Hello everyone,
I'm starting a new campaign with 2 other new players and I was looking for a good build to complete the group.
They will play a standard melee monk and a mysterious stranger gunslinger.
We start at level 1 (we will progress slowly to level 15 approximatly) with a 20 points build.
I have to play a tiefling for roleplay reasons but it can be any variant heritage or alternate racial traits.
I was thinking of playing a summoner so I could support the team with both my eidolon and my spells.
But I'm open to all suggestion and all builds (although I don't like multiclass much.)
Thank you for your insight.
Definitely something with Magic, and you could probably do with some sort of Librarian.
You are also missing a skill monkey, Disable Device etc.
You also have no healing.
I would probably suggest a Knowledge Cleric with a Disable Device trait, or a Bard
It depends a bit on what the campaign will look like. Is it a homebrew campaign, or something published?
Summoner should work well. The group would be fairly light on casting, which may be a problem is some campaigns, but Use Magic Device on either the Summoner or the Gunslinger plus some bought scrolls should help.
I really hope the Monk is an Unchained Monk, though, otherwise they're in very high danger of being outclassed by your Eidolon!
Edit:
Minigiant wrote: You are also missing a skill monkey, Disable Device etc. Completely overrated.
Minigiant wrote: You also have no healing. The Summoner has Infernal Healing, buying a wand of that takes care of at least HP healing.
Sounds like you've got damage covered, but will be lacking in healing and utility.
You should ask your Gunslinger if he plans on taking on the role of party face, if not then Bard or Skald would be good choices.
If he is planning on being the face, then I would recommend going either Alchemist, Investigator or Witch.
It's a homebrew campaign. So the GM will adapt it a little to the group, but it's always better to cover the basics.
If I understood correctly, we'll start in a fairly advanced city (not modern guns but they will be common) and then go on a planar trip to Sigil and other planes.
I'd say a cleric for condition removal. Talk the gunslinger into taking disable device, or just live without.
This is a small party, so channeling for healing isn't really necessary, though if you do build yourself to channel heals well you'll be able to use more spells for not-healing.
If it isn't too difficult, you might want to make sure you have the liberation domain. Since you are the only caster, if you get stuck somehow being able to give yourself Freedom of Movement could save the party.
You'll want to pick your spellcraft up as high as you can. You're the only one that will be able to identify magic items.
So, as I predicted the gunslinger doesn't feel like playing the party face.
I'm not really into the cleric vibe even if I agree it might be useful, so unless you have other ideas I think I'll go for a bard or a bard or a skald (never looked at this class).
Do you have any advice on want build and/or archetype to use?
Be a Monster Tactician Inquisitor...
Oradin (Paladin + Oracle)
Got the survivability for the group.
High Cha => Cha skills
Also, infernal healing, if effective in term of RAW is a bad choice in term of RP... (It more or less turn you bit per bit evil even if the rules "don't say so")
P.S.: Don't listen too much to the "Healing is overrated", sometimes, when your frontliner got crited, the only thing that can save the party is a good heal ;p
P.P.S.: The most important build is one that you find fun! Optimisation is optional ;p
Witch would round that group out very nicely. Heals, Debuffing, Crowd Control, Condition removal, and good Knowledge/Skills with all that Intelligence. Since Gunslinger isn't going to be party face, looks like it's up to you. You can do this with a decent Cha and you get Alter Self once you're level 3 anyway, so it's not a problem for a Witch. Is your DM planning on having his own NPC join the party?
Infernal or Celestial Healing = fantastic RP choice for a planar campaign. You're taking something from your enemy (depending on your Alignment and general plot of the game) to fuel your own HP recovery. Think of the potential if you meet an angelic being and can say truthfully you collected drops of fiendish blood to help defeat more of their evil throughout the planes...
My vote is if Cleric isn't your thing and you want something with magic in a planes-hopping campaign, consider either the Shaman or the Summoner. Summoner is thematic and lends itself to filling out combat support or DPR through eidolon and summoned creatures. The Shaman though is more hard-wired to more of a utility/battlefield control type caster with backup healing/curing/condition removal.
All of that being said, any way you use to max out Use Magic Device pretty much gets you wands of Cure spells and Lesser Restoration, maybe some other specific condition cure wands, so if that kind of magic is a concern you can throw some skill points and some money at it.
Still though I'm rooting for you playing a Shaman.
^--- Oooh yeah, Shaman would be good.
The disadvantage of a summoner is that you'd likely overshadow the other players.
A high strength shaman, using a longspear and reach tactics, would cover cover the group's spellcasting needs, and help in melee. With maximum ranks of Diplomacy (which is a class skill) you can act as the party face, even with a low charisma. charisma.
