MY top 2 are: The Aasmir cleric medic/archer, because the healer companions SUCK in this game IMO.

Aasimar Cleric Cruesader of Erastil who also spec'd as an acher build.. You take the Community domain and you have a healer that gets bonus domain healing spells and can where plate. IE the bleessed plate is a very nice enhance ment to the orginal build stat wise of :10 18 10 10 !6 16. Being Erastill is basically the Bow God, your cleric gets access to Long Bow for free. So you up armor medic healer is ether spamming AoE heals at a distance or bow fire. And if you get flanked the plates and high dex make you more defensible. Oh and I used the straight +Char and Wis Aasimire heritage.

The 2nd is the Dwvarven Thug/Rogue

10 18 15 12 14 5 out of the box. Why a Dwarf you say? because of the con oriented saving throw buffs. Sweet RnGesus is there A LOT of poisonius stuff in this game! By level 4 a Rogue with a natural 16 Con menas he can be an effective melle flanker that isn't squeshy HP wise. And th horrible Chr is no be deal. But the wisdom and dwarf hertiage is helful in SEEING trapps. I skill focus trickery at level 1and that makes up for only having an 18 dex out of the gate. As he levlels up I make hinto a weapon finesse dual wielding machine tat also is damn good with a cross bow. The Wyerns cloak is item to add to this mercnary as it buffs his high poison resistances higher and adds AC as well.


Thoughst? And whats you favoriter mecenary builds?

well if you ask for thoughts... you have a cleric that won't ever hit anything with his spells... with a bow of all things that does require a lot of feat investments. with a 0.75 BAB class that doesn't have any meaningful AB enhancements. sprry to say, you will not ever hit anything past act 2 pretty much. you also trade awesome domain goodies you can't find anywhere else for 4 feats or so.

rogue... well same deal more or less. even flankers need at least something to survive. at least barbarian DR. yeah you will drop enemies AC for 1 round once you hit em, but you will not have enough BAB to hit them to begin with past mid-game. Also merc rogue is never gonna be as good as Nok-Nok, not even a competition. Even MC can't be as good of a DW rogue as that little fella.

oh and good merc build, one that makes your life 10 times easier, is a sylvan sorc halfling, cause you need a competent transmuter on hard.

Funny thing is my dwarven thug puts out more DPS than the knifemaster goblin does, and has more AC because I built him from the ground up and was able to take feats for that option.

My cleric isn't there to do any but add fire support with a bow or drop AoE Heals and patch up the others after a fight as well as buff before fights.


See ithink are disconnect in the way we see things is I am used to having a squad with assisnged roles as I am retired US Army. The rogue is my Breacher and the cleric is my medic in a 6 man fire team. My arcane caster is my machine gunner spamming spells. The font 2 guys are all sword and borad tanks supported by a 2 hander that whalloped stuff from the side as the rogue sneak attacks from the other side.

To me this game is all situational squad level room clearing. Thats why these 2 Merc builds are my forverate as they support my play style/tactics

1st thing is you can not make a tank with feats. it's just how it is. anything udner 50AC might as well have no AC at all.
2nd. just wait till you get to late teens. your cleric won't hit a broad side of a barn. you need AB in 40s to hit late-game stuff.

I view things from Hard and all game long. your builds are not viable on hard in late teens and that's that. also pure rogue can't hit anything reliably more or less at pitax. there is just no going around it. rogues need AB support. especially if they d/w, otherwise your 20lvl rogue are as good at hitting stuff as lvl15 fighter and thats with fighter being bugged and fighter training not working. with a case of barb you are as good at landing hits as barb 12 give or take.

and no, Nok-Nok should not be a pure rogue either.

I am not trying to say "you are bad and you should feel bad". I am trying to warn you about what is coming later.

This game is not PnP. Mobs have much better stats and often PC levels. It's like playing with "wargamer" DM. You totally have to optimize on hard and above. challenging will kick your ass on some bosses with unoptimized builds. Did you do ratnook hill act 1 on hard? Well... late-game feels exactly the same.

