Need Help With A Bleed Build

[Allistar]

Hi everyone, it’s been quite a while

My playgroup has started talking about starting another campaign. What’s interesting is that the DM attached benefits to following one of his homebrew gods. There are some interesting ones, and the one I’m quite interested in building around is “The Butcher”. His special ability is “Heal 5% of total HP when you cause bleed damage”. Now don’t get me wrong, I know bleed is usually bad and I’m not actually sure if this makes it good, but I’d like to make a build centered around it and really get into it. I’ve already checked with the other players, and this wouldn’t interfere with anything they’re putting together.

We are starting at level 3, restricted to core races at 15 point buy, and no 3rd party stuff. Apart from that, anything that yall can come up with is fine. Some of the things I’ve found are Shark Style, Boar Style, Bloody Sabers, Thousand Cuts, Bleeding Critical, and the whole Rampager archetype.

If I could get some help in outlining a build, and maybe a bit of how this build would continue I would be very appreciative.

[Jack_Simth]

Summoner. One of the Eidolon Evolutions causes bleed on a per-hit basis. Synthesist if it needs to be you.

[Kurald Galain]

It may be nice to tack on some way of dealing fire damage and the Burning Amplification feat. It's not technically bleed but it's still damage-each-round.

[Allistar]

Summoner. One of the Eidolon Evolutions causes bleed on a per-hit basis. Synthesist if it needs to be you.

Interesting, I wouldn’t have even thought to look at that. I’d sort of like to look into an antipaladin build, but this seems like it’s a cool (probably better) thing to look into.

Here’s what I’ve got so far
Race: Human
Str: 16+2
Dex: 12
Con: 12
Int: 7
Wis: 8
Cha: 15
Human Feat: Divine Fighting Technique (Way of The Carving Blade)
1st level: Power Attack
3rd level: Furious Focus
5th level: Weapon Focus (Falchion)
7th level: Bloody Assault
9th level: Critical Focus
11th level: Bleeding Critical

At some point I’m thinking of swapping over to fighter and using vital strike, and probably just continuing that path. Not sure if I should do that before or after I get the aura of bleed damage.

Another thing I've seen is unarmed fighter 1, many styles monk 2, vivisectionist alchemist 13, scout rogue 4. Use boar style, shred etc, vivisectionist is good, and the scout stuff will allow me do sneak attacks on a charge. Need to play around with stats in that distribution but Idunno... what do yall think

[TiaC]

So when I look at that ability, I'm not clear if it triggers when you apply bleed damage, or when the damage ticks. If it triggers when the damage ticks, you want to bleed a ton of enemies at once but you only need one way of applying it, because it doesn't stack. If it triggers when you apply the damage, then multiple sources of bleed will let you heal more, even if the bleed doesn't stack.

Either way, since the healing is a percentage of your health, you want to have a lot of health.

You also want to be taking damage, because healing doesn't matter if you're at full health.

So, you probably want to go melee, for the larger hit die and the tanking potential of this ability.

If it triggers when the damage ticks, the Rampager's 8th level aura is great, since it applies to all nearby enemies with no save or attack roll needed. You won't need another way of inflicting bleed, but abilities like the advanced Way of the Carving Blade that give to bonuses against bleeding targets are still good.

If it triggers when you apply the damage, I'd go with a natural weapon build, stacking a bunch of sources of bleed damage to heal 15%+ on each hit, with enough natural weapons that you can full-heal each round. You'd want things like Blood Frenzy Style, Thousand Cuts, the Bleeding Attack talent, carrying a Crimson Altar, and a number of class-specific effects.

[Another Handle]

Rogues can get Bleeding Attack with their first talent, bleed on all SA. Cabalist Vigilantes are all about bleed, though don't have as easy a time triggering it.

