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I feel like the central issue with "sword and gun" in Pathfinder is that the economics of the game mechanics don't really support a "brace of pistols" approach since wealth is a separate advancement track from XP, the game math assumes you will continue to upgrade one or two weapons in order to keep pace with enemy AC, and it would be unconscionably expensive to pay to upgrade your cutlass as well as four pistols.
Since, IMO, "sword and pistol" combat in a setting like Pathfinder should involve something like "you draw your pistol, fire it, then stow it and fire another, only reloading when there's no one around to fight".
Guns in Pathfinder are a little too oriented around "reload as a free action so you can full attack" and not enough oriented on "reloading takes time, so you carry several guns."
Empyreal Knight gains the ability to summon allies, but only after trading out all the abilities that could support that for trash. Everything the archetype can do a standard Paladin with a not that expensive magic item can do better.
Empyreal Knight is frustrating because it's a cool concept that was this close to being a good archetype. Just a small tweak to the summon monster ability and it'd be great; make it usable 3+cha times per day, have 1 minute/level duration, standard action casting time, and gain SM1 at 2nd level and improve in grade every 2 levels thereafter. As it stands you're perpetually behind the curve.
I feel like the central issue with "sword and gun" in Pathfinder is that the economics of the game mechanics don't really support a "brace of pistols" approach since wealth is a separate advancement track from XP, the game math assumes you will continue to upgrade one or two weapons in order to keep pace with enemy AC, and it would be unconscionably expensive to pay to upgrade your cutlass as well as four pistols.
This can be gotten around by using magical ammunition. It's still more expensive, but you could support as many guns as you'd like with such an approach. If you've got a friendly party wizard willing to cast greater magic weapon then you'll have a cheap fallback for whenever you don't want to expend your good stuff.
The key problem with firearms, in my opinion, is that Paizo designed firearms for the Golarion setting. They wanted firearms to be rare, and didn't want player characters casually carrying them around as sidearms, so it requires intensive investment (in feats, gold, and class features) to be competent with them. In order to make the guns worth that kind of investment for specialists, however, they needed similarly awesome benefits. This creates a dynamic where once you're actually competent with firearms, you're in a position where there's really no reason you would ever want to use any other type of weapon under any circumstances.
To be fair, Sword and pistol TWF combat has a TON of issues.
0: Firearms require Exotic Weapon Proficiency
1: Firing a ranged weapon in melee provokes an AoO
2: Early firearms often only have 1 shot before reloading
3: Reloading a ranged weapon in melee provokes an AoO
4: Reloading a ranged weapon requires a free hand, currently taken by your sword
5: Pistols are not light weapons, limiting your swords to light weapons
6: Early firearms misfire frequently without specialization, a problem for a class that has decided to fire a pistol up to 4x a turn
7: Magic weapons are expensive, making the old pirate strat of drawing and discarding many pistols cost-prohibitive
8: Drawing a new pistol provokes an AoOGOOD NEWS!
9: Sheathing a pistol is a move action that provokes an AoO
10: Pistols are 1000gp each, so they are expensive to risk dropping on the ground instead of sheathing
11: Pistols do not scale their damage to any stat
12: Two Weapon Fighting is feat intensive
13: The sheer quantity of feats/class features required to solve these problems is cost-prohibitiveSolving all of these issues with a single archetype is tricky
I agree with your sentiment, but you got 1 bit wrong. Drawing a weapon in combat doesn't provoke AoO's (and it's worth knowing because it's an action that'll happen a LOT).
I agree with your sentiment, but you got 1 bit wrong. Drawing a weapon in combat doesn't provoke AoO's (and it's worth knowing because it's an action that'll happen a LOT).
Huh, thats good to know. I coulda swore that drawing a weapon provoked.
Here's an archetype which should be NPC-only, but the name draws poor foolish players to it: the sword saint. It's an archetype for the samurai.
