RangerWickett
Legend
When I first made my character, I Googled around for ideas on how to build a brawler, and the handful of guides didn't quite appeal to me. So now, 12 levels in, I thought I'd share my experience.
I'm playing a brawler in a Pathfinder adventure path, Iron Gods. I was already considering brawler because I liked having clever fighting style options, and always kinda wanted to play a Jackie Chan style character. Going in the GM told us we'd be facing a lot of robots, so when I saw the Steel-Breaker archetype, which has the ability to spend a swift action to try to find a weakness in an enemy and ignore its DR (or an object and its hardness), I thought it'd be a cool fit.
I may also have recently watched One Punch Man as well as The Man with the Iron Fists.
So I made a blacksmith named Massawijji, from distant Tian-Min, come to Numeria to craft the greatest sword possible as a gift to his fiancee's family. I played Massawijji as a bit of a trickster who tries to think of odd ways to outwit foes. I also have spent way too much time looking at the Combat Feat list.
1st Level. Power Attack is sadly just necessary for winning and Combat Expertise opens up a ton of options, so those were my first two feats. Mechanically I sort of regret not getting at least Wis 13 so I could eventually pick up Stunning Fist, but it wasn't a huge deal.
Early Tactics. I found the most effective thing the first few levels was to use Martial Flexibility to take Improved Grapple, then grab something so the party's scimitar-wielding magus could decapitate it. Our first ridiculous victory was when we were harried by a robot with Hardness 10 (which basically none of us could bypass except if I power attacked and rolled max damage). I grappled it, pinned it, and then we used ion tape (basically sci-fi duct tape) to trap it on the floor so we could go find a two-handed weapon for me to hit it with.
Put 1 rank in Knowledge (dungeoneering) and (religion) so you can take Rat Catcher to have some way to harm swarms, and Ghost Slayer to punch ghosts. (Oozes still suck, though.)
Put 1 rank in Swim so you can take Aquatic Combatant. I'm not sure what weird fighting style allows you to punch through water better, but that's Pathfinder for you. Oh, and this actually becomes somewhat unnecessary if you later take Snake Style, since your punches are now piercing, and thus slide through water more easily. Because Pathfinder.
In all fairness, this image is from Blizzard, not Paizo.
Early on it takes a move action to get a feat, so it was rare that it made 'action economy' sense for me to take the time to get something like cleave or weapon focus, but if you know a fight's about to happen against bland, normal humans, they're decent workhorse feats.
Just like how brawlers have feats for every situation, I like to have tools and options for every sort of challenge. A pair of dan bong came in handy for grappling, and an emei piercer proved useful once when we were attacked by an aurumvorax (DR 10/piercing or slashing).
Starting at 3rd level I discovered the joy that was Snake Style, to the point that I eventually took it as a permanent feat, and took Skill Focus (Sense Motive) and got a seducer's bane bracelet. At 12th level I have a +28 Sense Motive bonus, which is really handy in an adventure path with lasers. People don't expect you to have a touch AC of 38.
Mid-Level Tactics. I took Improved Grapple, Dodge, and Mobility. I am now Jackie Chan scampering around my enemies, then grappling them (often described in-game as me using some sort of weird environmental element like ladders, cables, or dead monster limbs to actually entangle the enemy).
I can occasionally use my Steel-Breaker power to punch through robots like paper.
Eventually I parlayed my blacksmithing skills and our magus's item creation feats into equipping the party with gear more personalized than what the adventures provided as loot. Mithral breastplate and mithral buckler, each enchanted, made me a premier tank. My go-to weapon for a while was a +1 construct-bane cestus. My attack bonus was already pretty high, so I didn't feel like I needed an amulet of mighty fists to hit, so I preferred the super-robot-stopping power of the cestus.
Lunge became amazingly useful once I was able to start getting feats as a swift action. There are so many situations where it saves your bacon, or just opens up creative options - like leaping into the air and grappling a hovering monster and then (with the aid of Greater Grapple) leaning out and snagging another hovering monster that thought it was in range, moving the two enemies adjacent so a PC spellcaster can peg them with an area of effect spell.
