[...] I decided for a two handed build instead, because I like the concept of reach weapons and their possibilities.What ChessPwn said, then.
May I suggest dipping into cleric? It will boost your Will save and some domains have strong 1st-lvl options, such as Travel or Growth (Plant subdomain).
I'd consider monk instead, just me...
Most of that looks pretty good, although I don't know why you wouldn't start with a strength of 16 and a wisdom of 14. Surely the +1 to attack and +1-2 to damage for the majority of the characters career would be a better investment than +1 to will saves. Especially since you're built to use potions of enlarge person, which would boost you to 18 strength where you get that +2 to damage right from level 1.
I've played that exact stat-block before with the intention of playing "slow" with evened-out str + belt from 4th-to-8th: 15>17+1(bump)+2(enlarge)+2(belt) = 22, which is perfect for 2hPA, whereas a 23 at that point gets you nothing. So the character's higher strength being a factor 50% of the levels is balanced against being -1 worse wisdom-related 100% of the time: Perception -1, Sense Motive -1, will saves -1, daily domain uses -1. (-1 spell DCs too, but Bane is out-of-gas past 3rd or so, so we can discount that in a "dip" build.)
If you have a lot of different ways of using wisdom, it's a harder decision to shave it.
If you intend to play "slow" at very low level, and you play the character so sporadically that it might take over a year to reach 4th, then I'd start with an even number in strength.
Also not sold on the teammate feats. My time playing cavalier and rogue tells me that unless you're going to continually badger the herd of cats you're playing with to position themselves exactly as you tell them to, those feats aren't going to be too useful.
I think Paired Opportunists is the most powerful combat feat in the game, bar none. If at least one other martial has Combat Reflexes and/or Greater maneuver mechanic (because you're going to get those too to royally roast this mechanic), woah Nelly....
You don't have to herd the cats, you just have to identify which cat generates AoOs and then hang around them tag-teaming with Fortuitous weapons.
|
Furious focus, is to some, a feat trap.
It only works on your first attack, and normally your first attack is so good that you're hitting on a 5 if not a 2. FF turns that 5 into a 3 and the 2 into a 2, and then it's doing nothing for your other attacks. Which to me seems like a pretty lackluster feat.
I found it to be the same 50% of the time, it really depends on the campaign and monsters/foes I ran into. Otherwise I generally took Cleave and called it a day.
The idea was a two-weapon fighter that used their shield in combat along with x-weapon (for me normally a longsword)
on 20pt's I generally build my sword and boards this way
str 15 dex 13 con 14 int 12 Wis 14 Cha 11
normally taking the social trait seeker to add perception to class skills & +1 and the religion trait Focused Disciple to add +2 against Charm & Compulsion effects
(Ran into a lot of GM's that liked to cast such on warriors to attack fellow party members on the island of ketchikan)
right, 10000 to do something fairly useless on the round that non-martials are doing their thing to trying to pretend to be a martial.You need to go check up on that item, and let your imagination run wild while perusing the Teamwork feat-list at Nethy's.
It is... ...really good.
I'm aware of what it does and how it's "better" for a dwarf, teamwork feats are by and large quite useless and hard to pull off. Even your prime example of paired opportunist is super hard to pull off, and this requires you spend the standard action to give it to others. This is tactician in an item and just like the ability, it's not good.
Also you've burned a feat to drink the potion faster,No I didn't. (Please attend to the context, which was the addition of a barbarian archetype.)
Sorry, I did miss that apparently the best way to fighter was to not be a fighter but a barb cleric.
AND you walk around carrying a potion all the time.Potion in hand, hand in pocket. If you need the hand for something else, drop potion as a free-action. If you've switched from S&B to polearm & buckler, this is very much not a problem.
This would very much not fly, if the potion is in a pocket then it's not in hand, if it's in hand it's not in a pocket, you can't have it be put away and out simultaneously.
