I kinda hate monster tactician, but that's beside the point, apart from taking whatever I say about it with a grain of salt as I never really played it and never will. The progression on summons is about all he's got, so 17 levels pure and then you can fill the last 3 levels with whatever you feel like is how you do it. As to it being fine or not, with the proper party anything can be dragged through and tactician is no exception.

Hello InEffect,
First of all thank you for the good work so far. It is appreciated. I understand if you have no desire to read this or help but I am curious if you wouldnt mind giving me your opinion on how to build this idea out. The idea is that of a sorcerer with heavy armor. Able to take a hit or two but to deal a good portion of damage themselves. Of course the sorcerer bit is not necessary just the only class I could think that would work with higher charisma and a spellcaster. Perhaps my view is too limited. I would appreciate another perspective. Thank you for reading this and if you offered your opinion thank you again as well.
Have a great day,
Mr. Kyde.

Just make a melee sorc, but take a fighter instead of SF. Will also have to cough up 2 feats to lower the ASF to 5% in mythral plate, so the feats will be tight, especially in the beginning. Otherwise it won't be too different apart from the touch AC and being very strained on the feats.

Thanks again!
So i made Aragorn as the main character, followed by 5 mercs (100gp each if we wait before levelling up at Oleg's).
Gandalf (universalist wiz/AT), Gimli (slayer), Arwen (merc cleric), Pippin (bard) and Legolas (eldricht archer/rogue+) all using your build, Amazing the time you spent building characters for the community.

Just use whatever is better at the moment. There's no sense in marrying the weapon before you are well into the game even if you've taken the focus. It's kinda similar in PnP as well, except there we usually don't even take the focus before we find a weapon we wouldn't mind going through the whole game with. It's one more reason why fighters kinda suck in pnp as well since they do marry a weapon early and there's absolutely no guarantee you'll ever get one, unless your DM takes a pity and hand-places something for you or you spend a ton of time to craft one, which you will pretty much never have, unless you run a west marches style game.

Hi InEffect and everyone !

First of all, thank you and congratutaltion on providing so many builds and offering your help and knowledge to the community.

I plan to get back to Kingmaker afer a long break. I never finished the yet (I know, shame on me) and lost all my previous saves. Since I'm sure they have been many updates since I played and since I got my hands on DLCs, I figured I should have a look on the net to find some ideas, builds, guides to help me realise what I want and that's how I ended here.

When I consider a build, I like to think party wise. I don't mind using mods to respec NPCs in that perspective.

What I would like to play is a bad ass sweet talker leader. I like the freebooter archetype for his bonuses to the team and for flavour. Then I'd like to make the best use of animal companions and summons, to flank ennemies and use at meatshields while the party enjoys the flanking bonusses and use sneak attacks, trip, anything nasty.

My Captain ain't playing fair when it comes to battle. I haven't decided yet if he should go pure range (using range weapons or magic) or melee (using reach weapons and trip maybe)

He doesn't have to possess an animal companion himself, other from the party can do that for him. I'm thinking at least 2 AC, up to 4 (I've read AC can be a pain in the butt in narrow places).

As for fighting dirty with sneak attacks, I was considering Vivi rather than rogue but it seems to be more appropriate for a melee fighter rather than range so I don't know. I do remember vivi still being an alchemist he has some very usefull spells including healing, enlarge etc.

I don't plan in going into hard nor unfair, I just want a fun party.

Thanks in advance and if you need me to provide any more informations please ask :)

For MC booter it really depends on how deep into the booter thing you are going. Also, booter is VERY micro-intensive. I mean several manual actions per round intensive. For mainly booter something like motherless M1/Booter10/Archae2/DD4/V3 will be pretty good. 3 bites for auto-trips with the winter wolf cloak or whatever it's called, mirror, etc. Since booter will need to utilize his move action every round you'd need at least improved cleave for standard actions. Monk is a perfect fit for the theme for a change since armor and ships don't really go well together. With cleave in mind you probably want something with decent reach, so at least a two-hander and preferably a polearm. Fauchard would probably be the best bet since we can guarantee Mastery and half the build is trips anyway. So cleave on the move action spend rounds and full attacks with auto-trips on the full action rounds, manual trip against single-target on the move action spend rounds. Booter will also allow you to skip focus and dazzling if you pick menacing. It's also reasonably easy to build as booter only really needs 4 levels to be decent. So M1/V3/Booter4/Archae2/DD4 is the core build that's easy to reach at a reasonable pace.
Rest of the party is fairly standard and easy since it's not like we have much of a choice. You'd need a Bard, so Val is always will be there, You need an alchemist, so Jubi has to be there(and playing without the best written companion in the game is a travesty), you need a full caster, so if you limit yourself to companions Octavia is your only real option, You'll probably want a cleric and the last slot is open for whatever you fancy since you already have everything you need in 5 slots.

Thank you very much. Guees if I want some animal companions in the party I can give one to the cleric or take a druid instead and have a ranged ranger as 6th slot.

Edit : do you advise any specific race and how would you distribute attribute points ?

Since you will bite/trip motherless is your boy. Without dumping anything, 18/14/13/10/16/10 is decent enough, +4into str and +1 con at 20.

