What to do with my PFS Suli

[trollbill]

So I have a boon for a Suli in PFS I am trying to figure out what to do with. It seems it would be particularly useful since this upcoming Season's theme is the elemental planes. I am looking for a character with a primary goal of being interesting, a secondary goal of being optimized and a tertiary goal of being versatile. I am mostly looking for Advanced Class Guide, Occult Adventures or Ultimate Intrigue classes as I have played these the least.

The first thing I looked at was a meteor hammer wielding Slayer. The boost to STR would be great here, but the penalty to INT is painful and the bonus to CHA does nothing.

Paladin would be an obvious choice but I already have 2 PFS Paladins. Skald is another but there are already several Skalds in my area.

So Bloodrager seems to be the best bet. Biggest problem is that most bloodragers get energy resistances that would be a waste because I am a Suli. Arcane bloodline would probably be the most optimized but is also one of the least interesting choices. Part of me is drawn to the Abyssal Bloodline even though elemental resistances would be useless, as I could use the Enlarge ability even though I am not humanoid. I am also drawn to this since I was thinking of using a falchion and I have a mini for a large djinn with a falchion already.

Any ideas or suggestions?

[RainyDayNinja]

What about a Str-based Swashbuckler? Bash in skulls with a Morningstar, but gracefully! You could even multiclass with Bloodrager a bit.

[Divvox2]

Melee focused sorcerer? I'm actually planning on building one myself with a suli boon, focusing on transmutation based spells (offensive and defensive), going aberration bloodline and taking the aberrant familiar feat with the protector archtype for some creepy pseudo-DR. With a little playing around you can get a disgustingly high AC too. Not sure on damage output yet, still designing the build, but I suspect it would be some decent damage (nothing to cheer over) and the ability to lay out debuffs in melee range, probably with a spell storing weapon for funsies.

Though my Suli paladin of Shelyn is contending for my favorite character of all time.

[pH unbalanced]

Any interest in Medium? It's a CHA-based caster which can also melee, and you could probably fluff your different spirits with different elements for RP purposes.

[BretI]

If you are going for melee, I would go Elemental Knight for the simple reason that without the boon you couldn't play that archetype. It wouldn't really take advantage of the Charisma bump, but it could be interesting.

Bloodrager and Swashbuckler would both work well. Destined bloodline has some interesting powers in it.

A cleric built for battle could also be very interesting depending on the god chosen.

Those are what I would look at.

[Fromper]

Very similar situation here. I just got a PFS Suli boon, too. And like you, I already have enough paladins in PFS, which is the obvious class for a race with str and cha bonuses. And I was also leaning towards bloodrager as another class that uses both of those.

Yes, arcane bloodline is a little boring, but looks very powerful. Aberrant looked cool for free reach without enlarging. Grab a reach weapon, and you're looking at 15 ft reach at normal size. I keep thinking I want to do that with a gnome, though, just because a 3 ft tall character with 15 ft reach would be funny to imagine.

One other thing to consider is the alternate racial trait in the ARG that lets you trade out 3 of your 4 elemental resistances for an added power when using your elemental attack. I was tempted to go with the shock shield. Since that would give up the fire, cold, and acid resistances, any bloodrager bloodlines that get them back would still be helpful. Add on the racial feats for more uses per day of that, and the ability to split up those rounds, and you've got 1d6 electric damage going all day. Not the most powerful at high levels, but you really just need high strength and Power Attack to be a heavy hitter, and at least it overcomes DR.

Another interesting type of str/cha build would be a front line oracle. I have a nagaji battle oracle that makes good use of the bonuses to str and cha for that reason.

I hadn't considered the medium before, but that's an interesting thought. It's a class that looks interesting, but will obviously require a lot of reading to really understand it. I don't even own the occult book yet, but I've read some of that stuff on the PRD, so I'm still just starting to understand the occult classes.

[Atarlost]

That int penalty is always going to hurt interesting and versatile since skills are what let you play most of the non-combat parts of the game.

Bard would work. Medium armor proficiency is only useful at low level if you can take the armor expert trait and get mithril breastplate and bardic weapon proficiencies are adequate. Or if your dex isn't going to fill that out anyways elven chain and no trait. Versatile Performance helps your skill situation slightly. I'd only plan around the first one and go for act or comedy since you have racial bonuses to diplomacy and sense motive. If you can RP in PFS that's your handle for it.

Oracle would work. Skills will be tighter, but you should be no worse off than a human cleric. You can pick up your missing proficiencies with battle or I think ancestors or metal.

Another possibility is cavalier. Cockatrice can leverage charisma well with standard action dazzling display and you're in the same skill situation as the oracle. Maybe better because you can better afford to use your favored class bonus on them.

[Charon's Little Helper]

The Slayer would get some benefit from the CHA if you use a Feint and/or Intimidate build.

You could go for a melee Oracle build.

You could look at the Suli only archetypes. (Does it bother anyone else that you can't combine the Magus archetypes Elemental Knight with Eldritch Scion? Ugh - Elemental Knight still casting off Int is bad.)

[trollbill]

Thank you all for your responses.

I looked at several of the options suggested and almost went with Medium but this ultimate versatility class seems to scream out for the ultimate versatility race, i.e. Human.

In the end I decided to go with a Aberrant Bloodrager. I will use a Falchion both for racial thematic reasons and to maximize by Staggering Strike ability. Uncanny Dodge plus Reach at 4th-level (or 2nd if I use a Wand of Longarm) will give me AoOs even on a surprise round and I can pick up Combat Reflexes for free at 6th. Biggest disappointment was lack of skills, of course. I had to go with an 8 INT, so even with favored class bonuses I only get 4 skill points per level. This is what was turning me off in the first place because it meant for a lack of versatility, which in turn would limit my party usefulness out of combat, although some of that can be made up for with the right utility spells. However, after studying the Bloodrager class skills, it was apparent most of them were more combat or self oriented and weren't all that great for helping the party outside of combat anyway. Then I realized that if I took the Trustworthy trait I would have a +9 to Diplomacy at 1st-level with a 15 CHA. I realized that would be much more useful to the party and the idea of a Diplo-Barbarian was very amusing to me. I will be spending half my skill points on Diplomacy and Linguistics (to pick up planar languages that should be useful in Season 8) and spreading the remainder out on the other skills.

[Charon's Little Helper]

Of note: it doesn't really matter much, but a nodachi is the same as a falchion but averages 0.5 more damage per swing.