Pathfinder: Goblin Alchemist/Barbarian grappler build?

[MasterFu]

Hi all. I'm working on a character for an upcoming 3.5/Pathfinder/Homebrew game. It'll be my first time with the group and they tend to run high-powered campaigns (which is kind of new to me, as most games I've been in have kind of died around level 6).

I personally favor fun/funny/creative over cheese and general munchkinry, but I try to make whatever I'm playing as effective as possible. With that said, my current character concept is a goblin grappler gestalt: Alchemist (Vivisectionist)/Barbarian (Feral Gnasher). The Feral Gnasher will allow me to grapple far above my weight class and with the Strangler feat, I'd be doing my sneak attack damage every round (plus possible bleed and str damage depending on my discovery choices). Unfortunately there's not a lot of alchemist info out there beyond Ogre's guide. I've been a lurker here for a while and the board community seems to be pretty good at this sort of thing, so I was hoping I might be allowed to pick your collective brains on my math and the concept in general. Any questions or useful comments are welcome, but there are a few things that would really help me to flesh this idea out:

1) Prestige classes? Master Chemyst is a possibility if the DM will allow me to substitute sneak attack progression for the bomb thrower ability (since I won't have bombs as a class ability). Warshaper? Any other ideas here?

2) Dex based or Str based? Dex is good early on (although feat-heavy), but with giant form, rage, and a good mutagen Str might be a better overall plan.

3) Iterative attacks (+20/+15/+10/+5) or feral mutagen (+20/+20/+20)? What feats (like Two Weapon Fighting) or discoveries (like Vestigial Arm) might help with either? I'm currently leaning towards the iterative attacks because I won't have the extra arms in a different form.

4) Any must-have traits, feats, discoveries, or rage powers?

I'm new to Pathfinder but I've been gaming for a while. Can anyone throw me a bone here?

[grarrrg]

I personally favor fun/funny/creative over cheese and general munchkinry, but I try to make whatever I'm playing as effective as possible. With that said, my current character concept is a goblin grappler gestalt: Alchemist (Vivisectionist)/Barbarian (Feral Gnasher).
Throw Beastmorph (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/archetypes/paizo---alchemist-archetypes/beastmorph) on your Alchemist as well (you can have more than one archetype so long as they do NOT replace the same things).
Beastmorph gives you extra bonuses when using your Mutagen, notably Pounce starting at level 10.



1) Prestige classes? Master Chemyst is a possibility if the DM will allow me to substitute sneak attack progression for the bomb thrower ability (since I won't have bombs as a class ability). Warshaper? Any other ideas here?
Master Chymist is perfectly viable, and gives you extra Mutagen uses per day (otherwise you really only get 1/day). But make sure to get to Beastmorph 10 ASAP. Either Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 1+, or Alchemist 7/Master Chymist 1/Alchemist +3/Master Chymist ++
For the Barbarian side, you're probably best off sticking to straight Barbarian for the various scaling bonuses.


2) Dex based or Str based? Dex is good early on (although feat-heavy), but with giant form, rage, and a good mutagen Str might be a better overall plan.
Normally, working with a Goblin I'd be VERY inclined to say DEX based, what with the -2 STR and +4 DEX and all.
But in this case, STR boosting seems worthwhile.
And remember, Feral Gnashers lose Medium Armor prof anyway, so a higher DEX for AC can always help.

Bottom line, bump up your STR, but do NOT kill the rest of your Stats to do it.
So if doing Point Buy, maybe buy a 16 in STR max (which will drop to 14 after Race), but not an 18.


3) Iterative attacks (+20/+15/+10/+5) or feral mutagen (+20/+20/+20)? What feats (like Two Weapon Fighting) or discoveries (like Vestigial Arm) might help with either? I'm currently leaning towards the iterative attacks because I won't have the extra arms in a different form.

BOTH!
You can make all of your normal Weapon Attacks AND Natual Attacks in the same Full Action.
The catch is that ALL of your Natural attacks are treated as Secondary attacks (-5 to-hit from highest Bab)

So assuming a 20 Bab, and 2 Natural Attacks, your Full Attacks would look like this
20/15/15/15/10/5
Two of the 15's are your Bite and a Claw attack (if attacking with a Weapon in your Claw hand you cannot use that Claw to make a separate attack).

NOTE: If you add Two-Weapon Fighting to the above, the Two-Weapon penalties only apply to the WEAPON attacks, NOT the Natural.
So a Two-Weapon + Bite Goblin would have
18/18/15/13/13/8/8/3 (assuming full Two-Weapon chain was taken).


4) Any must-have traits, feats, discoveries, or rage powers?