The best mercenary (it's even better if used for main character though) build so far for me is 5 sorc + eldrich knight. I am not sure if it's worth to add 4 dragon disciple. It grants you some additional elemental damage and some saving throws + 4 STR, but there are some imporant feats of EK you may miss in this case.
The point is that sorcerer doesn't need much charisma to be a proficient magic user. Basically, it's only needed to access higher tiers of spells, so 17-18 will suffice. Thus, every other point may be spent on STR and probably some additional DEX/CON. I prefer 14 DEX since it's +2 AC and grants access to the feat (13 DEX needed) that improves your AC by 1.
The stats at lvl 16 with the best gears available were like +29-30 melee attack (2-handed weapon), 35 AC (light armor), 160 HP and all the saving throws were about 20, 7 level spells available. Those stats are not the best possible, since I picked human race that time, while I certainly should've picked aasimar. Moreover, there is the transformation spell (lvl 6), that drastically improves your fighting abilities, but blocks spellcasting.

Mind that you also have access to the spell that provides you additional damage from sneak attacks (it's almost as powerful as if you were a rogue). Plus, some spells like vampiric touch (for me it was like 30 damage into healing, can be improved with metamagic) and shield of shadows (I am not sure if it's an accurate name of the spell) that are pretty useless for an ordinary mage, turn out to be very powerful and handy for your sorcerer.

I have to say that I didn't test the build throughout the game, but against wild hunt scouts (endgame enemy NPC) it worked very well.

There is little reason for EK on a sorc. You pay too much AC, compared to draconic bloodlines and there is transformation when you need to hit something in dragon form. As for a ranged sorc it's better to go full silvan as nothing would be as good as a pet will be. AB for ray spells is not that important and you always have true strikes if you really need to hit em. Maybe arcane bloodline sorc/EK with crossbows has merits as a merc, but I would not let him into melee ever.

I mean it will work - it's still a sorc, and sorcs are good, but it will lag behind what it could be. as for the melee touch approach there is magus that gets all the tools needed, including AC. That and no monk on a sorc is a crime.

IMO EK sorc as you described it will be pita to babysit on anything higher than challenging and even there he will die regularly due to low AC.

I also would not advise skipping CHA on sorcs even if you are planning to go into melee as your mages need to be able to use CC.

All in all, it's not awful, but can be improved dramatically as gishes in this game can easily reach 50+AC and 40+AB. In fact proper gish would reach 50AC by lvl 12 give or take. pretty much the same goes for AB, except the ways of boosting that fast are limited. around 30 by 12 is realistic for a scion/sword saint, though.

Well, I didn't mean to participate in some compitition, but since I want to defend my point, here goes the screenshot, so you can see how the build I suggested works. The EK has 50 AC (I actually forgot wings) and 40 AB. The difficulty is hard. Basically, I dealt with Wild Hunt Scouts only with Valerie and the mercenary.
Initially, I wanted to give an idea that Sorcerer + Eldrich Knight is very powerful (I also decided that it's actually worth adding 4 Dragon Disciple levels), I didn't try to get the best possible AC/AB bonuses out of it. Also, funny that you counted the bonuses that last only 1-2 rounds. Like, I could've added the bonus from True Strike to get a ridiculous AB. With quicken spell I could cast it as lvl 5 spell, so I'd still have 4 attacks per round. But I find it a bit silly to count such bonuses.

About charisma now. It's really not the best idea to trade your STR for something like +3 DC, which is not even applied for a half of the spells. In my opinion it's only good if your target has high Will save for example. So, your spell will have not 15% to succeed but 30%, which is twice better. But in fact it still sucks.

I could've made a DEX-based EK aswell. It would have the same AB but much higher AC. But I don't think it's a good idea. The thing is, you can boost your STR up to 30 at lvl 16, so the bonus from wielding two-handed weapon is HUGE. Plus, as you can see, it's possible to have somewhat decent AC, especially considering the additional protection from illusions.

At last I want to add that I have access to lvl 7 spells (which is not possible for Scion), I didn't use min-maxing that actually causes much discomfort, and my build is not depended on some specific gears. Oh, plus you don't have Improved Critical in your build which is kinda sad.

arcane accuracy for scion/saint lasts a long time. you should have enough for like 10+ rounds of it by midgame.

and if you are using touch spells anyways - magus got em all, and gets to add weapon damage on top of it. also the size of a weapon doesn't matter. with full sized 1-hander and free offhand you get both str bonuses and monk styles. only reason to go 2h is if you want reach, mechanically speaking

my real problem with sorc/EK though is it doesn't really compute in terms of opportunity cost. you pay 1 CL for something worse than what the spell can do and said something has to buff every fight with more than just a simple shield+haste.

