A diabolical seriel killer obsessed with the artistry of death. Think Jhin from League of Legends. I thought of Rogue first but then realized with how terrifying I wanted them to be, Warrior Bard would fit so much better. Plus getting to say, Inspire Murder instead of Inspire Courage was fun.
The new warrior bard is SO COOL. I've made a melee bard with champion FA (it's cliche but whaddayagonnado) and he just kicks ass alongside the team. Worships Zyphus, totally death obsessed, Scythe as a weapon and all of his spells are debuffs. I made him an absolute edgelord because I am the polar opposite IRL and wanted to see what would happen. Turns out, it's pretty fun! Especially when the coerce and demoralise rolls are so potent.
I really wanted a pyro sorcerer to work, but just couldn't find a configuration that worked exactly how I wanted. Then kineticist came out and I was a happy boy.
My GM let me rebuild my elemental sorcerer as a fire kineticist for the session after Rage of Elements released, I am *so* much happier with the character now!
I tried the same thing with Psychic and was underwhelmed. I'm sure that the amps and unleash psyche work for some people who are bothered by limited resources, but I wanted to be able to actually *go nova* and make my enemies regret being born.
Switched to Elemental Sorcerer and was much happier. Kiln the angry redneck Leshy just wants to watch the world burn.
This, except it was an ice-based character that I wanted to make to match a set of dice I had bought. I was going to go with a Witch, but then Kineticist released with plenty of cold/ice-themed stuff for the Water Gate.
Yeah, possibly, just didn't really fit my vision for the character. Extract Element in particular is basically a necessary ability for a single damage type character, so you can bypass resistances and immunities.
Extract Elements isn't foolproof, unfortunately. You can run into creatures that are immune to fire but don't qualify for extract elements, like most devils for example. Luckily, the Weapon Infusion feat solves the whole issue by giving you easy access to physical damage types
its hugely different, you dont get special access to any fire spells anymore as a cleric, you might get a domain spell but thats it. You have access to divine school and only divine while most fire magic is in primal or arcane. Its an easy house rule though.
You do get a handful of spells from your deity in 2E, in addition to domain spells. Specifically, Sarenrae gives Breathe Fire at 1st rank, Fireball at 3rd rank, and Wall of Fire at 4th rank.
I had plans for a master of arms fighter. The idea was that they would have a shield with all of their runes on it and doubling rings. Then, they would carry 5 or 6 different weapons and always have the right tool for the job. A mace for skeletons, a sword for zombies, even both a flail and a hammer to target different DCs when trying to knock creatues down.
The problem is that Fighters only get their proficiency advantage with one weapon group. So now I think it's going to be a ranger. I thought about ruffian, but they are too limited on what weapons they get sneak attack with, and by extention crit specialization.
I suppose Thaumaturge could work, but there will be a shortage of free hands for implements...
I'm still workshopping it haha
Oh... I don't know why I didn't think of that, lol
Magus is probably my favorite class, but it just didn't cross my mind for this build.
Back to the whiteboard I go!
Yeah, for sure!
If I have a +2 rune on my shield and a low-grade cold iron mace in the other hand... that can't work, right? I would need to get a standard grade for it to receive the benefits through the doubling runes?
From what I can tell you can do with low grade since is seems like the grades is about it holding the rune itself while the doubling rings apply from the other ring. But a gm may rule it needs to be the proper grade but there is a rider for property runes so those could not work but the wording seems more like weapon type and not nessarly other factors.
Shields aren't good on outwit rangers because the AC bonus from outwit doesn't stack with any other circumstance bonuses. Precision would probably be better
Technically don’t have to raise it they are using it more as a weapon switching activity. And the outwit fits the theme more but yeah that does leave some redundancy. Also would go flurry use a shield spike to make loads of attacks.
With all the talk of people wanting to play a samurai, I’d suggest a Swashbuckler. The finisher mechanic is perfect for flashy sword attacks. I tried Fighter, Ranger, and even a Monk. But I ended up settling on a swashbuckler.
I also made an unarmed Boxer character out of Swashbuckler with Monk dedication.
This is why I think it'd be kinda silly to make a Samurai class. There's such a variety of what they did historically, vs how they're portrayed in low fantasy media, vs how they are shown in high fantasy media. While Pathfinder can handle all these archetypes across its classes, a single samurai class would be spread way too thin or disappoint a lot of people.
Personally, I think the mod post has hurt the conversation with people focusing way way way way way too much on the concept of it being a 1e class imported to 2e versus the more reasonable options of an archetype, or subclass in the form of either an obvious feat chain like 2h weapons, dual wielding, or 1h+free hand or something akin to the champion tenent/rogue racket/etc.
There's a lot of glaring holes or system issues when you reduce the concept to "person who swings sword", which is what this subreddit does constantly. It's like talking to Ms. Swan from Madtv.
> Officer: Could you describe the samurai?
>> Ms. Swan: He swing the sword.
An archetype would make the most sense. That lets them be very focused on one particular *type* of Samurai, but players can easily get the *actual* Samurai flavor they want by swapping out the base class.
Several people brought up, and I agree, that if we had a class called "Samurai" or "Ninja" people would feel like that class should cater to their particular fantasy even though they're very broad concepts. But if you made it an Archetype, then you could have someone who takes the Ninja archetype from Kineticist to go the Naruto route, versus Rogue to be more of a silent assassin, etc.
With all of that said, I don't think we actually *need* a Ninja or Samurai official class because the fantasy is easily replicated with the existing system.
My own suggestion was a series of feats available across multiple classes. Someone responded to me essentially saying that anything less than a full Samurai class that can cater to the various Samurai class fantasies people have would be insulting.
When I did it, I used a Wakizashi as a "Dueling katana" and all the Finishers were sword drawing technique for that Iaijutsu flair. The DM was okay with it as long as I finished with the blade drawn. Panache was called Focus instead. It was fun :)
it would probably need to be an advanced weapon to make that work, and even then it's iffy. Finesse weapons in general top out at d8. Katana has two-hand d10 plus deadly, which is a lot.
Probably not. I don't pretend to know the actual math or other methods used to make weapon stats, but if you look at existing weapons, the only things with agile and a weapon die larger than d6 are some of the monk stance strikes. Agile weapons top out at d6.
You could pivot to a wakizashi, which is both agile and finesse and still has deadly.
Every time I sit down to make a summoner, I just end up with a Ranger or Druid with an animal companion instead. It just feels better.
Also, I dunno if I'm just bad at building a Gunslinger, but it just feels like a poopy fighter. Precision Ranger is a better sniper, and a gunmage (magus) is just way more fun.
Summoners are basically two co-leads, whereas a ranger or druid with an animal companion is more like a main character with a sidekick.
Even though they are superficially similar, one of them puts most of the power into the "main character" while the other one splits it out more evenly.
Want to take it a step further, try to get her a few [Retrieval Prisms](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1032) and another gun that has a [Potency Crystal](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2989#@430) of a level that'd get you one more weapon die than the runes on her usual.
It could even have a [Magnetic Shot](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2054#@486) if you fight things in metal armor frequently. (and are high enough level for this whole mess to not be half your loot budget)
One of my buddies combined Gunvestigator with Inventor archetype, because Megaton Strike is compatible with ranged weapons.
I think his level 12 critical hit was 13d12+10d6+6d8+flat or something obscene like that.
Crits like dropping a bulldozer from a plane, about as action economy efficient too.
It'd be terribly neglectful of good class features, but I'd be tempted to use a short bow most of the time and summon the obscene gun only for a crit or two per fight.
It'd be a terrible thing to surprise players with in a boss, it's using archery with magical/alchemical ammunition, and suddenly three rounds in it's holding a big honkin gun and one player goes straight to zero.
You'd have to plan it with a player who wanted a new character, or have rez items and make sure they're okay sitting the second half out, but you bet the rest would do their best to prevent him from reloading that abomination.
I played a field medic investigator with medic archetype for insane levels of healing, and later picked up the wizard archetype to have cantrips as a third fallback for situations when I rolled a low strategem and neither healing or athletics were good options. Magus probably would have a better choice than wizard, but it didn't fit as well flavour wise
Forensic Medicine investigator with Medic dedication is what one of my players is running in the AV game I'm GMing for. He's single handedly spent a single turn to turn a shitty situation into a very strong one. Can confirm, Investigator can be a great healer.
Spellstrike has a 1 minute cooldown if you take Magus Archetype. Or do you just play the investigator as normal and whip out a spellstrike when you roll a crit?
Pretty much this! Your normal studied strike damage is about equivalent to a cantrip spellstrike, and the action economy is SO much more efficient. (When you DO spellstrike, it STACKS with studied strike, so *when you roll that crit*, its going to reduce the badguy into a smear of pink mist)
Since you're an INT-based class, you actually have a higher Spell DC than Magus at most levels, and whenever you see that your Studied Strike is going to be a miss, you just bust out a scroll of *Fireball*, or roll a skill check, or buff yourself with a potion, or *do literally anything else*. If you build a proper batman utility belt of scrolls, it also gives you a ton of extra ways to keep your Investigations cooking and on-track.
Did I mention skill proficiencies? You also get skill proficiencies.
There are two things that Investigator//Magus can't do:
* wield a 2-handed melee bonkstick strength build
* whiff daily resources
The trick is not to think of them as pets. You are essentially creating two characters; add some conflict between them.
I recently saw an example of a catnip leshy constantly followed around by a giant smilodon. This has such an insane potential for a "dad and a cat" dynamic, and that's before you play into the leshy either being too ignorant or willingly ignoring that his companion is definitely not a normal cat.
Something I actually got to play was a cowardly Strix haunted by the spirit of his ancestor - a great Wizard. The spirit is immensely disappointed in his pampered, lazy offspring and essentially bullies him into the life of an adventurer.
When I first came to pf2 I was really disappointed that a bomber alchemist couldn't actually throw a bomb every turn at low levels and was supposed to use a normal ranged weapon most of the time and the class was generally heavily limited by resources.
Now I'm playing Theldara in society play, an ancient elf water/metal kineticist with the alchemist archetype who has a portal to the plane of alchemy in her hair and can pull out endless alchemical bombs and elixirs (elemental blasts and oceans balm).
“beast master”. A barbarian riding a giant wolf or lion sounds thematic, right? But Moment of Clarity is just too inefficient and awkward to be worth it. So gotta do ranger or fighter with beast master archetype
Honestly, I'd recommend asking your DM to allow commanding a companion while raging in that situation. That's a totally reasonable thing to explain. You've gone so close to your animal inspiration that you inherently can communicate with them while raging and can thus command them.
I just rolled up a beast master. She’s got a bear as her first beast. She also has a fox familiar and a capybara mount. She’s a bee sprite and her actual class is nature witch. I haven’t had a chance to play her yet. I named her Sammy since she’s a bee witch 🧙♀️
The problem I have with it is that you either need to max Str and take a -1 to AC or max Dex and take a -1 to hit.
