I might be getting into a Carrion Crown game, and figured I'd take a closer look at the occult classes as they fit the horror theme. While doing so, I noticed the Phantom Blade archetype for the Spiritualist, which goes well with my general like of classes that can create their own cool weapon. I also noticed it had the option to store the weapon inside yourself and gain the weapon bonuses on unarmed strikes instead, which made me also remember the existence of the Possessed Hand feat.
Thematically, especially if you never actually manifest the weapon, the spirit possessing the hand could be the same one as Phantom Blade. Mechanically, adding on a +1 to hit and damage on top of the Phantom Blade abilities seems pretty solid, and helps compensate for the lack of damage dice from using a real weapon.
I was thinking a dwarf would be a good choice for this, with the option to use the Barrow Warden racial option, on top of the Corpse Hunter religion trait and Subject of Study campaign trait, for a total of +2 hit, +1 damage, and +1 AC vs undead.
My question is, with this concept, what's the best way to build? Getting bonus feats helps, but I don't really know where to go besides "punch things with zombie hand".
It looks like Phantom Blade is just supposed to be a Magus but with Spiritualist stuff. I don't know the best way to build a Magus but I'd start by looking up some Magus guides.
Tiefling's alternate racial ability #24 allows you to produce a removable barb from your body that is treated as a dagger, and may fit the Phantom Blade + Possessed Hand theme, as well.
I know Tieflings are gross, and one pushing a fiendish thorn out of its body to use as a dagger is probably even more gross, but it's not unlike the Phantom Blade being produced from your person. Except it's a physical spike.
I don't know, you were talking about being a Dwarf, that's probably better. I'm just throwing ideas out there.
I am running a Vanara UnMonk (Sage Councillor) 1 - Spiritualist (Phantom Blade) X in Strange Aeons. So far I've been having a blast. In my opinion it is far more effective to keep the phantom blade housed in your mind because it represents a level scaling "slotless" Ghost Touch AoMF that stacks with a real AoMF (for special abilities only), which otherwise would cost a big chunk of WBL.
The one level dip in UnMonk gives you a non penalized flurry (i.e., no need to rely on spell combat's -2 attack penalty to get an extra attack or the threat of an AoO for casting in melee), free Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strikes) since the class gives IUS (interacts with phantom blade when housed in your mind to give WF), 1 free monk feat (dodge or combat expertise depending on the archetype/build), a +2 to two saves, WIS to AC (great for a finesse build with mage armor), and a few times per day stunning fist. These are worth a level lag in Spiritualist to me.
Bundle this with the fact that the spiritualist has Mage Armor, Blur, and Displacement on their spell list and you can really be tough to hit by pumping into a DEX/WIS build (ideal races are vanara, undine, etc.). Spiritualists can cast heroism which stacks with moonlight stalker, weapon focus, possessed hand, etc. to make you quite accurate despite use of Piranha strike. The wording of Phantom's blade weapon means you can actually pick a longbow (proficiency from the archetype) and have a scaling ranged weapon which allows you to switch hit at higher levels when you can easily move the blade from mind to hand. You also get a swift action magus like ability to give yourself flaming, shocking, etc. The spell list has other utility spells like fly, overland flight, haste, dimension door, or freedom of liberation as well as various condition removal spells. Finally you get some cool class abilities to use see invisibility (mins/level in min increments) or detect undead (at will)
In terms of spell combat, I usually only use chill touch (Save 2nd level spells for blur, and 3rd level spells for fly/heroism/dislacement). It gives me +1D6 per level so I can keep flurrying and touching for longer to pump my damage (helps conserve spell slots). Since you are pumping WIS for AC this makes your saves non-trivial so when using chill touch against undead you have a good chance of causing them to run away from you.
If you want more of a utility build then feat like Deific Obedience (Irori) gives a +4 to all knowledges (all of them are class skills with the sage counciller UnMonk Archetype) and you can use additional traits to pick up disable device as a class skill, pragmatic activator (UMD off INT), Wisdom of the Flesh (swap a STR skill to WIS), etc.
In my mind there are a handful of decent builds for the Unmonk 1 - Phantom Blade PC. All of them revolve around your first item being an Agile AoMF (4000gp) which you can then enchant with extra fun things (e.g., add cruel for a enforcer intimidate build, debilitating to further debuff, limning to remove miss chances, etc.). Here are some of the general outlines below (most use Bruising Intellect and Cunning Liar as starting traits to get Intimidate and Bluff of INT and or WIS, allowing CHA to be dumped.