You should roll says: You should roll Inquisitor and here's why:
Your party needs Divine spells in its repertoire and the party's social abilities could use some help. Inquisitor brings in 6+INT skill ranks per level with all of the important scouting and social skills as class skills. You also bring the needed Divine casting up to 6th level.
Honestly, Oracle of Battle would be pretty good too.
According to a quick google that lead to RPG stackexchange:
Horror adventure p 110 wrote: Casting an evil spell is an evil act, but for most characters simply casting such a spell once isn’t enough to change her alignment; this only occurs if the spell is used for a truly abhorrent act, or if the caster established a pattern of casting evil spells over a long period. A wizard who uses animate dead to create guardians for defenseless people won’t turn evil, but he will if he does it over and over again. The GM decides whether the character’s alignment changes, but typically casting two evil spells is enough to turn a good creature nongood, and three or more evils spells move the caster from nongood to evil. The greater the amount of time between castings, the less likely alignment will change. Some spells require sacrificing a sentient creature, a major evil act that makes the caster evil in almost every circumstance.
Those who are forbidden from casting spells with an opposed alignment might lose their divine abilities if they circumvent that restriction (via Use Magic Device, for example), depending on how strict their deities are.
Though this advice talks about evil spells, it also applies to spells with other alignment descriptors.
Yeah... Go infernal healing... right
Shaman are good ^^
For roleplay reasons infernal healing is nice. If for gameplay reasons I will play a tiefling, in the story we are a group of planar outcasts (a demon, a devil and an avoral) who went rogue and decided to stop fighting each other.
Same as the skald, I have no idea on how the shaman plays so I will definitely take a look.
Inquisitor might be a good idea, if I can build it more rogue like than armor and shiny like.
Cornebre wrote: Yeah... Go infernal healing... right What you've quoted is from a sidebar (which usually contain reminder or explanatory stuff) that utterly breaks the alignment rules in the CRB, and is self-contradictory to boot. It is not written as regular rule text, and indeed if you read the last sentence, you see that the content of the sidebar is explicitly refered to as "advice". In addition, the book is called "Horror Adventures" and is exlicitly "rules and advice for players and GMs to amplify the horror in their games". It is not intended as a book for every type of campaign.
Not only does apparently casting a spell three times in a row (that's 18 seconds) count as "establish[ing] a pattern of casting evil spells over a long period", it also funny situations like that the whole "saving dying children is now evil" thing.
That's not a rule, that's a steaming pile of shit. It goes against the very core of the alignment system.
Ithilion wrote: It's a homebrew campaign. So the GM will adapt it a little to the group, but it's always better to cover the basics.
If I understood correctly, we'll start in a fairly advanced city (not modern guns but they will be common) and then go on a planar trip to Sigil and other planes.
I'm a firm believer of playing what you want, and not being too worried about not having the perfect tool for every situation that might occur. Seriously, overcoming challenges is what the game is all about, and needing to come up with creative solutions is a lot of fun. You could even play a class without casting, even though the campaign would look notably different as a result. In the end, it depends on what you prefer, especially how much you want to shape the story rather than just following it.
I can honestly only suggest that you think about what kind of character you want to play, and then we can help you flesh out that character in regards to the party's shortcomings.
I weas thinking about Skald, too, but the only archetype where everyone profits from the Raging Song is Spell Warrior, which replaces the best ability you could have for this party, namely Spell Kenning. Unless both you and the Monk go dex-based as well.
Everything that can do a wide range of things helps a lot, which basically means something with at least 6/9 casting or alchemy (including, for this purpose, Medium).
the David wrote: Your party needs No.
Derklord wrote: Cornebre wrote: Yeah... Go infernal healing... right What you've quoted is from a sidebar (which usually contain reminder or explanatory stuff) that utterly breaks the alignment rules in the CRB, and is self-contradictory to boot. It is not written as regular rule text, and indeed if you read the last sentence, you see that the content of the sidebar is explicitly refered to as "advice". In addition, the book is called "Horror Adventures" and is exlicitly "rules and advice for players and GMs to amplify the horror in their games". It is not intended as a book for every type of campaign.
Not only does apparently casting a spell three times in a row (that's 18 seconds) count as "establish[ing] a pattern of casting evil spells over a long period", it also funny situations like that the whole "saving dying children is now evil" thing.
That's not a rule, that's a steaming pile of s~$*. It goes against the very core of the alignment system. Whoa! We get the point you're making and I personally agree, but ouch D-noble!
Ithilion wrote: It's a homebrew campaign. So the GM will adapt it a little to the group, but it's always better to cover the basics.
If I understood correctly, we'll start in a fairly advanced city (not modern guns but they will be common) and then go on a planar trip to Sigil and other planes.
