Meme Builds: The Shape

"I-I-I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall; not seeing the wall, looking past the wall, looking at this night...inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. Now, you can either ignore it, or you can help me stop it."



I was building an NPC, so I was looking at rogue archetypes. Here's a dirty secret: For as much as I like rogue, I tend not to bother with most of its archetypes. Back in the original, non-unchained rogue days they had very little you could trade out for other class abilities, and 90% of the archetypes that popped up would trade Trapfinding and Trap Sense for something minor, and that's it. I got to skipping them, I found them boring.

Then I found Rake. It's in a well respected hardcover book, it's mechanically effective, and it's a ton of fun. It was like Christmas. Within a few minutes of finding it I had a build in mind, and I thought...I might as well share. Rake is described as boastful, roguish and charming. Michael Meyers is none of those things...but let's use Rake to build him anyway.


The Shape
Class: Unchained Rogue
Archetype: Rake

Feats
1
2b Weapon Focus(Dagger)
3 Dazzling Display
5
7
9 Shatter Defenses
11 Quiet Death
13
15
17
19

Rogue Talents
2 Weapon Training
4
6
8
10 Opportunist
12
14
16
18
20

First off, having the skill unlock for Intimidate is necessary to this build. If you're playing an Unchained Rogue, you'll be taking that as your first Rogue's Edge unlock. You can also take the Signature Skill feat, but either way: Make sure you have it by level five.

The idea behind this build is easy. You pop up out of nowhere, stab them, and horrify someone into a coma with Intimidate's skill unlock. Bravado's Blade lets you trade up to your entire sneak attack bonus into an Intimidate roll, which can easily net you the "over ten" panicked condition bonus of the intimidate skill unlock. This sends them screaming away from you. Sure, it'll alert everyone around you, but that can be to your advantage. You can move people around who would otherwise be stationary, or pick off more people as they split up to look for you. They might even leave something unguarded. In addition: some people may come back after their panicked condition is over...but they might not, too. This could potentially buy you a lot of time to work.

The beauty of this is that while it's an ambush build...you can do all this shit in combat too. You can reliably crowd control people by trading your damage out, and because it's a free action? You can do it on any applicable Attacks of Opportunity as well. That's why I listed Opportunist as a required portion of this build. People running in a blind panic also makes them provoke AoOs. Handy.


Pros. Crowd control is huge. This is also not really a very heavy build: You have a ton of room for other things. You can easily turn this into a combat rogue, or even multiclass. It's easy to fit into millions of different play styles or character types. This build borders on just being an amazing trick you can work into other, pre-existing builds.


Cons. Infiltrating by scaring people can be really hairy and unpredictable. It's a powerful tool, but you need to be able to think on your feet and react to situations accordingly. Alerting everyone that an enemy is among them can sometimes be to your benefit...but sometimes it's not. People will be looking for you, so a high stealth check is a must. If you can find a way to get Hide in Plain Sight, it will be extremely useful. People running around like chickens with their heads cut off will reduce your number of viable hiding places. In addition to those concerns, some things are just plain immune to fear.

Oh, and you gave up Trapfinding and Danger Sense. If your party was looking for a typical "Pick the Locks, Disarm the Traps" Rogue...you'll do okay, but you'll eventually have some bad news for them... around the time you find your first magical trap.


Finishing the Character. There are so many places to take this build that our Christmas Morning theme continues. You can stack this build with anything that gives swift intimidates, since Bravado's Blade is a free fucking action. That means you could use the boar style tree(though you may have to multiclass for all those feats) or the borderline overpowered Enforcer to get additional(albeit smaller bonus) chances in a round. Demoralize doesn't stack, but it's handy if you're up against someone who's hard to demoralize, or you'd rather keep your damage up by not trading everything out. Gory Finish can let you pop up, kill a weak enemy, and set up a whole room of people as demoralized... very thematic, but also handy to start a combat with. Building a grappler and taking the feat Strangler would let you hold someone in place while they're flipping out screaming at you. I don't know how effective that would be, but it's certainly a hilarious mental image. You could also fill out the utility of Intimidate with Nerve-Wracking Negotiator or even just taking skill focus. Any skill bonus you can get over the "reliable" level of Intimidate can just add damage back into your strikes.

Rogue can take intimidating prowess as a talent to free up feat choices, but it also has a ton of complementary talents. Fast Getaway or Major Magic in Invisibility can help you completely disappear after an ambush. If you're confident enough that you're not trading out every single die of sneak attack, Bleeding Attack will help you tick away at their HP while they're running from you.

I want to give a special section to discussing a particular feat, Dastardly Finish. It lets you coup de grace cowering opponents, which is a condition you can cause once you have 15 ranks of Intimidate. Here's the thing, though: anything with a limited duration ends at the beginning of the initiative count they were caused. So, someone who you caused to cower on your action wouldn't be cowering for your next action. You could use this feat on someone you demoralized via an AoO, but in general, this feat is a great one for your friends to take, not you.


For Full Memery. Dress up like an actual fucking horror movie slasher. A mask is a must. Build a reputation. Straight up gruesomely murder people who deserve it. Leave calling cards. Use a Hat of Disguise to rapidly switch to your killer persona. Better yet: Dress like your killer persona, and use a Hat of Disguise to pass for normal.


