Party comp.

[Kindabushybeard]

Getting ready to play my first pathfinder game and was wanting some advice on what class to go with. So far we have a dwarf fighter and two half orc rangers, not sure if they are going ranged or melee yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[exelsisxax]

Getting ready to play my first pathfinder game and was wanting some advice on what class to go with. So far we have a dwarf fighter and two half orc rangers, not sure if they are going ranged or melee yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Anything you want. Get a good character idea, a vivid personality, then a set of mechanical goals that this character should carry out.

Then come back if you want help building that character. Currently, you've narrowed it down to literally any combination of classes, race, and abilities otherwise acquired.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Go with a dedicated arcane caster if your GM is at all fond of using AP modules. Otherwise, you can go with whatever floats your boat.

[KarlMarx]

My one point would be that an all-mundane party might have a difficult time with healing. If you pull it off well, you shouldn't need a priest, but you'd hate to be up the creek without a paddle or to be spending all your money on potions.

[Elkad]

If you want to play a melee type as well, you can get the healing done with a Paladin (and a wand, much cheaper than potions).

You'll want fairly high stats though. Too many ways to spread your points out (Str, Cha, Con, Dex at least).

And you'll fit the power level of the rest of the party well.

[Fouredged Sword]

Honestly you have plenty of options.

A bard would make all those melee characters better at melee and pack a little healing on the side.

A wizard will provide options that other classes just don't. Flight, invisibility, battlefield control spells... all good.

A cleric or oracle will keep everyone in fighting shape. Some people find them a little bland unless you remember you can fight AND heal.

An inquisitor can mix it up with the rangers and still pinch heal while shooting doom arrows of death at things.

[heavyfuel]

I'll second getting an Arcane Caster.

Preferably one that can do melee combat somewhat, like the Summoner or a Conjuration school focused Sorcerer/Wizard.

This way you can summon monsters to help you fight and protect yourself as well as the archers

[Eldariel]

Let's see. Your party has a warrior, a warrior and a warrior. Warriors are cool but they get much better with magic to buff them up. Magic doesn't mean you can't fight; caster classes can kinda do anything. I definitely suggest a Conjurer Wizard. Covers your healing needs (Infernal Healing early on, Summon Monster V+ later on), gives you extra melee to help your teammates and most importantly, gives the party all the options it currently lacks (divination, teleportation, flight, buffing, debuffing, disabling, etc.). Haste, Greater Magic Weapon and Enlarge Person are all amazing spells for these teammates, not to mention the options offered by Polymorph and Polymorph Any Object down the line (turn them into Giants or whatever). Cleric would work almost equally well on most fronts if you pick Domains wisely but Wizards make better summoners with their broader list, and they are easier to build and play. Just remember to use spells like Teleport, Scrying, Contact Other Plane and company as group effort and take your allies input in when casting to ensure that everyone feels involved - their classes lack the means to contribute on the strategic scale otherwise.

Wizards can be a lot of fun. Turn into Dragons to eat people. Make people blind or fall asleep and chop their heads off. Make your fighter huge or fast or whatever and enhance their ability to wreck face. And in your days off, if you're e.g. an Elf you'll still be a great Archer when not telling the laws of physics to shut up and sit down. The two best Wizard specialties, Foresight Diviner and Teleportation Conjurer are also great. And to top it all off, with Int-focus you have a good allotment of skill points so you can cover skill monkeying and e.g. trapfinding if needed (particularly if you invest a trait into making Search and Disable Device class skills), while also covering the all-important Knowledge skills. Student of Philosophy or Clever Wordplay + Cunning Liar would make you able to act as a party face too since you currently seem to be lacking in that department (doubly so with spells like Charm Person, Geas, Dominate Person, Charm Monster, Image-line spells, etc.). Hell, add Bruising Intellect for the whole trifecta. That would generally require taking Additional Traits but it's not really that bad a feat if not optimal either (class skill only practically means +3 to that skill so it's worth no more than Skill Focus, which is a terrible feat; however, keying a skill off Intelligence will amount to +10 or more down the line, which is already very substantial).

