Inquisitor Build Concerns


Advice


Hi there. So I am concerned that I am potentially calculating my Inquisitor's damage, to-hits and buffs incorrectly.

For context, I'm playing as a lv11 Half-Orc Tactical Leader.

Once all the relevant buffs and whatnot are up and running, my capabilities have seemed to be kind of ludicrous.

BAB +8/+3, Strength +5, Power Attack -3, Justice Judgement +3, Bless +1, Divine Favor +4 (+3 along with the +1 from Fate's Favored), Outflank +4 result in +22/+17 to hit.

And for damage, on a 2d4 Falchion you get Power Attack +9 from wielding it two-handed, Destruction Judgement +4, Divine Favor +4, Strength +7 (once again, two-handing the falchion so 1.5x strength bonus) results in 2d4+24 damage each hit on top of Bane.

While I'm not going to say no to good damage, and I know I can simply choose not to use those buffs, I constantly outdamage my party by an incredible margin, not to mention potentially increasing that output with buffs like Channel Vigor giving me haste, and sometimes I feel bad for them and my DM.

My question is, am I doing this wrong? Are these values from me miscalculating something? Because afaik the buffs stack because none of them share a type.

And a different, unrelated note. Does swapping your Judgements expend a use of the feature? I'm fairly new to pathfinder so the nuances are still a bit confusing sometimes.

Thanks for the help!

Grand Lodge

Hi
Your math seems correct just remember that outflank still needs a flanking ally who has outflank as well (which is a standard action to share the feat with your tactician ability).
The Inquisitor is really good at selfbuffing to hit and damage when he has the time to do so.
Only one standard action and swift action pr. round will limit you otherwise.
1. round: swift action destruction and justice judgment, standard action: divine favor.
2. round: swift action: Bane, standard action: tactician ability, Bless spell or Channel vigor
3. round full attack...

If your GM often gives you time to buff and only 2-3 encounters a day, then inquisitor is formidable.


So your damage at the output should be ~51.6925 per round (~58.435 if you have Improved Critical). That's high, but not ludicrously so. As *Kahn* said this does cost you 2 standard actions to set up, and it also requires some positioning from allies.

If you skipped Outflank pairing you'd be at ~38.3525 DPR (~43.355 with Improved Critical) which is about where you should be aiming if you're a primary damage dealer of your level. If you skip Divvine Favour instead of Outflank your damage would be slightly less, but then you also have Bane to uncrease the damage when needed.

My advice would be to either use Divine Favour (when fighting many small enemies you can't flank) OR use Outflank as a shared teamwork feat (when you have a small number of enemies you can flank), but not both. That saves you a standard action, and keeps you from making your teammates feel inadequate (Sidenote: You'll do less damage per round, but probably more damage overall unless the combat goes for 8 rounds or so).

If the combat seems to hard you still have Bane in your back pocket as a nuke option.


EDIT: It's just too late to update my post, but those numbers without "Outflank" were calculated without any flanking bonus whatsoever. You can still flank, you'll just get the usual +2 to hit instead of the +4 with Outflank, so if you have a reliable flanking buddy your average damage output should be somewhere between the two values I gave.

My bad =P

Either way, the advice is the same. You can afford 1 less buff each combat. It'll probably end with you dealing more damage per combat, but less impressively. This will (hopefully) help your teammates feel like they're doing more. It will also mean you can go through more encounters per day before running out of buffs, which can help keep the game momentum up.


Your numbers appear to use a non-masterwork generic weapon, i’m only seeing one feat contributing to your offense, and +5 Str bonus at level 11 seems pretty low. If anything i think your summary suggests lower damage than you should be getting.

Yes, Inquisitor is a beast out of the box. You are probably close to if not the best skills character in your group as well.

Get Boots of Speed, Cornugon Smash/Hurtful, and Improved Critical on a +3 Fauchard and you should be getting 5 attacks/round a fair number of times when you can full attack.


your numbers are correct. Some classes just deal more damage than others.

Silver Crusade

Two rounds is a long time to spend buffing before you make your first attack. As MrCharisma says, you're probably better off buffing only once before attacking for many combats.


Another thing you could do is change up your judgements. Healing, Protection, Purity, Resiliency and Resistance are all potentially useful buffs that will make you tougher rather than better at killing.

