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Hey everyone. I plan on starting a new character for Pathfinder Society because I want to introduce a friend of mine to it (we played 3.5 together a while back). He likes Oriental culture quite a bit and we settled upon him being a Kitsune Ninja.
As for me my character is going be a thug travelling with him, a sidekick if you will. I did play a couple of melee characters but never a monk and this is quite a specific kind of a control fighter. Digging so deep is more or less new to me and there are one or two things in the build that seem counter-synergetic so I would like some advice. Especially considering that I should always be ready to have my friend's back.
Human
starting scores:
Str 18
Dex 16
Con 13
Int 7
Wis 14
Cha 7
Level 1: Brawler 1. Improved Trip -human. Combat Expertise -level.
Level 2: Brawler 2. Weapon Proficiency (Kusarigama / Double-Chained Kama) -brawler.
Level 3: Monk (Maneuver Master) 1. Kitsune Style -level. Combat Reflexes -monk.
Level 4: Monk (Maneuver Master) 2. Improved Dirty Trick -monk.
Level 5: Brawler 3. Kitsune Tricks -level.
Level 6: Brawler 4.
Level 7: Brawler 5. Greater Dirty Trick -brawler. Kitsune Vengeance -brawler.
First off, you might have noticed I'm picking up Kusarigama/Double-Chained Kama proficiency at level 2. This is a reach, monk, trip weapon which allows me to combine Brawler's Flurry and Flurry of Maneuvers to cover a decent area and attack very often. Despite being a bit weaboo, that's also... quite a cool sight. Then as I gain levels I switch over to Dirty Trick since Trip becomes less and less reliable. As a Maneuver Master I can use a Dirty Trick in place of any attack in the Full Attack so this helps.
Brace yourselves, here are the questions I have:
Well, that was everything I could think of. Thank you very much if you took the time to read and I'm looking forward to any input!
P.S. I wouldn't rule out that we find a party to play outside PFS so if any of your suggestions involve non-PFS material it would at least be educational to me. Yet still, please do point out if what you're suggesting is unusable in PFS.
First of all, don't ditch your tripping. You might think it becomes less reliable but when you can grapple as a move action, you can bull your opponent to the floor to make escaping you virtually impossible. Add onto that the sheer power of dirty trick to blind, then followed by a trip, and the day is saved once again by the weaboo girls.
q1: Yes, this is both a reach and non-reach weapon. It picks up the old 3.5 spiked chain reach/double switch-off.
q2: You CAN do dirty tricks with the weapon, even at reach. Most combat maneuvers can be done with weapons, period. Some weapons just have bonuses to them.
q3: Your AC is always low. It's a hazard of MAD builds. Team-caster mage armor, combat expertise, and using maneuvers that tank your enemy's ability to hit (trip, stun, blind, etc) are going to be vital to your style. The dual-kama setup precludes Crane Style or I might suggest it for doubling up on fighting defensively and combat expertise.
q4: Brawler's Strike does nothing for you since it's made for unarmed strikes. Sunder is a great option for torquing off the members of your party as you destroy everyone's loot. I'd avoid Steel-Breaker, but you could take it if what you really want is the ability to punch through walls. For my 2cp I'd keep maneuver training.
q5: Don't even consider weapon adept unless your GM *explicitly* tells you that you can apply chained kama as kama. Perfect Strike works only with a very narrow subset of weapons. I know, it made me a little sad for my Iroran Paladin. You can't even get around it with the new feats that let you apply anything with unarmed strike pre-reqs to your unarmed strike, because the FEAT itself has the restriction.
q6: The Schools of Perfection are a big deal in Jalmeray, so if you want to play a formally trained fellow that might be an excellent fluff to adopt. The feats given up are in turn for what appear to be pretty cool feats of their own. You could always just *take* Combat Reflexes later on to go with your first level exotic weapon proficiency. Kitsune style has never struck me as terribly useful, so yeah, I might seriously consider this archetype as well.
q7: You're not missing out. Especially as someone who can actually get away with these abilities, controlling is an exceptional method of mastering the battlefield. I once put together a dwarven scorpion style rogue/maneuver master capable of completely taking people apart. Being unable to take actions effectively (or sometimes AT ALL) is an amazing benefit that helps the whole party. Just remember that you only really work on one target at a time. These kinds of builds excel against single NPC targets (BBEG) but not so much against monster of the week.
