The Character In Question: http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=1090640
So I just hit lv7 with my rogue/fighter, and I'm having a bit of a feat dilemma. First thing I have to note is, I was never meant to multiclass. I did it when I realized "holy crap, our cleric didn't build to melee at all, and we don't have any other melee capable party members." I started building into weapon master fighter (elven curve blades, since we hang around a bunch of elves and it made sense for them to teach him how to use one at the time), and stopped taking rogue levels (the DM allowed me to rebuild myself from a knife master to a scout, so i can SA on charge). The only roguey feat I still have is Dodge, which I need, because at the moment my dex is high enough that a +1 full plate we found would only give me a slight AC bonus over getting a better chain shirt. (plan is to switch out my strength belt for a dex belt, and pump my strength to compensate for the damage that I'm losing). I'm really building by the seat of my pants here, because the only other melee is a magus/ monk that just joined (which makes me wonder, mage/ monk? What the hell is he doing? Can that work?)
In hindsight, scout may have been a mistake, I've rarely been set up for a charge, but we've only had one fight with the new melee so I may yet get to pull off a charge. So, my feat dilemma atm is between a LOT of different options.
1. My AC hurts, we keep going up against stuff with crazy attack bonuses. Last game I got 2hit KO'd, thanks to a lucky crit and a +14 attack bonus. I have a +1 mithral chain shirt so once i can afford a +4 dex belt (soon) I'll be packing one of those and my AC and accuracy will be a lot better for it. To help with my armor issues against stuff like this, I was thinking of picking up Shield of Swings. But that damage loss....
2. Cleave and its variants for dealing with crowds. My AC makes this questionable, atm, though. Cleaving Finish is always nice to have, regardless.
3. Furious Focus. I'm still waiting for another level for BAB 6, so I'm only ever getting off one attack. If I throw in Furious Focus, the benefits are twofold. My damage output for that last level I'm waiting is gonna get a nice big consistent boost. The second benefit is charging. Eventually I'll have hyper-accurate charges that dish out a TON of damage (1d10, 2handing, power attacking, likely critting, 3d6 sneak attack provided I don't add more sneak attack later. 3d6 is some pretty decent extra damage). Also compliments my next choice.
4. Finishing the Spring Attack chain. I was initially gonna take spring attack when I was single classes, but now it seems a bit less viable seeing as how I'm packing high acrobatics, jaunt boots, and nasty charges that are gonna hurt way more than just skirmishing with spring attack. Still, spring attack is a nice option for dealing with stuff that has reach.
5. Toughness, maybe. I DID just come off of getting 2-shotted, and in the same fight we lost the cleric and almost lost the monk/magus. The gunslinger saved the freaking day getting to me before I bled out. We have a sorcerer but he always focuses on enchantment so I don't think he really packs buffs like we kinda need him to. His computer is also fried so he's AWOL until he gets it fixed.
additional question: should i go for the dex belt and boost my strength over time with leveling bonuses? or should i start seriously spending some cash and going for belts of physical might to take choice out of the equation?
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Here's my build advice:
1. Contrary to popular belief, Rogues have no use for Intelligence. As a Wizard/Bard, you can easily dump WIS a bit because you have good Will saves, right? Then why WOULDN'T a Rogue dump INT, since they already have good skills per level? Do you REALLY need the 8 points? That's why, when making Rogues, I tend to use my lowest roll on INT.
2. You spent a VERY valuable early feat and a Rogue Talent in Curved Blade proficiency and Finesse, when that doesn't give you more than a simple +1 to attack. With your fighter levels, you could have just picked up a Falchion, Greatsword, whatever, and taken Greater Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, or some other thing that would helped your survivability.
I'm sorry if I sound like a douche, but Rogues are the weakest class and thus REALLY hard to optimize to make a good character. You can't waste any resources if you wanna keep up.
3. Furious Focus is something you want the moment you can get it. It's too good.
4. You don't want Spring Attack. You want to charge.
5. A +1 Full Plate will screw up your Stealth bonus. Stick with the Chain Shirt, sell the Full Plate for something Mithralish.
6. Toughness is okay but not something I'd recommend. What situation almost killed you?
7. You seriously built a Scout Rogue Catfolk and DIDN'T go with the Claw Pounce route?!?! That would have been an excellent way to go Finesse.