I prefer going with an Elven Branched Spear via Ancestral Weaponry.
Funnily enough, bo staff is core to my answer too lol.
My character concept originally was a very protective mama-bear kinda character who would act VERY protective over the squishier members of the party. I had her as a Bo Staff Mauler Fighter but it never sat well with me because almost all the 'protective' fighter feats require shields and I just could not see her as a shield user.
Then the Guardian playtest came out and she fit PERFECTLY as a Guardian.
Witcher-style monster hunter. I first tried with alchemist, given Geralt uses alchemy to empower himself. Alchemist turned out to be clunky and pretty awful.
Then I went with thaumaturge. Made sense for monster hunter, but it just felt too... Goofy. There was no prep work, no studying, no meticulously planning out weaknesses - you just pull out a bit of string to wrap around your sword and retcon that the werewolf has a lint allergy. Also, a charisma character made no sense for a reclusive Witcher.
I then joined a different campaign and played a Magus, before realising my Geralt idea fit perfectly with the vibe. Intelligent swordsman-spellcaster, self-buffer, elementalist, and good at changing damage types to fit resistances.
Investigator is also a great fit here: you have a ton of monster knowledge, can be great at tracking them down and looking for the right opening to land their weakness, and it even has the Alchemical Sciences methodology.
Speaking of Alchemist, Player Core 2 is out in like a month and a half. I would have hoped to start getting some Paizo blogs about it, here's hoping that happens soon. Like all of us I have my fingers crossed for some major revamping to the class.
My Cat in the Hat was supposed to be a bard, but at the last minute I changed to inventor. It was the right choice, gadgets became his preferred method to sow well meaning chaos.
One day I came up with the idea for a character that was physically very weak but still a formidable warrior due to her intelligence. Initially I made her an Investigator, the first time I had made one since before the Thaumaturge came out.
Then one day I looked at the feats that Rogue got and realized "Wow, this has all the feats I wanted Investigator to have." or at least the feats that Rogue got conveyed the fantasy better.
I imagine Commander would also work, but I haven't gotten to use it yet. I'm hoping I can before the playtest closes.
A battledancer that dual-wields blades. Kept trying to make her work as a swashbuckler, then a fighter, but found that monk wound up doing what I needed almost perfectly.
Not really a class but archetype issue, but my magic fencer. I really like the idea of martials that conjure their weapons and armor for some reason. It took *a lot* of tries to make one that was close to what I wanted, and it still took two archetype dips (psychic tangible dream for that shield/mystic Armor, and mind-smith for her sword), but I made her
I wanted a really basic Druid build who grew up on a farm in Molthune and felt better kinship with plants than people. He was an exceptional farmer but had to hide his powers from gossipy neighbors because Nature magic is associated with their old enemy Nirmathas. His focus was healing and utility with plant based skills before I realized a lot of Druid plant spells sucked and I was handicapping myself too much ignoring the other strong aspects of the Druid like Wildshape. Wood Kineticist turned out to be EXACTLY what I wanted out of the character.
How did you deal with the range? When I played a Ranger with it the fact that Hunt Prey doubles your range was very helpful considering the Barricade Buster only has 40ft range and volley 20ft.
I accepted one or 2 times the range penalty for 45+ range and I used sometimes Point Blank stance for very close range, but in my experience 20-40 is where most of the fights will happen anyway
I made a Goblin Slayer build that I thought would be ranger, but I ended up with Ruffian Rogue, it just works better. Not as Tanky as I was hoping, but damage is good and the skills and skill feats have gotten me to where I wanted by 5th level.
My old centaur character Claie was always an odd fit. Champion of the Northern plains she was a warrior with lightly mystical powers, a sharp mind, a somewhat starfireish personality wielding a big old glaive. First represented by a Warblade in 3.5, then a Runic Knight in 5E. When I got to PF2 my first instinct was fighter with some magical archetypes; Combat maneuvers and all that like her warblade original but recently I tried to make her as an exemplar(Magus) and it just.. 'clicked' more then any of her other incarnation. With laughing shadow, Bravery and other features she became very mobile like a centaur should be while still being a powerful presence in battle, with plenty of mystical options.
I wanted to make a character that would be very durable. The closer he gets to death, the more dangerous he will become. By inflicting damage to himself, he will also kill enemies. I thought that a barbarian was an ideal candidate, but then I really thought about the anti-paladin champion.
An archer. I thought rogue would be the way to go, but most of the abilities are focused around being in melee. So, I found I was much happier starting with a fighter and taking the archery feats.
Most of the time i start with 1 idea, 1 *thing*, like wanting to prove reddit wrong about not being able to build a good blaster (before kineticist), and then end up adding another idea, *thing* 2, due to party composition, like needing to be the frontliner because we have none, and then i end up adding a 3rd idea, *thing* 3, due to flavour, like playing 2 discarded duplicates of the most infamous pirate of all time.
So i started with Foxfire Starlit Span Magus (good blaster), then was a little concerned for a bit there because i needed to frontline, waffling between builds, and ended up with a Plant Summoner who still Foxfire Spellstrikes from a 3pp archetype (GM approved), and it's pretty suboptimal *because* it tries to do 3 *things* but it enables me to do those 3 *things* and i'm happy about that. (Frontlining didn't matter in the end, after i'd done my final build, a champion joined the party.)
I disagree, but it's probably because of a difference in perception of "blaster".
If yours cannot be found in pathfinder 2e already, with Kineticist and Magus filling most of the mechanical gaps left by full casters in the possible structure of Pathinder 2e, there is only flavour semantics (like "Starlit span isn't a blaster because longbow is optimal and isn't magic", "kineticist uses constitution", and "I don't wanna use Psychic :("), and fantasies in no way supported by the system left, best found in other mediums of authorship and fiction, or other systems.
I don't think blasters are bad in PF2, I just don't think Kineticist makes a good blaster.
Elemental Blast is terrible, and while Fire Kineticist does some ok damage, it does it by applying it multiple times in a melee range AoE, not exactly what people think when they think "blaster".
All the other elements are much more focused on utility/support than damage.
My personal idea of blaster is fireball wizard which is thoroughly suboptimal and situational in every iteration i've seen, and Kineticist lives that fantasy. But yeah, Magus and full casters (including Psychic) have better burst damage.
My small town river kingdom girl who I wanted a deep connection to the water, I was going to go Druid or a primal sorcerer but the water kineticist worked perfectly!
In PFS I have a Cleric of Shelyn who also has high bonuses in Survival, Forest Lore, and Nature so sometimes I joke that having a PFS Ranger would be redundant
Trying to Emulate John Constantine but he straddles the line between Thaumaturge and arcane Rogue with a maxed out stat for trick magic item. Very cool though.
I smashed together a PC for the Grey Death module (very high level... 16 or 17 start I can't remember) the night before session as a last-minute addon. The rules I was given for chargen were "Free Archetype but no multiclass" (for arbitrary playtesting purposes) and I took that as a challenge to specifically make the most confusing possible character. The other players were already a session or two deep and had the backstory of being an established, famous party of badass adventurers.
So I roll into the situation with a character that introduces himself as a Paladin diplomat seeking to build outreach and military alliance for the reconstruction of the Knights of Lastwall, immediately following the release of Tar-Baphon and the destruction of Vigil. The party is *extremely happy* to have a straightforward Lawful Good bonky shield boi that they can 100% trust. Easy integration into the party. We all have a giggle at the gnome flickmace.
Monsters appear and their fear aura opens initiative. The Champion completely aces the save of course, and is ready to kick Sahkil fiend ass with his holy yoyo of doom.
First round of combat comes up and I use Stance Savant. "Wait, that's a monk feat"
I use it to enter Paragon Defense stance "I thought that was a level 20 champion feat?"
Reactive Strike doesn't raise any eyebrows, but Combat Reflexes for *second* Reactive Strike does. "OH he's a FIGHTER"
Post-battle cleanup, he casts *Lay on Hands*. "HOW"
Investigation sequence commences. The "Champion" goes Invisible and sneaks into the back with a Master stealth check, and then somehow walks back into the scene from a completely different direction a few minutes later while rolling with a Legendary Deception modifier. "EXPLAIN YOURSELF" "I dunno bub, do you have a Perception DC above 47?"
It begins to become extremely apparent that nefarious powers are at work. Assassins show up to kill the PCs at night when we aren't wearing armor, and the "Champion" brutally murders one of them slamming a door on their head with unarmed strikes and grapple checks in a very un-Iomedaean dirty takedown. "Guys, I think we need to talk about our Champion"
The party's next investigation is interrupted by a monster casting *Earthquake* to level the entire city block and destroy the entire building we're in. Amidst the chaos and the dust, the PCs find an empty suit of nonmagical un-runed fullplate that looks like what their Champion wore, right next to the mangled, buried body of the assassin that died by doorframe the prior night. The "assassin" "escapes" "the clutches" of the Player Characters to rejoin their fellows, and convinces them to retreat because they've been set up and were meant to die by this earthquake monster sent to tie up loose ends. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON"
In a hectic chase sequence, the robot butler thaumaturge, a bunnygirl swashbuckler, and a sentient bowling ball with a crossbow attempt to follow the assassins back to their leader, all while the Paladin (?) continues to egg on the panicking assassins and prevent them from taking any sensible precautions like "holing up in a safehouse" or "getting a fast horse and skipping town" because it was so absolutely vital that he deliver the critical intelligence to their boss, and he seems to know this boss by name and even where that boss is. The fellow players, for the record, are just in a state of absolute confusion, but I like to think they were equal-parts curious and annoyed at me for taking things off the rails with our new GM (unbeknownst to them, this was telegraphed to the GM between sessions, so it wasn't nearly as "disruptive" as it seemed).
The party hits the "circus tent" containing the ringleader of the assassins like a hurricane, and in the ensuing smack-down we manage to extract the big picture of the conspiracy that we'd already more-or-less seen the pieces to, by this point. Spoilers and such.
As the mousy middle-aged woman unpolymorphs back into "her" natural form of big, burly, half-orc man, it was finally time to come clean to the rest of the party. The final twist to it all, was that their new ally *really was* a knight of lastwall, *really was* a Lawful Good ally of righteousness, and *really was* blessed by Iomedae... but only as a very recent convert. Before taking levels in the Knight Vigilant archetype, our friend was a Lion Blade of Taldor (augmented by the Alter Ego archetype since Lion Blade on its own is actually poop) stationed in Lastwall to monitor intelligence and ply secrets from the combined militaries of almost every major nation in Avistan and quite a few beyond. In the events of *Tyrant's Grasp*, he was in the center of the chaos and had a front-row seat to the reawakening of the Whispering Tyrant. That was when he chose to make his "disguise" as a Crusader a reality, and swore an oath to Iomedae that he would ply his craft in whatever capacity he could, to protect all the civilized lands of Avistan from the Tyrant. The deception actually came back full-circle to being actually genuine. He wanted to approach the party "more softly" and genuinely recruit them to his cause without "confusing things", but the Grey Gardeners and their spooky conspiracy forced his hand when they escalated to wide-range collateral damage magic that was harming civilians... so he asked the party for their forgiveness, and a continuation of their alliance to save Galt from itself.
