Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, I’ll be sharing a tiefling arcane trickster Iconic Design.

We’ve been getting a lot of errata lately, and I felt kind of bad that my old elven arcane trickster build was rendered moot. So, for the last Iconic Design in Know Direction’s One Hell of an August, I’m doing an all-new arcane trickster build for everyone.

“But Alex,” you say, “You hated building the arcane trickster the last time you did it!” True, dear readers, but last time I didn’t have a copy of the Dirty Tactics Toolbox at my disposal.

Pique your interest enough? Great! Let’s get this party started.

Build Concept

So, let’s go over the build, shall we?

• Tiefling: AH! A NEW RACE! RUN FOR THE HILLS! In truth, there’s an awesome feat combo that I want to use, and all of it is tiefling exclusive. I won’t be using any variant heritages, as I need the darkness spell-like ability, but the price of using this race is well worth it, I think!
• Unchained Rogue: I like having Weapon Finesse on an arcane trickster; it means you can use Dex to hit with your touch attacks. Believe it or not, we only need one level of this. You’ll see.
• Sorcerer (Infernal): Yeah, not the most optimized choice, but its on-theme for this month. Plus tieflings have fiendish sorcery; that’s something, right?
• Arcane Trickster: The goal.

Alright, we have everything squared away now. Let’s get building.

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: unchained rogue 1, sorcerer 4, arcane trickster 2
• Feats: Weapon Finesse (Bonus), Fiendish Darkness (1st), Fiend Sight (3rd), Accomplished Sneak Attacker (5th), Fiend Sight (7th)
• Abilities: bloodline (infernal), ranged legerdemain, sneak attack +2d6, trapfinding +1
• Bloodline Powers: corrupting touch (1st), infernal resistances (3rd)
• Sorcerer 3rd-Level Spells (1): ANY ONE
• Sorcerer 2nd-Level Spells (2): elemental touch, invisibility
• Sorcerer 1st-Level Spells (4): protection from good; charm person, infernal healing, shocking grasp, ANY ONE
• Sorcerer Cantrips (7): acid splash, detect magic, ray of frost, spark, mage hand, prestidigitation, ANY ONE

So the first thing that you’re likely asking is, “Wait, what the heck does Accomplished Sneak Attacker do?” My readers, that one feat really, REALLY helps out the arcane trickster. From Paizo’s new Dirty Tactics Toolbox, that feat is Shaping Focus for rogues. It adds 1d6 to the rogue’s sneak attack, up to a maximum number of sneak attack dice equal to half her rogue level, rounded up. For us, it means that we can get into arcane trickster with one level of rogue rather than three, making the prestige class significantly better in terms of its late-game casting.

With that said, the arcane trickster is still a class with a poor attack bonus, and getting sneak attacks off with the arcane trickster is somewhat difficult. To that end, I’m building up towards a nifty feat called Blinding Sneak Attack, which allows a tiefling to attempt to blind anyone that she deals sneak attack damage to while she is within an area of magic darkness. But such a concept takes some work to pull off (and a poor BAB character like the tiefling will have to wait a long time to meet the feat’s BAB +5 prerequisite anyway), so until then I’m focusing on quality of life tricks for that end game goal. First, we don’t want our tiefling to ever have to worry about magical darkness if she’s going to use it like this, so I’ve decided to grab the Fiend Sight feat. The first time a tiefling takes this feat, her darkvision’s range gets a huge boost. The second time, she gets the see in darkness monster ability, and at that point she’s good to go. To further help us along, I’m grabbing the Fiendish Darkness feat, which allows our tiefling to use her darkness spell-like ability three additional times each day.

Spell wise, you want magic that can do whatever roguish things you’re looking to do. For example, if you want to be good at sneaking and scouting, grab invisibility. You want to be able to pop open traps, take Aram Zey’s Focus (having at least a few scrolls or a wand of this spell is a FANTASTIC idea). Stuff like that. That said, there are some spells that you REALLY want. Big among them are touch attack spells. Your base attack bonus is dreadful, so if you’re going to be dishing out sneak attack damage, you need a way to actually hit, and spells like shocking grasp and elemental touch are the way to do it. Its not listed here, but I’m a big fan of glitterdust for sneak attacking characters; blinding opponents is a great strategy to get those delicious sneak attacks. You’ll want darkness (and/or deeper darkness) on your list of spells known by the time you grab Blinding Sneak Attack as well. Other then that, you have a little bit of flexibility in your magic. For your 3rd level spells (which I intentionally left blank), you have tons of awesome choices, like haste, heroism, stinking cloud, lightning bolt, and more, so pick what works best for your group. 3rd level is when you get your first major area attacking spell, so I would definitely make sure to grab either fireball lightning bolt, and or a similar spell. Furthermore, the Infernal bloodline’s arcana gives you a +2 bonus to the saving throw DCs of all charm spells that you cast, so picking up a few more charm spells beyond charm person is also a great strategy.

