Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker Builds and Strats Thread

[Kyl Von Kull]

Should sword saint go with low str and high dex or try get high on both? estoc with finesse could be great.

Depends what armour you're going to use.

Oh wait, Sword Saint.

Hmm. Dex is better I think.

Yeah go Dex and try to pick up an Agile Estoc later on.

Agreed, I think it’s a mistake to try a STR based Sword Saint. I’m playing as a regular DEX based Magus with weapon finesse and fencing grace, which seems to work with spellstrike and spell combat even though I hear that it shouldn’t in the p&p version. Your Magus needs to be able to get up close and personal and a Sword Saint needs to do it without armor. You want that extra AC. For a Sword Saint, strength is a dump stat.

If you play as human, you’ll have enough feats to take slashing or fencing grace from level 3. The only problem in the prologue is that you should really make your chosen weapon an estoc, which means your Sword Saint won’t be able to use the rapier the game gives you. You’ll have to get by using only simple weapons until you can buy an estoc at Oleg’s.

Zero Credibility an estoc is better for a Magus than a dueling sword because it has a larger crit range (18-20 vs 19-20) and your crits apply to touch spells cast via spellstrike. If you take improved criticals down the line it becomes 15-20 as opposed to 17-20 for a dueling sword: estoc makes you a magical damage dealing machine. I think that’s worth the tradeoff of not getting the extra 2 AC from dueling mastery. Although for a sword saint I admit it’s a tougher call. By the time you’d get it at level 5, you’ll have mirror image and your spells will be renewable by tapping your arcane pool.

You get the chosen weapon by default, same with the clerics and inquisitors with their deities favored weapons. I was thinking 16 int, which is enough to get lvl 6 spells. I can't decide between sword saint, eldritch archer, tactician inquisitor and sacred huntsmaster...with mastodon abviously, my own miniature mammoth would fucking cool.

You do? They must have patched that in, because I got a rapier on day one.

Keep in mind that a Sword Saint adds his INT bonus to his armor class, so you get more out of intelligence than most other classes. Also, you’ll go through a lot of spells—I would go with 18 but you can get away with 16. Might want to play as an elf for the +2 to DEX and INT, but then you’ll have to wait a couple extra levels for fencing/slashing grace.

EDIT: you can take fencing/slashing grace from level 1 as a human.

Edit 2: here’s how I would do it:

STR: 7
DEX: 18
CON: 12
INT: 18
WIS: 10
CHA: 10

Your attack bonus will by +5 at level 1 with weapon finesse, and your DMG with an estoc will be 6-12 with fencing grace. 15% chance of rolling a critical.

You could dump some CHA and WIS down to 7 and 8, to send your DEX or INT to 20, but I like having a PC who doesn’t fail all of his diplomacy rolls and WIS under 10 makes you too vulnerable to anything that targets will (or dump WIS & CHA to 7 and 7 for 16 CON for a more resilient character). Kind of a glass cannon, but that’s the point. You only get 1 extra AC from your intelligence per level, until you hit your INT bonus, so by level 4 this guy gets 4 more AC.

At level 7, INT gives you a bonus to intiative. At level 9, you can apply your INT bonus to critical confirmation rolls. At level 11, your INT bonus lets you make additional attacks of opportunity per round. And, again, you really need those extra spells because you’ll be casting Shield and Mirror Image a lot and it’s a pain in the ass to carry enough rations to frequently rest in dungeons.

tl;dr if you’re a Sword Saint don’t stint on INT.

 

[Jarpie]

Should sword saint go with low str and high dex or try get high on both? estoc with finesse could be great.

Depends what armour you're going to use.

Oh wait, Sword Saint.

Hmm. Dex is better I think.

Yeah go Dex and try to pick up an Agile Estoc later on.

Agreed, I think it’s a mistake to try a STR based Sword Saint. I’m playing as a regular DEX based Magus with weapon finesse and fencing grace, which seems to work with spellstrike and spell combat even though I hear that it shouldn’t in the p&p version. Your Magus needs to be able to get up close and personal and a Sword Saint needs to do it without armor. You want that extra AC. For a Sword Saint, strength is a dump stat.

If you play as human, you’ll have enough feats to take slashing or fencing grace from level 3. The only problem in the prologue is that you should really make your chosen weapon an estoc, which means your Sword Saint won’t be able to use the rapier the game gives you. You’ll have to get by using only simple weapons until you can buy an estoc at Oleg’s.

Zero Credibility an estoc is better for a Magus than a dueling sword because it has a larger crit range (18-20 vs 19-20) and your crits apply to touch spells cast via spellstrike. If you take improved criticals down the line it becomes 15-20 as opposed to 17-20 for a dueling sword: estoc makes you a magical damage dealing machine. I think that’s worth the tradeoff of not getting the extra 2 AC from dueling mastery. Although for a sword saint I admit it’s a tougher call. By the time you’d get it at level 5, you’ll have mirror image and your spells will be renewable by tapping your arcane pool.

