Eldritch Scrapper - What makes it work?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Silver Crusade

Does anybody have any ideas on what could make an Eldritch Scrapper really good. I've been toying with a couple of build ideas centering around combat maneuvers and what I keep coming down to is that there really isn't anything an Eldritch Scrapper can do that a Magus or a Bloodrager can't do better. It seems like with the weak BAB and hit points getting access to all those Combat Feats just doesn't seem to compensate. Is there something about the class that I'm not seeing?


I've been doing a bit of building for this (nothing in play yet), and ran into the problem that for the Eldritch Scrapper archetype to be viable in the face of what you mention above, it needs the 9th level Bloodline Power of the Abyssal or Orc Bloodlines or the misleadingly-named Pit-Touched Wildblooded Archetype, but it replaces the 9th level Bloodline power, and Rules as Written you can't use it with a Wildblooded Bloodline anyway. You also need to go VMC Magus to make this viable, except that not only do you end up too feat-starved, but the Magus Arcana that you really need to take ASAP actually doesn't work in VMC, because it depends upon having actual Magus level, and VMC only gives you effective Magus level for the purpose of qualifying for Magus Arcana, not for their effects.

Silver Crusade

I'm not familiar with the acronym VMC. What is that?


It makes a half-decent dip. Making it work as the main class is a problem; you need a substantial source of attack bonus and ideally some bonus feats, but you don't want to multiclass too much. If you're using the monsters as character rules, maybe, or playing a gestalt game it'd work.

VMC is Pathfinder Unchained's Variant Multi-Classing.


I don't have any specific builds but I think the class looks like it was meant to support a polymorpher..

Shadow Lodge

avr wrote:
If you're using the monsters as character rules, maybe, or playing a gestalt game it'd work.

Yes, Eldritch Scrapper would be very nice gestalted with Paladin or Bloodrager.

Also potentially a good choice for a Dragon Disciple in a non-gestalt game, depending on how trading away bloodline abilities would work when dealing with the prestige class's advancement. I think Dragon Disciple would give you back the breath weapon and wings powers, just without the usual increases a Sorc/DD would get.


avr wrote:

It makes a half-decent dip. Making it work as the main class is a problem; you need a substantial source of attack bonus and ideally some bonus feats, but you don't want to multiclass too much. If you're using the monsters as character rules, maybe, or playing a gestalt game it'd work.

{. . .}

How would you make it work well as a dip (as opposed to something like the base class for Dragon Disciple)? Seems vanilla Brawler would be a better dip to get the one thing that it adds, which is Martial Flexibility.

I suppose you could use it as a dip for an Arcanist that picks up the Arcanist Exploit Bloodline Development (which progresses Bloodlines gained from another source); unfortunately (as noted above) it replaces the 9th level Bloodline Power that you need for somebody who is going to get good use of Martial Flexibility.

Scarab Sages

You could make a really decent go of it with the Ghoul Bloodline, and then use Eldritch Heritage to pick up the 9th level stat advancement of Orc or Abyssal. You do lose the 9th level haste from ghoul, but you can just cast haste instead.


^This might work, although I was toying with a similar build (using Psychic instead of Ghoul), and it is very feat-intensive, so that you don't end up being very good at spellcasting or martial flexibility. Also, the Abyssal (or Orc) abilities are delayed by 2 levels -- not as bad as what you would get with VMC Sorcerer, but it still hurts some.

I don't think Eldritch Scrapper should have replaced the 9th and 15th level Bloodline Powers for Martial Flexibility progression, because some of the 1st level Bloodline Powers it replaces (such as Abyssal Claws) have progression with Sorcerer level, so it ends up replacing more than it gives you.

Scarab Sages

Yeah I would hate to give up the 9th level bloodline power from psychic though. Under casting is very useful, and you can't do it without undercasting prodigy.


^So I noticed. Also tried to think up the build with a 1 level dip in Brawler or Monk instead of using Eldritch Scrapper (in the case of Monk replacing Martial Flexibility with fixed combat feats), to preserve the 9th level power, and using Eldritch Heritage and Improved Heritage to cheese the Abyssal Bloodline 1st level (actually feat tax, but adds some flavor) and 9th level powers back in, although delayed by 2 levels. But between the 2 Eldritch Heritage feats and the required Skill Focus prerequisite, and some feats needed for survivability, you wind up really feat-starved, and can't do a good job of either Sorcerer or Martial. Of course, it made things harder that I have been trying to make this build to transition into the slightly pre-Pathfinder prestige class Daivrat (from the Qadira setting book of the time, same vintage as Legacy of Fire), which has its own set of feat requirements, first to qualify and then to make it actually good -- by the time you get all that stuff online, a 1/2 BAB character is guaranteed to be really struggling with the Martial side of things.

Shadow Lodge

Given that it gives you access to feats, perhaps it would make sense for the archetype to replace the bloodline feats instead of your higher-level powers?


UnArcaneElection wrote:
How would you make it work well as a dip (as opposed to something like the base class for Dragon Disciple)? Seems vanilla Brawler would be a better dip to get the one thing that it adds, which is Martial Flexibility.

If you want to use wands, a sorcerer dip enables this while a brawler dip obviously doesn't. For example, a magus with the wand wielder arcana can use wands in place of their spellcasting for spell combat, and is not limited to 'wands using spells from the magus list' that I can see. Sure there's UMD but if you can't take 10 you need a large bonus to be reliable.

Also, you get the bloodline arcana if not the powers and there's probably some full caster out there willing to dip a level for that and a free feat (which can be Combat Casting, which Brawlers do not give.)


^I guess this could work decently, although you still have no way to progress the Martial Flexibility, and it locks you out of the Crossblooded Sorcerer dip option.

Weirdo wrote:


Given that it gives you access to feats, perhaps it would make sense for the archetype to replace the bloodline feats instead of your higher-level powers?

Replacing the Bloodline feats (which again are of REALLY uneven quality(*)) would make more sense than replacing the higher level Bloodline Powers, but based upon what you already trade in just replacing the 1st level Bloodline Power (again, these are REALLY uneven in quality(*)), it would make even more sense for it to replace only the 1st level Bloodline Power (still keeping the option to replace the 3rd level Bloodline Power with the 1st level Bloodline Power).

(*)We need a Sorcerer Unchained.

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