist/untouchable rager with the arcane bloodline is probably one of the best things you can do.

If you crossblood Celestial and Undead taking the 1st power from Celestial and the 4th from Undead you basically get Holy and then Ghost Touch for all of your melee attacks which frees up room for other enchanments on the weapon.
EsperMagic wrote:
wait why is primalist? A primalist/untouchable rager with the arcane bloodline is probably one of the best things you can do.

It's for PFS Primalist is banned in PFS.

Go Spelleater-

You lose uncanny dodge but get a quasi lay of hands for yourself as a swift action- combines w/ fey foundling for more goodness

you also get swift healing which is kind of like DR/- but better IMO as it almost always works while DR/- breaks down against spells, spell-like abilities and energy damage

Metamagic rager is really good if you do human since you can go PA and then spam extra rage and take rage rounds as FCB because it gives you enough rage to quicken and or intensify all spells.

I want to make this an aasimar bloodrager.

No one else seems to like blood conduit and it's unclear to me if you can ignore the range or find a way to improve the range on touch spells to let you do it when you trip people charging you.

I don't want to go crossblooded. I'm 100% sure it will cost me entire fights.
The Exchange
Dread Knight wrote:
If you crossblood Celestial and Undead taking the 1st power from Celestial and the 4th from Undead you basically get Holy and then Ghost Touch for all of your melee attacks which frees up room for other enchanments on the weapon.

Frees up room for other enchantments? Um... no. You already break alignment DR (ALL alignments, not just good) with a +5 base weapon (which means +3 furious). After that there's no reason to spend ~20k gold to do a little extra damage to incorporeals unless you're in an undead heavy campaign. You're not freeing up anything. You're just making your character weaker by giving up better options.

Dread Knight wrote:
EsperMagic wrote:
wait why is primalist? A primalist/untouchable rager with the arcane bloodline is probably one of the best things you can do.
It's for PFS Primalist is banned in PFS.

That doesnt really answer why unless its just another stupid arbitrary pfs ban...

EsperMagic wrote:
Dread Knight wrote:
EsperMagic wrote:
wait why is primalist? A primalist/untouchable rager with the arcane bloodline is probably one of the best things you can do.
It's for PFS Primalist is banned in PFS.
That doesnt really answer why unless its just another stupid arbitrary pfs ban...

It like divine protection are banned because they invalidate entire classes.

Scarab Sages

Crossblooded anything with Destiny, take the 4th lvl bloodline power from Destiny, and have the Fate's Favored trait. +2 to AC and all saves goes a long way toward ameliorating the negatives of Crossblooded.
Silver Crusade

Try stacking Archetypes. There's a solid case to be made for using Crossblooded with Steelblooded and Untouchable. You wear heavy armor, have SR while raging, and can pick Arcane/anything else for the ability to apply Buffs when entering bloodrage. These are applied automatically, so you don't need to cast spells in order to do it.

If you are going aberrant with an aberrant tumor familiar with the protector archetype, then Spelleater becomes about twice as helpful.

two years man, pretty sure he's not still needing advice.

Probably, but if one person googled up this old thread for advice, then some other person probably will too. Posting towards posterity.

I'm sort of perplexed by the crossblooded Abyssal/Aberrant suggestion. What exactly is Abyssal getting you there? Claws? Resistance? I'm not sure if Resist: 5 is worth a -4 Will penalty.

I think I'd rather stack Arcane and Abyssal if I'm going to go crossblooded.

Abyssal is for "Demonic Bulk (Su): At 4th level, when entering a bloodrage, you can choose to grow one size category larger than your base size (as enlarge person) even if you aren’t humanoid."
Melkiador wrote:
Abyssal is for "Demonic Bulk (Su): At 4th level, when entering a bloodrage, you can choose to grow one size category larger than your base size (as enlarge person) even if you aren’t humanoid."

Oh, okay, so you're taking the level 4 abyssal power at level 8. Gotcha.

That's the idea, though personally, I hate taking that effective -4 to will saves as crossblooded. You could also cross aberrant with black blood to get a 15 foot reach while staying medium, and then still cast enlarge person on yourself.

When I played an Aberrant bloodrager I found there were a lot of situations where I didn't cast enlarge person because there wasn't a lot of space available (and, using a reach weapon, I didn't want that big donut hole in close quarters.) So I think that Aberrant/Black Blood is a safer options for "you want silly reach", then you can get big (via spell) when you want to.

Crossblooded bloodrager isn't especially safe anyway though.

No love for the Blood Conduit? You can drop stuff like Rime Frostbite, Frigid Touch and Shocking Grasp with a swift action after making an unarmed strike. You don't even need to be a primary unarmed strike user; you can wield whatever you want to normally, and just make a single unarmed strike whenever you want to swift-spell something.

Or you can get fancy with something like... Draconic Blood Conduit 7 - Improved Unarmed Strike, Two-Weapon Fighting, Dragon Style, Rime Spell. Furious longsword +1, Furious Bodywrap of Mighty Strikes +1.

Charge: Dragon Style unarmed strike / Swift Frigid Touch.
AoO: two-handed longsword.
Full Attack: Dragon Style Unarmed Strike / Swift Rime Frostbite / one-handed longsword / one-handed longsword / Claw Attack (Rime Frostbite).

I really love the destined and the arcana bloodine, while the crossblooded looks terrible to me, -4 will save is a real nightmare.

Destined is a solid choice imho, maybe with the Steelblood archetype, for a quite sturdy frontline hero.

The arcana ability to cast free spells when entering a bloodrage is awesome and probably worth pick the bloodine even only for those powers..
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