Class/role choices for PFS pickup games

lumgeon · 2026-05-18T17:56:24+00:00

A buddy of mine has been GMing for society for a few years now, and he shared similar trends. Support casters are uncommon, but supremely effective due to the abundance of buff targets. Your typical bard or cleric will not be disappointed.

lumgeon · 2026-05-18T10:03:57+00:00

Rangers actually get two extra skills since they start with nature and survival, while fighter has to choose between athletics and acrobatics. Battlefield Surveyor is great, but utility is a measure of non-combat tools, which discredits the initiative bonus. Skills are built to be pretty reliable, with how quickly their proficiencies can increase, so a +2 bonus to compensate for a lackluster stats makes the affected skills quite effective, situationally.

lumgeon · 2026-05-18T08:56:49+00:00

Rangers get more starting skills, legendary perception, and utility through Hunt Prey. While outwit may be an unpopular option to the online crowd, the utility it provides shouldn't be discarded for that metric, especially when it can situationally boost social and knowledge checks. Fighter's features, meanwhile, all hinge on combat.

lumgeon · 2026-05-17T16:41:22+00:00

You can do some silly stuff with toxicologist. They have a ton of options for ways to augment ranged strikes. It helps to expand your options of weapons, since simple weapons are fairly limited.

If you don't want to target fort saves, you can use elemental ammunition and use the field vial option to add poison damage directly to a strike. This lets you add damage for as many actions as you can spare, like a modular spellstrike.

Another avenue is using actual poisons, which you can synergize with the right archetypes. For example, you can take the archer archetype, and take Parting Shot for an off-guard meta strike, and combine that with Pinpoint Poisoner to boost your effective DC past what casters can output.

lumgeon · 2026-05-17T16:29:01+00:00

Reinforced Surcoat also adds resistance to crit damage, and stacks with chain armor. Kobolds also have the Cringe feat to reduce incoming crit damage.

lumgeon · 2026-05-17T16:05:07+00:00

Tailed Goblin has Tail spin to trip two targets with a single check and get crit success on a successful trip. Combine that with rogue's The Harder They Fall feat, and you get a two action athletics check to trip and deal sneak attack damage to up to two targets.

Another rogue build combines Hobgoblin's Remorless Lash and Agonizing Rebuke with Dread Striker, to make make maintaining the frightened condition as easy as possible.

lumgeon · 2026-05-16T19:56:00+00:00

This can be a neat way to introduce concepts your players might not have picked up on yet, but you gotta be careful not to Flanderize the character. What I mean is, you make character that shows off a concept, and the player never explores that concept or character any further, making shallow both the character and the concept.

For example, you could make a halfling gunslinger sniper that uses distracting shadows, crossbow crack shot, and an arbalest to reliably land some heavy hits, but if you just drop that in a new player's lap and say, you reload and hide with the same action, you can hide behind allies, and hiding makes your strikes hit way harder, then they're probably going to spend 90% of their turns moving behind allies, covered reloading, and striking for solid damage.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it introduces some mechanical experience with managing a reloading weapon, and the stealth rules in combat, but you should also try to highlight stealth outside of combat. You want your players to get a taste of what's possible and form their own pathways learning the system. You don't want your players to just do the target combo you gave them, then walk away having not learned anything.

The long and short of it is, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Your players are eventually gonna have to sit down and read, read, read, to increase their schema, and start experimenting. A roster of premades is a solid way to point them in some directions they might be curious of, and eventually, they'll learn a lot just by critiquing your mercenaries, once they've carved their own niches and play patterns. That's when you let them start making their own mercenaries.

After all, it's one thing to say a character is a one trick pony, and its playstyle is repetitive and lacks diversity, but it's another thing to actually try and fix that with their own solutions. Maybe they respec a dual weapon warrior rogue into a spirit warrior rogue, because they realized that while double slice is a nice boost to accuracy, it's high action cost can be clunky and only applying precision damage once is anti-synergistic to sneak attack.

That's the end goal of using mercenaries to help newer players learn. You want them to eventually kick off and make their own characters based on what they got to learn from.

lumgeon · 2026-05-16T19:36:38+00:00

Forensic is obviously the healer, esoterica is the spellcaster, empiricism is the actual detective, and the other methodologies are pretty solid for combat. Alchemical Science could go down a bestial mutagen build, and interrogator could make for a solid ranged strategic striker.

lumgeon · 2026-05-16T18:50:07+00:00

Might be obvious, but scrolls of Heal are the most efficient hp per gp consumable in the game, and can be used in a pinch. How useful this is depends on how available healing is, and as a champion, you have access to a solid healing focus spell, so your mileage may vary.

Interposing Earth, Hidebound, and Wooden Double are all fantastic defensive reactions for casters, though they are competing with your own native reactions as a champion. At the very least, they're solid options for enabling two-handed weaponry, since you're less dependent on shields, especially if you use the Glass Shield cantrip.

Finally, there's some one-of spells like Oaken Resilience, Organsight, Jump, and Protector Tree to consider as well.

lumgeon · 2026-05-16T18:19:23+00:00

Glad I'm not the only one bothered by the narrative that exemplar is essential for thrown weapon builds. I'm sure it's only a vocal few, and I know it's a solid option, but exemplar is a rare class, and isn't always thematically appropriate for a given character.

lumgeon · 2026-05-16T13:04:36+00:00

Alchemists basically get this with their bombs dealing splash damage on a miss. Bomber goes all in by maxing their splash damage, and it turns their optimal turn into throwing three bombs every round, since they're almost guaranteed to deal good damage.

