Mesmerist Archetypes Breakdown – Pathfinder

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RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks. Also note that many colored items are also links to the Paizo SRD.

Red: Bad, useless options, or options whichare extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
Orange: OK options, or useful optionsthat only apply in rare circ*mstances. Useful sometimes.
Green: Good options. Useful often.
Blue: Fantastic options, often essentialto the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

Archetypes

Cult Master

This archetype is built around the Leadership feat. If your GM does not allow Leadership in your game, ignore this archetype. It also seems to assume that you are evil and manipulative, which may also be a problem for your GM.

The Cult Master could be useful in a campaign where the party does very little fighting. They have some support abilities and they’re great at Diplomacy, but they give up all of the Cult Master’s meaningful combat options, leaving them to rely entirely on their allies, their cohort, and their followers.

Insidious Personality (Ex): Diplomacy ismuch more useful than Bluff, and giving up access to Improved Feint costs younothing useful.

Fanatical Stare (Su): Reworking HypnoticStare gives up what little offensive capacity the Mesmerist had and forces itinto a support role. Giving up Painful Stare means that stare feats won’twork, either. The bonuses you grant aren’t fantastic, and you can only applythem to one ally at a time.

Cult Tricks (Su): Neither option isespecially good.

Double: Mesmeric Mirror is better, doesn’trequire you to have an adjacent ally, and doesn’t hurt your friends.
Extol: Optimizing Diplomacy is reallyeasy, especially with the bonus from Insidious Personality. The net benefitof this trick is a +2 bonus, which really isn’t worth the Trick slot.

False Healing (Su): With hours/levelduration you can throw this on your allies before you start fighting stuff anddramatically reduce your party’s need for hit point recovery for the day.

Faithful Followers (Ex): Leadership is agreat feat, but giving up one of your few Bold Stare slots is hard becausethey’re so important and because there’s no way to get more of them.

Fanatical Devotion (Ex): If you’re evil,you’re likely to suffer some penalties to leadership due to your evil actions.This offsets those penalties to some degree.

Spirit Walker

In your average campaign, the Spirit Walker is a decent choice. Undead are a commonly used type of enemies across most levels of the game

Spells: Useful options for handling undead,which are a huge problem for the Mesmerist because Hypnotic Stare does notaffect undead because it’s mind-affecting.

Undead Inception (Su): This makes undeadeven easier to handle.

Continued Animation (Su): This is amazing.It only works on humanoids until level 14, but you can turn enemies intoshort-term pets and turn them against this former allies in the sameencounter. Coordinate with your allies to focus on the subject of yourHypnotic Stare to make sure that the subject dies quickly.

Command Undead (Su): A great way to getundead pets, especially since the Mesmerist is Charisma-based.

Master of the Dead (Su): Rule Minds isgreat, but fincing high-level undead to dominate is much easier. High-levelundead include great options like demiliches, dracolichs, and otherhorrifyingly powerful creatures.

Toxitician

Overall, the toxitician makes dangerous trades to get something that it doesn’t really need. The toxitician gives up the Mesmerist’s ability to stare at creatures at range to gain the ability to debuff multiple foes. This is a scary trade to make for a lightly-armored character with d8 hit points and mediocre AC at best. Your “injections” eventually gain some useful debuffs that you can add to the effects, but you can get comparable effects stare feats on a vanilla mesmerist, and there are still saving throws to resist the effects. If you want to debuff stuff, play a real spellcaster like a sorcerer. If you want to sneak around and stab people, play a rogue.

Deft Fingers (Ex): Sleight of Hand is toosituational. You’ll need the bonus to deliver Injection “surreptitiously”, ofcourse, but most of the time you’ll be charging into combat to stab peoplewith an injection.

Injections (Su): You know how Mesmerists areall about staring people? Now you need to walk up and stab people with needleto do the same stuff. However, injections have one major advantage: You canhave multiple in effect at the same time.

Painful Injection (Su): The way this isworded is confusing, so I’ll attempt to clarify. When subject of one of yourinjections takes damage, it takes some more damage due to Painful Injection.However, this can only be triggered by a creature other than the mesmeristthat delivered the injection. This means that you’re getting half your levelin damage once per round. It’s now automatic so you don’t need to spend a freeaction to activate the damage, but it’s a free action so that hardly evermatters.

Injection Improvement (Su): Add apotentially powerful debuff to your injections.

Ability Decrease: -2 or -4 to an abilityscore will rarely be a significant debuff, but you may be able to handicap aspellcaster by targeting their casting ability.
Excruciating: You need all the damage youcan get. You get 8 damage at 20th level, which is almost as much as themaximum of 10 damage you get from Painful Injection at 20th level.
Fortitude Decrease: Fortitude saves aretypically very high, and a lot of great save-or-suck effects work onFortitude. Getting this in place will make those effects more powerful. Ofcourse, the target needs to fail a Fortitude saving throw to suffer thiseffect.
Natural Armor Decrease: This can be ahelpful way to debuff troublesome foes, but you still need to find a way tohit them once to get the effect in place.
Reflex Decrease: Reflex saves are generallythe least impactful saving throw.
Slow: The penalties are too small. AbilityDecrease will be more impactful.

Treatment Vials (Su): Creating the vialsahead of time means that you need to somehow predict the effects you’ll faceon a given day. This could be useful if you have someone else to deliver thevials like a familiar in the party, but otherwise the action cost will rarelybe justifiable in combat.

Improved Injections (Su): Adding two effectsdramatically improves your injections. Combine Ability Decrease (Dexterity)and Natural Armor Decrease for a significant AC debuff. Combine AbilityDecrease and Slow to inhibit your target’s attacks.

Replaced Features: consummate liar, hypnotic stare, painful stare, bold stare, touch treatment (altered), glib lie.

Compatible Archetypes: Spirit Walker.

Vexing Daredevil

The only good thing about this archetype is Blinding Feint. It doesn’t address the Mesmerist’s terrible damage output or poor AC, and it forces the Mesmerist into melee where it absolutely does not belong.

Class Skills: You only need Acrobatics forthe Outmaneuver option on Dazzling Feint, and it’s terrible.

Martial Weapon Proficiency (Ex): Oh wow,one weapon. Get a rapier, I guess.

Bonus Feats: If you’re going to build acharacter around flanking, I suppose getting the feats for free is helpful.

Dazzling Feint (Su): Blinding Strike isgreat, but it’s literally the only good option.

Binding Strike: Blinding a creature, evenif it’s only for one round, can make or break and encounter for yourparty.
Combat Maneuver: Use Blinding Strikeinstead. Blinding the target makes them unable to make attacks ofopportunity (usually) and removes the target’s Dexterity bonus to CMD.
Critical Strike: You don’t deal enoughdamage for this to matter.
Outmaneuver: Blind the target with BlindingStrike and walk away.
Piercing Strike: This will be an average of8 damage at most. I wouldn’t take this until very high level, and even thenit’s hardly worth the effort.
Sloppy Defense: The bonus is tiny andCirc*mstance bonuses are common.
Surprise Strike: With Improved Feint you’refeinting as a move action, which means that you only get your Standardaction to attack with. This gets you what is effectively an iterativeattack. Of course, your damage with weapons is still terrible and you needto hit with the first attack to get the second attack. Hitting with thatfirst attack is the only thing that matters because it triggers PainfulStare.

Shimmering Body (Sp): Your AC is going tobe poor, so any defensive option is welcome.

Replaced Features: class skills (altered), 1st-level mesmerist trick, touch treatment, bold stare, glib tongue.

Compatible Archetypes: None.

Mesmerist Archetypes Breakdown – Pathfinder – RPGBOT (2024)