Str is fine. str doesn't always mean armor. lets say you have +5 plate armor. that's +15AC, lets say you kept dex at 13 for dodge/monk feats. lets even presume you don't have +dex items and have to use spells. now 1 level monk dip would give you +5AC from robes+5ACbracers+3AC from Dex=13AC+whatever your cha/wis bonus will be. as long as it's higher than 2 - you win going monk. and all of the above are actually easy to procure throughout the game, unlike +5 plate. and before you say monk robes come in late you can get +2dodge robes from a master circa lvl10.

imp crit on which build exactly?

I do not value STR scores that high. mostly cause there are cheaper ways to ramp up STR, than CHA. there are dragon forms, legendary proportions, etc for that. DC's on the other hand are a lot more valuable.

50AC by 16 is ok so long as you don't mind getting hit half the time.

anyways that was more for strangers looking at this topic and not for telling you how to play. never had such intentions, sorry if that came out that way for you.

so does full sized 1h. and with 1h, even if you want armor instead of robes, you can take monk feats, gaining +8AC for 1 AB that actually would push you into good AC even without monk levels and actually be a tank instead of needing one. as I said, it's still a sorc. and sorcs are good, not disputing that. you do you, man. if your choice is to be offended - be it so. and I didn't say it sucks. I said it can be pushed further.

LOL, stop these dirty insinuations! I am not offended because some guy on the internet was mean to... my bulid ROFL
Dude, the thing is, you started to talk like an expert. Maybe you are, but I don't know you, right? You see, I watched some videos where people suggested some builds. Sometimes I thought it sucked, but I've never left a comment like "Hey, I am an expert here and your build sucks!". And if afterwards you say something like "I did not tell you how to play, just wanted to show strangers that may see your build that it sucks!" and then, "if your choice is to be offended so be it", well, it doesn't make it any better. You missed the point of the build, you talked like you immediately figured it out, but it wasn't so actually. That said, I don't mean that you are wrong in general. What I want to say is, it's really hard to say what's best. There are so many different parameters, not just like AC/AB scores. Moreover, there is a role-playing thing. How do you evaluate all these?

I actually did say how exactly it can be improved. with monk feats and 1h it will be pushed 8AC up(4from crane wing and 4 from fighting defensively), that is given you are already on 50+AC allows you to take the tank role, which is not exactly well represented in companions.

something like sorc6/DD4/EK10 should work decently well. although both dragonform-oriented sorc and eldritch scoundrel would have done the job better the former by having good AC and decent spell selection and the latter by having totally insane melee/ray damage with all the really important buffs still present.

now this brings us to exactly the problem I have with this class combo. you are either forced to skip DD or monk if you want a theoretical potential for lvl9 spells, while still getting ASF penalty should you pick up armor. so that puts you about 10AC behind or 2AC and 4 str behind, even with low-ish CHA - bad news bears. I, personally, would abandon ship on hoping for lvl8-9 spells and got monk at lvl 5 that would push into DD4 and EK afterwards if I absolutely had to go EK. You will still miss on 3 ac from draconic bloodline for all of the game but at least you'd get monk robes and crane style for your effort for combined boost of about 15 AC give or take. Although, being 3 levels behind on spell-casting would be harsh the gains in AC would likely cover it, especially if you'd go for 1h weapon and took crane wing/riposte as that would put you about 20AC above no monk 2h option. 1h weapon does put you into a bit of an awkward position as in you might not want dragonforms, so 2h is still a decent pick.
TL;DR as a sorc you have 3 choices: monk dip, ek dip or DD dip. and you can only have 2 at the same time without gimping your progression too much. Out of the 3 EK is easiest to compensate for.