DEBUFFER: Agile/Cruel AoMF required.
Feats
1C - Dodge
1 - Weapon Finesse
2C - Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strikes) - from Weapon of the Mind - From Harboring your Blade in your mind.
3 - Enforcer
4C - Pummelling Style (or Jabbing Style) for DR issues
5 - Piranha Strike
7 - Weapon Versatility
9C - Weapon Specialization (Unarmed Strikes)
9 - Belier's Bite
11 - Possessed Hand
MOONLIGHT STALKER (DAMAGE/DEBUFF): - MY SRANGE AEONS BUILD
Feats
1C - Combat Expertise
1 - Weapon Finesse
2C - Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strikes) - from Weapon of the Mind - From harboring your Blade in your mind.
3 - Blind Fight
4C - Pummelling Style (or Jabbing Style) for DR issues
5 - Moonlight Stalker (+2/+2 when you have concealment which is easy using blur or displacement)
7 - Enforcer
9C - Weapon Specialization (Unarmed Strikes)
9 - Piranha Strike
11 - Belier's Bite
MOONLIGHT STALKER FEAT CHAIN COMPLETION FOCUS (take a 2nd level of UnMonk at L7):
Feats
1C - Combat Expertise
1 - Weapon Finesse
2C - Weapon Focus (Unarmed Strikes) - from Weapon of the Mind - From harboring your Blade in your mind.
3 - Blind Fight
4C - Pummelling Style (or Jabbing Style) for DR issues
5 - Moonlight Stalker
7 - Moonlight Stalker Feint
7C - Improved Feint
9 - Moonlight Stalker Master (a nice little 10% increase to your blur/displacement miss chance)
10C - Weapon Specialization (Unarmed Strikes)
11 - Piranha Strike or Possessed Hand or Greater Feint
After to have played an unarmed Phantom Blade in the Strange Aeons campaign for some time, I would strongly advise to -NOT- try to follow the Magus guides for a Phantom Blade.
The main difference between a Phantom Blade and a Magus is the spell list: a Magus has some INCREDIBLY good assault spells, like Shocking Grasp or Blade Rush, than the Spiritualist can't use, which makes that all the good builds of a Magus are based on exploiting those spells...
However, the Phantom Blade has different benefits, which makes him better working a whole different way...
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First, be careful with the Weapon Finesse way.
I won't say it's stricly bad on a Phantom Blade, but it's certainly not as good as on a Magus, and I would not advise it for an -unarmed- phantom blade.
As I said, you don't have the wonderful assault spell of the Magus as a Phantom Blade, which mean that the main part of the damage you'll do is going to come from your weapon, not your spells.
That means that if you pick Weapon Finesse on a weapon who cannot benefit of the dex-to-damage feats like Slashing Grace or Deverish Dance, you automaticaly cripple your damage potential by losing the ability-to-damage bonus.
Meanwhile, the Phantom Blade use psychic magic, which doesn't suffer any kind of penality when casting in full plate... so what is truly the gain of going on a dex based build?
The AC won't be better, so you will have trade your damage potential for... just better reflex saves.
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Second, spellstrike is -not- the main ability for the Phantom Blade: Spell Combat is.
The best damaging touch spell a Phantom Blade can cast is Chill Touch, a spell that will give you ONE extra attack through spellstrike the round you cast it, then just empower your hits by 1d6 extra damage for the next few rounds.
That's not bad... but, instead, you could cast:
- Haste, which gives you one extra attack for every round of combat, at the best hit bonus, which will net a lot more damage in total
- Spiritual Weapon, which adds also a lot of extra hits through the fight, each doing more than a mere 1d6
- Shield, Cure Wounds or some other power like those, who will save your life... and you don't do 1d6 more damage when you're dead, believe me
- Jaelous Rage, which can turn the tide of the battle, if you know to use it well
In fact, Spellstrike, with experience, on a Phantom Blade, is best used as a filler, in combination with the Virtue cantrip: it's basicaly one extra attack for free, which can trigger the effect of Jaleous Rage, due to being a "beneficial" spell, even if you delievered it with you fist in the face of your target.
Your spell slots, for their part, have better uses than being consumed for the subpart touch spells the Spiritualist have, I swear.
Moonheart wrote:
First, be careful with the Weapon Finesse way.