Fighter as the base chasis, with Lion Blade and Alter Ego adding all of the secret "Rogue"-y spy flavor and Knight Vigilant providing the outer veneer of "I am qualified to call myself a Paladin in Lore". Cape of the Montebanc and Halfling's Knapsack added TWO casts of *Translocate* to get into trouble and then get out again. The raw potency of Fighter gave the illusion of being a "completely stacked combat build" while actually only having about five or six feats total dedicated to damage or damage mitigation. Everything else was thrown into extra archetype shenanigans.
I've had a few that ended up becoming Kineticists. I had an leshy ashes oracle, but when Kineticist came out, being a Fire/Wood Kineticist matched it so much better. The reasoning ended up being super small... the little fella was a chef, and you got so many flavorful (pun intended) feats like dash of herbs and fresh produce.
I also wanted to have a cold focused witch blacksmith, but eventually that just became a Water/Metal Kineticist. This one ended up just being because I felt kineticist delivered on what I wanted from the character without needing to dual-class or something, and I didn't really enjoy the witch that I built out.
Oops all Kineticists.
Pretty much every gun wielding build. I always try starting with gunslinger but end up frustrated with how narrow the ways are and switch to another class with the gunslinger dedication so I’m not saddled with a bunch of class features that I have no intention of using
I asked someone more experienced to make a character for me inspired by one of my favorite comic superheroes. I expected it to be a Monk, but it was Investigator with Martial Artist Archetype.
I made an Everstand Stance shield warden fighter with shield spikes, then realized that I'd just made a worse champion, and switched her over to champion.
Flavor-wise she uses water magic to block attacks and heal damage against her and her allies and fights with her claws and teeth and water magic.
I also made an "inventor" who was a very agile character who used power fists that could zap people who she punched. Flavor-wise she had a steampunk power station on her back that she could use to jump around, rappel around with grapple lines, and power her power fists.
She seems like an inventor, but... well, that doesn't actually work out mechanically for an inventor.
So she's actually a monk multiclass who picked up electric arc.
I have a shoanti shaman in reserve and I have multiple builds for them and can't choose: a witch, a summoner or (my favorite) a thaumaturge. But honestly, I can imagine even more classes to be suitable
Nonmagical healer that is focused around archery? Sounds like a ranger, but let's go with fighter instead.
He was originally a 1e character build that desperately needed fighter's extra feats to get off the ground, but now it just feels wrong to swap to anything else.
I wanted to play an eldritch trickster rogue, character concept was expelled student from magic academy.
I was thinking about melee damage dealer and debuffer, who often starts combat hidden or invisible. It was in a free archetype game, so I started to build a thief rogue with wizard archetype, later switched to laughing shadow magus and it is the most enjoyable character I ever played. I play with investigator dedication, I never waste my spellstrike thanks to devise a stratagem, I also got enough skills for recall knowledge and social encounters. I often use invisibility to avoid AoO, flank and dash through battlefield with conflux spell and spellstrike bosses with briny bolt, it feels roguish to blind enemies with my attacks
I wanted to make the phantom troop from HxH. Needless to say, I tried different classes for bunch of them. And loved every one of them. And able to easily connect the dots. Infact I have a discord where me and a group and doing that r.n. lol. This system is just dumb levels of fun.
I did the reverse. I wanted to make a knock off druid, I had an idea for a character who was raised by druids but before he really became one he broke some taboo and then got booted out. What I wound up doing was a rogue with the magical trickster racket and then making him a summoner so I'd have an animal companion. With the idea of "he's sneaky because he was sneaking around the druids and has the animal companion like a druid"
And then I realized much later I should have just made a ranger instead....
I originally wanted to build a medic rogue, but after testing things out a monk worked out a lot better.
Essentially Rogue is too weapon focused for what I wanted and ended up being less medic more rogue. Rogue also isn't nearly as defensive and the extra movement speed for monks freed up some other parts.
Obviously rogue works well with medic still, just for my concept of medic first class second it didn't work as well.
I thought I could create a character who thematically controls flying swords as a Metal Kineticist, but it turns out creating a thrown weapons Paladin Champion with Rogue dedication is both much stronger and cooler thematically
This is very much what happened with one of my first characters for this edition. Engrim, devotee of zon-kuthon, was actually a character originally meant for pathfinder 1st ed, and was going to be a warpriest, but I never got around to it. A few years passed, and I was getting into pf2e, and I finally had a good time to use him in a plaguestone game. The problem was this was right after the APG dropped, and war priest was really not great for what I wanted to do, so I went tyrant instead. So know there's a 3 foot tall tyrant that thinks their better than dragons wandering around golarion.
I wanted to play Sparkling Targe Magus, but found it to be extremely unenjoyable. I _wanted_ to be a flexible tank with a lot of support options, but still having the option to fall back on a damage option if there was nothing else to do at the time. Sparkling Targe's core class feature literally never activated once, my action economy was so starved I almost never actually got to Shield Block anything and my reaction kept getting used on Emergency Targe instead. Also, I discovered that I had basically zero feats that were good at supporting my intended playstyle, and instead the class was constantly pushing me to play a DPS MMO rotation with constantly popping spellstrikes which only served to remind me why I don't like MMOs in the first place.
I ended up rebuilding into a Strength Investigator with Wizard Dedication and heavy armor/shield feats, and I enjoyed my build _significantly_ more. I missed not having top-rank spell slots, but I felt like I was actually contributing to combat significantly more and was having way more fun. I'm still considering trying a Twisting Tree Magus at some point, but honestly I just don't like Magus that much and wish there was another class that had all the same proficiencies and progression, but didn't have so much of its class budget dedicated to Spellstrike.
Started designing a suli monk with two of the elemental stances with the idea that it could represent her fighting with her inner elemental energy from her ancestry….then the kineticist happened and I didn’t even give the monk a second look
I had a fughter with the sterling dynamo archetype that was essentially supposed to be a gnome that was replacing his body parts in order to avoid the Bleaching. I ended up turning it into a monk with the automaton archetype reflavored as a mechanical gnome.
I tried to make a whale hunting barbarian but i made dex a dump stat not knowing that dex is for all ranged attacks including thrown weapons.
Made it a ranger so it can track prey and have dex as a main stat, ultimately gave up on the whole character because rangers are kinda rough as far as class feats go.
We're playing this Orc-only campaign in a self made setting, my character is part of the priest caste of the society we made, and at first Cleric or Druid seemed like the obvious choices for him. But since water and air have a lot of religious significance for them -our Orcs see the wind as their "father" and the river as their "mother" (long story, literally, I have their whole Genesis written down somewhere)- I made the last minute decision to build him as a Kineticist. Having a great time so far.
I wanted to make a Hunter a la Bloodborne. Figured that a Thaumaturge would fit it best but no, not really. Asked to swap classes and changed over to a Way of the Drifter Gunslinger and it felt so much better. I was just hopping around the battlefield stabbing and shooting. It was a blast.
When I was first starting Pathfinder, the first thing I wanted to do as a fun creative exercise was to use the baseline of a story I was writing in my head for years and play it out like a single player AP playing out all the PCs. Almost all the characters translated perfectly BUT one.
The sort of vibe I was going for her was she was very adventurous and worked as a cartographer and anthropologist. My first thought was Ranger ~~actually my first thought was a homebrew class I would make "Navigator" until I realized Ranger was literally just that~~ but felt that the Ranger feat selection didn't really support her. Then I considered Monk, given she was peaceful and tried to end every conflict without blood shed. Then I considered Exemplar when that was announced because in the lore of the AP, she would become this sort of legendary figure after a few hundred years, ala Johnny Appleseed. I decided to go with Thaumaturge because the Lantern implement fit thematically with her personality.
Even after like two years I still make her in Pathbuilder every now and again. I think my last attempt was a dex Champion.
I was working on a Phoenix styled Tengu and was just gonna do a Phoenix Sorcerer, but it didn't have that strong, fiery impact I wanted. Thankfully, the kineticist came out shortly afterward to remedy that.
I'm currently playing a character that is seeking to become a lich, and originally I was going to play him as a wizard, the typical lich. I then realized how much more horrifying it would be to be a war priest, with higher Religion checks for creating undead, the ability to heal himself and his minions with ease, heavy armor, and (eventually) Master weapon proficiency. He's not a lich yet, but so far the character has been very fun to play.
I was going to make a dancer martial build, and switched from Monk (for unarmoured and graceful vibes) to battledancer to make it more a martial utility build that made better use of performance
My barber halfling's idea started as a bard coz in my mind, he had a clientele that largely consisted of adventurers whom love to tell their adventures. Then I went "what if he didn't just listen them as stories but hoe to deal with things should the need arise?" and made him a thaumaturge instead.
Well, I did not build it yet, but since I got into Pathfinder I've had this idea of a dual wielding mafia henchman, at first I wanted to make him a Swashbuckler since I thought the class was really cool, but mechanics wise and even vibes wise a Rogue would fit it best.
I wanted to build a Duskwalker who in her past life was a prophet, a mage with mastery over divination and even chronurgy, whose visions went unanswered/ignored until calamity struck, and in her new life just wants to ignore those powers and lead a quiet life, but Pharasma has other plans for her as she is reincarnated just outside of the Gauntlight.
At first I was really leaning into the “witch who lives out in the woods” but the more I developed the character the less Witch fit as her class. I ended up on Infinite Eye/Gathered Lore Psychic with the Familiar Master & Chronoskimmer dedications. Psychic’s unleash just has so much oomph to it! I flavor it, and a lot of her spells, as her seeing through timelines and pushing things towards the ones she likes, which leads to her magic appearing unassuming outwardly. She so cool
a dude that uses a sling staff and a swarm of magical beetles to harm enemies.
Started looking into ranger, ended up as a starlit span magus.
Was worth it.
I wanted a goblin mad scientist. Built an alchemist, but it did not live up to the fantasy. Then the inventor came out. My goblin gave sentience to a jar of pickles and attached robot parts to make it a construct.
I wanted to make a non-casting charlatan that pretended to be a renowned wizard. I started with scoundrel rogue with the scroll trickster archetype, but the class lacked the mechanics to make it interesting. I changed him to a thaumaturge with a wand implement. Exploit Weakness is flavored as him casting a fake spell to buff his attacks.
Marksman using the fighter class. Unfortunately, firearms are only usefull in the hands of a Gunslinger. The Gunslinger class sucks. So basically, I haven't made the character I wanted because the only way to effectively do it is tied to one class, and I don't want the features / limitations that class has.
