Challenge; 20 point buy, Orc, high knowledge checks, able to destroy undead well.


Advice


Challenge; 20 point buy, Orc, high knowledge checks, able to destroy or control undead extremely well. GO!


I'd go with a cloistered cleric. Bardic knowledge alone gives you strong knowledge with little work. Take any deity with glory domain and you have a good undead killer at most levels. Just get your charisma as high as you can and stay wise enough to be able to cast. The problem you will face is deciding two things....

1) selective channel vs channel ray: you can hit all the undead at once or can hit one with a +2 to DC. By the numbers channeling to the masses but sometimes you really want a high DC. Some enemies do have resistance to channeling after all.

2) variant channeling or regular: rulership or other variants that disable a character very well can be devastating to undead.

In either case I would go with Ra as my deity because he can both control undead or kill em with positive energy. He has glory domain too.

The Exchange

Blaster wizard, admixture subschool, blow everything up with fire. Oh. Don't forget dazing spell :)

Necromancer eizard, then fool around with the necromancy school ability to command undead.

Dirge bard with charm spells to screw undead up, pick up command undead from wizard list.

Hangover clerics are very MAD which means you'll have no points for int. Made worse when you have a -2 to wis and cha.

I think I'd go for the wizards or dirge bard, though dirge bard may be more optimized as they still have a 3/4 bab that can make use of orc +4 str.

Necromancy wizard can take dazing spell to daze undead too, just can't change elements on the fly.

Liberty's Edge

My approach would be a Lore Warden Fighter.
Hitting something hard with a two-handed weapon is always nice.

You'll have all the knowledge skills as class skills and even some extra points to spend for them. Combat Maneuvers are also a strength of yours.

Since you are a Fighter, you will have enough feats to get yourself Variant Multiclassing for Bard and Deific Obedience for Irori. Both will boost your knowledge.

Getting Clever Wordplay trait for the Versatile Performance is also a nice trick.

Know thy Enemy class feature enables you to do something with all your knowledge.

Using a weapon as main source of damage always opens up the Bane enchantment - here Undead Bane of course!


For the most outrageous single-target damage, some kind of Wizard or Arcanist can stack +CL onto an Intensified, Empowered Battering Blast until it does 3x7d6(x1.5) at CL15 for ~110 force damage, though at that point you can probably ragepounce with an Orc Barbarian anyways so, yeah.

For AoE bombing, the Ancestor Oracle's Spirit Storm will deal 1d8/level to undead, but it's maximum 3/day at 11. Stacking Channel and Quick Channel with Sun Domain can do about the same, but again uses/day is ouch.


Grenadier alchemists can hit their enemies with holy water-infused weapons (or fast sunlight bombs later on), have enough int and skill points to handle the knowledges, and while doing the first part they have at least a little synergy with the orcs strength bonus - which is completely wasted on a wizard or channelling cleric.


Ooh, I like avr's idea. Make it a Grenadier/Vivisectionist hybrid. Chug holy water and use its power to smite the undead!

...Crap, now I want to play this.


Full Orc, not half-orc? Yeesh. Beatstick Cleric IMO, or Paladin. Get a Sage Familiar to do knowledge checks.

Sovereign Court

Full orc is tough.. penalties to knowledge no matter how you turn it. I think avr is on the right track, alchemist is a good option. Not so much for the bombs, although those are useful. Mainly because of alchemists being decent at skills, and great at hulking up and going into melee.

The alchemist by default offers you the following:
* 4 skill points. With your racial Int penalty, you'll want at least this much if you really care about knowledges.
* A very good set of class skills. You should pick up Religion with a trait though. Pretty much everything else you need for undead-hunting is in-class already.
* Bomb. A majority of undead can be hurt with fire. Force bombs are amazing.
* Mutagen.
* One of the best spell lists. Alchemists get 2/3 of the best buff spells from the cleric list, and 2/3 of the best buff spells from the wizard list. You get Shield, Longarm, Enlarge Person, Barkskin, Resist Elements, Ablative Barrier, Alchemical Allocation, Heroism, Absorb Toxicity, Fly, Monstrous Physique, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Improved Invisibility, Stoneskin. Your spell list is very focused and very good at what it's focused on.
* A chance at the Mummification discovery which will protect you against some of undeads' scarier abilities like paralysis.

Further, there are some exciting archetypes available:
Grenadier, if you prefer to destroy undead at range.

  • Choose a longbow as martial weapon proficiency.
  • Get the Deadeye Bowman trait (Erastil) if you can for better accuracy. Get precise shot and rapid shot. Now you should be shooting accurately with arrows.
  • With the Alchemical Weapon archetype ability you can add holy water to arrows (or acid, which is cheaper and often works too). Drawing a splash weapon to attach probably costs a separate action so until level 7 you can't do this every round. Confer with your GM, not everyone thinks you need to spend an action drawing the splash weapon.
  • Get explosive missile discovery. Now you can shoot bombs at bow ranges. And combine the damage from Alchemical Weapon, Bomb and arrow damage.
  • Use Dye arrows (with marker dye and glowing ink if you're worried about enemies going invisible) or Tangleshot arrows to shoot at touch AC instead of normal AC. Use Ghost Salt blanch against incorporeal enemies (who have good touch AC anyway).
  • Eventually upgrade your bow to Seeking to handle Blur, Mirror Image (close your eyes), Displacement and Invisibility (if you pinpoint, for example with marker dye/glowing ink).
  • Take Force Bombs as soon as you can. They're a-mazing.
  • Fast Bombs are also nice if enemies get too close, but you can't use the bow.
  • Make your bow Adaptive and you can still shoot regular arrows if those would be sufficiently deadly and economical. As an orc your strength bonus makes this worthwhile.

