[PF] Character for PF Society

[radionausea]

Afternoon all,

I'm going to be playing a pathfinder society game for the first time tomorrow and I've been struggling with getting an idea together.  All I knew was that I didn't want to play a full caster and that I wanted to use ranged weaponry.

The game stats at first level and is PF society rules (20 point buy, no crafting, other annoying changes that are hard to keep track of)

What I've got so far is a pretty basic LN human inquisitor of Daikitsu.

Basic ideas:

(click to show/hide)

Stats are:
Str: 14  Dex: 16 Con: 12 Int: 10 Wis: 16 Cha: 8

Feats are: Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot
Traits are: Vagabond Child (for disable device as a class skill) and World Traveler (for knowledge local as a class skill)

I've chosen the Feather sub-domain for its perception bonus and animal companion at 4th level

Spell selection is
0: Detect Magic, Guidance, Light and Sift
1: Shield of the Faithful, Wrath

He'll be wearing Kikko armour (Medium, +5AC, max dex 4) and using a longbow. carrying a longspear and morningstar for melee.

Now I've seen it bandied about that Inquisitors are one of the better classes for consistent ranged damage but don't really know combat feats well enough to build for it.   I'm assuming that the damage comes about from using Judgements in combination with Bane and self-buffs through spells but some of it has to come from feat selection, right?

Deadly Aim, Rapid Shot and Manyshot are obvious feats but what else is there?

Any decent archetypes for ranged Inquisitors?  I've seen Preacher mentioned but it doesn't look that hot for what you give up...

Any advice on how to go about this would be really appreciated.

[deuxhero]

I was going to suggest Flail for a melee weapon, but then I checked how it compared to a Morning Star and "what the hell? Why is this martial weapon worse in every way to a simple weapon?".

Anyways, all the ranged inquisitors I have seen start as Cleric 1 and pick up Channel Smite and (more importantly) Guided Hand to remove the need for any dex beyond 13 (for Deadly Aim). If your Deity is alreddy set in stone, it doesn't work. If not for the fact that it appears Pazio editing sucks and he doesn't get the animal domain despite being god of horses with a (winged) horse as a holy symbol (and being PFS, the DM can't use common sense), I'd recommend General Susumu as a patron. He has Favored weapon: Longbow, War domain (thus tactics subdomain, which is great combined with Lookout) and SHOULD have the Animal Domain (thus Feather)...

Zen Archer Monk, potentially multiclassed with (Seeker) Empyreal Sorcerer+Arcane Archer, is the other go-to for PF archery.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Inquisitors really aren't good for archery, I don't know where these claims originated from.

They have medium BAB and no bonus feats to use one archery (UC added 2 teamwork feats to use w/ archery finally, and neither is that essential), which severely cripples their effectiveness.  Ranger and Zen Archer are getting Improved Precise Shot at 6; Inquisitor gets it at 15!  They get some small damage bonuses via judgement, and bane can certainly help a lot, but I would not try and make an archer inquisitor...

[radionausea]

Thanks for the advice guys, I spent a long time yesterday trying to make the numbers match up to the claims I'd seen but it was coming up crap everytime.   

I'll have a play around today with classes I've played with before and see what I can get

[radionausea]

In the end I decided to forget about archery entirely and go Melee brute alchemist.  Played my 2nd game last night and we tore apart a mod of a higher tier resulting in us getting 1,800gp - Falchion critical hit while enlarged and mutated (24 strength) finished off the end guy pretty much in one hit   

Build:
Half-Orc Alchemist (Beastmorph, Vivisectionist)
Traits: Reactionary, Tusked
Feat: Toughness (yeah, yeah I know, but I honestly couldn't think of anything else to take as a first level feat what with having BAB of +0)

Str: 18 Dex: 12 Con: 14 Int: 14 Wis: 10 Cha: 8


Plan: Alchemist10/Master Chymist2

feats:
3: Power Attack
5: Extra Discovery: Bleeding Attack
7: INA: Claws
9: ???????????? No idea what to take here.
11: Extra Discovery: Mummification

discoveries:
2: Feral Mutagen - Standard fare
4: Tumour Familiar: Compsognathus - Improved Initiative, a familiar and something to make my already quite disgusting character worse? Yes please
5: Bleeding Attack - Flanking tactics seems to be used a lot by the people I've been playing with, coupled with invisibility-type spells I'll be getting a a lot of bleed damage
6: Preserve Organs - Warforge myself up.
8: Wings
10: Crippling Strike
11: Mummification
12: Greater Mutagen


I think PFS only goes up to 12th level so no point planning beyond that.  I've also read the arguments back and forth about whether you can buy a Potion of GMF +5 and I am convinced that you can; and the DM looks like he will to so Alchemical Allocation here I come.

If it doesn't I'll consider rebuilding around a crit fishing falchion wielder but want to avoid it.

Any ideas about that 9th level feat, or about the build in general?


Self buffed he'll be pouncing for 2 claws at 2d6+23 and a bite at 2d6+23 at level 12.  Which is....acceptable in pathfinder but its not astonishing.