Like I said, if you find it fun go for it, it'll just be the character that is pretty much sitting around not really helping much while the rest of the party carry you (yes even your "striker" build). Also I find it hilarious that to make a fighter that fights, you need 2 levels of non-fighter to still not fight that well.
Furious focus, is to some, a feat trap.
It only works on your first attack, and normally your first attack is so good that you're hitting on a 5 if not a 2. FF turns that 5 into a 3 and the 2 into a 2, and then it's doing nothing for your other attacks. Which to me seems like a pretty lackluster feat.I found it to be the same 50% of the time, it really depends on the campaign and monsters/foes I ran into. Otherwise I generally took Cleave and called it a day.
The idea was a two-weapon fighter that used their shield in combat along with x-weapon (for me normally a longsword)
on 20pt's I generally build my sword and boards this way
str 15 dex 13 con 14 int 12 Wis 14 Cha 11
normally taking the social trait seeker to add perception to class skills & +1 and the religion trait Focused Disciple to add +2 against Charm & Compulsion effects(Ran into a lot of GM's that liked to cast such on warriors to attack fellow party members on the island of ketchikan)
Ah cleave, the other feat I feel is a trap, though I do think it's okay to pick it up with a fighter feat and trade it out. But as a feat for like lv5+ it's kinda bad. I just rarely see enemies that stand next to each other for cleave to be usable, and it seems to only decrease as the levels go up.
|
|
Most of that looks pretty good, although I don't know why you wouldn't start with a strength of 16 and a wisdom of 14. Surely the +1 to attack and +1-2 to damage for the majority of the characters career would be a better investment than +1 to will saves. Especially since you're built to use potions of enlarge person, which would boost you to 18 strength where you get that +2 to damage right from level 1.I've played that exact stat-block before with the intention of playing "slow" with evened-out str + belt from 4th-to-8th: 15>17+1(bump)+2(enlarge)+2(belt) = 22, which is perfect for 2hPA, whereas a 23 at that point gets you nothing. So the character's higher strength being a factor 50% of the levels is balanced against being -1 worse wisdom-related 100% of the time: Perception -1, Sense Motive -1, will saves -1, daily domain uses -1. (-1 spell DCs too, but Bane is out-of-gas past 3rd or so, so we can discount that in a "dip" build.)
If you have a lot of different ways of using wisdom, it's a harder decision to shave it.
If you intend to play "slow" at very low level, and you play the character so sporadically that it might take over a year to reach 4th, then I'd start with an even number in strength.
Just because you want to slow track the good levels does not make the strength trade a worse deal. It's not 50% of the levels, it's 7 out of 11 if you're not including seeker level content. That's nearly two thirds of the career. You could just as easily slow track level 1-3, and level 8-11. Also, the +1 to will saves is far and away better than the other benefits that wisdom gives you, much like bonus to attack and damage is the best things strength gives you. I could have included the increased carrying capacity, the higher CMB/CMD, as well as the bonus to climb and swim, but frankly felt it unnecessary. It all comes down to how often you are going to use these ability scores, and while all of it matters, a sixth round of being able to ignore difficult terrain, or a +1 to sense motive is pretty insignificant compared to a +1 to attack and damage because you are going to be attacking almost every round of combat, in 4-5 combats per session, for the entirety of your career. It's far and away going to be the most used stat on a fighter, hence the priority.
Also not sold on the teammate feats. My time playing cavalier and rogue tells me that unless you're going to continually badger the herd of cats you're playing with to position themselves exactly as you tell them to, those feats aren't going to be too useful.I think Paired Opportunists is the most powerful combat feat in the game, bar none. If at least one other martial has Combat Reflexes and/or Greater maneuver mechanic (because you're going to get those too to royally roast this mechanic), woah Nelly....
You don't have to herd the cats, you just have to identify which cat generates AoOs and then hang around them tag-teaming with Fortuitous weapons.
