It's just enchantment sucks. Big time. Only useful spells in the category are heroism ones. If you go arcane you are an illusion+conjuration or a necro+conjuration... AKA have actually useful and usable spells. Actually, that could be said about any caster. And that's why spitespawn bonus is useless. There literally isn't a class that is so desperate that it has to rely on enchantments, so only use for spitespwan is that edge case where you absolutely WANT to suffer.

Would someone focusing on illusion+conjuration go gnome then? On a pure arcane sorcerer? Or are wings too valuable and you always go musetouched aasimar for an arcane sorcerer? I guess as an aasimar you can grab conjuration ASAP and worry about picking between illusion and necromancy later? Whereas the gnome is firmly committed to illusion+conjuration.

I had thought though maybe spitetouched arcane sorcerer enchantment+conjuration might be a third option because of all the various enchantments of holding/sleeping things.

edit:

Oh also, while I have your attention. Why do all your archers take a dip of 2 into eldritch archer? How exactly does having 2 levels of eldritch archer give you extra bow attacks? Do you mean by using your arcane pool to give yourself haste? Can the pool even select that feature at level 2?

edit2: note to self, I figured it out, the eldritch archer can shoot his arrows AND a free level 0 cantrip spell both at the same time every turn, which is sort of kind of, extra bow attacks!

Gnome is the one for an illusionist DC stacking. Necro would pick human sage because of profane staff from varn DLC. Conjueror doesn't need DC boosts at all, so might as well be a sylvan or be a 2nd school so you have control spells on top of whatever you are doing. Transmutation wants to be an AT, so will likely be wizard or a draconic, just cause he won't get to those late class bonuses... Enchantment... eh... it's just it's a triple shitburger. First, all your spells target will(which is the highest save on most things past early-game) and don't even oneshot things like illusion does. Second, half the enemies in the game are flat out immune to it. Third, it's all save or suck spells, so if the enemy saves you've wasted a spell slot and a round casting. As said, if you find it fun - go ahead. If not - literally any other spell school is better even on a spitespawn.

I haven't gotten to the late game, so I wasn't aware that will saves were that dramatically higher than other saves. If all three saves are fairly balanced, I think general enchantment is pretty solid? no? If will saves are noticably higher though across the game, well, I agree, that totally ruins enchantments. I guess also apparently late game enemies that I don't want to be spoiled on the exact details of, have immunity to mind altering effects? That also sort of entirely ruins enchantments. So, thanks for explaining that. Assuming I'm understanding correctly. It's not that enchantments are worthless, in general, so much as, in this campaign setting all of the enemies you'd want to use them on, they won't work on, and so, they're literally worthless, in that they don't do anything at all.

I'm leaning pretty hard on starting this game as a gnome arcane sorcerer who cares about both illusion and conjuration spells. Mostly because I want my MC to have high persuasion skill. I guess if the sorcerer were a mercenary, I'd go sage sorcerer instead. That profane staff, you don't have to be human or something to use it do you?

Enchantmet vs conjuration really is an easy one. Conjuration does have chains of light that does quite literally the same as hold spells. And for whatever enchantments would work well... Stinking cloud works better. Even against mobs with high fort, as just the sheer number of saves it forces will make it succeed. Also stinking cloud is party-friendly with just communal delay poison. For everything that is immune conjuration has grease, while enchantment has jack all. And yes, lategame enemies have either +31 will saves or are immune to enchantment. Saves are not so much a problem if you stack DC's - that's why illusion is pretty decent.

Profane staff is +4 profane bonus to int, so for sage sorc it's another +2 DC. You must first finish varn DLC and then you can import a save-state come varn vanishing quest.

I read somewhere in this thread, or at least from you, that making my sorcerer my MC is a waste of a 25 point buy.
So I was thinking maybe I'd build something sort of similar to your saint vivisector.

Someone else (on steam) suggested running 13 saint/2 paladin (divine hunter)/2monk(scaled fist)/3stalwart defender because they were planning to have a mercenary 20 vivisector cast transformation on their saint for them (saint seems to require lvl16 to cast transformation themselves).

