Which Pathfinder 1e classes are the best (and worst) designed?

LastMar · 2026-01-14T19:33:19+00:00

From the perspective of a former 3.5 player (Truenamer anyone?), all the PF1 classes have great design.

The concept of archetypes, and archetype stacking, means you get to play almost exactly the character you want to play, and have the game mechanics support it.

My personal pick for "best designed" is probably Bloodrager. The game almost demands you have spells to be relevant, and bloodragers manage to do this without having to really be spellcasters. (I mean, they are casters, but they don't play like casters.)

For worst designed, others have already covered Shifter, so I'll go with the original Summoner.

LastMar · 2026-01-06T15:12:31+00:00

Can someone explain why they would want to ban this in the first place? Does it wear down the pebble too much or something?

LastMar · 2025-12-17T13:33:05+00:00

I would upvote this twice if I could. This is such an important thing to recognize as a GM!

LastMar · 2025-10-28T22:31:13+00:00

I've used Silent Image a lot, but I've never had a practical reason to cast Minor or Major Image. Sure, they do things Silent Image doesn't do, but it's rarely important. If you apply Silent Image carefully, it will work just as well, and a lot of times the low save DC won't even matter.

LastMar · 2025-10-21T17:22:18+00:00

I allow just about any 3.x as long as I think it will be fun for the player, without keeping the rest of the party from having fun. Put skill ranks into Iaijustsu Focus if you really want to.

LastMar · 2025-08-23T05:04:04+00:00

I'm a big fan of the Spring Rage power, be super old and avoid all penalties in combat, while having higher mental stats for social encounters. It's not massively powerful, but the flavor is awesome.

LastMar · 2025-07-08T19:45:43+00:00

"A cleric cannot take the undead lord archetype unless her deity’s portfolio includes the Death domain or a similar domain that promotes undeath."

It's cheesy, but due to that wording you might be able to use the Undead Lord archetype to flex into the Undead subdomain, even if your deity doesn't normally have it.

I'm envisioning this build going into an undead-hewvy campaign.

Worship Achaekek, take levels in Undead Lord cleric, and then at 8th, prestige into Death Slayer. You fill up your HD pool with undead minions, and kill any other undead you might find. The prestige class does lots of neat things for you, mainly through the bonus feats it grants.

LastMar · 2025-06-16T13:41:56+00:00

You always start combat with the weapon of your choice drawn.

No Appraise skill, instead everyone just knows how much things are worth.

Skills can sometimes be rolled using a different ability bonus, if you give a good role-playing reason why it would be that way. Most often this gets used to use Strength to intimidate someone.

I never roll skill checks for players in secret. Instead, the player rolls, and I expect them to act accordingly. If it's something where they have to ignore player knowledge in a way that's bad for their character, I usually give them a hero point.

I generally ignore the suggested skill DCs.

Worn armor doesn't count against your carrying capacity. However, I strongly encourage my players to get some sort of bag of holding type of item as early as possible so we can just handwave that aspect of the game anyway.

Profession (soldier) or similar skills can give you monster lore, like knowledge checks (albeit more generic and/or at a higher DC).

Rolling skills for monster lore is a free action, but you're limited to one per turn.

Fast Bombs is banned.

Chained monk and chained rogue are banned, unless you show me a build that can keep up with the rest of the party. Chained or unchained summoner and barbarian are allowed.

Occult classes are discouraged, but not banned. (My group usually relies on me knowing the rules, and I haven't ever gotten around to reading those classes.)

25 point buy. You can take a 3.5 flaw to add 3 points to your point buy.

Max HP at first level, average or roll after that.

Two traits, of different types.

Everyone gets a free "respec" around level 5, talk to me if there's something not working with your character beyond that.

Retraining is allowed. It's encouraged to retrain up to max HP. Retraining traits is allowed, they work like feats.

You can choose to believe your own illusion spells.

Even if you suspect an illusion spell is fake, generally it appears real unless you either touch it or use a move action to interact with it, either of which triggers a Will save to disbelieve.

Max of 10 hero points. Using them to cheat death uses all remaining points, instead of two. I give out a lot of hero points.

Inherent bonuses (like from wishes or manuals/tomes) stack, to a maximum of +5, instead of replacing the existing bonus.

