I've been looking into ways to make an unarmed character that has a little more to it than just a monk. Like in the thread title, more like Akuma or a fighting game character. Able to pull off special attacks/strikes/blasts, as often as possible and as close to level one as possible. I was only able to come up with a few possibilities:
1. An unarmed magus. Either the hex crafter, kensai, or...there was one other archetype for unarmed but it escapes me at the moment. I'll admit I've never played a magus so I only have a basic grasp of the class.
2. A kineticist. I'm not sure if the annihilator archetype would work better than the vanilla. I have heard the unarmed version is not good. Was thinking the kinetic blade is mostly asthetics anyway so it could easily look like an unarmed strike + energy.
3. Monk as a dip for a sorcerer or something...
I'll apologize ahead of time if I missed similar threads where this has been answered already. Just wanted to throw this out to the wisdom of the board.
You could elemental fist style with a monk, or brawler i guess? I think each of those styles also has a blast so you could straight up hadoken people.
Monk of the four winds gets elemental fist at first level. You can also take a master of many style with it. This way you could pick madrid style at level one and do a bonus to cold damage with increases reach.
I've been looking into ways to make an unarmed character that has a little more to it than just a monk. Like in the thread title, more like Akuma or a fighting game character. Able to pull off special attacks/strikes/blasts, as often as possible and as close to level one as possible. I was only able to come up with a few possibilities:
1. An unarmed magus. Either the hex crafter, kensai, or...there was one other archetype for unarmed but it escapes me at the moment. I'll admit I've never played a magus so I only have a basic grasp of the class.
...
You are thinking of the Esoteric Magus. It's a pretty fun archetype.
Esoteric is the other magus archetype you're thinking of. I suspect that a magus would be best for getting a variety of tricks - kineticist is very limited at low levels, and sorcerer on a delay of at least one level is also slow to get going.
Synthesist Summoner would also work if allowed.
Anyone know which would hold up better doing the kung fu thing in combat? Like for Ac and survivability. Magus vs kineticist? I wouldn't wand to run up and start punching only to realize melee is the last place I should be.
Ive tried building a marid/dragon style master of many styles monk of the four winds and it seemed pretty limited. It looked like a good subzero on paper but didn't seem like it would fair very well in play.
Kineticist is sounding pretty good but that may only be because of the at will thing and that I don't know much about the magus. Or which magus archetype would work better.
Also, thanks for the feedback!
Depends on exactly how you want to play the magus. Assuming Esoteric then if you're worried about survivability and you don't have time to buff normally then you can cast Shield or similar as part of spell combat (Mirror Image later on). The Shocking Grasp or Frostbite spells are obviously more offensive options, or even just Arcane Mark for an extra attack when you don't want to use up a real spell.
You do have a conflict between offence and defence in terms of actions with a magus when you can't do anything before closing into combat.
While I don't agree with Kurald on absolutely everything, his magus guide is pretty good.