I haven’t played D&D/Pathfinder in years. I have an opportunity to play in a PF2 game with my old gaming group; we used to play PF1 weekly. I’d like to recreate an old character of mine: a dwarf monk with the sensei, qi gong, drunken brawler, and four winds archetypes, who took every possible grapple related feat (e.g. snapping turtle style).
The three most important aspects of the character, mechanically speaking, are:
1. Bard-like abilities (sensei archetype)
2. Mystic abilities (qi gong ki spells), and
3. Insane grappling skillz <— this is probably the most important mechanical part of the character.
Of lesser importance (this stuff can just be flavour if it can’t fit mechanically):
4. Drunken master stuff,
5. Elemental stuff (e.g. elemental fist and elemental qi gong spells)
6. Giant hatred stuff (this was for Rise of the Runelords, and the character’s backstory was all must-get-revenge-against-the giants-for-murdering-my-clan).
I’m thinking bard with the monk multiclass archetype, or monk with the bard archetype is the obvious play here. A bard with some other grapple focused archetype might work too. However, I have essentially zero PF2 system mastery and don’t really know where to start with the specifics.
I think the GM is going to give us a free archetype. Any suggestions you have (feats, spells, etc.) are greatly appreciated!
Edited to add: it occurs to me that a monk with the marshall archetype might be a good option too.
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Monk/Bard works, though you wouldn't have Inspire Courage until level 8; a long time to wait for a campaign presumably starting at level 1 for new players.
I would actually recommend Monk/Psychic for this. You can get Amped Guidance right at level 2 with the dedication which will give you your Bard-esque support ability. Amped Message is an alternative choice, though you wouldn't be able to give your allies extra Strikes until level 8.
At level 8 you can use Advanced Thoughtform to get Psi Strikes, which is a feat that Monks have particularly strong synergy with.
The grappling stuff can be handled through your Monk feats, taking things like Flurry of Maneuvers and Whirling Throw. There's also the Wrestler archetype depending on how your GM feels about using different archetypes for your main class feats and your free archetype feats.
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Thanks! Psychic and wrestler weren’t on my radar, I’ll take a look!
Re: starting level, I think we’re going to play seven dooms, which starts at lvl 4 I believe.
Re: monk/bard, not getting inspire courage until lvl 8 is a bummer, but Song of Strength is available at lvl 4 as a consolation prize and should synergize with grappling, right? Grappling is an athletics check in PF2, isn’t it?
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A couple of things I would throw out for purposes of expectation management:
"Insane grappling skillz" ... PF2 doesn't support the same style of character building that PF1 does where you can build a character that never fails at a certain thing. The best PF2 grapple builds will still fail their grapple checks between 30% - 60% of the time depending on how challenging of an enemy they are facing.
Bard is a full caster class. Fortunately that doesn't affect their skill proficiencies, so building for grapple will still work. But their weapon proficiency lags behind the more martial classes. So you can grapple, but you won't be doing much weapon damage. In very difficult fights your most effective contributions to winning the fight will still be your spellcasting - not your grappling.
Song of Strength is available at lvl 4 as a consolation prize and should synergize with grappling, right? Grappling is an athletics check in PF2, isn’t it?
Yes. Song of Strength will add bonus to Grapple and a few other combat maneuver checks.
I haven’t played D&D/Pathfinder in years. I have an opportunity to play in a PF2 game with my old gaming group; we used to play PF1 weekly. I’d like to recreate an old character of mine: a dwarf monk with the sensei, qi gong, drunken brawler, and four winds archetypes, who took every possible grapple related feat (e.g. snapping turtle style).
The three most important aspects of the character, mechanically speaking, are:
1. Bard-like abilities (sensei archetype)
2. Mystic abilities (qi gong ki spells), and
3. Insane grappling skillz <— this is probably the most important mechanical part of the character.Of lesser importance (this stuff can just be flavour if it can’t fit mechanically):
4. Drunken master stuff,
5. Elemental stuff (e.g. elemental fist and elemental qi gong spells)
6. Giant hatred stuff (this was for Rise of the Runelords, and the character’s backstory was all must-get-revenge-against-the giants-for-murdering-my-clan).I’m thinking bard with the monk multiclass archetype, or monk with the bard archetype is the obvious play here. A bard with some other grapple focused archetype might work too. However, I have essentially zero PF2 system mastery and don’t really know where to start with the specifics.
I think the GM is going to give us a free archetype. Any suggestions you have (feats, spells, etc.) are greatly appreciated!
Edited to add: it occurs to me that a monk with the marshall archetype might be a good option too.
Items 1-3 have been covered pretty well. It's worth mentioning that getting the Bless spell will basically give you a weak, limited-use version of Courageous Anthem (the renamed Inspire Courage) to hold you over until 8th if you want to go the Bard route.
For 4, Stumbling Stance is the standard drunken master option. It's a d8 agile finesse strike with free off-guard against enemies who hit you, and a follow-up feat for a free action super-feint with a small bonus. It's also got backstabber, so it does bonus damage against off-guard targets.
For 5, you run into the problem that your archetype is already spoken for in parts 1-3. Once you've finished up your other archetype, Student of Perfection is the usual ay for Monk to get elemental abilities. Fortunately, there's another option! Playing a character with the Suli versatile heritage (or Ifrit/Oread/Sylph/Undine/Talos/Ardande if you only want one specific element) gives you access to elemental abilities through your ancestry feats. Suli has a feat that lets them add elemental damage to their strikes once per day.
For 6, I'd recommend just taking Titan Wrestler and calling it a day. There are ways to get specific bonuses against giants, but those are mostly locked away in dwarf and some rare Ranger feats.