I looking into a backup PC in case my current one dies. Even though my current one seems pretty survivable as a ranged flyer, bad things happen. And then there is always the chance I will do something dumb and/or heroic to get myself killed.
Now it wasn't planned, but with the gradual evolution of the group as players and characters have come and gone, we suddenly find ourselves with a moderately stealthy group. Most have light armor and high dexterity. Along with the stealthy scout. We have actually been sneaky pretty successfully. The rest of the group doesn't even have to be a half mile behind the scout to avoid blowing his chances.
We have most of the really essential roles covered. Me have a couple of melee PC's, but they are fairly fragile glass cannons. Something we don't have is a blocker. Someone who can just get in the way of advancing enemies. But I don't want to ruin the stealthiness we have developed with a typical Sir-Clanks-Alot type plate and tower shield build.
Also, we are in a moderately modified Strange Aeons AP campaign at about 7th level. Will saves and most especially fear/horror saves are abundant and at least moderately difficult (occasionally very difficult).
Any suggestions for a stealthy tank with good will saves?
Stealthy, high AC, good will save. It might be worth trying an avenger vigilante here. The armor skin talent lets you use medium armor without penalties to stealth and if you take the heavy training talent then the same applies in full plate. Follow those up with the mockery talent and you get antagonize+ to get enemies to direct attacks at you. You can have all those by 7th level.
Alternately an inquisitor can use stealth synergy and solo tactics to be reliably stealthy even with a -5 ACP and can have the remove fear spell. And the invisiblity spell if you need to be really stealthy for a few minutes. With a good will save by class and some need for Wis in class features as well as spellcasting you're encouraged to be good there.
And Merry Christmas. It's the day here in NZ even if it isn't to those of you on the wrong side on the date line yet.
Dot, for that last character build before P2 hits. Ah, so many options and such little time.
Never looked at the Avenger Vigilante before. I like that idea.
Current PC is an inquisitor so I don't want that for the replacement.
Don't know how well a paladin would work with this AP and our group. The swift action self heals definitely would help the tank aspect though. And they certainly have good saves. Will think about whether or not I can make it work. How would you build it?
Already have 2 swashbucklers and an investigator in the group. Don't want to step on toes.
Never thought of Slayers as particularly tank-ish. How would you do this?
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And Merry Christmas. It's the day here in NZ even if it isn't to those of you on the wrong side on the date line yet.
Right back at you (tomorrow for those of us on the correct side of the world). ;)
Dot, for that last character build before P2 hits. Ah, so many options and such little time.
So far, almost no one I play with has been impressed with anything they have seen of PF2. They would rather switch to DnD 5thEd rather than PF2. Unless it changes significantly, we will probably keep playing PF1.0 for the foreseeable future.
The Creeping enchantment eliminates the penalty for stealth on armor. At 5,000 gold it is pretty expensive but if you want to use heavy armor it works. Shadow armor gives a bonus to stealth so that could also help. Shadow armor is the cheaper way to go as it only cost 3,750 gold. If you have the cash they can be combined but it is pretty expensive.
Use a trait to get stealth as a class skill if it is not already and put at least one point into it.
Alchemist, you go for dex, get a dex based mutagen, ironskin/ magearmor/shield as extracts, as well as invisibility etc.
Not to mention displacement, healing and debuffs with bombs
(If the enemy can't hurt you, your a tank :D)
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Alchemists unfortunately don't have good will saves.
As previously noted, a Swashtigator would fit the bill.
Another possibility is a Halfling Dawnflower Dervish Bard. They're plenty tanky and stealthy, and have great fear saves when Battle Dance is going (double inspire courage morale bonus vs fear). Good Hope also helps everyone else's saves (and their own before they start Battle Dance). The only downside is that wisdom is otherwise a dump stat.
Alchemist is probably the best thing for strict AC. They have just about every defensive spell you can want plus light armor proficiently. An Internal Alchemist also gains Uncanny Dodge and gains resistance and eventual immunity to disease as well as poison at the lose of damage with bombs and other splash weapons. Combined with Mummification discovery and you have a list of several full on immunities to some of the nastier effects.
However, alchemist have poor will saves and Dex mutagen exacerbates this problem as it penalizes Wisdom. Traits and/or resist cloaks are needed to shore up this weakness.
Halfling rogue-paladin multiclass with the Fey Foundling & Greater Mercy + racial favored-class-bonus thing going. --You're sneaky, and can churn more hitpoints daily than two barbarians.
