Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to looking at a build for Sam Winchester, of Supernatural.

Welcome, Know Direction Network readers, to Iconic Design! But more importantly, welcome to OCCULT OCTOBER! For the entire month of October, things are going to get a little esoteric and odd as the entire team (Ryan, Perram, Anthony, and myself) go “all-hands-on-deck” to bring an assortment of occult content to you!

Anyone who has been reading my personal Facebook lately will not be surprised by this article. Early in the summer, my friends got me to start watching Supernatural, a cult TV series staring Jensen Ackles and Jared Paldelecki as Dean and Sam Winchester, two brothers who fight the shadowy world of supernatural frights and horrors that lurk just out of sight. To me, nothing felt more right than starting off Occult October with the most occult of the Winchester boys, Sam Winchester!

Don’t worry folks, I’ll do my best to keep spoilers to a minimum. 😉

Background

The son of a monster hunter who is obsessed with hunting the creature that killed his mother while he was an infant, Sam tried to leave the hunter’s life by going to law school. Sadly, he gets pulled back into it when his brother, Dean, arrives at his school to inform Sam that their father’s gone missing on a hunt. From there, Supernatural documents the brothers’ adventures as monster hunters.

Sorry, I can’t say any more; everything else is a MASSIVE spoiler. It’s a long series, but its totally worth watching for yourself!

Build Concept

Let’s dive into building Sam Winchester before I start spouting spoilers left and right!

• Human: Self explanatory.
• Investigator: Sam is the much more intellectual brother of the pair, although Sam gets a lot more martial and Dean gets a lot more savvy as the series progresses. Regardless, the investigator class fits Sam’s heavy focus on book learning and overall brain smarts to a tee, plus the class even has some options built in for picking up guns and the like. Nifty. (For PFS players, the firearms training rogue talent isn’t PFS legal; you’ll either want to invest in a level of gunslinger or picaroon swashbuckler, or focus on the hand crossbow instead of the pistol.)
• Psychic Investigator: In a nutshell, this archetype replaces all of the poison and alchemy bits of the investigator with psychic (the class) spells and abilities. Let me tell you folks, this archetype is one of my absolute favorites. It fits Sam to a tee, and what’s better, it uses the psychic spell list (up to Level 6), which is freaking AWESOME. This is my preferred investigator hands-down; I like this archetype as much as I like the lore warden, to give long-time readers an idea of how much I love this archetype.

With the basics underway, let’s talk about the build.

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: investigator (psychic investigator) 7
• Feats: Point-Blank Shot (Bonus), Precise Shot (1st), Rapid Reload: pistol (3rd), Weapon Focus: pistol (5th), Ranged Study (7th)
• Abilities: inspiration, keen recollection, psychic meddler +2, studied combat, studied strike +2d6, swift alchemy, trap sense +2, trapfinding +3
• Investigator Talents: firearm training (5th), expanded inspiration (7th)
• Phrenic Amplifications: defensive prognostication (3rd)
• Psychic 3rd-Level Spells Known (2): heroism, mind thrust III
• Psychic 2nd-Level Spells Known (4): anonymous interaction, augury, mirror image, ANY ONE
• Psychic 1st-Level Spells Known (5): find traps, heightened awareness, true strike, ANY TWO
• Psychic Knacks (6): detect magic, detect poison, open/close, mage hand, read magic, telekinetic projectile

So obviously, our build focuses on Season 3 / 4 Sam where he’s got his psychic powers. The psychic investigator handles that version of Sam perfectly, including giving him access to things like banishment and dismissal. In the show, Sam’s primary weapon is a pistol, but he switches to a dagger when he needs to tangle in melee. Personally, I don’t think Sam is physically weak at all, which is why you don’t see me preaching a Dex-based build for him. (No Weapon Finesse and the like.) Primarily, I chose to focus on his skills after getting the all-important firearms training ability.

What I really like about this class is that it is a 6th-level psychic spellcaster with trapfinding AND inspiration. Sam is the absolute king of Knowledge skills, and he has a bunch of awesome psychic spells that help boost his combat and out of combat rules, such as find traps, heroism, and true strike. His lone phrenic amplification is called defensive prognostication, and how it works is whenever Sam casts a divination spell, he gets an insight bonus to his AC. Primarily, you’re going to use this ability in conjunction with mind thrust, which will allow you to deal damage and gain an AC bonus for a few rounds at the same time. If this isn’t something you like, I recommend grabbing the amplification that boosts the save DC of your mind-affecting spells instead; that’s also very useful for same, as he has neat tricks for investigating and interrogating others that rely on enchantments, like anonymous interaction. Feat-wise, we focus on Sam’s ranged combat abilities primarily, making sure that we can attack quickly and accurately with his firearm while also using studied combat and studied strike from afar.

