My GM has successfully made me afraid (PF)

[BTB]

Essentially I'm getting into a campaign that throws back to the old days of roll-playing dungeon crawls, as he puts it: "One hundred percent Gygax improved". He claims it dangerous tot he point that he's allowing us each 4 reserve characters, or "extra lives" for when our main ones die. Normally, this wouldn't scare me, but despite my demonstrated ability to break the game at times, he's actually encouraging the use of entirely broken classes, like Synthesist Summoner.

He's seen what they can do.

So. In our party of 5 we each took a role, and mine is DPS. We start at level 5 and all our characters will level with the one being used. Basically, I need the most broken DPS concepts you can come up with. I won't use most of them as I prefer my own builds, but damn it I need ideas. He knows my tricks.

Right now I plan a summoner, a gunslinger, an archer of some sort, a mailman sorc, and I've yet to decide on a 5th character. Nothing is written in stone though. Ranger seems an interesting option. I'mm fairly sure we'll be in an actual dungeon, so archetypes for that are good.

[Krazzman]

From my... albeit really focused... experience... Barbarians are good. We play in a more or less un-optimized environment and only have Core + APG available and a 2HF Melee still rocks when he can get into melee range. Otherwise Magus is pretty awesome.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Don't focus on big numbers or combat prowess at all, if he's claiming gygaxian then it's likely to be of the "rocks fall, you die" school of dungeon design, work with abilities that let you flat out circumvent things, you can be a god in combat but what good are you when the greased floor suddenly drops 60 degrees and now leads to a pool of lava?

Minions are always good in these kinds of situations, always test a scenario by sending in an easily replaceable minion, summoners work well for this as nothing detect traps as well as sending a warm body into the line of fire.

If you go with synthesist summoner then movement methods should be handy, flying can bypass a lot of obstacles and should help in getting away when things go south (which they probably will)

[ArcturusV]

Yeah. I mean, presuming he's using the terminology to evoke the sort of games in that genre I've played... Combat is the LAST thing you want to do. No. It's never a good idea. Smashing things is your last resort. And many enemies are more along the lines of "Puzzle bosses" who, like some Legend of Zelda game, have one trick way to beat them and throwing out all the numbers in the world isn't going to help.

You're better served by focusing less on combat mechanics and more on mundane utility. Things that save your life in those sorts of games like: Having multiple sticks (Not weapons, I mean literally sticks), bags, jars, sand, 10' poles, ropes, pitons, etc.

Making sure your build allows you to use as much of that as possible, and effectively, and without being encumbered. That's the trick. After handling that sort of stuff the combat is trivial. But you'd never want to just run in and charge blindly counting on high numbers to carry the day. DPS was not the correct solution to problems.

[Barstro]

Keep in mind, OP stated that it is a party of Five, so there will be four other characters to help with, or completely handle, all out of combat issues. Perhaps one of them will be a Master Summoner to spam the area with trap-springing monkeys.

Besdies, the "trick" to beating BBEG could be damage reduction of 500, but only three hit points.

That said, I do agree that survivability should be a major concern.

[Bhaakon]

DPS at level 5?

Barbarian 2/Vivisectionist Alchemist 3

feral mutagen + lesser fiend totem = +8 strength with 4 primary natural attacks (bite, claw, claw, gore) and 2d6 sneak attack when stacking mutagen and rage. PLus a good HP total, decent skills, and limited casting. You will save will be garbage, though, so you might want to shore it up with iron will and a will-boosting trait.

[SowZ]

Even moreso than usual, getting a consistent method of flight may be essential to survive.

[laeZ1]

"One hundred percent Gygax improved".

Sorry to go off topic, but what does that mean?

[Namfuak]

Sorry to go off topic, but what does that mean?

Gary Gygax was one of the game's creators, and preferred game styles where players were playing "against" the DM (with the intention that the DM was going to try to not make encounters unsolvable, but be extremely difficult).

I haven't played pathfinder, but as others have said you should probably focus on being able to deal decent damage while also being able to do things to move around the battlefield. Something that gives you a climbing or burrowing speed comes to mind (in addition to a fly speed).

[Keneth]

I'm guessing that was supposed to be "Gygax-approved", not "Gygax improved". :smallbiggrin:

[nedz]

Gary Gygax was one of the game's creators, and preferred game styles where players were playing "against" the DM (with the intention that the DM was going to try to not make encounters unsolvable, but be extremely difficult).

What ?

Gary Gygax was one of the game's creators True, but his preferred style was one where encounters were not necessarily CR appropriate — you had to know when to run away. The game style was about judgement in many ways.

This is not Players V DM

[TuggyNE]

What ?

Gary Gygax was one of the game's creators True, but his preferred style was one where encounters were not necessarily CR appropriate — you had to know when to run away. The game style was about judgement in many ways.

This is not Players V DM

Both are true; Gygax was notorious for making gotchas of various sorts, with the idea that if the players fell for one of them, well, clearly they weren't being smart enough. Tomb of Horrors is kind of a self-caricature of this, but even his other works tended toward it.

For example, the whole thing of cursed items.