8. Scout was not a mistake. It's the strongest archetype for the Rogues, bar none. You had a ton of other issues in your build that overshadow your Rogue levels by a ton... Fast Stealth, for example, is nice, but as I said before... Rogues don't have enough Rogue talents to spend on cute stuff, you need to overcome your MAJOR combat weaknesses (low bonuses on important saves, low AC, low attack, difficulty to sneak attack...)
Anyway, if allowed, ask to redo your character. Take 4 levels Scout Rogue and the rest take Two-Handed Fighter, get high STR and good DEX, and just charge to your heart's content.
Then do something about those WIll saves. Considering you can't get high Wis, get high Cha and take the Steadfast Personality feat and Iron Will on top of that.
Here's my build advice:
1. Contrary to popular belief, Rogues have no use for Intelligence. As a Wizard/Bard, you can easily dump WIS a bit because you have good Will saves, right? Then why WOULDN'T a Rogue dump INT, since they already have good skills per level? Do you REALLY need the 8 points? That's why, when making Rogues, I tend to use my lowest roll on INT.
2. You spent a VERY valuable early feat and a Rogue Talent in Curved Blade proficiency and Finesse, when that doesn't give you more than a simple +1 to attack. With your fighter levels, you could have just picked up a Falchion, Greatsword, whatever, and taken Greater Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, or some other thing that would helped your survivability.
I'm sorry if I sound like a douche, but Rogues are the weakest class and thus REALLY hard to optimize to make a good character. You can't waste any resources if you wanna keep up.
3. Furious Focus is something you want the moment you can get it. It's too good.
4. You don't want Spring Attack. You want to charge.
5. A +1 Full Plate will screw up your Stealth bonus. Stick with the Chain Shirt, sell the Full Plate for something Mithralish.
6. Toughness is okay but not something I'd recommend. What situation almost killed you?
7. You seriously built a Scout Rogue Catfolk and DIDN'T go with the Claw Pounce route?!?! That would have been an excellent way to go Finesse.
8. Scout was not a mistake. It's the strongest archetype for the Rogues, bar none. You had a ton of other issues in your build that overshadow your Rogue levels by a ton... Fast Stealth, for example, is nice, but as I said before... Rogues don't have enough Rogue talents to spend on cute stuff, you need to overcome your MAJOR combat weaknesses (low bonuses on important saves, low AC, low attack, difficulty to sneak attack...)
Anyway, if allowed, ask to redo your character. Take 4 levels Scout Rogue and the rest take Two-Handed Fighter, get high STR and good DEX, and just charge to your heart's...
like i said, this character was never meant to go fighter, and some of that strength is coming from a strength belt. i was only able to switch around some feats and archetypes when i rebuilt it, so the damage is more from my having to improvise as we went along. i've never heard of a claw pounce build, i don't ususally play catfolk. i made this character as a joke character, it's based on my actual cat. i'm only still playing him because the party loves him. XD
i took weapon master because with that, i'll eventually compensate for some of that lost BAB with extra accuracy, damage, and crit shenangians. this DM auto-confirms crits, so critting is extra viable here, hence the curveblade over the greatsword.
and we almost got killed because the party split in a den of some kinda demon that can go invisible to move around, and just had really high attack stats. the cleric and monk stopped while we were looking around to look at something and lagged behind, and the monsters capitalized on it. when i went back to save them i dueled 1, won barely, and got charged and critted by another when it critted on its perception check to spot me hiding behind a wall waiting for it to come out. 2 nat 20s in a row, mang.
One of the coolest things a Rogue can do with talents and feats (and/or feats to grab extra talents) is go:
Talent: Ki Pool
Feat: Extra Ki
Talent: Ninja Trick: Shadow Clone
To grab Mirror Image 3/day. Besides the awesome shadow-warrior flavor, it has some pretty exceptional butt-saving potential.
Ninja Trick: Vanishing Trick is also very useful, but would need a bigger Ki Pool.
This Ki magic is rather feat-intensive, but if you're using a Rogue/Fighter you shouldn't have any problems covering your basic combat feat needs. Doing things like deploying Mirror Image and vanishing around flanks / through enemy lines for invisible sneak attacks is probably worth a lot more than putting feats into something like the Spring Attack chain.
