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You could always go for the sacred servant archetype, pick up the greater/ultimate mercy feats. Sacred servant slows down your smite progression, gives you a domain that you use as a cleric of your level -3 and gives you domain spell slots the rate of paladin spells, a divine bond with your holy symbol that lets you either gain a bonus to cater level, boost the dc's of channel to harm undead, boost the dice of channel or gain additional uses of lay on hands a day. Ultimate mercy lets you burn 10 charges of Lay on Hands to raise someone from the dead and you gain a negative level for 24 hours if you can't provide the material component. Amusing you take a 20 in CHA, buy a +2 Headband for 6 Cha you'll have 9 uses of lay on hands a day which you can boost to 10 buy activating the divine bond to get an additional 1.
But the best part about the Archtype is Call Celestial Ally (Sp)
At 8th level, a sacred servant can call upon her deity for aid, in the form of a powerful servant. This allows the sacred servant to cast lesser planar ally once per week as a spell-like ability without having to pay the material component cost or the servant (for reasonable tasks). At 12th level, this improves to planar ally and at 16th level, this improves to greater planar ally. The sacred servant’s caster level for this effect is equal to her paladin level.
The trick is to pick up the Augment Calling feat at 9th level to increase the HD limit of your free outsider by 2.
Do that and nab fighter (weapon master) as your gestalt class and kick ass while raising people from the dead and summoning angels.
I vote Arcane Duelist Bard instead of Oracle, personally. A lot of the Oracle stuff doesn't really mesh too well with Paladin, whereas Performances and such from the Bard do.
Build several characters.
Sometimes the best option is to run away.
With Gestalt when it comes to power you want to try to get the best of everything in 1 package. Combos like:
Monk//Cleric or Druid- Combat, Saves, Full 9th level caster, good amounts of skills and abilities to cover skills.
Paladin//Oracle or Sorcerer- Cha based Full caster with CHA to saves. Lots of Goodies.
Finding classes that use the same ability scores is key. Most people aim for 9th Level spell casting and good martial abilities.
But you can always choose to focus on something specific instead of covering everything. And since Rapp is a character blender I recommend this for the tanky person meant to stand and kill a beast or give everyone time to flee.
Something Like:
Paladin//Cavalier Order of the 7 Stars- Boosted LoH and Channel Energy for more sustainability, Smite+Challenge (massive damage potential), Teamwork feats to share, Can get Ultimate Mercy for easier Resurrection, Status Removal. Mostly Hyper focused on Combat and recovering from Combat. Hands down will out martial most foes. You just miss out on 9th level spells but typically others will have those tools.
Paladin//Scaled Fist Unmonk- Flurry of Smites, Stunning Smites, Cha to saves and AC, Extra beefed up attacks from Ki Pool, Tons of movement options.
Unmonk//Inquisitor- Flurry of Bane, Tons of Skills, Full BaB, Awesome skills, Some divine castings, Archetype choices.
I feel the Full casters to be the stronger option overall on a stand alone power scale....but your not playing a solo game. You have other group members who fulfill those options while you manhandle everything that tries to fight the group.
The choice is of course up to you. My main bit of advice is just try to have some sort of Synergy between your classes. Try not to have too many actions that conflict for action economy and the abilities run off your good stats.
Putting that aside, I don't see how the Oathbound of Vengeance should help my cause. I'm sure it's a great archetype, but has nothing to improve his or his allies resilience, which is what I'm looking for. Why would you say Sacred Shield is a bad archetype? To me it seems it has some pretty nice abilities.
Sacred shield is considered bad because Smite evil is better at making your party survive than Bastion of good. Smite evil allows you to quickly remove threats that can kill you and your allies. Which is better than halving damage from one target to allies within 10 feet, it's just one target, they can still do nondamage just as effectively, and within 10 feet is hard to ensure.
The build he posted will be really good at making your allies survive because life link heals all your allies every turn and you can heal yourself with a swift action. That allows you to heal everyone while attacking the enemy.
Update: Ierox's "Oathbound Paladin of Vengeance 7//Divine Herbalist Oracle 7 of Iomedae" build has been banned by my DM.
Apparently someone did something very similar in the past, and it turned out it was too unbalanced or something... so I need to go another way.I'm looking into Fighter archetype, maybe Armor Master or Unbreakable. Any thoughts?
No Armor master is terrible. NEVER give up Bravery or Weapon Training. Base Fighter is 100x Better now. Anything that gives those options are strictly terrible now.
Oh, ok!
Another suggestion I received is to build around the Warder class from Path of War. Until 10 minutes ago I didn't even know it existed, but it seems a class MADE FOR tank builds.
Is it any good? Are there some huge drawbacks I haven't noticed?
I do not use Path of War other than the feat Deadly Agility in my groups game.