Ranger or Slayer taking the Weapon & Shield style is very viable. Improved Shield Bash at level 2, Shield Master at 6, both skipping prerequisites. Medium armour and shield is solid enough, and shield bash, combined with bull rush if you want, is totally viable close quarters battlefield control. Add in Enlarge Person for reach, if you are so inclined, from UMD / a wand or from a party member, and it's not bad at all. You might even be able to swing Combat Patrol, although it gets feat intensive at that point.
Obviously, aim for a mithril breastplate and darkwood or mithril shields, to get that ACP down.
Alternatively, a Lore Warden fighter with a polearm and combat reflexes can be a solid frontliner, too. Add trip to taste and go to town.
How about a bolt ace gunslinger with crossbow mastery?
Hand crossbows can be fired with one hand, so you could grab a light shield for a nice chunk of AC that doesn't stop you from reloading. Add light armor, dex, and the gunslinger's scaling AC bonus, and you have some decent AC bonus. Their saves are decent enough- you only have to patch up will, and you are encouraged to get wisdom.
With the right feats, you can make it so that you don't draw AoOs at all from using your crossbow- either shooting it or reloading it. That means you can jump into the fray to shoot enemies directly in the face, or you could sit back and still get your damage at mid range.
Obviously, this doesn't give you direct bonuses to stealth... but you are a light armored character that needs a lot of dex. So you are likely fine.
If you are a Fighter that DOESN'T trade out Bravery (unfortunately this means no Lore Warden for you) or Weapon Training, and you have a feat to spare at 5th level, you can get Advanced Weapon Training (Armed Bravery), and suddenly your Will Save isn't so bad, and your Will Save against Fear is actually pretty good. Of course, you don't want to trade out Armor Training either, because it helps alleviate Armor Check Penalties, and at 7th level, you'll just be getting your 2nd rank of it. Of course, Fighter also gives you plenty of Bonus Combat Feats to be able to afford other feats to improve your stealth -- for instance, at level 10(*), you could take Advanced Weapon Training (Fighter's Tactics) to fake being an Inquisitor for the purpose of benefiting from Teamwork Feats (such as Stealth Synergy) even if you couldn't convince the rest of the party to get them.
(*)You can take Advanced Weapon Training as a feat (including a Fighter Bonus Combat Feat) once for every 5 Fighter levels.
Another possibility is to build a tanky Bloodrager, Magus, Spiritualist, or Warpriest, and then use a trait to get Stealth in class, and then use magic to improve your Stealth. Of these options:
* Bloodrager has the best hit points, decent feat availability (although with some weird restrictions), and passable skills, but worst Will Save (although being in Bloodrage helps with this).
* Magus has the best spellcasting (except can't cast Silence) and skills (as long as you didn't go Eldritch Scion) and the 2nd best Will Save (and Myrmidarch even gets Weapon Training and Armor Training), but the worst Bonus Feat availability (partially compensated for by Magus Arcana, although most of these don't help with being stealthy), and starts with the worst armor (but has ways to mitigate that, both archetype-based and otherwise); also eventually counts partially (fully if Myrmidarch) as a Fighter for the purpose of feat prerequisites.
* Spiritualist ties for the best Will Save, has good spellcasting, and passable skills, but has the worst feat availability, armor, and weapon proficiency (unless you go Phantom Blade, which gives good weapon proficiency and okay armor proficiency).
* Warpriest ties for the best Will Save, feat availability, and armor availability and counts as a Fighter for feat prerequisites when choosing Bonus Combat Feats (and Molthuni Arsenal Chaplain even gets Weapon Training), and can cast Silence for Stealth, but has the worst skills.
Might I suggest an Aether/Earth Kineticist who takes "Conceal Spell"? Not only are you not encumbered with armor and weapons, but you have a regenerating temp HP pool, DR, and you can throw tons of earth and giant statues at people all sneaky-like.
With telekinetic finesse you can pick pockets and locks from across the room...
A Dex-based Slayer with Defensive Study and a custom-created exotic 2h finesse reach weapon (you could create something similar to a Flying Blade) is a pretty formidable tank. For feats, get Hellcat Stealth, Ledge Walker, and Fast Stealth. Get the Child of the Moon trait for a +1, +2, or +4 to stealth depending on the Moon cycles. Take Dangerously Curious so you can use Wands/Scrolls for Invisibility, Cat's Grace, Pass without Trace, etc.
Consider going Human for the 1/6 Slayer Talent FCB or Halfling for the 1/4 AC vs Studied Target.
Also, Slayers can make great use of poisons even without picking up the Poison Use talent. With Poison Use, it's a 0% chance of failure, but without it, it's only 5%. You can seriously debilitate your first target of an encounter with poisons.
