A friend of mine gave me a challenge last night: build a character based around using a scythe, however I think best. So here's the build I came up with. Note that unless your DM is a little looser on racial requirements for feats, this will only work for a human. I went with a catfolk myself, since I'd personally loosen the reigns on such requirements unless it's a matter of physiology, but that's just me. That and I like the idea of being able to call this guy a critty cat.
----------
Trait: Bestial Wrath [Religion]
Trait: Swordlord's Page [Region]
Trait: Called [Faith]
Drawback: Anxious
Racial Traits: Cat's Luck, Natural Hunter, Sprinter, Low-Light Vision
Str: 18
Dex: 17 (+2)
Con: 14
Int: 13
Wis: 12 (-2)
Cha: 10 (+2)
--1st--
Brawler's Cunning
Martial Training
Mutagen
Unarmed Strike
Feat: Improved Unarmed Strike
Feat: Weapon Focus (scythe)
--2nd--
Brawler's Flurry: Two-Weapon Fighting
Bonus Feat: Weapon Focus (nine-ring broadsword or seven-branch sword)
So if he's supposed to be a scythe-user, why would he need weapon focus for either of these weapons? You'll see in a bit. For now, if you really need to flurry you'll need to do it barefisted or with one of these two weapons.
--3rd--
Maneuver Training: Trip
Feat: Ascetic Style (nine-ring broadsword or seven-branch sword)
I figure tripping is the most useful combat maneuver you could do during a flurry, since success means the opponent loses AC against the rest of your attacks.
--4th--
Ability Score Increase: Str
Beastform: Low-Light Vision, Movement +10
Knockout: 1
--5th--
Brawler's Strike: Magic
Close Weapon Mastery
Feat: Ascetic Form (nine-ring broadsword or seven-branch sword)
Bonus Feat: Martial Versatility (Ascetic Form)
And this is why the second weapon focus and ascetic style went to a weapon we have no plans on using in the long run. Once we take martial versatility (ascetic form), that means ascetic form applies to all weapons in the weapon group it's a part of. Both of these weapons are in both the monk group and the heavy blades group, so while it has the more predictable effect of allowing ascetic form to apply to all monk weapons, it also allows it to apply to all heavy blades. This allows the scythe to be used with brawler's flurry, to take on our unarmed strike damage, and to be used with knockout and awesome blow. Note however that this is only going to apply to ascetic form; we aren't going to benefit from any feats we take that only apply to unarmed strikes, nor will spells that only affect our unarmed strikes do anything with our scythes; our scythe only function with the class features that handle unarmed strikes like how the seven-branched sword or nine-ringed broadsword would.
Going this route actually opens a lot of options for brawlers. Wanna flurry with claws? Take weapon focus, ascetic style, and ascetic form with unarmed strikes. Wanna flurry with a war razor? Pick those feats with a butterfly sword. Flurry with a meteor hammer? Take the feat with a nunchaku. If you weapon of choice isn't already part of the monk group, chances are the group it's a part of also includes a weapon that is, so you should be able to do this with nearly anything besides bows, crossbows, firearms, and seige engines.
It should be noted, though, that it won't be as useful for a lot of other classes since this takes four feats to accomplish, so if you don't have access to that many bonus feats, this route may not be the best idea then. Also it'd need to be a class that makes heavy use of abilities with unarmed strike-based class features (such as an esoteric magus, a ninja with unarmed combat mastery, or an order of the hammer cavalier).
--6th--
Mutagen: +2
--7th--
Maneuver Training: Grapple
Feat: Focused Attack
And now the reason I specifically wanted a class with a flurry. Since it's used as a full-round attack, it's subject to focused attack's bonus. By 20th level, this guy is adding +6 to his crit range. It's not going to be that good right now, but considering scythes begin with a base crit multiplier of X4, that's going to be a heck of a bonus to your average damage output when you absolutely must kill something immediately.
