Rogue Wizard Thing (PF)

[Rezialn]

I've been working on this character for a Pathfinder campaign for a few days now and I've finally found all of the silly stuff I want to slap together. I would love for some additional advice on maximizing the fun shenanigans I can pull with this. We're starting level 3 with 3000 gold.

Human
Unchained Rogue(Carnivalist) 2 Wizard (Spirit Binder)1

Chaotic Good

Stats were rolled 4d6-low.
Stats
Str 9
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 18
Wis 13
Cha 14

HP at 26.

+2 dex +2 int from human (sacrificing feat for another +2)

Feats
Weapon Finesse
Evasion
Point Blank Shot
Rapid Shot

For use with a light crossbow.


http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/variant-rules-3rd-party/4-winds-fantasy-gaming/The-Loss-of-a-Body-Part/Prosthetics/magical-prosthetics/energy-palm
Spending 2080 of my starting gold on this to add 1d6 electric damage to all attacks made with that hand. If I can make enough money, I want to grab up some more prosthetics for those sweet bonuses.

For my spirit binder familiar, I'm using the school familiar archetype. I got improved initiative for my familiar's feat. Couldn't find anything better it could take. My familiar is a weasel because it can help me steal and it's cute. It can also ride on my shoulder and deliver ranged sneak attack acid splashes.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/familiar/familiar-archetypes/school-familiar-familiar-archetype

And my wizard 1st level spells are

Gravity Bow
Unseen Servant
Grease
Summon Monster 1
Vanish
Color Spray
Mage Armor

I picked conjuration as my wizard school so that my familiar can teleport back to me. My opposition schools are Divination and Abjuration.

If you have any ideas for shenanigans, would like to correct my misunderstandings, have advice to improve the setup, or any other comments you may have, I would love to hear them!

[BearonVonMu]

It was my understanding that you cannot mix the archetypes from the core classes with their Unchained versions.

[Geddy2112]

So, you plan on shooting people with an electric sneak attack crossbow, maybe use the familiar for flanking, and have some magic? I don't see any utterly gamebreaking shennagians or power combos. Sure, the familiar can get extra feats which has a lot of potential, but they come out of your feat pool. What exactly are you looking to do besides go arcane trickster? What school are you planning for your familiar, and opposition schools? You probably want illusion, enchantment, or conjuration as at least one of your focused schools, and probably use evocation as your opposition school. Being able to have your familiar concentrate on illusions is pretty good, as is increasing enchantment DC's.

Overall it looks like a solid path into arcane trickster, and being the sneaky spellblade archer dude is fine. Might also consider going elf to be longbow proficient and qualify for arcane archer.

A minor note, you get evasion at rogue 2, not rogue 1. Since you are going urogue, you might want to have a decent finesse weapon to use your beautiful dex to damage and to hit from 3rd level rogue. It can stack with your sneak attacking, electric palming whatnot.

It was my understanding that you cannot mix the archetypes from the core classes with their Unchained versions.
Only for monk...poor monk, even when they give the class a fix they still manage to jabrony it up.

[Psyren]

Old archetypes no, but the newer ones are compatible with both. uMonk got some really nice toys as a result. (Monk of the Mantis is one of my favorites.) I do think they need to remake a Tetori and a ranged monk like Far Strike for it, and we're starving for an Extra Ki Power feat.

[Rezialn]

So, you plan on shooting people with an electric sneak attack crossbow, maybe use the familiar for flanking, and have some magic? I don't see any utterly gamebreaking shennagians or power combos. Sure, the familiar can get extra feats which has a lot of potential, but they come out of your feat pool. What exactly are you looking to do besides go arcane trickster? What school are you planning for your familiar, and opposition schools? You probably want illusion, enchantment, or conjuration as at least one of your focused schools, and probably use evocation as your opposition school. Being able to have your familiar concentrate on illusions is pretty good, as is increasing enchantment DC's.

Overall it looks like a solid path into arcane trickster, and being the sneaky spellblade archer dude is fine. Might also consider going elf to be longbow proficient and qualify for arcane archer.

A minor note, you get evasion at rogue 2, not rogue 1. Since you are going urogue, you might want to have a decent finesse weapon to use your beautiful dex to damage and to hit from 3rd level rogue. It can stack with your sneak attacking, electric palming whatnot.

Only for monk...poor monk, even when they give the class a fix they still manage to jabrony it up.

Okay, I'll talk about my thought process for this character.

Initially, I wanted to make a rogue and steal things. Stealing things from long range sounded like a fun way to do it, so I explored those options. This lead me to Arcane Trickster, which gets Ranged Legerdeman. The fastest path to this was 3 levels rogue, 3 levels wizard. I don't really care about being a wizard, I'm just taking it out of neccesity.

