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View Full Version : Pathfinder Do Archaeologist's Clever Explorer and Rogue's Trapfinding Stack?



Levism84
2016-04-18, 08:39 PM
I was playing around with variant multi-classing a bard [archaeologist archetype] with rogue as the VMC. I know there is some overlap, but I was interested to know if the archaeologist's clever explorer and the rogue's trapfinding stacked?

Since they are named differently and provide mostly different mechanical benefits (and since clever explorer can't be used to qualify for things that require trapfinding) I figured it would be fine to stack them. I just wanted to get a feel from the community if that was RAW okay.

Overall benefits: at 20th level gain a +20 to Disable Device, a +10 to Perception (with an additional +10 to spot traps), gain +4d6 sneak attack to add to rogue feel, gain improved uncanny dodge at 15th (instead of 19th), and the rogue talents you get from archaeologist can be used to improve your VMC rogue sneak attack. However, you don't get anything except additional sneak attack damage at 11th and 19th (because you already get evasion at 6th and improved uncanny dodge at 15th, which sucks).

Psyren
2016-04-18, 10:26 PM
As written yes, Clever Explorer and Trapfinding stack. You're giving up a lot of feats for this though; consider that just two of the feats you gave up could have been spent on Skill Focus (Perception) and Skill Focus (DD) and you'd only be down by +4 instead of +10, with three additional feats left over. (Spend another one of those on Extra Rogue Talent [Canny Observer] and now your Perception bonus is the full +20 from the first build, with 2 feats left over instead.) Since Archaeologist already gets Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, these are wasted.

A better combination with VMC Rogue might be the Sandman Bard (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/archetypes/paizo---bard-archetypes/sandman). They don't get Evasion or Uncanny Dodge natively so nothing from the VMC is wasted. You also get the useful ability to hide your spellcasting in your music and steal spells from foes. To top it off, you natively get 5d6 sneak attack, so you can have a total of 9d6 (10d6 with Accomplished Sneak Attacker, i.e. full progression.)

Levism84
2016-04-19, 05:18 PM
I checked out the sandman archetype, and it definitely has some appeal (although it only gets +4d6 sneak attack, not +5d6 sneak attack; which still doubles the amount of sneak attack the archaeologist build would grant).

However, I am not a huge fan of "spell stealing" mechanics or bardic music in general. That being said, I did like the replacement for suggestion being a deeper slumber effect.

I think my big draw to archaeologist over sandman, still, is the archaeologist's pool of luck and access to rogue talents.