I won't say it's stricly bad on a Phantom Blade, but it's certainly not as good as on a Magus, and I would not advise it for an -unarmed- phantom blade.
As I said, you don't have the wonderful assault spell of the Magus as a Phantom Blade, which mean that the main part of the damage you'll do is going to come from your weapon, not your spells.
That means that if you pick Weapon Finesse on a weapon who cannot benefit of the dex-to-damage feats like Slashing Grace or Deverish Dance, you automatically cripple your damage potential by losing the ability-to-damage bonus.
Meanwhile, the Phantom Blade use psychic magic, which doesn't suffer any kind of penalty when casting in full plate... so what is truly the gain of going on a dex based build?
The AC won't be better, so you will have trade your damage potential for... just better reflex saves.
... I have to strongly disagree with you here. As posted above, an unarmed finesse build with a 1 level dip in UnMonk gives you a ton of benefits and is better than a normal STR or weapon finesse build:
1. A DEX focus patches bad reflex save of the spiritualist class. It puts all your saves into the green instead of having 2 good and one really bad save.
2. A DEX/WIS focused build has a higher AC than sitting in full plate. Mage Armor + no dex/wis cap + blur/displacement will always be higher and have no ACP impacting your other skills (i.e. you can have a sky high perception and stealth to be a good scout).
3. You can dump STR or start it at 8 or 9 because you'll be unarmored and never really run into encumbrance issues. Since unarmed strikes are light weapons, you qualify for Piranha Strike and don't need to qualify for power attack like a normal finesse weapon build.
4. You can get DEX to damage easily with an Agile AoMF. You can then add more fun enchantments to it while still getting the scaling +1/+2/+3 from the phantom blade class feature. So unlike a normal spiritualist you can double dip and actually effectively enchant your phantom blade. In addition you still have your magus style ectoplasmic pool to add flaming, shocking, etc. enchantments to pump your damage.
5. With unarmed strikes and the free IUS/Weapon focus for the dip you can get a number of relevant style feats easily to modify your attacks. The most important is Pummeling Style which allows you to out-damage strange DR in a way that a normal phantom blade/magus cannot.
6. Since you are effectively unarmored and only need to enchant your neck slot with the Agile AoMF, you can recover a lot of WBL to put towards cool or fun things you normally wouldn't be able to afford. All that money on heavy armor can go directly to bumping your stats which also effect your attack/damage/reflex/initiative/casting stat/monk class features/AC.
7. A 1 level dip gives you a full BAB flurry option so you don't have to constantly take a -2 to all of your attacks. I only need to do 1-2 times per combat to cast chill touch once. After that I flurry normally and discharge it when I successfully hit. This is better than a STR or normal finesse spiritualist who couldn't flurry with their normal weapons without taking the -2 or trying for a crusader's flurry shenanigan build.
8. While the crit range on unarmed strikes is bad, you get scaling weapon dice increases which also bumps your average damage.
Ultimately, while I agree you have to play the build different than from a normal magus, while you can't "nova" with endless shocking grasps you can put out accurate sustained medium to high levels of damage. At level 9 my standard full attack round can make use of moonlight stalker (rod of extend on blur uses 2nd level spells), heroism (rod of extend to leave more casts of haste), haste (from 3 seperate people in the party), weapon specialization, piranha strike, chill touch (usually 2nd round once in close), and 1d6 of elemental damage (e.g., ectoplastmic pool adding shocking/flaming/etc.) with the following values:
+20/+20/+20/+15 each for (1D8+17) + (1D6 Negative Energy) + (1D6 Other Energy)
Throw in bardic performance and pummeling style and your putting out decent DPR (better than an equivalent STR build without any of downsides). Spiritual weapon is an option but as well, but I'd rather save 2nd level spells for blur so I can trigger moonlight stalker or utility like lesser restoration.
Combat usually looks like this for me:
- Round 1: Swift to activate pummeling style, standard to cast a spell (blur, haste, or chill touch) or Stunning Fist, move to get closer
- Round 2: Swift to activate ectoplasmic pool for +1d6, full attack (either using spell combat to get chill touch or just normally).
That's good on the theorical field, a lot less on the pratical field.
I can tell you that having played the unarmed Phantom Blade a lot, an dex version with UnMonk build would have been killed by several situation my own build escaped.
Many players on those forumes tend to calculate a lot of "high level" stuff showing how much their build will be strong at the end... problem is: what kills the characters in Pathfinder are not the high levels, but the lower ones, which are a lot deadlier than the later.
