#i was actually given the option to take APES now that it's available for me but like a dumbass i decided to stick with phys 2 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gorgonarcher · 3 months

Text

Game 2 - Pathfinder 2e

Okay, so I've gotten into Pathfinder a bit recently after a long period of time being a bit doubtful of it. A lot of the public APs I've seen of it have not really made me confident it was something I'd enjoy. However, with recent Hasbro nonsense, my group has tried it out a bit and found we enjoyed it. We're currently playing a Anathema Vaults just to test it out and some of us have converted Icewind Dale: Rime of the Ice Maiden to PF2e and is playing that (though it wasn't in a time slot I could make, unfortunately).

In any case, we've found it to be a lot more granular, the cookie cutter nature of D&D being my biggest complaint with it. And allowing for a lot of flexibility in concept. But let's get to making our gorgon archer.

Archery is just a matter of getting the proper proficiency, but as usual, I'm placing the impetus on archery and gorgon-ness so we'll want something a bit martial-oriented. This brings the following options front and center:

Fighter

Ranger

Rogue

Monk

There is a Monk ki-spell called Medusa's Wrath that is literally the stoning gaze available at level 16. So it could be a good option. Given my normal direction on a full fantasy Gorgon Archer is more along the lines of a Ranger, I'm likely going this direction just for the different flavor. However, Medusa's Wrath can be reached via dedication feats taking at least two Feat options.

And yes, there is a definite archer monk build.

Now the issue with doing a ranger and multiclassing with a monk is that there is a key point of "gorgon" that is mostly going to be accessible by also dedicating into Witch for the Living Hair option. So that would be five Feat choices in total given over to getting that spell. Not terrible given just how many Feats you get in this game, (either one or two new feats at every level) but still a bit of an ask.

Besides, as I said, monastic archer is an interesting flavor to take.

Now, for Ancestry (race for people used to D&D) there's a couple of options:

Nagaji - snake people

Vishkanya - human-like snake people

Once you bring Heritages (think subraces) into then Human and Elf become good possibilities too. First, while each Ancestry has it's own set of Heritages, the developers have said it's okay to mix and match them to represent mixed blood. Which means, for example, you can give a human a heritage from Vishkanya.

Now for Heritages, there's a few that aren't attached to specific Ancestries. These are things like Nephilim (encompassing both tieflings and aasimar for those familiar with D&D), Aiuvarin (half-elves), Dromaar (half-orcs), and so on. One of these that appeals to me especially for this is Beastkin (think shifter with more shapeshifting). However, I just noticed a thing.

I've til now dismissed interest in the Nagaji, purely a taste thing, I'm not much interested in people without human heads. Doesn't seem to bother me with stuff like Disney movies. But looking at the Nagaji there is a heritage that avoids that: Sacred Nagaji (official art below)

So I'm going to go ahead go with that.

Which brings me to background. I usually do something a bit outcast-ish for a Gorgon Archer, but this feels a bit unnecessary for this character since there's entire snake-people cultures. Plus, again, let's stretch from my normal. (Not that many people have seen my other builds, since I doubt many have seen my old blogger site) but, anyway.

So on to Background. There's a lot for Pathfinder, I don't really want to lean too heavily into the "sacred" thing or the typical monastic monk (sort of a problem with the class being named monk... not all monks are actual monks.) In this case, I'm going to go with Courier.

So that gives us:

Ancestry: Nagaji

Heritage: Sacred Nagaji

Background: Courier

Class: Monk

So, let's get to determining Abilities. The way this works is we get bonuses for each of the following:

Ancestry: Two, usually one set and one free.

Background: Two or one depending on background

Class: One

Since we're going archery, we'll be doing Dexterity where we can.

The nagaji set boost is to Strength and we'll add the free one to Dexterity.

The courier background gets two boosts, one has to be to Dexterity or Intelligence and the other is free. They can't both be Dexterity because you can gain a boost to the same Ability from the same source. I'm taking Dexterity for sure and I think I'll go with Intelligence for the second. Why that and not Wisdom? That'll come up later.

Monk gives us one boosts to either Strength or Dexterity and we'll go with Dexterity.

In addition, at first level we get four boosts each of which has to go to a different Ability. We're going for Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, and Intelligence.

This makes the states look like the following:

Strength +1

Dexterity +4

Constitution +1

Intelligence +2

Wisdom +1

Charisma +0

You can actually do these things in whatever order you want, the game has a suggested order, but also are explicit that you can do things in any order. Especially for things that may have requirements. In this case, I'm going to move to Skills next, as that will determine what feats are available.

