optimizing inquizitor

[hoborobot]

our dm has been constantly switching beetween 3.5 campaigns, never getting farther than lvl 8 for our party. this time he decided to go with pathfinder since he thinks he wont have to go through so much trouble of premade campaigns and balancced chars. please help me prove him wrong with a human inquisitor. i honestly never played pathfinder, so any help at all would be apreciated.

[grarrrg]

our dm has been constantly switching beetween 3.5 campaigns, never getting farther than lvl 8 for our party. this time he decided to go with pathfinder since he thinks he wont have to go through so much trouble of premade campaigns and balancced chars. please help me prove him wrong with a human inquisitor. i honestly never played pathfinder, so any help at all would be apreciated.

Inquisitors are a very flexible class, able to fill a variety of roles.
First question: Do you want to go the Intimidate route?

[The Grue]

Can you explain exactly what you wish to prove wrong?

[hoborobot]

Inquisitors are a very flexible class, able to fill a variety of roles.
First question: Do you want to go the Intimidate route?

no


Can you explain exactly what you wish to prove wrong?

that all classesses are created eqeal. also i want to accutuaaly matter in the campaign as i have never been a useful class, always asked to be a third or forth tier class. im just tired of it is all.

[Chaosvii7]

our dm has been constantly switching beetween 3.5 campaigns, never getting farther than lvl 8 for our party. this time he decided to go with pathfinder since he thinks he wont have to go through so much trouble of premade campaigns and balancced chars. please help me prove him wrong with a human inquisitor. i honestly never played pathfinder, so any help at all would be apreciated.

I'm honestly confused.

First off, If you and your party members agree that you'd like to see a campaign all 20 levels through then you can just as easily sit down with the DM and talk to him as a group about how you'd like to play a full-spectrum D&D campaign instead of having to restart frequently. If he doesn't budge, say that you'd like to find a new DM to suit this goal and invite him to play instead of run for it. If the other members of the party are okay with only going to level 8 and then starting a new adventure then it's a healthy pattern of play, but that means it might not be right for you and I would consider perhaps finding a group that would want to see the whole shebang play out in a novel of a campaign instead of telling a bunch of short stories.

From what it sounds like, there's either one of two things going on: Your DM has a short attention span with regards to the storytelling and plotting aspects of the game and very much doesn't want to deal with high-end optimization troubles that emerge in a typical 3.5 game(which isn't very fun for the players); Or your DM is just more inclined to telling these short stories of people who become heroes of legend without having to get 20 experience levels(which is what might be bothering you). I can totally see why you'd want to play a full 20 level campaign, especially if you and your friends have never seen it the whole way through, but if he's doing this because he just gets easily frustrated with thinking about double digit CR encounters then he definitely needs to be talked to about DMing long-term gaming sessions, especially if this has happened multiple times.

It also sounds like making an overly-optimized build isn't going to help the situation with your DM out. You'd want to meet a solution that enlightens both parties without having to cause havoc among yourself and your DM, or (heaven forbid) yourself and your entire gaming group. Talk to your party members for sure, and if the majority of you agree that you'd like to see a longer length campaign take place then bring it to the DM's attention. There's no need to have to feel like you need to crunch a character so hard that it becomes unhealthy for somebody's preferred pattern or style of play, because everyone is allowed to enjoy the game on different levels. If your DM isn't helping fulfill those levels on enjoyment then ask him if he'd be willing to help meet those goals; If not, then a talk of a new DM shouldn't be out of the question.

[Alex12]

That's not exactly what's happening.
Part of our campaign woes is just getting everyone together. We don't know who's going to be there beforehand, which makes it tricky to plan. The last campaign had a couple of newbies to 3.5, one of whom wanted to play an artificer without realizing it's a "homework" class, and another who's been absent for several weeks, which is problematic since the quest we were in the middle of is trying to claim his title (he's the bastard of a nobleman who had loads of kids, and set up some kind of fetch quest to prove worthiness or something).
What we're doing now with the shift to PF from 3.5 is trying a premade adventure path with rotating DMs.
We also have varying levels of optimization skill with 3.5, and a wide range of tiers in the party, built to a wide variety of different optimization standards. The group we just had was a whisper gnome rokugan ninja with Iaijutsu focus and gnomish quickrazors, a homebrew-fixed swashbuckler played by someone who doesn't even know his own class abilities (he didn't realize he wasn't proficient in heavy armor), a necropolitan dread necromancer aiming for tainted scholar, a bard/artificer, a swordsage, and an evil paladin.
The other issue hoborobot has is that he's got a certain fondness for the psycho-murder-ninja type character. Which leaves him pretty much useless at everything except butchering whatever he's pointed at. Now he wants to play a heavily-optimized inquisitor to try and outshine the rest of the party.
Me, I'm just gonna try and play a pony.

