RotRL character help

[Ultra4Life]

One of my friends decided to run a Rise of the Runelords campaign. I got kinda shoehorned into it since without me he only has three players and he's so adamant that "it's designed for four players" and he needs a fourth to do it. So fine, whatever. I figured I'd try to build a character that was fun. Unfortunately thus far our party consists of two wizards and a magus. One of the wizard players only ever plays wizards and trying to convince him otherwise doesn't work. He's gonna try to play a control wizard (try is the important bit, he always makes mistakes that get his character killed by trying to be clever). The other wizard player is on leave and not exactly available for this discussion but seemed to want to play a blaster wizard. And the third had to have his arm twisted to try the game out, so letting him play what he wants to play is pretty much mandatory. Gonna go Dervish Dancer Bladebound Magus.

So now it falls to me to build something to fill in the gaps. I know very little of RotRL, but standard party composition sense leads me to think we need 1. A divine caster 2. A skill monkey and 3. A face. I'm not sure how important the latter two are in RotRL, but the first is usually pretty important. I personally like my characters to fight in combat, not heal or spend all their time buffing, so I'm having trouble putting a character together who can pull all of that off competently. Is there any way you (people on GiantITP) can think of to pull something that at least touches on all those bases? The character doesn't need to be a master of those aspects of the game by any means, but would be appreciated if they could handle them well enough.

Tl;Dr
I need a character who can fit into a group of two wizards and a magus for Rise of the Rune Lords.

[Geddy2112]

An inquisitor would fill the gaps in fairly well for the party. You get all the face skills, a lot of class skills the other classes lack and enough ranks to pick up anything they are missing. Inquisitors hold their own well as a frontline combatant, and have divine casting to support and fill in what the arcane casters won't have.

[Ultra4Life]

I'm not terribly fond of divine casters with this GM (reasons not worth going into). I've been perusing other options - how well could Occultist (The Paizo one, not the third party one) work for this type of character? It seems like if I pick Conjuration at level one it'd be pretty easy to provide healing as necessary (with the right trait I can get enough gold to start with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds). Then if I pick up Flesh Mend at level 3 I should be able to provide a pretty substantial amount of healing to the party. Go human, dump Dex, select heavy armor proficiency as a bonus feat, put points into charisma, take advantage of an Int based class and 4+ skill points per level w/human bonus to get a sizeable chunk of skill points, etc.

My main concern is how well this character can keep up at higher levels. Any experience with high level Occultists?

[Firest Kathon]

Having played RotR I will try to give some generic advice (without spoilers). It is, in my experience, a quite combat-heavy campaign with a strange mix of periods with almost no downtime and extremely long downtimes. Some source of out-of-combat healing is definitely a good idea. You could also use a frontliner/tank/damage sink, summons may fill this role as well. Social situations are limited and generally with friendly NPCs, but at least some focus on it can help in some situations.

We ran the camapiagn with a Paladin (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin) (Divine Hunter (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo---paladin-archetypes/divine-hunter)), a Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife) (Armored Blade (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/armored-blade), War Soul (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/war-soul-soulknife-archetype)) a Bard (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard), and a Druid (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid) NPC. So we had no main healer, but ran through the campaign without significant trouble (only the soulknife died once due to an unlucky crit). We also had no trap/skillmonkey, I'm not sure if our GM just left out traps or if there are not many in the campaign, but we had basically no trouble due to that.

What your group is in my opinion is missing most for that campaign is a second body between the squishy casters and the bad guys, especially since the Magus seems to go a lightly armored, mobile route. My default for that would be a Summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner) (or Unchained Summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/unchained-classes/summoner-unchained)), unless you are worried about the large number of arcane casters in the group. As a Charisma-based caster you'd have some social skills, the Eidolon is a nice hp buffer, and some of our summons can provide healing and other cleric support spells (or just UMD a Wand of Cure Light Wounds).

I can't give an input on the Occultist, I've never really looked at the class, but a handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?452661-CTP-s-Guide-to-Occultists) may be useful.

[Ultra4Life]

I should point out I'm not saying we need a healer - I used the term Divine Caster for a reason. Even the aforementioned group had a Divine Caster (a full caster at that) in the Druid. Divine casters can provide a ton of useful spells for the party beyond just healing.

I have an aversion to the summoner - it's just never been something I particularly like. The whole idea of a pet class tends to turn me away, and the few archetypes that don't rely on it (synthesist) don't really interest me.

