Pathfinder Kingmaker

[ShadowImmor]

So my wife has agree to run me a 1-on-1 Pathfinder Kingmaker adventure path.

I will be playing a human, but it is currently a toss up between Wizard and Cleric. I'm leaning towards cleric as I already have a couple of Wizards I'm playing.

Any hints or tips (without giving away the story to me) about what things I should definitely go for? (At this stage I don't know if I will get any helpers or if the game will be scaled down to a one player mode, or if I will have to build my own party, I'm kind of hoping one of the former two)

Thanks in Advance!

[Elricaltovilla]

If you are playing solitaire without NPC party support then cleric is a much better choice than wizard. You will need the extra defenses and healing.

The AP is still built assuming you'll have a 4-man band at hand, so some early battles will be very tough, but exploring takes so much time you can usually expect only one big encounter per day. That means you don't typically have to hold back on your biggest spells.

After you found your kingdom (I don't really see that as being a spoiler, It's in the title) charisma becomes much more important and mastery of Excel spreadsheets becomes necessary.

As a solo player, the leadership feat may be a necessity in order to pad out your party size. You may want to consider playing a Druid (for summoning extra bodies) or an Oracle (for better charisma focus) instead of a cleric.

[Feantar]

I'd strongly suggest wizard over cleric. For soloing you need a lot of save or sucks and crowd control spells, and clerics are more of the buff variety. For healing, get UMD, pragmatic activator, and a wand of CLW. If you want something really different, an artificer might also be useful here.
Boost your initiative to the stratosphere and put some ranks in perception. If not, make a deal with Pharasma for frequent flyer miles.:smalltongue:
Contingency Services (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/goods-and-services/hirelings-servants-services/#TOC-Contingency-Services) rules might be useful when the inevitable happens.
Pick up Ray of Stupidity as fast as possible, if wizard.
Enchantment will be useful for disabling enemies, minionmancy and handling encounters, don't prohibit it.
Try to get people alive to extract information.
Give your DM this (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WHB0UVxIpUcy0eHr24gRAtIdzc-T6bBvETMkwQ_SViY/edit?usp=sharing) google sheet - it will be very helpful to both of you (She needs to copy it to use it).
Crafting can be really useful in this campaign due to downtime.
Personal Experience: The modules are a bit thin, being sandbox, so most DMs apply a serious backdrop of politics. Therefore, divination is key.
A way to detect traps will be useful. Not necessary, but useful.
Survival is also mildly useful, but don't go out of your way.

Finally, in case she thinks of gestalt, the best combination for soloing things I've seen is Factotum//Wizard, because it allows more actions. Be very careful with that, however, because it can accidentally break the action economy to a ridiculous degree.

[exelsisxax]

The correct answer is druid, spiritualist, or summoner. Companions are the most reliable feature when going solo without gestalt.

[Feantar]

The correct answer is druid, spiritualist, or summoner. Companions are the most reliable feature when going solo without gestalt.

Didn't pathfinder's druid get nerfed a lot, or am I confused?

[gkathellar]

I’ll second summoner. If it’s really down to wizard or cleric, well ... what’s your starting level?


Didn't pathfinder's druid get nerfed a lot, or am I confused?

PF Druid has less power in Wildshape. It still has an animal companion and is a 9-caster with an impressive list.

[Selion]

Didn't pathfinder's druid get nerfed a lot, or am I confused?

Druid has been nerfed because of the way polymorph works in pathfinder.

