u/MTLink

For reasons outside of my control, my sweet baby Thief Rogue has been removed from my game. Between his skill-monkey capabilities and pretty terrifying levels of damage, I'm going to miss him dearly. But I've been given the sign-off from our GM to put together an Exemplar for my new character, and I want to tear shit up. Insofar, our group consists of:

• Human Monk: Focused on athletic maneuvers, very wrestler coded. Big beefy boy, and our only Strength focused guy.
• Vishkanya Thaumaturge (Mirror Implement): A melee fighter as well, but more focused on Finesse weapons. Has Medicine focus.
• Kobold Gunslinger (Pistolero): Some overlap with my old Rogue, funnily enough. Charismatic, high damage, good dexterity.
• Human Wizard (Battle Magic): We're really early on so I haven't seen much of what he can do, but seems to be standard wizard stuff. Also has Medicine.
• Human Oracle (Flames): This one hasn't joined the group yet, but I assume they're gonna be burning stuff down with some healing here and there.

So as you can see, we have a pretty balanced crew already, besides the slight bias towards range and dexterity. I've been reading this Challenging the Divine guide, and it's been pretty helpful. I mostly need some help focusing in on the mechanical side of things. There's a few "requirements" I'm trying to hit:

• Race has got to be Automaton. It's pretty core to the concept I'm considering, so I'd love some synergy here. Heritage can be one of the Versatile ones, though, if it's a big help.
• Big Damage. Was looking at ideas like the "Berserker" from the Guide. Beyond that, I prefer not using a two-handed weapon. Since we're in a more Industrial-Fantasy setting, we can use the Uncommon/non-standard weapons, as well.
• Utility. This game has a lot of downtime. It's what made my Rogue so fun, we had skill checks for days, so he got a ton of use there. I know I won't be able to get Rogue levels of skill increases, but I want to have the capability to be proactive outside of a fight, too.
• No Free Archetype. Several people in our group are pretty new so our GM isn't using it.
• Not INT based. My last character in this group, in 5e, was a two-handed Eldritch Knight/War Wizard. So very smart, big sword, etc. I don't want to just tread that same ground again.

I'd love some advice in regards to building this character. I really loved that Rogue, but I can't use them, so I'm hoping that the process of making this character will bring me to an end destination I'm really content with. Feel free to ask any clarifying questions, I'm even down for chat discussions to flesh this out, etc etc. Thank you all, and have a good one!