Throat Slicer is cheap and unfair, and our GM doesn't let it work on pinned enemies, but when hold person works, sometimes you need to dash over and finish an enemy in a hurry.
Caster's Champion into Riving Strike is for when you absolutely positively have to help the party's 3 spellcasters take out a boss.
At around 9th level style feats start becoming interesting, since you can grab a whole style at once, so perhaps plan ahead. The only ones I ever really use, though, are Crane, Snake, and in one very weird instance Monkey style when I was benefiting from owl's wisdom, was prone, and needed to scamper through an enemy's space with Acrobatics to keep the party from getting bottle-necked.
High-Level Tactics. I'm at the point now where I can 'one-punch' a boss with frightening regularity, and after talking with the GM I decided I'd limit myself to using the power on second-tier foes so as not to ruin the drama of a big boss fight.
Disruptive and Spellbreaker, though, are fair game.
I chose Improved Trip and Ki Throw as permanent feats, but kind of never use them. So many monsters have spare legs for no good reason other than to make tripping useless. And Ki Throw doesn't work on creatures larger than you, which relegates it to a 'sometimes food' feat. If my GM gives us leave to retrain, I'm going to instead take Improved Critical and Critical Focus to open up the various critical feat options.
I just got my fist enchanted with greater magic fang and permanency, which I thought was pretty munchkin-y, but the GM suggested it. So now the cestus is a back-up weapon, and if I pray with Ghostslayer my fist is ghost-touch. Sadly I have not found any way to grapple ghosts. Some day I'll figure that out.
If you want to see more Brawler options, check out this thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/show...Combo-Martial-Flexibility-Combinations-Thread
Enjoy finding your own kung fu style.
(Oh, and if you're wondering, the greatest sword in the world is a +1 horacalcum transformative katana, which is imbued with a fragment of my consciousness - left over after my brain was half-eaten - so that the wielder can instantly be proficient in whatever form the weapon takes. It's not just one sword. It's all swords.)
I'm playing a brawler in a Pathfinder adventure path, Iron Gods. I was already considering brawler because I liked having clever fighting style options, and always kinda wanted to play a Jackie Chan style character. Going in the GM told us we'd be facing a lot of robots, so when I saw the Steel-Breaker archetype, which has the ability to spend a swift action to try to find a weakness in an enemy and ignore its DR (or an object and its hardness), I thought it'd be a cool fit.
I may also have recently watched One Punch Man as well as The Man with the Iron Fists.
So I made a blacksmith named Massawijji, from distant Tian-Min, come to Numeria to craft the greatest sword possible as a gift to his fiancee's family. I played Massawijji as a bit of a trickster who tries to think of odd ways to outwit foes. I also have spent way too much time looking at the Combat Feat list.
1st Level. Power Attack is sadly just necessary for winning and Combat Expertise opens up a ton of options, so those were my first two feats. Mechanically I sort of regret not getting at least Wis 13 so I could eventually pick up Stunning Fist, but it wasn't a huge deal.
Early Tactics. I found the most effective thing the first few levels was to use Martial Flexibility to take Improved Grapple, then grab something so the party's scimitar-wielding magus could decapitate it. Our first ridiculous victory was when we were harried by a robot with Hardness 10 (which basically none of us could bypass except if I power attacked and rolled max damage). I grappled it, pinned it, and then we used ion tape (basically sci-fi duct tape) to trap it on the floor so we could go find a two-handed weapon for me to hit it with.
Put 1 rank in Knowledge (dungeoneering) and (religion) so you can take Rat Catcher to have some way to harm swarms, and Ghost Slayer to punch ghosts. (Oozes still suck, though.)
Put 1 rank in Swim so you can take Aquatic Combatant. I'm not sure what weird fighting style allows you to punch through water better, but that's Pathfinder for you. Oh, and this actually becomes somewhat unnecessary if you later take Snake Style, since your punches are now piercing, and thus slide through water more easily. Because Pathfinder.
