Building an archer healer / caster with good dpr

[Trevor86]

Hey everyone,

I'll be starting a third character for pathfinder society soon and I'm having a bit of trouble reaching a certain concept.

Thematically, the character i'm trying to replicate is Kevin Graham from the legend of heroes rpg series. He has a cover as a goofy priest travelling around for fun, but in actuality he is a super cold assassin from the church sent to find and kill heretics, usually by himself, though they have squires assigned to them from time to time.

In that game, In combat, he uses a bow or crossbow. He is a good archer but his real strength lies in his ability to protect the party from harm or using damaging spells. His signature ability, grail sphere, blocks 1 or 2 incoming attacks per party member and he has a number of additional utility healing abilities. When he drops his cover he is implied to be a beast with his bow. During cutscenes he has high level mind affecting magic.

Thematically, the class that seemed the most suited to this for me initially was inquisitor. However, the only thing that can somewhat replicate grail sphere in pathfinder, to my knwledge, seems to be a high level channel positive energy (i am unfamiliar with the variants on channel energy, but im assuming ill have to just reflavor the healing from the base channel to protection).

Currently i'm stuck on a cleric with the healing subdomain to cover the restorative part, but i'm not sure if thr rest can be covered somehow. Possibly the animal domain, pretend he altered a dangerous animal's mind to follow him to cover for lowered damage? Though thats not really a part of the character.

Does anyone have any advice on this? I think what would work best is to take a rwstorarion domain cleric and make him a good archer. How should i do this?

[PhD. Okkam]

inquisitor (ravener hunter) with Life Mystery

[avr]

It isn't until the end of PFS normally, but Divine Interference would be a solid 11th level feat to emulate the grail sphere too.

Okkam's got a solid idea there. One other that might work is an oracle with the wood mystery and a buff or two for archery, and the spirit guide archetype with the Life spirit for channeling.

If you're set on the cleric with restoration, a number of deities with that subdomain also have access to the defence subdomain. The deflection aura that grants would fit your grail sphere too. Making a cleric good at archery is mostly a matter of casting buffs (preferably with the fate's favored trait) and spending all your feats on shooting things. As a human maybe

1: PBS
Human: Precise shot
3: Rapid shot
5: Weapon focus
7: Deadly aim
9: Manyshot or clustered shots
11: Clustered shots or manyshot or quicken spell

[Matt2VK]

If you're planning on using the Bow for combat, I can see you going two ways -

inquisitor (ravener hunter) with Life Mystery (as Okkam suggested) or Warpriest (choose your favorite deity for this - maybe one with the protection Blessing.)

...but if you just want the Bow for show and plan on going 'pure' caster, I'd probably go Oracle and skip the Archery feats. Since this sounds like PFS you'll usually be spending most of your encounter rounds casting spells so any archery feats you select would be mostly wasted.

[Scott Wilhelm]

My first thought is Paladin. Smite Evil works great with a bow. Healer, archer, good dpr, clergy, killer-agent of the church.

Paladin.

[Trevor86]

Thanks for the advice everyone :) I think I'll give the ravener hunter inquisitor a go. Seems like the perfect suggestion!

I thought of hospitaler paladin (or regular paladin) after posting this as an aternative but I have both done a paladin before and it would fall short on casting abilities imo.

[PhD. Okkam]

Ravener Hunter is combined Sanctified Slayer. What is more suitable for you thematically.