Greetings everyone! I hope you are all well!
We are planning on running the Hell's Rebels adventure path from level 1 all the way to the end.
I would like to ask you about the composition of the party we have, as I am a bit worried about the balance and integrity it has.
We have the following party members:
A Human Unchained Rogue who specializes in Two-Weapon Fighting.
A Half-Elf Skald who wields a greatsword in battle.
A Human Warpriest with the Arsenal Chaplain archetype who wields a glaive and specializes in attacks of opportunity with Combat Reflexes.
A Human Inquisitor with the Sanctified Slayer archetype who wields a longsword and a shield in battle.
I am afraid we might be a bit hampered when it comes to dealing with hordes of small enemies, and we do not have a very robust martial character. Do you think that such a party is capable of handling itself in battle and out of combat?
Thank you for your advice in advance!
The rogue is probably the weak link of the group. A rogue is a medium BAB class with no way to boost accuracy. Getting sneak attack on two weapon fighting is difficult so that puts his DPR even further behind. He is also not going to benefit from the skalds inspire rage. Between the skald and the inquisitor you have most of the out of combat skills covered. Other than traps what does the character do that one of the other characters cannot do better?
Other than the rouge this looks like a decent party. You have no full BAB classes. Everything but the rouge is a medium BAB class with 6th level casting. All the other classes have decent class abilities. The Skald can boost the combat ability of the warpriest and inquisitor.
Your one weakness is offensive arcane magic. My recommendation would be to replace the rogue with a magus. That would give you 4 medium BAB class with 6th level casting.
I'll be honest, I've never played that AP so I can't give you any advice specifically for it. But you have 3 casters, all of which with basic healing spells, and 2 that have access to condition removal spells. They all have buff spells too, which is handy. And any spells that they don't have can be UMD'd by the Rogue. So I think you're covered in that regard.
A horde is always going to be difficult for a small group without AoE spells, but I think you should be able to manage. Just try to keep the Rogue in flanking position. And if anyone has the feats to spare, getting a little battle buddy a la the Animal Ally feat can't hurt.
Your party is notably weak at range.
The skald and warpriest have proficiency in martial weapons and the inquisitor is proficient in a lot of ranged weapons. There is no reason they party cannot used ranged weapons when needed. The inquisitor’s bane works on any weapon. Most of the buff spells the inquisitor and warpriest will also be able to be used with ranged weapon. They may not have a dedicated archer, but the party does have some ranged combat ability.
Valid points.
I think you're covered with skills too. Rogues get 8 and Inquisitors get 6. So as long as no one dumps Int, you're good to go.
Skills are not going to be a problem for the party even without the rogue. The skald gets 4 per level and has Bardic Knowledge. The inquisitor gets 7 (after human bonus) per level and additional bonuses on intimidate, sense motive, tracking and monster lore. Even the warpriest gets 3 per level because of being human.
We TPK’d in the last part of book 3, so I can’t guide you on the entire AP, but it’s one of the ones where you all need to do social stuff (for the plot) AND all need to do sneaky stuff (because of the setup) AND fight (because APs have level appropriate fights) AND have the right stats for the additional subsystem that Paizo has tacked on to track how well your revolution is going. You can’t say ‘person X is the skill monkey so the rest of us don’t have to worry about that’ as you might in a more traditional adventure.
I really wanted to like the AP from the premise, but my actual play experience was that if you had enough skill monkeys to deal with the plot you couldn’t take the fights, and if you built a party for combat you failed at the plot stuff. It also has the worst bit of railroading I have seen in any AP.
The rogue is probably the weak link of the group. A rogue is a medium BAB class with no way to boost accuracy. Getting sneak attack on two weapon fighting is difficult so that puts his DPR even further behind.
I disagree here, TWF rogues can deal out huge amounts of damage, he just needs to concentrate on ways to get flanking/deny dex bonus.
I agree with the lack of arcane though, a magus or a straight up wizard would do well here.
The biggest problem I see with the rogue is that it does not offer much that other characters cannot already do. About the only thing that could not be covered by one of the other characters is disabling traps and sleight of hand. A human inquisitor will get almost as many skill points per level as the rogue and gets scaling bonuses on several of those skills including sense motive. With the right inquisition the inquisitor can be the face of the party while dumping CHA.