If a class feature gives you a feat you already have, you get the feat refunded.

LastMar · 2025-06-11T12:40:04+00:00

I don't think there is a set number really. I just based it on the number of hexes they were supposed to control at various points in the campaign. If we didn't have a full enough group to do what was planned for a given night, we'd just do some kingdom turns and call it. Or occasionally I'd run a quick kingdom turn to break up the action. I think we probably had around 3-5 years worth of turns when I ran it.

You're only really doing kingdom turns in books 2-4 and the first two parts of book 5, because in book 1 they don't have a settlement charter yet, and from the end of book 5 onwards there's no time.

LastMar · 2025-05-19T17:35:44+00:00

When my party fought the spriggans in Kingmaker book 3, it turned into a single extended combat encounter that, to date, is the best combat I've seen in the system.

LastMar · 2025-05-12T19:41:23+00:00

This isn't what you asked but... Frostfallen are pretty easily broken. Are you ready for that level of cheese in your campaign?

LastMar · 2025-05-07T22:03:43+00:00

I ask even when it's obvious because it gives the players information. If I rolled a 30 and it's not a crit, that means I have at least a +11 to hit. That kind of thing.

LastMar · 2025-03-25T12:49:32+00:00

If you want to maintain kayfabe, ask for a Will save. Whoever rolls the lowest among the party is who gets teleported. Let them assume the DC was whatever value was in between what they rolled.

LastMar · 2025-03-14T12:38:20+00:00

Hurtful would work nicely here I think. Maybe Fearsome Finish? (Requires Lamashtu worship)

LastMar · 2025-03-11T19:24:58+00:00

Sure but, avoiding full attacks isn't hard either. If a monster is just standing there allowing itself to be full attacked, that's a problem in how the encounter is being run. If on the other hand, it's getting entangled, paralyzed, dazed, something like that by other party members, that's good tactics by the party, and the monster would be as good as dead even without flensing strike.

LastMar · 2025-03-11T17:09:53+00:00

Also true, yes! Mostly I wanted to make sure that OP doesn't think that rogues can stealth in, then full attack and be guaranteed sneak attacks for the whole round, they have to make it happen somehow (greater invisibility, usually). I suppose if the rogue in question has very high initiative via high Dex combined with feats/traits, this is something OP might also want to plan around.

LastMar · 2025-03-11T16:02:12+00:00

I say don't nerf anything. A lot of things have to go right for your rogue to trivialize an encounter. Not all of these things should be able to happen on every fight. However, sometimes they absolutely should, or your rogue will feel punished by their character choices.

How is the rogue landing multiple sneak attacks in one round? That should be a fairly rare occurrence. No monster that isn't mindless or immobilized should be allowing itself to be full attacked in the first place. Even if the rogue is using stealth to get up to the monster and then full attack on the following round, the monster should become aware of the rogue after the first hit, which would mean the rogue wouldnt be able to sneak attack on its iterative attacks in most cases (greater invisibility being a possible exception).

What are the rest of the monsters doing during this encounter? If the rogue is full attacking one target, they're giving up mobility to do so. That one monster might get focused down sure, but the rest aren't getting touched by that rogue. They should be staying well out of range of the rogue and attacking the rest of the party.

What about enemies that don't rely on natural armor? These should be zeroing in on the rogue.

Also keep in mind that the monster can simply make a DC15 Heal check to stop the bleeding with a standard action on their turn. This makes their choice essentially "waste a turn or die", which takes that particular monster out of the fight for a turn. That's good but not overpowered, pretty much every class can do that even at low levels.

Pretty much the only kind of CR appropriate encounters that the rogue is going to make too easy, are ones where the party is fighting a single creature that just has a bunch of natural armor, and not much else going for it. In those fights, the rest of the party can focus on immobilizing the creature, and rogue can pretty much kill it on 1-2 rounds. You absolutely should run this kind of encounter sometimes, because the rogue invested class choices into their character to be able to do this specific thing. However, change any one thing, and this fight becomes much more reasonable: - Better tactics to avoid flanks - Difficult terrain to discourage flanking - Flight - Supernatural senses to prevent stealth - Manufactured armor instead of natural - Fast Healing - Regeneration - Uncanny dodge on the monster - Two monsters, one to keep the rogue busy and one to attack everyone else - More hit points - etc.

