Ok, so... where to begin.
After a few years of hopping over to the 5e train, I was invited to go join my old pathfinder group I used to run while I'm back for about a month over the holidays. My DM is a good friend and used to be one of my regular players. He's the kind of guy who would show up to the table having taken a week-long Adderal fueled SRD dive and have some sort insane paladin/synthesist or magus/swashbuckler explosive crit combo character and break the game 5 ways from here to sunday.
It's not like he runs his games much differently than that though. He's allowed all 3rd party on the SRD. Let me repeat: All. 3rd. Party. That means feats, classes, races. Everything. Monster feats too. Worth mentioning that Power Attack and Combat Reflexes are just free feats every character gets. He's also allowing prestige classes to no longer be gated by the skill rank requirements, though all the other prerequisites are necessary. Also just the cherry on the top: everyone just gets a free +2 to one ability score.
So, it's been a few years since I've played pathfinder 1e, I've unlearned some of the rules. Given what I've told yall, how do you think I should proceed in starting the nuclear arms race that will be my character?
We're level 4, and I already rolled up my stats. They're pretty solid:
17, 17, 14, 12, 12, 12
Edit: As an aside, he's been actively challenging players to show up with broken characters, especially me, so I'm not actually working against the spirit of this game if it wasn't clear by the insanity of character creation.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Something poorly balanced is the primal fury discipline in Path of War (3rd party, yes). A warlord or whatever with access to that discipline can do an unlikely amount of damage. It doesn't take a huge amount of work to optimise.
Assuming you mean d20pfsrd there are a few monsters like gargoyles or drow nobles which get more than the usual amount of abilities.
A critical specialist Magus (Rapier) is Nasty. The one at our table by level 8-10 was doing an average of 80 Damage per attack. Only character I found that was more broken was a force missile mage (magic missle specialist) wizard stacking free metamagic feats and sacred geometry (beefing a level 1 spell so nearly 100% success rate). By level 10 he would take more force spells for flavor but i’ve seen him nuke the field at mid high levels.
All. 3rd. Party.
Hahahaha, really?
I'd take at least one level of Cleric, devoted to Fate and another equally broken domain. Make sure to take the Improvisation feat and you can now succeed on literally any skill check your GM throws at you, no matter how ridiculous the DC.
You can touch a creature as a standard action, granting them the ability to automatically succeed or fail (at their option) on one saving throw, skill check, or ability check. The automatic success must be used within one minute of being touched.
'
An easy way to abuse this would be to be a Human with the Silver Tongued alternate racial trait, buy the Authoritative vestments Channel Foci, and make every enemy within 60 ft go from Hostile to Friendly as a standard+swift action combo.
I play with all 3rd party content in my games, and I would highly recommend a Psionic Class of some kind.
I munchkin'ed a Chaotic Surge Wilder into god-like status if you're interested in doing something like that. Massive action economy abuse, no negatives from Wild Surging (in fact you place all your negatives on the enemies, so it's unbridled Wild Surging every time you manifest a power), crazy damage/buffing/debuffing/utility, and really powerful summoning.
You just melt faces, everything dies. I'm talking like x2 ~60-80d6 Disintegrates, -10 negative levels, couple max-lvl Astral Construct summons, and a teleport each round, at lvl 20. But Wilders stay impressive the whole way from lvl1 to lvl20.
I also have a Neutral Drow Druid with maxed out Stealth and Hellcat Stealth, and Reach Spell. He's not even possible to be hit, like, ever. At lvl 16, his Stealth is 1d20+100ish and he can Stealth every round as a Move Action (even while being actively viewed). And with Reach Spell metamagic, he can turn any spell into Maximum range (even touch spells). So basically, wild shape into a hummingbird and stealth to 1000ft away, cast a Quickened Spell (which brings you out of stealth), then cast any spell as a Standard Action, then re-enter Stealth as a Move action. If the enemy cannot pass a 110-120ish DC Perception check, they can't even target you, and you're still 1000ft away, so... what are they even going to hit you with :P, and even if your DM pulls shenanigans and "hits" you with some "Readied Action", you fly away and heal and come back with maor nukes, or summon a windstorm with Control Air and wipe him off the map :P
Game-breaking builds aren't my strength, but if you go with a martial character, I'll point out the half-ogre from Adamant Entertainment. This is on d20PFSRD.
Half-ogres get +4 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom. And then they get a standard array of abilities akin to the half-orc. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other races out there that are more unbalanced, but I do recall having to tell a player they couldn't roll a character using this race.
Game-breaking builds aren't my strength, but if you go with a martial character, I'll point out the half-ogre from Adamant Entertainment. This is on d20PFSRD.