[hoborobot]

That's not exactly what's happening.
Part of our campaign woes is just getting everyone together. We don't know who's going to be there beforehand, which makes it tricky to plan. The last campaign had a couple of newbies to 3.5, one of whom wanted to play an artificer without realizing it's a "homework" class, and another who's been absent for several weeks, which is problematic since the quest we were in the middle of is trying to claim his title (he's the bastard of a nobleman who had loads of kids, and set up some kind of fetch quest to prove worthiness or something).
What we're doing now with the shift to PF from 3.5 is trying a premade adventure path with rotating DMs.
We also have varying levels of optimization skill with 3.5, and a wide range of tiers in the party, built to a wide variety of different optimization standards. The group we just had was a whisper gnome rokugan ninja with Iaijutsu focus and gnomish quickrazors, a homebrew-fixed swashbuckler played by someone who doesn't even know his own class abilities (he didn't realize he wasn't proficient in heavy armor), a necropolitan dread necromancer aiming for tainted scholar, a bard/artificer, a swordsage, and an evil paladin.
The other issue hoborobot has is that he's got a certain fondness for the psycho-murder-ninja type character. Which leaves him pretty much useless at everything except butchering whatever he's pointed at. Now he wants to play a heavily-optimized inquisitor to try and outshine the rest of the party.
Me, I'm just gonna try and play a pony.

maybe this time i picked an inquisitor so i dont have go the same route i always do ie: psycho killer

[avr]

There's a couple of guides to inquisitors listed with other class guides here (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m612?Guide-to-the-Class-Guides).

As an overview - you're a bard level caster; spells are nice to have but they can't be the center of your combat role. You can do some nice tricks with skills of which Intimidate is the most combat-useful. The bane ability is especially nice with a longbow and Rapid Shot; the judgements and teamwork feats can work with any combat style.

Out of combat, you're good with skills and the spells can make you better.

[Coidzor]

That's not exactly what's happening.
Part of our campaign woes is just getting everyone together. We don't know who's going to be there beforehand, which makes it tricky to plan. The last campaign had a couple of newbies to 3.5, one of whom wanted to play an artificer without realizing it's a "homework" class, and another who's been absent for several weeks, which is problematic since the quest we were in the middle of is trying to claim his title (he's the bastard of a nobleman who had loads of kids, and set up some kind of fetch quest to prove worthiness or something).

That's a bit of an organizational nightmare, yeah. :smalleek:


What we're doing now with the shift to PF from 3.5 is trying a premade adventure path with rotating DMs.

Fun fun. Which one y'all going with? :3 Good luck with the rotating DMery though.


We also have varying levels of optimization skill with 3.5, and a wide range of tiers in the party, built to a wide variety of different optimization standards. The group we just had was a whisper gnome rokugan ninja with Iaijutsu focus and gnomish quickrazors, a homebrew-fixed swashbuckler played by someone who doesn't even know his own class abilities (he didn't realize he wasn't proficient in heavy armor), a necropolitan dread necromancer aiming for tainted scholar, a bard/artificer, a swordsage, and an evil paladin.

Sounds like that's one of the issues y'all need to sit down and address then. As it seems like if this has been going on for a while, it won't naturally settle out, but a balance point needs to be agreed upon.


The other issue hoborobot has is that he's got a certain fondness for the psycho-murder-ninja type character. Which leaves him pretty much useless at everything except butchering whatever he's pointed at. Now he wants to play a heavily-optimized inquisitor to try and outshine the rest of the party.

Weird, do-everything characters like Bards, Gishes, and Sword Shape Mystic Rangers usually have a lot more in their bag of tricks than just butchering. :smallconfused:

Sounds like an Inquisitor is basically what they'd want though, given that tendency to want to do a bit of everything and be a ninja-type at the same time.


Me, I'm just gonna try and play a pony.

