Hello forum,
please help me build a Human Mesmerist using Material Manipulator archetype and make her as awesome (and strong) as possible! No multiclassing!
Looking at the archetype, you sacrifice a lot of the mesmerist class abilities for a wider spell selection and a disguise ability which eventually becomes polymorph. You keep the stares though. Notably this means that you can apply hypnotic stare to sorc/wiz illusion (shadow) spells. Shadow conjuration & enchantment, and touch of blindness are relevant spells to use with that.
What constraints are you under - any books/paizo only/some subset thereof? Does your GM reckon that weapon finesse works with touch attacks? 20 point buy or something else?
Looking at the archetype, you sacrifice a lot of the mesmerist class abilities for a wider spell selection and a disguise ability which eventually becomes polymorph. You keep the stares though. Notably this means that you can apply hypnotic stare to sorc/wiz illusion (shadow) spells. Shadow conjuration & enchantment, and touch of blindness are relevant spells to use with that.
What constraints are you under - any books/paizo only/some subset thereof? Does your GM reckon that weapon finesse works with touch attacks? 20 point buy or something else?
15 point buy (we might make it 20)
Paizo onlyno multiclassing
yes, on the Weapon Finesse + Touch Attack
and thank you
Human with 15-point buy. You probably don't want to dump Str any lower than 10 given you'll likely be wearing a chain shirt and carrying a buckler and some weapon, but you do get to add Cha to will saves so dumping Wis is workable if painful. Int would be nice but isn't that important. Something like Str 11, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 7, Cha 16 + 2 race = 18 could work, or you could get Dex 16 & Cha 14+2=16, or Str 12, Dex 15, Cha 15+2=17.
On the feats obviously you're going to want weapon finesse. Combat casting is an unfortunate necessity given you may sometimes have to cast a spell in melee without spending a move action to negate psychic casters -10 penalty to concentration, and might cast touch attack spells at low levels too. It might work out as
1: weapon finesse
Human: combat casting
3: spell focus (illusion)
Bold stare 3: psychic inception
5: shadow gambit
7: confusing stare
Bold stare 7: sapped magic
9: solid shadows
There's other ways to do this of course but I think the above'd work.
If I understand this correctly, I should build a pure spell-caster then. Thank you
Won't I be hindered by having half spell progression?
If you want to go for the Enforcer/Bludgeoner build then I would drop Material Manipulator archetype and run the Enigma Archetype. It changes your Hypnotic Stare so you wont need Bold Stare: Susceptibility but you will gain an Invisibility affect which improves to Greater Invisibility at 8th level. You will also gain sneak attack, bonuses to stealth, apply penalties to perception to notice you, and the capstone ability is nice but not the reason for taking this archetype.
Ninja'd you, sorry. Sadly Enigma is incompatible with Material Manipulator archetype (I love its flavour).
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By pure spellcaster, you mean still a MM Mesmerist but focusing on spells? Probably yes. A mesmerist leans towards the spellcasting side more than most 6-level spellcasters and this archetype drops some of their non-spellcasting class features. You can get the most out of your limited spells by using multi-touch spells some of the time, or you might cast monstrous physique and use weapon finesse/piranha strike to claw people up as a gargoyle, but with the latter you'd still be only so-so in a fight. At 7th level you might have 3-4 claw attacks (depending on whether you use a buckler) at ~ +6 for 1d4+6 each, adding 2d6+3 damage to one hit. OK but nothing special.
If you want to use enforcer with a sap (skip bludgeoner) I wouldn't bother with susceptibility. With a charisma focus you'll find that the DCs to demoralize just aren't that hard. Shaken is a modest but useful debuff; delivered via sap it's going to happen at the wrong order for you to make use of it for your own spells but with hypnotic stare it will be solid for letting others in the party finish the target with their spells.
Shadow enchantment, conjuration, evocation and transmutation are 3rd, 4th, 5th & 6th level spells which you can pick from 7th, 10th, 13th & 16th class level respectively, and could use with solid shadows from 3 class levels later (or not at all with shadow transmutation). They're good to have but late blooming - mostly too late to be on the plan I suggested.