I should point out I built a character for this game prior to this post, I just wasn't particularly happy with it. The complete lack of Charisma in the party (no one has more than 10, no social skills on anyone) makes me feel kinda obligated to play something with Charisma. And while I normally don't mind playing divine casters (I generally consider Cleric and Druid my favorite classes in practice, though Ranger and Monk are my favorites in theory), this GM's attitude has me adverse to it. What exactly I mean by that is that he seems to consider it his personal responsibility to constantly make your choice of deity a constant and perpetual pain. He calls it good roleplaying and what's "supposed to happen" to those characters. I call it a very good reason to never play one in his games. Then he tends to have his own very particular views on what constitutes following an alignment/code of conduct correctly.

All in all this makes me not want to play any sort of divine caster in his game. Too much effort for too little enjoyment coming back - divine casters tend to be the "draw straws" class, and putting more of a headache on top just kills it. Plus in just about every game I'm ever in I get stuck playing one. Would really like to NOT end up having to play a divine caster just to keep the party from imploding in on itself (which in my experience with three of the four of the people in the group kinda ends up as my job).

Going back, the initial character I built was a Nature Fang Druid. I tend to like to take classes and try to use them in interesting ways. In my case I was building a Druid (as in single class Druid) who conceptually was a ninja (as in how he acts, fights, etc). Partly to show one player in our group (who always plays his characters as complete stereotypes) how your character's class really only defines a very narrow aspect of your character, even in the case of a fairly restrictive class like Druid. I finished it, and was fairly happy. And make no mistake, nature and the reverence of (in his own way) was still an important part to the character. But as I spoke to the GM he made it fairly clear he doesn't think Druids should act like this. So I'm fairly certain I'll just end up slapped with a "not revering nature by the GM's standards" penalty and end up as a glorified Commoner pretty quickly. Which when you combine with the lack of social skills made me want to just completely trash the character. Which is why I'm trying to come up with something else.

Now personally I consider the Druid to be the least restrictive of the restrictive classes (which I consider the Druid, Cleric, and Paladin). The only real criteria is to revere nature and not wear metal armor. The first is pretty ambiguous, and the latter is easy enough. So using Cleric or Paladin is out of the question. Which is why I'm having this issue - my normal methods of solving this problem are out. And I'm wary of using Inquisitor around this guy. I know Inquisitors don't have as strict roleplaying requirements, but I don't want to get into an argument every time I want to do something questionable. Not to mention not being a full caster. Then Oracles. Well I'm just not fond of Oracles. I always find myself wanting to play a Cleric instead. Plus there's inevitably going to be that point where I have to point out that Oracles have no alignment or roleplaying restrictions and risk an argument over that.

Which now that I say all of that it gives me the feeling I should just cut and run. Well make up a decent sounding excuse to not be in the game and not join when it finally starts.

[exelsisxax]

Here's a pretty good excuse:

"You don't need 4 for RotRL, and I don't feel like joining."

My group was 2 magi and a cleric(that only punched things) and it wasn't difficult. When we added a 4th halfway through, it got more difficult because he was basically a ball-and-chain - even moreso than the horrifically unoptimized cleric that never cast a single buff.

[Geddy2112]

So, you think the party needs a divine caster, but the DM hates divine casters....Don't play?

If you decide to play, a bard would probably be your next best choice. You could be a charismatic face rogue too. Grab a wand of CLW for either one.
I have no experience with the occultist, but it looks like it would work too.

[Muggins]

how well could Occultist (The Paizo one, not the third party one) work for this type of character?
...
My main concern is how well this character can keep up at higher levels. Any experience with high level Occultists?
I do, and they do just about as well as you'd expect from a class with 6th level spells. I liken them to an alchemist in terms of fun and flexibility, although the class does take some getting used to (effects, foci, etc).

[Ultra4Life]

I wouldn't say he hates divine casters. Just that he has a very particular idea about how each class is supposed to act and doesn't like deviations.

Regardless turns out he wanted to play today, and without a character the issue has resolved itself.

[Gnaeus]

Other likely options include:
Alchemist (gets healing, can melee some)
Witch (gets heal spells and hexes, some hexes synergize brutally with wizards)

Either of those 2 can get a familiar who could potentially UMD heal wands.

Or Investigator, which gets some healing, but also serves for trapfinding, party face, or light melee.