If your DM allows you to rebuild again, go Slayer? It's basically a rogue/Fighter (well, rogue/ranger, but ranger is basically fighter++ anyway). If that's not allowed, at least switching to Mutation fighter would be great.
Most of the options you consider are really, really sub-optimal at the level you are at. Keeping up in AC is basically impossible, and also kinda pointless with feats; you can only do it with more and more money spent on gear.
You have really high DEX and your STR isn't terrible. I'd pick up a reach weapon and combat reflexes; that actually lets you control the battlefield around yourself a bit which is how you tank in PF.
rebuilding again isn't an option, the DM was kinda hesitant to give me the one i got. and i had to do it during a session, so it was really sudden and i didn't have a lot of time to think about what to do to make the character not suck. i probably wouldn't have taken reach anyway, though. i'm worn out on reach characters, id been playing one for a year and a half. im not trying to make this guy optimal: just functional. he's never gonna be anywhere near optimal.
(plus in this group's last campaign i played a fairly broken sorcerer and i'm trying to tone it down for this one so i'm not overshadowing anybody again. i came in in the middle of the campaign specced for battlefield control and diplomacy and basically started doing everything).
I'm seconding the shadow clone thing. It ups your survivability a lot more than a few extra points of AC would. Heck, just ask if you can retrain to ninja and shift your points around a bit.
yeah, but that involves multiclassing again into ninja and waiting 2 levels, which is gonna tear my BAB another new a@~%!#*. at this rate i'm seriously considering pulling the character regardless of the other players liking him and just bringing him back for the next campaign, fully thought out and put together right. he's fun to roleplay, but mechanically he's a mess made from a messy situation. all ive been doing is damage control on him, and it's frustrating because this is my second character for this campaign. i busted out my magus early on, but had to have him leave because of alignment conflicts. (we were all stupid and didnt make clear what kinda game we wanted to do: half of us were good, and half were neutral-borderline evil. we all decided to stick with the neutral campaign and the good characters left).
Can you retro take an archetype? Shielded Fighter will give bonuses to AC, Unarmed Fighter + Claw/Claw + Agile AOMF will give many attacks and you can focus on a style, which will help greatly.
If you end up scrapping him and building again, you can go Brawler: Snakebite Striker, and take Improved Natural Attack to bump your claws to d8, Feral Combat Training to use claws with anything for unarmed strike, and basically be Sabretooth.
Can you retro take an archetype? Shielded Fighter will give bonuses to AC, Unarmed Fighter + Claw/Claw + Agile AOMF will give many attacks and you can focus on a style, which will help greatly.
If you end up scrapping him and building again, you can go Brawler: Snakebite Striker, and take Improved Natural Attack to bump your claws to d8, Feral Combat Training to use claws with anything for unarmed strike, and basically be Sabretooth.
if i scrap him i'm gonna replace him with either my beast totem barbarian (pounce pounce pounce) or an old reach-and-performance fighter i have lying around that fits the party alignment and is a nice, fairly versatile character. Good all-around melee, with a little bit of face capability on the side for when the sorcerer isn't around. Which is a lot, lately.
I read that rebuilding isn't an option for you, so I'll give what advice I can within the confines of your build.
1. My AC hurts, we keep going up against stuff with crazy attack bonuses. Last game I got 2hit KO'd, thanks to a lucky crit and a +14 attack bonus. I have a +1 mithral chain shirt so once i can afford a +4 dex belt (soon) I'll be packing one of those and my AC and accuracy will be a lot better for it. To help with my armor issues against stuff like this, I was thinking of picking up Shield of Swings. But that damage loss....
That's sort of what happens as you get higher up; Attack Bonus vs. AC becomes INSANE. The game is designed to put some pressure on you, after all, and you're not going to become unhittable without a complete rebuild.
Here are some AC tips:
#1 – Keep alternate weapons on you. Grab a +1 shortsword and a light steel shield, or something along those lines. The best way to pump up your AC is to switch to a magical shield.
