I'm designing a goblin character that starts with 21 DEX, the Color Thief trait, and is most definitely wearing light armor (masterwork studded leather). No armor check penalty. They have the base racial traits, stealth as a class skill, and a rank in stealth.
Steal total for goblin at level 1: 19.
I'm planning on taking 4 levels of rogue (bandit) and 6 levels of sohei. By this point I plan to have the Animal Ally feat (with Boon Companion of course). This offers me a very limited selection of mounts, but the wolf is among them, and that's a thematic goblin mount if there ever was one. But...
What the HELL do I do to make its stealth comparable to mine without casting Invisibility?
Assuming I put a point into Stealth at every level and don't take Skill Focus in it, I have +30 bonus to all my stealth rolls at level 12. That's a lot. Meanwhile, if my animal companion takes Stealthy and Skill Focus (Stealthy) with 9 ranks in stealth, it still only has 23 stealth. I suppose that's nice, but that's taking two feats to work, and that's only if I keep it Medium. It's obviously better to make it Large, but if I do that its stealth score drops to +18.
Any advice? I want to make this character a bandit/sohei/something that sneaks up on enemies and makes terrifying charge attacks using her dex score for damage. It's sub-optimal, sure, but it's fun enough that I want to see it happen, and the stealth score is really important to me.
EDIT: As an aside, I may reduce the levels in Sohei to 2 and combine that with 4 rogue levels and go Cavalier the rest of the way, opening up my mount options a little.
What are those ways, if you know? That'd be the best thing if I could do it. Stealth Synergy looks really good though.
There are magic items which give a competence bonus to stealth. Armor with the shadow property would be legal even if this is for PFS.
This may sound harsh but you don’t. Your character is focused pretty heavily on stealth and because of this your bonus is extremely high for something without magic. If you could easily get your animal companions stealth to match yours it would lessen your characters specialty. If a large animal companion can get stealth as high as yours other things can do the same. This kind of diminishes your character. Expecting your mount to be able to match you at your specialty is not a reasonable expectation.
The only way to get your mounts stealth to near your level would be to use magic. If it is going to be wearing armor consider going with the shadow line of enchantments. The basic shadow enchantment only costs 3,750 gp for a +5 bonus. Improved shadow is a bit more pricy at 15,000 gp for a +10 bonus.
You could argue with your GM that animal companions should have skill points based on wisdom. After all, most animals would starve if they had to rely on their survival skill.
This won't give you any more max ranks, but it will let you put points into other things as well.
You could argue with your GM that animal companions should have skill points based on wisdom. After all, most animals would starve if they had to rely on their survival skill.
This won't give you any more max ranks, but it will let you put points into other things as well.
This is completely untrue. Survival is a WIS based skill and the DC to survive in the wilderness is 10. A wolf has a +1 bonus to survive so by taking 10 it can survive in the wilderness. Unless the animal has a WIS penalty, which I have not seen on a single animal, they will be able to survive.
Get some Oil of Carry Companion and Oil of Invisibility for when you absolutely have to sneak past something.
In this case, the goblin isn't from Golarion, but rather from a world where goblins are like those from Lord of the Rings, where goblins riding wargs is very common. So yes, wolves are thematic.
This may sound harsh but you don’t. Your character is focused pretty heavily on stealth and because of this your bonus is extremely high for something without magic. If you could easily get your animal companions stealth to match yours it would lessen your characters specialty. If a large animal companion can get stealth as high as yours other things can do the same. This kind of diminishes your character. Expecting your mount to be able to match you at your specialty is not a reasonable expectation.
I guess that's fair. I keep worrying that since both the character and the mount need to succeed on stealth checks when being sneaky I need to ensure my mount has as high a stealth score as possible... But this is a very reasonable thing to point out.
I'll try using shadowy armor and maybe Stealth Synergy. I'll see where it gets me.