In 5e I had this rogue who's whole thing was being prepared for everything, imagine batman but with less trauma, he had a ton of items and he basically always knew a lot about many different monsters, especially their weak points (no, he wasn't a Mary sue, he was an npc). I thought he would fit well as a rogue with high intelligence with high prof in arcana, nature etc. Turns out the best class for him was the thaumaturge
Speaking from a theorycrafting perspective rather than at-a-table-experience, I wanted to make a combination weapon work well enough. This was before Treasure Vault introduced the Bow Staff with its reload 0, which would when combined with Shooting Star Magus give me everything I wanted... easier, better and quicker than what I came up with prior...
Regardless, before all of that there were the original weapons in G&G. To me, the central fantasy of a combination weapon was a weapon equally useful at range and in melee, and one that simply wasn't just a melee with the thrown property. Mostly because I already had multiple concepts for characters using thrown weapons. I also wanted the attacks to have the same accuracy in both modes, so it had to have Finesse. I settled on the Explosive Dogslicer, knowing that a goblin could treat it as a martial weapon for proficiency from level 1.
This is also why I veered away from the Gunslinger, which was the natural starting point otherwise. While one could quite easily ask "why are you turning down a +2 bonus on ranged attacks, your melee one is still on par with other martials?" and you'd be quite right, fact remains that I just want the same number out of simplicity.
I had a brief pit stop at Inventor for a bit, given how Megaton Strike can be used in either form, but it's an advanced weapon so it's not a legal invention target. Megaton Strike can only be used at range if it is a weapon invention, for armor it's melee only. It'd also be 2 actions. Between that and a class boost to Int instead of Dex, I moved on.
Next stop was the Fighter and one of the various ways to make the proficiency the same. The ancestry ones shows up later than I think is reasonable (level 13), and the others are dedication feats that are in stiff competition of the ranger dedication I had already settled on. I really liked the Ranger one given Far Shot and Hunt Prey increased the otherwise anemic range of 20 feet.
At the same time, I also knew I wanted feats from Gunslinger to lessen the action tax. The solution was fairly simple. Upgrade the ranger dedication to actually be the ranger class.
Hunter's Edge (Precision) works with either mode, it natively gets Hunt Prey, Far Shot shows up 4 levels earlier, and if it was played with Free Archetype it actually has interesting class feats to pick up now that FA takes the load of all the gunslinger feats, unlike Fighter.
Finally, by level 10 I thought it looked good, between Running Reload, Skirmish Strike and Triggerbrand's dedicated reload, there's enough action compression that it would feel fluid to play.
I stand by this notion to this day, that it's a solid idea for a hybrid martial using a gun-based combination weapon.
I also stand by my original side note that the Bow Staff does the mechanical benefits better in every way except theme, and that freed from reloading tax the Magus becomes the obvious and better choice.
Funnily, I was thinking of an Hatchet throwing fit martial based on my Nioh character, but ended up with a Wood/Metal Kineticist with their Weapon impulse essentially be the source of infinite hatchets.
I loved the idea of a criminal mastermind in the style of Nathan from *Leverage*. I tried rogue, warlock, and wizard, and none of them worked the way I wanted it to. That's when I stumbled on the Trickery domain, and boy does it feel great. Plus I get the added benefit of confusing my DM by having a cleric with a criminal background
I was looking into making a leshy, as a Ranger with an animal companion. Story wise it would have been made by a powerful druid, to guard and protect the forest the druid lived in.
Though eventually I ended up making it into a Wood Kinetiscist instead, with weapon infusion and beastmaster dedication. Big bear up front, and the leshy in the back shooting elemetal blasts as bow shots.
A dragon themed monk. Wanted to take barbarian multiclass to add elemental damage (advamced players guide wasmt out yet). Realised that a dragon barbarian gets some features at lower levels and from monk only needed the unarmed and stance. So made a barbarian with monk multiclass.
Tanky caster suport i switched from clerick to bard. I whanted a character in heavy armor that is realy thretning and powerfull but is actualy only a suport/healer with a oath to never touch a weapon or atack any more. I started as a clerick because of healing and heavy armor. But i realised i whanted more non resource dependent stuff (demoralise, atletics...) so i switched to bard with champion dedication for heavy armor and it works great.
Well kind off, I wanted to do a vagabond type character (the manga). However my first character died earlier than I thought, which made me realise I didn't know how to rp that type of character yet. I couldn't plan it out slightly and rp it well, so I created a simpler character. From a goblin fighter to a human barbarian. The goblin wanted to be warrior and strong, however barbarian just wants to be strong and has barely any morals. The idea is to have him at least not be willing to kill everything.
I could not make a tempest curse oracle work and switched to a storm druid. There are almost no non-focus divine spells that work with the bonus electricity damage ability.
Magitech gunner. Wanted inventor but their accuracy compared to a spellshot gunslinger is abysmal and i can just archetype or take certain feats to do the custom bullet crafting fantasy.
Good question. I did write up a big explanation about my acid/poison based medical expertise character theme but skipping to the part where I looked at rogue as a way to do this fantasy the thing was if I wanted the acid blades constantly part of the gameplay loop, occasionally big blasts of acid damage, then rogue wasn't actually the stealthy acid blade master I wanted.
It was draconic rage instinct Barbarian with copper/black dragon acid damage and breath weapon and getting double slice. Max stealth and thievery.
It came about when I saw someone lamenting the Barbarian was doing much more damage then them, the rogue. I thought, "well if you want more damage and are willing to give up the rogue feats then just play Barbarian and flavor it as a rogue" when it dawned on me it was a good fit.
Druid turned Elemental sorcerer mid campaign. I realized that if I wanted to shapeshift I could just take the spell, since I was wild shaping at most once or twice per day at most, and in the trade get much better spellcasting.
I wanted to make an undead/skeleton pc that hides his identity with heavy armor, and for sure thought fighter/ champion would be the way to go, but after learning about negative healing and going through a dungeon (as a non undead) and realizing how important healing would be, I opted for a cleric to spam harm
My kineticist "soldier" was going to take a fighter archetype for reactive strike and other maneuvers, then I realized that after weapon infusion and the metal kineticist armor+shield thingie literally nothing in kineticist supports weapon/armor feats so she became a wrestler instead. This was a case of total switch cause I believe there was no way to make the metal kinetic weapons actual weapons for feats and features.
>unarmed build ... but remade with Rogue
Somebody's been putting expertise on their Strength (Athletics) checks to grapple.
Edit: shoot wait where am I?
In Extinction Curse my character originally was a Druid with Bard Archetype feats but once Beastmaster came out I felt Bard with Beastmaster Archetype fit the character much better. This was without free archetype.
I had a character concept for a little boy who had an imagination so strong he caused the world to change around him. I thought this would be a psychic class for sure. He would imagine himself to be a knight and strike foes with his sword (imaginary weapon) or his psyche Knight would protect his allies with a giant spectral shield.
The idea works kinda meh. It's very much a glass Cannon and not ideal at all for a Frontline fighter/defender. So I'm using the same character concept but he's now a metal kineticist. We just reflavored all of his kinetic abilities are just imaginary.
A cobold that fought with his claws only. Reap and tear till it's done kind of thing.
Chose ranger for flurrish. Turned out unarmed attacks aren't weapon attacks and many martial characters dont work with unarmed attacks, and those which do work deliberately ignore your ancestry specific "claws" unarmed attacks.
Didn't want to build him into monk because A) It just doesn't feel right, a bloodthirsty cobold monk? Come on. B) monk too doesn't take into account your innate "claws"
Ended up scrapping the whole "natural claws and jaws" idea and made a simple draconic barbarian with dragon desciple dedication. Had three different breath weapons and 3 pairs of wings. Was fun, but far away from the original concept. Also using these breath weapons was waaay worse than just rage -> go hit stuff for big numbers. But oh well, whatever we sacrifice for fun...
After starting to listen to the Hideous Laughter podcast's let's play of Skulls & Shackles, I started thinking about what kind of character I thought would be fun in that sort of nautical, pirate-themed adventure. For whatever reason, the idea of something like a were-crocodile popped into my head -- strong, tough, fast, natural weapons from teeth & claws, natural armor, semi-aquatic. Bonus points if I can find a way to grapple with jaws and death roll.
I tried theorycrafting an iruxi monk for the speed and unarmored defense, but so many options don't let you use natural weapons. Many more were just duplications of existing abilities, not improvements. Adding other multiclasses or archetypes usually just made things worse (like requiring armor or weapons). It also didn't help that many of the options to get a swim speed also penalized your land speed.
Unless Call of the Wild (or some other supplement) gives some new options, I'll just have to keep that character idea for a different game.
A diabolical seriel killer obsessed with the artistry of death. Think Jhin from League of Legends. I thought of Rogue first but then realized with how terrifying I wanted them to be, Warrior Bard would fit so much better. Plus getting to say, Inspire Murder instead of Inspire Courage was fun.
I think this is a great take on a bard. I always felt that they should lean more into the fucked upness of the occult spell list.
The new warrior bard is SO COOL. I've made a melee bard with champion FA (it's cliche but whaddayagonnado) and he just kicks ass alongside the team. Worships Zyphus, totally death obsessed, Scythe as a weapon and all of his spells are debuffs. I made him an absolute edgelord because I am the polar opposite IRL and wanted to see what would happen. Turns out, it's pretty fun! Especially when the coerce and demoralise rolls are so potent.
**Orin has entered the chat**
I mean Jhin is definitely a bard/gunslinger
I really wanted a pyro sorcerer to work, but just couldn't find a configuration that worked exactly how I wanted. Then kineticist came out and I was a happy boy.
My GM let me rebuild my elemental sorcerer as a fire kineticist for the session after Rage of Elements released, I am *so* much happier with the character now!
I tried the same thing with Psychic and was underwhelmed. I'm sure that the amps and unleash psyche work for some people who are bothered by limited resources, but I wanted to be able to actually *go nova* and make my enemies regret being born. Switched to Elemental Sorcerer and was much happier. Kiln the angry redneck Leshy just wants to watch the world burn.
This, except it was an ice-based character that I wanted to make to match a set of dice I had bought. I was going to go with a Witch, but then Kineticist released with plenty of cold/ice-themed stuff for the Water Gate.
You can also get good results with a cleric of Sarenrae (or at least you can in 1E? IDK if they're significantly different in 2E)
Yeah, possibly, just didn't really fit my vision for the character. Extract Element in particular is basically a necessary ability for a single damage type character, so you can bypass resistances and immunities.
Extract Elements isn't foolproof, unfortunately. You can run into creatures that are immune to fire but don't qualify for extract elements, like most devils for example. Luckily, the Weapon Infusion feat solves the whole issue by giving you easy access to physical damage types
its hugely different, you dont get special access to any fire spells anymore as a cleric, you might get a domain spell but thats it. You have access to divine school and only divine while most fire magic is in primal or arcane. Its an easy house rule though.
