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[scriver]

What I want is to add sneak attack damage to the Magus weapon-crits-spell-damage-multiplies ability, by the way. Because why not.

[Sirian]

I'm annoyed that Fencing Grace only works on light/piercing weapons, but Finesse Training works on anything compatible with weapon finesse -- so if I want to add my dex bonus to damage, I'll have to go rogue for 3 levels. My character probably would have been better off with a rapier, but the elven curved blade looks cool, and looking cool is more important than stats, right?

Interestingly, I found that if you have the exotic proficiency for the dueling sword (the same that aldori dueling masters use), you qualify for Finesse and Slashing grace, which completely replaces Str with Dex for both attack and damage bonuses.

Even more interesting, if you play the Sword Saint magus subclass, you can select it as your chosen weapon at level 1 and gain the full proficiency without the martial and exotic proficiency feats. There's even an exclusive "Aldori dueling mastery" feat. Considering the scenario, I can imagine those dueling swords being available in good quality too.

The only downside is that the dueling sword doesn't have the best crit range like the rapier (19-20 instead of 18-20), but it has a better damage range (1-8 instead of 1-6).

Sword Saint is pretty fascinating too, you only need Dex and Int and you don't wear any armor but you get all sorts of cool bonuses and gimmicks (and spells).

I'm actually considering restarting as a sword saint, because the eldritch scion has been really butchered from what it should be when they used the sorcerer bloodlines to replace the "bloodrager" stuff. For instance, the arcane bloodline (which I selected) has redundant stuff that overlaps with the magus part : at level 20 you get both "True Magus" and "Arcane Apotheosis". The first one gives you auto success on concentration check for defensive casting (like a touch spell) and the second gives auto success on all spell or spell like concentration checks... serious overlap, which happens because the devs were lazy (it also overlaps with the spell combat concentration bonuses from the magus part). The info text for eldritch scion is even using the word 'sorcerer' on the bloodline parts, you can tell that they copy-pasted the whole thing without checking.

[Kanil]

Interestingly, I found that if you have the exotic proficiency for the dueling sword (the same that aldori dueling masters use), you qualify for Finesse and Slashing grace, which completely replaces Str with Dex for both attack and damage bonuses.

Which also doesn't work with the elven curved blade. Bleh.

I'm playing a sword saint, it's a fun class. Their AC is exceptional, higher than even a full plate/shield fighter when properly buffed. Doesn't have the HP to outright replace your meat shield, though. Still, it's fun -- go for it.

[sambojin]

For those wondering about the mechanics, Pathfinder does have an open/free documentation thing going.

I'd recommend a phone app. It probably doesn't have everything, but the Pathfinder Open Reference app will tell you plenty you need to know to min/max the hell out of this.

Not saying its all going to work exactly like tabletop, but it'll give you an idea of what's good. And having it on your phone/tablet is usually quicker than tabbing out (and no crashes!).

(PF has sort of ended up in the 3.5e basket for me these days. Just too much stuff and too fiddly compared to 5e. Too much stuff to know. But I probably will grab this game at some point, just because it sounds so fully featured compared to many other cRPGs)

[ChairmanPoo]

I shouldn't have to look at obscure tsbletop documentation. Everything shouldnbe in game

[sambojin]

No, seriously, I think they wanted to make it accessible. So you can just try stuff out.

But if you wanted to min/max the hell out of it, they'd have to include pretty much that entire document. Which would have made it less accessible. So they didn't. They just let you try stuff out. You'll find a character build you like, and it gives the game itself plenty of replayability, even as a single player game.

You don't know just how much stuff there is in Pathfinder, do you? There's lots.

[ChairmanPoo]

And all of it poorly documentated in-game. The game is not highly tolerant of "trying stuff out", unless by that you mean "restart and reroll"

[Majestic7]

Yeah, not being able to respec your characters makes it possible to fuck things up for good. Although that has always been a D&D/Pathfinder feature, since the game is so much based on optimizing your builds to a stupid degree.

A new patch is out, but it doesn't fix any of the bugs I've cried about. Waa waa waa. Still happy to see constant updates, though.

[Ghills]

I'm annoyed that Fencing Grace only works on light/piercing weapons, but Finesse Training works on anything compatible with weapon finesse -- so if I want to add my dex bonus to damage, I'll have to go rogue for 3 levels. My character probably would have been better off with a rapier, but the elven curved blade looks cool, and looking cool is more important than stats, right?

Interestingly, I found that if you have the exotic proficiency for the dueling sword (the same that aldori dueling masters use), you qualify for Finesse and Slashing grace, which completely replaces Str with Dex for both attack and damage bonuses.

Even more interesting, if you play the Sword Saint magus subclass, you can select it as your chosen weapon at level 1 and gain the full proficiency without the martial and exotic proficiency feats. There's even an exclusive "Aldori dueling mastery" feat. Considering the scenario, I can imagine those dueling swords being available in good quality too.

