Build Advice: Unchaind Rogue need help!

[Tarock]

Hello everyone,

I´m currently trying out a fun build for an Unchaind Rogue and I have a few ideas in mind how I can make it from lvl 1 to lvl 16 through a whole AP. There is no party setup as off yet, so I am just doing a benchmark build and will apply changes when or if I need to.
My build starts with a standard 15 point-buy plus 3 traits. I am limited to the paizo stuff so please no 3rd party or VMC.

Name: UCR (placeholder)
Class/Lv: UC Rogue 16 (Knife Master / Scout)
Race: Halfling (Fleet of Foot, Dimdweller, Halfing Luck, Keen Sense and Fearless)
Abilities: 8 / 18 / 14 / 12 / 12 / 9

Traits:
Ancestral Weapon
Fate´s Favored
Reactionary

Feats:
1nd: Two-Weapon Fighting
3rd: Deifice Obedience (Pharasma)
5th: Skill Focus: Stealth
7th: Hellcat Stealth
9th: Flensing Strike
11th: Extra Rogue Talent
13th: Twist Away
15th: Improved Two-Weapon Fighting

Other Options:
Shadow´s Shroud, Out Flank (if I there is a buddy I can share it with), Improved Initiative, Combat Reflexes, Wasp Familiar

Unchained Rogue Talent:
2nd: Slow Reactions
4th: Bleeding Attack
6th: Minor Magic (Detect Magic)
8th: Major Magic (Vanish)
10th: Double Debilitation
11th: Crippling Strike
12th: Opportunist
14th: Stalker Talent*
16th: Dispelling Attack

* Blind Spot, Perfect Vulnerability, Shadow's Speed, Signature Weapon, Strike the Unseen, Surprise Strike, Leave an Opening

Other Options:
Assault Leader, Combat Trick, Skill Mastery, Dampen Presence, False Attacker, Trap Spotter, Familiar

Rogue´s Edge:
1th: open
2nd: open
3rd: open

To be honest I didn`t know that the rogue had so much great options. The stalker talent is amazing and combined with Flensing Strike and Double Debilitation I can debuff just about everyone I manage to hit with a sneak attack.
For example:

UCR lvl 11 vs a Glabrezu after one sneak attack:

AC 28 -> AC 16
to hit 20 -> to hit 11

These are now the stats of a Babau Demon

Do you have any remarks or advice for my build or maybe even more options?
Can you guys estimate the value of talents like Dispelling Attack? Are they really worth taking?
And are these three Scout/Vanish/Hellcat Stealth good enough to achieve sneak attacks?

I am happy and thankful for every hint or tip you can get me.

[Scott Wilhelm]

How are you locking in your Sneak Attack Damage? I think a Sneak Attack Character should have at least a couple of tricks for guaranteeing you will get to inflict those lovely extra d6s.

[PCScipio]

Tarock wrote:

Traits:
Ancestral Weapon
Fate´s Favored
Reactionary

Keep in mind that Halfling Luck, despite the name, does not give a luck bonus.

I'm no rogue expert, but I'd suggest trying to work in Iron Will, and possibly Great Fortitude. At higher levels, failing Fort or Will saves can be devastating.

[Tarock]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

How are you locking in your Sneak Attack Damage? I think a Sneak Attack Character should have at least a couple of tricks for guaranteeing you will get to inflict those lovely extra d6s.

lvl 1

Stealth +12, Ini +6, Flanking

lvl 4
Scout’s Charge

lvl 5
+ 3/6 Stealth

lvl 7
Hellcat Stealth

lvl 8
Vanish, Skirmisher

I think that are enough options. Maybe Shadow´s Shroud is better than Hellcat Stealth but i´m not sure.
I could go the Feint or Dirty Trick rout but they are both pretty feat intensive.

PCScipio wrote:

Keep in mind that Halfling Luck, despite the name, does not give a luck bonus.

I'm no rogue expert, but I'd suggest trying to work in Iron Will, and possibly Great Fortitude. At higher levels, failing Fort or Will saves can be devastating.

I know Halfling Luck is not a luck bonus but I want to buy Lucky Horseshoe and later Stone of Good Luck.

Iron Will and Great Fortitude are okay feats. I hope Twist Away will fix my bad Fortitude save, for my Will save I can take the Familiar Unchained Rogue Talent. This can give me Iron Will + Alertness + tones of Skill Points and a second perception check.

