Spending Money for a No-Magic Character

[Davor]

I'm considering a character concept revolving around someone that completely eschews all forms of magic. He won't refuse magical assistance from other players, but he refuses to use any form of magic himself. I'm looking at an Investigator build atm, currently with a focus on just being super skillful and using Aid Another to help his allies.

My main question is, on what should I spend my money to benefit myself, and the group, if I will not be using magic items?

[Menacing Shade of mauve]

Give the money to your friends, as partial compensation for being such a liability.

[Pizza Lord]

Horses and animal companions.
Tithes for resurrection.
Antitoxin, acid, various alchemical items.
Alchemy lab.

[Protoman]

Carriage, horses, and driver.

Ask GM about Ultimate Campaign downtime rules and maybe you can invest your gold into a business or base of operations for your party.

Your gp is your bribery slush fund.

Buy a ship.

Get the Bodyguard and Combat Reflexes feats to help out more with aid another.

[voideternal]

1) What level character are you making? How far will you level up?
2) Do your table use Automatic Bonus Progression?
3) Do your character consider extracts to count as 'magic'?

If the answer to 1) is 'not a low level', and the answer to 2) is 'no', then be prepared for your character to have lower raw numbers to rely on in various scenarios.

If the answer to 3) is 'yes', you're choosing to abandon core class features.

Under the assumption that 3) is 'no', you could talk with your GM about spending money on researching new unique extracts. If the lack of magical gear is likely to weaken your character, maybe your GM will be liberal enough to make the custom-made extracts over-powered enough to compensate for it.

Otherwise, you might spend money on the downtime rules from Ultimate Campaign to make a house or home-base or detective squad or something.

[Rub-Eta]

POISON!

[Davor]

voideternal wrote:

1) What level character are you making? How far will you level up?

2) Do your table use Automatic Bonus Progression?
3) Do your character consider extracts to count as 'magic'?

If the answer to 1) is 'not a low level', and the answer to 2) is 'no', then be prepared for your character to have lower raw numbers to rely on in various scenarios.

If the answer to 3) is 'yes', you're choosing to abandon core class features.

Under the assumption that 3) is 'no', you could talk with your GM about spending money on researching new unique extracts. If the lack of magical gear is likely to weaken your character, maybe your GM will be liberal enough to make the custom-made extracts over-powered enough to compensate for it.

Otherwise, you might spend money on the downtime rules from Ultimate Campaign to make a house or home-base or detective squad or something.

1) We're running through Hell's Rebels, starting at 1st level. Presumably we'll get up to high levels eventually.

2) No Automatic Bonus Progression.

3) I do count extracts as being "magic". However, I'm looking at the Sleuth archetype to remedy that situation (yes, I know it's a straight downgrade, but it's the best solution to that problem).

[Claxon]

No offense, but I can only see the character concept being a liability.

Unfortunately, magical gear is virtually required to be competent in this game.

[Davor]

Yes, everyone, I understand the character will not be contributing much in the damage department. His party contributions will revolve around skill support, scouting, social strength, and aiding during combat (with combat reflexes/bodyguard, he'll regularly be throwing out +5 untyped bonuses to attack rolls/AC thanks to good traits). No, he won't be putting out much damage, but I've already accepted he'll be a support character that will be strong in social/trapfinding situations.

[GM Rednal]

Take a long, hard look at the various kinds of gear. For example, lots of Masterwork Tools can give you skill bonuses to pretty much everything, and at a fairly low cost.

And the Technology Guide is still a thing... XD

[Claxon]

The problem isn't even just damage, without magical bonuses the rest of your party could probably do all the same skill better than you.

Your character will rely on other characters hopefully not having overlapping skills with you.

[skizzerz]

Without Automatic Bonus Progression, your character will become a major liability for the party in later levels, as the math of Pathfinder assumes you have magic gear and weapons. This is important in more than just combat; you won't have any of the stat boosting items that help against important little things such as saves and skill checks -- both of which are highly relevant in out-of-combat situations. The thing is, you won't be strong in social/trapfinding situations without gear to boost your social or trapfinding skills at later levels. Competent, sure, if you spend the skill points to max out those skills, but not strong.