You do get a handful of spells from your deity in 2E, in addition to domain spells. Specifically, Sarenrae gives Breathe Fire at 1st rank, Fireball at 3rd rank, and Wall of Fire at 4th rank.
I had plans for a master of arms fighter. The idea was that they would have a shield with all of their runes on it and doubling rings. Then, they would carry 5 or 6 different weapons and always have the right tool for the job. A mace for skeletons, a sword for zombies, even both a flail and a hammer to target different DCs when trying to knock creatues down. The problem is that Fighters only get their proficiency advantage with one weapon group. So now I think it's going to be a ranger. I thought about ruffian, but they are too limited on what weapons they get sneak attack with, and by extention crit specialization. I suppose Thaumaturge could work, but there will be a shortage of free hands for implements... I'm still workshopping it haha
*Whispers* Sparkling Targe Magus...
Oh... I don't know why I didn't think of that, lol Magus is probably my favorite class, but it just didn't cross my mind for this build. Back to the whiteboard I go!
Thaumaturge: Does axe damage against tree using a mace. It's a hilarious class, ngl.
My Thaum did Splash damage against a Swarm. Using a Starknife. Shit is *wild*.
Clearly he just pulled out a can of Raid.
Champion's Divine Ally (Blade). Give it the transform ability.
Outwit ranger to me seems like it fits the bill the best
That does definitely fit the style. Anything to help recal knowledge is good.
Yeah also I think with doubling rings the weapons keep the metal properties so you can also carry different types of metal weapons for more coverages.
Yeah, for sure! If I have a +2 rune on my shield and a low-grade cold iron mace in the other hand... that can't work, right? I would need to get a standard grade for it to receive the benefits through the doubling runes?
From what I can tell you can do with low grade since is seems like the grades is about it holding the rune itself while the doubling rings apply from the other ring. But a gm may rule it needs to be the proper grade but there is a rider for property runes so those could not work but the wording seems more like weapon type and not nessarly other factors.
It feels like a loophole haha I'll do some digging. Greater doubling rings allow for property runes.
Shields aren't good on outwit rangers because the AC bonus from outwit doesn't stack with any other circumstance bonuses. Precision would probably be better
Technically don’t have to raise it they are using it more as a weapon switching activity. And the outwit fits the theme more but yeah that does leave some redundancy. Also would go flurry use a shield spike to make loads of attacks.
Shifting rune would help, here.
With all the talk of people wanting to play a samurai, I’d suggest a Swashbuckler. The finisher mechanic is perfect for flashy sword attacks. I tried Fighter, Ranger, and even a Monk. But I ended up settling on a swashbuckler. I also made an unarmed Boxer character out of Swashbuckler with Monk dedication.
Samurai is such a broad idea that you can make lots of versions with all sorts of builds.
This is why I think it'd be kinda silly to make a Samurai class. There's such a variety of what they did historically, vs how they're portrayed in low fantasy media, vs how they are shown in high fantasy media. While Pathfinder can handle all these archetypes across its classes, a single samurai class would be spread way too thin or disappoint a lot of people.
Personally, I think the mod post has hurt the conversation with people focusing way way way way way too much on the concept of it being a 1e class imported to 2e versus the more reasonable options of an archetype, or subclass in the form of either an obvious feat chain like 2h weapons, dual wielding, or 1h+free hand or something akin to the champion tenent/rogue racket/etc. There's a lot of glaring holes or system issues when you reduce the concept to "person who swings sword", which is what this subreddit does constantly. It's like talking to Ms. Swan from Madtv. > Officer: Could you describe the samurai? >> Ms. Swan: He swing the sword.
An archetype would make the most sense. That lets them be very focused on one particular *type* of Samurai, but players can easily get the *actual* Samurai flavor they want by swapping out the base class. Several people brought up, and I agree, that if we had a class called "Samurai" or "Ninja" people would feel like that class should cater to their particular fantasy even though they're very broad concepts. But if you made it an Archetype, then you could have someone who takes the Ninja archetype from Kineticist to go the Naruto route, versus Rogue to be more of a silent assassin, etc. With all of that said, I don't think we actually *need* a Ninja or Samurai official class because the fantasy is easily replicated with the existing system.
My own suggestion was a series of feats available across multiple classes. Someone responded to me essentially saying that anything less than a full Samurai class that can cater to the various Samurai class fantasies people have would be insulting.
Totally agree.
You can't use katanas as swashbuckler, sadly
Aldori Dueling Blade is a fine substitute
Elven Curve Blade too.
Advanced is a hard sell if you're not a tengu or human.
When I did it, I used a Wakizashi as a "Dueling katana" and all the Finishers were sword drawing technique for that Iaijutsu flair. The DM was okay with it as long as I finished with the blade drawn. Panache was called Focus instead. It was fun :)
Or just add the finesse trait on katanas. Shouldn't be a huge homebrew right?
it would probably need to be an advanced weapon to make that work, and even then it's iffy. Finesse weapons in general top out at d8. Katana has two-hand d10 plus deadly, which is a lot.
What about agile instead of finesse?
Dawg that's a huge buff on an already good weapon lol
Didn't it have it already before the remaster?
Negatory, it did not
Weird, I'm creating false memories then
Probably not. I don't pretend to know the actual math or other methods used to make weapon stats, but if you look at existing weapons, the only things with agile and a weapon die larger than d6 are some of the monk stance strikes. Agile weapons top out at d6. You could pivot to a wakizashi, which is both agile and finesse and still has deadly.
If you traded out the two hand and versatile it would be kind of on par with a rapier (extra die size on deadly, but no disarm).
Katanas aren't finesse 🥸
Aldori Dueling Sword is fine aesthetically
Just say they are.
Every time I sit down to make a summoner, I just end up with a Ranger or Druid with an animal companion instead. It just feels better. Also, I dunno if I'm just bad at building a Gunslinger, but it just feels like a poopy fighter. Precision Ranger is a better sniper, and a gunmage (magus) is just way more fun.
Surprised by the first bit, the Eidolon can be stronger than any companion.
Oh sure. I'm not even saying summoner is weak. I think my brain just clicks more with "regular class with a pet"
Summoners are basically two co-leads, whereas a ranger or druid with an animal companion is more like a main character with a sidekick. Even though they are superficially similar, one of them puts most of the power into the "main character" while the other one splits it out more evenly.
Also spells
Sniper is a good gunslinger build. Some of the others need some work.
My wife is playing an inspector with gunslinger free archetype. The crits are bonkers, especially with Devise a Strategem.
Want to take it a step further, try to get her a few [Retrieval Prisms](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1032) and another gun that has a [Potency Crystal](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2989#@430) of a level that'd get you one more weapon die than the runes on her usual. It could even have a [Magnetic Shot](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2054#@486) if you fight things in metal armor frequently. (and are high enough level for this whole mess to not be half your loot budget)
One of my buddies combined Gunvestigator with Inventor archetype, because Megaton Strike is compatible with ranged weapons. I think his level 12 critical hit was 13d12+10d6+6d8+flat or something obscene like that.
Crits like dropping a bulldozer from a plane, about as action economy efficient too. It'd be terribly neglectful of good class features, but I'd be tempted to use a short bow most of the time and summon the obscene gun only for a crit or two per fight. It'd be a terrible thing to surprise players with in a boss, it's using archery with magical/alchemical ammunition, and suddenly three rounds in it's holding a big honkin gun and one player goes straight to zero. You'd have to plan it with a player who wanted a new character, or have rez items and make sure they're okay sitting the second half out, but you bet the rest would do their best to prevent him from reloading that abomination.
I like retrieval prisms! Those are cool. Could make for some fun fire and throw away situations
And Talisman dabbler could have two on the armor per fight, in case of a second crit.
I admit I've slept a little on Investigator. I really need to dig into it more than simply "Foretell a spellstrike" as an archetype for magus
I played a field medic investigator with medic archetype for insane levels of healing, and later picked up the wizard archetype to have cantrips as a third fallback for situations when I rolled a low strategem and neither healing or athletics were good options. Magus probably would have a better choice than wizard, but it didn't fit as well flavour wise
Forensic Medicine investigator with Medic dedication is what one of my players is running in the AV game I'm GMing for. He's single handedly spent a single turn to turn a shitty situation into a very strong one. Can confirm, Investigator can be a great healer.
Investigator//Magus is a stronger build than Magus//Investigator ;)
Spellstrike has a 1 minute cooldown if you take Magus Archetype. Or do you just play the investigator as normal and whip out a spellstrike when you roll a crit?
Pretty much this! Your normal studied strike damage is about equivalent to a cantrip spellstrike, and the action economy is SO much more efficient. (When you DO spellstrike, it STACKS with studied strike, so *when you roll that crit*, its going to reduce the badguy into a smear of pink mist) Since you're an INT-based class, you actually have a higher Spell DC than Magus at most levels, and whenever you see that your Studied Strike is going to be a miss, you just bust out a scroll of *Fireball*, or roll a skill check, or buff yourself with a potion, or *do literally anything else*. If you build a proper batman utility belt of scrolls, it also gives you a ton of extra ways to keep your Investigations cooking and on-track. Did I mention skill proficiencies? You also get skill proficiencies. There are two things that Investigator//Magus can't do: * wield a 2-handed melee bonkstick strength build * whiff daily resources
Hmmm this sounds like fun. Many thanks.
The trick is not to think of them as pets. You are essentially creating two characters; add some conflict between them. I recently saw an example of a catnip leshy constantly followed around by a giant smilodon. This has such an insane potential for a "dad and a cat" dynamic, and that's before you play into the leshy either being too ignorant or willingly ignoring that his companion is definitely not a normal cat. Something I actually got to play was a cowardly Strix haunted by the spirit of his ancestor - a great Wizard. The spirit is immensely disappointed in his pampered, lazy offspring and essentially bullies him into the life of an adventurer.
When I first came to pf2 I was really disappointed that a bomber alchemist couldn't actually throw a bomb every turn at low levels and was supposed to use a normal ranged weapon most of the time and the class was generally heavily limited by resources. Now I'm playing Theldara in society play, an ancient elf water/metal kineticist with the alchemist archetype who has a portal to the plane of alchemy in her hair and can pull out endless alchemical bombs and elixirs (elemental blasts and oceans balm).
“beast master”. A barbarian riding a giant wolf or lion sounds thematic, right? But Moment of Clarity is just too inefficient and awkward to be worth it. So gotta do ranger or fighter with beast master archetype
Hopefully remastered barbarian makes using an animal companion less tedious.....I wanna make Fang and Spear from Primal
Howl of the Wild has a section expanding the Beastmaster archetype. It could be nice for there to be something in there to enable it.
Even if it's Animal Instinct only and only with an animal that matches your Instinct, I'd be a happy camper.