The grenadier ends up being fairly thrifty with bombs because of the bow, most of the time. But when needed you can go wild with Fast Bombs.

Alternatively, the Vivisectionist (sneak attack!) with side helping of Beastmorph (pounce!) is all about melee.

  • Feral mutagen is an obvious discovery to take. It can give you triple full-BAB sneak attacks.
  • Eventually, you can use Monstrous Physique to gain even more brutal battle forms. The gargoyle has four primary natural attacks and flight. Going Large probably won't help though, because that makes it harder to maneuver around enemies and get sneak attack.
  • Most undead can be sneak attacked in PF, and that will be about half of your damage-per-attack. However, you need a way to get into position, or remain unseen. Check with your party if you'll have a flanking buddy. Improved Invisibility comes online at level 10, and most undead can be sneak-attacked that way. However, a significant minority have See Invisibility, True Seeing, Blindsight or Lifesight. Those creatures tend to have "boss" written all over them. Also, many undead bosses may be wizards/witches/clerics with a template (lich, vampire, penangallen, worm that walks...) so they'll have an answer too.
  • DR is common among undead. Claws are B/S and bite is P/B/S, so that is a good start. With your phenomenal set of buff spells you can skimp on some magic gear and spend it all on the neatest Amulet of Mighty Fists you can get. Good enchantments would be Bane (Undead), straight +x, and Holy. Don't bother with Keen because sneak attack doesn't crit anyway.
  • Against incorporeal undead you'll be in trouble. In the long run, you'll need a backup Ghost Touch weapon. In the short run, if you get proficiency or just stack your to-hit high enough, use a Spiritbane spike. What not everyone knows is that Ghost Touch turns sneak attack back on against incorporeal creatures. And while you might be suffering non-proficiency penalties, incorporeal creatures tend to have slightly low-ish AC because they were counting on Incorporeal to protect them.
  • It may be worthwhile to dip into another class to pick up some first-level goodies. We're looking for boni to Fort and Will, armor and weapon proficiencies.
    Ranger Favored enemy. Very straightforward.
    Bloodrager Almost strictly better than a barbarian dip. Until level 4 you wouldn't know Charisma played any role. At level 1 you get fast movement, which helps to get into flanking; medium armor proficiency (let's go with a mithral breastplate that won't slow us down), and of course raaaaaage. Which stacks with orc racial bonus to strength, mutagen, enlarge person/monstrous physique and bull's strength.
    Investigator Uses the same casting stat so effectively more level 1 extracts. Bonus to Will save. Class skills including Religion. Trapfinding. Inspiration. Short-sword proficiency for a spirit-bane spike. Since we're not spending a trait on getting Religion anymore, might as well use that to grab Armor Expert and get a mithral breastplate.
    War Priest If we can somehow get our Wisdom to 12, this is a fine enough dip. Undead hunters need good Will saves and Wisdom and War Priests help. We should be especially interested in the Good blessing. The big selling point however is heavy armor proficiency and proficiency with a favored weapon. Maybe Shizuru will give us a nice katana?
    Sohei Monk Excellent saving throws. Regular monk bonus feats (the mounted feats are only an addition). Allowed to flurry in light armor (or mithral breastplate!), and with a temple sword that's actually a solid competitor against feral mutagen. The sword will cost only half as much to enchant. This dip could be worth staying in for two levels just to get even better saves and bonus feats and evasion. Also, we get Religion class skill (freeing a trait). Since we get all martial weapon proficiency, with a cracked opalescent pyramid ioun stone we could also grab one of the wacky monk weapons with reach without spending a feat. In that case, be sure to pick up Combat Reflexes.


Easy.

Lore Oracle.

Put everything into Str and Cha.

Lore Mystery has a revalation that uses CHA instead of int for knowledge checks, not to mention the Lore mystery gives you all the knowledges as well.

so with a 18 Cha score and 1 rank in each knowledge, you would be looking at

3(favored class bonus) + 1(rank) + 4(cha modifier)= 8 to any knowledge.

It is also worth noting that a lot of oracles can do more than just blasting, they also have good offensive/melee builds, so in regards to the undead, you can just smash them to bits, or since oracles and clerics have almost the same spell list there are a lot of anti-undead spells at your disposal.

The point buy is a little hard, but I would do something like:

14 str +4 = 18
8 dex = 8
12 con = 12
12 int -2 = 10
10 wis -2 = 8
17 cha -2 = 15 (put your level 4 bonus here)

Also, Lore oracles are able to add their cha bonus to their reflex saves and ac instead of their dex.


I counter your Grenadier with a Mindchemist. Double int mod to knowledge skills, cognatogen, and you can take holy and good bombs as a discovery to deal extra damage to undead and stun evil things, sunlight bombs for vampires. It's more knowledge monkey than the grenadier.


Inquisitor. Especially the kinslayer archetype.


I was also going to suggest Inquisitor. I can't remember the exact option, but there is an option that allows you to exchange Bane on attack to instead make the undead make a saving throw or be destroyed as though it were a disrupting weapon.

Plus, you get bonuses to knowledge checks to help out. Regardless full orc is pretty bad because of the -2 to mental abilities across the board.

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