u/Decicio

Got an interesting challenge for everyone today.

I’m part of the spiritual successor to Reddit gifts (see r/givingifts if you want details) and I signed up for the anonymous board game exchange as I do every year. Usually I get someone who is into modern games and etc.

Lo and behold my surprise when I got matched with a 65 year old retiree who wanted some classic games.

Now I’ve got some of the classic stuff down for them to play with the folks at their retirement home, but then my wife had a great idea. In their description about themselves, they’ve talked about their dialysis struggle. My wife, being a doctor and a bit familiar with what she’s going through, recommended I look for some sort of solo game that could be played in a dialysis chair.

You have limited arm movement as you’re hooked up to the machine, and may or may not have access to a side table.

I realize that a small handheld digital version of a board game is likely the best fit, but I’m not big in the solo board gaming scene so wanted to at least ask if you all could think of something appropriate.

Welcome to Max the Min Monday! The series where we take some of Paizo’s weakest, most poorly optimized, or simply forgotten and rarely used options for first edition and see what the best things we can do with them are using 1st party Pathfinder materials!

What Happened Last Time?

Holy cow it has been a month without one of these. I'm sorry all, being the dad of a growingly busy and adventerous toddler has made the past month very busy and exhausting.

Last time we discussed the Blood Kineticist! There were builds focusing on maximizing bleed via Shax obedience and other feats and discussions about Wrack's reliability without needing attack rolls, among other things. Good discussion!

So What are we Discussing Today?

Today we're discussing u/CosmoBrockington's nomination of the Swarm Fighter, the fighter archetype where your kobold PC is all about getting really up close and personal, both with allies and enemies.

But where is the min? Well there's a few glaring spots, though admittedly this may be leaning more towards one of our "min of obscurity" posts. Especially since, as we'll see, one of the mins here is extremely deependent on party composition, so could either be a non-issue or one that makes you lose half your feats if you don't have a teammate who coordinates their build with yours.

First off though, in order to take the archetype, you gotta be a kobold, which is enough of a min that we covered them 6 years ago (holy cow did I really start this series that long ago?!). Unless you wanna just... you know, sidestep that min by being a human with an extremely odd Racial Heritage, though that would actually come with its own nerf later on...

Ok, but aside from being locked to a weaker race option (or requiring a feat tax), what does the archetype itself do?

Well first off you lose heavy armor and shield proficiency, which is an immediate nerf. Though we probably won't miss the shield too much, as you'll see later.

On the flip side of that immediate nerf, however, we get to add acrobatics and climb to class skills... even though climb is already a class skill (Paizo editing at it again), as well as a scaling bonus to each equal to 1/2 your swarm fighter level.

Next, our first bonus feat is locked into Mobility, and we can't use the retraining rules nor the fighter feat changing rules to ever get rid of it (without losing the archetype itself). The upside being, since it is a named bonus feat, we need not meet the Dex 13 or dodge prereqs (though with only have medium armor proficiency and on a race with a dex bonus, the former probably isn't that big of a deal). I'm curious to see if there are any cool feat options that have mobility as a prereq that this could get us early access into, but I think most of them usually require dodge as well, so if we wanna go up the mobility feat trees, then skipping even that prereq might be pointless.

Next is the Safety In Numbers ability which replaces the Bravery bonus against fear effects. Insteead, you get a +1 per ally within 20 feet, up to a max of half your level. Numerically this is theoretically a superior bonus starting at level 4. Though it is very dependent on ally positioning (especially since we're gonna be very close to our enemies to use our later abilities). Though many parties will have pets / summons / minions which can help make getting the full bonus relatively easy. The main issue is there are some great looking feats that require bravery that we're now locked out of (each of those words is a different link fyi, and there are more). And considering that fear effects aren't super common, then these feats would certainly make bravery the better option. But that's with a feat tax of course.

Next, half of our bonus feats must be teamwork feats (specifically 2nd level and every 4 levels after). This is where the "Min" aspect of the swarm fighter archetype gets particularly nuanced because for the first time, this is mostly a min for your party composition. See, unlike a cavalier or an inquisitor, you get neither the ability to share these teamwork feats nor the ability to use them if your ally doesn't have them. Which means you must have a teammate or teammates who also take them, or they are dead feats. Moreover, even if your ally takes the feat, there still isn't language stating that sharing a space counts as being adjacent for the feats. So some of the feats that require adjacency mean you can't share the space with your buddy to use. Not too much an issue if your ally is in the thick of melee as we'll see, but still something to mention.

All this means unless you are coordinating building characters with a friend, this archetype most likely isn't going to be a viable table option. Now there might be options like leadership or etc. that bypass this need... which I'll leave for you all to max below.

Finally we get to what I consider the "special sauce" of the swarm fighter: the abilities that trade weapon training (ouch) for a focus on attacking an enemy from within their own square.

Starting off at level 5, we get the ability to share spaces with creatures at least one size category larger than us (uh oh, this means our human with racial heritage is no longer a great idea huh?). These don't have to be enemies, but if it is you can still share their square as long as you roll a successful acrobatics check. Hence why the class skill + 1/2 level bonus is so important. You get a +2 shield bonus to AC and +1 to reflex saves while sharing a space with anyone, friend or foe, which is nice.

At 9th level, you deny the dex to AC of anyone you are sharing a space with vs your own attacks as you "strike the underbelly".

At 13th, you get Step Up and at 17th you get Following Step as bonus feats. Unlike the teamwork feats, this one does expliciltly state that sharing a space counts as being adjacent for these feats.

Finally, should you make it to level 20, you automatically confirm all critical threats against those you share a space with.

All good abilities, but you are losing weapon training (and therefore Advanced Weapon Training), which are basically the fighter's best class abilities aside from the bonus feats... which you're also trading half of for teamwork feats.

So yeah a situational archetype that is heavily dependent on your party. But assuming a synergistic one, I see a lot of potential. So go forth, calculate the areas of your Spherical Kobols and let's theorycraft a Maxed Kobold Swarm Fighter!

Nominations!

I’ll post a comment below which contains the rules for nominations. Please keep all nominations as replies to that comment to have them considered. As this post makes obvious, we're leaving our weekly format to a more... whenever I think it is feasible format. But the series isn't dead yet!

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