In place of the samurai's mount it gets a terribad ability with another good name, iaijutsu strike. When you draw your sword (and it must be a one-handed or light sword) and attack with it as a full round action you get a minor damage bonus on the single attack this action allows you...and -4 to your AC. The minor upgrades you get to this ability by sacrificing other class features later don't really change this. By the time the damage bonus is significant you'd be so much better just taking quick draw and making a full attack that it's not funny.
You'd be best off forgetting that you even have this ability but that does make you essentially a warrior with the resolve class feature and proficiency in the katana.
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I am so glad we have good "samurai without a mount" archetypes now.
Here's an archetype which should be NPC-only, but the name draws poor foolish players to it: the sword saint.
I remade it completely for my campaign because I like the concept but hated the execution. Looking back on it, I don't think I worded it quite as well as I would have liked but here it is:Sword Saint Redux.
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I am so glad we have good "samurai without a mount" archetypes now.
Yeah, the Warrior Poet is basically everything I wanted out of the class when I read "samurai" but before I read the actual mechanics. Love that archetype.
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That works around the difficulty in how often you can perform iaijutsu strike Cavall (albeit while making you use cheap-ass swords), but it does nothing to fix how bad iaijutsu strike is - which is the point I mentioned. And no, eventually getting to inflict shaken or deafened with save DCs based off your 3rd-5th highest ability score is not pretty incredible.
SiL's rework is way better while still not exceeding the better cavalier or samurai archetypes, let alone better archetypes of other classes.
Another bad archetype to point out: Crossbowman Fighter -- trades out a lot and doesn't give you much, with injury added to insult by having Crossbow Expert, the Weapon Training substitute, act like a specialized version of Weapon Training but not count as Weapon Training for the purpose of prerequisites, due to the way it is worded. Actually, several Fighter archetypes have this problem (Archer is another example), but this has got to be one of the worst -- worse than Archer since it locks you in to using a weapon that is very slow-firing without a LOT of investment and doesn't give you a way to bonus damage except on a Readied Action.
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If we're continuing to list archetypes where the mechanics don't really make the concept viable, I'd say that another good (read: bad) contender would be the Eldritch Scrapper.
The description of the archetype indicates that an eldritch scrapper "has a thick skin and a fighting style that blends weapons with spells."
And yet, all you get from it is trading a bunch of possibly useful bloodline powers for Martial Flexibility. As a sorcerer, you possess neither the HP nor the BAB to be mixing it up on the front lines. You also don't get anything like Spell Combat, an actual ability that lets you blend weapons with spells, nor do you get any bonus weapon proficiencies, which makes the whole description feel kinda untrue.
^Not only that, but one of the Bloodline Powers you trade out is the one you would get at 9th level, which includes some Bloodlines' boosts to Constitution (Pit-Touched) or Strength (Abyssal or Orc) that would be needed to make you have any shot at being passable in melee. And since you're trading out 2 Bloodline Powers to get 1 martial power, it's a ripoff.
Really, you’re trading out 3 bloodline powers for 3 on demand combat feats. Which isn’t a terrible trade in a vacuum. The problem is that the rest of the class doesn’t support combat as an option. If you offered the same kind of deal to a bloodrager, it would at least be tempting.
It's not bad for someone going into Eldritch Knight, basically just trading out the 1st level bloodline power for a floating combat feat. Definitely a very niche archetype, but functional within that niche.
For conventional Sorcerers it can be a decent option at low levels, especially for bloodlines with weak 1st level powers, but the moment you hit 9th it just becomes a terrible trade that you should retrain out of.
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I know that the Shaman Druid archetypes were mentioned above, but can I emphasize that the Dragon Shaman is the worst at fulfilling the fantasy it's trying to go for?
The flavor text indicates that your totem is the dragon, but it really should be called the lizard shaman, because that's what most of the archetype is really about; you turn into lizards, you can speak to lizards, etc. The only dragon-related benefit you get from it is that at 8th level you get to deal a bit of extra energy damage with your bite attacks. That's it. No breath weapon, no fearsome presence, no flight, nothing like that. Just a bit of extra damage on one of your natural attacks.
The Draconic Druid archetype might be one of the maligned drake archetypes mentioned above, but at least it lets you wildshape into a dragon! I mean, come on!
