Advice on Warpriest of Norgorber

[Sebecloki]

Hey pathfinders,

I'm making up a 1st level Warpriest of Norgorber for a new campaign. I'm flipping through the optimization guides, trying to decide on a build. I was thinking of making a bad touch warpriest vmc cleric, and then prestige classing into souldrinker, but I'm still trying to figure out if there's good synergy between the bad touch concept and the prestige class.

In general, I'd like to make a warpriest that also is kind of a rogue. Any ideas?

[Shorticus]

It's not my favorite archetype, but "Warpriest that is kind of a rogue" sounds like the Cult Leader.

If you decide to do Warpriest but want to use the core version, I would strongly push you toward the Arsenal Chaplain instead. (It's technically the Molthune Arsenal Chaplain, but still.) IMO, it's a strict upgrade in many cases over the standard Warpriest.

The main downside to the above archetype is you get War, not... something else. That's the sadness.

Beyond that, I can't offer much advice. I typically play more smashy warpriests, or powerful ranged warpriests. Those aren't what you're going for, though, so I'll step out and let smarter posters take over.

[Melkiador]

Maybe not what you're looking for, but when I think of a rogue-like warpriest, i think of the inquisitor.

[Ryze Kuja]

Tbh, it sounds like Rogue with VMC in Cleric is actually what you're looking for, and then take Norgorber's Silent Shiv Divine Fighting Technique.

Not sure if Norgorber would be happy if you became a Souldrinker and started worshiping the Four Horsemen though, unless your GM is cool with that. But if he is cool with that, Souldrinker nets you the Fiendish Boons a lot earlier than normal.

Since you're starting off worshiping Norgorber, are you going to do the whole poison infatuation thing? And then continue to worship Norgorber once you switch to Souldrinker and start worshiping the Four Horsemen as well?

[Sebecloki]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

Tbh, it sounds like Rogue with VMC in Cleric is actually what you're looking for, and then take Norgorber's Silent Shiv Divine Fighting Technique.

Not sure if Norgorber would be happy if you became a Souldrinker and started worshiping the Four Horsemen though, unless your GM is cool with that. But if he is cool with that, Souldrinker nets you the Fiendish Boons a lot earlier than normal.

Since you're starting off worshiping Norgorber, are you going to do the whole poison infatuation thing? And then continue to worship Norgorber once you switch to Souldrinker and start worshiping the Four Horsemen as well?

I'm not decided on the poison issue yet. Is there a way to incorporate that into a bad touch build?

[Ryze Kuja]

Bad Touch Clerics don't typically focus on using weapons or poisons, so how you incorporate that is entirely up to you. If you want, you could fight with no weapons most of the time, but also have a ceremonial dagger coated with poison for a special occasion?

[Derklord]

Sebecloki wrote:

In general, I'd like to make a warpriest that also is kind of a rogue. Any ideas?

Standard question for these threads: What exactly do you mean with "kind of a rogue"? What abilities are you looking for? Because Rogue has a bunch of different stuff, but excels at literally nothing, so there is and can be no general definition of what a "kind of a rogue" character looks like.

Do you want Sneak Attack?
Do you want trap finding abilities?
Do you want trap handling abilities?
Do you want a bunch of skill ranks?
Do you want to be good at stealth?
Do you want to be good at problem solving?
Do you just want Disable Devise and Stealth as a class skills?

[Gray Warden]

Sebecloki wrote:

Ryze Kuja wrote:

Tbh, it sounds like Rogue with VMC in Cleric is actually what you're looking for, and then take Norgorber's Silent Shiv Divine Fighting Technique.

Not sure if Norgorber would be happy if you became a Souldrinker and started worshiping the Four Horsemen though, unless your GM is cool with that. But if he is cool with that, Souldrinker nets you the Fiendish Boons a lot earlier than normal.

Since you're starting off worshiping Norgorber, are you going to do the whole poison infatuation thing? And then continue to worship Norgorber once you switch to Souldrinker and start worshiping the Four Horsemen as well?

I'm not decided on the poison issue yet. Is there a way to incorporate that into a bad touch build?

If you manage to get Poison Use, you can pick the Toxic Spell metamagic feat. It only costs +1, so maybe pick Magical Lineage on your favourite Fort save spell and browse for cheap poisons.

The spell does not need to be touch, however AoE (Nauseating Trail) or multi-touch spells (Touch of Blindness) are preferable since they often trigger multiple saving throws from the same target over time, increasing the chance of the poison eventually working.

Often poisons with a onset are cheaper and/or stronger than instantaneous ones in terms of ability damage and penalties, but of course have the drawback of not triggering with the attack. This is not a problem for you, since Toxic Spell gets rid of the onset. Similarly, you can pick ingested poisons without the issue of having your target actually eat/drink it.

Toxic Spell is not extremely powerful, since the poison DC is still set to the original one, but after all it is just a +1 level increase, and it still boosts the poison DC by anything else increasing the spell's DC (Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, traits). It's great versus casters or Dex-based targets, since they usually have terrible Fort saves. Against big, chunky enemies with incredible Fort, just use Bestow Curse.

Overall it's a nice feat to have on a caster with some poison flavour, but do not build your character solely around it.

[Ryze Kuja]

Unfortunately, the use of poisons becomes obsolete around level 9-12ish. Most creatures and NPC's that you'll face lvls 10+ have Fort Saves that are higher than the actual Poison DC itself, or are simply immune to poison. /shrug

Honestly, if Poison DC's scaled with level, they'd see far more use.

I've been playing around with making a house rule for scaling Poison DCs to make their use actually worthwhile in the late game. I haven't decided which one I want to use though.

Either:

All poisons become: 10 + 1/2 class level that grants poison use + highest ability modifier

or,

Original Poison DC + 1/2 class level that grants poison use + Int Mod

[Philippe Lam]

The lack of skill points is putting a wrench on the goal on making the character versatile enough (although the spells will help in another aspect).

That only is enough to make me second the idea of being Inquisitor instead as the class abilities do appear to suit it better. Warpriests are inherently physical hitters most of the times (not speaking about corner cases, rogue builds or else) so thematically I don't see the bad touch, either.

[Meirril]

I just want to hammer this home to make sure OP is aware of the issue: By RAW if your Norgorber worshiping Warpriest suddenly starts worshiping one of the 4 horsemen or a Daemon Harbinger he will lose all of his divine powers as described under Ex-Warpriest in the class description. Which also means if you are depending on your Warpriest class abilities to provide the 2 necromancy spells you need to know, you won't make the prerequisites to even take the Souldrinker prestige class.

If you are going to aim to become a Souldrinker, start off worshiping something that qualifies. There are no rules for switching from one deity to another, so changing is going to be a DM call. One thing to say is if you switch to a new deity, you probably need to rework your blessings to be ones that the new deity has access to. You'd also need to retrain your fiendish obedience.

[Sebecloki]

Thanks for the input everyone -- I ended up making a sap master brute strength based Unchained Rogue instead.

[Philippe Lam]

I might fancy adding Cruel to the weapon and playing around Shattered Defences in that case. Any weapon could do the trick given the character is str-based, regardless of anything