Min/Max Boards

Yeah yeah, I know Diplomancy is nerfed in PF. 'sokay, I know this!

With that out of the way, I was noticing that the Rapport Discipline Psychic in Occult Adventures lets their party members access their + for Cha based skills, and thought that it would be fun to have a party full of people using a Diplomancer build's bonus to Diplomacy to shortcut the "each person can only try once per 24 hours to raise attitude" thing.

I wanna let a party full of Charisma dumpstat comrades make hostile foes with 40+ per stat statlines helpful in a chain of successes while I hang around in the background coaching them in their heads and giving mental congratulations as we sit down for drinks with the story arc's final villain to let them cry it out to our sympathetic ears before we trot them out of their lair to make amends with whoever gave us the quest, who is also helpful from past interactions, a world of helpful people who just really love our incredibly charismatic Cha dumpstat party...and that one charming weirdo who smiles a lot and always seems to be thinking really hard about stuff. The Inner Sea will remember them as "that one, the...cohort? of...one of them? of all of them? who...who was that?" but the party will know who made the kumbaya gravy train they're all riding in.

My only concern is how exactly to build this particular Diplomancer! I've been away from 3.x/Pathfinder for a while and am rusty with the particulars, and I have an excel file with a Kobold Dragon Herald Bard Diplomancer that I got from somewhere (Paizo boards I think) that gets +116 at 20th level and I know I probably can't hope to get it up that high with a Psychic of any race, but is there any hope of getting above +100 at before 20th level for a Rapport Psychic?

In terms of mounts, I was thinking of making my cohort a druid that focuses on wildshaping...are there any other PrCs I should think about other than Master of Many Forms and Warshaper? I presume I won't get the same flaw/feat exchange or the same stat rolling rules, but I think I can still make an interesting mount(s) out of my cohort regardless!

Ok, here's the preliminary

Some of this is Dragonmark stuff, but I'm not married to having a Dragonmark. I was toying around with a war orphan Deneith fostered by the Silver Flame as the origin story behind my Silver Flame devotee, but I can keep the idea without needing to have a Dragonmark.

Human: Able Learner
Cloistered Cleric 1: Least Dragonmark, Law Devotion (flawfeats: Mark of the Recovery, Sentinel Stance)
Fighter 1: Weapon Focus (longbow)
Cloistered Cleric 2: Knowledge Devotion
Cloistered Cleric 3:
Cloistered Cleric 4:
Ordained Champion 1: Practiced Spellcaster (Cloistered Cleric), Power Attack (swapped for Law ability)
Ordained Champion 2:
Ordained Champion 3:
Ordained Champion 4: Smiting Power (possibly Dragonmark Smite?)
Ordained Champion 5:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 1:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 2: Holy Warrior
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 3:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 4:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 5: Awesome Smite
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 6:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 7:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 8: Persistent Spell
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 9:
Exorcist of the Silver Flame 10:

As I said earlier in the thread, trying to maximize my smiting! I'll be using a longsword, but the prereqs for OC are explicit, so WF (longbow) it is.

Any suggestions, comments, questions, critiques?

hmm ... mimicking a VoP build could work.

Try some No Items build and take all your treasure back
to whatever Town, get spellcasting services in return. 
This is what VoP is supposed to do anyway, right?

Not trying to replicate Vow of Poverty anymore, as I said in my most recent post on the thread.

Keldar: Of your ideas, the one most appealing to me is Exorcist of the Silver Flame out of Knowledge Devotion Cloistered Cleric. Would you recommend just continuing in Cleric after the PrC, or is there another PrC I could be taking to cheese it out even further and leave Cleric at 5 levels?

Hmmm, yeah, I guess there's not many ways to min/max a gray guard AND have the AoP levels do anything worthwhile. I thought I might be missing something that I'm just not aware of that'd let me cheese it, but if not...should I make a new thread for a gearshift or could people help me here with the change?

I can always, as captnq suggests, RP someone who has taken vows of poverty, peace and nonviolence without taking the feats or dipping into AoP or any of the other things that might tick off a party (I actually don't think it would make anyone in this game upset that I was AoP useless, we have a big party with a lot of roles covered and a slack DM)...that said, I DO want to be able to hard break Paladin vows (eventually) with little to no consequence, and still remain at least somewhat impactful in combat.

I imagine the combat with this character, when it eventually starts going down, to be a single-minded, blinders on, 1v1 smite party on the biggest, toughest baddies. From a character motivation perspective, if a foe is serious enough for the divine forces to flow in a violent way through the character towards that foe, it's time to hit them as hard and fast as possible, over and over again, until they are subdued (or, if tragically necessary, killed). I don't really know how to represent that in combat for a GG 10, I guess? If I'm already sacrificing rules for story though, maybe I could just min/max that combat concept and then RP it as if I have become deluded into thinking my CN violence party is LG Paladinhood? I'm not sure how far out of the concept I want the rules to be for shoehorning purposes or vice versa, but I guess my hope is to be effective enough in combat to actually pull off smacking the villain of the piece into next week. Whether or not I like that or feel tortured about it, as a character, doesn't need feats or AoP levels, necessarily...I just liked the idea of it!

1) Until I hit level 10 Gray Guard, I am going to be massively hampered by the Vows, yes. Plan to remain conflicted but vow-loyal until I hit that ability. In combat terms, support/healing as much as possible on every turn...the only problem is, I kind of wanted to focus (post-GG10) on unarmed/ward cestus proficiency, making the character into a bit of a smite-tank. I want smites that maximize the damage output of my unarmed, since I'll probably still be RPing a "no possessions" thing most of the time, even after GG10. It's just that, as you say, I'll be kind of useless trying to build up to that beforehand. Which is basically fine by me, as long as I can be good at smiting things hard with my fists/ward cestus after GG10.

2) My DM will interpret defenseless and helpless consistently and fairly over time, I trust that, and I trust that the players will be fine recognizing that one way of ending a combat comes with a cost.

3) I am of the understanding that the ruling interpretation of the PrC overriding the Feat is fine with my DM.

So basically, spells-wise, feats-wise and combat-wise, I'm looking at stuff to aid my smiting/unarmed melee attacks as 1st priority (more smiting, additional effects on smites esp. better chances to hit/more damage/additional types of damage, etc, as well as just all around increased chances to melee damage or chances to hit in melee, or unarmed specifically), healing as 2nd, general support for my party as 3rd.

Out of combat/skills-wise, he will be a face and a diplomat and a mediator, that much is certain. As GG 10 hits, the morally ambiguous uses of Cha skills will become a spice used sparingly, but more often than you'd expect a LG Apostle of Peace to whip out for sure. Nonmagical healing via the skill, also an out of combat focus.

Does that help clarify what I'm looking for a bit better?

I'm not super familiar with bloodlines, but I imagine my DM'd be fine with them. I'd need to run it past him, but I don't see why not. What in particular would help me hit the prereqs quicker?

I know Apostle of Peace opens up specific magic items (protection-based, non-armor magic items) as a-ok (although eventually I'll be able to vow-break all over the place), and I was wondering if there were any that fit particularly well that are weird finds or from other campaign settings or the like?

The ward cestus is looking pretty nice!

Oh, I have also just been informed we can take up to two flaws from Unearthed Arcana to get up to two bonus feats.