The inquisitor is a sanctified slayer so get studied target and sneak attack. At 8th level he gets a slayer talent so can even pick up trapfinding. At that point there is nothing the rogue can do the inquisitor cannot do better. Heroism is a 3rd level inquisitor spell that last for 10 minutes per level. Being able to get +2 on all skill checks in addition to all the other bonuses the inquisitor has makes him better at skills than the rogue.
In combat the inquisitor can use studied target, and bane to exceed anything the rogue can do with sneak attack. Plus, he can use solo tactics to get an extra dice of precision damage by using precise strike.
I don’t know the build of the inquisitor, but the fact he is taking the sanctified slayer archetype seems to indicate a rogue like build. If that is the case the rogue offers nothing unique to the party. A magus does offer something else no one in the party does. Offensive spells are always useful. As an INT based caster the magus is actually going to have decent number of skill points even though they only get 2 per level.
Just for fun I’m going to throw out Warlock Vigilante as an option. If u go Human you get 5 skills per level and they have good saves especially if you go with a Dex based build. They get 6th level arcane casting and have sneakyness built in to the class (especially if you take the Malleable Flesh talent). The Mystic Bolts aren’t the most powerful weapon but with a two-weapon fighting build (add Rapid Shot for an extra attack too) you can chuck quite a few of them and they go on touch AC by 5th level. They can be used in melee or ranged so that would cover the ranged deficit somewhat. You would need to invest in Deliquescent Gloves or Demonic Smiths gloves to boost their damage though (if u make one of them a Tattoo item you could have both). They can get a familiar so if you went with a Protector archetype you would improve your chances of survival. The Tattoo Chamber talent is kinda cool for sneaking in items in places ur not allowed to and if you put a wand (or multiple wands) in it you can use it without having to draw it or even have it in hand. That’s my 2cp anyway :)
I think this group could do ok. We don’t know who is playing what or how much they want their current choices. The rogue may be the most replaceable, but that guy may have no interest in playing the arcane caster this group could kind of use.
The warpriest will be important for removing conditions. The skald may be good at condition removal too depending on what he chooses.
The only thing that I'd do to change the Rogue is not to change their class, but to encourage them to pick up the Eldritch Scoundrel archetype. It'll grant you 6th level spell casting of the wiz/sor list (and give you access to fireball and other spells to help with large crowds). It's a good trade off and leaves you with a full compliment of characters that are pretty damn good at filling all the roles.
The Eldritch Scoundrel would give the character a unique roll that no one else is covering. But is probably going to make two weapon fighting difficult. The Eldritch Scoundrel is probably going to want a higher INT so getting a high enough DEX for improved two weapon fighting is going to be difficult. Switching to an elf my help with that.
I had considered recommending using arcane trickster, but that would also conflict with the desire to two weapon fight. Ultimately it really comes down to who wants to do what and why. The rogue may simply not like the class fantasy or extra homework of being a caster.
While inquisitors fit in very well in that AP, that would be the next character I'd consider swapping for something else.
The inquisitor would be the last character I recommend swapping. In reality they are better at skills than any other class. They get 6 skill points per level and a bonus of half their level on two other skills, plus tracking and the ability to add WIS to identify monsters. Sanctified Slayer gives them a bonus on bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival vs the target. Their primary STAT is WIS so trying to get something past them is incredibly difficult. Take improved monster lore and they get ½ their level to knowledge skills to identify monsters.
The usefulness of tracking can vary by a lot, but in my experiences it isn't worth much. The skald will functionally have more skill points with versatile performance. It also gets its bonuses to knowledge for all uses, not just identifying monsters. Inquisitor is a good class, but not really needed with this comp, especially if the rogue stays, who also has a lot of skills.
The inquisitor’s sense motive is going to be way higher than the rogue or skald can achieve. In an urban environment that skill is going to be worth a lot. Perception is also a WIS based skill so that is another skill the inquisitor will have the advantage on. Both of those skills can be boosted by studied target as can all knowledge skills relating to a target. The inquisitor can also make use of the skalds inspired rage while that will be mostly wasted on the rogue. Bane not only adds 2d6 damage, it also increases the enchantment bonus by +2. When the inquisitor gets greater bane the damage boost goes up by 2d6 to 4d6. The bonus to hit from studied target stacks with that of bane as do the sneak attack damage. At 12th level the inquisitor is getting +5 to hit and damage, and an extra 7d6 from bane and sneak attack. Throw in a few buff spells and it goes even higher.
The inquisitor can also detect alignments at will and can discern lies a number of rounds equal to his level. I would much rather have a skald and a inquisitor than a skald and a rogue.
