Yes I am calling myself a monkey, but in a silly play on words kind way, and that I love bananas. More importantly I easily influenced into stating up characters I see in movies. this won’t be a, how does x character fit into its world and what is its relative level, but I want to look at how I can play this character in a pathfinder setting at a level where all it cool shit starts working. Have you seen Atomic Blonde, if not stop reading and go watch it and then return.

Finished product up front!

Good now that you got that out-of-the-way, we can appreciate Charlize Theron is pretty awesome and that movie had a pretty groovy soundtrack. More than that it made me want to make a character who eschews the traditional giant swords and hammers, and fits well into a more urban setting.

Let’s look at movies like Atomic Blonde, All of the Bourne movies and anything else with Krav Maga or up close and personal fighting styles. The action seems to be about bringing the bad guy down, using your surroundings to help you not being squeamish about playing dirty.

The following are my character goals.

Skills: have a class and intelligence combination that let’s play at being a spy

Combat Effectiveness: I don’t need to be a soldier, but I do need to be able to fight unarmed, with improvised materials and with my opponents weapons.

Tricks: This is a broad category, but I need to be able to perform dirty tricks (eye gouge, crotch kick, etc) and disarm with suitable ease.

Classes

After some gnashing of teeth and searching of the internet I settled on a combination of brawler and rogue, specifically level 2 Snakebite Striker Brawler and level 3 Unchained Rogue Makeshift Sapper. Level 5 seems to be the sweet spot where I get everything I want and I would probably continue to level mainly in rogue.

Unchained rogue is perfect for this character since I plan on going with a high dex build, so free weapon finesse at lvl 1 and dex to damage on a finessable weapon of my choice (unarmed) at level 3 helps me to put the hurt out. Rogue also gives me a huge bag of skills that are needed for this character concept, I am thinking Escape Artist, Bluff, Sense Motive, Acrobatics and Knowledge Local will be the minimum skills I want to look at maxing out.

Makeshift sapper is great because it gives me the Throw Anything and the Catch Off Guard feats. These are awesome for situations where you are weaponless and want to throw something or just surprise someone by beating them with a candlestick, both things you frequently see in movies, with the added benefit that if my opponent is unarmed Catch Off Guard let’s me catch them without their dex, as long as I have an improvised weapon, hello sneak attack!

Matched with unchained rogue is snakebite striker brawler. Brawler gives me unarmed strike which is pretty important for replicating the character from the movie. Brawler also gives me a bonus combat feat at level two which will be helpful to get both combat expertise and improved disarm. Aside from unarmed strike, I really wanted brawlers flurry early on. I love the idea of making two attacks, the first being a disarm and the second being an attack with the newly disarmed weapon, all the better it counts as a light improvised weapon since that triggers catch off guard, weapon finesse and sneak attack!

You might be screaming, “what about martial flexibility?”, it’s one of the best parts of brawler. Well as a snakebite striker I give that up for the more stylish sneak attack. This coupled with my rogue levels will keep my sneak attack damage up to par and help the character to be able lay on the pain.

Feats

Combat Expertise-Lvl 1

Improved Disarm-Lvl 1 Human Feat

Agile Maneuvers-Lvl 2 Brawler feat

Sap Adept-Level 3

Weapon Focus Unarmed-Level 5

Catch Off Guard-Archetype

Throw Anything-Archetype

Improved Dirty Trick-Rogue Talent

With the combination of archetypes and classes I ended up with 8 feats, some like throw anything are more for flavor and probably won’t get used too much, but they can be flavorful. Sap adept will help me get more damage while doing non lethal unarmed strikes while improved dirty trick will help me blind my opponent when I don’t have a flanking partner, finally improved disarm will help me make my opponents fight on my terms. Lastly agile maneuvers will let me use my dex modifier instead of strength for my combat maneuvers like dirty trick.

Items

+1 Brawling Chain Shirt: +2 to attack and damage with unarmed strikes and my weapons count as magic, brawling is the perfect on a chain shirt and is a must have items for the spy on the go.

+1 Cloak of Resistance: Dear Pharasma my will save is bad, this should help.

Belt of Dexterity +2: It’s the main stat used for this character, this should be fairly self-explanatory.

MWK Hand Crossbow: Spies have guns, fantasy spies have hand crossbows! Ideally I’d like to have two of these and keep them both out so that if I win initiative I can fire twice (albeit with a penalty)

Sleeves of Many Garments: You need to look good when on the job, and with these sleeves you can change your wardrobe at will.

Character Sheet

Parting Thoughts

This build has weaknesses sure, it’s not good in the wilderness, it’s best against foes that can be denied their dex bonus, and it’s will save is worse than the 3rd leprechaun movie. I intend to build this bad boy out and take it out to a few PFS games to see if I can find some scenarios that are more intrigue based.

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