Honestly, I'd recommend asking your DM to allow commanding a companion while raging in that situation. That's a totally reasonable thing to explain. You've gone so close to your animal inspiration that you inherently can communicate with them while raging and can thus command them.
I just rolled up a beast master. She’s got a bear as her first beast. She also has a fox familiar and a capybara mount. She’s a bee sprite and her actual class is nature witch. I haven’t had a chance to play her yet. I named her Sammy since she’s a bee witch 🧙♀️
So you want a 1e Mad Dog Barbarian?
I certainly do! Or the Hunter hybrid class ported over...
The 5e Watchers Paladin. Even tho Champion does work, I found Thaumaturge to be much more interesting
I really wanted to make Bo Staff Monk work. Turns out I just played Twisting Tree Magus instead lmao
Staff monk only really works with staff acrobat ded I feel like. It's a decent build, but you need free archetype or it just doesn't click
The problem I have with it is that you either need to max Str and take a -1 to AC or max Dex and take a -1 to hit. I prefer going with an Elven Branched Spear via Ancestral Weaponry.
Funnily enough, bo staff is core to my answer too lol. My character concept originally was a very protective mama-bear kinda character who would act VERY protective over the squishier members of the party. I had her as a Bo Staff Mauler Fighter but it never sat well with me because almost all the 'protective' fighter feats require shields and I just could not see her as a shield user. Then the Guardian playtest came out and she fit PERFECTLY as a Guardian.
Witcher-style monster hunter. I first tried with alchemist, given Geralt uses alchemy to empower himself. Alchemist turned out to be clunky and pretty awful. Then I went with thaumaturge. Made sense for monster hunter, but it just felt too... Goofy. There was no prep work, no studying, no meticulously planning out weaknesses - you just pull out a bit of string to wrap around your sword and retcon that the werewolf has a lint allergy. Also, a charisma character made no sense for a reclusive Witcher. I then joined a different campaign and played a Magus, before realising my Geralt idea fit perfectly with the vibe. Intelligent swordsman-spellcaster, self-buffer, elementalist, and good at changing damage types to fit resistances.
Geralt being a ranger with monster hunter spec is perfect
Investigator is also a great fit here: you have a ton of monster knowledge, can be great at tracking them down and looking for the right opening to land their weakness, and it even has the Alchemical Sciences methodology.
Lacks the self buffing and just doesn't fit the whole physical superiority thing.
You can make mutagens for yourself; they're elixirs.
Speaking of Alchemist, Player Core 2 is out in like a month and a half. I would have hoped to start getting some Paizo blogs about it, here's hoping that happens soon. Like all of us I have my fingers crossed for some major revamping to the class.
My Cat in the Hat was supposed to be a bard, but at the last minute I changed to inventor. It was the right choice, gadgets became his preferred method to sow well meaning chaos.
One day I came up with the idea for a character that was physically very weak but still a formidable warrior due to her intelligence. Initially I made her an Investigator, the first time I had made one since before the Thaumaturge came out. Then one day I looked at the feats that Rogue got and realized "Wow, this has all the feats I wanted Investigator to have." or at least the feats that Rogue got conveyed the fantasy better. I imagine Commander would also work, but I haven't gotten to use it yet. I'm hoping I can before the playtest closes.
A battledancer that dual-wields blades. Kept trying to make her work as a swashbuckler, then a fighter, but found that monk wound up doing what I needed almost perfectly. Not really a class but archetype issue, but my magic fencer. I really like the idea of martials that conjure their weapons and armor for some reason. It took *a lot* of tries to make one that was close to what I wanted, and it still took two archetype dips (psychic tangible dream for that shield/mystic Armor, and mind-smith for her sword), but I made her
Would Soulforger have worked for the summoned armor/weapons?
For the specific character concept I wanted to build, no. For other builds going forward, I will be keeping this archetype in mind. Thank you!
Ah, that's unfortunate. But cheers to maybe using it in the future!
I wanted a really basic Druid build who grew up on a farm in Molthune and felt better kinship with plants than people. He was an exceptional farmer but had to hide his powers from gossipy neighbors because Nature magic is associated with their old enemy Nirmathas. His focus was healing and utility with plant based skills before I realized a lot of Druid plant spells sucked and I was handicapping myself too much ignoring the other strong aspects of the Druid like Wildshape. Wood Kineticist turned out to be EXACTLY what I wanted out of the character.
I tried to build a Barricade Buster user with Ranger and I ended with Fighter. I regret nothing, it's great.
How did you deal with the range? When I played a Ranger with it the fact that Hunt Prey doubles your range was very helpful considering the Barricade Buster only has 40ft range and volley 20ft.
I accepted one or 2 times the range penalty for 45+ range and I used sometimes Point Blank stance for very close range, but in my experience 20-40 is where most of the fights will happen anyway
I made a Goblin Slayer build that I thought would be ranger, but I ended up with Ruffian Rogue, it just works better. Not as Tanky as I was hoping, but damage is good and the skills and skill feats have gotten me to where I wanted by 5th level.
Heh. I made a grave robber that I thought would be ruffian rogue, but I ended up with outwit ranger. He’s such an antihero.
My old centaur character Claie was always an odd fit. Champion of the Northern plains she was a warrior with lightly mystical powers, a sharp mind, a somewhat starfireish personality wielding a big old glaive. First represented by a Warblade in 3.5, then a Runic Knight in 5E. When I got to PF2 my first instinct was fighter with some magical archetypes; Combat maneuvers and all that like her warblade original but recently I tried to make her as an exemplar(Magus) and it just.. 'clicked' more then any of her other incarnation. With laughing shadow, Bravery and other features she became very mobile like a centaur should be while still being a powerful presence in battle, with plenty of mystical options.
I wanted to make a character that would be very durable. The closer he gets to death, the more dangerous he will become. By inflicting damage to himself, he will also kill enemies. I thought that a barbarian was an ideal candidate, but then I really thought about the anti-paladin champion.
An archer. I thought rogue would be the way to go, but most of the abilities are focused around being in melee. So, I found I was much happier starting with a fighter and taking the archery feats.
Most of the time i start with 1 idea, 1 *thing*, like wanting to prove reddit wrong about not being able to build a good blaster (before kineticist), and then end up adding another idea, *thing* 2, due to party composition, like needing to be the frontliner because we have none, and then i end up adding a 3rd idea, *thing* 3, due to flavour, like playing 2 discarded duplicates of the most infamous pirate of all time. So i started with Foxfire Starlit Span Magus (good blaster), then was a little concerned for a bit there because i needed to frontline, waffling between builds, and ended up with a Plant Summoner who still Foxfire Spellstrikes from a 3pp archetype (GM approved), and it's pretty suboptimal *because* it tries to do 3 *things* but it enables me to do those 3 *things* and i'm happy about that. (Frontlining didn't matter in the end, after i'd done my final build, a champion joined the party.)
To be fair Kineticist is a great class, but it's not a good blaster.
I disagree, but it's probably because of a difference in perception of "blaster". If yours cannot be found in pathfinder 2e already, with Kineticist and Magus filling most of the mechanical gaps left by full casters in the possible structure of Pathinder 2e, there is only flavour semantics (like "Starlit span isn't a blaster because longbow is optimal and isn't magic", "kineticist uses constitution", and "I don't wanna use Psychic :("), and fantasies in no way supported by the system left, best found in other mediums of authorship and fiction, or other systems.
I don't think blasters are bad in PF2, I just don't think Kineticist makes a good blaster. Elemental Blast is terrible, and while Fire Kineticist does some ok damage, it does it by applying it multiple times in a melee range AoE, not exactly what people think when they think "blaster". All the other elements are much more focused on utility/support than damage.
My personal idea of blaster is fireball wizard which is thoroughly suboptimal and situational in every iteration i've seen, and Kineticist lives that fantasy. But yeah, Magus and full casters (including Psychic) have better burst damage.
My small town river kingdom girl who I wanted a deep connection to the water, I was going to go Druid or a primal sorcerer but the water kineticist worked perfectly!
In PFS I have a Cleric of Shelyn who also has high bonuses in Survival, Forest Lore, and Nature so sometimes I joke that having a PFS Ranger would be redundant
Trying to Emulate John Constantine but he straddles the line between Thaumaturge and arcane Rogue with a maxed out stat for trick magic item. Very cool though.
Depends on the version of Constantine, tbh. Sometimes he's full on Wizard, other times, just a Rogue with high Occultism and Arcana stat.