You get the chosen weapon by default, same with the clerics and inquisitors with their deities favored weapons. I was thinking 16 int, which is enough to get lvl 6 spells. I can't decide between sword saint, eldritch archer, tactician inquisitor and sacred huntsmaster...with mastodon abviously, my own miniature mammoth would fucking cool.

You do? They must have patched that in, because I got a rapier on day one.

Keep in mind that a Sword Saint adds his INT bonus to his armor class, so you get more out of intelligence than most other classes. Also, you’ll go through a lot of spells—I would go with 18 but you can get away with 16. Might want to play as an elf for the +2 to DEX and INT, but then you’ll have to wait a couple extra levels for fencing/slashing grace.

EDIT: you can take fencing/slashing grace from level 1 as a human.

Edit 2: here’s how I would do it:

STR: 7
DEX: 18
CON: 12
INT: 18
WIS: 10
CHA: 10

Your attack bonus will by +5 at level 1 with weapon finesse, and your DMG with an estoc will be 6-12 with fencing grace. 15% chance of rolling a critical.

You could dump some CHA and WIS down to 7 and 8, to send your DEX or INT to 20, but I like having a PC who doesn’t fail all of his diplomacy rolls and WIS under 10 makes you too vulnerable to anything that targets will (or dump WIS & CHA to 7 and 7 for 16 CON for a more resilient character). Kind of a glass cannon, but that’s the point. You only get 1 extra AC from your intelligence per level, until you hit your INT bonus, so by level 4 this guy gets 4 more AC.

At level 7, INT gives you a bonus to intiative. At level 9, you can apply your INT bonus to critical confirmation rolls. At level 11, your INT bonus lets you make additional attacks of opportunity per round. And, again, you really need those extra spells because you’ll be casting Shield and Mirror Image a lot and it’s a pain in the ass to carry enough rations to frequently rest in dungeons.

tl;dr if you’re a Sword Saint don’t stint on INT.

How would you build Eldritch Archer? low str, high dex and int too?

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Serus]

I found a really good build:

Human
Fighter

Pump STR

Even better, a Two-Handed Fighter instead of basic fighter for pure damage. You lose a bit of tankiness and iirc speed but you get a substantial increase in damage output.
Something like 20/12/16/x/10/x, human, start with power attack, cleave and cleave finishing (or weapon focus and take cleave finishing on level 2). Pump STR, 1 point in DEX if you want the 13DEX feats at some point. Use charge to get fast into melee range. Buff as needed. Add any feat that adds damage, and toughness for a little more HP. See things die very quickly.

 

[jungl]

have not tested but isn't dueling mastery useless for a magus. You can grab the shield spell and get a better bonus out of that in the long run then dueling mastery.

 

[Lagole Gon]

The builds you can do in this game... I usually like it, but... this... this is a bit too much for me...
Everyone gives Amiri 1 level in vivisectionist for +STR, enlarge and +k6 sneak attack...
Weird combinations disgusting in the eyes of gods...
This is the eight circle of munchkinism...
Multiclassing mongrels...
La creatura...

 

[Shadenuat]

The builds you can do in this game... I usually like it, but... this... this is a bit too much for me...
Everyone gives Amiri 1 level in vivisectionist for +STR, enlarge and +k6 sneak attack...
Weird combinations disgusting in the eyes of gods...
This is the eight circle of munchkinism...
Multiclassing mongrels...
La creatura...

Enlarge which she can't cast because of low INT (and of which potions are plentiful, and you can just use party teamwork to give it her), unless you later equip her with INT item.

Also, I believe that screws her BAB progression - you'll get extra attacks slower.

Rogue with enhanced sneak I can understand more.

But I just level her as barb/2-handed fighter and have no problems. With a Bite attack from Barb, complimented with Cloak of Winter Wolf (gives every bite attack of a user +1d6 cold damage and auto-trip) and acid gauntlets for extra 1d6 acid damage. Looks p. funny when she bites someone with +2d6 elemental damage or trips them.

 

[jungl]

multiclassing is pointless in pathfinder. Its not as strong as it is in 3rd edition and even there it was whatever. DnD games are not games I would play for character development depth its mostly all filler with most classes being identical to each other.

 

[Serus]

The builds you can do in this game... I usually like it, but... this... this is a bit too much for me...
Everyone gives Amiri 1 level in vivisectionist for +STR, enlarge and +k6 sneak attack...
Weird combinations disgusting in the eyes of gods...
This is the eight circle of munchkinism...
Multiclassing mongrels...
La creatura...