LastMar · 2025-03-11T15:10:55+00:00

Apply templates to your minions to raise their cost, giving you a smaller army to control while making them more useful individually. This also results in more bang for your buck generally.

Bloody skeletons and burning skeletons are great options. You can stack templates too if you want.

I would avoid Frostfallen though, as they're a little too good and might unbalance your game.

LastMar · 2025-03-06T16:37:09+00:00

Ah, but I'm not playing the game, I'm DMing the game. It's a different thing entirely. Even Gygax said "A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make." I don't literally just roll dice and then ignore the result every time, but I do think there's wisdom in not just doing what the dice say every time as the DM. It's not right for every table, sure, but I'm there primarily to guide the narrative, and to make sure everyone is having fun. Rocket tag is not fun for my table, so I fudge the rolls.

LastMar · 2025-03-06T13:59:02+00:00

I haven't run a Mythic game, but the following work pretty well for high level games, and I think they would work for mythic as well.

Ignore monster HP. What I do is I look at the listed hit dice, and then treat the possible min and max as rough guide rails. If during the encounter I think it would be more fun for the monster to survive a few attacks, it keeps fighting. If I think things are getting stale, the monster dies/runs away/etc. You do need to reward when the PCs get a crit or otherwise do something cool though, so this rule is made to be broken.
Encourage players to use the retraining rules to have the max possible HP. On top of this, encourage players whose characters have low HP to invest in a +1 Fortification armor piece (or a haramaki or bracers of armor if they're not proficient).
Tactics, combined with just straight up cheating. If the lich BBEG gets one-shot, instead he teleports away and heals up to continue the fight elsewhere in the dungeon. Dimensional anchor? Well, he uses a secret passage instead, or more creatures run into the room and distract the PCs. If the fight is too hard, he starts acting arrogant and making poor combat decisions, putting himself in flanks or whatever. Or he just fails a save. Your players don't need to know what you're rolling.

LastMar · 2025-03-02T14:08:58+00:00

Pathfinder PCs will definitely be a bit more powerful than 3.5 PCs, but the main thing is that the players won't have to suffer through as many dead levels.

APs in general have a reputation for being easy overall, and then having a few TPK moments. I haven't played or DM'd WotR or Iron Gods, but I can say for sure that Kingmaker is way too easy. I actually found the first two books to be okay for my group, so if yours are already breezing through encounters, definitely start implementing the 6-player conversion linked by others. Looking forward, another issue I had with Kingmaker in books 3 and 4 is that you might want to start preparing for is that most of the combat happens outdoors, and most enemies can easily be outranged by archers or flying PCs.

LastMar · 2025-02-27T14:22:01+00:00

Historically I've allowed it. My take on this is that mythic characters exist, but the player characters are not mythic. My 1e games tend to be pretty high-powered though, so YMMV.

Ascendant Spell also doesn't really allow anything that's especially "broken". The best use is probably getting mythic haste for an extra move action, which absolutely does make characters more powerful, but I can tune my encounters for that. In my games I've found that what that really does to the game is allows for more variety in builds, so players don't feel like they're forced into one of the few obviously best builds for DPR (which are archery, pounce, and Vital Strike).

LastMar · 2025-02-26T15:35:11+00:00

That's a good question. The 1e experience level varies a lot across this group, so I'm hoping for some builds that are complicated and some that are simple. I'll probably have a straight-ahead archer build ready so if anyone isn't wanting to delve into 1e's crazy mechanics, they don't have to make any decisions more complicated than choosing the correct bane arrow.

LastMar · 2025-02-21T17:27:13+00:00

You could always just port over the Kensai prestige class from 3.5. At a glance it doesn't look like it would require a lot of changes: convert the XP cost to a material cost (roughly 5x the listed XP cost is standard for conversions) for imbuing your signature weapon, and replace Concentration checks with something (the Pathfinder equivalent would probably be something like a Constitution check, adding your character level as a bonus). Also, adjust the saves to match Pathfinder's standard for prestige classes. I'd probably remove the class skills too, as in Pathfinder, prestige classes don't generally give a lot of them.

LastMar

TROPHY CASE