I'm a firm believer of playing what you want, and not being too worried about not having the perfect tool for every situation that might occur. Seriously, overcoming challenges is what the game is all about, and needing to come up with creative solutions is a lot of fun. You could even play a class without casting, even though the campaign would look notably different as a result. In the end, it depends on what you prefer, especially how much you want to shape the story rather than just following it. This was why above I mentioned the UMD skill and wands. If you're willing to shell out lots of money and spend skill points or feats or both on UMD, you can use wands and low level scrolls to cover a lot of nice in-game utilities.
Consider that there's a Rogue that can get a familiar, and there's a couple different ways to get the Familiar to have a pretty high UMD by anywhere from 3rd to 7th level. If you have a decent Cha and can afford wands and/or low level scrolls then between you and your familiar you can be the substitute healer/revitalizer without ever taking a single spellcaster level.
This is another place where Derkous Maximus and I concur - play what you WANT to play.
Sounds like the OP would be happy with a Cha-based spellcaster such as a Bard or a Skald; ok, play that. We'll help you build towards the concept you want and, if necessary, find ways to have folks in the party maximize secondary options to bring in healing/curing/condition mitigation type spells/abilities.
Then again, Shaman is a good way to hand out buffs/debuffs, at least the one time I reviewed their spell list. I'm sure there's DPR builds for Shamans, Touch Attack builds for Shamans, and so on, but most of what I saw was more support/battlefield control related. They get some healing and such, so THAT might be a way to go.
Yet a third way would be to say HECK WITH ALL THAT and triple down on the frontline melee DPR in the party! Pick a Barbarian or a Bloodrager, get the most brutal melee weapon you can afford and spend all your feats and gold on dealing as much damage as possible. There's no reason to debuff or AoE your foe if you can spring attack for tons of damage!
Be what YOU want, then fix the issues that might arise from that, as The DL says above.
Summoner should be fine. You could go spirit summoner with the life spirit if you wanted to handle healing a little more, but it does trade out the powerful summon monster spell-like-ability.
Inquisitor is almost too versatile, but it is tied to a deity, so I'm not sure what your options would be there. The class is already pretty "rogue"-ish, but you could go with the sanctified slayer archetype to make it just a little more rogue-like. The monster tactician archetype is a beast. It's like someone said, "You know I like the summoner, but I think it should be stronger."
If you are interested in being a little bit rogue, while being decent at out of combat healing, I recommend the antiquarian investigator. It gets you access to a lot of the important healing spells, trap finding, talents and tons of skills per level.
Thank you all for your help.
To answer a little to your questions about what I would like to play. I tend to play mostly casters in our games. Because I like that, yes. But mainly because usually nobody in the group wants to do it.
For this party, I don't want a full caster. Ideally, I would have played a stealthy character who could buff his friends. I like the bard (and I'm starting to like the inquisitor too) but they got maybe a little bit to much spells.
And yet, I know our GM likes challenging fights and the other players won't be the most efficient fighters.
That's why I'm asking for your help. I'm trying to find a class/build that might please me and help our fights (and handle at least a part of what the other can't do outside of fights).
Once again I'm grateful for the time you take to help me.
Ithilion wrote: I like the bard (and I'm starting to like the inquisitor too) but they got maybe a little bit to much spells. Have you considered the alchemy classes, Alchemist and Investigator? You wouldn't have any actual (technical) spells, but could still hand out buffs with the Infusion discovery, and both have a lot of problem solving ability. Investigator especially is also the best class in the game at skills, although you'd need UMD for a wand (Alchemist can use a CLW wand without UMD). Both have Invisibility on the 'spell' list, which should care of the stealthy part (plus either can be made dex-based).
Ithilion wrote: And yet, I know our GM likes challenging fights and the other players won't be the most efficient fighters. Is that due to the players not building good characters? Both Gunslinger and Monk, at least unMonk, can be very good at damage. Of course, "challenging" implies a relative difficulty - a GM can make difficult but doable combats for a group of commoners, or do the same for a group of optimized killing machines and on-turn-combat-ender casters; even though the combats would be completely different, both would be "challenging fights". It falls under the GM's duty to adjust the difficulty to the party, because not doing that isn't fun for anyone.
The non-full-caster with the highest combat impact is probably Summoner.
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: Yet a third way would be to say HECK WITH ALL THAT and triple down on the frontline melee DPR in the party! Pick a Barbarian or a Bloodrager, get the most brutal melee weapon you can afford and spend all your feats and gold on dealing as much damage as possible. There's no reason to debuff or AoE your foe if you can spring attack for tons of damage! Speaking from experience, the Summoner actually does that, without neglecting casting/problem solving. The Eidolon can go toe-to-toe with even well build Barbarians (after they get pounce!), and Haste at the very least saves gold for the party (no need for Boots of Speed).
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