[Firebug]

I had a Bleed oriented character in PFS for a bit.
Two-handed Fighter 3 for Overhand Chop (double str mod on single attacks)
Warpriest X (Trickery Blessing) (I forget if it had an archetype)
Lamashtu's Carving (Divine Fighting Technique) to make a single attack with a Falchion (or kurki) and instead of adding Str to damage, its applied as bleed damage.
Greater Weapon of the Chosen to roll twice to threaten a critical. Improved Critical eventually.
A Viridium (so it has Fragile) Falchion with Disposable Weapon feat to auto-confirm a critical threat. Viridium also has a minor chance of applying a disease (leprosy) on hit, or poison on crit (green blood oil). Easily avoid the check every 24 hours by choosing an Outsider as your race.

So 15-20 threat range roll twice, auto-confirm for 4x Str as bleed damage, save or con damage poison, usable every round (as long as you have extra Falcions, which are cheap since we don't bother with magical). Mending at CL8 to repair the Falchions.

Otherwise, Cabalist Vigilante gets a good bit of benefit from bleeding. They can gain Temp HP when doing applying Bleed to an adjacent foe (once per hour). When they attack a surprised foe (or denied dex) they get Cabalist level as bleed damage.

[TheStranger]

So when I look at that ability, I'm not clear if it triggers when you apply bleed damage, or when the damage ticks. If it triggers when the damage ticks, you want to bleed a ton of enemies at once but you only need one way of applying it, because it doesn't stack. If it triggers when you apply the damage, then multiple sources of bleed will let you heal more, even if the bleed doesn't stack.

Either way, since the healing is a percentage of your health, you want to have a lot of health.

You also want to be taking damage, because healing doesn't matter if you're at full health.

So, you probably want to go melee, for the larger hit die and the tanking potential of this ability.

If it triggers when the damage ticks, the Rampager's 8th level aura is great, since it applies to all nearby enemies with no save or attack roll needed. You won't need another way of inflicting bleed, but abilities like the advanced Way of the Carving Blade that give to bonuses against bleeding targets are still good.

If it triggers when you apply the damage, I'd go with a natural weapon build, stacking a bunch of sources of bleed damage to heal 15%+ on each hit, with enough natural weapons that you can full-heal each round. You'd want things like Blood Frenzy Style, Thousand Cuts, the Bleeding Attack talent, carrying a Crimson Altar, and a number of class-specific effects.

This is how I'd approach it - focus more on the healing side of things than the damage side. This ability doesn't change any of the reasons that bleed damage is a suboptimal strategy or let you do any more bleed damage than you would otherwise. But it has lots of potential as an easily-optimized fast healing ability that lets you recover fully in a round or two from anything that doesn't one-shot you (and IME cumulative HP damage is still the leading cause of PC death, so nigh-immunity to that is a big deal). That works well from an RP perspective too - your character can just be constantly covered in blood and indifferent to how much of it is his.

A word of warning - if your DM was thinking of this as a neat little flavor ability and you turn it into arbitrary amounts of fast healing, you may be hit with a nerf bat (or a baseball bat if your DM has anger issues). But if that level of optimization is expected at your table, or the other deities' abilities are similarly powerful, have at it. Even then, when your DM realizes that the only way to threaten your character is to drop him in one round, you might find yourself fighting opponents who can do just that, either through massive damage or save-or-lose effects.

[Kitsuneymg]

Does your GM allow 3pp?

[Jack_Simth]

Interesting, I wouldn’t have even thought to look at that. I’d sort of like to look into an antipaladin build, but this seems like it’s a cool (probably better) thing to look into.Summoner has an odd place. Synth even more so. It's a 6th level caster... but it gets a lot of discounted spells - (if you're NOT using the unchained version, anyway; examples: Teleportation Circle, Maze, Mass Charm Monster, and Dominate Monster as 6th level spells rather than the 9/8/8/9 that they are for the Wizard). But it's got a lot of melee capacity in the eidolon.

If you went with, say, a Quadruped Synthesist, at 1st, you could have... Claws, Bleed(Claws), and Pounce for your evolutions, and have a full attack routine of Bite/Claw/Claw at +3 for 1d6+2/1d4+2/1d4+2 (+5 on a charge), with 1d6 bleed on both claws. That'll down most CR 1 things. Although you'll need at least 20 HP before the 5% of max thing gets you even one back.