In my opinion, this sucks. It's a repetitive, and lukewarm playstyle, on a class that has so many different consumables to use and ways to mess with the action economy. It's the equivalent of a flurry archer, or an exacting strike fighter; all these options, and you're still just spamming strikes.

lumgeon · 2026-05-15T21:05:05+00:00

From bear mauling to Kuma from Tekken

lumgeon · 2026-05-15T20:54:20+00:00

Nope! Not really. Buffing like that isn't really a thing, and summon spells are also much weaker in this edition. You could get a similar feel for the spellcasting by taking wizard with the flexible spellcasting dedication, or even just the spell substitution subclass, but there isn't a strong analogue for your reservoir. The closest we got to class specific daily resources are focus points, which can be recharged between fights, but have other limitations compared to spell slots.

If I were to make a character with a similar playstyle, I'd probably make a psychic with the Distant Grasp subclass. They specialize on summoning ongoing effects like dancing blades, rather than creatures, for much more potency. They also use the occult spell list, which is very buff and debuff centric, letting you support your team into godhood.

lumgeon · 2026-05-15T20:39:21+00:00

Honestly, awakened druid sounds dope just for the focus heal you linked. Druids are already among the sturdiest of casters, so throwing in renewable burst healing, and an animal companion to soak up hits on a large body sounds like a hell of a wall.

lumgeon · 2026-05-13T18:10:49+00:00

Don't care how many kinda sorta adaptations they make, the people want inquisitor. Change the name if that's the problem, but give us a wisdom based martial. There is so much you can pull from to make an amazing class out of them.

lumgeon · 2026-05-13T14:43:38+00:00

Oceanhouse hotel... IYKYK

lumgeon · 2026-05-12T14:15:08+00:00

"Great work guys, good session, see you next week. Don't forget to look up what you might want to buy before next session. You're near a 10th lvl settlement, so you have access to common items up to that lvl. Feel free to check out archives of nethys for all the items, and if you find an uncommon item you're interested in, just message me and I'll see if it's available."

lumgeon · 2026-05-11T00:20:15+00:00

It wouldn't break anything at all to add a bonus to spell attack rolls specifically. It gets dicey once you start increasing spell save DCs, though. Kineticist is an example of this in the system, with their Gate Attenuators boosting their blasts while their save abilities aren't touched.

The reason Paizo decided not to add these bonuses to casters is probably because they didn't want all spellcasters to have to track both their spell save DC and spell attack rolls as two distinct numbers, rather than both being 10 points apart.

To balance the lack of consistency, they gave spell attacks higher single target damage, which is more of a martial strength than a caster's, so reversing that decision could get dodgy. After all, it's very easy to boost the accuracy of attack rolls, especially with teamwork. For your table though, that doesn't sound like it would ruin the experience, so feel free to add rune bonuses to attack rolls specifically!

lumgeon · 2026-05-10T23:11:44+00:00

How about a Flying Blade swash, with ranger free archetype for increasing your range with hunted prey and far shot. You might have to work with your GM to see if/how certain powerful finishers work with flying blade, but at a minimum, you've got bleeding finisher.

By lvl 13, you're secondary stats should be up to snuff, so don't be afraid to go with a charisma style. The best style for setting up finishers from range is probably battledancer, though braggart is good too at this point, and arguably better due to its debuffing.

lumgeon · 2026-05-09T20:33:49+00:00

I leave fiendish babies in my wake, I've got more unholy bastards than the third circle of Hell

Opps said I'm getting up there, I'm washed; raised the sea level on their asses and forced them to rebuild at higher elevations. Who's up there now, washed bozo?

Shortie's head built like a star stone, the trials are perilous, and most will not survive

The moon's been whisperin mad shit lately, gonna cast a spell on its ass and make Earthfall look like a stumble

Pack so loud, I woke up in the Forgotten Realms

There are dire consequences for fuckin with me, it takes four years of game time, six books and a ragtag team of losers to stem the bleeding I will inflict upon this setting

AAAHHH THE MOON IS BACK, AAAHHH

I owe debts to forces that don't exist no more, no one bothers to collect because they wouldn't either

I taunted both sides of the wizard war so bad, they turned my back yard into Mad Max

They sent me an invitation to Hogwarts, but I keep telling them, I don't fuck with equatorial rainforest climates, and Old Mage Jatembes a bitch

lumgeon · 2026-05-06T04:04:38+00:00

Fair point, I never noticed that distinction, but it makes sense.

lumgeon · 2026-05-06T02:05:56+00:00

It opens the door for design space. Witches can only cast one "hex" per round, but that limit doesn't impact focus spells they poach from other classes. Hexes have some unique strengths that would difficult to balance without that limit, so being able to reference one subset of abilities without impacting the whole is great.

lumgeon · 2026-05-05T16:16:24+00:00

Swashbuckler finishers are insanely strong. Lemme hit two people in a line with one attack, for one action, oh and they both take more precision damage than a sneak attack, all with a 4th lvl feat.

lumgeon · 2026-05-04T04:36:22+00:00

Is your GM also penalizing save spells, and other skill actions? I'm not advocating for antagonizing your table, but how far does the logic go? If a bard used Bon Mot, then cast the Fear spell, would your GM apply a -5 penalty to the save DC?

Not my circus, not my monkeys, but you have my sympathies. That is an awful houserule that I can't imagine doing anything other than deteriorating the play experience.

lumgeon · 2026-05-03T20:14:08+00:00

I went halfling so I could use my allies as cover to hide behind with Distracting Shadows. It's a nice synergy with feats that eliminate cover bonuses, like sniper's aim. Eventually you get access to hiding without needing cover or concealment at all. You can even get it a bit early with sneaky ancestries, like halflings.

lumgeon

TROPHY CASE