[Scott Wilhelm]

If you were a Ninja instead of an Unchained Scout, you could Vanish as a Swift Action by level 2 instead of Level 8. Once you have the Ninja Vanishing Trick, you could turn Invisible as a Swift Action then use Stealth as a Move Action or something. I think you have Vanish, you do not need Hellcat Stealth. As an Unchained Rogue, you can still get Ninja Vanishing Trick. You'd need to take the Ki Pool Rogue Talent First. If you want to do things like Vanish, I think Ninjas are better than Unchained Rogues.

Tarock wrote:

Iron Will and Great Fortitude are okay feats.

I think a better way to get +2 to your Will Save would be to dip a level in Arcanist. That will give you a +2 to your Will Save. It will also give you the ability to use any Wizard or Sorcerer Wand and any Scroll with Level 1 ore 0 Spells, and give you some spells: : you won't have to put any skill points into Use Magical Device. A 1 level dip gives you a lot more for you level than taking Iron Will. It makes a whole lot more sense to just dip a level in Arcanist than taking the Minor Magic Rogue Talent. Dipping a level in Arcanist gives you more than Iron Will + Minor Magic put together.

More: you can take an Arcane Exploit. I like Dimensional Slide. Dimensional Slide is a Teleport that you can use as part of your Move. It only has a Range of 10', but that is usually plenty to guaranty that you can achieve Flanking with your ally. And you want to be able to zip around the battlefield skirmishing and spreading out your SA Damage amongst lots of opponents, throwing a little teleporting in would be pretty slick.

Since you want to run around the battlefield all Scouty and Skirmishly, You should take a look at Panther Style Feats. They give you Bonus Attacks whenever you Provoke an Attack of Opportunity by Moving out of a Threatened Square. There is a Ninja Trick that lets you take a Style Feat, and you can take Ninja Tricks as a Rogue or Unchained Rogue.

Another Feat you should look at is Canny Tumble. Canny Tumble robs your opponents of the Dex Mod to AC if you successfully tumble through and opponent's square without Provoking an Attack of Opportunity. That seems very useful for a skirmisher. It requires you take Dodge and Mobility first, but those are also good things for a skirmisher character to have.

I might not be advising you to be a Ninja and not an Unchained Rogue. It depends on how important it is for you to Vanish. Ninjas have more Ki Points to Vanish with. Unchained Rogues get Dex-to-Damage, and they can get some Ki.

I have some Rogue builds I could show you if you want. I also wrote out a list of my favorite ways to lock in Sneak Attack Damage if you wat to see those.

[*Khan*]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

You'd need to take the Ki Pool Rogue Talent First.

Ki Pool is a Core Rogue talent only unfortunately.

[Scott Wilhelm]

*Khan* wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

You'd need to take the Ki Pool Rogue Talent First.

Ki Pool is a Core Rogue talent only unfortunately.

Maybe he could take the Ninja Trick Unchained Rogue Talent, then choose Rogue Talent as his Ninja Trick, then choose Ki Pool as his Rogue Talent.

Maybe he could take Extra Talent as a Feat and take Ki Pool that way.

[*Khan*]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

*Khan* wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

You'd need to take the Ki Pool Rogue Talent First.

Ki Pool is a Core Rogue talent only unfortunately.

Maybe he could take the Ninja Trick Unchained Rogue Talent, then choose Rogue Talent as his Ninja Trick, then choose Ki Pool as his Rogue Talent.

Maybe he could take Extra Talent as a Feat and take Ki Pool that way.

Sounds like a GM ruling.

[Derklord]

Tarock wrote:

UCR lvl 11 vs a Glabrezu after one sneak attack:

AC 28 -> AC 16
to hit 20 -> to hit 11

Nope. On any Sneak Attack, you can only apply one talent with an asterisk. That means you have to choose between Bleeding Attack, Double Debilitation, Crippling Strike, and Slow Reactions. That also means that you shouldn't have that many mutually exclusive talents.

Tarock wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

How are you locking in your Sneak Attack Damage? I think a Sneak Attack Character should have at least a couple of tricks for guaranteeing you will get to inflict those lovely extra d6s.

I think that are enough options.

The problem is that all your sneak attack enablers only work for a single attack. The debuffing abilities aren't actually that impressive (without stacking of talents that can't be stacked), especially from a party member's viewpoint, when making a single SA per round.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Maybe he could take the Ninja Trick Unchained Rogue Talent, then choose Rogue Talent as his Ninja Trick, then choose Ki Pool as his Rogue Talent.