You say in your saint vivisector guide that saves are not an issue, and if they are, some cleric can bestow grace on you. That means a saint vivisector doesn't really need paladin at all, at least according to you. So I got to thinking about ways to get that steam guide up to 16 or more level of sword saint, and I saw that cutting the 2nd level of monk cuts evasion (but this is again saves related). Cutting the 3rd level of stalwart defender cuts uncanny dodge. Uncanny dodge and evasion are both top flight skills, that a lot of people would consider worth 1 level all on their own.

So, I started to give up on getting all of that in one package, the "all" in this case being tensor's transformation self casted.
...
However in your saint vivi build you specifically point out how amazing the AC on a saint vivisector is. When I looked it up though, both the scaled monk bonus and the canny defense from the saint were gained at level 1. So, now I have the idea, what about a 1sword saint/1scaledfist/18vivisector? or 1sword saint/1scaledfist/2paladin/16vivisector. Either way you can cast transformation. The only problem I can see is that sword saint's AC bonus is tied to using only one weapon, and sneak attack dice benefit a lot from dual wielding?

Any idea how to come up with a frontline tank that also does great damage via the transformation spell by using a dip into sword saint and monk? I feel like the sword saint's best ability seems to be gained at level 1, yet all the sword saint builds I see online go to level 13+

Or is there a loophole in the sword saint wording? and you can dual wield as long as both weapons are the same?

I guess either way that canny defense works, the end result of this plan, ends up just being a far weaker version of your trip vivisectionist, except with much higher persuasion for no good combat related reason at all. Hmm.

They are fine if you can get em sacrificing nothing. Saint gets too much from levels. Saint 19 is even better if I were willing to suffer through early unfair without mutagen(which I evidently am not). Both are easily negated through CC, positioning and buffs. Evasion is flat out meh. Reflex spells is not what kills you.
https://i.imgur.com/gGJhwuM.png

Every melee goes online after A1 saint is perfectly fine at trolls give or take. https://i.imgur.com/f7elxX1.png that's my saint on the last unfair run just entering troll fortress. Saint really doesn't get much of anything from multiclassing - he only stands to lose something. Saint doesn't work like monk. You get 1AC per int per level. That being said, there is a build that takes 1 saint level. Namely, trip vivi, but he does that to get 2 feats in 1 level, nothing more.

You can d/w. Saint is not about that, though. You need to stack loads of flat damage and crit mult to do stuff like that https://i.imgur.com/nME8uYX.png. And D/W will run directly counter to that.

Ahh, thanks, I was totally misreading canny defense then!

The long and the short of what I was looking for though, was, how do you build a vivisectionist to be a melee damage dealing powerhouse? or is that just not something vivisectionists should look to do? (Basically, I'd like to get a vivisectionist into my game, but I'm not sure I want to play the trip gimmick build one, so I was foolishly trying to morph your saint vivi, into a vivi saint, despite not even understanding the basic abilities of either class!)

edit:
Also, I see you often mention that a druid can solo unfair, and so they're "strong" but it's not fun, and it doesn't play well with a party. What's the build for it then? aasimar defender of the world pure 20 druid? (I saw you mention feyspeeker 20 to someone, but I think that might've only been in reply to the fact they asked you about feyspeekers).

https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/ineffects_guide_v2/post230
That's how vivi does.

Druid solo unfair is just a degenerate kiting galore. It's about as fun as watching the paint dry. As to which druid to use for it... I'd probably go feyspeaker just cause I wouldn't plan on hitting much of anything myself and illusion spells are decent. Probably would splash 1 level of SF for the AC stacking somewhere late in the levels just cause it'd save a bit of time, the rest doesn't matter. DotTW works too, except you'd have to stock on invis pots.

I've personally done solo unfair run with sylvan8/SF1/V1/AT10. Pretty much the same as sorc/AT, but has a pet to kite enemies and to solve the earlygame and that's what I'd recommend if you want to do it. Got melee sorc and melee bard reasonably far, but got bored to death and swore to never run solo unfair ever again.

Hmm, that build is one level short of casting transformation, I guess, from your comments below the build, the suggestion then is to go traditionalmonk1/saint1/dd4/vivi13/1whatever to get the levels needed to cast level 6 alchemist spells?

But you'd expect if no one else is singing for 2 levels of bard to be preferred? Although the Archaeologist can only sing to himself. I'm not sure I understand the inclusion of the bard levels versus not including the bard levles here. The comments below the build itself seem to make me think, you meant the bard levels to be optional.

