Undine
Undines are planetouched
native outsider races with a connection to the elemental plane of water. This
means that they are obviously great in aquatic environments, but they’re also
not terribly strong. Their bonuses to Dexterity and Wisdom give them an edge at
classes like the Rogue and divine casting classes. Undines might actually be my
least-favorite race in the whole game, UNLESS you’re playing in an underwater
campaign.
Racial
Traits:
Ability
Scores: +2 Dexterity, +2 Wisdom, -2 Strength. The boosts to Dexterity and
Wisdom make undines naturally sneaky and excellent at divine casting. With a
penalty to Strength, melee builds are tougher, though you can still make a
great Dex-based Magus or Monk.
Type: Undines
are outsiders with the native subtype, so just like the other planetouched
races they can’t be affected by spells and effects that target humanoids, such
as enlarge person and charm person, so this is a double-edged
sword. .
Size: Undines
are the same size as humans.
Speed: Undines
have the same base speed as humans on land, and they also have a natural swim
speed of 30 feet, which can come in very handy if you fall in a river, or if
you’re playing a pirate-themed campaign that involves ships.
Energy
Resistance: Cold resistance 5 is great, though if you’re
playing a caster you can get higher resistance than this, so don’t put a ton of
weight on it.
Spell-like
ability: Undines can cast hydraulic push once per day, which puts out
fires and lets you perform a bull rush combat maneuver using your caster level
plus whichever of your mental stats is highest as your base attack bonus.
Pretty nice!
Darkvision: I’ve
talked this one to death on other races’ descriptions… it’s excellent, and way
better than Low-Light Vision, simple as that.
Water
Affinity: Just like the other elemental races, undines get bonuses to powers of
the elemental (water) bloodline or the Water domain. The powers of the water
bloodline aren’t bad, but the important point here is if you take that
bloodline, your Charisma score is treated as if it’s two higher for ALL of your
Sorcerer spells and abilities. The water domain isn’t bad, but I think the Ice and Oceans subdomains are probably a bit stronger,
and you can choose either of those instead.
Alternate
Racial Traits:
Acid Breath
(Spell-like ability): Honestly, a 1/day breath weapon taht only has 5 feet of
range just isn’t that good. I suppose if you’re a non-spellcaster it could come
in handy, but I’m not a huge fan.
Amphibious
(Spell-like ability): This option gives your undine the aquatic subtype, which
means that she can breathe both underwater and in air. This will obviously be
useful in any aquatic campaign. If you choose this abiliy here, you don’t have
to use a feat on it later, so it’s a good idea.
Deepsight
(Darkvision): This ability replaces your normal darkvision of 60 feet at all
times with darkvision 120, but only when underwater. This will obviously be
useful in an aquatic campaign, but not one that is mostly on land.
Flesh
Chameleon (Energy Resistance): This power is interesting, giving you a +4 racial
bonus to Disguise checks to appear human, and allowing for a really cool
roleplaying opportunity in the skin-color-changing ability. However, I think
that this is generally not going to be as helpful as energy resistance would
be, so I can’t rate it very high.
Hydrated
Vitality (Water Affinity): Just like the other three elemental races, you can
get fast healing 2 for a single round, but unlike the other three races, you
don’t need to get hit with a possibly damaging spell to get this. This is
obviously going to be even better in a solely aquatic campaign, since you can
then essentially turn it on anytime you want to.
Nereid
Fascination (Spell-like ability): A fascination ability is
very useful for many different characters, and the Will save to ignore it can
get crazy high if you focus your character on Charisma, so for a Cha-focused
character this is better than the hydraulic push spell-like ability.
Ooze Breath (Spell-like
ability): This is similar to the Acid Breath ability, but instead of more acid
damage you can instead cause the sickened condition. This is probably not as
good as the Nereid Fascination ability, overall.
Terrain
Chameleon (Energy Resistance): A bonus to Stealth can come in handy, but since it
only works in water this can be very situational unless you’re playing a solely
aquatic campaign. The resistance to cold is probably better for most
characters.
Water Sense (Energy
Resistance): This is a really amazing ability, especially if you’re a caster
who can create a small body of water to fight in. I’d probably take this one
for most characters in lieu of the cold resistance.
Classes:
Alchemist: You can
make a decent ranged Alchemist out of your undine character, especially if your
GM lets you use the Underwater Demolition discovery, which
lets you use bombs underwater, though it was written for grippli originally.
Don’t try to make a melee mutagen-focused Alchemist, though, since the Strength
penalty will severely deter you.