And without further delay, let’s look at the mid-levels!

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: unchained rogue 1, sorcerer 4, arcane trickster 9
• Feats: Weapon Finesse (Bonus), Fiendish Darkness (1st), Fiend Sight (3rd), Accomplished Sneak Attacker (5th), Fiend Sight (7th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (9th), Blinding Sneak Attack (11th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (13th)
• Abilities: bloodline (infernal), impromptu sneak attack 2/day, invisible thief, ranged legerdemain, sneak attack +5d6, trapfinding +1, tricky spells 5/day
• Bloodline Powers: corrupting touch (1st), infernal resistances (3rd)
• Sorcerer 6th-Level Spells (2): hellfire ray, ANY ONE
• Sorcerer 5th-Level Spells (3): ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 4th-Level Spells (4): acid pit, charm monster, black tentacles, ANY ONE
• Sorcerer 3rd-Level Spells (4): fireball/lightning bolt, ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 2nd-Level Spells (5): elemental touch, invisibility, ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 1st-Level Spells (5): protection from good; charm person, infernal healing, shocking grasp, ANY TWO
• Sorcerer Cantrips (9): acid splash, detect magic, ray of frost, spark, mage hand, prestidigitation, ANY THREE

11th Level is the prize level; its where the build gets Blinding Sneak Attack. This awesome feat gives you a pretty good chance at blinding someone with any sneak attack that you make from an area of magical darkness. Which you can totally see through using our two applications of Fiend Sight. Very fun, very useful. The other jewel is the second feat from Dirty Tactics Toolbox that I’m going to call attention to, Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack. Impromptu sneak attack is an awesome class feature; uses per day to resolve any attack as if the target were flat-footed. Sadly, the arcane trickster doesn’t get nearly enough uses out of this class ability; it gets a paltry two uses per day 10th level. TWO! Luckily, Dirty Tactics Toolbox changes this with the new Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack feat, which allows the arcane trickster to gain one extra use of this ability per feat spent, a sound investment in my opinion. With a bit of luck, our arcane trickster can drop his magical darkness anywhere he wants (even 100 feet away from his target, if it suits him) and use Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack to try and blind his target using Blinding Sneak Attack. If he succeeds, his target becomes blinded and his next attack can auto-sneak attack without him needing to use up an Impromptu Sneak Attack (blinded targets are flat-footed versus all attacks), and the wonderful carnage continues.

Spell-wise, you have a lot of flexibility. Same rules apply as before, though I recommend picking up a spell to counter each saving throw; something like hungry pit or acid pit for Reflex, stinking cloud for Fortitude, and touch dominate person for Will. Black tentacles is also a favorite of mine, and the thematic hellfire ray spell is pretty awesome too. But other that, do what you want!

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: unchained rogue 1, sorcerer 9, arcane trickster 10
• Feats: Weapon Finesse (Bonus), Fiendish Darkness (1st), Fiend Sight (3rd), Accomplished Sneak Attacker (5th), Fiend Sight (7th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (9th), Blinding Sneak Attack (11th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (13th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (15th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (17th), Extra Impromptu Sneak Attack (19th)
• Abilities: bloodline (infernal), impromptu sneak attack 2/day, invisible thief, ranged legerdemain, sneak attack +6d6, surprise spells, trapfinding +1, tricky spells 5/day
• Bloodline Powers: corrupting touch (1st), infernal resistances (3rd), hellfire (9th)
• Sorcerer 9th-Level Spells (3): ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 8th-Level Spells (3): ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 7th-Level Spells (3): ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 6th-Level Spells (3): hellfire ray, ANY TWO
• Sorcerer 5th-Level Spells (4): ANY FOUR
• Sorcerer 4th-Level Spells (4): charm monster; acid pit, black tentacles, ANY TWO
• Sorcerer 3rd-Level Spells (4): suggestion; fireball/lightning bolt, ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 2nd-Level Spells (5): scorching ray; elemental touch, invisibility, ANY THREE
• Sorcerer 1st-Level Spells (5): protection from good; charm person, infernal healing, shocking grasp, ANY TWO
• Sorcerer Cantrips (9): acid splash, detect magic, ray of frost, spark, mage hand, prestidigitation, ANY THREE

And that’s the end! Grab a couple more uses of impromptu sneak attack, pick your favorite high-level spells, and settle down for the ride!

What did you think of this build? Is this something you would play or run in your home games? What changes would you make to the build? Thanks for reading, and tune in next week for another installment of Iconic Design!

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.