Take the Goblin Alt-Trait (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/featured-races/arg-goblin) that grants you a Bite attack, this combines with the Bite granted by Feral Gnasher to make it a 1d6 Bite attack.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Beastmorph is a bad trade before level 6, about even 6-9, and becomes awesome at 10+. If you're only dipping alchemist, you may not want beastmorph. If not, you should grab Internal Alchemist, though. Being able to hold your breath so long and fake your own death is just cool.

Grapple has no size limitations on who you can use it on, unlike many other combat maneuvers, so I'm not sure what Feral Gnasher is doing for you, other than blocking you from being an Urban Barbarian to make rage boost Dex and actually use that +4 goblin dex to make a genuinely effective grappler.

Having to spend a feat on both Weapon Finesse and Agile Maneuvers is stupid, though. So you may want to just down reduce person potions/extracts and skip Agile Maneuvers entirely -- the rules state tiny and smaller creatures use dex instead of str on combat maneuver checks.

For feats, while it does not help grappling at all, I really enjoy Roll With It. Mitigates damage entirely, gets you out of melee to avoid further attacks, and if you have the means to fly (like the wings discovery or beastmorph wings), you can choose any direction....up is a direction....

You may want to consider fighting unarmed and adding natural attacks at the end of your full attack. The Brawling armor property is only a +1 cost and gives untyped +2 attack and damage to unarmed (but not natural weapons) and +2 on grapple. Even if you don't go unarmed style, it might be worth it just for the grapple bonus.

[MasterFu]

(lots of stuff)
Grarrrg, thanks. Not going to quote and parse your entire response because I'm probably going to use everything in it (although I might just take TWF as a rage power and pass on the rest of the chain in favor of more discoveries).

My current plan is to take Alchemist as far as it goes (might not even take Master Chymist up to 10). I'm ok with delayed gratification and really like the flexibility that Beastmorph offers, but I'm not sure that giving up poison immunity is the smartest thing to do when you're planning a build around a bite attack. I can still pick up pounce as a rage power at level 10 if I don't mind taking a couple useless (to me) prerequisites. Still mulling that one over. And most of the fluff from Internal Alchemist I'll be picking up with the "Mummification" discovery (immunity to nonlethal damage can be a wonderful thing). And with the goblin racial Rag Doll Mutagen, this becomes immunity to falling damage, also.



Grapple has no size limitations on who you can use it on, unlike many other combat maneuvers, so I'm not sure what Feral Gnasher is doing for you, other than blocking you from being an Urban Barbarian to make rage boost Dex and actually use that +4 goblin dex to make a genuinely effective grappler.
Grapple doesn't have any size limitations, but the Gnasher gets grab, which is size dependent. If I end up going for the Strangler feat I'll have to take IUA and Improved Grapple first, so maybe that's not such a big deal. Really like the flavor of the class, though. And reducing my size to tiny for Dex-based grapple sounds like it will be worth provoking the occasional AoO that reach 0 will cost me. Thanks. That's exactly the sort of info I'm looking for here.



For feats, while it does not help grappling at all, I really enjoy Roll With It. Mitigates damage entirely, gets you out of melee to avoid further attacks, and if you have the means to fly (like the wings discovery or beastmorph wings), you can choose any direction....up is a direction....
I like this. It might even make it worth taking Death From Above (+5 to all attacks if you charge while flying) since I'll have pounce (and possibly rake).



You may want to consider fighting unarmed and adding natural attacks at the end of your full attack. The Brawling armor property is only a +1 cost and gives untyped +2 attack and damage to unarmed (but not natural weapons) and +2 on grapple. Even if you don't go unarmed style, it might be worth it just for the grapple bonus.
I'm going to have the feral mutagen giving me natural claw attacks at 1d4, 1d6 with Improved Attack. But I will definitely be looking for that grapple bonus, so thank you again.

What I really feel I am lacking here (potentially) is poison immunity, but I'd also appreciate any input on additional ways to deliver my sneak attack damage reliably. Strangler lets me apply it once per round and pinning an opponent lets me do it with every attack. My stealth will be very high but I'd like to avoid dependence on improved invisibility. Any other ideas out there?

[Ravens_cry]

I don't think a goblin would work. One one hand, the +4 cancels out the -1 if you are using agile manoeuvres, but on the other hand Barbarian gives strength, which, if you are using agile manoeuvres, is only good for CMD. Still important, but the -2 to strength is going to cancel out a lot of that benefit.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I would not go Master Chymist. It may give you more does of the mutagen to use between brewing, but it also exacts a rather annoying cost, which will stick to you whether you go 1 level or 10 levels. It also hurts extract advancement and keeps you from getting the very nice higher level discoveries. The options MC gives instead are not as good, IMO.