Also, one thing that was confusing me. There's a typo in the summary of the build at the top. In that the sword saint 1 isn't listed.

"Final Build: Monk(Sensei) 1/ Alchemist(Vivisectionist) 12 / Bard(Archaeologist) 2 / Dragon Disciple 4 "

It was confusing me for a bit how the math to level 20 worked. I'm not totally sure I understand the reasoning behind including the sword saint (if you are leaving the bard levels in). I think the way it works is... You need a bonus feat for weapon focus fauchard. If you took 1 level of fighter, you'd get 1 bonus feat, but you'd have to waste it on weapon proficiency exotic. Wheras the sword saint can take weapon focus in any weapon, even one he couldn't previously use at all. Is that right? That's why sword saint is mandatory and bard is optional?

You don't need transformation as a trip vivi. Your whole deal is AoO's and your AB is good enough without. If you really want transform in a pinch have redeemer on swap. Done.

Bard levels are needed to qualify for DD. 5CL bard gets 2nd levels spells and mirror image, which is what's needed for any sensible melee. And it absolutely has to be archaeologist because you need access to opportunist. Song is not that important in his case, but it allows you to use greater ring of ultimate protection+RoC or unmaker, instead of dreamer.

If you take fighter you only get 1 feat and you still won't get 16BAB doing it. Saint gets both proficiency and focus for his chosen weapon and that's why we do it like that. You also get 1AC and 1 weapon enchant will compensate for the lost AB in the midgame.

Ahh, I was using what must be a badly written wiki to lookup opportunist and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it had to do with being a level 2 bard. I wish there was one wiki for this game that could correctly list the feats in the game. All four wiki's I've consulted though each have their own gaps/flaws.

I could find that opportunist was 10th level or above for rogues, but nothing else on it, and since it's a talent not a feat, I can't even check it on character creation. I had to start a game and then hack myself in bonus xp to level up to see if I could follow this build, but... a level 2 archaelogist just cannot learn opportunist? I actually had to be level 10 vivisectionist level 2 archaeologist to see opportunist, the worst part being when I was leveling up vivisectionist and I was choosing my rogue talents, and I hit show unavailable... it still wouldn't show me opportunist as unavailable! because it's simply not a talent vivisectionists learn. Very strange. Not only are the wiki's confused, but even the game's UI attempts to hide the fact that this multiclass works from you!

Now that I know that vivisectionists unlock advanced rogue talents, but actually only unlock half of them, but actually if you multiclass a vivisectionist back into a rogue, then the level 10 unlock applies to that new rogue, and the bard subtype archaeologist gets the FULL rogue talent selection list when the vivisectionist rogue talent list is shorter. Very confusing. Took me eons to figure out how this worked, even AFTER you explained it to me. Thanks for explaining it though. I can see now that bard2 is infinitely superior to rogue2 here and those are the only two classes that can choose to learn opportunist in the whole game right?

I am the wiki. LOL. Basically how it works is if you get to advanced rogue talents on one class you can then get those from any other class that would normally get those as well. Vivi normally has no access to opportunist, but archae does, and that's exactly why we take bard after 10 levels of vivi. As to if it should work like that in PNP... I'm not sure. I can't find anything that would counter it, so it's fair game, I guess.

D20PFSRD is pretty much the only thing that's moderately useful as far as external resources go, after you account for all the quirks of the game, which are not that many, really. Neoseeker has some useful stuff too. Like a usable relic fragment checklist, for example.

I've been checking gamepedia and fandom and fextralife and yes also D20PFSRD.
The first three are randomly missing like 20% of the features of the game (even when combined), and the fourth one has roughly 50% of it's information changed/missing in the game.

Glad I now have a level 1 character save file at the start of the game with enough EXP to hit level 20, so I can test stuff like this again in the future.

edit: oh also, my test character was an aasimar for basically no reason. While I was furiously choosing random things to level up to level 12. I managed to choose wings and wings.

Does aasimar wings feat stack with feral mutagen feral wings feat? For double wings and 6 dodge? Or do two dodge bonuses not stack? I get that for a bite build being a tiefling is too important, but I'm curious of if double wings would be valid/useful on another character.

I just use bag of tricks mod for it. Can also add items and all that. And slap respec mod on top of that so I don't have to reload to fix/retry.