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[Nabirius]

So my friend is starting up a new campaign using pathfinder. Some material is getting imported from 3.5 the Tome of Magic, the Tome of Battle, the Expanded Psionic Handbook, and the 3.5 Assassin Prc, and some of the Unearthed Arcana (LA buyoff, perhaps flaws). He is new to DMing we are going moderately low OP. The party thus far consists of

Me: Unknown
A Pyrokineticist (or Pyromancer of some form), mainly a ranged DPS.
My Friend who always wants to play controller (Consistently the least OP in the group).
And a friend that has expressed interest in tanking (New, unlikely to be problem, probably a paladin).

We are starting ~lvl. 6. The Pyrokineticist is likely going to play a wilder/pyro. Is there anyway to make that even remotely viable?

I'm thinking some sort of rouge or monk. Maybe a PF Monk/Swordsage/Shadow Sun Ninja, should I go straight Monk? Basically I need to know if this will be too powerful, I'm fine with outstriping other party members a bit, but I want to be with them for the most part. What do you all think?

Also would it be reasonable ask for the Monk Ki pool and related abilities (abundant step, high jump, etc.) to scale with SSN, as it didn't exist in 3.5? Part of me wants to be a Glitherazi, would that be a terrible idea?

[StreamOfTheSky]

This is important: Are you using 3E or PF rules for tumble DCs?

If 3E, I suggest you just go swordsage, it's a decent yet not overpowered class that is just plain better than monk and (for combat purposes) rogue.

If PF.... man.... I don't know what to tell you. PF nerfed the hell out of rogue and monk, so those are out. Swordsage relies on skirmishing a lot so that's out... I guess you could just try to make a swordsage that fights with a reach weapon but doesn't skirmish...

What in PF is available?

The Vivisectionist archetype (Ultimate Magic) for Alchemist makes that class a halfway-decent rogue, and the Beastmorph archetype (Ult. Combat) stacks with it and gives you flight and pounce eventually. Use feral mutagen to make 3 primary natural attacks, with sneak attack, buff with Greater Magic Fang and such.

Bard in general is better than a rogue at being a rogue aside from DPS. Versatile Performance means that they eventually end up with more skill points than a rogue, even. And at upper levels, they can take 10 on all skills. Archaeologist archetype (Ult. Combat) lets you find traps, get evasion and uncanny dodge and such, even, though you lose some nice features.

If you just want an unarmed combat machine, I suggest Fighter, he's better at it in PF than monk, especially if you have PF splats available. You could go normal fighter, Unarmed Fighter or Brawler (both Ult. Combat) or even Lore Warden (PF Society Field Guide) and end up better than monk. Feel free to dip monk 1-2 levels for benefits (like 1d6 base damage), though. In particular, the Master of Many Styles (Ult. Combat) Monk is a great dip. You get (Greater) Weapon Focus/Specialization, Weapon Training, gloves of dueling (item, Adv. Player's Guide), and unlike monk's flurry of blows, if YOU take two weapon fighting, you can attach natural weapons to the end of it, too. The new Ult. Equipment book also has a "brawling" armor enhancement, +1 cost, that can only go on light armor and gives untyped +2 to unarmed attack/damage and on grapple checks. Bracers of Armor are not considered light armor, so a monk can't use it w/o throwing away 1/2 of his main class features.
As I said, the more paizo splats available, the more fighter completely pwns monk at being a monk.

[Andreaz]

the Expanded Psionic HandbookPathfinder has an adaptation for psionics, canonical and all. As all things pathfinder, it's in the srd (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed).
It's also much better than 3.5's EPH, with far less exploits (the really bad ones are all gone, as far as I can tell).

[Nabirius]

snip


I should reiterate, for my own part, I am mostly very good at optimizing, I want people's opinion as to whether or not this is do-able for a completely new DM. My characters have all had a tendency to overwhelm the DMs I've played with. The last 3.5 campaign I played a sorcerer that turned the action economy into his little *****, in 4e my level 7 swordmage has a AC of 36, a Fort of 22, a Reflex of 26, and a Will of 20, which was too high to hit reliably with APL monsters so we ended up fighting level 13's frequently. I don't want to do this to the new DM.

The other problem is that I'm typically far-and-away the most powerful of the group, I would like to remain 'with them' for the most part. That said I don't like playing things that don't get options.

The main things I am concerned about are things like my Monk's defenses being too high or something like that. Also I fear for my Pyrokeniticist friend.

I've never actually looked through PF psionics, I'll check it out, thank you.