Maybe he could take Extra Talent as a Feat and take Ki Pool that way.

When you're an unchained Rogue, for everything that has something to do with the class, the unRogue Talent list is the only one that exists. The book says "The following rogue talents can be used without modification." PU pg. 24 Everything not on that list (or the main unchained list) can not be used "without modification". The Ninja Trick looks at the unRogue Talent list. The feat looks at the unRogue Talent list. If you would, say, take 4 levels in Dashing Thief, the Rogue Talent form that archetype would be a cRogue one, but everything based of your actual unRogue class uses the unchained list.

[Scott Wilhelm]

Derklord wrote:

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Maybe he could take the Ninja Trick Unchained Rogue Talent, then choose Rogue Talent as his Ninja Trick, then choose Ki Pool as his Rogue Talent.

Maybe he could take Extra Talent as a Feat and take Ki Pool that way.

When you're an unchained Rogue, for everything that has something to do with the class, the unRogue Talent list is the only one that exists. The book says "The following rogue talents can be used without modification." PU pg. 24 Everything not on that list (or the main unchained list) can not be used "without modification". The Ninja Trick looks at the unRogue Talent list. The feat looks at the unRogue Talent list. If you would, say, take 4 levels in Dashing Thief, the Rogue Talent form that archetype would be a cRogue one, but everything based of your actual unRogue class uses the unchained list.

I was mostly joking. I do think the OP should consider being a Ninja or an Unchained Rogue. Your Dashing Thief idea is cool.

[Tarock]

Derklord wrote:

Nope. On any Sneak Attack, you can only apply one talent with an asterisk. That means you have to choose between Bleeding Attack, Double Debilitation, Crippling Strike, and Slow Reactions. That also means that you shouldn't have that many mutually exclusive talents.

There are two Bleeding Attacks on D20pfsrd

One with an asterisk (CRB) and one without (unchained) and my google search only finds the one without asterisk so I was fooled . I looked up the talent in the book, and it indeed has an asterisk.

So the calculation is

AC 28 -> AC 22
to hit 20 -> to hit 12

or

AC 28 -> AC 16
to hit 20 -> to hit 18

But I think you are right, I shouldn´t have that many talents with an *.
I will check out the ninja or the Dashing Thief but you lose a lot with both options.

[Derklord]

Tarock wrote:

There are two Bleeding Attacks on D20pfsrd

One with an asterisk (CRB) and one without (unchained) and my google search only finds the one without asterisk so I was fooled .

It's actually the other way around, the unRogue one has the asterisk and the cRogue one doesn't. The same seems to be true for a bunch of cRogue Talents.

d20pfsrd.com is not a good rule source anyway, as the site often omits, changes, or adds text. I highly recommend to use aonprd.com for looking up rule options. It's way more accurate and doesn't sneak in 3PP options.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Your Dashing Thief idea is cool.

It was more of an explanation of the concept than an idea, really, as it would only grant yet another SA enabler that only works once per round.

[Tarock]

Derklord wrote:

d20pfsrd.com is not a good rule source anyway, as the site often omits, changes, or adds text. I highly recommend to use aonprd.com for looking up rule options. It's way more accurate and doesn't sneak in 3PP options.

I use AoN as much as I use d20, and i double checked Bleeding Attack on AoN too, but it has a similar problem, it uses * but didn't use it for Bleeding Attack because they put it in a different category (Sneak Attack Talents) which don't exist in the books, which is quite confusing.

[Derklord]

Tarock wrote:

I use AoN as much as I use d20, and i double checked Bleeding Attack on AoN too, but it has a similar problem, it uses * but didn't use it for Bleeding Attack because they put it in a different category (Sneak Attack Talents) which don't exist in the books, which is quite confusing.

If you read the section above the lists, AoN is quite clear - it says "Some talents add effects to a rogue's sneak attack. Only one of these talents can be applied to an individual attack and the decision must be made before the attack roll is made.", and then they list all talents that work like that, followed by all talents that don't. When picking from a list that method is actually much more sensible then sorting them purely alphabetical, because you want to pick them seperately.