--8th--
Ability Score Increase: Str
Brawler's Flurry: Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
Bonus Feat: Weapon Specialization (scythe)
--9th--
Beastmorph: Darkvision 30, Climb Speed 15
Brawler's Strike: Cold Iron, Silver
Feat: Critical Focus
--10th--
Knockout: 2
Mutagen: Spontaneous Healing
--11th--
Maneuver Training: Sunder
Mutagen: +3
Feat: Impaling Critical (scythe)
Bonus Feat: Greater Weapon Focus (scythe)
And now we have an even better reason to fish for those crits. Impaling is just adding that extra chunk of damage to a critical hit as well as a little control over the enemy.
--12th--
Ability Score Increase: Str
Brawler's Strike: Alignment
Mutagen: Greater Mutagen
--13th--
Beastform: Scent 30, Movement +15
Feat: Improved Critical (scythe)
Technically, this would be a trash feat, since we could always just grab a keen scythe instead, but it's a requirement for the following:
--14th--
Bonus Feat: Superior Critical (scythe)
This feat is just beautiful for anything that has a high crit multiplier. Since it's 4x on a scythe, that means our criticals don't just deal 4x our unarmed damage dice now, but also tack on another 4d10.
--15th--
Brawler's Flurry: Greater Two-Weapon Fighting
Maneuver Training: Bull Rush
Feat: Savage Critical
Ahem. Make that 5d10, if we roll a natural 20. And this is on top of the extra damage our scythe is going to deal as we pull it out of the foe's body.
--16th--
Ability Score Increase: Str
Awesome Blow
Knockout: 3
Mutagen: +4
--17th--
Brawler's Strike: Adamantine
Feat: Penetrating Strike
Bonus Feat: Improved Impaling Critical (scythe)
Did I say extra damage? I meant extra bleed damage. Penetrating strike is probably unnecessary since we can already break through DR/piercing, slashing, magic, cold iron, silver, and now adamantine, but at this point we're just grabbing icing talents. It's honestly more for a full flurry than a focused attack.
--18th--
Beastmorph: Climb 30, Movement +20
--19th--
Maneuver Training: Dirty Trick
Feat: Greater Penetrating Strike
--20th--
Ability Score Increase: Str
Improved Awesome Blow
Bonus Feat: Modify Mutagen
Modify mutagen makes a decent capstone, I think. It's not much, but it's nice to actually be able to choose your penalties as well as your bonuses when you take a mutagen.
----------
Again, since this is ignoring the human prerequisite on martial versatility, the build may be restricted to humans on a more by-the-books DM, but beyond that, I feel like this build should work as intended. A few more thoughts:
- Regardless of the above, the only way to use a weapon to flurry before 5th with this is if your chosen weapon is one you could already flurry with. In these cases you may still wish to take the ascetic style and ascetic form feats, if only so you can get the unarmed damage and ability to use them with awesome strike.
- Since you can completely skip all four feats for unarmed strikes, if you choose to use those for this build, you'll likely wish to grab some other style feats. Boar, jabbing, pummeling, kitsune, snake, and tiger are all awesome styles that I think could fit well with this.
- The crit feat, obviously, doesn't need to be impaling, especially if you choose a weapon that can't do piercing.
- You may be able to take another critical feat and critical mastery in place of the penetrating strike feats. There's plenty of good ones out there.
- Aside from scythes, weapons that would work especially well with this are ones that either have a 4x crit multiplier (light picks, heavy picks, pickaxes, tri-bladed katar, gnome hooked hammers, tetsubo, and mattocks) or ones that have 18-20 crit range (kukri, cutlasses, rapiers, scimitars, falchions, estocs, rhokas, elven curve blades, fauchards, nodachi, wakizashi, katana, urumi, and crystal chakrams). This certainly isn't a limiter though, and you can just use whatever fits your character flavorwise.
Ascetic style + Martial versatility is borderline cheese, but it checks out.
However, if you are going to use 3pp stuff I don't think I know enough to help you.
I'm beginning to see why Ascetic Style was barred for Society play.