Hi InEffect,

you wrote at one point that an arcane sorc would make a better dc sorc than a sage if the Varns DLC is missing.
I'm very curious how you would build one, you mentioned at one point that it would be a gnome illusionist, what other focus would be good in that case?

Love the thread and your guides and any pointers are greatly appreciated!

be a gnome, pick arcane sorc, take foci in illusion and necro and you are kinda done.

I don't know if this is the correct thread for this request, but what would be some good companion builds with the "Call of the Wild" mod installed?
I would like to use Jaethal, Regongar, Amiri and Valerie as Tanks, Octavia ranged DD, Harrim as either tank or ranged DD/healer, Tristian ranged DD/healer and, as for the others, as you see fit. (with ranged DD here I mean magic DD obviously)
Consider also that I buff all the companions so that the sum of all their stats is at least 80 (like Valerie) and I change Valerie to have 14 Dex and 18 Con. How I change the other characters, it depends on the path I choose for them. For example, if I try to build Harrim as a tank, I give him at least 13 Dex (by removing points from his Cha).

These are my "Call of the Wild" mod settings:
{
"update_companions": false,
"reduce_skill_points": false,
"sacred_huntsmaster_animal_focus": true,
"swap_weapon_sets_as_move_action": true,
"allow_spellcasting_in_elemental_form": true,
"fix_teamwork_feats": false,
"fix_ecclesitheurge_class": false,
"advanced_fighter_options": true,
"wizard_discoveries": true,
"secondary_rake_attacks": true,
"one_sneak_attack_per_target_per_spell": false,
"metamagic_for_spontaneous_spell_conversion": true,
"remove_solo_tactics_from_sacred_huntsmaster": true,
"update_kineticist_archetypes": true,
"balance_fixes_monk_ac": false,
"balance_fixes": false
}

Thanks, or sorry if this wasn't the place for such a request!

Hello InEffect, first of all, thanks for the job you do, its awesome.

I want to play a halfling crusader "follower" of Gorum named Bozh. plate armor, greatsword, chaotic neutral/evil/good.
Ive asked my broter to write a short stoy based on my idea, its here translated to english. Hope you can help me, im more interested into rp than min/max and everywhere i search they say its an awfull class and combination.

In normal difficulty, alongside with Valery, Linzy, Harrim, Amiri and Ekun mainly. Want to do all companion quests tho.

Many thanks in advance.

-Trickygnosis.

"I have always had a bad memory, but within that fact there are moments in my life that I remember with a certain intensity and then the great lagoon that will always accompany me.
I remember my childhood in a blurry way, moments of games with other children who, although they were my age, were always taller than me: wooden swords, initiations to magic ... always with the eyes of the wisest of the human tribe. who adopted me positions in me. I tried harder than the rest, I always gave a little more in each decision I made, and although I ended up taking the clergyman's vows and became brotherly with the rest of the members of my order (worshipers of Gorum) I always had to stand out precisely because I was different. . The personal and external demand took a toll on me.
Perhaps that demand was the reason that when I reached my twenties I rebelled against the world around me, although perhaps I did it because I simply could. Thanks to my constant training since childhood I could handle a greatsword with great precision and inflict pain and death on my adversaries, I could bear the heavy load of a heavy armor whose metal pieces protected me from any threat and if this was not enough I could heal myself myself using the positive energy that flows in the universe.
I am middle-aged and that I could never change, but despite being in a hostile environment on many occasions I got ahead among the humans who found me in my earliest childhood, not only did I get ahead but I also became the best in each discipline in which I was trained.
Perhaps that is also why I abandoned my tribe and went out into the world.
Then comes the blackout. My amnesia has taken my
first years of adventures that I experienced.
However, this last year it seems that my mind is recovering, I remember the prayers of my religion, I remember the projects in which I embarked and above all I remember the missions that have been assigned to me in my work as a mercenary. Despite the fact that I have a bad temper that seems to be returning chronic and I do not accept the natural order of things at practically no time, I keep moving forward looking for new adventures, which I do not know if I will remember in a few years.
Tomorrow I have a meeting at the Aldori mansion, all the rumors suggest that different expeditions to the Stolen Lands will be opened, perhaps my true moment is coming and it may be me who claims the right to the barony after ending the bandit that is made call king."

In "short": Halfling, Greatsword, Plate armor, Crusader, Gorum (war, str, chaos?)

Found by a human clan/tribe fanatics of Gorum when was a baby, made a war cleric for his affinity with the god.
After an existential crisis he left his tribe to travel as a mercenary and thus find himself, at the same time the story of the game begins...

Hello,

your character and class guide are excellent and have been very useful for me tu understand how mechanics work, and which are the most useful, in the game.
I am having a lot of problems in making a character that follows my... tastes, and so I thought to ask for your help, please:

Difficulty is Challenging, I want some kind of arcane caster in heavy armour. Possibly focused on the spells rather than the sword swinging, and I want them to be a normal person. None of those weird mutations, special ancestries from dragons, demons and whatever, transforming into monsters or having a divine godfather filling the character with magic juice.
A good old school character, from the times when men were men, mages were men, and dragons were dragons and not your shapeshifting character with three different archetipes.