Some resources you can use to make the spell selection process less overwhelming:
Treantmonk's Guide to Pathfinder Wizards: Playing a God
Why work when others can do it for you - A guide to Summoning (I recommend beginning using summons on level 5 with Summon Monster III, which contains awesome options like Lantern Archon, Dretch and even Celestial/Fiendish Leopard/Aurochs)

But just the basic crowd control, buff and utility spells get you started:
Level 0: Detect Magic, Prestidigitation (guide here), Daze, anything else you'd prefer
Level 1: Grease, Enlarge Person, Color Spray, Sleep, Silent Image, Protection from Evil, Charm Person, Mage Armor (can also buff any light armored allies early on)
Level 2: Invisibility, Pyrotechnics, Web, Glitterdust, Resist Energy, (Alter Summoned Monster + Heightened Mount is cheesy but highly efficient) - also Mirror Image as a defensive scroll in particular, and See Invisibility as utility
Level 3: Stinking Cloud, Haste, Slow, Summon Monster III, Greater Magic Weapon, Phantom Steed, Magic Aura against Evil, Ray of Exhaustion, Arcane Sight, long-term preparation spells (Shrink Item, Explosive Runes, Sepia Snake Sigil)
Level 4: Black Tentacles, Confusion, Greater Invisibility, Dimension Door, Summon Monster IV, Resilient Sphere, Enervation - also Scrying, Animate Dead and Lesser Simulacrum as downtime powers
Level 5: Teleport, Summon Monster V, Telekinesis, Baleful Polymorph, Wall of Stone, Wall of Force, Polymorph - also Contact Other Plane, Permanency, Lesser Planar Binding, etc. as downtime powers


And it goes from there. Bottomline, extremely varied, versatile abilities, lots of good ways to make your teammates more efficient and day-to-day variety as for what you'd like to do at any given time and a lot of ways to solve problems (need to carry a boat? Shrink Item! Throw it at someone if you need a huge obstacle between you and the target) and gain additional options with downtime. Should be fun and definitely should be able to help the party out in a myriad of ways (focus on making the enemies useless babbling idiots and let your three buffed warriors take them down) - would give it the things it's lacking in ways to approach problems laterally and also hit enemies' weak points in terms of saves or touch AC.

[Jay R]

While I agree that the party needs a caster, and that a healer is equally crucial, I need to ask one question leading to a warning.

This is your first game of Pathfinder, and the question seems to imply that you aren't used to D&D either.

So what level are you starting at?

If it's 1st through maybe 4th level, go ahead and take a cleric or wizard. But if you're starting at high levels, that's a serious challenge for you. A high level wizard or cleric is not necessarily a great choice for a beginner. It takes some experience to understand how to play them well.

[Eldariel]

If it's 1st through maybe 4th level, go ahead and take a cleric or wizard. But if you're starting at high levels, that's a serious challenge for you. A high level wizard or cleric is not necessarily a great choice for a beginner. It takes some experience to understand how to play them well.

I wouldn't worry about it that much, really. In this kind of a party, just doing what feels good would work on the higher levels, particularly with a generic list of "check these spells out" - your contributions would still be comparatively worthwhile and the game could be calibrated for "lowish difficulty" anyways. And you'll get a hang of it quick enough. We had first-timers play Wizard and Cleric respectively in our first campaign and while they started off kinda whatever, they got to the swing of things soon enough - the great thing is, you just prepare a set of spells one day and another the next. This allows you to experiment until you find the spells that work and also the spells that you like. Though of course something like Summoning is something you want to put feats into, and thus it's less friendly to experimentation; but it's a pretty safe category and to start off, you can just keep stats for two-three of the most important summons and just use those for each level (say, Lantern Archon, Dretch, Celestial Leopard for SMIII for instance).