Making a Monster Tactician "Get Down, Mr. President!" build

[Seaaaaaan]

Hey folks. I'm joining an in-progress adventure with the hard hitting enemies that is supposedly pretty high difficulty. I'm coming in at level 4. We are using EitP test tax rules.

The party currently consists of a casting focused (squishy) pei zin oracle, a fetching rogue of some flavor, a blade bound magus, and a zen archer.

I think this party cries out for both crowd control, front line, and utility casting. I'm very tempted by Death Druid (you get a phantom!) and saurian shaman (campaign takes place near realm of the mammoths lords!), but this post is about an idea I had for an Inquisitor.

The gimmick I have is kind is to, by level 8, have disposable summons with the which I've shared Loyalty to the Death and Broken Wing Gambit. My summons always attack with broken wing gambit, then either get attacked or say "get down, Mr. President!", get attacked at +6, and the bad guy provokes either way. With Shared Training spells, I can share both of these feats with my two melee allies to get them in on the AoO and protection fun.

I'm torn between two directions.

The first is to just focus on summoning. Spell focus conjuration is a straight useless feat tax, but Augment, superior, and evolved summons are all really great. However, the gimmick is to get them attacked at +6 as an immediate action, so they're kind of unlikely to live long anyway - Summon Good Monster can help with that, I guess. I probably just take combat reflexes and blood for the empire to help my personal attack style.

The other direction is to focus on reach combat, maybe even with something like Greater Feint. I'm not really sure what my options are beyond the basics - I'm more of a caster player, usually. In this style, my Summoned monsters are just fodder for the teamwork feat gimmick. I just pick the most durable options and hope they last a few hits.

I'm sure this isn't a new idea, but it seems fun and is something that I haven't seen. I'm just looking how to make it a solid party support class in the most, in the mtg parlance, Johnny build possible.

Directions I'm hesitant about include adding an animal companion (would be great but might get groans) and shenanigans with skill unlock: intimidate (would definitely get groans).

I'd appreciate any thoughts on what you think might be fun or effective ways to make the gimmick work.

[JiaYou]

I played the first book and change of Curse of the Crimson Throne with an Monster Tactician of Shelyn. So reach with the glaive and dropping summons like it was going out of style. It was quite effective. There was one particular battle on a ship where we couldn't believe we survived, even with our Oracle being able to spam Burst of Radiance...

"Advice": Broken Wing Gambit is nice, but simply giving Ferocious Loyalty or Friendly Rivalry to your swarm of Earth Elementals keeps the game flowing more quickly while delivering essentially the same level of ouch. And is Summon Good Monster worth a feat to you, considering the Monster Tactician gets to add a monster from the Expanded Summons list to their summon options every level?

[Scott Wilhelm]

Take a look at Archon Style Feats. They literally improve the AC of your allies, and they grant Attacks of Opportunity to allies whenever you are hit.

Take levels in Inuquisitor, and then you get an Attack of Opportunity through Paired Opportunist whenever your allies do. Use one of your Judgements to give yourself Fast Healing. Inquisitor is a good way to get Broken Wing Gambit, too.

Another good way to get Broken Wing Gambit is via a level in Cavalier or 3 levels in Paladin or Warpriest with the Holy Tactician or Divine Commander Archtype. The Tactician Class Ability lets you give everybody your Teamwork Feat. So, you with BWG, whenever anyone is attacked, all of you get Attacks of Opportunity, and you use Archon Style Feats to make people attack you, which also gives everyone Attacks of Opportunity.

If you dipped a level in Monk, Master of Many Styles, you could use Archon and Snake Styles at the same time. Then take Broken Wing Gambit as a level 3 Warpriest Divine Commander with Broken Wing Gambit. So then you can make sure that one attack/round directed at someone else gets diverted to you. Whenever anyone Attacks any of you, everyone gets an Attack of Opportunty from BWG. Whenever an Attack hits you, everyone gets an Attack of Opportunity from Archon Justice, whenever an Attack Misses you, You get an Attack of Opportunity from Snake Fang. You will be limited to Unarmed Strikes with Snake Style Feats, but you can be doing Sacred Weapon Damage with them, so that will be all right.

[Seaaaaaan]

JiaYou wrote:

I played the first book and change of Curse of the Crimson Throne with an Monster Tactician of Shelyn

"Advice"...

Shelyn was actually the direction I was going to go for character reasons - and getting glaive doesn't hurt. My idea was to play something like the classic reach cleric, with my weapon skills coming mostly into play for aoos.

I see what you mean about broken wing. I'd say the primary reason for taking it is just to match with what is, to my interest, the more important Loyalty to the Death to push attacks into the summons. Our magus just swapped to play a witch instead so aoos are less of a priority for sure. Blood for the Empire seems like a good one.

Can I ask what attribute/feat you went? I'm used to building straight casters pumping a single stat with some dex and con, so I'm honestly in a bit of analysis paralysis.

On the one hand, I go high dex, bladed brush, combat reflexes, and then whatever. Maybe slashing grace later. Trip (with solo tactics tandem trip) is potentially good here?

On the other hand, Augment summons and especially superior summons seems attractive because more immediate actions available means more attacks going to summoned creatures and more aoos for my team.

Choices choices.

[JiaYou]

Before level 5,standard action summons are better than anything else you could build for, PERIOD.

After level 5, Bane makes it slightly less than 100% sure.

Put another way, what can your Inquisitor do in combat that is more valuable than dropping two to four augmented Earth Elementals all power attacking for 1d6+7 or +10 (power attack, but not including the "both parties are on the ground bonus)?

You don't have enough feats to go Bladed Brush at low levels, unfortunately.

My Monster Tactician+Urban Infiltrator (you might need those skills, you might not) only had 15 point buy, so I went

Str 14+2
Dex 14
Con 12
Int 10
Wis 15
Cha 7

Reformation Inquisition to key Diplomacy and Intimidate off of Wis. If you rolled stats or have a greater point buy, then you can alter that. Especially the Cha. If I didn't "have" to take the Reformation inquisition, Shelyn has a ton of good domains to choose from.