Welcome to Iconic Design, Private Sanctuary’s source for innovative and evocative character builds for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be looking at a build for a nine-tailed kitusne fighter.

You may or may not have heard, but I’m currently running a Kickstarter campaign! I’m looking to make a book on world flavor and character options for kitsune, nagaji, samsarans, and wayangs. In honor of that loafty goal, for the month of June I’m going to do character builds themed around those four character races.

First up, kitsune!

Build Concept

Here’s the basics of this build.

• Kitsune: No surprise, its practically in the title!
• Fighter: Basically, we’re going to pick up the nine-tailed scion trait from Dirty Tactics Toolbox and use the bajillion fighter bonus feats that our character will get to pick up a bunch of tails. Neat, huh?

But that’s enough dawdling; let’s get to the build!

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: fighter 7
• Traits: Armor Expert, Nine-tailed Scion
• Feats: Weapon Finesse (Bonus), Power Attack (1st), Magical Tail (Bonus), Advanced Armor Training: adaptable training (3rd), Magical Tail (Bonus), Advanced Weapon Training: trained finesse (5th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Run (Bonus), Magical Tail (7th)
• Abilities: armor training, bravery +2, weapon training +1
• Advanced Armor Training: adaptable training: Acrobatics (Bonus), armored sprint (7th)
• Advanced Weapon Training: trained finesse (Bonus)

So the basic idea at the early levels is that you grab something that you can finesse (preferably a rapier at this point) and beat the crap out of someone with it using Power Attack. Meanwhile, you have awesome spell-like abilities that no one else has yet, and have Acrobatics as a fighter skill (plus what amounts to free ranks in said skill). At 5th level, when the build picks up trained finesse, swap out to a nodachi; the damage die is better and you’ll get the two-handed bonus to damage from Power Attack. (And if you decide to invest a little in Strength, you could edge out a little bit more damage there too.)

One thing I REALLY want to point out is the super underrated armored sprint advanced armor training, which basically gives you Run as a bonus feat. Run is SUCH an underrated feat, and you can basically get it for free as a fighter. Totally worth it in my book.

The early levels are sort of dry for this build; you cap out at FINALLY getting displacement at 4th level. Let’s move on and see how this build does at later levels.

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: fighter 14
• Traits: Armor Expert, Nine-tailed Scion
• Feats: Weapon Finesse (Bonus), Power Attack (1st), Magical Tail (Bonus), Advanced Armor Training: adaptable training (3rd), Magical Tail (Bonus), Advanced Weapon Training: trained grace (5th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Run (Bonus), Magical Tail (7th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Weapon Focus: nodachi (9th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Sprightly Armor (Bonus), Magical Tail (11th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Weapon Specialization: nodachi (13th), Greater Weapon Focus: nodachi (Bonus)
• Abilities: armor training, bravery +4, weapon training +3
• Advanced Armor Training: adaptable training: Acrobatics (Bonus), armored spring (7th), armored master: Sprightly Armor (11th)
• Advanced Weapon Training: trained finesse (Bonus), trained grace (9th), warrior spirit (13th)

I really like this build for capping out on the Magical Tail feats at 12th level; that means the build is designed to give you the pinnacle of your mystic power well before PFS’s conventional play ends which is a perk to those PFS players out there. Additionally, the build picks up trained grace, which adds a nice chunk of damage to our nodachi attacks, and the warrior spirit advanced weapon training, which works like a limited version of the occultist’s transmutation implement ability. Other then those options, the feat choices are rather dry: Weapon Specialization and Greater Weapon Focus are simply SUPER good. Another “different” choice that I made was to grab Sprightly Armor as an Advanced Weapon Training. This ability allows our build to add its armor enchantment bonus on initiative checks, which is pretty great on a Dex-to-hit build.

I’m pretty pleased with this build so far; let’s wrap it up in the end game and see how it does.

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: fighter 20
• Traits: Armor Expert, Nine-tailed Scion
• Feats: Weapon Finesse (Bonus), Power Attack (1st), Magical Tail (Bonus), Advanced Armor Training: adaptable training (3rd), Magical Tail (Bonus), Advanced Weapon Training: trained grace (5th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Run (Bonus), Magical Tail (7th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Weapon Focus: nodachi (9th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Sprightly Armor (Bonus), Magical Tail (11th), Magical Tail (Bonus), Weapon Specialization: nodachi (13th), Greater Weapon Focus: nodachi (Bonus), Furious Focus (15th), Critical Focus (Bonus), Penetrating Strike (17th), Greater Penetrating Strike (Bonus), FREEBIE (19th), FREEBIE (20th)
• Abilities: armor mastery, armor training, bravery +6, weapon mastery, weapon training +4
• Advanced Armor Training: adaptable training: Acrobatics (Bonus), armored spring (7th), armored master: Sprightly Armor (11th), adaptable training: Escape Artist (15th)
• Advanced Weapon Training: trained grace (Bonus), trained finesse (9th), warrior spirit (13th), item mastery: Racial Item Mastery (17th)

There are a couple of neat abilities here. The first one I really like is the Racial Item Mastery feat, which will give us three additional uses of racial spell-like abilities. With this build, we have a lot to choose from. I also grabbed adaptable training: Escape Artist because its bound to be better than a straight CMB check with my bonuses. Finally, I left two feats open for freebies; I think I’d pick the focus weapon advanced weapon training ability as one of them, and the armed bravery advanced weapon training as the other. In all, this build has awesome spell-like abilities, is a solid 2H melee build, and works well with the kitsune racial stat modifiers. I’m a pretty big fan of it and might use it myself in the future.

So, what do you think? Is this a build you’d use? What would you change? Leave your questions and comments below, and I’ll see you back next week. Also, if you’d like to support me, please consider tossing a few dollars at my Kickstarter project. Thanks, and have an awesome weekend!

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.