Paired Opportunist can be pretty powerful, but if you're expecting to show up to a random PFS game and have a character who triggers AoOs, I don't know what to say. Personally I never assume any sort of characters are going to be at a game and make self reliant characters because after making my first few characters fairly one dimensional, with obvious weaknesses expecting the other party members to make up for those weaknesses, I ended up with dead character because those weaknesses weren't being covered (kind of threw the third character on a grenade because I was frustrated with playing them, but still...). Unless you're playing with a greater maneuver build of some sort, I don't really see a lot of characters who create AoOs.
Now if you have someone else you always sign up with, that's a different story, teamworks feats can work for a pair that always play together and intend to work together. Or you could do something like taking the eldritch guardian archetype for a mauler familiar, which you could use broken wing gambit with, that would be something else, because you'll be the one(s) to ensure that it works. But too often players have their own strategies, or have their own mechanics that will force them to play in a certain way that won't synergize with your teamwork feat. Heck, I had a hard enough time with having players leave a charge lane open with the cavalier without reminding them every combat I do triple damage on a charge, and almost never miss. Thank goodness for wheeling charge.
{. . .}
Also not sold on the teammate feats. My time playing cavalier and rogue tells me that unless you're going to continually badger the herd of cats you're playing with to position themselves exactly as you tell them to, those feats aren't going to be too useful. And nobody wants that guy at the table telling everyone how they should be playing.
You could get Advanced Weapon Training (Fighter's Tactics) at 5th or 6th level, which lets you replicate Inquisitor's Solo Tactics, although even as good as this is, I'm not convinced that is the best use of Advanced Weapon Training, since you can only get it again at 9th level by replacing a rank of Weapon Training or at 10th level by another application of the same feat.
|
|
You could, but with paired opportunist you would still need to have someone to both be in position to provoke an attack of opportunity, and be able to make one yourself. There are other feats that work a lot better with Fighter Tactics. Also forgot to mention above, if you plan on being the one who moves into position and provokes AoOs on enemies so your teammates can make AoOs, that works a bit better.
^Oops -- forgot to mention that I was thinking of teamwork feats more generally, not Paired Opportunist specifically. Yes, some teamwork feats are technically covered by Solo Tactics/Fighter's Tactics, but don't actually do anything unless you are partnered with somebody else who has them or you can actually grant the feat to them (Cavalier's Tactician ability(*), etc.) -- avoid these unless you can do the latter.
(*)I would have said Tactician Fighter, but that trades out Weapon Training 1 to get Tactician, which really hurts in the limited career space of PFS, and even more generally; it also means that you have to go 5 levels before you get it. Either way, the limited uses per day also hurt, unless you go Holy Tactician Paladin -- but then Paladin has to be your kind of thing.
yeah, I recently played in a campaign game where I was a character that got attacks of opportunity when an enemy attacked me, and we had a reach cleric, so we thought it would be a good idea to take Paired Opportunist and use it. The issue was that the positioning was kinda hard and we had this planned out. Also that without my character forcing AoOs we'd have never used the feat.
teamwork feats are by and large quite useless and hard to pull off.
Unless you have a mechanic for sharing them -- then they're party-wide buffs, and any that give you extra attacks are the best of all.
Compare and contrast:
* fighter with WF/WS/WT buys gloves of dueling (cost: 15,000gp). He's +4/+5 att/dmg before weapon. Figure a +2 weapon of +1/??? (cost 8,000gp)
* barbarian multiclass with Extra Rage, Combat Reflexes, a Commander's Helm, and a Fortuitous weapon enhancement. He shares Paired Opportunists with the party during the buff round. While raging, he's +5 to hit with a +1/Furious component. Anytime that he, or another member of the party, get an attack of opportunity on a target they both threaten, the other dance partners get an AoO too. ...and then the ping-pong thing kicks in: Fortuitous triggers. Any Greater maneuver (which triggers AoOs of their own) can taken in place of an attack, triggering more AoOs from everybody. Basically, once triggered, nothing should survive the reverberating supernova of damage. And next round, everybody's AoOs reset, so you get do it again! (Assuming surviving enemies haven't wet their pants and run away.)
