My group is getting ready to start a Kingmaker campaign after our current campaign ends and most of the party has already settled in on their builds and characters for the game. I’ve settled on my character, but I’ve got myself stuck in a situation where I have several possibilities for how to go about building her…
The character is basically a Druid, but not officially a Druid… they are a fierce protector of nature and its inhabitants. Well, that’s the simplest way to describe her anyways…
Option 1) Sacred Huntsmaster/Green Faith Initiate Inquisitor - with this option I would be building largely for Archery and taking an assortment of teamwork feats that work with her pet (as well as eventually some that work with another member of the party who is getting bonus teamwork feats)
Option 2) Grasping Vine Shaman w/Nature Spirit - with this option I would be playing into the full caster route, focusing on area control type spells and bolstering my familiar via feats such as Evolved Familiar as we level.
Option 3) Nature-bonded/Staff Magus - a more melee oriented playstyle using her bond with nature to bolster her defense as well as to a lesser degree apply some area control with spells such as Entangle…
Option 4) Verdant Shifter - Similar concept to the magus route, except non-caster and far more defensively focused… I know this one is likely to be rather feat starved…
Option 5) Terrakineticist - sort of a wildcard style build… taking a bit of a blaster-caster approach with her power drawn from the land around her, rather than bending nature to her will she uses nature as it permits her to.
The party consists of a Bard, Slayer (archery focused), Cleric, Druid, Hunter (Two-Handed), Rogue, & a Fighter (Two-Weapon). So I’m not exactly filling any niches that aren’t covered by someone else in the party, I’ve spent the better part of a month bouncing between which build I’d like to play… so I figured I’d ask for some input here to see what others think… I’ve tried asking input from the other players in the party but I got only the non-helpful answer of “play whichever one you want”… I wouldn’t be asking for advice if I knew which one I want to play most, so that answer really isn’t helpful at all…
But I have to say that party is stacked, I can see why they said to just "play whatever you want".
“Play whatever you want” has sorta been a bit of a motto of our group… most of us don’t build to fill holes in the party… though we all are painfully aware of any such holes when they exist…
That's a big party. Three people in melee already (maybe more) might not leave room for another any time you're indoors. With an actual druid who might throw around entangles I'd avoid either of the two doing those too. The archer or the terrakineticist sound best.
We played through the first 2 books of Kingmaker before the GM got bored because he couldn't pose any relevant threat to the party without completely throwing the rules out the window ... We had a 3 person party.
My advice would be to check if/how-much the GM is going to change the adventure to suit the party.
- If they're not changing it play a class that you wouldn't want to play in a more combat-oriented campaign, since this is the chance to do it without your character lining up for the chopping block.
- If they are changing it then everyone's advice is probably good, but yeah if you have an 8 person party you're pretty unrestrained. Play what sounds fun.
Option 4) Verdant Shifter
Don't do that to yourself. Your uses per day of Wild Shape is counted in rounds and the Natural Armor bonus overlaps with the Wild Armor ability. Play what you want and all that, but this route is bound to disappoint you.
I'd try out the Terrakineticist if you haven't played the class earlier. Otherwise roll a die?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I mean - if ever there were a time to try an underpowered class that you like thematically now's the time. Especially if it's underpowered because it only works for a few rounds per day, that's basically perfect for Kingmaker.
Based on the other characters, combat and divine are pretty well covered with the only arcane caster being the bard. Some other possible nature-themed casters that could be options:
1) Beastmorph/vivisectionist alchemist gives up bombs for Sneak Attack, but is a strong melee combatant; extracts aren't technically spells, but have much of the same utility with the Infusion discovery
2) Brown fur transmuter or elemental master arcanist
3) Greenrager bloodrager, if you want a stronger combat focus.
4) Cartographer/natural philosopher investigator; again it's extracts instead of spells, but close enough
5) More than any other AP (pacing of encounters and lots of travel to significant sites), Kingmaker allows a medium to really shine and fill different roles as needed; kami medium is more directly nature-themed, but rivethun spirit channeler is also a possibility
6) Fey trickster mesmerist
7) Geomancer, naturalist, or (as a more "monster-hunter"/"nature guardian" character) psychodermist occultist
8) Totemic skald gains limited wild shape
9) Sorcerer, especially the Fey or Verdant bloodlines
11) Fey caller or leshy caller summoner
12) Avenging beast vigilante can expand their spell list via witch patron spells
13) Beast-bonded or ley line guardian witch; appropriate patrons may include Animals, Plant, Thorns, or Woodlands (or possibly Autumn, Elements, Spring, Storms, or Summer)
14) First World caller or possibly spell sage wizard
Personally, I'd probably lean toward arcanist, sorcerer, witch, or wizard to fill in as a primary arcane caster. For a hybrid caster, I'd look at alchemist, investigator, nature-bonded magus, medium, mesmerist, occultist, skald, or summoner.
