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So I was looking for a way to min max wild empathy, because I thought it would be fun to be able to be friends with all of the animals. But while doing so, I stumbled upon the perfect build for any character that would be stuck in one or two types of terrains for a campaign. In these chosen domains, you will be absolutely amazing. Outside? Meh. But it makes for an interesting Aquaman or other such character
People are probably familiar with the basics of this but I will go over it anyways:
This is a 10 Slayer 10 Horizon walker build.
The main goal of the build is to boost Favored Terrains as much as possible. Horizon Walker is obvious, with their Terrain Dominance ability, granting your Favored Terrain bonus as a Favored Enemy bonus to any enemy who lives in that terrain. The prestige class itself grants many domains. Slayer was chosen because it is Full BAB, and has access to rogue talents. The rogue talent we will be focusing on is Terrain Mastery, which grants you a favored terrain and increases your existing terrains bonus as well.
Assuming 20 pt buy, I would recommend STR for this build, as power attacking is the least feat intensive fight style that wont leave you super underwhelmed when you aren't in your special area.
Stats are as follows:
15 + 2 Racial = 17 STR
14 DEX
14 CON
10 INT
14 WIS
8 CHA
Choose Half Orc, with the alternative trait that grants Endurance as a bonus feat
First we go 6 levels of slayer, with our favored class bonus going towards the extra slayer talent. First feat is Power Attack, All other feats for the rest of the build will be Extra Slayer Talent, getting Rogue Talent -> Terrain Mastery for another terrain. All slayer talents will be, you guessed it, Rogue Talent -> Terrain Mastery. We will also need atleast 6 ranks in Knowledge Geography
Once we hit 7, we start going full blast into Horizon Walker. Over the course of these 10 levels, we will gain 7 terrains, and the capstone grants a +2 to all existing terrains and makes any terrain we currently do not have as favored terrains a +2 bonus. Terrain Mastery as the Horizon Walker ability grants some nice bonuses, but the real deal is Dominance. With dominance, we gain that aforementioned favored enemy, and also a stronger ability related to terrain. Some of these grant spell like abilities, like the amazing Astral option, that grants Dimension door as a spell like ability 3 times per day + WIS mod.
Once we get through the prestige class, just finish up with 4 levels of slayer, continuing to acquire terrains
A nice little item that enhances this build are the boots of friendly terrain, which grant an additional +2 bonus to a terrain of your choice.
Boots of Friendly Terrain
So, counting all these up, we have 9 Feats which go towards terrains, 5 normal slayer talents going towards terrains, 1 bonus slayer talent from favored class bonus going towards terrains, 7 terrains from Horizon Walker, 2 "effective" bonus terrains from the capstone and the boots. Adding these together we get...
23 Favored Terrains(Effective level 24 due to capstone). A whopping +48 Favored Terrain bonus for our first terrain. Thats +48 to Initiative, Knowledge Geography, Perception, Stealth, and Survival skills. Also against any creature that comes from that area, +48 to Bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, Survival AND to hit and damage. Wow.
For a lesser bonus, you could take the ranger combat style feats to gain Two Weapon Fighting feats to get more attacks in.
Also for a much lesser bonus, you could swap out slayer for some Hunter Levels and pick up Nature Warden as a prestige class. 2 Levels gives you your favored terrain bonus to Wild empathy checks, and half of the favored terrain bonus as an insight bonus to AC. If you keep up with the spellcasting aspect, you could take up Instant Enemy and Terrain Bond for more flexible applications of your crazy bonuses.
So what do you all think? Did I make any errors that should be corrected? Have any other suggestions for the build?
This basic build has been done before with the ranger or rogue and horizon walker before. The slayer just makes it a bit better since it's full BAB.
The biggest problem is that there is not a list for what creatures count as living in a specific terrain. Humanoids of any type may not be on any list. There is a little too much left open to interpretation, and without the attack and damage bonuses against enemies the other bonuses just aren't that good.