What do you think would be a rad addition to this Kingmaker party?

[(Un)Inspired]

I'm very excited.

My little brother has decided to try his hand running a campaign. He's become enamored with The Kingmaker campaign and is going to run it for his girlfriend, my girlfriend and I. He's got tons of play experience and I think he'll be a great DM.

I'm going to be playing an oracle splitting pretty evenly between casting and Buff 'n' Snuff.

My girlfriend is gonna play a Lion Druid with (eventually) a dire lion who turns into a lion and summons lions.

My brothers girlfriend, however, has not decided what she'd like to play. She's asked for some advice on this front. I've seen her play a sorcerer, a ranger and an inquisitor in other games and she seemed to enjoy them all.

So, Giant in the Playground, knowing what my girlfriend and I are playing, what would you bring in to a Kingmaker game?

All suggestions are welcome. We use all Paizo pathfinder material and my brother is pretty open minded when it comes to including 3.5 and well put together homebrew stuff. We're using a pretty high point but for ability scores so hopefully even somewhat MAD classes can shine.


Oh, and please please please no spoilers for Kingmaker.

[Extra Anchovies]

A full arcane caster, probably, both so your party has access to arcane magic and so everyone's around the same power level. Summon-spamming melee druid and buffing oracle would go well with a utility wizard.

[Seerow]

I'm going to make a suggestion based entirely on the premise of "I statted this character up recently and I feel like it'd be a ton of fun to play".

Frost Mage

Design as a Blaster primary with a focus on battlefield control.

Crossblooded Sorcerer(Silver or White Draconic Bloodline/Primal Water Elemental Bloodline). If you want to go higher op you can just dip 1 level into crossblooded and go the rest of your levels into Wizard, since first level gets you what you really wanted (+2 damage on every damage die with cold spells), but I personally prefer spontaneous casters, and it looks like she has some experience there.

Low level workhorse spell is going to be Snow Ball, ranged touch attack for 1d6 damage per level plus fort save or stagger, so decent damage (especially with crossblooded and potentially picking up intensify spell) plus crowd control. Other spells known can be spent on whatever you prefer, you'll get Burning Hands(Cold Subbed) free from bloodline for an early AoE option, so your other spells known can pretty much go to utility/control spells until level 5-6 (at which point you want to pick up a 2nd or 3rd level blasting option).

Fun Feats worth noting for the Frost Mage:
-Rime Spell (Entangle enemies you hit with a cold spell)
-Lingering Spell (for 1 round after you cast an area spell, the spell lingers causing its effect to anyone who moves through it and causes concealment)
-Dazing Spell (standard mid-high level control metamagic)
-Piercing Cold (ignore cold resistance, deal half damage against cold immune creatures)
-Intensified Spell (add +5 damage dice to most of your low level spells. Just saying 10d6+20 damage isn't a waste of an action even at mid levels, and only takes a 2nd level slot, 1st with any sort of metamagic reducer)


And of course, as with any blasty-type, any metamagic reducer (note: there's 2 PF traits that will reduce metamagic on a single spell. And since you are running 3.5 material as well as PF, all of the 3.5 metamagic reducers are in play)



Or if you want something dramatically different from that since there's already two casters in the group, you could build a Swordlord using Path of War material. (In the Kingmaker player packet there's even a trait that gives a straight +1 to hit with an aldori dueling sword, which is pretty decent)

Swordlord

I'd do this one as a Myrmidon Archetype Fighter from Path of War. You get up to 6th level maneuvers plus Grit in exchange for a few bonus feats. Go for a focus on Scarlet Throne maneuvers, grab an Aldori Dueling Sword, and as a 1st level human you can start with Weapon Finesse, EWP, and Power Attack. Grab Scarlet Throne Style and Deadly Agility shortly after that, asap as you level, and you are pretty much good to go.

There's a few other fitting Archetypes that are compatible with the Myrmidon. None are particularly great, but the default Fighter's Weapon/Armor Training and Bravery aren't that great either so may as well trade them away. The Swordlord and the Martial Master are particularly fitting, Martial Master is probably the better of the two but Swordlord is literally designed for this concept. There's also the Mobility Fighter, Free-Hand Fighter, Intelligent Duelist Fighter, and a few others that may be of interest. Lots of options here, though I wasn't able to find any two that I could get to go together by RAW (if your DM is open to requests, see about combining Swordlord and Martial Master, just skipping the Disarming Strike ability at Swordlord 5, since it replaces the same Weapon Training that Martial Master replaces).