The skald uses his charisma for sense motive with versatile performance, so pretty good. I can go on about various great things a skald can do too. The point is that the inquisitor isn't needed in this comp.
Why I really choose the skald above inquisitor here is spell kenning. That kind of versatility is just too important in a party with no full casters.
Too me both the skald and the inquisitor are my choices to keep. I would swap out the rogue first and the warpreist second. The inquisitor is STR based so will benefit more from the skald’s inspire rage than the unchained rogue with DEX to damage.
From what I understand you need more than one character with social skills for the AP. Both the skald and inquisitor excel in this area and both of them are better at it than the rogue will be. Trying to get something past a well-built inquisitor is extremely difficult. Fooling a rogue is fairly easy in comparison to fooling either of those classes.
To me other than the rogue this party has some serious synergy going. When the warpriest cast blessing of fervor and the skald grants inspire rage the whole party starts acting like full BAB classes. Then the inquisitor uses Bane and studied strike to boost himself up even farther. All three of the other characters have good fortitude and will saves. The will saves of the inquisitor and warpriest are going to be about as high as you can get. The rogue is definitely the one that needs to worry about will saves.
I recommended swapping out the rogue for a magus in my first post. The Idea of an entire party of medium BAB that are 6/9 casters is interesting. To me that is a balanced party. Having a party where all characters contribute in multiple ways and spreading out the roles among the charters is something not seen that often. But at the same time each character has something unique to contribute to the group. I also saw the potential for some decent synergy if the magus was STR based instead of DEX based. The skalds' ability to boost the whole group would be more potent in this group than most.
I have not played the adventure path.
This looks like a party that has come about by each player building the character they want to play. That is a perfectly valid approach to the game.
As for what is an optimal party, this is a long way from it imho.
I am pretty in tune with Azothath's post of 13/11.
To meet all the challenges PF is likely to throw up with 4 players you probably want-
1 a full arcane caster
2 a full divine caster
3 a very resilient melee character ie a tank
4 another melee character. This could be a number of things, barbarian, rogue, ninja or summoner for example.
This party consists of 4 characters suitable for 4 above. The lack of the power and versatility of full casters leaves big holes in capabilities.
I disagree with the idea a party needs either an arcane or divine caster. With all the spell casting options available in Pathfinder those classification no longer have the relevance they once had. Maybe if you are limited to core only those classifications have some relevance. But with the diversity of spell caster available from the latter books they quickly lose any meaning.
Classes like the witch and shaman get a mixture of what was once considered both arcane and divine spells. Many casters gain spells not normally on their base list which makes the classifications even less clear. An Oracle with the right mystery and curse can make a decent blaster. Throw in other types of casters and the arcane/divine groups become even less clear. Alchemy and occult magic make the distinctions even less relevant.
"Divine caster" is kind of vague, but you will certainly suffer without a party member who can heal conditions. And while you can replace most of that with magic items, that path will get rather expensive.
"Divine caster" is kind of vague
You're being to benign with the term "vague", it's utter nonsense to say "divine caster" when you mean "condition removal". Druid is lacking a bunch of condition removal spells (Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Curse, Remove Paralysis, Restoration), and an Oracle will have almost no condition removal spells in their spells known. Meanwhile, Witch has more condition removal than a Druid, as does Warpriest (obviously) and Alchemist/Inquisitor, and a Skald has Spell Kenning to grab Cleric spells. Not to mention there is no reason why you'd need all condition removal on the same character.
I've yet to encounter the need or even desire for "a very resilient melee character" , and while two melee creatures aren't bad to have, those don't have to be characters.
Of course, I see the idea to have a perfect solution to every challenge the party faces as folly. Do we play to have it the easiest way? Do we play to never struggle? Do we play to never have to overcome (in-game) hardships? I don't.
A skald can pretty much take care of any condition removal needed. In addition to Spell Kenning they are also a CHA based class with UMD as a class skill. A few points into UMD and the skald can use scrolls and of from multiple spell lists. The skald gets scribe scroll as a bonus feats so can use spell kenning to create any spell from the bard, cleric or wizard spell list.
Just for curiosity sake I sat down and built a party with a STR based Magus, a half elf Skald using an elven curve blade, a Human Arsenal Chaplain Warpreist wiulding a Guisarme focusing on trip, and a human sanctified slayer inquisitor with the Clandestine inquisition. From the looks of it the party would work very well. Give them a round to buff and they become nearly unstoppable.