First, some Skills came with Background and Class

Courier provides the following Skills:

Society

A Lore skill related to the City you're from.

Class provides the following training, not all of these are skills, but I'm including proficiencies as well:

Trained in Perception - most classes seem to start with this.

Expert in all three Saving Throws - seems to be a Monk thing

Expert in Unarmored Defense - Monk thing

Trained in Simple Weapons

Trained in Unarmed Attack

Trained in Monk ability save DCs

Trained in 4 Skills plus Intelligence (+2 here)

10 Hit Points + Constitution per level (that's right, you don't roll HP)

So, I have to pick 6 skills

Acrobatics for maneuvering

Athletics for climbing

Deception for intrigue

Diplomacy for etiquette

Stealth for intrigue

Survival for travel

Now we come to feats. There are four kinds:

Class Feats - abilities particular to your Class

Ancestry Feats - abilities particular to your Ancestry

Skill Feats - abilities particular to your Skills

General Feats - general capabilities

Most martials, Monk included, get a Class feat at 1st level. All classes get a Class feat at each even level afterward.

Characters get one Ancestry feat at 1st level, then it seems at 5th and each 4 levels afterwards, but this seems to be a determined by class, so their may be some classes that get more or fewer Ancestry feats.

Skill feats are definitely a class thing with Rogues getting a Skill feat every level and other classes seeming to get them every even level.

General feats seem to come at 3rd level and every 4 levels after, but again, some classes might be different.

We get one right away because of the Courier background, Glean Contents, which allows her to figure out what papers contain without disturbing seals or with only a quick glimpse. Then we get an Ancestry feat and a Class feat.

Class feat is easy: Monastic Archer Stance. Because we want to be an archer.

Now the Ancestry feat. There's two that stand out, one is Cold Minded, which gives a +1 to saving throws vs emotion magic and Serpent's Tongue which gives the Scent ability. I'm going for the Scent ability in this case to be able to catch awareness of enemies.

That gives us the following end result for 1st level:

1st Level Sacred Nagaji Courier Monk

Strength +1

Dexterity +4

Constitution +1

Intelligence +1

Wisdom +2

Charisma +0

Hit Points: 11 AC: 19

Fortitude +6

Reflex +9

Will +7

Monk DC: 17

Trained Perception: +4

Initiative: +2

Skills

Trained: Acrobatics +7

Untrained: Arcana +2

Trained: Athletics +4

Untrained: Crafting +2

Trained: Deception +3

Trained: Diplomacy +3

Untrained: Intimidation +0

Trained: Lore: City +5

Untrained: Medicine +1

Untrained: Nature +1

Untrained: Occultism +2

Untrained Performance +0

Untrained Religion +1

Trained: Society +5

Trained: Stealth +7

Trained: Survival +4

Untrained Thievery +4

Weapons

Fist +7, 1d6

Tail +4, 1d6

Longbow +7, 1d8

Class Feats

Monastic Archer Stance

Ancestry Feats

Serpent's Tongue - Scent (Imprecise) 30ft

Skill Feats

Glean Contents

Features

Sacred Nagaji Tail - 1d6 Unarmed, Brawling

Sacred Nagaji stability +2 to Fortitude and Reflex saves to resist Grapple, Trip, and other similar abilities.

Flurry of Blows

Low-Light Vision

Powerful Fists

That's it for 1st level done for. I'm going to continue on to 4th level however, to reach for an important bit for the gorgon concept: snakes for her. Granted, we can just describe her as having snakes for hair, but when the option to represent something mechanically, I'll take it and since I can't do more than fluff it at 1st level, I'll move on to 4th.

2nd Level

For the second level, we get into how Pathfinder does multiclassing. It does it, as it does most things, through feats. We're going to take a Dedication Feat for the Witch class, which is why we wanted Intelligence at +2 to meet the requirements.

Dedication Witch gives the following:

A patron

A familiar which knows two Cantrips.

The ability to prepare one Cantrip per day.

Training in a skill based on patron.

For patron, we're choosing Spinner of Threads, feels like that goes in with intrigue a bit. This means she gains the Occultism skill and gains spells from the Occult list. For a familiar, we're going with a sparrow.

For the two cantrips, Approximate and Message. She'll probably prepare Message on most cases. But Approximate would be useful for some investigations.