{. . .} And since you're trading out 2 Bloodline Powers to get 1 martial power, it's a ripoff.
Actually, you're trading out 3 Bloodline Powers to get 1 martial power. Dain bramage.
If we're talking about archetypes that don't benefit the base class, there are a lot to choose from...
- Blade Adept (Arcanist): you trade exploits for a Magus' Black Blade, except that you don't get exploits that temporary grant you a better BAB.
- Beast Rider (Cavalier): you trade heavy armor proficiency to get a more exotic mount... which is a rather odd choice considering that you can talk to your DM to replace your standard mount by something else as a regular cavalier.
- Two-Weapon Warrior (Fighter): Improved and Perfect Balance add absolutely NOTHING if you want to TWF with 2 one-handed weapons.
i believe the gm option for cavalier is generally interpreted as ‘your dm may also approve some other crappy horse-comparable setting appropriate mountable animal companion from the companion list’ not ‘really just pick anything that’s squintably mountable’.If we're talking about archetypes that don't benefit the base class, there are a lot to choose from...
- Blade Adept (Arcanist): you trade exploits for a Magus' Black Blade, except that you don't get exploits that temporary grant you a better BAB.
- Beast Rider (Cavalier): you trade heavy armor proficiency to get a more exotic mount... which is a rather odd choice considering that you can talk to your DM to replace your standard mount by something else as a regular cavalier.
- Two-Weapon Warrior (Fighter): Improved and Perfect Balance add absolutely NOTHING if you want to TWF with 2 one-handed weapons.
Huh... if the Druid and Ranger have access to a wider range of companions, why not the Cavalier and Paladin?
{. . .} And since you're trading out 2 Bloodline Powers to get 1 martial power, it's a ripoff.Actually, you're trading out 3 Bloodline Powers to get 1 martial power. Dain bramage.
That’s being misleading though. It’s one martial power that gives you an extra variable combat feat for every bloodline power you trade out. The trades are “fair”. The problem is that they don’t work well with the rest of the class.
ranger doesn’t have a ‘wider range of companions’. Historically they’ve been restricted to ‘handful of bad non-mountable companions’ where cavaliers/paladins work with a ‘handful of bad mountable’ options. Because paladins and cavaliers have it through a feature called ‘mount’.
You'd think that any Large companion, or any companion that gets Large, would get on that list. Druids have access to every single companion, regardless of size.
Large cats, wolves, grizzly bears, sharks, bulls and others can be ridden from the start, at 4th or at 7th level, and that's only for Medium riders. Badgers, weasels and wolverines would fit for Small riders.
ranger doesn’t have a ‘wider range of companions’. Historically they’ve been restricted to ‘handful of bad non-mountable companions’ where cavaliers/paladins work with a ‘handful of bad mountable’ options. Because paladins and cavaliers have it through a feature called ‘mount’.You'd think that any Large companion, or any companion that gets Large, would get on that list. Druids have access to every single companion, regardless of size.
Large cats, wolves, grizzly bears, sharks, bulls and others can be ridden from the start, at 4th or at 7th level, and that's only for Medium riders. Badgers, weasels and wolverines would fit for Small riders.
Druids are friends to all animals. So they have an open list. Cavaliers use animals that for the most part are trained mounts, like camel and horse.
The classes are like this from design. If you want to ride more wild beasts that is exactly what the archetype is for.
Not all races have camels and horses...
Medium Cavaliers:
Axebeak, Camel, Elk, Giraffe, Horse, Seahorse, Giant, Tortoise, Giant, ZebraSmall Cavaliers:
Antelope, Boar (requires 4th level), Capybara, Dog (requires 4th level), Kangaroo, Lizard (Giant Gecko), Pony, Ram, Reindeer, Stag, Weasel, Giant, Wolf, Wolfdog
I... didn't know about that list at all. Where did you get it? I noticed it on the Archives of Nethys, but... when was that added?
This is what I have in the book:
The creature must be one that he is capable of riding and is suitable as a mount. A Medium cavalier can select a camel or a horse. A Small cavalier can select a pony or wolf, but can also select a boar or a dog if he is at least 4th level. The GM might approve other animals as suitable mounts.