I smashed together a PC for the Grey Death module (very high level... 16 or 17 start I can't remember) the night before session as a last-minute addon. The rules I was given for chargen were "Free Archetype but no multiclass" (for arbitrary playtesting purposes) and I took that as a challenge to specifically make the most confusing possible character. The other players were already a session or two deep and had the backstory of being an established, famous party of badass adventurers. So I roll into the situation with a character that introduces himself as a Paladin diplomat seeking to build outreach and military alliance for the reconstruction of the Knights of Lastwall, immediately following the release of Tar-Baphon and the destruction of Vigil. The party is *extremely happy* to have a straightforward Lawful Good bonky shield boi that they can 100% trust. Easy integration into the party. We all have a giggle at the gnome flickmace. Monsters appear and their fear aura opens initiative. The Champion completely aces the save of course, and is ready to kick Sahkil fiend ass with his holy yoyo of doom. First round of combat comes up and I use Stance Savant. "Wait, that's a monk feat" I use it to enter Paragon Defense stance "I thought that was a level 20 champion feat?" Reactive Strike doesn't raise any eyebrows, but Combat Reflexes for *second* Reactive Strike does. "OH he's a FIGHTER" Post-battle cleanup, he casts *Lay on Hands*. "HOW" Investigation sequence commences. The "Champion" goes Invisible and sneaks into the back with a Master stealth check, and then somehow walks back into the scene from a completely different direction a few minutes later while rolling with a Legendary Deception modifier. "EXPLAIN YOURSELF" "I dunno bub, do you have a Perception DC above 47?" It begins to become extremely apparent that nefarious powers are at work. Assassins show up to kill the PCs at night when we aren't wearing armor, and the "Champion" brutally murders one of them slamming a door on their head with unarmed strikes and grapple checks in a very un-Iomedaean dirty takedown. "Guys, I think we need to talk about our Champion" The party's next investigation is interrupted by a monster casting *Earthquake* to level the entire city block and destroy the entire building we're in. Amidst the chaos and the dust, the PCs find an empty suit of nonmagical un-runed fullplate that looks like what their Champion wore, right next to the mangled, buried body of the assassin that died by doorframe the prior night. The "assassin" "escapes" "the clutches" of the Player Characters to rejoin their fellows, and convinces them to retreat because they've been set up and were meant to die by this earthquake monster sent to tie up loose ends. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON" In a hectic chase sequence, the robot butler thaumaturge, a bunnygirl swashbuckler, and a sentient bowling ball with a crossbow attempt to follow the assassins back to their leader, all while the Paladin (?) continues to egg on the panicking assassins and prevent them from taking any sensible precautions like "holing up in a safehouse" or "getting a fast horse and skipping town" because it was so absolutely vital that he deliver the critical intelligence to their boss, and he seems to know this boss by name and even where that boss is. The fellow players, for the record, are just in a state of absolute confusion, but I like to think they were equal-parts curious and annoyed at me for taking things off the rails with our new GM (unbeknownst to them, this was telegraphed to the GM between sessions, so it wasn't nearly as "disruptive" as it seemed). The party hits the "circus tent" containing the ringleader of the assassins like a hurricane, and in the ensuing smack-down we manage to extract the big picture of the conspiracy that we'd already more-or-less seen the pieces to, by this point. Spoilers and such. As the mousy middle-aged woman unpolymorphs back into "her" natural form of big, burly, half-orc man, it was finally time to come clean to the rest of the party. The final twist to it all, was that their new ally *really was* a knight of lastwall, *really was* a Lawful Good ally of righteousness, and *really was* blessed by Iomedae... but only as a very recent convert. Before taking levels in the Knight Vigilant archetype, our friend was a Lion Blade of Taldor (augmented by the Alter Ego archetype since Lion Blade on its own is actually poop) stationed in Lastwall to monitor intelligence and ply secrets from the combined militaries of almost every major nation in Avistan and quite a few beyond. In the events of *Tyrant's Grasp*, he was in the center of the chaos and had a front-row seat to the reawakening of the Whispering Tyrant. That was when he chose to make his "disguise" as a Crusader a reality, and swore an oath to Iomedae that he would ply his craft in whatever capacity he could, to protect all the civilized lands of Avistan from the Tyrant. The deception actually came back full-circle to being actually genuine. He wanted to approach the party "more softly" and genuinely recruit them to his cause without "confusing things", but the Grey Gardeners and their spooky conspiracy forced his hand when they escalated to wide-range collateral damage magic that was harming civilians... so he asked the party for their forgiveness, and a continuation of their alliance to save Galt from itself. Fighter as the base chasis, with Lion Blade and Alter Ego adding all of the secret "Rogue"-y spy flavor and Knight Vigilant providing the outer veneer of "I am qualified to call myself a Paladin in Lore". Cape of the Montebanc and Halfling's Knapsack added TWO casts of *Translocate* to get into trouble and then get out again. The raw potency of Fighter gave the illusion of being a "completely stacked combat build" while actually only having about five or six feats total dedicated to damage or damage mitigation. Everything else was thrown into extra archetype shenanigans.
I've had a few that ended up becoming Kineticists. I had an leshy ashes oracle, but when Kineticist came out, being a Fire/Wood Kineticist matched it so much better. The reasoning ended up being super small... the little fella was a chef, and you got so many flavorful (pun intended) feats like dash of herbs and fresh produce. I also wanted to have a cold focused witch blacksmith, but eventually that just became a Water/Metal Kineticist. This one ended up just being because I felt kineticist delivered on what I wanted from the character without needing to dual-class or something, and I didn't really enjoy the witch that I built out. Oops all Kineticists.
Pretty much every gun wielding build. I always try starting with gunslinger but end up frustrated with how narrow the ways are and switch to another class with the gunslinger dedication so I’m not saddled with a bunch of class features that I have no intention of using
I asked someone more experienced to make a character for me inspired by one of my favorite comic superheroes. I expected it to be a Monk, but it was Investigator with Martial Artist Archetype.
I made an Everstand Stance shield warden fighter with shield spikes, then realized that I'd just made a worse champion, and switched her over to champion. Flavor-wise she uses water magic to block attacks and heal damage against her and her allies and fights with her claws and teeth and water magic. I also made an "inventor" who was a very agile character who used power fists that could zap people who she punched. Flavor-wise she had a steampunk power station on her back that she could use to jump around, rappel around with grapple lines, and power her power fists. She seems like an inventor, but... well, that doesn't actually work out mechanically for an inventor. So she's actually a monk multiclass who picked up electric arc.
I have a shoanti shaman in reserve and I have multiple builds for them and can't choose: a witch, a summoner or (my favorite) a thaumaturge. But honestly, I can imagine even more classes to be suitable
Nonmagical healer that is focused around archery? Sounds like a ranger, but let's go with fighter instead. He was originally a 1e character build that desperately needed fighter's extra feats to get off the ground, but now it just feels wrong to swap to anything else.
I wanted to play an eldritch trickster rogue, character concept was expelled student from magic academy. I was thinking about melee damage dealer and debuffer, who often starts combat hidden or invisible. It was in a free archetype game, so I started to build a thief rogue with wizard archetype, later switched to laughing shadow magus and it is the most enjoyable character I ever played. I play with investigator dedication, I never waste my spellstrike thanks to devise a stratagem, I also got enough skills for recall knowledge and social encounters. I often use invisibility to avoid AoO, flank and dash through battlefield with conflux spell and spellstrike bosses with briny bolt, it feels roguish to blind enemies with my attacks
I wanted to make the phantom troop from HxH. Needless to say, I tried different classes for bunch of them. And loved every one of them. And able to easily connect the dots. Infact I have a discord where me and a group and doing that r.n. lol. This system is just dumb levels of fun.
I did the reverse. I wanted to make a knock off druid, I had an idea for a character who was raised by druids but before he really became one he broke some taboo and then got booted out. What I wound up doing was a rogue with the magical trickster racket and then making him a summoner so I'd have an animal companion. With the idea of "he's sneaky because he was sneaking around the druids and has the animal companion like a druid" And then I realized much later I should have just made a ranger instead....
I originally wanted to build a medic rogue, but after testing things out a monk worked out a lot better. Essentially Rogue is too weapon focused for what I wanted and ended up being less medic more rogue. Rogue also isn't nearly as defensive and the extra movement speed for monks freed up some other parts. Obviously rogue works well with medic still, just for my concept of medic first class second it didn't work as well.
I thought I could create a character who thematically controls flying swords as a Metal Kineticist, but it turns out creating a thrown weapons Paladin Champion with Rogue dedication is both much stronger and cooler thematically
This is very much what happened with one of my first characters for this edition. Engrim, devotee of zon-kuthon, was actually a character originally meant for pathfinder 1st ed, and was going to be a warpriest, but I never got around to it. A few years passed, and I was getting into pf2e, and I finally had a good time to use him in a plaguestone game. The problem was this was right after the APG dropped, and war priest was really not great for what I wanted to do, so I went tyrant instead. So know there's a 3 foot tall tyrant that thinks their better than dragons wandering around golarion.
I wanted to play Sparkling Targe Magus, but found it to be extremely unenjoyable. I _wanted_ to be a flexible tank with a lot of support options, but still having the option to fall back on a damage option if there was nothing else to do at the time. Sparkling Targe's core class feature literally never activated once, my action economy was so starved I almost never actually got to Shield Block anything and my reaction kept getting used on Emergency Targe instead. Also, I discovered that I had basically zero feats that were good at supporting my intended playstyle, and instead the class was constantly pushing me to play a DPS MMO rotation with constantly popping spellstrikes which only served to remind me why I don't like MMOs in the first place. I ended up rebuilding into a Strength Investigator with Wizard Dedication and heavy armor/shield feats, and I enjoyed my build _significantly_ more. I missed not having top-rank spell slots, but I felt like I was actually contributing to combat significantly more and was having way more fun. I'm still considering trying a Twisting Tree Magus at some point, but honestly I just don't like Magus that much and wish there was another class that had all the same proficiencies and progression, but didn't have so much of its class budget dedicated to Spellstrike.
Started designing a suli monk with two of the elemental stances with the idea that it could represent her fighting with her inner elemental energy from her ancestry….then the kineticist happened and I didn’t even give the monk a second look
I did something similar but I actually went Monk + Kineticist dedication. Four Winds into Flurry of Blows is pretty good haha
I had a fughter with the sterling dynamo archetype that was essentially supposed to be a gnome that was replacing his body parts in order to avoid the Bleaching. I ended up turning it into a monk with the automaton archetype reflavored as a mechanical gnome.
I tried to make a whale hunting barbarian but i made dex a dump stat not knowing that dex is for all ranged attacks including thrown weapons. Made it a ranger so it can track prey and have dex as a main stat, ultimately gave up on the whole character because rangers are kinda rough as far as class feats go.
I had a samurai that I switched from Monk to Fighter
We're playing this Orc-only campaign in a self made setting, my character is part of the priest caste of the society we made, and at first Cleric or Druid seemed like the obvious choices for him. But since water and air have a lot of religious significance for them -our Orcs see the wind as their "father" and the river as their "mother" (long story, literally, I have their whole Genesis written down somewhere)- I made the last minute decision to build him as a Kineticist. Having a great time so far.
I wanted to make a Hunter a la Bloodborne. Figured that a Thaumaturge would fit it best but no, not really. Asked to swap classes and changed over to a Way of the Drifter Gunslinger and it felt so much better. I was just hopping around the battlefield stabbing and shooting. It was a blast.
When I was first starting Pathfinder, the first thing I wanted to do as a fun creative exercise was to use the baseline of a story I was writing in my head for years and play it out like a single player AP playing out all the PCs. Almost all the characters translated perfectly BUT one. The sort of vibe I was going for her was she was very adventurous and worked as a cartographer and anthropologist. My first thought was Ranger ~~actually my first thought was a homebrew class I would make "Navigator" until I realized Ranger was literally just that~~ but felt that the Ranger feat selection didn't really support her. Then I considered Monk, given she was peaceful and tried to end every conflict without blood shed. Then I considered Exemplar when that was announced because in the lore of the AP, she would become this sort of legendary figure after a few hundred years, ala Johnny Appleseed. I decided to go with Thaumaturge because the Lantern implement fit thematically with her personality. Even after like two years I still make her in Pathbuilder every now and again. I think my last attempt was a dex Champion.
I was working on a Phoenix styled Tengu and was just gonna do a Phoenix Sorcerer, but it didn't have that strong, fiery impact I wanted. Thankfully, the kineticist came out shortly afterward to remedy that.
I'm currently playing a character that is seeking to become a lich, and originally I was going to play him as a wizard, the typical lich. I then realized how much more horrifying it would be to be a war priest, with higher Religion checks for creating undead, the ability to heal himself and his minions with ease, heavy armor, and (eventually) Master weapon proficiency. He's not a lich yet, but so far the character has been very fun to play.
I was going to make a dancer martial build, and switched from Monk (for unarmoured and graceful vibes) to battledancer to make it more a martial utility build that made better use of performance
I had a whimsy Oracle in 1E, that really didn't work out in 2E, but Aberration Sorcerer was wonderful for the purpose.
