that vivisectionist is weapon+light shield with shield bash. so he dual-wields, but his 2nd weapon is shield.

You have some very good builds for the main character and story companions. Do you have any recommended Mercenary builds?

most MC builds can be adapted. just drop main stats a bit. It doesn't hurt that bad in the long run. sylvan sorc works well as a merc, especially on hard where good transmuter is at full potential and a pet is always awesome as it both solves weight problems and is another body on the field.

.... Wait the pet's strength counts toward carrying capacity? Mind BLOWN.

oh yes, it does. not only that, but everybody's favorite smilodon has a metric ton of it. added to char building DIY.

@InEffect: offtopic question, did you maybe do the same for Pillars of Eternity 2? :-)

not really. pillars are not that complex. didn't touch em for a long time. Heard that potd can't be just right-clicked now and you actually have to press buttons occasionally. Also there are people who dedicated much more time than me to that system on obs forums.

I also was not enamored by the system of pillars be it 1 or 2 enough to warrant my time for guide-writing. also obs habit of nerfing everything that is fun or works well makes the whole ordeal counter-productive .

I only done it for PF cause I liked the game enough and it has much steeper learning curve, so my guide might be actually more helpful to new players. Last time I did something like this was for NWN2 ages ago... I guess there is a pattern in the games I love, huh.

Uh, NWN2. The good old Times. I am old...
Baldurs Gate 1 + 2 gave me goosebumps. EPIC. Alltime Favorites.
Icewind Dale 1 + 2 was nice too.
NWN + NWN 2. Very good games.

Ah...


EDIT:
A friend of mine started playing Kingmaker. Do you have a piece of advice for
Monster Tactican / Grenadier build?
The two classes he is most interested in.

I still love the monkadin^^

just go pure monster tactician. take spell focus conjuration and all summon feats. the rest hardly matter. going fauchards or bow/crossbow is a decent idea for tactician. pick animal domain with smilodon or leopard - whatever you fancy and take boon companion at lvl5

grenadier is pretty much like jubilost, but with more oomph. give him crossbow and as many extra bomb talents as it can fit after taking precise shot. something like that.

Saint Vivisector

Race: Aasimar(Angelkin)
Alignment: LG

Stats:
Str: 18 > 22
Dex: 14
Con: 12
Int: 15 > 16 @ 12
Wis: 7
Cha: 16

Final Build: Magus(Sword Saint)18 / Monk(Scald Fist) 1 / Alchemist (Vivisectionist) 1

Main skills: Mobility 3, Persuasion (max)
Suggested secondary skills: Athletics(at least some), UMD(same here) whatever else you fancy.

Detailed leveling breakdown:
Lvl 1:Monk - Dodge // Crane Style
Lvl 2: Vivisectionist
Lvl 3: Magus - Chosen Weapon: Falcata* // Accomplished Sneak Attacker
Lvl 4: Magus
Lvl 5: Magus - Dazzling Display // Arcane Accuracy
Lvl 6: Magus
Lvl 7: Magus - Intimidating Prowess** // Outflank
Lvl 8: Magus - Enduring Blade
Lvl 9: Magus - Crane Wing
Lvl 10: Magus
Lvl 11: Magus - Shatter Defenses
Lvl 12: Magus
Lvl 13: Magus - Wings*** // Crane Riposte
Lvl 14: Magus - Devoted Blade
Lvl 15: Magus - Greater Weapon Focus: Falcata
Lvl 16: Magus
Lvl 17: Magus - Improved Critical: Falcata // Bane Blade
Lvl 18: Magus
Lvl 19: Magus - Weapon Specialization: Falcata // Greater Weapon Specialization: Falcata
Lvl 20: Magus - Ghost Blade****
*If you don’t have Varnhold DLC swap to longsword and pray you’ll get redeemer from the artisans. Or estoc for blinding light.
**I like it as most big exp persuasion checks are intimidation, but you can swap it for skill focus or extend or whatever else you fancy.
***Or Blind Fight. Or whatever else. I opted for wings to help the AC ramp. You can use Echolocation from party Alchemist or wands instead.
****Optional. Doesn't really matter what you take here. Can take touch attack thing. It's not needed, but you can have it for master below.

Important Spells:
Lvl 1: Shield, Shocking Grasp, True Strike, Grease, Vanish, Corrosive Touch
Lvl 2: Mirror Image, Glitterdust, Blur, Frigid Touch, Stat Spells.
Lvl 3: Haste, Displacement, Vampiric Touch
Lvl 4: Greater Invisibility, Dimension Door, Stoneskin
Lvl 5: Cloudkill
Lvl 6: Transformation

Gear: LG monk robes, AC items, Stat items. Falcata(Lion’s claw)

Spilled some awesome sauce on saint. Deals good damage and x4 crits. Doesn’t rely on perfect strike at all as you don’t care much about weapon dice. Crits on 15-20 for around 150 damage(250+ by endgame).

Would love someone casting Legendary proportions on him. With legendary proportions on doesn’t need gyronna to reach 70AC for unfair

Has Decent Dazzling and Shatter, 50 buffed AB in top gear + Arcane accuracy should you need it.

Arcane weapon you’ll likely use is Axiomatic+Bane. 2 points left to bring the weapon to +5. Keen enchant is to be used till you get Improved Crit.