In all fairness, this image is from Blizzard, not Paizo.
Early on it takes a move action to get a feat, so it was rare that it made 'action economy' sense for me to take the time to get something like cleave or weapon focus, but if you know a fight's about to happen against bland, normal humans, they're decent workhorse feats.
Just like how brawlers have feats for every situation, I like to have tools and options for every sort of challenge. A pair of dan bong came in handy for grappling, and an emei piercer proved useful once when we were attacked by an aurumvorax (DR 10/piercing or slashing).
Starting at 3rd level I discovered the joy that was Snake Style, to the point that I eventually took it as a permanent feat, and took Skill Focus (Sense Motive) and got a seducer's bane bracelet. At 12th level I have a +28 Sense Motive bonus, which is really handy in an adventure path with lasers. People don't expect you to have a touch AC of 38.
Mid-Level Tactics. I took Improved Grapple, Dodge, and Mobility. I am now Jackie Chan scampering around my enemies, then grappling them (often described in-game as me using some sort of weird environmental element like ladders, cables, or dead monster limbs to actually entangle the enemy).
I can occasionally use my Steel-Breaker power to punch through robots like paper.
Eventually I parlayed my blacksmithing skills and our magus's item creation feats into equipping the party with gear more personalized than what the adventures provided as loot. Mithral breastplate and mithral buckler, each enchanted, made me a premier tank. My go-to weapon for a while was a +1 construct-bane cestus. My attack bonus was already pretty high, so I didn't feel like I needed an amulet of mighty fists to hit, so I preferred the super-robot-stopping power of the cestus.
Lunge became amazingly useful once I was able to start getting feats as a swift action. There are so many situations where it saves your bacon, or just opens up creative options - like leaping into the air and grappling a hovering monster and then (with the aid of Greater Grapple) leaning out and snagging another hovering monster that thought it was in range, moving the two enemies adjacent so a PC spellcaster can peg them with an area of effect spell.
Throat Slicer is cheap and unfair, and our GM doesn't let it work on pinned enemies, but when hold person works, sometimes you need to dash over and finish an enemy in a hurry.
Caster's Champion into Riving Strike is for when you absolutely positively have to help the party's 3 spellcasters take out a boss.
At around 9th level style feats start becoming interesting, since you can grab a whole style at once, so perhaps plan ahead. The only ones I ever really use, though, are Crane, Snake, and in one very weird instance Monkey style when I was benefiting from owl's wisdom, was prone, and needed to scamper through an enemy's space with Acrobatics to keep the party from getting bottle-necked.
High-Level Tactics. I'm at the point now where I can 'one-punch' a boss with frightening regularity, and after talking with the GM I decided I'd limit myself to using the power on second-tier foes so as not to ruin the drama of a big boss fight.
Disruptive and Spellbreaker, though, are fair game.
I chose Improved Trip and Ki Throw as permanent feats, but kind of never use them. So many monsters have spare legs for no good reason other than to make tripping useless. And Ki Throw doesn't work on creatures larger than you, which relegates it to a 'sometimes food' feat. If my GM gives us leave to retrain, I'm going to instead take Improved Critical and Critical Focus to open up the various critical feat options.
I just got my fist enchanted with greater magic fang and permanency, which I thought was pretty munchkin-y, but the GM suggested it. So now the cestus is a back-up weapon, and if I pray with Ghostslayer my fist is ghost-touch. Sadly I have not found any way to grapple ghosts. Some day I'll figure that out.
If you want to see more Brawler options, check out this thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/show...Combo-Martial-Flexibility-Combinations-Thread
Enjoy finding your own kung fu style.
(Oh, and if you're wondering, the greatest sword in the world is a +1 horacalcum transformative katana, which is imbued with a fragment of my consciousness - left over after my brain was half-eaten - so that the wielder can instantly be proficient in whatever form the weapon takes. It's not just one sword. It's all swords.)
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