Anthony and Alex return from a month of Occult goodness with an all-new installment in their class features series! Today, the Everyman Gamer and the Man Behind the Screens tackle the most unexpected of the hybrid classes, the hunter! How does this class’s combination of two extraordinarily similar classes stand up to the other goodies that the Advanced Class Guide has to offer? Head on over to the Private Sanctuary and see for yourself!
Listen Now!
- Vital Statistics
- Class Features
- Spells
- Animal Companion
- Animal Focus
- Nature Training
- Precise Companion
- Hunter Tactics & Bonus Teamwork Feats
- Empathic Link
- Woodland Stride
- Bonus Tricks
- Second Animal Focus
- Raise Animal Companion
- Improved Empathic Link
- Speak with Master
- One with the Wild
- Master Hunter
- Builds and Play Experience
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Thanks for covering this one, I had never had the interest/patience to really grasp this one. Now I’m sort of regretting that I played my Animal Speaker Bard at 2nd level last week before considering this option.
I like Anthony’s idea for Raise Animal Companion. Since it doesn’t cost a Hunter to replace a companion, it could have been something cool like… Through selective breeding you have obtained a superior breed of companion, add a 1 pt eidolon evolution that does not require an additional body part.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the remaining classes, but particularly the investigator and the brawler. They’re both very fun to play, but for completely different reasons.
I’d also really like to hear your thoughts on the investigator. I played one for two sessions of PFS and was told by most of the people at the table that the investigator is just a bad class and I should play a druid instead.
Goodness, I couldn’t disagree more!
The first thing I’d say, though, is play the class and the character you want to play. Part of the fun of PFS is having to improvise because you need AM BARBARIAN when you have five wizards and a bard.
My investigator is a gnome with the sleuth archetype*. He has skill ranks in everything, and on some skills he can roll 40s. He has decent charisma, and so makes a great party face. Unsurprisingly, out of combat, he’s pretty effective. You want to know who made the Maguffin of Powerful Magics? Hemlock will know.** He can talk his way out of (and, in fairness, into) trouble, fortresses, and bedrooms.
He’s also not that bad in combat – it’s all about how you play him. He’s never going to be a front line character (small, low strength, traded out alchemy), but he can be surprisingly useful. With his knowledges, he usually knows not only what the weaknesses, abilities, and so on are of a given enemy, but what they had for breakfast. He has a stash of wands and scrolls that he has a decent chance at activating. By equipping him with a crossbow and the ranged study feat, he can effectively be just a couple of dice behind a sniping rogue, but without having to worry about concealment. The aid another action is also surprisingly useful.
There’s also a huge amount of potential for role play. My investigator is usually quite a humorous character, but you could be a deadly serious infiltrator, a hard-bitten gumshoe detective, and a whole load of other tropes besides.
Rather that people suggest I play a different character, I’ve had people ask me to bring my investigator along; even though he is not, and is never going to be, a damage dealer, he can still help in a fight, and more than makes up for it outside.
* He always introduces himself as “I’m Hemlock Sholmes, the Inner Sea’s most famous gnomish investigator. But of course, you already knew that”.
** He’ll probably also tell you that it’s similar to one of his most famous cases.
Slayer please.
I don’t think that the Shapeshifting Hunter works.
Nature Training only helps you to qualifying for feats. Not for there effect.
That is correct, Nature Training does not acts as levels for effects just for prerequisites. So that exploit does not work.
Also I believe the word you wanted was innocuous, not innoculous.
Otherwise, great show guys.
Just to tag on, Nature Training only helps for qualifying for things that “modify or improve an animal companion”.