Vivisectionist is taken for the extra 2d6 sneak attack and mutagen. 10m is enough per rest usually if you don’t spend much time idling. Also some free true strikes are not wasted on us.

Basically it’s a flip side of a scion with more fightery approach to things.

Turn off spellstrike when you don't use touch spells(which is going to be pretty much always past midgame) to get 1.5 damage mod.

I've always appreciated the fine art of powergaming. Mastering the rules in as complete a manner as possible to achieve extraordinary feats and actions. I think it's a shame that the word got mixed up with its ugly half-cousin, minmaxing. While, granted, minmaxing is a form of powergaming, there's no finesse to it. No art. While veterans were fiddling around with Black Dragon acid pools and the Shrink Item spell, minmaxers were cranking out Charisma / Intelligence 3 Barbarians to stack their physicals just as high as they conceivably could.

After the first couple of builds, I realized there was no combo or finesse to these builds. Just min/maxing. I wrote them off as "at least he's not sinking his attributes to a 3, he at least stops at 7" until I realized that 7 is the lowest they can go and are functionally a 3 for this game. And Intelligence more than any other stat seems to be your favorite dump. There are a lot of drooling learning disabled adventurer stats being posted here. It might've been bareable if some of the builds had some nuance. But everytime you went with the minmax option. There are excellent trip combo builds for a wolf-using Druid. But every recommendation is Smilodon because it has the most attacks and does the most obvious damage. Blegh.

Still, this is a good guide in an introductory sense for people who are new to Pathfinder or D&D, I suppose. It'll teach them bad habits, but part of the growth of a player is eventually overcoming those and elevating.

where to begin...

let's adress min-maxing first. most of the builds I made are easily equalized if you drop secondary stats a bit.as I mentioned several times. in the guide. you either missed the memo or didn't bother to read at all.

7int thing. this game does not require your main to have any skills whatsoever- story companions have more than enough spare skills to cover everything. in PnP I'd never do such a thing. but in a cRPG I don't see any crime in this.

Pets: smilodon does good damage and has great str to help you carry more rations and saves time that way. Don't see any other pet with such utility. Leopard is nice, but doesn't get as much str, diminishing the general utility.

General stuff: the game does not provide all the tools for intricate play PnP does and shoehorns you into brute-forcing the system, unless you find it interesting to buff for trash-mobs. And no, it is not intended to teach people to build characters in PnP at all. Nobody should do stuff like this in PnP, period.

So, your horribly minmaxed builds "aren't minmaxed if we change the numbers you posted so that they're not minmaxed" is your defense? C'mon. I can see dropping the occasional stat down to an 8 here or there, but literally every build you have posted are all 7's and 18's. Every. Single. One.

You're right. The developers didn't put "low int speech" or some other deterrent in there to dissuade minmaxers from doing what you're doing. Sure, your character is functionally retarded by the standards of the world, but if the game isn't going to penalize you or make you play it, take THAT Kingmaker, you'll dumpstat that attribute all day long!

Like I said, total lack of nuance. "Which pet does most damage? Okay, that's the only one worth taking!" What I don't get is how that was possible? The game forces a Ranger with a Wolf companion on you. You have a free NPC that reaches Large size naturally with a plethora of spells around boosting his Size and Strength that has an inherent Trip attack, and it never occurred to you to combo off of that? To work out a trip build? How does one get so blinded by base attack damage that Smilodon is the apex of his build ability?

You're mistaken. I'm on my fifth full playthrough (not counting the hundred or so false-starts and prematurely bug-ended ones), one on Challenging and four on Hard mode. I haven't had to resort to minmaxing a single time to get through. Now, there's clearly a market for a gaggle of Aasimar Int 7 resto-glitch equivalent nonsense builds. Rather than justify it, I say embrace it. Be the king of the low-end minmaxers.

As an aside, although most of them I thought were poorly conceived, your early builds with the companions were your best. Having predefined classes and attributes made you think within the system instead of bruteforcing minmax garbage on them. It's a pity the rest of the thread didn't follow suit.

well... duh. If DM's didn't penalize people for making drooling idiots the same could happen at the table 100%
not min-maxed trip build. As I said, you haven't read anything I wrote. I also hate Ekun with passion. worst NPC in the game, imo. At least you can kill him, so that's nice.

if you can make a character, that does the job better - I see no reason for gimping myself obeying arbitrary "world rules". rules that are not enforced do not exist. Name it as you will.
I actually rather like several of the MC ones for the theory-crafting behind them. If you don't - it's your choice.

The same DOES happen at the table. People build like you when they're new. Bad DMs let them get away with it, good ones make them play it out. What's the meaning of integrity, doing the right thing when no one's looking? It seems like if you joined a game where the DM didn't penalize you, you'd be rolling Int 3 characters all day long. You have to be FORCED to play your stats.

You mean your Trip build character where you STILL picked Smilodon as a companion and took no Trip-related abilities? Yeah, I saw it.

I know you don't. That is verbatim the rallying cry of minmaxers the world over. Hence, my dubbing you "resto glitch InEffect." If someone doesn't force you to play it correctly, even if you know better, you'll sink to the lowest common denominator every single time. What I don't get is why you seem so defensive about it? Again, embrace being King of the low-end Minmaxers.

Nah, too many Aasimar builds with multiple 7's. That's not theory-crafting, that's minmaxing.