Earth Pony? Pegasus? Unicorn? I don't know if they've added Crystal Ponies to Ponyfinder yet or not...


maybe this time i picked an inquisitor so i dont have go the same route i always do ie: psycho killer

Enforcer Feat + Blade of Mercy Trait = Nonlethal Intimidate each time you hit a creature that isn't immune to nonlethal damage or intimidate.


that all classesses are created eqeal. also i want to accutuaaly matter in the campaign as i have never been a useful class, always asked to be a third or forth tier class. im just tired of it is all.

Well, you won't really prove that with an Inquisitor, one of the more balanced classes in Pathfinder, unless the rest of the party is made up of Rogues, Cavaliers, and Fighters; since as an Inquisitor, you'd be about on par with Bards, Maguses, and maybe Paladins. You'd want, as in 3.5, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, or Wizard. Oracle, Witch, Summoner, and certain varieties of Alchemist are added to the list of classes that stand a cut above the rest as well.

If Psionics are on the table, then, well, most of those are pretty well balanced, but a full 1-9 manifester is going to outclass a Fighter or Rogue relatively easily.

Though, really, your group should already be fairly aware of the power of fullcasters aside from the new ones.

[Alex12]

Fun fun. Which one y'all going with? :3 Good luck with the rotating DMery though.
We're going with Council of Thieves to start with. I haven't read any of it beyond the player's guide stuff, since I'm not first in line to DM and don't want to have foreknowledge.


Sounds like that's one of the issues y'all need to sit down and address then. As it seems like if this has been going on for a while, it won't naturally settle out, but a balance point needs to be agreed upon.
We're hoping that PF's rebalancing, and our unfamiliarity with the changes, might balance things out. Current expected characters are a Witch (the first DM, so that one'll be kind of in the background), a Forgeborn Aegis (that class looks seriously cool), hoborobot's Inquisitor, a gunslinger, a cryptic, and I'll be going for Sorcerer.
These may be subject to change, of course


Weird, do-everything characters like Bards, Gishes, and Sword Shape Mystic Rangers usually have a lot more in their bag of tricks than just butchering. :smallconfused:
We're talking rogue/assassin and Rokugan ninja type stuff. Primary sneak-attackers. Pretty much no capability outside trapfinding and sneak attack-type stuff.


Sounds like an Inquisitor is basically what they'd want though, given that tendency to want to do a bit of everything and be a ninja-type at the same time.
I dunno if PF's got the tier system the way 3.5 does, but it sounds like you're saying inquisitor is T3, is that right?


Earth Pony? Pegasus? Unicorn? I don't know if they've added Crystal Ponies to Ponyfinder yet or not...
I'm aiming for Unification-bloodline pegasus sorcerer. Ponyfinder's got "gem ponies" and a bunch of other cool races, though.


Well, you won't really prove that with an Inquisitor, one of the more balanced classes in Pathfinder, unless the rest of the party is made up of Rogues, Cavaliers, and Fighters; since as an Inquisitor, you'd be about on par with Bards, Maguses, and maybe Paladins. You'd want, as in 3.5, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, or Wizard. Oracle, Witch, Summoner, and certain varieties of Alchemist are added to the list of classes that stand a cut above the rest as well.

If Psionics are on the table, then, well, most of those are pretty well balanced, but a full 1-9 manifester is going to outclass a Fighter or Rogue relatively easily.

Though, really, your group should already be fairly aware of the power of fullcasters aside from the new ones.

Well, everyone in the party has at least some casting/manifesting. Some of our group members don't seem to grasp the power disparity, which is odd. I actually pulled up the "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" video as a demonstration of the difference in capabilities, but I'm not sure everyone gets it.

[Spore]

maybe this time i picked an inquisitor so i dont have go the same route i always do ie: psycho killer

How about you don't pick a class that is best at killing certain targets in a minimal amount of time then and actually play something that isn't T3 (as you mentioned that this is not strong enough for you)? I.e. a buffing cleric, a control wizard, a sorcerer with a controlling or supportive bloodline or an oracle of life/paladin combo.

Inquisitor as far as you can play it has 4 class features:
Skills to find targets.
Bane/Judgment to kill targets.
Skills to make the killing of targets socially acceptable.
Spells to support all of the above

Everything your DM can control is your target choice and whether or not you fall through your actions (and this isn't even in the rules' book). I would advise STRONGLY against the class. Inquisitor is just like a divine assassin really.

[Coidzor]

We're going with Council of Thieves to start with. I haven't read any of it beyond the player's guide stuff, since I'm not first in line to DM and don't want to have foreknowledge.

