Hi all and thanks in advance.
Recently, I was introduced to Pathfinder and I am extremely excited to be joining the community. We are running dungeons with a 3-man group with a possible 4th to join in a few months. I have done a lot of research and the class that seems to fit my playing style as well as being a good contributor to the group would be an Alchemist - Mr. Hyde build (MRB) to be exact. As I read guides and look at builds I keep running into this one problem - why does this build grab the improved unarmed strike (IUS) feat?
In a post by Duskblade about Polymorph, Mutagens, and Unarmed Strike, he describes a MRB that includes feats like Two Weapon Fighting and Double slice, and explains that these feats are good with IUS. However I don't understand why.
In the CRB, Natural Attacks are said to be able to be used with weapons, as long as the attacks aren't made with the same limbs. Therefore, you could punch with each hand as an Unarmed Attack, but then you couldn't use the claws.
Can someone make sense of this? I understand that Natural attacks and Unarmed Strikes can be confusing even to the most veteran player. As a newb, I need help.
Thanks all.
I recently built a Mr. Hyde Alchemist for Pathfinder Society, as well as having theory crafted a few other alchemist builds, so I'm fairly well-read on building them.
My question are what does your group allow for race? How does it determine stats? 20 point buy? 15 point buy? Rolling system? And what is your GM's policy on traits.
Once I know these, I should be able to narrow down what decisions you need to make for building your Mr. Hyde Alchemist.
Maybe he wanted to give you more attacks via kicks.
That may seem somewhat useful (unarmed strikes get enhanced by the same items as natural attacks), but then it would ruin the natural attacks. Unarmed strikes get iteratives and need TWF, so I am pretty sure they count as manufactured weapons for the purposes of making EVERY natural attack secondary
That halves their str and power attack damage, and puts in a rather stiff -5 penalty to attack (reduced to -2 with multiattack). Since that ruins the bite/claw/claw and adds all sorts of penalties to your attacks (at best, everything hits at BAB-2).
This would only be an advantage if you were a vivisectionist, who gets sneak attack, which means you care more about getting hits in rather than what damage they can do themselves. Even then, you are a 3/4 BAB character who would be dealing with all sorts of penalties to attack. Even with mutagen, you would likely hit more consistently with just a bite/claw/claw (for a 3/4 BAB character, this combo is fairly close to a TWF build in itself).
I also question how this seems like it would just HAVE to be a dex build (since you have both TWF feats to qualify for and your INT to think about for your spells). You thus run into the classic rogue problem- what to do when you can't sneak attack. A strength based alchemist just running with Bite/claw/claw would do fine even in that case, since their attack stat is also their damage stat. To do the same with a dex build, you would need an agile Amulet of Mighty Fists (which is already very expensive, so this would delay you from getting proper enhancements just to do the damage STR builds do naturally). I am a bit wary of DEX builds on an alchemist, since that encourages you to make DEX mutagens, and thus you would suffer a -2 to WIS.....
I also would avoid this route since it need all this: IUS, Feral Combat Training, weapon focus, TWF, Improved TWF, weapon finesse, multiattack, and an agile AoMF. Overall, a huge amount of investment, none of which pays off at the level you are starting at. This approach also needs you to be a vivisectionist alchemist, which is nice, but you lose your bombs (which serve both as damage and a way to give area of effect debuffs with nasty save DCs).
Personally, I would just stick with normal bite/claw/claw at your level, since that combo dominates all the way through mid levels, and it is still decent at high levels (about as well as a gish like character in melee can be at high levels, anyway).