-- The only way this doesn't work is if you're the only martial in the party. (And the way you solve that is by getting an animal companion and giving it a Greater maneuver feat chain different from any you have.)
In a way, I'm glad that most players have reflexively adopted the mentality of "Teamwork feats suck!" -- It just means that PFS isn't overcrowded with nuclear builds to the point certain things are banned and/or Paizo swings the Nerfhammer.
Potion in hand, hand in pocket. If you need the hand for something else, drop potion as a free-action. If you've switched from S&B to polearm & buckler, this is very much not a problem.This would very much not fly, if the potion is in a pocket then it's not in hand, if it's in hand it's not in a pocket, you can't have it be put away and out simultaneously.
In that case, buy a pair of spring-sheaths, since those are specifically tailored for dealing with this exact problem.
They'll put the potion in your hand as a swift action, with the added bonus that you'll have both hands gripping your weapon (and therefore eligible to take AoOs off-turn).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just because you want to slow track the good levels does not make the strength trade a worse deal. It's not 50% of the levels, it's 7 out of 11 if you're not including seeker level content. That's nearly two thirds of the career. You could just as easily slow track level 1-3, and level 8-11.
To date, I've only had one PFS character get to 8th. (I've either lost interest, or higher-level play opportunities rapidly diminish.) If I did play another to retirement, then you can go beyond 12th now, and enter another "sweet spot" range.
The main deal is that 20pt-buy is very "efficient" with a 15,14,14,14,12,7 base pre-racial array. Getting the 15 to a 16 costs three build points, and they do not efficiently come out of anything in that array.
Also, the +1 to will saves is far and away better than the other benefits that wisdom gives you, much like bonus to attack and damage is the best things strength gives you. I could have included the increased carrying capacity, the higher CMB/CMDAs a barbarian who rages to a 19 right from word "go", carrying capacity isn't a problem. Being frequently Enlarged adds another +2 str, as well as a size bonus to CMD.
You could, but with paired opportunist you would still need to have someone to both be in position to provoke an attack of opportunity, and be able to make one yourself.
Even if no one else in the party had Combat Reflexes, it'd still work to more than pay its weight: Everybody gets at least one AoO per round.
1. Share Paired Opportunists during buff round via Tactician ability or Commander's Helm.
2. Make a Greater maneuver attack against target at least one ally threatens. (Reposition is great because you can move the target toward the ally.)
2.a ...normally this does not give you you an AoO, but....
3. "Hey dude, you get a free swipe at that!" you say to ally threatening same target.
4. Ally takes AoO since he has Paired Opportunists (because you gave it to him). (Note: your ally's AoO does not have to be successful; just that he takes it.)
6. You take AoO granted by ally's AoO due to you having Paired Opportunists.
6a. ...ask ally if they have Combat reflexes.
6b. ...if "No", then make an attack for damage,
6c. ...if "Yes", then make another type of Greater maneuver attack (and recycle/repeat)
7. Take Fortuitous AoO at any point.
-- This is why Paired Opportunists and Combat Reflexes (in conjunction with an AoO-generation mechanism such as a Greater maneuver) are the best "accelerant" feats in the game, and why Fortuitous is the best weapon enhancement. No other combination is even remotely close in generating additional damage. In the example above, if I do 30 average damage Hulking with my polearm, I just picked up 60pts additional damage (not counting ally's AoO).
|
Lots of great input here, thanks everyone for that!
Another quick question for the more experienced players here:
Are the Disruptive and Spellbreaker feats worth it?
I am playing a magus in a home game and it seems to me that it is quite easy to cast defensively, but as a magus I am a little more specialized towards that.