Another part of my problem is EK itself as a class. all it does pretty much is giving you 3 feats in exchange for 1CL, as you will still use transformation if you want to murder things in melee. Especially so if you don't dip anywhere and go straight from sorc to EK. IMO, EK is much more impactful on 3/4 BAB classes, especially ones that don't get transformation, like bards, to get to BAB breakpoints at a reasonable pace.

I will stress again: it doesn't mean the sorc6/EK10/something at lvl17 build is shit or unplayable - it's still a sorc and it will get get dragonforms, which are awesome. What I am actually saying this class combo is forced to make sacrifices where they could be avoided by either swapping base class to 1/2 caster or skipping EK in favor of transformation and shape-shifting.

Hope this is detailed analysis enough.

I tried your Eldritch Scion build, again. With 30 CHA and 26 DEX and all possilbe buffs I had 55 AC (with Wings), which is 2 points more than I had with EK in medium armor. I dunno how you achieve 60 AC, doesn't matter. Let's say we have it. The problem was, my damage was... pathetic. Valerie was dealing the same damage. Is it surprising? Actually, no. Why would this build be more damaging than a classic tank? Well, we have spells, right? Yep, but only 5 lvl. Dragon breath failed every single time dealing only half of the damage. With 30 CHA. Also I want to point out, that we don't have Sense Vitals, which is really sad.

I'll be honest, when I tried EK build, I used the weapon that ignores damage reduction. That's how I was able to deal ~150 dmg per round to Wild Hunt Scouts (whose damage reduction is huge). Is that the case? Not quite. The thing is, all my 2h weapons are awesome. There are bonuses like Keen + 20d6 slashing dmg in a 30-foot cone, better crit range and multiplier and +10 dmg per hit, ability to cast Heroic Envocation (9 lvl) etc. Nothing alike for 1h weapon. So it's justified. Not like I expected, but still, 2h is not only about additional range, it's got better bonuses.

EK is a very natural choice. The easiest way to make a build is to take a really good basic class and think of how you it can be improved with multiclassing. I think your approach is different and more about finding synergy between classes. Well, if you take a look at Sorcerer, you will see that he gets pretty much nothing but higher level spells as he progresses. Plus, there are really good spells that a fighter could use. So EK is a win-win. Very simple.
Sorry, but have you completed the game? There is no 9 lvl spells for multiclasses, 17 lvl is the cap.
Could you explain it a little bit? I tried it once and I thought it sucked. The claws fail to hit anything and the breating is mediocre, isn't it?

yes and I did say theoretical one sentence prior. also it is possible to reach 18. 20 is doable with a team of 3 and exp sharing off. have you played the game? xD
dragon forms have a lot of attacks, allow to cast(so you do get to cast transformation when shifted), give hefty boosts to everything and on top of that with sense vitals and elemental damage abuse you can do about 100 damage every hit you land. with transformation and all buffs/items you will get 50+ AB, which is not terrible by any means.

about scion. it's a tank first and foremost. CHA is focused as it's both AC and AB. saves too if you get there or have a priest/paladin in the team. she also gets to cast touch spells for free and gets arcane weapon enchants that can help deal with incorporeal creatures. and as far as good-aligned weapons go - cleric can do it for free, no need to waste a spell slot on a useless buff.

bit less AC, but a whole lot more damage would be Scoundrel4/AT4/M1/EK10/V1 final. ES4/M1/AT4/EK9 by the end of the game give or take with 9d6 sneak attack and geneikind/alkali gloves to push the dps even more. gets lvl 6 spells on 18 so just in time for the last stretch with shared exp on.

lets calc dex scion AC.
10base+9CHA+9DEX+5Monk Robes+5Bracers+3Wings+4Fighting defensively+4Crane Wing+3Nat ammy+4ring+4Draconic AC+1Dodge+1Haste+4Shield=66AC

upd. forgot to include shield spell.

Well, this is BS. I soaked all the available EXP and 17 is the cap and many people say the same. I played the game and I provided the screenshot where you can see that what I was talking about is really working, while you keep talking about some theoretical possibilities. It's getting nowhere.
I tried it and it did not work as you say. I think it's the same as for your Scion. At first you talk about some proper gish that has 60AB 60AC, after I prove you wrong you say it's a tank not a DD (then why did you compare AC of your tank-build with my pure DD build?). I am off with this BS.