The Eldritch Assassin

[Soranar]

This is a build for an upcoming campaign, I volunteered to be the party's skillmonkey/trapfinder/tracker/face

We start at level 6 but this should be playable at any level. Still, I'm looking for ways to improve it.

Race: Human
Alignment: neutral evil
Template : necropolitan (necessary to fix your HD, preapproved by my DM)
2 Flaws

STATS (32 pts)
STR 8
DEX 16
CON -
INT 18 (main stat, gets every increase)
WIS 8
CHA 14

1 Factotum Able Learner, Spell Hand,Wild Talent, Point blank shot
2 Warlock
3 Warlock Psionic Shot
4 Warlock
5 Warlock deceive item
6 Assassin Obtain Familiar
7 Assassin uncanny dodge
8 Assassin
9 Eldritch Theurge Improved Familiar (Hellhound)
10 Eldritch Theurge
11 Arcane Trickster
12 Arcane Trickster Greater Psionic Shot
13 Arcane Trickster
14 Arcane Trickster
15 Arcane Trickster Mortal Bane (or practiced spellcaster: warlock, if my DM allows it)
16 Arcane Trickster
17 Arcane Trickster
18 Arcane Trickster Knowledge Devotion (at this point I can afford to put enough skillpoints in the 6 knowledges required to get a decent bonus
19 Arcane Trickster
20 Arcane Trickster

'Eldritch theurge is a dual progression class that requires arcane spells level 2 (from assassin) and 2d6 eldritch blast

'with mage hand and assassin spellcasting, I qualify for arcane trickster, I use able learner and the high INT to fill in the skillpoints required

Build Tricks for optimal damage:

-Iajutsu focus (takes a move action to draw a weapon, eldritch blast is only a standard action so you can draw a weapon then shoot someone)

-psionic shot (and the greater version) would only work on the first round of battle but untyped damage is pretty useful and it basically doubles your damage at early levels

-Unfortunately I only cast as a warlock level 16 so my eldritch blast is 7d6 by level 18 but I do get several interesting invocations by that point and I can always use a staff or a wand (with deceive item I can always take 10 on UMD checks).

-sneak attack damage is also 7d6 (having access to invisibility all day, not hard to succeed at those and there's always the arcane trickster ability)

-A Factotum's cunning insight gives one of the few ways of adding a STAT bonus to an eldritch blast's damage, even with only 2 inspiration points you get to do it twice an encounter (or you can use it on the to hit roll if the creature is especially hard to hit but that's unlikely with touch attacks)

-Picked the hellhound as a pet since he gets a huge bonus to survival (also has track and sent) so he can fill the tracker role.

[*.*.*.*]

I would probably make my base race an elf so I could grab Faeri Mysteries Initiate. Otherwise, I really want to show that to a guy in my group, he would adore this build.

[Soranar]

I dunno, you get a lot of nerfs as an elf.

-First you can't take the able learner feat (as you're not human) and you lose the bonus feat from being human.

-You lose the bonus skillpoint but you probably gain INT +2 to compensate

-You also get a multiclassing xp penalty but many DMs ignore those

-You'd have to switch around when you take warlock and Factotum (again, to get the right skills at the right time to qualify for Assassin). So Instead of a level 1 Factotum that gets 24 skillpoints, you start as a Warlock with 8, since you lost able learner all skills are no longer class skills which further complicates your skillpoint distribution.

-not sure how faery initiate works with an undead character (and your DM would have to be really nice to allow it at all)

-Finally, taking that feat also means you need to cut something (besides dropping able learner). I guess you can do without an improved familiar (even a raven is really worth it with enough UMD ranks).