I've posted before (when I was thinking of running a bard in Skull and Shackles) but I've since found out another player wants to run a bard and, I'll be honest, in Kingmaker I'm currently the party face and I've had enough of it after a few years. I want someone else to do it.
I seek help because I am terrible with creating characters for Pathfinder it seems. My first character was a Paladin (who died) and my main character now started off as a gambler/swashbuckling rouge (great for cities, I didn't know what Kingmaker was). Anyway, my character's only good asset in Kingmaker is her Charisma and I'm the party face. Everything else, the other characters have left me in the dust (damage, to hit, ect). Wish I made something else. If we weren't so close to the end of the game and if she wasn't the "queen" now, I might try to kill her off. I realy don't enjoy playing her anymore (although I still love the game).
So with my bard concept for S&S gone, I thought Occultist. Well, the group decided no on Occult Adventures (which is fine, I started to find it a bit overwhelming). Now I'm thinking it might be fun to be a cleric or inquisitor of Besmara. The GM told us we start out press ganged, I figure that could be my right of initiation into my holy order. A wiser higher level cleric (or whatever) taught me the ropes and then sold me into slavery as part of the start of my clerical or inquisitor career...good luck! My ultimate goal could be revenge too (GM wants us to have long term goals we are working towards) even though this would have been expected by my character.
So my question and advice I'm seek is, are these decent concepts for the adventure (no spoilers please)? I just don't want to get stuck with another city rouge in the wilderness.
And, of the two, what would really be more useful and level well. Again, I hate that my current character seems so weak compared to the others. Especially considering that I think, to make things a challenge for the rest of the party, the GM has to make things nearly impossible for me to fight (more than one encounter, my only hope to hit has been a 20 while the barbarian need only roll a 4 to hit the same target).
Any tips for building the character too? I'm thinking water and storm domains. Or maybe trickery instead of storm.
Also, as a backup idea, in case the GM says no to Besmara, I'm thinking cleric of Calistria. It seems to fit the theme, including my revenge plan. Plus, it could be a fun character to play. I'm thinking knowledge and luck domains. Maybe trickery instead of knowledge.
It looks like I would be the only one playing a divine character: others are the bard, gun slinger, archer or ranger, and one unknown. We aren't even going to have a druid. So I think the party could use a cleric or inquisitor.
Have you had a chance to look through the article on Besmara in Inner Sea Faiths? A big part of Besmara's faith is how unstructured and unorganized it is. Another priest of Besmara could be your best friend or worst enemy - the only thing which unites most worshipers is a free spirit and a lust for treasure (however such a person might define 'treasure').
The fact you're press-ganged to start doesn't mean you need to start out as a slave, though if you want to take your character that way that's certainly up to you (though I'd think it would sour you to Besmara's faith more than anything else).
As far as "Does a cleric or inquisitor of Besmara work well in this campaign?". Absolutely. Especially if no one else is bringing a divine class to the mix, both classes are a fantastic idea, and both can work really well as in the thick of the fray swashbuckling priests.
Calistria is also a good fit for the campaign as someone to worship, and helps if you don't want to be so devoted to purely piracy for piracy's sake.
Well, tiny spoiler about the campaign...you will meet an NPC cleric of Besmara pretty early on, so don't feel you need to play a cleric at all.
Personally I find Inquisitors way more interesting than Clerics. Clerics are always very bland and uninteresting to me as a class.
As far as the idea of a cleric of Besmara selling you into slavery, while it's possible that it could happen I think it doesn't make much sense. You spend years training someone (2d6) only to drop them off as slaves. Sounds like a good way to create an enemy searching to kill you.
Alternatively, having an initiation right where you have to go off on your own and join a pirate crew and attempt to become a captain in your own right seems very reasonable without creating a lifelong enemy.
Besmara is the best deity to hook into the path no question. You definitely need to build a character that 'wants' to be a pirate. While you won't choose how you first get introduced into the life of piracy, already wanting that career certainly will make the path flow better for your character.
