The
Pathfinder RPG now has an
Advanced Class Guide.
The
list of character class guides will need many additions!
As usual, the explosion of new feats, spells, and archetypes means the
League of the One Trick Pony will be gaining many new members.
New Classes and Archetypes
But I am more interested in what new well-rounded character concepts are available.
Note: I have not played Pathfinder in about a year, so there are a few other Paizo publications besides the Advanced Class Guide among the links below of possibilities that are new to me. Please do not fuss. This is what is new to me, not what is all new stuff.
The
Unlettered Occultist Arcanist finally allows a character to excel a both healing and standard-action summoning. (Here are two
summoning guides.) The feat
Evolved Summon Monster allows adding tiny "evolutions"
such as pounce, reach, bypassing DR/magic, a pair of claw attacks, or 1d6 bleed damage.
The
Wild Child Brawler allows a "cleaned up monk" to have an animal companion.
A neutrally aligned
Hex Channeler Gravewalker Witch with the
Healing Patron and traits
Student of Philosophy and
Pragmatic Activator resembles a super-Cleric. Heal your friends! Take control of undead! Be diplomatic and charming! Cast both arcane and divine spells! Use magic items superbly! And at tenth level she can start using a flavorful
version of the Druid's wildshape ability.
Student of Philosophy and Pragmatic Activator really helped that Witch. There are yet more traits that move skills to Intelligence:
Clever Wordplay,
Precise Treatment, and
Bruising Intellect.
The new feat
Orator also can help an intelligence-based character excel in social situations.
The
Psychic Searcher Oracle
gains a big bonus to social skills and can use the Empathy ability for
an absurdly large bonus to the Sense Motive skill. He does not really
read your mind and predict your future, but it seems that way. If he has the
Lore mystery with
the new trait
Irrepressible and new feats
Noble Scion (War) and
Divine Protection, he has incredible saving throw and initiative bonuses.
(Thanks, Andrew.)
An Undine
Steam Caster Waves Shaman (or
Spirit Guide Oracle) can knock down foes with any water or fire spell. But the Spirit Guide archetype is more often used with the
Lore Spirit to give the Oracle
Wizard spells each morning.
An
Empiricist Investigator with the
Student of Philosophy trait uses Intelligence for
every mental skill. And judging from the picture above, he has good taste in boots, too.
The sixth level
Buccaneer Arbiter Bard retains
inspire courage while also excelling at subduing foes and/or making extra attacks. He uses
Paired Opportunists (level 2 bonus),
Broken Wing Gambit, and
Outflank (level 6 bonus). Once per day he can "nova" using his Knock Out ability while doing typically lethal damage.
The prestige class
Evangelist is almost an archetype. It advances the character's original class abilities as the new class advances in level (with a one-level delay).
Many classes have an archetype with the new
Martial Flexability ability.
Sorcerers can now use either
Intelligence or
Wisdom instead of Charisma. An Orc Witch can use
Constitution as a casting ability score!
Crossblooded Bloodragers can threaten with 25 feet of reach. Cast the
long arm and
enlarge person spells. Have the
aberrant and
black blood bloodlines for two abilities both named "abnormal reach".
The
Soul Warden prestige class turns any spellcaster into an undead-fighting hero.
The
Harrow Warden monk, at fifteenth level, can punch someone to polymorph them into a small and harmless creature. The archetype also stacks with
Master of Many Styles.
Barbarians
can now multiclass as Monks.
The Fighter archetype
Savage Warrior begs to gestalt with Druid.
The recent
ruling about
early entry to prestige classes provides several nice
Eldritch Knight options,
described here, and several very quick
Mystic Theurge options,
described here. Those two prestige classes are now very nice instead of a debilitating trap.
Other New Options
There is
now a feat to reward a character for dramatically kicking in a door.
Some
story feats look like a lot of fun. My favorites are
Truth Seeker and
Artifact Hunter. It is easy to imagine a character who uses both of those, with the discovered ancient knowledge including the location of a long-missing artifact. Automatic checks to notice
secret doors is a novel and useful ability.
(The low-level spell and item that detect secret doors are seldom used because they require concentration. The high-level spell has limited range.)
The human-only feat
Racial Heritage now has many more
race feats,
race traits, and class archetypes to work with.
Barbarians have two
new ways to get extra rage rounds. But they also seldom need this...
A character with the
Optimistic Gambler and
Community Minded traits has morale bonuses from his or her spells and abilities last an extra d4+2 rounds.