Then I discovered archetypes. Rogue archetype sniper sounded like an excellent addition to our party of short-ranged fighters, and our DM probably won't use traps anyways. Then I found the spirit-binder mage archetype and fell in love with the idea of a deceased loved one becoming your familiar.

Then I found out that I could get something like Ranged Legerdeman without having to go Arcane Trickster. There isn't much in Trickster that excited me besides Legerdeman, so I don't see why I should bother with it.

So at this point, Wizard 1 is non-negotiable unless I can get a familiar with another class and I pass on the school-familiar archetype. I don't care enough about what I'd get out of going deeper into spirit-binder, but getting another class to picks up familiar so that I can keep improving the familiar is something I could be interested in. If I can improve my familiar and my martial prowess with the crossbow, that would be fantastic. Otherwise, I'm very open to other ways to enhance the fun value I get out of my familiar and the fun value I get out of my ranged attacks.

The magic hand is barely worth talking about, but I did have the idea of stealing for great enough profit to replace all 4 limbs. DM has already approved it.

For your questions, picking the arcane school has been very tough for me. I was considering conjuration.

[EldritchWeaver]

How do you get Ranged Legerdemain without Arcane Trickster?

[Rezialn]

How do you get Ranged Legerdemain without Arcane Trickster?

Equipment trick Thieves' Tools

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/equipment-trick-combat

[Geddy2112]

Okay, I'll talk about my thought process for this character.

Initially, I wanted to make a rogue and steal things. Stealing things from long range sounded like a fun way to do it, so I explored those options. This lead me to Arcane Trickster, which gets Ranged Legerdeman. The fastest path to this was 3 levels rogue, 3 levels wizard. I don't really care about being a wizard, I'm just taking it out of neccesity.

Then I discovered archetypes. Rogue archetype sniper sounded like an excellent addition to our party of short-ranged fighters, and our DM probably won't use traps anyways. Then I found the spirit-binder mage archetype and fell in love with the idea of a deceased loved one becoming your familiar.

Then I found out that I could get something like Ranged Legerdeman without having to go Arcane Trickster. There isn't much in Trickster that excited me besides Legerdeman, so I don't see why I should bother with it.

So at this point, Wizard 1 is non-negotiable unless I can get a familiar with another class and I pass on the school-familiar archetype. I don't care enough about what I'd get out of going deeper into spirit-binder, but getting another class to picks up familiar so that I can keep improving the familiar is something I could be interested in. If I can improve my familiar and my martial prowess with the crossbow, that would be fantastic. Otherwise, I'm very open to other ways to enhance the fun value I get out of my familiar and the fun value I get out of my ranged attacks.

The magic hand is barely worth talking about, but I did have the idea of stealing for great enough profit to replace all 4 limbs. DM has already approved it.

For your questions, picking the arcane school has been very tough for me. I was considering conjuration.

Ah, so you want to be a sneaky thief and use a familiar/magic to help you be a sneaky thief. If you want to use equipment trick to sub for ranged ledegermain, you can just take minor magic to get mage hand as a power, and call it good. For a familiar, take the carnivalist rogue archetype(see if you can drop the trap sense replace ability so you can also get sniper) to get a familiar and have your familiar be able to pick locks, steal things, etc. You can always add in the fluff that your familiar is a dead relative or friend or something. Even if you dip wizard here, this would give you stacking levels for familiar.

But staying with a wizard dip is not so bad-you have to risk armor check fails, so avoid somatic spells unless they are things you can cast out of combat and with enough time to take off your armor. Conjuration is a solid school, but you get two schools to focus on and one opposition-I suggest illusion or enchantment to be able to help your thievery. Then you can just go up the standard ranged combat tree-point blank shot, rapid shot, rapid reload, precise shot, crossbow mastery, etc.

[Psyren]

But staying with a wizard dip is not so bad-you have to risk armor check fails, so avoid somatic spells unless they are things you can cast out of combat and with enough time to take off your armor.

Alternatively, you can wear light armor with 0% ASF like a Haramaki or Silken Ceremonial armor. The rogue side will cover proficiency, though that doesn't even actually matter since these armors have no check penalty anyway so you can wear them nonproficient with no problems.

[Geddy2112]

Alternatively, you can wear light armor with 0% ASF like a Haramaki or Silken Ceremonial armor. The rogue side will cover proficiency, though that doesn't even actually matter since these armors have no check penalty anyway so you can wear them nonproficient with no problems.
I should slap myself for forgetting the eastern armors, considering I am currently playing an arcane caster with a haramaki. Plus, they have no max dex bonus so you can really go nuts on getting your dex high and add that sweet dex to damage from finesse training.