Most of those multiclassing shenanigans result with only limited increase in power. Sometimes it's not even that, just trading something for something else. There might be an exception or two but whatever. You can keep characters pure and they will be strong enough. I might not be a specialist of Pathfinder and have only played a few levels of P:K but I am 100% certain of that. Munchkinism is for people who enjoy it and is an art largely for that art's sake.

Edit: also the idea of a barbarian chick - who also is a "vivisectionist" brings some disturbing imagery... I'd say it's cool.

 

[Shadenuat]

The problem is there is a shitton of items that are obviously designed specifically to augment story companions in fairly powerful ways. If you don't take them into concideration when building them and just grab the low hanging fruit you might end up with something useless in the long run just because you wanted easier early game.

Everything that people do from what I've seen is done with that idea in mind ("Instead of using hundreds of scrolls and wands from my inventory, I am going to screw my spell progression and give my sorcerer a level of rogue for 1d6 sneak attack damage on my crossbow").

That, just like picking shit like weapon specialization in the beginning of the game (instead of planning it for endgame when you already gathered a collection of weapons to use) you have no knowledge about is just bad idea.

 

[Thal]

I think the general problem with "builds" is that people fail to realize that they aren't playing an mmorpg. Sure, you can plan a perfect level 20 build, but it hardly matters in the end. There is no pvp and there is no end game. The game just ends. How you get there is what actually matters. I'm sure many are willing to accept some trade-offs in power progression, but generally speaking, if you don't want to frustrate yourself, your build should be as viable at level 5 as at level 15.

This is also why I absolutely detest respec options. What's the point of an rpg when you can just scrap your character progression halfway through?

 

[glass blackbird]

The problem is there is a shitton of items that are obviously designed specifically to augment story companions in fairly powerful ways. If you don't take them into concideration when building them and just grab the low hanging fruit you might end up with something useless in the long run just because you wanted easier early game.

Everything that people do from what I've seen is done with that idea in mind ("Instead of using hundreds of scrolls and wands from my inventory, I am going to screw my spell progression and give my sorcerer a level of rogue for 1d6 sneak attack damage on my crossbow").

That, just like picking shit like weapon specialization in the beginning of the game (instead of planning it for endgame when you already gathered a collection of weapons to use) you have no knowledge about is just bad idea.

Haha, yeah, Octavia is pretty terrible

 

[Serus]

The problem is there is a shitton of items that are obviously designed specifically to augment story companions in fairly powerful ways. If you don't take them into concideration when building them and just grab the low hanging fruit you might end up with something useless in the long run just because you wanted easier early game.

Everything that people do from what I've seen is done with that idea in mind ("Instead of using hundreds of scrolls and wands from my inventory, I am going to screw my spell progression and give my sorcerer a level of rogue for 1d6 sneak attack damage on my crossbow").

That, just like picking shit like weapon specialization in the beginning of the game (instead of planning it for endgame when you already gathered a collection of weapons to use) you have no knowledge about is just bad idea.

Haha, yeah, Octavia is pretty terrible

Sneak attack works with touch spells as well though. And having 1d6 you can get a feat to get 2d6, right? It's a trade off, a level of rogue gives something but makes you get some spell slots and levels slower by that 1 level.

 

[glass blackbird]

Yes, and additionally you can use that to get a prestige class, so i think on the whole it's fine, but I wish she had just been a straight wizard so that could be my choice.

 

[Shadenuat]

Octavia is set up for a prestige which is powerful, but unless you also plan yourself for that prestige it is different.

 

[Serus]

Yes, and additionally you can use that to get a prestige class, so i think on the whole it's fine, but I wish she had just been a straight wizard so that could be my choice.

Well, I don't want to start the discussion about custom mercs but having ONE custom merc won't cut you off from a lot of NPC-related content (you still have 4 story NPCs) but it allows you to build that pure caster, the existing NPC roster is lacking.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Yosharian Sorry If I bother you, but I remember you mentioned that Alchemist Vivisectionst is awesome and I wanted to ask you if there can be good multiclasses with it or only pure class with kit is way to go?

Also, I wanted to ask thoughts about arcane trickser, but based on rogue/sorc, not rogue/wizard, because even in PnP manuals there is not much more information about it. Yeah it mention that this is descent, but not much.

 

[glass blackbird]

Yes, and additionally you can use that to get a prestige class, so i think on the whole it's fine, but I wish she had just been a straight wizard so that could be my choice.

Well, I don't want to start the discussion about custom mercs but having ONE custom merc won't cut you off from a lot of NPC-related content (you still have 4 story NPCs) but it allows you to build that pure caster, the existing NPC roster is lacking.