(Barbarians and Bloodragers dance with joy, because most combats do not last more than four rounds, so they only need to spend one round of rage or bloodrage for those morale bonuses. The Group Leader and a Flagbearer also smile.)
The feat
Raging Blood allows anyone to rage! It can also help when
charging, or can add
staggering,
sickened, or
confused to a critical hit. What a great deal for any character wanting who specializes in critical hits.
Continuing the raging goodness, the teamwork feat
Spirit of the Corps might allow any nearby ally to share in the rage/bloodrage! (But it is clearly meant to instead share the spells
wrath,
aid,
heroism,
righteous vigor, and especially the Paladin spells
rally point and
saddle surge.)
The feat
Feral Heart can increase the rage morale bonus to some ability and skill checks (including
initiative) from raging by +2.
The feat
Experimental Spellcaster can allow a Cleric or Oracle to use the
word-equivalent spell of
animate dead at third level (two levels early).
Druids could already use
wild shape to pounce at level six (including with five attacks as a
deinonychus). The new
Pummeling Charge feat means Monks and Brawlers at level eight could effectively charge then full attack. Other martial characters need to wait to level twelve to get Pummeling Charge. (Somewhat similar--and perhaps mixable--is the
Scout Rogue, who can add sneak attack damage to a charge at level four.)
With
two feats any character can have an animal companion. (Three feats if you count
Boon Companion.)
There is a new
wolf combat style that allows a ninth level melee character the equivalent of casting
bestow curse. Combine this with the new feat
Dirty Trick Master to do a ton of melee debuffing! The rage power
Savage Dirty Trick adds even more for a barbarian!
Want to play with darkness? A
weretiger,
tiefling or
fetchling can now see in supernatural darkness, as can
some barbarians. (There is also a
spell.) Cast
deeper darkness or throw an Alchemist's
darkness bomb and attack your foes who are lost in the dark!
The feats
Summon Good Monster and Summon
Neutral Monster are both strong alone and add more
summons with alignment subtypes for the feat
Sacred Summons.
There are some stupidly potent
spells. The most ridiculous is
emergency force sphere. Wizards are no longer fearful and fragile! Also tied for first is a spontaneous caster using
paragon surge to get the feat
Expanded Arcana, making available any needed utility spell.
How about ice magic that takes advantage of some overpowered spells? Use the
Marid or
Rime-Blooded bloodline for a
Sorcerer or
Blood Arcanist. The new spells
snowball,
flurry of snowballs, and
frost fall are very potent. Add
Rime Spell metamagic. At sixth level a Rime Spell
flurry of snowballs fills a thirty foot cone with 4d6 damage and two rounds of entangling! That calls out for the
Magical Lineage trait to keep it in second-level spell slots.
The ice spell
ice slick replaces
grease as the best spell to
make foes
flat-footed. Your spellcaster can be the sneak attacker's best friend!
Here is a silly example with only slight early entry. Let's make an extra strange and spooky necromancer Big Bad Evil Guy for sixth level. Use a Half-Elf with the Drow Magic
alternate racial trait who can cast
darkness, to qualify for arcane early entry into
Mystic Theurge. Take one level of
School Savant Arcanist with the
Undead school and then four levels of
Blight Druid with the
Death domain to put
animate dead on its Druid spell list. Start Mystic Theurge at sixth level. No one expects the necromancer to spend four hours of the day in the shape of a animal! At sixth level it can be a
Dire Badger able to dig through stone to flee and become a recurring villain. As with any Mystic Theurge who has
animate dead on two spell lists, it will enjoy two "buckets" of caster level for amassing a double-sized horde of minions. (Personally, I would alter him to be an
Arcane Bomber Wizard who drop-kicks the bombs while a Dire Badger. But that is probably not legit.)
Also, let's count the ways a spellcaster can boost its caster level for the
animate dead spell without magical equipment. Traits:
Gifted Adept and
Signature Spell. Feats:
Undead Master,
Spell Specialization and
Theurgy. Spells:
death knell. That's +10 caster level, available as early as fifth level with the human bonus feat. And because of the odd wording of
animate dead, if (5+10) x 2 =
30 hit dice of undead are animated
in one casting they all stay under the control of that fifth level character. Yes, that exceeds the 5 x 4 = 20 hit dice a fifth level character can normally control using
animate dead, but only any undead created with
previous castings of the spell become out of control.
Finally, there is a feat named
Eldrich Researcher to encourage PCs to
design spells.
