Roahin: The buffing is still casting, and the damaging spells are more reliable anyway. The higher you tune the difficulty, the less likely your physicals are to hit multiple times a round (if at all). The AoE always hits. Even at half damage, it always does a lot of damage and as opposed to that sword swing, is good for multiple targets. A Fireball saved down to 30 damage that hits 6 targets is still a single third level spell that was worth 180 damage.

Dragonkind spells don't come along until 6th+, which means you're not getting a lot of casts out of them and furthermore mean a huge chunk of the game is behind you.

Again, look at the raw data when you're playing the build without a bias against how you feel it SHOULD be performing. I guarantee you this build is out-damaging all your other ones by an enormous margin.

Masquerouge: However, his resist poison, communal was incredibly useful in some quests

Roahin: Nah, Synthesis isn't in the game. Honestly, I was always felt that 3.X Mystic Theurge was too powerful a class from the get-go. The Pathfinder updates where you get to double-cast with Synthesis and stack spell libraries with Combined Spells just made it obnoxiously so.

Roahin: Hey, I appreciate all the kind words you guys are posting in the thread. I'm especially pleased to see that there's a market for lore-appropriate builds non min/maxed builds here. A lot of other sites I've tried peddling my builds on receive a far cooler reception.

Roahin: Hey, I appreciate all the kind words you guys are posting in the thread. I'm especially pleased to see that there's a market for lore-appropriate builds non min/maxed builds here. A lot of other sites I've tried peddling my builds on receive a far cooler reception.

Tygarus, those characters will give you an evenly balanced party with all the bases well taken care of. I'm not seeing much in the area of gear crossover either, so you should be just fine. As far as main character suggestions, I've deliberately shied away from making any of those. With Companion builds, I really only have 2-5 each that are both lore-appropriate and still strong enough to be effective on higher difficulties. With main character ideas, I have hundreds and they're all constantly being tweaked and overhauled as I try to eek one more bonus here, or make one slight lore change there.

For your party, you have an alignment majority on Chaos / Neutral and Good, so I assume that's where your MC is going. I can toss you a rough outline of the last three Chaotic/Neutral Good characters I played and feel free to let me know if any catch your eye?

First there's my Kellid Half-Orc Tharuk Bloodborne. He's a Chaotic Good Barbarian / Rogue build that uses the Orc-Double Axe (Half-Orc's get proficiency with it for free) and feats like Double Slice to stack his Strength and rage bonuses on top of his Sneak Attack. He largely takes Animal Totems, so he has tertiary bite attacks (also Sneak Attacks) and can pounce for full attacks. It's one of the higher and consistent non-caster damaging builds I've played through. I rather liked the idea of this semi-feral stalker predator exploding out of an ambush and attacking in a flurry, even gnashing his Orc tusks into the enemy before it falls. Despite his savagery, I had him respond largely as a good character, but naive with a focus on freedoms. So, when the tax question came up, he dropped all taxes. Whenever anyone came petitioning wanting to do something, he always allowed it. Made for a much more difficulty management part of the game.

The next one was a more common build that I'm sure most of us have experienced with some variation of at one point or another. Cuthbert Westbrook a Neutral Good Human Crusader of Erastil. We've all done the Cleric of Erastil build at some point. A Cleric with a bow and an Animal Companion and it works. I prefer Crusader for the access to Fighter feats like Weapon Specialization. I had it in my head that he was a local rural boy who was actually apprenticed under Jhod and sees the Cleric as his current mentor even as a Baron. So, he uses a Dog for an animal companion (statistically better than a wolf anyhow), and generally follows his lead in decision-making. Further, like Jhod, he prefers keeping the land undeveloped and taking care of the local populace first and foremost. I can't emphasize how effective the build is, by the way. You're in the back to fire off your Selective Channels whenever you need, but meanwhile, by the time you have Ekunadyo, Cuthbert is nearly arrow for arrow as effective as him, along with this Animal Companion up front.

The last one was a bit of a failed experiment. Grymwalld, a Neutral Good Gnome Feyspeaker. I had been wanting to make a character to romance Nyrissa and since Feyspeakers are Druids that bond with Sylvan creatures and Gnomes are from the Feywild, it was a conceptual match. I especially like Gnomes as Feyspeakers since Feyspeaker replace Wisdom with Charisma (which Gnomes get a bonus in) and add Enchantment/Illusion spells (that Gnomes also get a bonus in!) to their spell lists. So lore and concept-wise, I was all set! But buildwise? Eh. There's only so much you're really going to want to do with a Druid, and it usually starts and ends with Summoning Builds. Even if you want to create an Illusion/Enchantment build, the Feyspeaker doesn't get enough to make him comparable with just a regular Bard. Anyhow, I've found summoning builds in this game, ESPECIALLY on higher difficulties to just be massive under performers. Literally only good for tying up enemies, and if you've got a good tank or two with smart placement, that's never a necessity. I'm convinced there was a better build (that's still lore appropriate) for Grymwalld somewhere, but I haven't figured it out yet.