Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Unfair Solo Gish Build (correct Lich)

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This build is for a solo run on Unfair difficulty. It obviously easily can function as the main tank/DD of a party or on lower difficulties.

Other Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Guides:

It’s a gish build using arcane buff spells to provide defenses and Elemental Barrage to deal incredible amounts of unresistable damage.

Strengths

Incredible damage
Very good staying power, especially after transformation
Lich provides very good buffs and valuable immunities for a melee character
You only need to care about STR and CHA, they give you absolutely everything
24h buffs
Incredible clear speed, constant uptime
20+ castings of Mirror Image

Weaknesses

You will pull out your hair until ML3
You will pull out your hair until level 9 spells (bad initiative)
There are a few optional bosses you have to visit later
Screenshots include Incorporeal Charm – it will work without it, but I wanted 100 AC
Not enough skills to realistically go for secret ending
Pounce tends to bug out if you put Charge on autocast so a bit of microing is still needed
24h Haste, Displacement, Greater Invisibility will make you hate regular puny mage buffs in the future

This is the character page:

How this build works

It’s very important to understand what you see in this picture:

That’s two of your charge attacks (one normal, the other an opportunity) without a critical for 383 and 478 damage.

The feat that makes this possible is Elemental Barrage:

Contrary to the description it triggers on weapon elemental hits, and actually dealing damage with the element is not needed. Different elements are separate applications for this feat, that all can prime and detonate Elemental Barrage.

So, if you have a sword with fire and cold with it, hit the enemy only once, then the game will calculate damage as:

1. You deal weapon damage.
2. You deal fire damage, it primes Elemental Barrage.
3. You deal cold damage, the enemy was primed so Elemental Barrage triggers.

There are two ways to have lots of elemental damage. First is this weapon:

Can be found in the Old Wing of Areelu’s Lab in the secret room.
This by itself gives you 1.5 Elemental Barrage triggers every attack.

Second is the 5th level arcane Transmutation spell Geniekind, that gives you d6 elemental damage. 4 casts of it gives you 4 elements – so a further 2 procs of Elemental Barrage every attack. What’s great about this spell is that it applies the damage to natural attacks as well.

Pathfinder’s engine also has the strange behaviour that when a weapon deals damage in multiple parts (say – once with elements then with an Elemental Barrage proc), those all will individually trigger other weapon effects – like Vampiric Blade or Living Bane. Sprinkling Mythic Charge and Death Rush on it makes the maths even more convulted, as those can trigger multiple times in one attack as well.
The end result is that you deal likely resistable damage with your weapon hit, then trigger multiple times 30d6 (Elemental Barrage, Mythic Charge, Death Rush), d6+28 Vampiric Blade and 2d6 (Living Bane) damage.

Stacking attacks, streamlining stats and maximizing damage output

Stacking attacks
As you are capped with 4 main hand attacks your best bet at increasing damage output is having more natural attacks. You can have:

Bite from race (Motherless Thiefling or Kitsune)
Bite from Oracle – Wolf-Scarred Face
Dragon Bite from Dragon Disciple level 2
Bite from Close to Abyss

Streamlining stats
Oracle Nature’s Whisper allows you to ignore DEX for CHA.
Scaled fist as usual gives your CHA to AC.
Lich transformation makes you undead, so your CHA will be your CON.

This means you really have to worry about two stats only – Strength for martial things and Charisma for everything else. This enables you way more options for gearing up.

Maximizing damage output
While Elemental Barrage is not something you have to do much to use, the rest of your damage (Mythic Charge, Death Rush) requires you to charge. Since you won’t be able to get Greater Beast Totem this leaves you with only one race choice – Kitsune. Conveniently it also has a CHA bonus (but a STR malus) and a natural attack so it’s perfect for us.

Character Levels

As discussed above our race is fixed, we have dumpstats galore and only two things we have to worry about.
I’m lazy though and dislike reloading for failed saves/skills so I put more points in INT and WIS – but you can dump those as well and max out STR.

Race is Kitsune, background is Pickpocket. Trickery is our only non-class skill anyway, and Trickery/Perception are by far the most important skills in the game. The bit of initiative also helps.

Starting stats are 14/9/7/14/14/19, alignment you have to have Lawful Evil (Lawful due to monk and Evil due to Lich), for deity I chose Urgathoa for obvious reasons.

For skills I went with Mobility 3, Knowledge (Arcana) 5 (this is needed by level 5, don’t forget to put points in here!), Trickery 20, Perception 20 and spread the rest everywhere.

Leveling order:

1 – Seeker Oracle (1)
Martial Weapon Proficiency, Wolf-Scarred Face, Nature, Nature’s Whispers

2 – Scaled Fist (1)
Crane Style.
You are downright brutal at this point – CHA x2 to AC and 4 attacks (Flurry and two bites) make this part a cakewalk. It will pass.