Is the +4 for the DC of the check worth the feat? And the possibility of an AoO for a failure with the second feat?
And another one, just to make sure I am getting that right:
I can take the Advanced Weapon Training options only starting at lvl 9. So it would not be possible to get Armed Bravery earlier?
Also I checked the Step Up feat chain and it says, I could only use that with foes adjacent to me. So I guess it doesn't make sense to take it with a fighter that wants to focus on reach weapons. Am I reading that correctly?
Disruptive and spellbreaker are good IF you're using step up, or .. see below. Otherwise, it is very rare to stop someone from 5 foot stepping away from you and fireballing you in the face. (which is way better than casting defensively)
Disruptive is very good with a reach/melee combo. Such as an unarmed strike bite or dwarven boulder helmet and a pole arm. its either that or spend the feats on step up and strike.
|
|
Yes I was eyeballing the Step up and Strike feat, too. But in the Step Up feat it says:
Benefit: Whenever an adjacent foe attempts to take a 5-foot step away from you, you may also make a 5-foot step as an immediate action so long as you end up adjacent to the foe that triggered this ability.
Which seems not that useful to a fighter focusing on reach weapons.
But in the description of Following Step it says:
Benefit: When using the Step Up feat to follow an adjacent foe, you may move up to 10 feet. You may still take a 5-foot step during your next turn, and any movement you make using this feat does not subtract any distance from your movement during your next turn.
It doesn't say anything about the need to end that movement next to the enemey I am chasing. Or is that included in the part "When using the Step Up feat to follow an adjacent foe"?
Finally in the description of Step up and Strike it says:
Benefit: When using the Step Up or Following Step feats to follow an adjacent foe, you may also make a single melee attack against that foe at your highest base attack bonus.
Would that mean, that I could let them step away, hit them square in the face with my reach weapon and THEN follow them?
But even if if works like that, 3 feats to pull that off seems like a steep investment and I could still only really benefit from that if I was standing adjacent to them, which I wouldn't normally do, as I am focusing on a weapon with reach.
In that context, the Disruptive and Spellbreaker combo seems more worthwile to me, as I am threatening a larger area - even though that only works against casters.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Nothing says "I don't know what the hell i'm talking about" quite like "Teamwork feats are by and large useless and difficult to pull off"
Nothing says "I don't know what the hell i'm talking about" quite like "Teamwork feats are by and large useless and difficult to pull off"
This is for PFS. So you can't count on someone taking a feat. You need to be a cavalier or something to get a lot of mileage out of them.
Fighters get AWT solo tactics
Or the eldritch guardian archetype, or the tactician archetype.
Yes I was eyeballing the Step up and Strike feat, too. But in the Step Up feat it says:
Benefit: Whenever an adjacent foe attempts to take a 5-foot step away from you, you may also make a 5-foot step as an immediate action so long as you end up adjacent to the foe that triggered this ability.
In four years of PFS, I can count on the fingers of one finger the number of times that an opponent took a 5' step away from an initial position of adjacency. Very few enemies in PFS modules are polearm wielders who would have to step back after you've crowded them. Monsters typically just attack until they die. If they want to get past you to reach a tasty squishy in the back, usually they're just moving through your threatened zone rather than 5-footing.
I never take the Step Up line of feats. Like the Cleave line, they're...OK if you put a lot of work into making it...work, but in a game with a thousand feats and counting, you only have room for a dozen or so in a PFS character. If you're not tapping them constantly, there are better things worthy of the slots.
In four years of PFS, I can count on the fingers of one finger the number of times that an opponent took a 5' step away from an initial position of adjacency. Very few enemies in PFS modules are polearm wielders who would have to step back after you've crowded them.
.. what are your caster opponents doing?
Fighters get AWT solo tactics
At 9th level. That is way too late in a career to plan on
Or the eldritch guardian archetype
Might work with a mauler familiar but inquisitors do the pet thing better.
or the tactician archetype.