[The Raven Black]

Gunslinger ?

[swoosh]

Do you consider alchemical items to be magic? There are a lot of those, some are pretty solid, especially at lower levels.

Look at mercenaries too, see if you can hire any with all that extra gold. WbL inflates surprisingly fast, so late game I'd look at buying castles or businesses or something.

Get a masterwork tool for every skill you're planning to play with. If your GM is skeptical of a masterwork tool for a certain skill check, beg. You need it. Consider skill focus and other skill boosting feats too midgame, since at that point investing further in improving your combat efficacy is going to be a lost cause.

As for gameplay, I think this build could actually do fine, as long as your GM knows what he's up against. Assuming there are four of you, you should make it clear to the GM he should be designing encounters for three people once you get to around level 5 or 6 or 7 or so.

[Jiggy]

Davor wrote:

Yes, everyone, I understand the character will not be contributing much in the damage department. His party contributions will revolve around skill support, scouting, social strength, and aiding during combat (with combat reflexes/bodyguard, he'll regularly be throwing out +5 untyped bonuses to attack rolls/AC thanks to good traits). No, he won't be putting out much damage, but I've already accepted he'll be a support character that will be strong in social/trapfinding situations.

I think you're using the wrong game system for your concept, and unless the GM does a lot of tweaking and/or the other PCs force weaknesses into themselves specifically to leave room for you, you're going to eventually run into problems.

It's not about your damage output. It's about how the whole game is set up.

For example, a character's AC is built almost entirely on magic items. Even if you decide to invest in extra armor proficiencies (or use thing nonproficiently) and wear full plate and a tower shield, the highest AC you can ever get without magic items will be 26 (and even that is assuming a couple more feats).

That means you're only into mid levels when monsters start consistently hitting you with single-digit rolls. By the low teen levels, even monsters' secondary attacks are going to be hitting you a lot. Thus, you're going to be taking more damage than normal. On top of that, you're not going to have the CON belt (and other stat boosts later on) that the monsters' damage output is assuming you've got, so you can't even take as many hits. By mid levels, a single pouncing animal is going to down you in a single round, and it's only going to get worse from there.

And then there's your saves. Without a cloak of resistance, stat boosters, etc; you're gradually going to need higher and higher rolls to make your saves, and the effects of failure are going to get more and more dramatic.

So as levels rise, more and more you'll find that you're neutralized in the first round. Then nobody gets those untyped assistance bonuses you were hoping to contribute, because you're not around to provide them.

Out of combat, you were hoping to be good at social skills and other such things? Not without magic. Skill DCs tend to scale faster than the +1 per level that ranks give you, because it's assumed that you're boosting relevant stats and accumulating magic bonuses. Your success rate is going to continue to drop over the course of the game.

I'm sorry, I like your concept, but Pathfinder is a system that's built on omnipresent magic and punishes concepts like this past the first few levels. Making it work will require lots of bending over backwards from everyone else at the table, both players and GMs. You need to ask them if they're okay with it.

[Chess Pwn]

And if they are okay with it, Don't come to the forums, and I'm not sure what you were expecting to get.

Spend your money by buying resurrections (assuming you're okay receiving that magic) and buying magic items for your party/give your party the money to buy magic items.

PS, you could pull off this concept almost equally as well using the expert NPC class, just an idea

[Illeist]

Without any magic items or spells, the rest of the party is going to leave you in the dust. Even in terms of skills, PCs with stat-increasing items and items that give skill bonuses are going to quickly equal or surpass you. You'll soon find yourself doing nothing well and one thing poorly. This concept isn't support; it just demands that others support you.

[GM Rednal]

Again - technology guide. Maybe reflavored somewhat to match the campaign better. At the very least, though, it has non-magical options for things. XD