Gonna go ahead and copy paste this over from the Slayer thread
I have a friend who's playing a Catfolk Slayer, but she's have a hard time deciding build-wise what to do.
She wants to be rogueish and do all the typical rogue things so she went dex focused with a rapier, but she also wants to do a lot of damage (especially since she feels like she's falling behind the paladin with a glaive and 18 str, and my elven grenadier alchemist.), but also took the Ranger Style talent to get Crossbow Style.
It's kinda led to the DM having to give her free stat boosts so she feels useful.
I'd told her about Unchained Rogue when we were first doing character creation, but she really wanted to stick to Slayer.
Edit: We are currently level 2.
My wife plays a ranged (composite longbow) Slayer. Between the Rogue talents and Ranger feats she has put together a ranged powerhouse that gives me fits when designing encounters. I would recommend a ranged Slayer, but there are many ways to take it. I like the Slayer, so much so I don't think I will allow it in any more games henceforth. ;-)
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Slayer is not hard to pull off. But her focus is too far spread out.
1 handed weapon and Crossbow is crippling herself on damage.
She should be using a 2 handed weapon and a Longbow with a Str focus but keeping a 14 Dex. It is called the switch hitter approach and it is very strong and embodies the Idea a character be decent at both ranged and melee damage with the ability to flow between both ranges seeming-less and taking advantage of full attacks.
For Talents she should sprinkle on the "rogue" flavor. Trap-finding ext ext. I myself favor picking up Favored Terrain as it's bonuses are amazing if you spend lots of time in a single terrain type.
+2 bonus on initiative checks and Knowledge (geography), Perception, Stealth, and Survival skill checks when he is in this terrain.
The Bold Skill bonuses are great for a roguish type sneaking around, scouting, tracking, and looking for traps. If my group is back and forth between 2 types of terrains I can grab Boots of friend terrain and have the bonuses most the time...or I can boost up the single terrain another +2. Or lastly I could dip into Horizon Walker after level 7 and grab a few terrains to master and SLAs like D. Door or Fly. I wait till 7 so Studied target becomes a swift action and stalker kicks in. But the bonuses from Studied + Favored Terrain becomes very strong together.
But she is playing a catfolk and if she would have built right from the start she could have easily been able to do a Pounce with Claws doing d8 Sneak attacks instead of D6. But you have to build towards that goal.
Consider this campaign her learning campaign. From this point forward it is best to plan out her next character with a goal in mind. So you can make sure you stay relevant all the way through the campaign.
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My wife plays a ranged (composite longbow) Slayer. Between the Rogue talents and Ranger feats she has put together a ranged powerhouse that gives me fits when designing encounters. I would recommend a ranged Slayer, but there are many ways to take it. I like the Slayer, so much so I don't think I will allow it in any more games henceforth. ;-)
Terrible reason to Ban a class when she could just Build a Zen archer monk, Fighter, ranger, paladin...ext ext and take the same types of feats and still blow you out with damage. Then your back to adding more and more bans to your list because it is effective at what it does. Damage.
Learn to use Wind wall, fickle winds, Concealment like (Fog Cloud, Ash Storm, Cloud Kill, stinking cloud), Protection from Arrows, ext ext.
DMs have MANY answers for a ranged Characters beyond just banning them. And martial PCs are in no way OP just because they become a machine gun of damage. If you think so you have never met a proper Wizard player who knows the class.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll talk to my friend and see if she takes any of them!
I believe at the moment, her physical stats are:
Str 16
Dex 20
Con 16
I don't know about her int and wis, but I know she also got a special charisma boost.
Any suggestions for down the line based off those stats?
My wife plays a ranged (composite longbow) Slayer. Between the Rogue talents and Ranger feats she has put together a ranged powerhouse that gives me fits when designing encounters. I would recommend a ranged Slayer, but there are many ways to take it. I like the Slayer, so much so I don't think I will allow it in any more games henceforth. ;-)Terrible reason to Ban a class when she could just Build a Zen archer monk, Fighter, ranger, paladin...ext ext and take the same types of feats and still blow you out with damage. Then your back to adding more and more bans to your list because it is effective at what it does. Damage.
Learn to use Wind wall, fickle winds, Concealment like (Fog Cloud, Ash Storm, Cloud Kill, stinking cloud), Protection from Arrows, ext ext.
DMs have MANY answers for a ranged Characters beyond just banning them. And martial PCs are in no way OP just because they become a machine gun of damage. If you think so you have never met a proper Wizard player who knows the class.
It was a joke.
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Thanks for the suggestions, I'll talk to my friend and see if she takes any of them!
I believe at the moment, her physical stats are:
Str 16
Dex 20
Con 16I don't know about her int and wis, but I know she also got a special charisma boost.
Any suggestions for down the line based off those stats?
Use a Composite Longbow +3 lol. +3 str will be added to each arrow. Crossbow gets no bonus from a higher Str and requires Rapid Reload as a feat tax. Even with the tax your not getting the same damage.
As far as being Level 2. PFS rules allow a reroll at level 2 before you play your first level 2 session. See if the DM will be kind enough to just let her fix her character to be more useful instead of boosting her stats. Most new players have no Idea how to build a character or what they want to play. At least she Knows what she wants to play so you can build from there. But if it is going to be a long campaign I suggest letting her fix her character so she is happy with it and doesn't feel useless by comparison.
I'd more or less second the suggestions made above - and especially that the GM and player should strongly consider doing at least some basic retraining/rerolling.