#2 – Ignore your fighter levels. Keep going rogue and pick up the Offensive Defensive rogue talent. This incredible talent gives you a dodge bonus to AC equal to the number of sneak attack dice that you possess whenever you sneak attack an opponent. If you also pick up the catfolk-exclusive Nimble Striker feat, you no longer take an AC penalty when you use the charge action. This means that you can charge someone, sneak attack them, and get a dodge bonus to your AC for charging without taking any penalties. Since your next level nets you a rogue talent, you can easily grab offensive defensive and be on your way towards charging for an AC benefit.
#3 – Upgrade your armor from a chain shirt to a mithral breastplate. For only a –1 armor check penalty, you net a +2 to your AC.
2. Cleave and its variants for dealing with crowds. My AC makes this questionable, atm, though. Cleaving Finish is always nice to have, regardless.
If you follow my advice above and grab offensive defensive and Nimble Striker, also taking Cleave becomes MUCH easier, as Nimble Striker also nullifies Cleave's AC penalty. (As well as Lunge, if you ever want that feat.)
3. Furious Focus. I'm still waiting for another level for BAB 6, so I'm only ever getting off one attack. If I throw in Furious Focus, the benefits are twofold. My damage output for that last level I'm waiting is gonna get a nice big consistent boost. The second benefit is charging. Eventually I'll have hyper-accurate charges that dish out a TON of damage (1d10, 2handing, power attacking, likely critting, 3d6 sneak attack provided I don't add more sneak attack later. 3d6 is some pretty decent extra damage). Also compliments my next choice.
Furious Focus is a good feat, but if you're having trouble staying alive, it shouldn't be high on your must-have list. I'd skip it until after you have Nimble Striker; make it your 11th level feat.
4. Finishing the Spring Attack chain. I was initially gonna take spring attack when I was single classes, but now it seems a bit less viable seeing as how I'm packing high acrobatics, jaunt boots, and nasty charges that are gonna hurt way more than just skirmishing with spring attack. Still, spring attack is a nice option for dealing with stuff that has reach.
Not worth it. Spring Attack isn't worth your time because ultimately, you WANT to be next to your enemy. You're asking about optimizing your survivability, after all. Plus, its a feat guzzler and you're playing a class with limited feat access.
5. Toughness, maybe. I DID just come off of getting 2-shotted, and in the same fight we lost the cleric and almost lost the monk/magus. The gunslinger saved the freaking day getting to me before I bled out. We have a sorcerer but he always focuses on enchantment so I don't think he really packs buffs like we kinda need him to. His computer is also fried so he's AWOL until he gets it fixed.
Toughness is okay, but its not going to help you as much as upping your AC will. Would you rather have 9 more hit points or an improved chance to not be hit at all? Remember that even creatures with those crazy-high attack bonuses take penalties on iterative attacks; even if you're not dodging the first hit, you're probably dodging the third and might even be dodging the second.
additional question: should i go for the dex belt and boost my strength over time with leveling bonuses? or should i start seriously spending some cash and going for belts of physical might to take choice out of the equation?
That's up to you. Generally, the Strength option will kill stuff faster. You might want to pick up a Strength belt and then invest in the Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier. Considering your almost-death to a critical hit, I'm sure you'll be drooling over the jingasa once you read it. ;-)
Hope this helps!
I'm seconding the shadow clone thing. It ups your survivability a lot more than a few extra points of AC would. Heck, just ask if you can retrain to ninja and shift your points around a bit.yeah, but that involves multiclassing again into ninja and waiting 2 levels, which is gonna tear my BAB another new a$&*$@*.
There's no need to multiclass again, Rogues can grab Ninja tricks. The only downside is that if you can't rebuild at all, then it'll take a few feats/levels to get there, since you need two talents/feats and one feat to grab the clones. Perhaps if you ask nicely you would be allowed to re-tweak things just a little bit to serve a humble dream of a little ninja magic?
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Where woukd I go from there
2 lvs fighter
Mobility
Combat reflexes
Then go shadow dancer to 3 and get your shadow. Then switch back to rogue and play team flank.
Get your shadow a 1 ghost touch menacing blade to give you a 4 flank. Then beef your dex and put agile on that blade followed by viscious, spell storing, and holy. Spend some money on a shield wand (if you can umd) then beef up the ac.