3 – Crossblooded Sorcerer (1)
Weapon Focus (kukri), Draconic Blue Dragon bloodline, Metamagic (Extend), Elemental Earth bloodline
Bloodlines are for immunities (with mythic feat) and Extend will enable you for the sweet-sweet 24h haste, displacement, greater invisibility, geniekind.

4 – Crossblooded Sorcerer (2)
+CHA

5- Crossblooded Sorcerer (3)
Power Attack
We have feats to spare, and when you are hitting 400+ for each attack things WILL die. Improved Cleaving Finish helps a lot with clear speed, we want that.

6 – Dragon Disciple (1)

7 – Dragon Disciple (2)
Cleave, Sorcerer Casting, Toughness
At this point Toughness will be enable you to endure one more hit (usually 3 instead of 2). It’s absolutely useless after your transformation though, so you can pick something else if you don’t mind reloading.

8 – Dragon Disciple (3)
+STR

9 – Dragon Disciple (4)
Cleaving Finish
Enough is enough from this class, while the benefits would be good, losing more caster levels would just push 24h haste/geniekind further back and you cannot afford losing any more BAB.

10 – Eldritch Knight (1)
Great Cleave

11 – Eldritch Knight (2)
Improved Cleaving Finish, Sorcerer Casting

12 – Eldritch Knight (3)
+STR

13 – Eldritch Knight (4)
Dodge
Slap on a +4 DEX item (or a +2 and go for Web Strider) to be able to pick this up. If you don’t want to delay leveling you can continue down the line and pick it up as late as level 18.

14 – Eldritch Knight (5)
Dazzling Display
Don’t use this feat ever though, it’s only a prerequisite for Shatter Defenses. You want to hit enemies as much as you can and hitting flat-footed AC is better than hitting normal AC.

15 – Eldritch Knight (6)
Vulpine Pounce
With this the Mythic Charge-Death Rush engine gets a huge buff.

16 – Eldritch Knight (7)
+STR

17 – Eldritch Knight (8)
Shatter Defenses
Both Lich Fear Control and the Frightful Aspect triggers this.

18 – Eldritch Knight (9)
Crane Wing

19 – Eldritch Knight (10)
Greater Weapon Focus (kukri)

20 – Crossblooded Sorcerer (4)
+STR

You will hit 20 at around Midnight Fane solo, at that point you are pretty damn strong. Playful darkness will likely need mass healing scrolls though, but from there it’s as smooth saling as Unfair Solo can be.

Mythic Levels

1 – Mythic Hero
Close to the Abyss, Elemental Barrage
The additional Natural Attack is great and you are doing all of this for Elemental Barrage

2 – Mythic Hero
Elemental Body

3 – Lich
Weapon of Death, Enduring Spells
Take whichever pet you like most. It will matter at the transformation. For that reason also don’t forget to recruit every undead companion you can AND switch XP sharing back on when you get to 20.

4 – Lich
Greater Enduring Spells
Again, take the pet you’d like the most. I went with bard for the buffs. Also keep in mind that Lord Beyond The Grave applies to your own self after transformation as well. That makes The Bound of Possibility a very good choice for the cloak slot.

5 – Lich
Archmage Armor

6 – Lich
Mythic Weapon Focus, Fear Control

7 – Lich
Mythic Charge
And you are there. From this point onward all your buffs last 24h.

8 – Lich
Flawless Attacks
Your choice really. This one’s pretty good though.

9 – Lich
Dragon Ascendance, Death Rush

10 – Lich
Abundant Casting
+8 Mirror Image is always good (4 normal and 4 extended)

Spellbook

What’s a gish without a spellbook?! Here are the spells you will want:

Level 1
Expeditious Retreat, Mage Armor, Shield, True Strike
No comment, running around until you have 24h haste is good, AC is good and +20 attack is good for the optional bosses.

Level 2
Mirror Image, Sense Vitals

Level 3
Displacement, Haste, Power from Death
Power from Death unlike in the description lasts 10 minutes/level. It also determines the bonus at the moment of casting. At higher caster levels (maxes out at 8) you will likely have to pull a second group where the first one died.

Level 4
Dimension Door, Greater Invisibility, Vampiric Blade
Dimension Door is still good for hopping over triggers, while most enemies do see invisible there are a few that don’t so you might as well have Greater Invisibility going.
Vampiric Blade – since it procs and heals multiple times per attack – will take care of healing you to full. You reasonably can expect around 50-100 hp healing from an attack.

Level 5
Echolocation, Geniekind
I don’t know if Echolocation gives any meaningful bonus over True Seeing. Geniekind is mandatory.

Level 6
Bone Shield, Greater Heroism

Level 7
Blessing of Unlife, Legendary Proportions, Ice Body
Blessing of Unlife and Legendary Proportions will be obsolete after your transformation.

Level 8
Frightful Aspect, Seamantle

Level 9
Fiery Body, Foresight