If You Hate Fun. For once, there's not much to put here. It's not a meme-heavy build in the way that someone's going to notice or think it's silly if you don't want them to. You can play the boastful rogue in the way Rake recommends, or a cowboy-esque brawler who relies on overawe and reputation to get things done. In addition: You don't have to use daggers. You can use any finesse melee weapon for your Weapon Focus.

Stupid Magic Items III

I told you I'd never run out of these. While I'm removing the "In defense of the magic shop" descriptor as this goes forward, never forget that I do this to illustrate that giving players freedom to come up with their own magic items, or even just buying things off the shelf, is preferable to constantly getting random loot.


Lesser Poisoner's Jacket. Sometimes things look good because they fit a role well. Sometimes they look great because you don't see the need to do the math on it. You trust the designer to make sure the item is 'worth it' to buy. Fortunately for all of you, I like math. So, first off, you're going to be getting this item between levels 7 and 8, if you want it. It'd be a significant magic item in that range. Second, it costs 12,000 gold and lets you 'create' a 300gp(or less) poison three times a day. It sounds great, like I said. Well, the first problem is that you need to use this jacket 40 times before it was worthwhile to buy it over just buying the poisons outright. If you use all three of them in one combat(Likely, and even probable), that's fourteen encounters. That's not great, but none of it is a dealbreaker, exactly.

Your best options for poison are going to be Blood Leaf Residue(DC 16 contact poison for HP and CON damage), Giant Wasp Poison(DC 18 for DEX damage), and Large Scorpion Venom(DC 17 for STR damage). You can't actually make a decent poison that's going to directly help you kill someone, but that's okay. Debuffs can sometimes win you a fight.

Hopefully you see where I'm going with this. At level 8, someone with a "bad" fort save will have a +4 or so. Someone with a "good" fort save will have anywhere from a +8 to a +10. Monsters virtually never have a "bad" fortitude save, and their numbers at level 8 will ballpark around +12. So your significant expenditure item is netting you "free" poisons you have to use a ton of to get value from that will be obsolete even before you can reasonably get the item.

Oh, and the greater version is bad too. Repeat everything I said, and also there simply aren't very many decent poisons in the 2k-4k gold range that you'd be excited to use.


Volatile Vaporizer. I was gonna let this whole "stupid magic items" thing slide. I was. There's a lot of shit to talk about and I felt I made my point. Then I saw this abomination while gearing up a character and I got real mad. This thousand gold consumable item turns a potion into a 10ft radius cloud which affects everyone in it. It's an item which is consumable that costs a thousand gold or more that you use on a 50gp potion so it can affect multiple people.

Let's assume you need more convincing. For this item to be worthwhile, you'd need to fit twenty people in this 10ft radius. You can fit 12, if they're not ratfolk. Even then, they'd have to all be busy(unable to just drink a potion on their own) and all benefit from the potion for this to be worthwhile.

So this is the perfect item for your party of 24 ratfolk who all pack as tight as possible in a 10ft radius, who all have ranged attacks and all benefit universally from a cure light wounds potion that cost a thousand fucking gold. Great, we found a use.


Book of Extended Summoning. So this is where someone tries to make the argument that you're not "supposed to" buy everything in the book, and their value comes from finding them in a treasure hoard. My counter-argument is that finding something like this begs to be sold, and if it can't? It feels like being cheated out of loot.

This is a book which functions as a Metamagic Rod of Extend, but only for summoning spells, only of a particular alignment, and it crumbles when used. A Lesser Rod of Extend is 3,000 gold. The lesser book is a whopping 750 gold. Yes, that means Rod makes its money back in a mere four uses. In a busy dungeon, that might be two fucking days. Easily. The Standard and Greater versions fare similarly, losing value after four-ish uses. If it would be completely ludicrous to buy an item, it shouldn't be on the random loot table either. Whoever decided this item's cost has their head up their ass.


Cautionary Creance. This is a 100ft leash which only functions when you attach it to a flying animal companion or familiar. The leash then attaches to the master's arm, giving him a -1 penalty on skill checks and attack rolls with that arm. So you give up the significant range advantage of a flying companion by leashing them and take a minor attack penalty in exchange for...feather fall at will. They're...they're explicitly a flying creature, how often do you think you're going to need to cast feather fall on them? Other than that, once per day it lets you use Share Touch Spells at a range. So if you desperately need to buff your hawk once a day and don't mind carrying a ludicrous one hundred feet of leather strap around all the time, I guess this is your item.


Dust of Acid Consumption. This dust will absorb up to ten gallons of acid and turn it into a minor consumable acid attack item. It costs 1,600 gold. The lengths that you'd have to go to, just to render this item legitimately useful, are staggering. There's other ways to get rid of acid. Depending on the acid, buckets work. Those are five silver. A guy casting Protection from Elements probably works too. He's probably in your party. Just give him the two grand.


Efreeti Bottle. It's a 145 thousand gold item which you have a 10 percent chance of losing forever because he attacks you, or a 10 percent chance of losing forever because he granted you three wishes, which cost a little over half the price of this item. Great use of your gold. Again, I'm weighing this against selling the item. You could sell this and have most of the gold toward just buying three wishes.