Runaway Train – Vizier Speedster (Speed Freak Week!)

©2015 Lost Spheres Publishing, Swiftblood – Artist: Dio Mahesa,

“Speedsters” often affiliated with comic book characters and superheroes like those at DC and Marvel, can be challenging to emulate in the fantasy gaming world.  Pathfinder (generally speaking) is not a superhero game. But with characters that are fantastically gifted and heroes the comparison holds up pretty well. So where are our “speedsters?”

Well, our options for benchmarks are probably one of three: Barbarian (Enhanced Move and damage acceleration), monk (attack acceleration, movement augments) or rogue (scout archetype for damage boosts related to movement).

A lot of our builds this week struggled to compete with the staying power for a long workday game.  Today we will take a look at a pretty stable (long workday) speedster Dreamscarred Press built on their Akashic veilweaving rules.  We are going to use the vizier class, mostly due to its improved essence capacity ability.

For base race we are going to choose human, Akashic mechanics loves essence feats and we are gonna work that pretty hard.

Base Build:

1st Level – human vizier (Path of the Seer or possibly Path of the Crafter)

Here’s what we start with:

• Veils:
  • Coward’s Boots will give us our base movement effect they ramp consistently and you should pretty much expect to have them in your feet veil slot all the time. You get a +5 to your movement and +5 more for each invested essence. Basically, we are move 40′ out the gate. What’s worth noting here is that it is untyped, allowing us to dip stances from the Dreamscarred martial maneuvers rules or use magic to get expeditious retreat.
  • Storm Gauntlets provides a ramping touch attack that gives us electric, sonic, and cold damage.
• Eldritch Insight gives us the ability to phantom charge items so a wand of expeditious retreat used cautiously never actually drains charges.
• Path of the Seer gives all allies around us another 5′ movement boost aura, which they will benefit themselves from. Akashic Army allows them to take a teamwork feat (we recommend Outflank or Precise Strike) and by using essence give them to perferred combat partners in 60′ which kind of puts us back in a “speed manipulation” theme. Some people who find they aren’t looking at a lot of melee support, are going to want use Path of the Crafter instead which gives them great abilities to transfer charges and magical effects.
• Recommended Feats: Akashic Charge (more bonus to hit and damage on a charge) and Essence of the Immortal (Bonus HP equal to total essence).

Stats:

Generally with a standard point buy (if you have to use one) probably looking at:

Str 13 Dex 14 Con 16 (+2 Racial) Int 16 Wis 7 Cha 7 = Be honest are most speedsters wise or likable?

Racial Stat Choice: Con is very important for Veilweaving feats and Int is the basis of DCs. It is possible to swap Int for Str but not really necessary since out primary damage source will be touch attack based.

Advancement:

Every level is pretty much Christmas (or another holiday of your choice) from here on. At 2nd we can throw our Storm Punches (if we want) via a Chakra bind and another veil (Bladeward might be best) . At 3rd our Improved essence capacity means more base speed (5 feet) and more damage with our touch attacks (Up to 3d4 now, one of each type). We also get another feat and it might be a good time for Run. Lastly we gain the ability swap an existing veil for another one and can be a life saver if we are ill-prepared, called veilshifting. 4th level we gain AC increases (by binding our Coward’s Boots) and another veil (Robe of the Forgotten Deity gives us miss chances vs. Attacks)!

 

5th Level – human vizier (Path of the Seer)

Here’s what we are probably looking at now:

• Base movement is always 45′ and 75′ if we have a wand of expeditious retreat.
• Treewalker gives us a climb speed EQUAL to our landspeed!!! Wall-running acheived!
• We get a second shareable teamwork feat from Path of the Seer.

Stats (Before Magic Items):

Advancement: We are as fast as the umbra (a little faster actually) and have our walls. At 6th our Head slot becomes bind-able and a lot depends of theme, but Sentinel’s Helm probably wins over Minotaur’s helm (though that extra gore attack looks pretty nice) but uncanny dodge says speedster, we might need to skip our Robe for a level. We also got more essence capacity so we are faster and hitting harder. 7th gains us another slot and another veilshifting. Our feat allows us to take Enhanced Capacity and we can either boost damage or movement again. 8th allows us to bind Bladeward’s and that means more AC! 9th gives us Ring Slot and we probably are going to go with Ring of the Abjurer and movement boosts and teamwork feats from our Path of the Seer.

10th Level – human vizier (Path of the Seer)

Here’s what we are probably looking at now:

• New chakra bind for Shoulders, Vorpal Guards gives us massive AC vs. critical hit confirmation and immunity to nasty vorpal qualities. Fast enough to keep our heads in any situation.
• You should have essence to max invest all veils at this point and that is about to go up again at 11th.

Advancement: 11th level opens deeper essence capacity taking us to 4 and likely 5 with Enhanced Capacity (taken a second time at this level) allowing us to have a based 65′ speed pre-expeditious retreat and 3d10 storm punches. 12th moves this up to 70′ and 3d12 and also gives us a new bound veil which Eyes of the Oracle looks pretty great for (a variable insight bonus to attacks, saves or skills usable once a round!). 13th is another bonus teamwork feat shareable with Path of the Seer. Enhanced Capacity is still solid if you have a 3rd veil you use a lot. 14th gives you Neck bind and with Collar of Skilled Instruction you can spontaneously gain and grant ANOTHER teamwork feat.

15th Level+ – human vizier (Path of the Seer)

Here’s what we are probably looking at now:

• The ability to select and share FIVE  team work feats with allies. At this point you should probably be granting: Outflank, Precise Strike, Escape Route, Swap Places and more as needed to simulate your super-speedy assistance.
• Base speed should probably be 100′ most of the time. Check with your GM to see if they consider boots of speed usable with Eldritch Insight.
• A 2nd Ring and Stormcaller’s Band might be useful to simulate whipping up windbursts and the like with your speed-effects.

Advancement: From here on a few more binds give us acrobatics and stealth, with Hide-in-Plain-Sight for dim areas (Stalker’s Tabi) at 16th. 17th and 19th give us back to back essence increases ramping speed and damage and our ultimate at 20th lets us reshape veils when needed.

Our final speedster comes in fast and furious, with powerful single hits. A low-BAB impacts over all damage output but dips into martial mechanics can greatly aid that.  The best part, the vizier speedster is 100% powered all the time. Workday, smerk-day. We hope you enjoyed Speed Freak Week!

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