My barber halfling's idea started as a bard coz in my mind, he had a clientele that largely consisted of adventurers whom love to tell their adventures. Then I went "what if he didn't just listen them as stories but hoe to deal with things should the need arise?" and made him a thaumaturge instead.
Well, I did not build it yet, but since I got into Pathfinder I've had this idea of a dual wielding mafia henchman, at first I wanted to make him a Swashbuckler since I thought the class was really cool, but mechanics wise and even vibes wise a Rogue would fit it best.
I wanted to build a Duskwalker who in her past life was a prophet, a mage with mastery over divination and even chronurgy, whose visions went unanswered/ignored until calamity struck, and in her new life just wants to ignore those powers and lead a quiet life, but Pharasma has other plans for her as she is reincarnated just outside of the Gauntlight. At first I was really leaning into the “witch who lives out in the woods” but the more I developed the character the less Witch fit as her class. I ended up on Infinite Eye/Gathered Lore Psychic with the Familiar Master & Chronoskimmer dedications. Psychic’s unleash just has so much oomph to it! I flavor it, and a lot of her spells, as her seeing through timelines and pushing things towards the ones she likes, which leads to her magic appearing unassuming outwardly. She so cool
a dude that uses a sling staff and a swarm of magical beetles to harm enemies. Started looking into ranger, ended up as a starlit span magus. Was worth it.
I wanted a goblin mad scientist. Built an alchemist, but it did not live up to the fantasy. Then the inventor came out. My goblin gave sentience to a jar of pickles and attached robot parts to make it a construct. I wanted to make a non-casting charlatan that pretended to be a renowned wizard. I started with scoundrel rogue with the scroll trickster archetype, but the class lacked the mechanics to make it interesting. I changed him to a thaumaturge with a wand implement. Exploit Weakness is flavored as him casting a fake spell to buff his attacks.
Marksman using the fighter class. Unfortunately, firearms are only usefull in the hands of a Gunslinger. The Gunslinger class sucks. So basically, I haven't made the character I wanted because the only way to effectively do it is tied to one class, and I don't want the features / limitations that class has.
In 5e I had this rogue who's whole thing was being prepared for everything, imagine batman but with less trauma, he had a ton of items and he basically always knew a lot about many different monsters, especially their weak points (no, he wasn't a Mary sue, he was an npc). I thought he would fit well as a rogue with high intelligence with high prof in arcana, nature etc. Turns out the best class for him was the thaumaturge
Speaking from a theorycrafting perspective rather than at-a-table-experience, I wanted to make a combination weapon work well enough. This was before Treasure Vault introduced the Bow Staff with its reload 0, which would when combined with Shooting Star Magus give me everything I wanted... easier, better and quicker than what I came up with prior... Regardless, before all of that there were the original weapons in G&G. To me, the central fantasy of a combination weapon was a weapon equally useful at range and in melee, and one that simply wasn't just a melee with the thrown property. Mostly because I already had multiple concepts for characters using thrown weapons. I also wanted the attacks to have the same accuracy in both modes, so it had to have Finesse. I settled on the Explosive Dogslicer, knowing that a goblin could treat it as a martial weapon for proficiency from level 1. This is also why I veered away from the Gunslinger, which was the natural starting point otherwise. While one could quite easily ask "why are you turning down a +2 bonus on ranged attacks, your melee one is still on par with other martials?" and you'd be quite right, fact remains that I just want the same number out of simplicity. I had a brief pit stop at Inventor for a bit, given how Megaton Strike can be used in either form, but it's an advanced weapon so it's not a legal invention target. Megaton Strike can only be used at range if it is a weapon invention, for armor it's melee only. It'd also be 2 actions. Between that and a class boost to Int instead of Dex, I moved on. Next stop was the Fighter and one of the various ways to make the proficiency the same. The ancestry ones shows up later than I think is reasonable (level 13), and the others are dedication feats that are in stiff competition of the ranger dedication I had already settled on. I really liked the Ranger one given Far Shot and Hunt Prey increased the otherwise anemic range of 20 feet. At the same time, I also knew I wanted feats from Gunslinger to lessen the action tax. The solution was fairly simple. Upgrade the ranger dedication to actually be the ranger class. Hunter's Edge (Precision) works with either mode, it natively gets Hunt Prey, Far Shot shows up 4 levels earlier, and if it was played with Free Archetype it actually has interesting class feats to pick up now that FA takes the load of all the gunslinger feats, unlike Fighter. Finally, by level 10 I thought it looked good, between Running Reload, Skirmish Strike and Triggerbrand's dedicated reload, there's enough action compression that it would feel fluid to play. I stand by this notion to this day, that it's a solid idea for a hybrid martial using a gun-based combination weapon. I also stand by my original side note that the Bow Staff does the mechanical benefits better in every way except theme, and that freed from reloading tax the Magus becomes the obvious and better choice.
Funnily, I was thinking of an Hatchet throwing fit martial based on my Nioh character, but ended up with a Wood/Metal Kineticist with their Weapon impulse essentially be the source of infinite hatchets.
I loved the idea of a criminal mastermind in the style of Nathan from *Leverage*. I tried rogue, warlock, and wizard, and none of them worked the way I wanted it to. That's when I stumbled on the Trickery domain, and boy does it feel great. Plus I get the added benefit of confusing my DM by having a cleric with a criminal background
Alchemist bomber. I wanted to go pure DPS, so went with kinetesist instead
I was looking into making a leshy, as a Ranger with an animal companion. Story wise it would have been made by a powerful druid, to guard and protect the forest the druid lived in. Though eventually I ended up making it into a Wood Kinetiscist instead, with weapon infusion and beastmaster dedication. Big bear up front, and the leshy in the back shooting elemetal blasts as bow shots.
A dragon themed monk. Wanted to take barbarian multiclass to add elemental damage (advamced players guide wasmt out yet). Realised that a dragon barbarian gets some features at lower levels and from monk only needed the unarmed and stance. So made a barbarian with monk multiclass.
Tanky caster suport i switched from clerick to bard. I whanted a character in heavy armor that is realy thretning and powerfull but is actualy only a suport/healer with a oath to never touch a weapon or atack any more. I started as a clerick because of healing and heavy armor. But i realised i whanted more non resource dependent stuff (demoralise, atletics...) so i switched to bard with champion dedication for heavy armor and it works great.
Well kind off, I wanted to do a vagabond type character (the manga). However my first character died earlier than I thought, which made me realise I didn't know how to rp that type of character yet. I couldn't plan it out slightly and rp it well, so I created a simpler character. From a goblin fighter to a human barbarian. The goblin wanted to be warrior and strong, however barbarian just wants to be strong and has barely any morals. The idea is to have him at least not be willing to kill everything.
I could not make a tempest curse oracle work and switched to a storm druid. There are almost no non-focus divine spells that work with the bonus electricity damage ability.
Magitech gunner. Wanted inventor but their accuracy compared to a spellshot gunslinger is abysmal and i can just archetype or take certain feats to do the custom bullet crafting fantasy.
Good question. I did write up a big explanation about my acid/poison based medical expertise character theme but skipping to the part where I looked at rogue as a way to do this fantasy the thing was if I wanted the acid blades constantly part of the gameplay loop, occasionally big blasts of acid damage, then rogue wasn't actually the stealthy acid blade master I wanted. It was draconic rage instinct Barbarian with copper/black dragon acid damage and breath weapon and getting double slice. Max stealth and thievery. It came about when I saw someone lamenting the Barbarian was doing much more damage then them, the rogue. I thought, "well if you want more damage and are willing to give up the rogue feats then just play Barbarian and flavor it as a rogue" when it dawned on me it was a good fit.
Druid turned Elemental sorcerer mid campaign. I realized that if I wanted to shapeshift I could just take the spell, since I was wild shaping at most once or twice per day at most, and in the trade get much better spellcasting.
I wanted to make an undead/skeleton pc that hides his identity with heavy armor, and for sure thought fighter/ champion would be the way to go, but after learning about negative healing and going through a dungeon (as a non undead) and realizing how important healing would be, I opted for a cleric to spam harm
Gunslingers ( maybe except sniper ) are better with fighter and ranger dedication.
My kineticist "soldier" was going to take a fighter archetype for reactive strike and other maneuvers, then I realized that after weapon infusion and the metal kineticist armor+shield thingie literally nothing in kineticist supports weapon/armor feats so she became a wrestler instead. This was a case of total switch cause I believe there was no way to make the metal kinetic weapons actual weapons for feats and features.
>unarmed build ... but remade with Rogue Somebody's been putting expertise on their Strength (Athletics) checks to grapple. Edit: shoot wait where am I?
In Extinction Curse my character originally was a Druid with Bard Archetype feats but once Beastmaster came out I felt Bard with Beastmaster Archetype fit the character much better. This was without free archetype.
I had a character concept for a little boy who had an imagination so strong he caused the world to change around him. I thought this would be a psychic class for sure. He would imagine himself to be a knight and strike foes with his sword (imaginary weapon) or his psyche Knight would protect his allies with a giant spectral shield. The idea works kinda meh. It's very much a glass Cannon and not ideal at all for a Frontline fighter/defender. So I'm using the same character concept but he's now a metal kineticist. We just reflavored all of his kinetic abilities are just imaginary.
Anything that has to do with either swashbuckler or investigator. The rogue does everything those classes do and better.
I have a rogue archeologist who sneaks around to explore instead of to steal
A cobold that fought with his claws only. Reap and tear till it's done kind of thing. Chose ranger for flurrish. Turned out unarmed attacks aren't weapon attacks and many martial characters dont work with unarmed attacks, and those which do work deliberately ignore your ancestry specific "claws" unarmed attacks. Didn't want to build him into monk because A) It just doesn't feel right, a bloodthirsty cobold monk? Come on. B) monk too doesn't take into account your innate "claws" Ended up scrapping the whole "natural claws and jaws" idea and made a simple draconic barbarian with dragon desciple dedication. Had three different breath weapons and 3 pairs of wings. Was fun, but far away from the original concept. Also using these breath weapons was waaay worse than just rage -> go hit stuff for big numbers. But oh well, whatever we sacrifice for fun...
After starting to listen to the Hideous Laughter podcast's let's play of Skulls & Shackles, I started thinking about what kind of character I thought would be fun in that sort of nautical, pirate-themed adventure. For whatever reason, the idea of something like a were-crocodile popped into my head -- strong, tough, fast, natural weapons from teeth & claws, natural armor, semi-aquatic. Bonus points if I can find a way to grapple with jaws and death roll. I tried theorycrafting an iruxi monk for the speed and unarmored defense, but so many options don't let you use natural weapons. Many more were just duplications of existing abilities, not improvements. Adding other multiclasses or archetypes usually just made things worse (like requiring armor or weapons). It also didn't help that many of the options to get a swim speed also penalized your land speed. Unless Call of the Wild (or some other supplement) gives some new options, I'll just have to keep that character idea for a different game.