So I would not know of suggestions to give for that. Is your DM allowing 3rd Party Material that is not Paizo?
Have you considered a paladin/bard combination? Use any archetype that you want for the paladin side, as long as it does not trade away smite evil. Use the archeologist bard to get skills and rouge abilities. What you end up with is basically Batman. Use a mithral breastplate and go weapon finesse with something like slashing grace or fencing grace.
As Louise Bishop mentioned a unchained monk/inquisitor is also very strong. Flurry of bane is incredibly good. That alone would be enough, but the combination actually gives you a lot more.
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Just a half way worked out suggestion.
Tiefling
Magus (Kensai) 7/ Unchained Monk 7
Str 10
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 16
Wis 14
Cha 8
Feats:
Kensai Weapon: Temple Sword
1: Weapon Finesses
Kensai Bonus: Weapon Focus: Temple Sword
Monk Bonus 1: Dodge
Monk Bonus 2: Combat Reflexes
3: Slashing Grace
5: Intensified Spell (Metamagic)
Kensai Bonus 5: Improved Initiative
Monk Bonus 6: Improved Trip
7: Weapon Specialization: Temple Sword
AC: Base 10 + Dex Mod 4 + Int Mod 3 + Wis Mod 2 + Dodge 1 + Monk 1 = 21
Touch AC: 21 Flat Footed AC: 13 (invest heavy in perception)
This is before any items.
+2 Dex belt 4k, +2 Int, and Wis 10k, and Bracers of Armor +2 4K. total 18K. New AC total 26 Touch 24 Flat Footed 16
Casting shield will put you up to a 30 for known combat. Pearls of power 1 are cheap way to make sure you have enough castings.
Initiative: Dex Mod 4 + Int Mod 3 + feat 4 = 11
with items: 13
With listed gear, and flurry. Over all not great damage. However dose not include spell strike surge damage from magus.
Temple Sword +2 To Hit +15/15/10 Damage 1D8+9
Just a half way worked out suggestion.
Tiefling
Magus (Kensai) 7/ Unchained Monk 7
Str 10
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 16
Wis 14
Cha 8
Feats:
Kensai Weapon: Temple Sword
1: Weapon Finesses
Kensai Bonus: Weapon Focus: Temple Sword
Monk Bonus 1: Dodge
Monk Bonus 2: Combat Reflexes
3: Slashing Grace
5: Intensified Spell (Metamagic)
Kensai Bonus 5: Improved Initiative
Monk Bonus 6: Improved Trip
7: Weapon Specialization: Temple SwordAC: Base 10 + Dex Mod 4 + Int Mod 3 + Wis Mod 2 + Dodge 1 + Monk 1 = 21
Touch AC: 21 Flat Footed AC: 13 (invest heavy in perception)
This is before any items.
+2 Dex belt 4k, +2 Int, and Wis 10k, and Bracers of Armor +2 4K. total 18K. New AC total 26 Touch 24 Flat Footed 16
Casting shield will put you up to a 30 for known combat. Pearls of power 1 are cheap way to make sure you have enough castings.
Initiative: Dex Mod 4 + Int Mod 3 + feat 4 = 11
with items: 13With listed gear, and flurry. Over all not great damage. However dose not include spell strike surge damage from magus.
Temple Sword +2 To Hit +15/15/10 Damage 1D8+9
Good example of how not to build.
Flurry and spellstrike/spell combat do not work together. Two separate full round actions. Only the Dex overlaps but the build also needs Int, Wis, in good amounts.
Good AC but offensively too much fighting over your action economy.
I don't know much about gestalt characters, so much of this won't be relevant to all parties or to the original question, and I'm going to echo some earlier posts, but I thought I'd put up some general thoughts since we've found ways to succeed down there without gestalt and with a lower point buy:
I have a Rappan Athuk game that just hit level 11 yesterday, after starting at 4. There were many casualties until the vast treasure piles down there kicked in: now we expect death, and consider the vast sums we spend on raise dead magic as a necessary investment. There's SO MUCH treasure down there that it really changes how one should approach the game. Our WBL is off the charts, and yours will be, too (if you live long enough): once you hit that first big score (and manage to reach a place where you can spend it wisely), the place won't be quite so scary any more.
Our game has no restrictions on downtime. Whenever we managed to get out of that place we tried to get to the nearest major city (we're in a homebrew setting with Rappan Athuk dropped into it) to offload aforementioned treasure (easier said than done sometimes). Then, crafting feats. Collectively, the party should try to have all the important ones. We've spent hundreds of days crafting while hanging around the elven capital.
Buy scrolls of powerful spells before you can cast them yourself: scrolls of summon 5/6 and teleport saved us many times (if the first doesn't work, try the second and survive). In a normal game that money would be missed, but not here. You'll find more. Launch scrollcast shadow demons like cruise missiles--so expensive, gone when you use 'em, but boom.