Half-ogres get +4 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom. And then they get a standard array of abilities akin to the half-orc. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other races out there that are more unbalanced, but I do recall having to tell a player they couldn't roll a character using this race.
Look into the Ogrillon... it's a monster but it's stated out for PC class levels.
It counts as both Orc and Ogre, gets a
+8 STR, +4 CON, -4 INT, -2 WIS, -2 CHA
Starts w/: Weapon Focus (unarmed strike)
Has 2HD, BAB +1, and Fort +3
Qualifying as Orc you can use the Orc HornBow if you want, or take the Tusked trait for a bite attack... also, the pre-errata Scarred Witch Doctor is a fun option.
Qualifying as Ogre means you can take Corrupted Flesh/Improved Stench/Ability Focus (Stench) and this goes well with the Drawback Warded Against Nature...
Being anything that has the Disruptive/Spellbreaker feats available will make you an absolute menace to spellcasters because they will probably fail the Fort save and be Sickened or Nauseated by your Stench before you even hit them... a Ring of Amplify Stench is the trick to get Nauseated.
If you want to do a Martial Build, consider a Half-Giant Psychic Warrior.
Half Giants can use a weapon 1 size category larger than them without penalty, and a Psychic Warrior gets a psionic power called Expansion, which increases your size to Huge. So that's a Gargantuan Greatsword, so 6d6 dmg. Take Vital Strike at lvl 6 to make that 12d6.
Or! Consider going a Soulthief Vitalist. Soulthieves can use Xfer Wounds on their enemies, and any damage you cause gets distributed throughout your group as a Triage Heal. Pick up Blind-fight and Intuitive Fighting feats, and now you're using your Wisdom for your +Att stat instead of Str, and with a 5-6 Wis mod and 2 BAB, you're looking at a +7-8 to Touch at lvl 4, and that hits almost everything with a roll of 6 or higher. At level 5, you can take Expanded Knowledge: Hammer. Now you can manifest Hammer, then start using Xfer Wounds and Steal Health. So at level 5, you could manifest Hammer for 3 charges of 2d8 damage, and then go Xfer Wounds on an enemy for 2d6+5 + 2d8 damage, and 100% of the 2d6+5 dmg you can use as a Triage heal throughout your group as you see fit. Additionally, any time you manifest a Healing power or Ability Score restoration power, you can Triage this throughout the group as well. This will make your DM rip his hair out because your group is essentially unkillable as long as you have Power Points and Xfer Wounds, and there's hardly anything except a high-dex rogueish character who can avoid your touch attacks.
If you want to do a Martial Build, consider a Half-Giant Psychic Warrior.
Half Giants can use a weapon 1 size category larger than them without penalty, and a Psychic Warrior gets a psionic power called Expansion, which increases your size to Huge. So that's a Gargantuan Greatsword, so 6d6 dmg. Take Vital Strike at lvl 6 to make that 12d6.
I recently created a 3.5 Half Giant Psychic Warrior as a backup character, and I'm eager to use him. He fights with a Heavy Flail, and he does have Expansion. He has Improved Trip and Improved Disarm, and he has a Lesser Augmentation Crystal of Return on his Flail just in case. He also has a Composite Bow. In 3.5, your Enlarged Arrows do not shrink when they leave the bow. Anyway, he has his Bow that shoot telephone poles, but mostly he gets lots of Attacks of Opportunity with his Gargantuan Flail through Reach, Disarm, Canny Opportunist, and Prone opponents.
In 3.5, Disarming is a muuuuch more powerful tactic.
I have a lvl 16 Half-Giant Psychic Warrior and he absolutely curbstomps. I haven't played him since 2014 though. With the Vigor/Share Pain combo on my Psicrystal, Psionic Lion's Charge, Fold Space (i.e. dimension door) as a Move Action, and Hustle as a Swift Action to gain another Move Action, he was really tough to kill and extremely mobile. I didn't do the Vital Strike feat with him because I had Psionic Lion's Charge, so either I 5ft step and Full Attack, or I Psionic Lion's Charge for 5pp and get a full attack action on the end of a charge, so Vital Strike didn't really fit with what I was doing.
@ColbyMunro
Tbh, if you really want to make your DM cry, I'd strongly recommend the Soulthief Vitalist. One of the ladies in my current group played a Soulthief Vitalist in my last campaign (ended at lvl 13), and I'm telling you, there were many times I felt like ripping my hair out. The group was simply unkillable. They destroyed everything I threw at them for months, so I had to bump up the CR of encounters to ridiculous amounts. I remember when the group first hit level 5, they came across a CR12 Drider and a couple of her CR5-8 minions, and I still couldn't even pressure them. The group just never takes any actual damage that cannot be instantly healed every round on the Vitalist's turn.