Pushing weapon training back is rough.
At 5th level, you can take a feat at 5th level to gain it if you're so inclined.
What eldritch guardian isn't taking a mauler familiar?
You aren't getting those gloves of dueling til 9th level at least anyway, what exactly are you losing out on beyond +1 to hit and damage?
In four years of PFS, I can count on the fingers of one finger the number of times that an opponent took a 5' step away from an initial position of adjacency. Very few enemies in PFS modules are polearm wielders who would have to step back after you've crowded them... what are your caster opponents doing?
Your typical not-invisible, non-flying humanoid caster in a low/mid-level PFS mod hangs in the back behind his mooks. Assuming he's not machinegunned by the archer or an ally caster, the martial PC most likely to catch him will be a fast-mover or a mounted concept. My fast-movers are typically polearm barbarians. (Even though there are amazing builds possible, monks and other boxer types never were my thing.)
Step-Up is basically for fast guys afoot with short weapons. (Meaning, ironically, that it'd be very well suited for the dwarf blocker build I submitted on the first page of the thread who had a move of 50 in heavy armor and enough AC to be unconcerned with getting hit by AoOs while zipping past the mooks.)
If the caster is flying and you are melee you should be flying to, either your caster is prepared enough to have it , you're prepared enough to have bought them a scroll, or you say to heck with it and use a potion of fly.
Might work with a mauler familiar but inquisitors do the pet thing better.Hunters do it best of of all. (That Hunter's Tactics ability is a like a 20th-level critter-class capstone that you get at 3rd-level because it didn't occur to the designer how much gruesome, sickly-sweet brokenness you can truck out of it. A near-permanent +4 Pack Flanking bonus is the very least of things you can get away with.) Raid the class for three levels, and on to the next...
You aren't getting those gloves of dueling til 9th level at least anyway, what exactly are you losing out on beyond +1 to hit and damage?
You are stuck in some cash-starved campaigns (APs?) if you have to wait until 9th to afford a 15K item.
|
|
Re: Martial Master
Try Varisian Freestyle Fighter to get "dial-a-feat" starting at 1st level! (Equal to a brawler)
Some trade-offs, but you can read all about it at:
http://archivesofnethys.com/ArchetypeDisplay.aspx?FixedName=Fighter%20Varis ian%20Free-Style%20Fighter
And the book it's in, Weapon Master's Handbook, is something you'd want anyways for advanced weapon training options, etc.
Might work with a mauler familiar but inquisitors do the pet thing better.Hunters do it best of of all. (That Hunter's Tactics ability is a like a 20th-level critter-class capstone that you get at 3rd-level because it didn't occur to the designer how much gruesome, sickly-sweet brokenness you can truck out of it. A near-permanent +4 Pack Flanking bonus is the very least of things you can get away with.) Raid the class for three levels, and on to the next...You aren't getting those gloves of dueling til 9th level at least anyway, what exactly are you losing out on beyond +1 to hit and damage?You are stuck in some cash-starved campaigns (APs?) if you have to wait until 9th to afford a 15K item.
WBL for a 9th level character is 46000 gold. The gloves are 1/3 of your WBL at level 9. As a fighter you need magic weapons, magic armor, you're going to want a cloak of resistance to up your saves. The odd potion or wand, a haversack or bag of holding. possibly a stat belt. 1 level prior and those gloves are nearly 50% of your total recommended wealth by level. You're playing some high treasure campaigns if you're buying a single 15k magic item before level 9
PFS, and many home-game GMs, are more generous than book WBL. (Older published APs are the stingiest.)
Nov 24, 2017, 10:05 pm
Let's further pretend that I totally don't care like an alpha *boss* when I'm deliberately necro'ing a thread where somebody responded to my last post, and I didn't see it at the time.
"Damn the trolls, full steam ahead! They'll grease the treads!"