She also gains a Skill Feat and I'm taking Streetwise so she can gather information through Society instead of Diplomacy.

3rd Level

At this point, we gain our first General feat. As a note, when you get a General feat you can instead take a Skill feat. In this case, I'll take a General Feat, Incredible Initiative so that she gains +2 to initiative. Initiative usually uses Perception, but you can make a case for using other skills, such as if you're being very stealthy (Stealth) or start with a battle cry (Intimidate)

She also gains the following Monk features:

Mystic Strikes so her unarmed attacks (and bow attacks while in Monastic Archer Stance) count as magical.

Incredible Movement so she gets +10ft to Movement and +5ft for every 4th level after.

We also get to increase a skill. We could increase one of our skills to Expert, but instead, we'll take another skill to complete our intrigue concept: Thievery.

4th Level

Now we get to another Class Feat which is going to be "Archetype Feat" which are basically the multiclass feats. And we're going to take the feat we dipped into Witch.

We taking Basic Witchcraft, giving us a 1st or 2nd level Witch Class Feat, which will be Witch's Armaments. That gives us a choice between claws, fangs, or living hair. We're obviously going for living hair.

Now, we take a Skill feat which will be Ambush Tactics, which means she has a good eye for spotting ambushes within a terrain she has a Lore for... Cities.

And now at 4th level we have our Gorgon Archer. You'll note that AC has gone up. Level is part of all calculations, including AC, Attacks, save DCs, and Skill bonuses. Untrained skills do not increase so they would just use base Ability score.

I'm also going to say right now that going for Living Hair is not optimal, but it is a good flavor and what I'm looking for. Also, the hair, while a weak attack, has traits making it useful for disarming, tripping, grappling, and is also agile, meaning it doesn't suffer from multiple attack penalty as badly.

4th Level Sacred Nagaji Courier Monk

Strength +1

Dexterity +4

Constitution +1

Intelligence +1

Wisdom +2

Charisma +0

Hit Points: 54 AC: 22

Fortitude +9

Reflex +12

Will +9

Monk DC: 20

Trained Perception: +7

Initiative: +2

Skills

Trained: Acrobatics +10

Untrained: Arcana +2

Trained: Athletics +7

Untrained: Crafting +2

Trained: Deception +6

Trained: Diplomacy +6

Untrained: Intimidation +0

Trained: Lore: City +8

Untrained: Medicine +1

Untrained: Nature +1

Trained: Occultism +8

Untrained: Performance +0

Untrained: Religion +1

Trained: Society +8

Trained: Stealth +10

Trained: Survival +7

Trained: Thievery +10

Weapons

Fist +10, 1d6

Tail +7, 1d6

Longbow +10, 1d8

Living Hair +10, 1d4

Class Feats

Monastic Archer Stance

Witch Dedication

Basic Witchcraft: Witch's Armaments: Living Hair

Ancestry Feats

Serpent's Tongue - Scent (Imprecise) 30ft

Skill Feats

Ambush Tactics

Glean Contents

Streetwise

General Feats

Incredible Initiative

Features

Sacred Nagaji Tail - 1d6 Unarmed, Brawling

Sacred Nagaji stability +2 to Fortitude and Reflex saves to resist Grapple, Trip, and other similar abilities.

Flurry of Blows

Low-Light Vision

Powerful Fists

Witch's Patron: Spinner of Threads

Mystic Strikes

Incredible Movement

Occultism Witch Cantrips: Approximate, Message

I thought I was going to stop here, but I'm going to go ahead and push to 20th because Medusa's Wrath happens at 16th level and when I've gone that far, might as well go to the end. On my blogger, I'd do summaries every 5 levels. Instead, I'll just do the level up decisions and then summarize at 20.

5th Level

This is one of the few levels that only comes with a single Feat. In this case it is an Ancestry Feat. For this I'm taking Nagaji Spell Familiarity which gives her a list of three cantrips she can choose between preparing each day. These are Daze, Detect Magic, and Mage Hand.

This level also comes with a Skill Increase and four Ability boosts.

For the Skill Increase I boost Society, and for the Ability boosts I choose: Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom.

Dexterity doesn't go up here because once you get to +4 it takes two boosts to go up. So I'm going to buff up my lower Abilities a bit first. Boosting Intelligence gives her another basic skill training, for that I chose Medicine.

At this level, her Perception, Unarmed attacks, and Monk attacks (like bows) are now up to Expert proficiency.