My fav poisons:
Drow Poison
Burnt Othur Fumes
Deathblade
Blue Whinnis
Diplopic Serum
Dreaming Death
Night's-Eye Dust
Rainbow Scarab Shell
The only thing that sucks about a Slayer is the complete lack of a proper Will Save, so if you get Dominated you have a good chance of putting your whole party in the hospital. It's worth it to get Improved Iron Will if you know your DM likes to use Dominate, or if you're just facing a crapton of Vampires :P
Is poison ever worth the investment? Low DCs and significant gold costs. By the time you can afford to throw away the 100ish GP each does costs the save is a joke. Right?
My fav poisons:
Drow Poison
Burnt Othur Fumes
Deathblade
Blue Whinnis
Diplopic Serum
Dreaming Death
Night's-Eye Dust
Rainbow Scarab Shell
There's some poisons with 20+ DC's :)
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This is a great conversation.
I like a lot of these ideas folks. I appreciate your responses. So far the Avenger Vigilante, and Sneaky Paladin archtypes seem like the best fit. (Though the paladin alignment a code might be aproblem in this AP.) However, I think some of them are losing focus on the goal, so I will try to restate it a bit more clearly.
1) A decently high will save is mandatory for this campaign (and this GM in general). I don't think there has been a single significant fight in this campaign without each of the PC's (especially the melee PC's) having to make at least 1 high DC will save or several moderate DC will saves. If he fails a save vs. Fear, he runs away and isn't tanking to protect the squishies. If he fails a save vs. Mind Control, he is likely to kill the squishies he is supposed to be protecting. So 'band-aiding' a horrible will save up to halfway decent is not good enough. It needs to be an actually good will save.
2) Tank - Anvil not Hammer. His DPR only needs to be good enough that people can't just ignore him and walk by to kill the squishies. So sneak attacks and flanking bonus are not a priority. (Not a bad bonus to have but it isn't the focus.) We have several glass cannons that do a pretty fair amount of damage. But they need someone to hide behind when they start to take a few solid hits.
3) Tank means taking the hits for the rest of the group. High AC, high hit points, the other saves, SR, energy resistance, evasion, self healing, etc... Things which allow him to take the spells or strikes and keep standing in the way. Our point man has often been taking hits from a couple of large-huge creatures or getting hit with several spells right at the start of the fight.
4) Sneaky for a tank, not necessarily incredibly super stealthy. He isn't the group scout. He just needs to be sneaky enough that at something like 20'-30' behind the scout, his clanging won't wake up the whole castle. Which is the norm for most tank builds.
As an example, a couple levels ago our point guy was a bloodrager with high hit points. He took iron will, VMC oracle with the shattered mind curse, and the courageous trait. So he did have an excellent will save vs. Fear and Mind Control effect. However, his dex save and AC were pretty low. Yes he had high hit point, but nearly everything always hit him. And he usually took full damage to the energy spells as well. So his will save was good enough, but he really wasn't good enough at taking the spells and hits to function well enough as a tank.
Really feels like nobody took the idea of a monk seriously. Here is a monk build I did for a tanking thread a while back. Of course you don't have to follow that build but it shows just how powerful of a tank a monk can be. The old style monk is a much better defender than it is at dealing damage. Combine that with spell like abilities and unlimited Ki and it becomes something other than the flailing miss machine we use to associate monks with before Unchained became a thing.
Just change Swim to Stealth and the build is set.
Hmm... Guess maybe I will have to play around with it in some fake combats. I've never seen a monk be at all tank-ish. They've always been rather fragile.
Sounds like you want an inquisitor. Weapon and shield, travel domain maybe, mithril breastplate, use judgement to shore up whatever you need to.
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I'll also mention that the Half-Orc Bloodrager in my Strange Aeons party has a good will save. He has the Pariah alternate racial trait (+2 racial bonus vs emotion and fear), the Courageous trait (+2 trait bonus vs fear), and took Iron Will early. All this saved his life when the Revenant came for him (he just barely survived).
One other idea since damage doesn't have to be this guys strength. Take a kinetic knight (kineticist), they're expected to wear heavy armor with a shield. Add the telekinetic invisibility wild talent, it explicitly covers sound too and can be used at will. Aether element first required for that BTW. With elemental whispers (hedgehog) giving +2 to will saves and the resolve ability giving them a will save reroll 3/day they're not too bad at those.
For the second element which you get at level 7 you might go with air for a lightning sword or whip, or aether again for another wild talent and an actual force sword. Jedi imagery tends to be popular IME. With air or another element your character level 4 talent might be telekinetic haul, with aether you might get kinetic healing and kinetic restoration perhaps, or kinetic healer and angelic protection. Taking telekinetic haul and touchsight would also be an option.