Whelp, that’s all for the early levels: lets check the mid levels.

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: investigator (psychic investigator) 14
• Feats: Point-Blank Shot (Bonus), Precise Shot (1st), Rapid Reload: pistol (3rd), Weapon Focus: pistol (5th), Ranged Study (7th), Extra Investigator Talent (9th), Extra Inspiration (11th) FREEBIE (13th)
• Abilities: inspiration, keen recollection, psychic meddler +5, studied combat, studied strike +6d6, swift alchemy, trap sense +4, trapfinding +7
• Investigator Talents: firearm training (5th), expanded inspiration (7th), combat inspiration (Bonus), inspired intelligence (9th), empathy (11th), device talent (13th)
• Phrenic Amplifications: defensive prognostication (3rd)
• Psychic 5th-Level Spells Known (3): dismissal, mind thrust V, suffocation,
• Psychic 4th-Level Spells Known (4): agonize, cast out, locate creature, telekinesis
• Psychic 3rd-Level Spells Known (5): heroism, ANY FOUR
• Psychic 2nd-Level Spells Known (6): anonymous interaction, augury, mirror image, ANY THREE
• Psychic 1st-Level Spells Known (6): find traps, heightened awareness, true strike, ANY THREE
• Psychic Knacks (6): detect magic, detect poison, open/close, mage hand, read magic, telekinetic projectile

As we level Sam up, you’ll notice that I’ve left a LOT of empty space for his spells known. That’s because there’s only a small handful of “spells” that we ever see Sam use in Supernatural, so I didn’t feel comfortable assigning him stuff that isn’t supported by the Supernatural canon.

Mid-levels is more of the same; focusing on skills, ranged combat, and spells that allow Sam to gather information and harm evil outsiders. He finally gains dismissal by 5th level, and he also has some wicked-cool telekinetic powers that totally sync with his abilities on Supernatural. 3rd Level spells are freaking fantastic for 9th-level arcane and psychic spellcasters normally, but Sam uses so few spells (as noted above) that you get to be REALLY flexible here. I like haste, personally.

All of Sam’s investigator talents focus on letting him get the most from his inspiration ability; he can use it more often because he doesn’t need to spend uses to power it thanks to an array of social and thieving choices that allow Sam to shine as the skill-focused brother of the Winchester team.

On that note, let’s turn our eyes towards the End Game.

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: investigator (psychic investigator) 20
• Feats: Point-Blank Shot (Bonus), Precise Shot (1st), Rapid Reload: pistol (3rd), Weapon Focus: pistol (5th), Ranged Study (7th), Extra Investigator Talent (9th), Extra Inspiration (11th), FREEBIE (13th), FREEBIE (15th), FREEBIE (17th), FREEBIE (19th)
• Abilities: inspiration, keen recollection, psychic meddler +5, studied combat, studied strike +6d6, swift alchemy, trap sense +6, trapfinding +10
• Investigator Talents: firearm training (5th), expanded inspiration (7th), combat inspiration (Bonus), inspired intelligence (9th), empathy (11th), device talent (13th), amazing inspiration (15th), FREEBIE (17th), greater combat inspiration (19th)
• Phrenic Amplifications: defensive prognostication (3rd)
• Psychic 6th-Level Spells Known (5): banishment, mind thrust VI, moment of prescience, transformation, ANY ONE
• Psychic 5th-Level Spells Known (5): dismissal, suffocation, ANY THREE
• Psychic 4th-Level Spells Known (6): agonize, cast out, locate creature, telekinesis, ANY TWO
• Psychic 3rd-Level Spells Known (6): heroism, ANY FIVE
• Psychic 2nd-Level Spells Known (6): anonymous interaction, augury, mirror image, ANY THREE
• Psychic 1st-Level Spells Known (6): find traps, heightened awareness, true strike, ANY THREE
• Psychic Knacks (6): detect magic, detect poison, open/close, mage hand, read magic, telekinetic projectile

Lots of you picks! The definite spells that we need are banishment and movement of prescience, and I like the idea that transformation (yes, THAT is on the psychic spell list) lets Sam “hulk out” when he needs to. Overall, Sam ends strong as a skill-focused character who can make extremely accurate, studied shots while ruining any outsider’s day with powerful spells like banishment, agonize, and cast out.

That’s it for the first Iconic Design of Occult October! What did you guys think? Would you consider using the psychic investigator as a player or GM? Supernatural Fans, am I missing anything important for Sam’s write-up? Leave your answers and comments below, and I look forward to coming back to you all month long with an entire line-up of fantastic, occult character builds. Until next time, take care!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex also cohosts the Private Sanctuary Podcast, along with fellow blogger Anthony Li, and you can follow their exploits on Facebook in the 3.5 Private Sanctuary Group, or on Alex’s Twitter, @AlJAug.