6th Level

Now we get another Class feat and a Skill feat. For this I'm choosing:

Ki Strike - our first Focus spell

Forensic Acumen - now that she has training in Medicine, more intrigue

Now we have to choose whether her Ki spells are Divine or Occult and I'm sticking to theme and going with Occult.

7th Level

At this level we get a General feat a skill increase and the first Path to Perfection. That's basically a choice of a saving throw to increase. Now, Pathfinder has retraining, but the third path goes to Legendary while the first two go to Master. I'm going for Reflex at this point.

For the General Feat, I'm choosing Feather Step, allowing her to Step into difficult terrain, which is normally not possible. For the Skill Increase, I'm going to increase Deception to Expert.

At this level, she also gains Weapon Specialization, adding damage to weapons and unarmed attacks.

8th Level

At this level we get another Class Feat and a Skill Feat, for these I'm choosing:

Pinning Fire - Letting her immobilize a target she hits twice with a Flurry of Blows from her bow.

Eyes of the City - letting her use Society to Gather Information instead of Diplomacy

9th Level

At this level we get a Skill Increase, an Ancestry Feat, Monk abilities increase to Expert, and Metal Strikes so that her unarmed and bow attacks (while in Monastic Archer Stance) count as Cold Iron and Silver.

Skill Increase: Society

Ancestry Feat: Guarded Thoughts - making it hard to read her mind.

10th Level

At this level we get another Class and Skill feat, and four more Ability Boosts.

Ability Boosts: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, and Charisma

Class Feat: Ki Rush - burst of quick movement

Skill Feat: Biographical Eye - this is the Sherlock Scan

11th Level

At this level we get a General Feat, Skill Increase, and the second Path to Perfection.

General Feat: Ancestral Paragon for a bonus Ancestry Feat

Ancestry Feat: Nagaji Lore

Skill Increase: Deception

Path to Perfection: Fortitude

Now, Nagaji Lore comes with a couple of things:

Training in Occultism and Crafting, but she already has Occultism, so instead we take Intimidation

Training in Nagaji Lore

12th Level

Another Class feat and Skill feat.

Class Feat: Elemental Strikes - adding elemental energy when using Ki Strike

Skill Feat: Lie to Me - ability to trip people up that try to lie to her.

13th Level

At this level we get another Ancestry Feat along with her weapons and unarmored defenses becoming Master in proficiency.

Ancestry Feat: Disruptive Stare, to make enemy spellcasters have a tougher time.

14th Level

Another Class and Skill Feat.

Class Feat: Focused Shot - lets her ignore cover and concealment.

Skill Feat: Quick Jump - lets her jump quicker

15th Level

Now we get one Skill increase, one General Feat (which I will turn into a Skill Feat), the third Path to Perfection, and Greater Weapon Specialization.

Ability Boosts: Dexterity, Intelligent, Wisdom, and Charisma

Skill Increase: Society, now it's Legendary

General/Skill Feat: Legendary Codebreaker

Third Path to Perfection: Will

Increasing Intelligent gives us another basic Skill Training. And I'm taking Performance for that.

16th Level

And here we come to finally getting Medusa's Wrath because it's a new Class Feat and a Skill Feat.

Class Feat: Medusa's Wrath

Skill Feat: Slippery Secrets - so it's harder to catch her in a lie.

17th Level

At this level we get an Ancestry Feat, her unarmored defense advances to Legendary, and her attacks count as Adamantine.

Ancestry Feat: Nagaji Spell Mysteries. Allows her to prep Charm, Fleet Step, or Heal once per day.

18th Level

And now we get another Class and Skill Feat:

Class Feat: Diamond Fists, since Monastic Archer Stance causes these abilities to affect her archery, it carries over. Each successive hit she makes in the same round does more damage.

Skill Feat: Doublespeak, the ability to say one thing and mean another.

19th Level

Now we get a Skill Increase, General Feat, and Perfected Form which basically means she can't roll less than a 10 on her first strike each turn.

Skill Increase: Thievery

General Feat: Reveal Machinations

20th Level

The last Class and Skill feats. The level 20 Class feats are the typical capstone abilities and for this case, I'm taking Enduring Quickness which basically gives her an additional action every round purely for movement. I'm running out of exciting things for Skill Feats though.

Class Feat: Enduring Quickness

Skill Feat: Underground Network

The final build is this:

#character creation #ttrpg #gorgon archer #gorgon #pathfinder 2e #archer #tabletop roleplaying game #fantasy #character creation and the gorgon archer

0 notes