A couple of builds that we're really touched on at all, however, that I think would perhaps speak to your friend's desire for a high damage, dex based slayer are TWF build & Natural Attacks build.
TWF: Commonly frowned upon on the boards as inferior to 2H or archery, twf can still be a lot of fun, and slayer is likely the strongest contender for best twf. To do this, your friend will want to ideally trade out Crossbow combat style for either TWF or Weapon and Shield (probably superior). For the former, dual kukris or her Rapier + Kukri are both viable. I recommend she get a quick runner's shirt, and otherwise will have to try to coordinate with other PCs (glaive guy for example) to try to lock down enemies so she can get off full attacks. As she gets to higher levels, it strongly behooves her to pick up critical feats - keen weapons or imp. critical, and even critical focus/critical <status>. There are TWF ranger and slayer guides she could take a look at for ideas.
With weapon and shield, she can go kukri & heavy spiked shield or keep the rapier and go light spiked shield. Ranger combat style gets her Shield Mastery at 6th level (!). This route is potentially more powerful and she can also get cool stuff like free shield slams and a better AC, but it is feat heavy. (Incidentally, I have a friend who suggests a Dual Klar build for extra powerful, double shield slams/shield mastery cheese. I think it's kinda dumb but ymmv ~shrug~)
Natural Attacks: for this you have a couple of options, but ultimately won't be strong without some more substantial retraining/modifications to the character. Specifically, you need a way to get at least 3 primary attacks (claw claw bite) - you can get claws via Catfolk or Aspect of the Beast, but it's going to be tough to get a bite.
You have two main options here that I see: the first is appealing to the GM to let you take cat's claws, natural weapon ranger style, and house rule Aspect of the Beast to get a Bite attack instead. There is also the Adopted -> Tusked trait which I think wouldn't be unreasonable to allow, however this is a secondary NA which is lame.
The second is more extreme: if the GM let's her reroll to a Skinwalker (Weretiger kin) - she keeps almost exactly the same stat mods, abilities, and flavor but can a) hide as a human, and b) get some very powerful shifts in her cat form - namely a bite attack (though see in darkness is super-good! And +10 base speed is nothing to sneeze at). Then she takes ranger style natural attacks, aspect of the beast.
In either of these cases she's *ok* with her stats as they are, but the best option is to reduce her str (to put points elsewhere, or whatever), and pick up weapon finesse and an Agile Amulet of Mighty Fists asap (WBL she should be able to afford this as of 3rd level - 4th at the latest). For a conversation on what goes into a high damage natural attack build ranger/slayer (and some comparisons to TWF) see this old thread.
Whatever she does, as she advances, I recommend she pick up UMD (she can get this as a class skill via traits if retraining) to get her some magic - she'll want buffs especially for the natural attack build and unless you have a druid or summoner or some such, she may have to get those herself. Beyond that magic is extremely powerful and versatile and she benefits from having access to it in some way. Similarly, if the GM allows unchained rogue talents, minor and major magic are worth it.
Stygian Slayer archetype might be worth it for her. She definitely needs either power attack or piranha strike to make her damage relevant, however it's important to note that especially with TWF, you can't always use power attack.
Flanking is your friend - more +hit = more reliable use of power attack = significantly more damage.
Her high stats are a combination of rolling and free stat boosts from the DM, as well as feats but more on that later.
Her initial rolled stats were 18, 18, 17, 15, 13, 10 (DM lets everyone have one free 18 and then rolls the rest, I believe the roll equation is 6d4(drop lowest)+2). Both 18s went into Dex and Int, the 17 into Cha and 15 into Wis, and 10 into Str and 13 into Con. In the last session, she got her con and str boosted to 16 each.
With that, she also got catfolk exemplar feat twice for free to get claws and scent, and knowing my DM, he'll probably allow her claws damage dice to scale as we go.
Retraining anything is kind of out of the question at the moment, there's a lot of time-sensitive plot threads going on right now that we gotta catch.
Flanking would be nice yes, but her and the paladin are not very tactically minded and just stand and fight for the duration of combat unless I whisper to them to maybe take a 5-foot step here and a 5-foot step there.
This all probably comes off as just complaining that nothing's good enough, but I am honestly taking all these suggestions into consideration.
My friend is... Stubborn, to put it simply, she's not super glad that she needs all these handouts to be competent, but she knows she needs them in order to feel useful.
I want to help her be able to make her own character and feel accomplished without telling her everything she's done is wrong.
Tell her that Slayers rely on STR and that Crossbows are a low-damage weapon.
Her stats are really good for a switch-hitting playstyle.
She could pick up Weapon Finesse and TWF, and dual wield a pair of kukris. Due to Sneak Attack and +damage on Studied Target, that should be very nice damage.
She could then move onto a longbow to deal much better damage than with a crossbow.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll talk to my friend and see if she takes any of them!
I believe at the moment, her physical stats are:
Str 16
Dex 20
Con 16I don't know about her int and wis, but I know she also got a special charisma boost.
Any suggestions for down the line based off those stats?
The Wizard, however, is only going to be impressive for a very short period of time. Woe to ANY caster that has to suffer through many of the grueling gauntlet adventure modules that are on offer. Or if their party members don't wanna have to stop after every encounter to let the Wizard rest. And at second level, Wizards just plain blow. Once they get the more powerful spells such as Lightning Bolt/Fireball (keep in mind, I only allow the Core Rulebook for classes), they can be fairly badass, but until then they don't have a hell of a lot to go with at the lower levels.