On topic: you should relay on summons as a solo-party, so your choices are:
Wizard/arcanist:
Pro: you got bonus feats, so you have room for the summons-improving feats. Later on you have the most versatile spell list, you can use summon monster, planar binding and animate dead spells, at the same time you can use enchantment spells either to gather more allies or to disrupt enemy plans. Once you get magic jar you can jump from body to body in search of a more powerful form, at the same time you can infiltrate among enemies. Wizard is the most powerful choice, but power comes with a cost
Cons: early levels will be a nightmare, you get few daily spells, the best route is to invest a lot of ability points in con an dex and use sleep and color spray at low levels, you'll need to retreat a lot to recover your spell slots and if you are cought in situation which requires attrition you are basically screwed

Cleric:
Pro:Your summons are as good as those of a wizard, you can select domains which improve your versatility and have a lot of countermeasures to enemies spell casting at high level (such as mindblank, forbiddance and so on). You got a lot of survivability and you can keep fighting even when you deplete your spell slots. You can turn/rebuke undeads.
Cons: you just cannot do everything like a wizard would at high levels, early on you must proceed with melee and healing, because you have not encounter resolving spells like a wizard.

Druid:
Pro: the most safe choice imho, but at the same time the less powerful one. Early on you have an animal companion which is almost as powerful as a martial character, you have spontaneous summons and, more importantly, from level 4 on you are the perfect scout: you can explore as an animal most of the time, so you can avoid encounters you don't need to face.
Cons: summon nature ally is not as good as summon monster, your spell list at high levels falls a lot behind in respect to either a cleric and a wizard, you are short of options inside of a dungeon (your animal companion and your summons still work, though)

Summoner:
I don't know well this class, btw eidolon is strongest than an animal companion, your summons are SLA and last minutes, which is extremely useful in this setup, but you are not a full caster (you still have access to a few high level spells)

[Elricaltovilla]

What books do you have access to for your character? That can make a big difference on the recommendations people will make.

People saying that clerics don't make good solo adventurers because they lack animal companions/summons are forgetting that clerics are amazing necromancers and have access to animal companions via domains.

[Ellrin]

I'd like to throw out that a nature fang druid can get bonus feats every two levels via rogue talents (levels 4-10, only combat feats) and advanced rogue talents (levels 12-20, any feats), both accessible through the slayer talents list that nature fang druids gain access to. You give up wildshape, but that's not a massive loss if you're focusing on spellcasting and have some other way to stay out of reach. It's also worth noting that since these feats are gained through a talents class feature, you can change one out per day with the shifting jerkin (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-armor/specific-magic-armor/shifting-jerkin/). This offers a pretty staggering level of versatility if you've got a fair amount of down time to work with. (And if you want to make yourself a gish, you've got studied target to help make up the difference in your BAB).

Speaking of versatility, while I'm not sure it's worth losing a domain/animal companion over, I think it's worth noting that druidic herbalism is a third nature bond option that effectively gives you brew potion for free, lets you make a number of cost-free potions per day equal to your Wis mod, lets you halve the cost of making additional potions, lets you make potions in one minute, and lets you prepare spells as herbal concoctions that work like an alchemist's extracts (+ infusion discovery); so you can leave some spell slots open and prepare "spells" quickly on demand.

I mean, yes, the PF druid spell list is a bit underwhelming compared to a cleric or wizard, but that's a ridiculous level of being able to adapt on the fly.

EDIT: Forgot Nature Fang doesn't start getting slayer talents till level 4.

[ShadowImmor]

Just a heads up, I will be sticking with either Wizard or Cleric, as I have yet to play one in a campaign and have always wanted to. And apparently the only way to do it is to rope my wife into doing a Kingmaker game for me :P

Some additional discussions my wife and I have had mean that :-

A) There will be hirelings available (probably like Pathfinder: Kingmaker the game, and she has already said Regongar is coming over)

B) I will start with all my stats at 12, and then roll a D6 to add to them then assign (meaning I will have a minimum of 13 in all stats, just so I can fill any gaps)

C) I will probably use CRB +1 (Probably Ultimate Magic) so as not to drop to much on my wife's head and force her to Read EVERY rule (we just picked up a load of Pathfinder rulebooks in the Humble Bundle which was AWESOME)

I hope this helps crystalize any help that can be given.

Ideally I'd like help IF I go Wizard, what should I be picking (feats and such), and IF I go Cleric, what should I be picking? etc