[Tarock]

Derklord wrote:

Tarock wrote:

I use AoN as much as I use d20, and i double checked Bleeding Attack on AoN too, but it has a similar problem, it uses * but didn't use it for Bleeding Attack because they put it in a different category (Sneak Attack Talents) which don't exist in the books, which is quite confusing.

If you read the section above the lists, AoN is quite clear - it says "Some talents add effects to a rogue's sneak attack. Only one of these talents can be applied to an individual attack and the decision must be made before the attack roll is made.", and then they list all talents that work like that, followed by all talents that don't. When picking from a list that method is actually much more sensible then sorting them purely alphabetical, because you want to pick them seperately.

So I can use Slow Reactions because it is not listet under Sneak Attack Talents?

[Derklord]

Guess they screwed that up. Never mind, then!

Well, the talent does show the asterisk, so AoN is still ahead in that regard, but yeah, it's not perfect (but still much more reliable). Checking the latest printing of the book in question is always the sures version, of course.

[Tarock]

I finally had enough time to check out all your options and suggestions, and I tweeked my build quite a bit. I want to say thank you for all your great ideas and support.

At first I considered the Ninja. I checked the pros and cons and what I get is a small pool of Ki-Points (1/2 lvl + Cha-mod means only 5 on lvl 10 without additional investments) and the ability to get vanish/greater invisibility as a swift action plus some additional minor bonuses.

But I would lose the d8s on sneak attack (Knife Master), the sneak attack bonus on charge or after moving (Scout), the Dex to damage, Weapon Finesse and the Debilitating Injury (-4 to -8 AC/to hit after sneak attack). Furthermore I would only get one Rogue Talent and one Advanced Talent, and the Ninja Tricks are quite mediocre in comparison to the Rogue ones. Finally I would need to spent two Rogue Tricks to get Vanishing Trick and Invisible Blade.

All things considered the Ninja seems to be a big downgrade and just not worth it.
Thats why I stayed with my UCRogue but made some adjustments.
Like Derklord said, I had far too many talents depending on sneak attack that don't stack well, so - Dispelling Attack being the weakest in my opinion - I cut that one out. Without Dispelling Attack the whole Magic Trick package is not worth it, especially when I am planning to get a high UMD anyway.

So here are my new ideas:

Name: UCR (placeholder)
Class/Lv: UC Rogue 16 (Knife Master / Scout)
Race: Halfling (Fleet of Foot, Dimdweller, Halfing Luck, Keen Sense and Fearless)
Abilities: 8 / 18 / 14 / 12 / 12 / 9
Traits:
Ancestral Weapon
Fate´s Favored
Reactionary
Feats:
1nd: Two-Weapon Fighting
3rd: Deifice Obedience (Pharasma)
5th: Skill Focus: Stealth
7th: Hellcat Stealth
9th: Flensing Strike
11th: Wasp Familiar
13th: Twist Away
15th: Extra Rogue Talent
Unchained Rogue Talent:
2nd: Trap Spotter
4th: Bleeding Attack
6th: Dampen Presence
8th: Combat Trick (ITWP)
10th: Double Debilitation
12th: Opportunist
14th: Stalker Talent (Surprise Strike)
16th: Skill Mastery
A second idea I had was not to focus on the whole stealth ability too much because it is never 100 % reliable. Thats why I searched for other ways to obtain sneak attack and I arrived at the Scurrying Swarmer feat.
As a Ratfolk you can occupy the same square as your frontliner and flank all day long. You can still use stealth if needed but movement gets a lot easier. You don't have to run around the enemy (eventually provoking AOOs) and you can stay in passage ways whiteout getting in the midst of thy enemys.

Name: The rat
Class/LvL: UC Rogue 16 (Knife Master / Scout)
Race: Ratfolk (Surface Sprinter, Unnatural, Swarming, Tinker)
Abilities: 8 / 18 / 14 / 12 / 12 / 7
Traits:
Ancestral Weapon
Fate´s Favored
Reactionary
Feats:
1nd:
3rd: Deifice Obedience (Pharasma)
5th: Flensing Strike
7th: Outflank
9th: Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
11th: Wasp Familiar
13th: Twist Away
15th: Shake It Off
Unchained Rogue Talent:
2nd: Combat Trick (Two-Weapon Fighting)
4th: Bleeding Attack
6th: Weapon Training
8th: Trap Spotter
10th: Double Debilitation
12th: Opportunist
14th: Stalker Talent (Surprise Strike)
16th: Skill Mastery

What do you think might be the better build of those two?