Yeah, that's always an option, though actually I made my own cleric since Tristian is demonstrably terrible and Herrim is kind of underwhelming.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Well, I don't want to start the discussion about custom mercs but having ONE custom merc won't cut you off from a lot of NPC-related content (you still have 4 story NPCs) but it allows you to build that pure caster, the existing NPC roster is lacking.

I think it even full merc team doesn't cut you from any content, I mean isn't you can return in location at any moment (except prologue castle) and do companion quests? Or I getting something wrong?

Yeah, that's always an option, though actually I made my own cleric since Tristian is demonstrably terrible and Herrim is kind of underwhelming.

Herrim not just terrible - he just suck, I have seen one particular guy making him druid to compensate his weakness.

 

[deuxhero]

Haven't touched the game, but using the wiki to know what is in it and applying PNP PF builds:
Slyvan Sorcerer 20 with Boon Companion as soon as you qualify. Sorcerer has some of the best buff spells in the game, even if they haven't implemented share spells (can anyone confirm if it's in or not?) and you're still a full caster.
Paladin 2/Sorcerer 4/Dragon Disciple 4/Eldritch Knight 10. Take Power Attack, Arcane Armor Training series (sucks in PNP, but apparently doesn't eat your swift action here. Someone can verify) then Cornugon Smash as soon as you qualify. 17/20 BAB (actually hits as often as a 19/20 with better damage thanks to strength boost of Dragon Disciple) and 16/20, casting wearing mithral medium armor, charisma (your casting stats) to saves and a smite once a day. Between the save bonus and 3/4 of the classes having a strong will save you can safely dump wisdom. Grab a two hander and smash.
Rogue 1/Wizard 3/Arcane Trickster 10/Wizard 6. Take Accomplished Sneak Attacker at level 3. Pretty basic, and apparently used by one of the companions.

From there make a melee cleric (no archetype. Shelyn with luck+protection or Gorum with 2 of Glory/Strength/War are your better picks) or herald caller (pick any domain that gives buffs, preferably party wide), mostly for healing long term conditions between days than heal boting, and some wilderness guy (ranger gives you an archer, druid gives more casting, barbarian works but it's more melee when you have battle cleric/summons, a paladin and animal companion) which are relatively straightforward.

Yosharian Sorry If I bother you, but I remember you mentioned that Alchemist Vivisectionst is awesome and I wanted to ask you if there can be good multiclasses with it or only pure class with kit is way to go?

Also, I wanted to ask thoughts about arcane trickser, but based on rogue/sorc, not rogue/wizard, because even in PnP manuals there is not much more information about it. Yeah it mention that this is descent, but not much.

Doable, but charisma synergy with rogue abilities is low, plus you get spells latter. Intelligence gives you more skill points and better skills.

 

[hell bovine]

Yes, and additionally you can use that to get a prestige class, so i think on the whole it's fine, but I wish she had just been a straight wizard so that could be my choice.

Hey, if not for her having that one level of rogue I wouldn't have even noticed you can sneak with spells.

deuxhero
I don't think this 'spell sharing' is in, or I just didn't find it with my sylvan sorceress. The animal companion was her level, so I don't think you need boon. The issue is that you don't level that fast early on (think Baldur's Gate), so I'd rather pick up offensive spells (e.g. laughter with the fey bloodline).

Edit: some kind soul on reddit has posted the spell lists for caster classes - names only, but at least you sort of know what to expect ar level up

Druid - has links to other classes at the bottom

 

[jungl]

anyone try a trip focused build with high strength and dex? The ranger companions dog fairly good at tripping enemies seen it trip a ancient wyvern. Can only imagine a character build around this can trip about everything in the game besides stuff without legs.

 

[glass blackbird]

anyone try a trip focused build with high strength and dex? The ranger companions dog fairly good at tripping enemies seen it trip a ancient wyvern. Can only imagine a character build around this can trip about everything in the game besides stuff without legs.

Trip is very powerful, especially since there's a feat to improve your tripping abilities.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Doable, but charisma synergy with rogue abilities is low, plus you get spells latter. Intelligence gives you more skill points and better skills.

Thank you for clarifying it, sadly charismatic rogue is not a thing it seems.

 

[Yosharian]

Yosharian Sorry If I bother you, but I remember you mentioned that Alchemist Vivisectionst is awesome and I wanted to ask you if there can be good multiclasses with it or only pure class with kit is way to go?

Also, I wanted to ask thoughts about arcane trickser, but based on rogue/sorc, not rogue/wizard, because even in PnP manuals there is not much more information about it. Yeah it mention that this is descent, but not much.

Vivisectionist is quite flexible, you can multi or single with it. I'm using a pure build.

Arcane Trickster: you can use Sorc, sure. I don't really rate Arcane Trickster though.