Which reminds me of bolt ace (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/gunslinger/archetypes/paizo---gunslinger-archetypes/bolt-ace), 5 levels here gets dex to damage on the crossbow and gets you some other nice stuff on the way. If you decide you wanna get more ranged damage out of your build.

[Rezialn]

Ah, so you want to be a sneaky thief and use a familiar/magic to help you be a sneaky thief. If you want to use equipment trick to sub for ranged legerdemain, you can just take minor magic to get mage hand as a power, and call it good. For a familiar, take the carnivalist rogue archetype(see if you can drop the trap sense replace ability so you can also get sniper) to get a familiar and have your familiar be able to pick locks, steal things, etc. You can always add in the fluff that your familiar is a dead relative or friend or something. Even if you dip wizard here, this would give you stacking levels for familiar.

But staying with a wizard dip is not so bad-you have to risk armor check fails, so avoid somatic spells unless they are things you can cast out of combat and with enough time to take off your armor. Conjuration is a solid school, but you get two schools to focus on and one opposition-I suggest illusion or enchantment to be able to help your thievery. Then you can just go up the standard ranged combat tree-point blank shot, rapid shot, rapid reload, precise shot, crossbow mastery, etc.

We did our first session Saturday so it's a bit late to go back now. I'll give you an update on what I've done. I'll also update the original post with my new information.

I was allowed to reroll my stats because the rest of the party is ridiculous. By ridiculous I mean our Warlord 3 almost killed a level 9 Rogue. So now I'm rocking 9 18 14 18 13 14. That includes taking +2 in dex and int as a human.

Found carnivalist while I was researching. That's neat.

The one wizard level is so that I can get the school familiar template. Can't have a wizard school without a wizard level. Now my familiar can acid splash for 1d3 (+1 from an acid vial) and get sneak attacks. Besides the fluff, I really wanted my familiar to contribute damage. Good call on carnivalist.

As far as sniper, I'd really like to take it with carnivalist but both replace trapfinding so they're not compatible. I'm not going to push the rules on this one. DM is already giving me third party magical cyborg nonsense.

I'm considering taking 1 level in snakebite striker for the sneak attack. It'll help since Carnivalist pushes sneak attack further down the levelings. This is also led me to discover that Snakebite Strike and Rogue with 3 wizard levels means 6th level arcane trickster should I want that. It'll be 7th for me since I took 2 rogue levels already but I just appreciate having discovered that. I may end up going 2 levels trickster for sneak attack again.

Losing the rogue talents at 2 4 and 6 is kind of awful but thems the breaks.

I opted for no armor for my spellcasting. My dex is pushing my AC to 14. I'm still a bit concerned for my survival but having a Warlord in the party helps. Plus our damage output between me, my familiar, warlord, gunner, and the two summoners (who are Jojo characters, the madmen) means things die real quick and that there is usually a group of people in front of me. We also have two other party members who may or may not contribute to combat.

I might stop taking rogue levels and go fighter. Because of what carnivalist changes, I'm short feats and carnivalist doesn't really give me anything I want and neither does rogue.

Also because of carnivalist, I'm strongly considering trickster again. Sneak attack every 2 levels. I'll have to take another 2 in wizard, but I sure don't mind. So my end goal is something like

Carnivalist (Rogue) 1
Carnivalist (Rogue) 2
Spirit Binder (Wizard) 3
Snakebite Strike (Brawler) 4
Crossbowman (Fighter) 5
Crossbowman (Fighter) 6
Spirit Binder (Wizard) 7
Spirit Binder (Wizard) 8
Arcane Trickster 9
Arcane Trickster 10
Arcane Trickster 11
Arcane Trickster 12

and that brings up my sneak attack to 4d6, BUT my familiar also gets sneak attacks, and is usually riding on my shoulder, so is in sneak attack range when I am. Actually taking Arcane Trickster means I save on the Legerdemain feat. 4 more casts of my level 1-2 spells per day as well. Two levels crossbowman fighter gives me 2 more feats to make up for the lost rogue talents. If I opt for a third level, I can get 1/2 my dex mod on my damage. Brawler gives me access to fighter and monk talents if there are any in particular I'd want.

Eastern armor is a neat idea. We should eventually be in the far east which will feature Asian culture. I can reasonably grab it up there. Otherwise, I'll have to get AC or more dex from enchanted items. If I get 16000 gold, I can get a leg magical prosthetic for 4 dex.

We might get to level 20. DM said to prepare for 10 levels but we'll go all 20 if he's feeling up to creating content for it. I'm not sure what to do for the other 8 levels. Getting Trickster to 10 doesn't sound too bad but it would still leave me with 2 levels. Carnivalist 2 and Wizard 3 already get my familiar to level 5 abilities so I believe I get the second feat from Spirit Binder.

I'm all up for suggestions on what I can take to increase my sneaky stealy shooty game.