Help with Brawler

[Vyanie]

I have been invited into a campaign that a few of my friends are enjoying. At the moment the party consists of a Dhampir witch, a fetchling ninja, and cleric not sure of race. The DM is being very generous with stats (base 10 with a 1 for 1 buy of 23 points no stats before modifiers above 18 no going below 10 before modifiers.) As for races we are not allowed to play beastial type races (half orc, goblins, basically anything that looks to different from humans as its part of the campaign hook). We are allowed to use any of the pathfinder books, unchained, advanced books and so on, but only paizo books no 3pp. Fast xp progression until lvl 6 then normal after that. So far I am looking to build my character as a Suli Brawler, as I came in late we are already level 2. I have somewhat planned my character out until 7 but would like any advice on the build that people better than me at building a character might give.
Character is as follows
Stats are after racial modifiers 20/18/17/8/10/12 at level 4 ability point goes into con
Backgrounds traits are adopted to get carefully hidden, and Reactionary
First 2 levels are Brawler then 2 of unchained moms (since paizo didn't specifically state we could not I was able to finagle my way into it) then the rest brawler
Feats
lvl 1 Weapon focus Unarmed strike
lvl 2 Outslug style
lvl 3 Dirty Fighting / Jabbing style
lvl 4 Jabbing master
lvl 5 improved trip
lvl 7 lunge / outslug weave

1k gold to start so basic stuff like chain mail and heavy shield. Going to try and save the rest for essential items later.

Any advice from anyone would be extremely helpful

[Vyanie]

No one has any advice? suggestions? anything?

[Florian]

I´m not seeing the point of your build. The Brawler´s strength is martial flexibility, meaning you get the basic style feat and try to collect as many prereqs for other styles as possible, and activate the full style feat chain that you think you´ll need. Your build loses that flexibility by delaying martial flexibility for 2 levels and already being fixed on two styles.

[Vyanie]

I was planning on utilizing martial flexibility more for other feats than for style feats, Power attack, trip, and such. I had thought the flexibility would benefit me more on the CMB side of things since I would be swapping out to trip/bullrush/grapple an opponent instead of taking static feats for them and not being able to use them half the time. The 2 styles I had picked ( I may be mistaken) I had believed were a good combination for using fuse styles from moms, If there is a way to do that without the moms dip i would love to know.

Dirty Fighting was picked specifically with the ninja in mind as they love to flank and it allows me to trip and such without provoking an AoO with them around. I was going more of a damage focused brawler build but still trying to leave the options out there for area control since our witch is looking to be set up for a full control build and our cleric is looking to be a full support build as well.

[Geddy2112]

Jabbing is a good style and synergizes with outslug fairly well. I know MOMS says you don't need to meet the prerequisites for style feats, but getting jabbing master at level 4 is probably not RAI, and you might want to ask your DM if that is okay.

If you are going monk, you could retool your build to have more WIS and just use that instead of armor/shield, but you are fine going the route you are on.

I would grab power attack over trip; you will use power attack more often and a lot of things simply cannot be tripped or are functionally impossible to trip. If you want to trip(or any other maneuver you need), you can learn it through flexibility. If you put ranks in intimidate picking up cornagun smash would be a decent add to power attack.

[Psyren]

I agree with Florian, I'm not sure why you're diluting your build. You should either be a Brawler or an Unchained Monk, there's no real point to being both. With Wis that low I'd go with Brawler. Also why do you have 12 Cha? Neither class cares about Cha at all, you'd be better off putting that 12 in Int for more skills. You'd also be only a single Int away from Combat Expertise (or just use a bypass feat like Dirty Fighting.)

Also, Paizo did specifically disallow MoMs with Unchained Monk - it cannot use any monk archetypes unless they specifically state they work with uMonk.

[Vyanie]

Jabbing is a good style and synergizes with outslug fairly well. I know MOMS says you don't need to meet the prerequisites for style feats, but getting jabbing master at level 4 is probably not RAI, and you might want to ask your DM if that is okay.

If you are going monk, you could retool your build to have more WIS and just use that instead of armor/shield, but you are fine going the route you are on.

I would grab power attack over trip; you will use power attack more often and a lot of things simply cannot be tripped or are functionally impossible to trip. If you want to trip(or any other maneuver you need), you can learn it through flexibility. If you put ranks in intimidate picking up cornagun smash would be a decent add to power attack.

Hrmm thank you, i had not even thought of that for trip vs power attack, completely slipped my mind.

Did not see cornagun smash, now that i have i like it quite a bit thank you,

[Vyanie]

I agree with Florian, I'm not sure why you're diluting your build. You should either be a Brawler or an Unchained Monk, there's no real point to being both. With Wis that low I'd go with Brawler. Also why do you have 12 Cha? Neither class cares about Cha at all, you'd be better off putting that 12 in Int for more skills. You'd also be only a single Int away from Combat Expertise (or just use a bypass feat like Dirty Fighting.)