And yes, I have downloaded the latest version. (initial release in 2010, updated in 2012)
Ok then... I stand corrected.
My original response to you actually answered that.
Wilderness origins book. Paizo realized that printing 4 beastiaries after the cavalier class and 5 after ranger meant the lists originally given were woefully short of representation. So they updated classes like cavalier paladin ranger...
It's just at the back of the book. Well worth the few dollars given the feat options for shifters and these lists being updated.
Thanks for the information.
The blade adept isn’t “as” bad. You get a bonded object, so that’s a bonus spell per day, though you do have to be holding your sword to cast any spells, which can be bad in certain situations. And the black blade has a lot of the benefits of a familiar, which is worth an exploit on its own.
It gives a lot of combat options that will go to waste, but there’s at least 2 exploits worth of good stuff in there for a non-fighter. So, it’s not a “good” archetype on its own, but it’s not as bad as some of the archetypes that give combat stuff to casters.
I've thought about making a Blade Adept VMC Battle Oracle/Eldritch Knight. Full progression spellcasting is nice, but from VMC, and favored prestige class/prestigious spellcaster you basically have no feats prior to the PrC giving you some.
The blade adept isn’t “as” bad. You get a bonded object, so that’s a bonus spell per day, though you do have to be holding your sword to cast any spells, which can be bad in certain situations. And the black blade has a lot of the benefits of a familiar, which is worth an exploit on its own.
It gives a lot of combat options that will go to waste, but there’s at least 2 exploits worth of good stuff in there for a non-fighter. So, it’s not a “good” archetype on its own, but it’s not as bad as some of the archetypes that give combat stuff to casters.
The Blade Adept would be better if it received an exploit that temporarily grants Base Attack Bonus = caster/character level, for 1 round/level. For me, that's the deal breaker here.
You're supposed to be a melee character, but your attack bonus just cannot match it. You will also rely mostly on regular melee attacks, not touch attacks. Finally, there aren't many exploits that would benefit from the Black Blade. For instance, Flame Arc and Holy Water Jet cannot be used, because these are cones or lines, not ranged touch attacks.
If we're talking about archetypes that don't benefit the base class, there are a lot to choose from...
- Blade Adept (Arcanist): you trade exploits for a Magus' Black Blade, except that you don't get exploits that temporary grant you a better BAB.
{. . .}
I've got a fix for this. Completely Rules As Written, to the best of my understanding. And doesn't even use Eldritch Knight.
If we're talking about archetypes that don't benefit the base class, there are a lot to choose from...
- Blade Adept (Arcanist): you trade exploits for a Magus' Black Blade, except that you don't get exploits that temporary grant you a better BAB.
{. . .}I've got a fix for this. Completely Rules As Written, to the best of my understanding. And doesn't even use Eldritch Knight.
You're multiclassing though...
I see multiclassing as extremely limiting, because you stop progressing in one ay in order to go another way. That's why I like archetypes that grant access to other classes' features or base classes that are considered hybrid classes.
I see archetypes as "alternate ways to multiclassing". If you need to dip in another class to make the archetype even viable, that's a clear indication that the archetype isn't good on its own...
The Blade Adept would be better if it received an exploit that temporarily grants Base Attack Bonus = caster/character level, for 1 round/level. For me, that's the deal breaker here.
You're supposed to be a melee character, but your attack bonus just cannot match it. You will also rely mostly on regular melee attacks, not touch attacks. Finally, there aren't many exploits that would benefit from the Black Blade. For instance, Flame Arc and Holy Water Jet cannot be used, because these are cones or lines, not ranged touch attacks.
It does gain the ability to use another exploit to pick up the magus Arcane Accuracy arcana. That bonus will be pretty close to what is missing from BAB, but it uses up your swift action every round which has its own problems, and uses up yet another exploit that you can’t even take till level 5 and also burns up a pool point.
The arcanist does have issues with having low hit points, low fort saves and lowish armor, though that can be covered by spells to a point.