Protection plus Resiliency is actually a fairly decent defensive buff. Neither the AC nor the DR are amazing on their own, but combined they'll save you a big chunk of damage.

Grand Lodge

PCScipio wrote:
Two rounds is a long time to spend buffing before you make your first attack. As MrCharisma says, you're probably better off buffing only once before attacking for many combats.

It depends on how often the combat starts by surprise. And series of small encounters will use up the inquisitors limited ressources faster than one big fight. Clever opponents will retreat and regroupe and try new tactics.

At level 11:
Jugdement 4 times pr. day. (Last one battle each)
Tactician 3 times pr. day. (Each use is only 8 rounds)
11 rounds of bane pr. day
Spells like divine favor is also limited.


When I played an Inquisitor archer I would at most spend one round buffing, though archery is already really good at damage dealing.

The first round would be used to cast divine power/favor and activate judgements. The next round, if I thought it was necessary I would activate Bane as a swift, though for many fights I didn't feel it was necessary.

Aside from that it was just full archery attacks.

I had chosen the Chivalry Inquisition to get myself a mount to move me around the battlefield, so I was basically always full attacking.

Ultimately, an Inquisitor that has 2 or 3 rounds to buff can have powerful attack and defense spells running on top of their class features that buff attack and damage.

Inquisitor is honestly one of the best classes IMO for having high martial capability, high spell capability, and high skill capability even if they aren't the best at any one. But it is an incredibly potent combination of abilities.


Esseless13 wrote:
I constantly outdamage my party by an incredible margin

I'm honestly a little shocked here. What sort of PCs do the other players have? A Phantom Thief skillmonkey Rogue and a sword-and-board Fighter who wants to be a tank? Because your damage output isn't really that great. Even buffed thus and flanking you'd need three full attacks to kill an average CR 11 monster, there're plenty of fairly simple builds who could do that in one round even to non-adjacent enemies.

It's entirely possible to play the game at a low power level. Is that in any way a conscious decision at your table? And how experienced and how build-interested are the other players?

Also, does your game, like, not use magic items?


Derklord wrote:
Esseless13 wrote:
I constantly outdamage my party by an incredible margin

I'm honestly a little shocked here. What sort of PCs do the other players have? A Phantom Thief skillmonkey Rogue and a sword-and-board Fighter who wants to be a tank? Because your damage output isn't really that great. Even buffed thus and flanking you'd need three full attacks to kill an average CR 11 monster, there're plenty of fairly simple builds who could do that in one round even to non-adjacent enemies.

It's entirely possible to play the game at a low power level. Is that in any way a conscious decision at your table? And how experienced and how build-interested are the other players?

Nah the OP has a good build.

Two-handed weapons deal good damage, so even with minimal investment you've got a good whack of HP whenever you actually manage to hit. What Esseless13 has managed to do is get their To-Hit rolls ludicrously high. The first attack is going to hit on a 3+, and with a crit-friendly 2-handed weapon of course that's going to be some noticeable damage.

If the others at the table are using less optimised builds (TWF/Sword&Board/etc) they're going to deal less damage. Hell even a well built archer will seem puny to that Falchion. The archer may actually deal more damage throughout the combat, but it won't seem like it when the Falchion hits so much harder and has an ~87.5% hit-rate.

The problem is that we on the boards are the optimisers. We see this as a normal-ish build because we're the ones who discuss these things and break down the game-mechanics to a science. Most people don't go to this much effort, so an optimised build in among regular gamers is like a PC class among commoners.

You have to remember Derklord that even my idea of power-gaming would probably be laughable to you. Esseless13 is a Fighter among Commoners, I'm the equivalent of an Occultist with Trappings, so my optimised build would likely seem like I was cheating ... and you're playing the God-Wizard, making my Occultist seem like small-fry. Your idea of "low power level" probably isn't that relevant at most tables.

Quote:
Also, does your game, like, not use magic items?

Yeah ... I'm with you on this one. How do you not have at least a +1 weapon at level 11?


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You are missing two obvious buffs, especially since you don't seem to have a magic weapon. Greater magic weapon lasts 11 hours at this level and gives +2 to hit and damage. Heroism lasts almost 2 hours and gives another +2 to hit. You can give these buffs to your party members to increase their combat capabilities too.
What are the others playing?

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