Gestalt Arcanist / Slayer and arcanist / paladin still considered a good house rule combo?

[Senko]

As I mentioned in another thread I'm playing around with a few build ideas at the moment I don't expect to be able to play e.g. broodmaster summoner (fun but not good for PC for a number of reasons) and I'd like to muck around with an arcanist gestalt build tommororw. So I was looking for what people consider a good class to combo with it and what I found seems to be paladin or slayer. So I'm just wondering are they still considered good classes to combine with an arcanist?

[avr]

Cha to saves is useful to an arcanist, though not amazing. Slayer has full BAB, the two missing good saves and bonus feats but probably isn't as good as unchained monk for an arcanist gestalt - base unchained if the arcanists' reservoir stat is Wis, scaled fist if it's Cha.

[CBDunkerson]

Instead of the full caster / full BAB route you could also go all in on casting... Arcanist (White Mage) / Psychic (Magaambyan Telepath). That'd give you the full Sor/Wiz and Psy spell lists along with various Cleric and Druid spells.

[VoodistMonk]

Arcanist and Slayer is a great combination... you are giving the Slayer good Will saves and 9th level spellcasting. Plus the Dimensional Slide Exploit helps with Sneak Attack.

This is, of course, assuming that you want to be in the the fight.

Slayer is a good combat class, and the Arcanist can add a lot to it, most noticeably being the good Will saves.

If you are only interested in spellcasting, then adding Slayer to the Arcanist does very little for you.

[Lelomenia]

VoodistMonk wrote:

Arcanist and Slayer is a great combination... you are giving the Slayer good Will saves and 9th level spellcasting. Plus the Dimensional Slide Exploit helps with Sneak Attack.

This is, of course, assuming that you want to be in the the fight.

Slayer is a good combat class, and the Arcanist can add a lot to it, most noticeably being the good Will saves.

If you are only interested in spellcasting, then adding Slayer to the Arcanist does very little for you.

slayer has the BAB, saves, HD, and skills. Studied target and some of the talents can also be useful for casters. Sneak attack can also work with a caster, especially with the Vanguard archetype giving a nice initiative bonus and automatic surprise round access.

That said, unchained monk or 2 pally/x unchained monk is probably better. But Slayer is good.

[Senko]

The problem with monk is the same as paladin stop being lawful or lawful good and you lose your class abilities. Sure you can atone but its still a pain. Not so much of an issue here as I'm just theory crafting still its an issue if you ever want to play the class.

Any archetype you'd recommend or just staight unchained monk?

For this bit of theory crafting I'm looking sort of battle mage primarily a caster but able to fight if the enemy try to deal with the mage first so while I appreciate the full caster build I may need to come back to it to see what it does later.

[Senko]

I'm starting to think unchained rogue may be better than slayer lower fort and bab but more choice of talents and idont thibk slayer gets ranged sneak attack, I'll need to check tonight.

[avr]

With rare exceptions sneak attack works with all attacks. Slayer isn't an exception. Actually applying sneak attack at range is a pain though for most.

Simply on attributes though unchained rogue isn't a bad choice - an arcanist needs Int and at least one of Wis or Cha, and an unRogue lets you dump Str more easily than a slayer.

[VoodistMonk]

Senko wrote:

I'm starting to think unchained rogue may be better than slayer lower fort and bab but more choice of talents and idont thibk slayer gets ranged sneak attack, I'll need to check tonight.

Slayer gets Sneak Attack out to 30', just like everyone else who has Sneak Attack... same talents to extend it by 10' are available to the Rogue as well as the Slayer.

The Rogue has worse saves, worse BAB, worse hit dice, no Studied Target, no access to Ranger Combat Style feats... you do you, by all means, but I would rather eat glass than be a Rogue over a Slayer.

[Senko]

VoodistMonk wrote:

Senko wrote:

I'm starting to think unchained rogue may be better than slayer lower fort and bab but more choice of talents and idont thibk slayer gets ranged sneak attack, I'll need to check tonight.

Slayer gets Sneak Attack out to 30', just like everyone else who has Sneak Attack... same talents to extend it by 10' are available to the Rogue as well as the Slayer.

The Rogue has worse saves, worse BAB, worse hit dice, no Studied Target, no access to Ranger Combat Style feats... you do you, by all means, but I would rather eat glass than be a Rogue over a Slayer.

I dont think slayers get access to rogue or ninja talents. Even if they do they're more str based which adds an ability you need to worry about whereas rogue gets dex to damage. Ranger style feats don't really help with ray's I think only ranged weapons. Fairly sure I saw an eratta about that somewhere.

I didnt realize sneak attack applied to ranged attacks, i thought it was melee only interesting.

[Meirril]

The reason most wizard/arcanist/sorcerer builds have a tendency to go (UC) monk is because the monk is by default unarmored. At low levels you're a monk that can throw a few spells per day. Once you hit mid levels you transition to being a caster that doesn't immediately panic when something gets in your face.