If you want to avoid the poor experience of being unlucky and get killed early, you need to have a character that is efficient straight in its first levels, like the level 3-4
The famous "Agile Amulet of Mighty Fist" many players like to build around is a realy costy item that comes truly late regarding this. It hurts monks building around it at low levels.... it hurts the Phantom Blade even more because it doesn't have all the other monk benefits to compensate.
A dex phantom blade do ridiculous damage until it gets his hand on this items, and it could mean its death many times before he gets wealthy enough for that
Likewise, the dip, assuming your DM will accept it (5 of the 6 DM I play with forbids it, because it's too abusive), will make all your Phantom Blade coming late: unarmed damage (unMonk doesn't stack with it), spells, DC, black blade enhancement, which will hurt you even more on low levels.
Comparing a STR unarmed Phantom Blade with a DEX one, you will see the STR version will crush easily the DEX one until level 10 or so... because of better damage, better spells, better DC, better black blade enhancement, bigger ectoplasmic pool, and so on.
And the first 10 levels are MUCH harder in Pathfinder than the 10 later.
The question I throw is always the same on those talk on this forum: "What good makes you to be able to do insane things at level 13+... if you die at something like level 6 ?"
Level 9 isn't used as a "this is when things come together" marker. It was an example level I picked at a whim. You have falsely assumed that this build is under-powered until that point.
Despite poor damage in L1-L2, your AC is still good (17 to 22 with mage armor), your saves are good for your level (7 Fort/7 Ref/6 Will) at L3. Your casting stat is a 16 and you'll be pumping it to a 22 with a headband (i.e., DCs won't lag behind a STR build as you suspect, but you admitted yourself that wasn't the strong point of the phantom blade, it was instead the utility spells that don't require a DC?). The only thing that lags for 1-2 levels is damage, and you can just as easily shoot a longbow as a switch hitter for those early levels.
At L3.5 you get your Agile AoMF. The build is now complete. You should be at around a +8/+8 for 1d6+5 each on a full attack flurry with the opportunity to cast chill touch to bump that to 2D6+5 each. That is mid range damage for that level AND you have good saves, an average Initiative, good AC, and a 1/day stunning fist. Unlike a raging two handing barbarian who uses his HP as his defensive quality and deals massive damage from L1-5, that isn't you're role and being a STR based phantom blade won't somehow change that. Meanwhile the STR based spiritualist has to dump dex (or keep it at 10) and as a result has a bad reflex save, a much worse initiative modifier, either BAD AC or average AC with a really high Armor Check Penalty, and has a worse to hit from loss of WF or spliting point buy between STR/DEX/CON. Furthermore the STR spiritualist won't be doing that much more damage considering the lower attack bonus and is either giving up spell combat by two handing (starting STR of 18 gives a +6 modifier to damage and +1 from the blade progression) or is only one handing and taking the -2 to attacks for spell combat. In either case you give up an iterative for 1 extra damage (-1 attack) OR you take the iterative for -2 attack and the same damage. At this point the STR based build is behind due to accuracy or the lack of an iterative attack from flurry/spell combat AND worse AC/Saves/Initiative/ACP.
At L4 you have pummeling style and thus can keep a high to hit but really ignore the main downside of having multiple smaller hits. A normal phantom blade can't readily overcome DR in the same way because he can't change materials, weapon damage types, alignments, etc. of the blade. Even to change the weapon type might cause issues if you tried to go for weapon focus or other abilities to increase your to hit. Dex build now has the +1/+1 phantom blade progression and is clearly the winner. ACs between both groups have likely caught up or are both in the low 20's.
At L5 you have moonlight stalker which is a +2 Att/+2 Damage to anything that doesn't have true seeing or is casting glitter dust/etc. You spend all of your 2nd level slots on blur and with proper resource management can have this going for 90% of combats in a day. This is the equivalent of 3 feats (weapon focus/greater weapon focus/weapon specialization). As a STR build you'd have had to spend all of your feats to use this feat chain and not take Heavy Amour Proficiency as you suggested above. I doubt it is what your or most STR builds would build towards up to this point. The STR build gets an ecotoplasmic pool which can helps put damage between the builds on par, but still suffers the bad Save/Init/ACP.
At L6 the Dex build gets the ectoplasmic pool which is far more damage on a more accurate flurry build than a one attack or spell combat STR build.