Other than the money thing, I've found that AOE, minions, and teleportation have been more important than in most other games. If I was making a single standard character based on everything I've learned so far, I'd build a negative channeling cleric with the travel domain, command undead, and crafting feats. The investment-oriented mindset I've grown into suggests Abadar. That'd be fun.
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Performances are great for action economy for sure, but I'm curious why Arcane Duelist?
A bit more combat focused, including ability to use Mithral Full Plate starting at level 10. You trade out most of the bard's utility abilities but 6 skills/level and 6-level casting still gives you a decent number of tricks.
Just a half way worked out suggestion.
Tiefling
Magus (Kensai) 7/ Unchained Monk 7
Str 10
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 16
Wis 14
Cha 8
Feats:
Kensai Weapon: Temple Sword
1: Weapon Finesses
Kensai Bonus: Weapon Focus: Temple Sword
Monk Bonus 1: Dodge
Monk Bonus 2: Combat Reflexes
3: Slashing Grace
...
Good example of how not to build.
Flurry and spellstrike/spell combat do not work together. Two separate full round actions. Only the Dex overlaps but the build also needs Int, Wis, in good amounts.
Good AC but offensively too much fighting over your action economy.
Also, Flurry of blows and spell combat don’t work with Slashing Grace.
How well would Cleric/Fighter or Cleric/Barbarian work as a gestalt? Will save patch, decent combat, and divine spells for when you want to play god(dess)?
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Cleric//Fighter works pretty well, but it's not as tanky as most paladin gestalts.
Cleric//Barbarian gets complicated if you want to cast spells while raging - Moment of Clarity will work if you need, for example, an emergency Breath of Life, but it's not ideal.
Another idea: Paladin//Geokinetic Knight?
Defensively: Heavy armour and shield. d10 HD, all good saves. Paladin lay on hands, divine grace, and immunities. Geokineticist DR/adamantine equal to half your level and Kinetic Knight samurai resolve.
Offensively: You'd be using a earth blade (no burn cost) which gives you pretty good base damage. You get some control/debuff options using substance infusions or whip (which gives you a good threatened area and the disarm and trip properties - and you don't need Combat Expertise for maneuver feats). Note that at level 8 infusion specialization 2 lets you use 2-burn infusions like whip or entangle for free. You threaten with a shield bash when your blast isn't active. Smite should work normally with blast attacks. Check with your GM about Divine Bond - the blast is a weapon but since it's not normally enhanced and you have to re-form it each round the enhancement might not stick. If this is the case you could keep the weapon bond for a bonus on a secondary weapon like the shield bash or a bow, or grab a mount (though keep in mind the mount will be relatively weak in a gestalt party).
Utility: Not great, but you do get 4 skills/level and all your utility talents. That can get you a sage familiar with for knowledge skills and scouting (elemental whispers talent), tremorsense, earth glide, or flight if you take air as your expanded element. Missing out on the oradin gestalt's healing spells may or may not be an issue depending on party composition.
Since you'd have a somewhat higher demand for Con than your average paladin, stats would be a little tighter than the Paladin//Oracle, but probably about the same as the Paladin//Scaled Fist Monk (which wants more Dex to keep AC up).
You can drop some strength doing that build presumably.
Sooooo . . . What does your dungeon master say about Warpriest/Oracle? XD
The flaw with this build is the heavy reliance on immediate/swift actions, particularly the conflict between Parry and Lay on Hands. Assuming you're okay with that, you could go with a Dazzling Display build Virtuous Bravo Paladin/Scaled Fist Unchained Monk. You stack Dex and Charisma to AC, +1 AC from Nimble, Dodge as a bonus feat, and Opportune Parry and Riposte to negate enemy attacks. Unmonk let's you flurry with a temple sword, giving you two attacks per turn to get crits/deal damage. The Ki Guardian Ki Power let's you make saves for your allies against area of effect attacks. The Foot Stomp Style Strike lets you pin down foes and prevent them accessing weaker allies. Take Dazzling Display as your 6th lvl Scaled Fist bonus feat to debuff the enemy and lower their chance to hit your allies.
What is your He's opinion on summoner? Using a synthesis summoner you can crank out some pretty nasty builds, in my own experience.
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You can drop some strength doing that build presumably.
A little, since you don't need it for damage, but it's still your accuracy stat so I wouldn't want to skimp too much.
With 25 point buy, human or half-human, and a 4th level increase I might go for 15+2/13/16/8/10/15+1, start with a Con belt, and plan to increase Str at level 8 and Con afterwards while investing heavily in the Str/Con belt and Cha headband. If you dump a little harder you could get 15+2/12/17/7/10/15+1 or even 15+2/13/17+1/7/7/16.