That's a fun one. We ended up getting a bit too involved in trying to figure out the nature of the noble houses in West Crown when we started it, but other than that was pretty good.


We're hoping that PF's rebalancing, and our unfamiliarity with the changes, might balance things out. Current expected characters are a Witch (the first DM, so that one'll be kind of in the background), a Forgeborn Aegis (that class looks seriously cool), hoborobot's Inquisitor, a gunslinger, a cryptic, and I'll be going for Sorcerer.
These may be subject to change, of course

Hmm, Cryptic. I must've missed when that one came out, since it's not ringing any bells at all. XD I think you've got a pretty good set up going in though.


We're talking rogue/assassin and Rokugan ninja type stuff. Primary sneak-attackers. Pretty much no capability outside trapfinding and sneak attack-type stuff.

Ahh, yeah, those skills aren't worth as much unless you use 'em for more than just sneak-killing.


I dunno if PF's got the tier system the way 3.5 does, but it sounds like you're saying inquisitor is T3, is that right?

IIRC, several T5s jumped ship into T4, and then they added some more T1, T2, T3, and T4 classes and one or two T5s. Wizards are still one of the most powerful classes, Bards are still one of the most balanced. Fighters are still pretty lackluster though they got some more goodies and Rogues cry because they've not been able to move with the times and now there's archetypes of several different classes that do their various specialties better than they do.

GOD (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1570.0)Wizard is still GOD (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/treatmonks-lab/test) Wizard, just his tool kit is a bit smaller. And the Bard has more company from the Summoner, Inquisitor, and Magus, though the Summoner is the most generally powerful of the bard-progression-ish casters.


I'm aiming for Unification-bloodline pegasus sorcerer. Ponyfinder's got "gem ponies" and a bunch of other cool races, though.

Ahh, ok.


Well, everyone in the party has at least some casting/manifesting. Some of our group members don't seem to grasp the power disparity, which is odd. I actually pulled up the "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit" video as a demonstration of the difference in capabilities, but I'm not sure everyone gets it.

It mostly starts to come out when you've got someone without casting, such as, say, a Rogue, and then compare them with a caster of equal level who has, say, 4th, 5th, or 6th level spells. It just gets more and more egregious when you've got someone who can depopulate a small kingdom with a single spell or create an infinitely exponentially growing army of angels versus someone who can put people to sleep/paralyze/kill them if they fail a fort save with one try per person per day, which is the equivalent of certain lower level spells as an at-will SLA.

[hoborobot]

while looking throught handbooks, i keep stumbling across point buy. what does that mean?

10 Point Buy: Str 16, Dex 9, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 15, Cha 7
15 point Buy: Str 16, Dex 11, Con 13, Int 8, Wis 15, Cha 7
20 Point Buy: Str 16, Dex 11, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 7
25 Point Buy: Str 16, Dex 12, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 7

[Coidzor]

while looking throught handbooks, i keep stumbling across point buy. what does that mean?

10 Point Buy: Str 16, Dex 9, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 15, Cha 7
15 point Buy: Str 16, Dex 11, Con 13, Int 8, Wis 15, Cha 7
20 Point Buy: Str 16, Dex 11, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 7
25 Point Buy: Str 16, Dex 12, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 7

Point buy is a way of generating ability scores. I guess in Pathfinder the default start is at 7. Or else ability scores can be lowered to 7 for extra points. But your ability scores all start at some number, and then you assign points to buy higher scores in any particular ability, with the cost going up the higher the ability score bonus is. So an 18 in an ability score costs a fair bit. It means that everyone has roughly comparable ability scores, so that no one is saddled with a crippled character they have to kill off due to poor rolls and no one has such awesome rolls that they outshine the rest of the party based upon their ability scores.

[Spore]

You get 25 points to generate stats (before modifiers): http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gettingStarted.html#_generating-ability-scores

Base line is 10 (instead of 8 like in D&D point buy): Generating an 18, 11 and a 15 costs 25 for example.

[Alefiend]

If you're not into the teamwork feats, you can become an awesome support character with the Preacher archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor/archetypes/paizo---inquisitor-archetypes/preacher)—all those rerolls add up. If you've got any interest in Intimidate (I know you said you don't, but just in case) you can pair it very effectively in the middle levels with the Blistering Invective (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blistering) spell. And I agree that Bane is a delight for archers—longbow is the best proficiency you have out of the box, and inquisitors aren't quite sturdy enough for front line combat.