[(Un)Inspired]

Extra Anchovies, as you pointed out, something with some muscle behind it is a good idea. I don't want her to feel like the odd man out in a party with an oracle and a Druid. You totally right that arcane casting would be the business. We currently are completely without a way to teleport (lame) as a party, nor a good way to bind outsiders (super lame). I'm not sure preparing spells from the wizards great and powerful list is something she is gonna want to sit down and do regularly, unfortunately.

Seerow, I've never been partial to blaster a but that Frost Mage is pretty rad sounding. I get the feeling she. (Quite unlike I) would love to play a blaster but I fear that, as only a moderately experienced player, she will burn through all her spell slots super rapidly and be left with nothing to do. Is this a reasonable concern ?

[Seerow]

Extra Anchovies, as you pointed out, something with some muscle behind it is a good idea. I don't want her to feel like the odd man out in a party with an oracle and a Druid. You totally right that arcane casting would be the business. We currently are completely without a way to teleport (lame) as a party, nor a good way to bind outsiders (super lame). I'm not sure preparing spells from the wizards great and powerful list is something she is gonna want to sit down and do regularly, unfortunately.

Seerow, I've never been partial to blaster a but that Frost Mage is pretty rad sounding. I get the feeling she. (Quite unlike I) would love to play a blaster but I fear that, as only a moderately experienced player, she will burn through all her spell slots super rapidly and be left with nothing to do. Is this a reasonable concern ?

At low level it might be. But it's worth noting that her Icy Ray cantrip will deal 1d3+2 damage as a touch attack, which is a fair bit better than a crossbow bolt. Plus she'll have a 6-7/day energy ray for 1d6+1 damage from bloodline. They're not great damage (actually at level 1 the damage is competitive with snowball, minus the staggering part), but it'll help her get through the day still feeling like a caster until you guys gain a few levels levels.

And once you hit mid levels (like by level 6), spells per day really shouldn't be an issue any more. Especially since her level 1-2 spell slots will remain relevant damage-wise until probably around level 10-12.


Edit: I can post the level 20 version I made up a couple days ago if you're interested.

[(Un)Inspired]

At low level it might be. But it's worth noting that her Icy Ray cantrip will deal 1d3+2 damage as a touch attack, which is a fair bit better than a crossbow bolt. Plus she'll have a 6-7/day energy ray for 1d6+1 damage from bloodline. They're not great damage (actually at level 1 the damage is competitive with snowball, minus the staggering part), but it'll help her get through the day still feeling like a caster until you guys gain a few levels levels.

And once you hit mid levels (like by level 6), spells per day really shouldn't be an issue any more. Especially since her level 1-2 spell slots will remain relevant damage-wise until probably around level 10-12.


Edit: I can post the level 20 version I made up a couple days ago if you're interested.

Yeah post away. The more suggestions ( and explanations) she can look through the better off she'll be right? I'm gonna show her this thread when I see her in a few days and she can look over everything people suggest and how they work and she can make some decisions.

Really, if anyone has any ideas for builds that would be fun for kingmaker or builds in general that are fun , functional and don't require oodles of system knowledge feel free to post them.

[Extra Anchovies]

Extra Anchovies, as you pointed out, something with some muscle behind it is a good idea. I don't want her to feel like the odd man out in a party with an oracle and a Druid. You totally right that arcane casting would be the business. We currently are completely without a way to teleport (lame) as a party, nor a good way to bind outsiders (super lame). I'm not sure preparing spells from the wizards great and powerful list is something she is gonna want to sit down and do regularly, unfortunately.

Wizards don't prepare from their whole list, though. They only prepare from their spellbook. In high-op these are basically the same, but they don't have to be. Wizards automatically get all cantrips, plus 3+int 1st-level spells, plus 2 spells per wizard level above first. Excluding cantrips, that's only eight more spells than a sorcerer learns.