Hope this was helpeful!
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Purplefixer is correct on the MAD builds having AC issues, particularly when you're focusing on unarmored, which is already behind the curve for PFS. After playing a low AC human brawler in PFS for 2 years and 14 levels, I found that survivability is an issue in many fights, and my brawler had 14 CON (later 18 with a belt bonus). So I would strongly recommend some method of avoiding damage, and possibly improving your CON a bit.
I found deflect arrows to be selectively effective in many lower level scenarios, but effectively useless further on, and it did nothing vs. melee attacks which are much more plentiful, so I used the brawler ability to freely retrain it into something else. I do still use it sometimes via Martial Flexibility when there are nasty ranged attacks coming in.
My solution was to invest in the Snake Style feat tree, which I've found to be extremely effective in fights on the front line. Typically in a fight I avoid an opening charge and then effectively my first turn is a full round attack. Once you get the full tree you also get AoO whenever someone misses you and confirm crits with Sense Motive. I don't need to worry about most ranged touch attacks, and I can prioritize the usage to avoid particular attacks in enemy full attack actions (poison, energy drain, etc...). It also works on touch attacks, so you'll always have uses for it. The out of combat benefits of a high sense motive are also pretty cool. Alternatively you could also do Crane or Turtle style.
Regarding Dirty Trick, I never used it, but the general consensus is that it's pretty great. I would strongly suggest getting the feats that allow you to drop it as one of your normal attacks though, so you're not sacrificing a full round just to blind someone for one turn (I think the feat is Quick Dirty Trick). If you can, at a later level, retrain some of the later feats into something else and use Martial Flexibility to grab them as you need them. This lets you dedicate your feats to things you'll ALWAYS be benefiting from, and grab situational feats as you need them. Once you can grab a feat as a swift action it gets a lot easier to do, and later when it becomes a free action you'll be doing it during most fights.
Kitsune Style: It's not bad, but that's a lot of feats for just dirty trick (6), and prevents you from using other style feats, which are a common method of avoiding damage. I think you could get 80% of that mileage out of improved, greater, and quick dirty trick feats. If you want to completely shut down your enemies though, it's a hell of a way of doing it. Woe be to you if you fail an attempt vs. a nasty melee fighter though. You won't get a lot of room for mistakes, and you'll be in trouble if the GM says some of those debuffs can't apply to the monsters you're fighting, but that's the risk when you hyper-specialize for anything. I'm mostly worried that your low HP will take you out of fights regularly.
Another option might be to take power attack and combat expertise and the Improved X feats for a couple maneuvers you like and use Martial Flexibility to grab the others as you find uses for them. You won't be the best at any of them, but you'll be able to do THEM ALL, while having feats to distribute into things like survivability and damage output.
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Thanks for the answers everyone, they were very helpful!
Funnily enough, I had just looked through the Style feat chains as I decided to check on the thread so I understand how attractive they are.
I also see now that my AC would be almost unforgivably low for a tank; it gets worse since at least a third of mages I met while playing PFS never took Mage's Armor (I could buy a wand for them though I guess).
Anyway, I think I'll be switching the Monk to a Master of Many Styles. I needed to be unarmored so that Flurry of Maneuvers would function and that's an amazing ability for a controller but the defense trade-off seems too high. Moreover, Brawler and Master of Many Styles seem to be a natural fit for each other.
I'm still keeping the doulbe-chained kama though. It's definitely a go-to weapon early on, but would it be a good idea to switch over to a weapon like Cestus to up my damage when I get higher in level? Cestus has 19-20 crit range, benefits from Keen when used as a piercing weapon, benefits from Close Weapon Mastery and would also make sense on the character. And if I do, should I keep the doulbe-chained kama around for maneuvers and enchant it for situational things, or will I never have enough money (even with Fame/Prestige purchasing)? And should I get a pair of Cestuses (Cesti? It's Greek, not Latin though) or would a single one be enough?
I did look into the Bounty Hunter Slayer already but Sneak Attack isn't reliable enough for me to justify a minimum of three levels that barely bring anything else. So many things are immune to precision damage, smart enough to not get flanked and Shatter Defenses is too specific just like the three levels. Overspecialization isn't something I like too. I think a simple Quick Dirty Trick and spreading my resourses over the rest of the maneuvers is the way to go here.