Beyond the typical setups for the game, I'd recommend talking to the other players about what they expect to do once you have a ship of your own (I don't think that is a spoiler for anyone) and how you are going to organize the PCs as the ships officers. For example, several of the things Captains do is heavily based on CHR. Piloting a ship used the WIS based Profession: Sailor. Making sure everyone will have a job, and a job they want to do in dealing with the your own ship helps it out. In our group we split some of the traditional roles. We had a bard that was our negotiator and face, but he wasn't the Captain, we had a Druid that excelled at piloting for the helmsman, but she wasn't the captain either. Our captain didn't excel at any of the ship functions, but was at least competent in all of them and known to be dangerous and had a good intimidate score, basically just quietly passing on his orders to the other officers, who saw they were carried out but unless things went bad was otherwise just a quiet pressence on the bridge. My point is that their are lots of ways you can organize, and while it won't matter for the beginning of the Path eventually it will, and making sure that everyone has something (and two people don't want the same thing) will make it go smoother.
From a mechanical perspective, your party currently at least lacks anyone for battlefield control. Clerics can perform this role admirably. I am not sure you want to take that role though, since you seem pretty focused on measuring a character just by how much damage they can do. Clerics can certainly contribute both as melee focused and to an extent with direct damage spells, but a build for a melee cleric and build for a control cleric are usually fairly different. One way to split the difference if you really want to melee is focusing on summoning, perhaps with the herald caller archetype and others spend your resources on melee (and not needing to go for an ultra-high WIS since you won't be throwing a lot of spells with save will let you have good STR too.) Summons can be excellent control, and a flexible to deal with a variety of situations, it won't be any surprise that aquatic environments are a factor. Spending a round or two summoning to lock down some of the enemy forces and separate them and then wading into melee is a pretty good option.
In any event, I think cleric is a great choice for the Path, and will work well with your group, but exactly what role you want to fill in combat would alter the 'best' build considerably.
Uda Wendo medium of Besmara. Captain Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach )
If you go with an inquisitor of besmara you can certainly be good in a fight and if you take the conversion inquisition you can cover being good at the skills you need to be a good sailor and a good captain (if you wanted to). If you go with a half-orc inquisitor specifically you can have a massive bonus to intimidate at level one which can help for rp stuff and in combat if you go down that feat tree.
Im terrible at clerics so I cant offer anything helpful there but Dave Justus had a good breakdown of the different ways to cleric.
Thanks for the advice. I should stress that I don't care that I hit hard in combat, I just want my character to be useful in different situations. My current character seems to only be useful in social situations, but most of our time is combat, research (knowledge skill checks), using magic, etc. I don't want another one-trick-pony character.
I like doing buffs. I very briefly played a witch for a while and loved that character. Mainly I was buffing up the party and debuffing the enemy... with a bit of crowd control. She was also fun to role play with her low charisma with was very sour and bossy.
I think the bard will cover that bit though, so I thought heals, cures, crowd control, etc would be nice. I like the idea of my character already having sailing experience too.
I really like the last idea, the half-orc inquisitor of Besmara with sailing skills. I might try building one. It sounds like it would be useful as a party member and fun to roleplay! A big change from my current, Neutral Good, Benevolent, honey tongued queen.
I may also roll a half-elf or elf cleric of Calistra too for comparison.
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Inquisitors are a great class. They can self buff themselves and go nova in combat so that's good.
Out of combat they have a great skill list and are actually REALLY good in social situations, not as faces, but as defense against other faces as their Intimidate and Sense Motive are godly.
Quick rundown of their icnoic features:
Domain/Inquisitions - Great place to put in either extra flavour or optimisation. Lots of good options for both.
Judgment - Really nice self buff for the most important fight of the day.
Monster Lore - You'll know everything about monsters. If you have no other know it alls in your party then you can be the resident expert on anything you'll face.
Stern Gaze - Out of combat Sense Motive and Intimidate buff. Both of these are class skills too so no lying NPC will be safe from you.
Cunning Initiative - Another great combat buff. If you go ranged inquisitor then your dex plus your wis will mean you will almost always go first.
Detect Alignment - Flavorful out of combat social utility.
Track - Out of combat, you're a great tracker
Solo Tactics/Teamwork Feat - A bit hard to use (as you have to be comfortable with the Teamwork feats) but really useful in combat.
Bane - At will bane is just amazing for really putting the hurt on something you really want dead. At 5th level Inquisitors start to be deadly novas.
Basically it's a really nice mix of out of combat and in combat class abilities. It's a great class.
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The chances you'll feel weak as an Inquisitor are extremely low just pick a fighting style and go wild.
Archery and Two handed melee intimidation would both be very powerful indeed and you don't really have to sacrifice much utility at all to achieve either of them.
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"I'm Green Beard the Pirate, and I approve this thread."