[Seerow]

Frost Mage Link (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oBuJ4L8i1zR7BSTwwGLQ3AShe2pCdn3yw-aXFqqpCxU/edit?usp=sharing)

It's a few feats short for a PF character (my group usually does 3.5 base with PF stuff backported when used), and the gear is just boring number based stuff (since the actual details of gear tend to be something I worry about when I will actually get to play a character), but it should give a good idea of which bloodline abilities I was looking at and the spells known loadout I was looking at. Of course that spells known list has lots of overlap (I was mostly building for theme), so dropping out a few spells to make room for Teleport/Greater Teleport and Planar Binding or the like without losing anything important is pretty easy. Also no favored class bonuses are included there, so if you get a favored class for bonus spells known, there's even more wiggle room available or the general arcane utility you're looking for.

Spells and feats in general are taken from Pathfinder, though a handful of exceptions are from D&D (specifically Arcane Fusion and the Dragon Breath spells I know were grabbed from 3.5)

One bit in there I thought was particularly fun: The character has three separate forms of breath weapon (one from bloodline, one from the bloodline spell Form of the Dragon, and one from the Dragon's Breath spell), and at later levels gets the spells Greater Stunning Breath (swift action, stun enemies for 2d4 rounds with your breath weapon) and Animate Breath (swift action as you use your breath weapon to turn it into an elemental).

[Incorrect]

Seerow, I've never been partial to blaster a but that Frost Mage is pretty rad sounding. I get the feeling she. (Quite unlike I) would love to play a blaster but I fear that, as only a moderately experienced player, she will burn through all her spell slots super rapidly and be left with nothing to do. Is this a reasonable concern ?
She will not run out of spells in Kingmaker, unless you have several random encounters each day.
Maybe once per book will have an instance with many encounters, like a dungeon crawl, but in general Kingmaker has one encounter per day.

[Extra Anchovies]

She will not run out of spells in Kingmaker, unless you have several random encounters each day.
Maybe once per book will have an instance with many encounters, like a dungeon crawl, but in general Kingmaker has one encounter per day.

Wow. That AP really favors casters, doesn't it?

[Dysart]

I've been playing in a Kingmaker campaign, we're about half way through first book but I'll not include any spoilers.

My suggestion is either go with a Magus or an Archivist for her.

Magus -
Pros:
Can fight without spells and not suffer too badly.
Can cast Arcane spells including some buff but a lot more blast.
Gets Wizard spells at later levels so can diversify their spell list.

Cons:
Doesn't get level 7, 8 or 9 spells.
Gish issues, aka can she cast defensively?

(Probably loads more but meh, not wanting a class battle)

Archivist -
Pros:
More spells per day than a wizard
More spells known than a sorcerer
Can pick up an ability at level 1 that lets them switch what spells are available using a full round action and one of their power points
Can specialise depending on what she finds the most fun

Cons:
Tier 2 spell progression
Still involves spell book based things.

(again, please no class war replies >.< )

The reason I'd suggest a Archivist over a Wizard is it's a lot more forgiving when choosing your prepared spells, has more per day (ish) than a basic wizard and will have the same level progression as her experience with a Sorcerer.
It's kinda the gateway drug to Wizard (or has been for me) and with it getting a new cool ability ever other level it works well to keep the player from being board when the Oracle gets cool stuff and the Druid gets a pet :P

[robgrayert]

I'm DM-ing Kingmaker with my group right now, and I'd recommend a meat shield. But also an arcane caster. So a sword caster type like a Magus might be a good compromise. Although in the day-to-day there aren't a lot of reasons for a bruiser character in Kingmaker, there are a handful of encounters per book of the series with hard-hitting creatures that could start dropping PC's.

[charcoalninja]

I vote a Path of War Initiator like the Warder or Harbinger as they are awesome.
I also suggest a Psionic character like a Psion, Soulknife or Psychic Warrior for the exact same reason. Awesome.

[(Un)Inspired]

I'm a bit worried that if she plays a path of war character she'll be bored as hull when were out of combat.

I don't want to be stone shaping castles while the druid controls weather patterns for our kingdom while her character just has to sit there and wait for the next karate match.