The only downside is that the dueling sword doesn't have the best crit range like the rapier (19-20 instead of 18-20), but it has a better damage range (1-8 instead of 1-6).

Sword Saint is pretty fascinating too, you only need Dex and Int and you don't wear any armor but you get all sorts of cool bonuses and gimmicks (and spells).

I'm actually considering restarting as a sword saint, because the eldritch scion has been really butchered from what it should be when they used the sorcerer bloodlines to replace the "bloodrager" stuff. For instance, the arcane bloodline (which I selected) has redundant stuff that overlaps with the magus part : at level 20 you get both "True Magus" and "Arcane Apotheosis". The first one gives you auto success on concentration check for defensive casting (like a touch spell) and the second gives auto success on all spell or spell like concentration checks... serious overlap, which happens because the devs were lazy (it also overlaps with the spell combat concentration bonuses from the magus part). The info text for eldritch scion is even using the word 'sorcerer' on the bloodline parts, you can tell that they copy-pasted the whole thing without checking.

That's really disappointing.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think I will try a scaled fist/Dragon disciple character, with a level of archeologist to qualify for DD

[scriver]

I think I'm gonna restart this game as an Aldori Defender 1/Eldritch Rogue the rest. Seems reasonable, right?

Maybe go to arcane trickster. Haven't looked at it yet as it isn't lockable by default and I'm to lazy to go to the pfsrd.

Kingmaker have not implemented multiclass xp penalties, right?

edit: Lol, I got confused and forgot eldritch Scoundrel is a rogue sublclass, not Magus. Well, there went that. Still, an Magus Bowman/Rogue delivering sneak attack critable touch attacks with their bow could be fun.

An Aldef/Magus/Rogue combination is still possible of course but a bit too dippy for my taste. I don't even want to calculate how many levels until I'm actually able to use it for the combination I want to use it for.

[Hanzoku]

Pathfinder doesn't have multiclass XP penalties. You won't get your favored class bonus (locked to +1HP) unless you're leveling the class with the most levels in your build, but that's it.

The Arcane Trickster prestige class is fairly well locked down by Octavia. 1 Rogue / 9 Wizard / 10 Arcane Trickster is ideal, and only takes one feat (Accomplished Sneak Attacker) to avoid having to put any more rogue levels in.

[scriver]

Oh and now I want to make a Magus Monk and deliver magic attacks with my punches

edit:

The Arcane Trickster prestige class is fairly well locked down by Octavia. 1 Rogue / 9 Wizard / 10 Arcane Trickster is ideal, and only takes one feat (Accomplished Sneak Attacker) to avoid having to put any more rogue levels in.

That's like saying the Eldritch Scion class is "locked down" by Orchole Guy. It's irrelevent to if I want to play with one.

And a Magus-less trickster specifically do not get the extra critable touch attacks, which is why I want to shove Magus in there. Otherwise it would have been a lot more straight-forward.

On the other hand, I just looked and it turns out the Duelling Sword do not get a expanded crit range, only the usual one for swords (19-20x2). So including Aldef in it was pointless. I will either remove it or exchange it for a regular Fighter dip and specialize in the Estoc instead.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Isn't Monk absolutely terrible or is that one of the things that Pathfinder fixed? In D&D 3.5 they require so many different attributes to be effective, Strength for damage, Dexterity/Constitution for defense, Wisdom/Charisma for abilities, etc, etc, and their abilities are on the lackluster side even when they are effective. So I assume that Pathfinder tried to improve them due to how obviously bad they were.

[scriver]

Okay, this is so significant it requires a double post: I made said Eldef/Rogue/Magus as a merc companion ingame to test it out (which is when I realised said thing about Duelling Sword crit range above) and I just now encountered my first enemy that didn't get killstolen by my main character before the merc had a chance to go at it, and...

It turns out that she gets the double amount of sneak attack dice. Probably because when she uses her Magus Weapon-Touch Attack ability, the weapon attack and the Touch Attack are delivered as two separate attacks made at the same time. And you get sneak attack dice on both of them.

So my merc did 1d8+6 (weapon) + 3d6 (sneak attack) slashing damage, plus 3d4 (Corrosive Touch spell) + 3d6 (sneak attack) acid damage.

Isn't Monk absolutely terrible or is that one of the things that Pathfinder fixed? In D&D 3.5 they require so many different attributes to be effective, Strength for damage, Dexterity/Constitution for defense, Wisdom/Charisma for abilities, etc, etc, and their abilities are on the lackluster side even when they are effective. So I assume that Pathfinder tried to improve them due to how obviously bad they were.

I dunno, it wasn't a serious thought. The idea of punching magic just appeals to me.

Also thanks for making my post not a double post any more, by the way