Never played Skull and Shackles, but this is my cleric of Besmara in Pathfinder Society. I built him as a "bad touch" cleric, using the Trickery and Chaos (Protean) domains to stand on the front lines debuffing enemies with the level 1 Chaos power.
He specializes in debuff spells, channels negative energy (badly, due to 7 charisma), and spontaneously casts inflict spells if he really needs to contribute a little damage. I put my first two feats and a trait into boosting his concentration checks, since casting on the front line is what he does. He also has spell focus: Necromancy now, and Blindness/Deafness has become his "go to" move from a distance.
He's up to level 6 so far, and I've had a lot of fun playing him.
So I have more feedback from my fellow players. What we have now is:
-Warlord or Cavalier (Daring Champion)
-Slayer
-Bard/Rogue or maybe Bard/Sorcerer
-Unknown but not a cleric or healer since he does this in Kingmaker and he wants to try something new.
At least that gives me some focus. I don't need to worry about being a front line, damage dealer. I can buff and cast and will be useful and strong (and I'm going to think of a fun way to role play her... all I know is I don't want to be a goody two shoes like my current Kingmaker character. I'm thinking she may be slightly mentally unbalanced too in some fashion. Nothing crippling, but RP fun).
Now to research! Thanks Green Bard, I will take a look at your type of build too. Although I think I want to channel positive energy and heals (if I go cleric).
I should also note that I do not want to be the party face again. I do that now and it's someone else's turn. Maybe that bard/sorcerer combo character can do it. The guy playing it is fast on his feet when it comes to banter. They player is a natural, I'm not.
...I can't help but wonder why in the world you'd want to multiclass bard / rogue OR bard / sorcerer...bards are kinda like rogue sorcerers already but better o.o >.> >.>
Cleric will be more useful in a wider variety of situations, with more and more varied buffs, higher level spells, healing, and easy ability to change spells day by day. Secondly if your DM doesn't let you play a cleric of Besmara in S&S you should quit immediately >.<
The great thing bout cleric is if you have 14+ wisdom you basically *can't* eff it up long term because you can just change your spells. You can channel positive as a cleric of besmara. However
** spoiler omitted **
Well, I was wrong. The guy playing a bard is playing a straight up bard. I must have misunderstood (maybe he said bard or sorcerer).
So we have:
Daring Champion
Slayer
Bard
Me playing a cleric or inquisitor
whatever the last player chooses (I seem to remember him talking about a ranger)
The GM gave me the go-ahead for evangelical cleric of Besmara or an inquisitor of Besmara. I know about the spoiler (someone else mentioned it earlier). My GM is the type that might just change out that NPC for some other class to make things more interesting if I play a cleric. He's done that kind of thing before with out Kingmaker campaign. I can't remember what the NPC was supposed to be (some kind of spell caster), but he told us he changed the Old Belle Dame to the witch class because he thought it would be more interesting for us than whatever it was she was supposed to be.
I think I will role up both as characters, build back stories and motivations, and after they are done, figure out which one will be more fun to play. I can save the other as a backup, just in case.
I would lean towards the inquisitor, as the versatile skill set makes them very good at handling diverse situations. A cleric becomes more powerful (eventually), but there are very few situations in which an inquisitor cannot contribute.
Granted, the group is a bit light on healing so an oracle or cleric isn´t a bad choice by any mean, but of the two, I would go with an inquisitor. Of course, no one would ever call you an inquisitor - you are a priest of Besmara to those in the know, just a sly and savvy one!
Personally I think an Inquisitor would be more fun to play and be more interesting.
But a Cleric would help your party a lot more I think.
It sounds like we have a party makeup now :
Daring ChampionSlayer
Bard
Skald
Me playing a cleric or inquisitor
We are short any full casters. We may not need them, but it could come in handy. Of course, my GM threw a curve ball at me and told me to look at Oracle too. I know little about them, but what I read so far makes it sound like it's a character that can be cool, but unforgiving if you make mistakes building it early on. I'm good at making mistakes building Pathfinder characters (hence this post--I don't want to mess up again like I did with my rogue).
So if anything, I suppose I'm inclined to evangelical cleric based on the party make-up. Between the bard and the skald, Inquisitor skills might be redundant. It would be nice to have some powerful spells too.
Unless the Bard is going for a selfish archetype, I wouldn't go with the evangelist archetype for cleric, the party doesn't need two sources of inspire courage and you don't want to step on any toes. Of course if he is focusing on melee and does take a selfish archetype, Evangelist would be very good for your party.