At L7 you grab piranha strike to pump damage. STR builds hit parity of accuracy with a DEX build by casting heroism on themselves (thus a two hand build can do more damage, a 1 hand build does equivalent damage).
At L8 DEX pulls ahead again with heroism.
This trend shown above continues. Where in general the DEX build is more accurate than either a one or two handed STR build and either does more damage due to it's increased accuracy or because it has more attacks than a two handing STR build that has given up it's iterative via spell strike. The STR build will almost close the gaps on the levels where it gets ectoplasmic pool, the phantom blade progression increases, or it gets a new spell level (depending on spells picked), but otherwise that only lasts for 1 level. In the end the STR build has a bad reflex save, bad initiative, high ACP (or way worse AC), and falls behind a dex build.
At high levels (9+) where low cost AC options are expended the dex build starts having better AC and the weapon damage die size starts to increase as per a monk. The Unarmed build continues to bump its attack/defensive capabilities with wealth investment in DEX/WIS (something a more MAD STR build cannot and has to give up progression somewhere) and can even put more enchantments on his fists with a +2 equivalent AoMF. Meanwhile during the entire time the DEX build has been using it's phantom blade as a scaling bow and switch hitting with it as required. Ranged combat for the STR build is painful up to L7 when it can finally cast fly (at the expense of haste or heroism). At L11+ the build moves from damage to debuff using Enforcer + Beliliers Bite + an Agile Cruel AoMF giving the ability to cause enemies to be Shaken+Sickened+Bleeding in one turn.
The STR build has the option to do a crit fish build, which can really help it pump some damage and outpace the dex build, but that is a L11+ discussion and requires picking the right weapon. To spell combat with one of those weapons still may require casting defensively, which up until ~L6 (without combat casting) is still fairly likely to fail or provoke.
The "who is better" comes down to this:
L1 - STR>DEX (just damage)
L2 - STR>DEX (just damage)
L3 - DEX>STR
L4 - DEX>STR
L5 - DEX>STR
L6 - DEX>STR
L7 - DEX~STR (parity in Attack/Damage and likely AC)
L8-L11 - DEX>STR
L11+ - More Data Required (Dex likely falls behind a crit fish build in damage, but otherwise stays ahead in almost everything else).
You've painted "DEX" builds with a broad stroke without really looking at the math behind them. Beyond dealing damage, the dex build is far more well rounded and can be a proper scout for the party in addition to casting buff spells on itself or the team. It can hold it's own in combat, and with investment in INT and some traits can become somewhat of a face for the party. Ultimately the spiritualist in STR or DEX form is a secondary front liner, not a primary front liner like a two handing raging barbarian that doesn't serve much function outside of combat.
Also if your GMs won't let you multi-class then you should find new GMs. Dipping one level into UnMonk isn't abusive. I've never met a GM who thought that. As you said you 'give up' as much as you get in many cases with that dip, so painting it as some crazy exploit is insane. Do they expect you to only dip into classes which have literally no synergy so as to punish you for multi-classing?
The one weakness of my build is being grappled. My solution is to pump escape artist and to have a high AC/20% miss chance at all times. Otherwise I go nova and flurry in the grapple with stunning fists to drop the creature. I fail to see how that is not an issue with a STR build though who might have +1 CMD, but ultimately no chance to use escape artist or attack (two hander) or flurry with spell combat (concentrations check of a million in a grapple) over the DEX based build.
I'm not going to go for a quote war with you.
I've tested both the DEX and STR way for an unarmed phantom blade, and I'll still side with the STR way seeing how advantageous it is.
Your analysis is theoricaly logical and well put, but it does not pass the pratical field experience, that's all.
The OP will decide then what is best for himself.
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I'll only add something: I never said that my GM don't allow multiclass, they don't allow DIPPING.
Rules As Written allow dipping... but Rules As Written allow in fact a ton of things that are total absurdities in terms of roleplay. That's why the best DM do not play by RAW but by RAI.
The INTENT for the 1st or 2nd abilities of a class is to design a power that is a class signature.... NOT to allow powerbuilds by making ridiculous mix based on the fact to take a single level of a class and then ignoring it entierly after that.
That's why almost all the most competent DM I've met in twenty years of table top roleplaying just strictly frown on that kind of build.
If yours don't, good for you. But I would not fight to go at the table of a DM that just let things like that slip.
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