| Grakul |
Hi everyone,
Looking to build a character who uses throwing daggers as his main combat style. Gestalt game, going for Warpriest (WP) + Swashbuckler Flying Blade(SW).
With my GM ruling that I get the bonus feats from each class (Max one per level), I have a bunch of feats to play with:
LVL 1: Feat 1 + Human
LVL 2: -
LVL 3: Feat 2 + WP bonus
LVL 4: SW bonus
LVL 5: Feat 3
LVL 6: WP bonus
LVL 7: Feat 4
LVL 8: SW bonus
LVL 9: Feat 5 + WP bonus
LVL 10: -
LVL 11: Feat 6
LVL 12: 1 bonus feat, either from SW or WP
Full BAB from SW, River Rat trait, Whetstone, SW weapons training and WP Sacred weapon boosting damage/hit, SW Finesse and WP focus weapon at lvl 1.
MAD character, but have not picked my stats so far.
Looking at Quick Draw, Precise Shot, Point Blank Shot, Two-Weapon Fighting, Close-Quarters Thrower, Improved Initiative, Weapon Specialization, Critical Focus, Distance Thrower, Dodge, Mobility and Combat Reflexes so far.
Am I missing any important thrower feats? Do I have any feats that are useless? And in which order would you prioritize the feat's?
In advance, thanks for any help :)
| Avoron |
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Not sure what your deity is, but if it's possible for you to worship Pharasma, Deific Obedience will be a great help.
Rapid Shot is strictly better than Two-Weapon Fighting, because it's cheaper and lets you use Precise Strike. If you end up having extra feats, you might want to take the Two-Weapon Fighting line as well, to complement your full BAB, static bonuses to damage, and need for criticals to regain panache. But that has its downsides, so I would be wary about investing too much into it.
Assuming you have Combat Reflexes by that point, you might want to take Signature Deed (Disrupting Counter) to really mess with your attackers. This is basically a better version of Come and Get Me and is definitely worth the feat.
Along that line, Disrupting Counter can combine really well with False Opening.
A Gestalt Swashbuckler and Warpriest has an excellent action economy, and you'll end up having an opportunity to use fervor at the beginning of each combat. As the old saying goes, fervor leads to divine power, divine power leads to luck bonuses, and luck bonuses lead to taking the Fate's Favored Trait.
If you find yourself having swift actions free even after fervoring what you want to fervor (you must not have been riposteing enough, why haven't you been riposteing enough?), you might even want to grab Quicken Blessing eventually, depending on your blessing, so that you get more opportunities to full-attack.
If you haven't been riposteing enough, this is probably because of low panache, which you have because of your low Charisma, which you have because of your MADness. This also interferes with your Disrupting Counter use before 11th level. The most straightforward way to deal with this is just to take Extra Panache, but you might also need to coordinate with your team members to leave killing blows for you.
But the best way of becoming less MAD is to ditch Strength entirely. Grab an Agile dagger and a Blinkback Belt, and you can get Dex to damage on both melee and ranged attacks. A bit pricy, but definitely worth it, because you can then just dump strength.
With a low Strength you won't qualify for Distance Thrower, but you can just take Far Shot and maybe even get a distance weapon to compensate if you find yourself throwing long distances frequently. Although hopefully you'll be in the thick of combat more often than not once you pick up Close-Quarters Thrower.
Whether or not you want Deadly Aim depends on how often you're hitting already and how much damage you already deal. But if you find yourself rarely missing (particularly if you did decide to go with Pharasma's Deific Obedience), you might want to take the feat to hit a little bit harder.
One last thing: the human warpriest alternate favored class bonus is fantastic, giving you an extra bonus feat every 6 levels. This gives you even more options for effective feat distribution.
| Anonymous Visitor 163 576 |
I'm not in love with close-quarters thrower. If you get backed into a corner, you could just go to town with weapon finesse and twf.
Rapid shot and Twf stack, you want both.
Weapon finesse is also good if you ever need to do, say, bludgeoning damage.
And don't forget, with your excellent aim, you'll do well with alchemists fire and holy water. Don't let dr stop you.
| Grakul |
Thank you so much for you insight Avoron, really useful advice.
After reading your post my plan looks like this:
LVL 1: Feat 1 (Quick Draw) + Human(Point Blank Shot)
LVL 2: -
LVL 3: Feat 2 (Rapid Shot) + WP bonus (Deific Obediance)
LVL 4: SW bonus (Precise Shot)
LVL 5: Feat 3 (Weapon Specialization)
LVL 6: WP bonus (Dodge)
LVL 7: Feat 4 (Close-Quarter Thrower)
LVL 8: SW bonus (Combat Reflexes)
LVL 9: Feat 5(Far Shot) + WP bonus (Mobility)
LVL 10: -
LVL 11: Feat 6 (Signature Deed (Disrupting Counter))
LVL 12: 1 bonus feat, either from SW or WP (?)
Any further suggestions/mistakes I have done?
One question about Deific Obediance: Pharasma's obedience needs the name of someone recently born and someone that recently died. How does your character get this knowledge ingame? Knowledge local? Any low level divination?
Looking at Pharasma's domains, Knowledge looks interesting. Are any of her other domains useful for a warpriest?
| Avoron |
Anonymous Visitor, you're right that Close-Quarters Thrower definitely isn't necessary early on. But as you get higher level, it tends to become more helpful. Part of this is just because you'll begin to rack up combat abilities that only apply on ranged attacks: Point-Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, etc. But there will also be situations when you will be threatened but still unable to reach your intended target with melee attacks. You might be surrounded by summoned minions while the squishy caster stands behind them blasting happily away. You might be standing 15 feet away from a stone giant. Sure, Subtle Throw can help out in emergencies, but then you'll burn through your panache (and swift actions) even more quickly.
Plus, Close-Quarters Thrower can let you pull off some fun False Opening shenanigans.
Two-Weapon Fighting might be the best option, but it has some serious drawbacks, even ignoring the feat cost. It costs twice as much to enchant your weapons. You take an additional -2 to hit and lose access to all Precise Strike damage. It also lowers your AC by preventing you from using an enchanted buckler.
Oh, and one more feat to grab, once you qualify: Improved Precise Strike.
| Avoron |
The knowledge blessing can be really interesting and useful, especially because you can't afford to have an intelligence that's even passable.
For your other domain, I would suggest Repose, and here's why:
Once you can afford it, you can make your dagger conductive. Then, whenever you are able to interrupt a full-attack against you with Disrupting Counter or Opportune Parry and Riposte, you can conduct Gentle Rest through your dagger to stagger your opponent without a save, preventing them from completing their full-attack.
And it lasts for a full round, so against enemy bosses you could follow up by using it again on your turn, causing them to fall asleep and miss a round of combat (and possibly drop items and/or fall prone, depending on your GM's interpretation of what sleeping implies).
As for your other question, if we consider recent births or deaths to be common rumors, then you can probably see if you know them already with a DC 15 Knowledge (local) check (which you could take 10 on). If you fail, you could probably attempt a DC 10 Diplomacy check to gather information, which would take 1d4 hours in an appropriate location. You can also take 10 on this check, and you can retry as much as you want.
Remember that you can reuse these names until they're no longer considered "recent," so you should be able to take care of this through these sorts of mundane methods outside of actual gameplay.
If a situation does come up where you can't get access to the necessary names in a mundane way (maybe you just escaped from prison), there are a few fairly low-level divination spells that could help out a bit, such as Seek Thoughts, Blood Biography, and Commune with Birds.