I like Oracles, but I wouldn't go with one for this party. Prepared casting when you are the primary source of magic for the group is pretty powerful since you will probably need to change what you memorize depending on the situation.
A cleric seems to be would be more beneficial to the party composition. Between the cavalier, the slayer, and the skald it seems like youve got the "in your face" dps covered and full casters are always useful to have around. Plus clerics have some great flexibility when it comes to spells which is good if theyre the *only* fulll caster.
That being said, its equally important to think about what would be more fun to play. Personally, inquisitors are my favorite class and Ive never been able to really grok full casters so I am 100% biased in this case.
Im also supremely confident that "pirate priest" is a concept thatll be fun no matter which class you pick.
Im hesitant to push you one way or the other since its not my game so I guess what Im saying is check out some cleric builds and some inquisitor builds and see what sounds most awesome. I can post a copy of an inquisitor concept I rolled up specifically for skulls and shackles if you want but I suck at clerics so I can only advise you check out the class guides for that.
EDIT- i keep editing my post trying to find the best way to say what im trying to say so probably best to just ignore me at this point
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Unless the Bard is going for a selfish archetype, I wouldn't go with the evangelist archetype for cleric, the party doesn't need two sources of inspire courage and you don't want to step on any toes. Of course if he is focusing on melee and does take a selfish archetype, Evangelist would be very good for your party.
I like Oracles, but I wouldn't go with one for this party. Prepared casting when you are the primary source of magic for the group is pretty powerful since you will probably need to change what you memorize depending on the situation.
Pretty much exactly what I was going to say.
Personally, I like all the skills available to the inquisitor. They have the monster knowledges down pat. Plus they can nova a respectable amount of damage when needed. They are one of my favorite classes.
Having said that, your party doesn't have a prepared full caster. The slayer, bard, and skald should have plenty of skill ranks for the monster knowledges and social skills. Bard and skald should be able to hand out a flurry of useful party buffs. A full prepared caster that plans for specific anticipated situations can be incredibly useful and powerful.
Play what will be fun for you. With your group I would probably play the cleric even though I generally like the inquisitor better.
Now, the prepared aspect's utility depends a bit upon the party and GM. If the GM is one that never lets you have an actual clue about what is going to happen AND/OR the party is one that always charges in headlong without any preparation or planning... Well then, the prepared aspect won't gain you very much utility and you will find yourself almost always using the same selection of spells. Only you can answer this.
Thanks for all the advice! It really helps. I think what I will do is build both an inquisitor of Besmara and a cleric (of either Besmara or maybe even Gozreh or Cayden). I looked into the oracle and I'm convinced I'll end up getting too narrowly focused which is part of the problem with my Kingmaker character (one trick pony). I don't think I'm a good enough player to effectively plan an oracle. I need a more "forgiving" character class.
After I create the two, create backstories for them, then I will pick one and leave the other for a backup character.
Quick question, I read it's better to play a druid than a cleric of Gozreh. I'm not interested in a druid, but is that essentially true? Is it a waste? Or is it normally true, but with S&S a good build for the high seas.
Click on mah face, if ye dare! ARRRRRRRrrr! :)
Click on mah face, if ye dare! ARRRRRRRrrr! :)
Thanks!
Fun update, the one bard is changing to a monk (I think because of the skald) and another player suggested I look at Shaman. I never even knew about the class. I really like Shaman from what I see. It's very flexible after level 4, seems forgiving, and fits the theme of the adventure (off the top of my head a wind or wave shaman would fit in perfectly). Plus you get access to divine, druid, and arcane spells as well as cool hexes. It sounds like a lot of fun without boxing you in. Plus it fills the sorely needed (in our party) full caster.
So I think I made up my mind to build an Inquisitor of Besmara and a Shaman. Then I will compare and pick. They both look like fun, so it will be a tough pick. If I get my builds made this weekend, I'll post them.
You folks are the best! Thank you again!
For all it's worth, I'm having tons of fun with this build. It's so versatile it literally feels like playing a wizard... sorting through all the Swift Action possibilities is the only downside. Blistering Invective is my go to spell. It's just amazing.
I'm actually playing the same build in a lower level separate campaign. Since guns are expensive, and that the gold is hard to come by in the other campaign, I use a repeating heavy crossbow in that one. But overall build is the same.
If you're still interested in rolling a cleric, might I recommend the herald caller archetype?
You trade the ability to wear medium armor for some extra skill points and summoning abilities. Summon Besmara's planar pirate crew to fight alongside you!