Also, Paizo did specifically disallow MoMs with Unchained Monk - it cannot use any monk archetypes unless they specifically state they work with uMonk.

12 cha is because of the race, as i said i can not dump stat so no going below 10 before modifiers.
Besides skill points why would i care about a 13 int? I have Brawler’s Cunning, as it states " If the brawler’s Intelligence score is less than 13, it counts as 13 for the purpose of meeting the prerequisites of combat feats." this was specifically put in to make brawlers less MAD.

The only thing remotely related to paizo saying you can not go MoMs with Umonk that I have found was with PFS, thankfully both my DM and myself view that as an extension of crazy thats trying to remove even more from martials... in other words, PFS is trying to ruin the game for martials so we ignore it.

I went back into unchained and the exact wording on page 8 for it is
"Finally, with the exception of the monk, these classes should work with any of the archetypes from previous books as long as the classes still have the appropriate class features to replace."

As I said it does not specifically state NO you cant do it,

[Psyren]

12 cha is because of the race, as i said i can not dump stat so no going below 10 before modifiers.
Besides skill points why would i care about a 13 int? I have Brawler’s Cunning, as it states " If the brawler’s Intelligence score is less than 13, it counts as 13 for the purpose of meeting the prerequisites of combat feats." this was specifically put in to make brawlers less MAD.

You're right, I forgot that class feature. But my point stands, your wisdom is abysmal for splashing monk and wearing armor shuts off a lot of monk features. So you might as well just go straight Brawler.


The only thing remotely related to paizo saying you can not go MoMs with Umonk that I have found was with PFS, thankfully both my DM and myself view that as an extension of crazy thats trying to remove even more from martials... in other words, PFS is trying to ruin the game for martials so we ignore it.

I went back into unchained and the exact wording on page 8 for it is
"Finally, with the exception of the monk, these classes should work with any of the archetypes from previous books as long as the classes still have the appropriate class features to replace."

As I said it does not specifically state NO you cant do it,

That's exactly what "with the exception of the monk" means :smallconfused: What did you think it meant? By RAW they're not allowed.

Ultimately it doesn't matter since you and your GM have houseruled it, but I still don't see what Unchained Monk is getting you that is worth losing Brawler levels for. If it's the ability to use two styles at once, Combat Style Master effectively does that for most purposes by letting you swap as a free action.

[Vyanie]

You're right, I forgot that class feature. But my point stands, your wisdom is abysmal for splashing monk and wearing armor shuts off a lot of monk features. So you might as well just go straight Brawler.



That's exactly what "with the exception of the monk" means :smallconfused: What did you think it meant? By RAW they're not allowed.

Ultimately it doesn't matter since you and your GM have houseruled it, but I still don't see what Unchained Monk is getting you that is worth losing Brawler levels for. If it's the ability to use two styles at once, Combat Style Master effectively does that for most purposes by letting you swap as a free action.

Ok trying to not be a **** but did you read it? It did not, not even once specifically state that Umonks can NOT choose them. Pazio in typical fashion was unclear, this has been debated on many forums, asked for clarification but no official answer was given. If they had it, would have changed to something like these classes can choose any archtypes, Monks can NOT use old archtypes. If something is not spelled out specifically to NOT let you use something then guess what... it does not mean you cant.

Now enough with that, Yes could could use combat style master but it ONLY allows a swap as a free action, a free action can not be used to interrupt an action already in place, so no attacking with outslug and flurry then on second hit after hit change to jabbing for extra damage. In addition I would lose on the bonuses of Outslug style to swap in between them, so i would lose out on 1 damage per hit and the 1 AC. Since we are using fast progression 2 extra levels did not seem like to long to wait for martial flexibility, not when I was comparing it to the extra damage i would have.

[Elysiume]

I agree with Psyren.

Finally, with the exception of the monk, these classes should work with any of the archetypes from previous books as long as the classes still have the appropriate class features to replace.If someone said, to Alice, Bob, and Carol, "with the exception of Carol, you can take a break," would you interpret that as Carol being allowed to take a break? Another way to think about it: why would they have bothered to even say "with the exception of the monk" unless they were excluding the unchained monk from being able to take pre-unchained archetypes? You don't need to get defensive about it; none of us are going to try to change your DM's mind.

[Psyren]

Ok trying to not be a **** but did you read it?

Yes, I did. I'm not sure you did.

But seeing as you've houseruled it, I agree it's irrelevant and will drop it.


Now enough with that, Yes could could use combat style master but it ONLY allows a swap as a free action, a free action can not be used to interrupt an action already in place,

This is wrong too - you can take free actions at any time during your turn, even during other actions. CRB 181:

"Free Action: Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally."