Will be staring a short (levels 1-7ish) undead slayer campaign and I’m curious what possible atypical characters (builds) the PF2 community has thought up and/or played. This campaign will involve the free archetype feature, though not required in your submissions.
Thanks in advance for those who share their fantastical ideas!
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Will be staring a short (levels 1-7ish) undead slayer campaign and I’m curious what possible atypical characters (builds) the PF2 community has thought up and/or played. This campaign will involve the free archetype feature, though not required in your submissions.
Thanks in advance for those who share their fantastical ideas!
Divine casters and champions will really shine for base classes, as will the Spirit Instinct Barbarian. Book of the Dead also contains a bunch of relevant archetypes for hunting,controlling, or becoming undead. There also anti undead options in the various Knights of Lastwall themed archetypes.
For heritage, consider gravewarden dwarves or duskwalker.
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I think there's a flaw in the premise, since "undead slaying" leads to picking fairly typical abilities, and those abilities stand out strong enough it's hard to bypass them! That said...
I suppose a Monk with Sacred Ki might be atypical. Get Ki blast of course for those hordes, w/ Good vs. standard undead w/ no risk of hurting your own team and go back to force damage vs. immaterial.
The Monk's high saves at low levels would start them off well vs. all the strange attacks undead have, plus they could be built to target Weaknesses/bypass DR pretty easily.
Cleric of Nethys might be a bit atypical too, yet they'd have Magic Missile available for force damage plus the standard anti-undead goodies.
Inventor might be useful w/ a Construct Companion, as those would be immune to lots of the carrier effects undead inflict like disease, drain, or even necromancy as a whole. It wouldn't benefit from what I suppose would be frequent uses of AoE Heal, so it balances. The companion could do all the poking about rotting corpses and other unhealthy areas.
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Ghost Charges and Bottled Sunlight have enough going for them in such a campaign that it might be worth putting together a bomber - alchemist if you want to go all-in, or investigator if you don't. Small quantities of splash damage can suddenly become very nice indeed if you can consistently hit weaknesses with them. Possibly consider Dual-Weapon Warrior for your archetype if you can't come up with anything better.
Summoner (psychopomp eidolon) is another one that's a bit unusual but both fits the concept and has a nice bit of power for it.
Spirit Instinct Barbarians likewise get access to some of that sweet, sweet built-in positive damage.
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Spirit barbarians can also grapple ghosts, 'nough said. Double down with the Wrestler archetype and go to town.
Hmm. I suppose a properly build psychopomp eidolon could do the same.
for that matter, non-psychopomp eidolons could use Energy Heart to get access to that damage type too... though it's a bit steep of a cost if you're not fighting undead *exclusively*.
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Luchador Spirit Barbarian/Wrestler whose arch-nemesis is a Grappling Spirit named El Muerte.
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I don't think that all that many undead are actively weak to positive energy - zombies of course, but let's face it, zombies are not too difficult to fight anyway. Still very satisfying. So while it's not bad to have positive damage, you won't be in too much trouble if you don't.
Incorporeal is another matter, that's a lot of resistance. Ghost touch runes might come up relatively often.
Good damage doesn't trigger weaknesses per se, but it'll almost always just be effective damage. And you might run into the occasional fiend when the GM is looking to spice things up beyond only using undead all the time.
One particular build I'd be interested in trying would be a Pharasmin redeemer with the dual-weapon warrior archetype, focused on double daggers. Because it's your favored weapon they're d6, agile, finesse, thrown, versatile p/s, so pretty good. You could divert from the standard low dex fullplate build a bit, and actually keep up your dex and have a thrown option as well.
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I don't think that all that many undead are actively weak to positive energy - zombies of course, but let's face it, zombies are not too difficult to fight anyway. Still very satisfying. So while it's not bad to have positive damage, you won't be in too much trouble if you don't.
Incorporeal is another matter, that's a lot of resistance. Ghost touch runes might come up relatively often.
Good damage doesn't trigger weaknesses per se, but it'll almost always just be effective damage. And you might run into the occasional fiend when the GM is looking to spice things up beyond only using undead all the time.
One particular build I'd be interested in trying would be a Pharasmin redeemer with the dual-weapon warrior archetype, focused on double daggers. Because it's your favored weapon they're d6, agile, finesse, thrown, versatile p/s, so pretty good. You could divert from the standard low dex fullplate build a bit, and actually keep up your dex and have a thrown option as well.
- Zombies are weak to positive
- Skeletons are resistant to a bunch of things that aren't positive- Ghosts are resistance to *even more things* (but not positive)
- Severed heads are (slightly) weak to positive
- Vampires have resist physical (which positive is not)
You wont' get anything extra on ghouls or crawling hands, but in this "just check a smattering of stuff" technique that I used to scan through, I'm seeing that a fair number of lower-level undead either have vuln to positive or resist to a fair number of other things.
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Undead being weak to positive is a nice plus, but quite a few of the positive damaging spells have undead make basic saving throws. So on a critical fail, they are taking double damage anyways. Still pretty good, unless they make their save and only take half. Lol. But that's even for those who don't have explicit weakness.
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And a lot of undead have bad saving fort saves.
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Unorthodox builds for an Undead Slaying campaign... A Skeleton anything.
On a more serious note though, a Gunslinger with a Scattergun might actually be not that bad. On top of having access to whatever damage type they need, Munitions Crafting gives access to Ghost Charges for Positive Damage and if you allow it (Uncommon) Pressure Bombs for Force, and at level 4 with Alchemical Shot can even inflict the Scattergun's Xd8 with 10' splash plus 1d6 Persistent of them on Strikes (8 free shots a day at level 4 if they don't use Reagents on ammo instead, plus however many they buy or craft normally). Bonus Points on the Ghost Charges that since it's Positive damage the Fail condition of you taking damage instead won't actually matter (unless you do like my initial joke and go Skeleton, or Dhampir).
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I note, incidentally, that for intangible undead, if you have access to positive damage, you don't really need access to force damage. Once you have the ghost charges, whether or not your GM signs off on pressure bombs is not particularly important.
Oh, and it's the exact opposite of atypical, but Cloistered Cleric (heal font) is a pretty obvious win, especially once you start takign the appropriate supporting feats.
Ghost Eater, Ghost Hunter, and Exorcist are all potentially interesting as archetypes.
Undead being weak to positive is a nice plus, but quite a few of the positive damaging spells have undead make basic saving throws. So on a critical fail, they are taking double damage anyways. Still pretty good, unless they make their save and only take half. Lol. But that's even for those who don't have explicit weakness.
Forcing the enemy to take damage on everything but a crit in their favor is pretty nice in its own way... especially if they have an appropriate vuln.
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A specific theme I came up with was a Hellsing Alucard ripoff/homage of a human damphyr gun wielding Champion (Paladin) who's trying to cure themselves of their undead half. Oath against Undead, ranged retributive strike, and a little gunslinger/gun user archetyping to make more of a bang.
My first full release 2e character was an Angelic (later psychopomp) Sorcerer who freaking hated undead with a passion, and had positive and negative based spells in his repertoire in equal measure. Fun character, so sad his campaign ended early due to IRL nonsense...