Generally speaking, most players that would choose to be a gestalt Arcanist/Monk would give themselves Arcanist stats. In the long run you are more concerned with pushing your spell DC than you are with hitting melee attacks.

If you want to be a Rogue/slayer gestalted with a wizard/arcanist you will tailor yourself to casting spells that you can get your sneak attack with. Lots of ranged touch, touch and ray spells. While you can do a lot of interesting things this way...you don't actually get much damage out of it. Spells are generally limited to 1 per round, so you get spell damage + sneak attack once.

If you went with a Paladin/Rogue you get full BAB, the best sneak attack progression, tons of skill points, best saves, best armor, smite, self healing. So what you can't use poison? Get a melee partner and get as many sneak attacks as you're BAB will allow. Go all in and follow the TWF feat line to spam out more sneak attacks.

[Thedmstrikes]

Senko wrote:

I dont think slayers get access to rogue or ninja talents. Even if they do they're more str based which adds an ability you need to worry about whereas rogue gets dex to damage. Ranger style feats don't really help with ray's I think only ranged weapons. Fairly sure I saw an eratta about that somewhere.

I didnt realize sneak attack applied to ranged attacks, i thought it was melee only interesting.

Slayers do get rogue/ninja talents, just less of them. Sneak attack applies in situations as part of an attack, ranged or melee is not one of those requirements, but it is far easier to qualify in melee because of flanking, which does not apply to ranged.

I am playing a modified gestalt Paladin Arcanist (modified that the gestalt addition is half the level instead of full) now and I find the boost of the Arcane defensive spells (just think of the personal spells that arcanist can not normally share) and concentrating on my Paladin and combat abilities for feats makes him a very mobile combat monster. With the breath of abilities, I find that it can take two rounds to completely set up for combat due to action economy when you are in a big fight.

EDIT after reading the post while I wrote, use the still metamagic and metamixing to ensure your spells go off while wearing armor, wear bracers of armor, or use spells to cover this deficiency, potent magic increases caster level by 2 with use of a reservoir point and caster level increases the duration of the protective spells. My arcanists go through their allotment of reservoir points daily and I cannot trade away the consume spells ability in an archetype because of it.

As a slayer or rogue arcanist, I would concentrate my arcanist abilities on stealth (invisibility) to increase my sneak chances at range. Use feats and talents to improve those ranged strikes.

As an arcanist is also a full caster with complete access to the sorcerer/wizard spell list, that is a lot of extra utility to add to any skill monkey, let alone the blasting capacity, which can be augmented with certain sneak combinations.

[Senko]

Interesting I didn't realize slayers got rogue talents, I knew rogues could take ninja/slayer ones.

On looking at it it seems monks have changed a bit since I last looked at them. I thought like paladins they lost their class features if they changed alignment but instead they merely can't progress any further. That's much more manageable. Still a shame the martial artist isn't compatable with the unchained monk as they can be any alignment.

Just to restate myself this is NOT for any game I'm just theorycrafting some ideas I expect never to be able to play. An arcanist/monk could work well if you can get to a decent level before an alignment change. Also need to look into how Brawler compares to unchained monk.

If slayer/rogue dictate how your spells should be set up to get maximum benefit I may be better of with the monk/brawler gestalt arcanist. I have reasons to not go paladin. Ah well I'll look into if monk or braweler is better regarded and try mocking up an arcanist/x. Perhaps since this is jsut theory work I'll give the familiar class levels for that arcanist/whit mage mix suggested above though I'll probably go with shaman as I prefer them a bit more than Oracle.

[The Innkeeper]

We're actually playing an all Gestalt campaign set in a wild-west setting based on Pathfinder rules right now. A bit of a side tangent but...

Factotum is probably THEE best gestalt class out there. A straight 20 levels of it. It's a 3.5 class but apparently the creator said its meant to work fine for Pathfinder and I personally had no issue translating it over once my DM oked it.

The thing that makes it so good for Gestalt is it complements casters SUPER well. A lot of its functionality scales on intelligence and it's inspiration abilities can be used to seriously augment some things you could never do as a regular factotum. For instance, you can burn inspiration points to get off an additional standard action in a round. You can also burn inspiration points to IGNORE a targets spell resistance for around.

So the absolutely glorious factotum/mystic-theurge I built for my fiance can as a full round, use a quicken metamagic to get off one spell, then weave together a divine and arcane spell a single standard action, then give herself an additional standard action using inspiration points, and for this entire round she's firing off a total of 4 spells say "Hey big boss with spell resistance. You don't get that this round."

Not bad for a class that already adds intelligence to their initiative as a bonus modifier.

I've never seen a character more capable of ending boss fights.

[Senko]

Hmmm I might do some digging and see if I can find information on it.

As for the arcanist/monk archetype giving them the scaled fist/sacred fire adept archetypes appeals to me for some reason even though I've never read the occult handbook.