Building a Kitsune Ninja Scout, 20 pt buy
Attributes will be (With modifiers)
Str 10
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 8
Cha 16
Feats/Ninja Tricks
1st: Weapon Finesse
2nd: Combat Trick: Weapon Focus: Wakizashi
3rd: Two-Weapon Fighting
4th: Flurry of Stars
5th: Improved Initiative
6th: Shadow Clone
7th: Point-Blank Shot
8th: Vanishing Trick
9th: Rapid Shot
10th: Invisible Blade
11th: Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
12th: Advanced Talent: Crippling Strike
13th: Dodge
14th: Evasion
15th: Iron Will
16th: Improved Evasion
17th: Extra Ki
18th: Fast Stealth
19th: Improved Iron Will
20th: Ghost Step
I'm not a god Min-Maxer, and this my second-ever Pathfinder Character, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Okay, looking it over:
— Part of optimization is picking one thing and building yourself to be REALLY good at it. One of the potential issues that I see with your build is that you randomly start focusing on shurriken use at a relatively early level, which is going to hurt your build overall because those abilities aren't really necessary.
— You have a lot of feat slots that you've filled with something that ultimately isn't very helpful. For instance, you have Point Blank Shot and Rapid Shot for your shurriken use, but you don't have Precise Shot. This means that any time an ally is adjacent to your target, you take a –4 penalty to hit with your thrown weapons.
It almost looks like you're going for a switch-hitter build with your ninja, where you switch back and forth between ranged and melee as needed. The problem is that this isn't a particularly good tactic for a character who is dependent on sneak attack damage because it is very difficult to pull off a sneak attack with a ranged weapon because of distance limitations and the fact that it is much harder to deny your target its Dex with a ranged weapon. Your scout archetype will help in this regard, but ultimately you're cutting yourself down to a single attack per round. Even with sneak attack, its not a very effective use of your actions.
The other problem is that your Will save is going to suck terribly because of your 8 Wisdom, and charmed / dominated rogues kill parties. Iron Will comes far too late in your build, and honestly Steadfast Personality (which allows you to add your Charisma bonus as an insight bonus on WIll saves against mind-affecting effects) is better for you anyway. I would bring that up sooner and grab a trait that gives +1 on Will saves for good measure.
If I were building your character, I would drop the shurriken abilities and focus on my wakizashi. I might even grab things like Extra Ki, Two-Weapon Feint, and Improved Two-Weapon Feint for good measure. The scout archetype's sneak attack-activating abilities are great, as is invisible blade, but you don't want to have to rely on spending ki solely on being invisible every combat. That's going to hamper your ability to use your ki pool to get extra attacks because you'll drain your ki very quickly. Two-Weapon Feint (and eventually Improved Two-Weapon Feint) will allow you to put that massive Charisma bonus of yours to work catching enemies off-guard and providing for a full arsenal of sneak attacks down the road. The only downside to this route is that you'd need an Intelligence of 13 in order to meet the Combat Expertise prerequisite.
If you decide to go the Two-Weapon Feint route, I would drop your Con to 12 to refund yourself 3 ability points and invest them into Intelligence. Alternatively, you can drop your Con to 13 and put those 2 points into Int, then use your 4th level bonus to raise your Int to 13 just in time for your 5th level feat.
Also, the Realistic Likeness feat was practically MADE for kitsune ninjas. Being able to transform into any human that you've ever seen is the pinnacle of subterfuge, even if it isn't a particularly strong combat ability.
Generally, I would tend to avoid two-weapon fighting with a ninja or rogue. It looks cool but without reliable to-hit buffs from party members tends to end up with you missing a lot. Given how positioning-dependent you are to activate sneak attack you'll often only get 1 attack per round anyway. If you have Inspire Courage and Good Hope up at all times then this can change things.
It may be worth going for more ways to trigger sneak attack reliably at low-mid levels instead of getting TWF & ITWF.
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When it comes to ninja I also avoid the twf and instead invest in the Snap Shot feat chain and Clustered Shots. Pretty much throwing shuriken with a bunch of sneak attack. If built right a shuriken thrower with a bunch o sneak attack can dish out some hefty damage. It may not be an optimizable path to go but it is fun and pretty effective.
What build would you suggest oppose to TWF? I don't really want to do a Shruiken focused build, but all of the guides I have looked at suggest TWF as the best melee build, or go full-out Natural Attacks with a Tengu.
Hypothetically, getting full attacks and sneak attacks every round, two-weapon fighting looks good. The shine comes off rapidly when you don't get to full attack and don't have the circumstances to trigger sneak attacks. The no full attack/no sneak attack thing comes up with unfortunate frequency.
This thread has a lot of ideas about novel ways to make Rogues work better. What's good for a rogue is usually as good or better for ninjas. There's a lot of discussion on setting up sneak attacks and so on, if you can wade through all 44 pages of thread.
Thanks, I'll try reading through it. I mostly want a sneaky, melee Ninja.
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My suggestion for a solid to-hit is to start with the same first two levels, Finesse and Focus, but then go into Slashing Grace to add a little extra damage when not sneak attacking. TWF eats too many feats and you lack the accuracy boosting abilities to make it work.
As suggested above, taking the racial feat to give yourself free shapeshifting onto almost anyone will give you a ton of possibilities for infiltration. Add in a Sleeves of Many Garments and it only gets better.
Drop the ranges feats, since Pathfinder only rewards ranges fighting with a heavy investment of feats that the rogue cannot provide in a timely fashion. Instead, invest in Iron Will ASAP to help resist the multitude of character-ruining spells and effects that come as early as level 1.