It might be helpful to narrow down the concept to the specific "druid-like" abilities you want the character to have. Which may help select the "best" class/archetype or progression to prestige class (which is another level of complexity) to realize the concept.
I mean - if ever there were a time to try an underpowered class that you like thematically now's the time. Especially if it's underpowered because it only works for a few rounds per day, that's basically perfect for Kingmaker.
I'd normally agree. If the underpowered choice actually delivered on the theme then a low-stakes game would be when to go for it. But Verdant Shifter doesn't. I did bring up the two biggest design faults of the archetype as Chell Raighn seemed focused on mechanics, but the personal dealbreaker is how plain it is. From level 1-5 you have essentially no class features except "having claws", and while Plant Shape is meant to be what defines you it's restricted by rounds/day.
You won't scale a wall as a creeping wine, or pretend to be shrubbery when a guard walks by, or flex on NPCs by being half-plant while asking for directions, or whatever other ideas you had to show off your connection to nature. Because the duration of Plant Shape is simply not enough to attempt anything but combat, and even that it does poorly.
The design choices are anti-fun. That's why I think it will disappoint.
Yeah fair enough, I don't really know the Shifter, let alone the archetype.
Thankyou all for your input. From all of ya’lls input and some time taken to fully flesh out some build paths, I’ve settled on the Inquisitor build… it partly came down to ease of build… the Shifter is too feat starved to get a proper build on… for the magus it was an issue of a surprising lack of usable arcanas with the nature bonded archetype (since it has no arcane pool)… the shaman was in this weird limbo state where it had a large number of gaps in the build as well as a large amount of things vying for the same feat or hex slot, not to mention my general dislike of prepared spellcasting looming over my shoulder… the terrakineticist could be quite fun, but knowing the fact that we will cover practically every terrain type atleast once in Kingmaker, it would require a lot more book keeping than I really want for this campaign…
A few key points I feel I should make on a couple of the options ai was looking at though…
The Verdant Shifter: I am well aware of how “bad” this archetype is considered to be in comparison to the base shifter, and quite frankly I don’t care. The concept of the archetype fit the character quite well and was highly reflective of how she would have been had I taken her into a upfront and direct approach. An earlier concept for this character actually had her as a Ghoran Leaf Shifter, but unfortunately Ghoran isn’t a permitted race for this campaign, so when I opted to make her as a Gathlain instead the Leaf Shifter archetype was no longer a valid option…
The Terrakineticist: I really do love the idea behind this archetype, and some day I will certainly make a character using it… and when I do that I just might pick up Kinetic Blade… but if I had gone with it for this character, Kinetic Blade was far from a priority… My intention had I chosen Terrakineticist was to embrace the blaster/caster aspect and go full ranged. In fact I spent the most time deciding between Inquisitor or Kineticist in the end…
The Magus: Sure the party is fairly melee heavy as is… but as others have noted we are a bit scarce in the arcane department… however despite Magus being an arcane class, I wouldn’t have viewed my character as an arcane caster really… the idea was more that she was basically channeling nature through her staff and her “spellbook” would have served more as a meditative aid in a sense… largely consisting of notes on different ways in which she can channel natural magic. If it helps any, think about her as a Hippie that just learned she can use magic and has taken to using magic to protect the wild.
The Inquisitor: So this was actually the original plan I had for the character… her whole origin initially was spawned by a joke that came amour when I first saw the Green Faith Marshal archetype… “Nobody expects the Druidic Inquisition!” … and it spiraled from there… at the time I was making a backup character for our gestalt campaign and she was going to be a melee oriented Inquisitor//Shifter… but as time went on and it became clear that my character in that campaign was likely to be the last to ever die (monks in gestalt campaigns are OP), I put the character on the back burner… when we decided Kingmaker would be our next campaign, I figured this might be a good time to revise the character… we decided no gestalt this time, so the inquisitor and shifter builds separated into two different build paths, and the idea of going ranged with the inquisitor path became very appealing to me for some reason… at first I basically just scrapped the shifter route entirely, but as other members of the party were submitting their character ideas I found myself looking at alternative options for my build… but I guess as the saying goes “the best ideas are usually the first ones”