Barbarian: The Strength penalty is definitely a problem here,
and there aren’t any racial powers that make up for it at all. I’d say this is
suboptimal at best, and possible even a just plain horrible choice.
Bard: Undine
Bards get access to a racial archetype called the Watersinger, and personally I think this
is the absolute best thing about being an Undine. At 1st level, you gain the
ability to use bardic performance to manipulate water and shape it into all
sorts of useful things. The really cool ability comes at 3rd level, however,
when you can have that water that you’re controlling attack a creature, and
even provide a flanking bonus. This means you can essentially use your bardic
performance to summon a creature that is immune to essentially everything,
since it’s actually an object (and gains hardness). The damage even increases
as you level, from 1d6 plus your Charisma mod at 3rd level up to 2d8 plus your Charisma
mod at 20th. The only painful thing about using this ability is that you have
to spend an extra round of bardic performance each round in which you attack
with the water, but this doesn’t cost you any action at all (maintaining a
bardic performance is free) so you’re able to continue doing whatever else you
want, including spellcasting or attacking the same creature to get that
flanking bonus for yourself.
Cavalier [Samurai]: The penalty to Strength is going
to hurt you here, and there’s absolutely nothing else going for you as far as
being a Cavalier. You could go for a ranged build, but honestly you’d be better
off taking Ranger or Fighter in that case. If you’re in an aquatic campaign,
talk to your GM about riding something like a giant seahorse or dolphin,
because otherwise the Cavalier class literally does nothing for you.
Cleric: Just
like the other elemental races, you can make a very good Cleric if you focus on
the Water domain or its subdomains. I personally like the Ice subdomain, which lets you turn to ice for
several rounds per day, gaining DR 5/- and cold immunity, but you have to be
careful of fire damage. I would suggest combining this with an energy
resistance spell against fire of some type. The Oceans subdomain’s surge power is also pretty
cool, giving you a replacement for your racial hydraulic push ability
that’s usable much more often. Obviously you can switch that spell-like ability
out for another option… I’d recommend either Amphibious or Nereid Fascination.
Definitely ignore the favored class option. It’s terrible.
Druid: All of
the suggestions I made for the Cleric also apply for a Druid, but you also get
access to a racial archetype, the Undine Adept. It’s a pretty excellent
option for an aquatic campaign, as you gain the amphibious special ability for
free, and you also get to apply the effects of Augment Summoning to creatures with the water
subtype, so that’s really nice for a summoning-focused Druid. Combine this with
Nereid Fascination and Water Sense, and you’ll have a very strong character
when in water! The favored class option isn’t bad if you’re in an underwater
campaign, but otherwise ignore it.
Fighter: With a
Strength penalty, I’d obviously recommend a ranged Fighter build for an Undine.
The only painful thing is that ranged combat underwater SUCKS unless you’re
willing to invest some serious resources into it, and ranged builds are already
resource- and feat-heavy. If you’re not playing in an aquatic campaign this
isn’t a problem…. but wait, why are you choosing undine again??
Gunslinger: The same problems exist for an undine Gunslinger as
for a ranged Fighter, but you have to spend even MORE money to make it work…
you need to at least have a Dry Load Powderhorn or the Dry Load property on your gun or cartriges,
which are all super expensive. If you’re not playing underwater, pick another
race for your Gunslinger. Seriously.
Inquisitor: I can’t
really see any reason to choose Inquisitor over Cleric or Druid at all. That
being said, the Wisdom bonus is great, and a ranged build would work very well.
Magus: A
Dex-based Magus build would work well here, but without an Int bonus and with a
penalty to Strength it’s not going to be ideal.
Monk: An undine Monk could work very well, especially if
you take advantage of the Water Sense abiliy as well as the favored class
option, which boosts both your CMD to resist a grapple AND gives you more uses
of stunning fist per day. Make sure to focus on Dexterity as your main stat. If
you aren’t planning to use Stunning Fist, you should instead take the Flowing Monk archetype because… well… it’s
flowing! This is probably one of the better builds to use underwater, since
melee attacks aren’t affected by water, unlike ranged ones.
Oracle: I
absolutely love the concept of an undine Oracle of Waves, as some of the Waves
revelations are just amazing (baleful polymorph several times per day at
7th level? Yes, please!) Couple this with Nereid Fascination and you can shut
down entire combats all on your own! The deaf curse works very well for aquatic
environments as well, since you can’t hear underwater anyway. Combine this with
Water Sense, for sure.
Paladin [Antipaladin]: The Strength penalty is
definitely detrimental, and in an aquatic campaign you’re not going to enjoy
using a horse as a mount. Definitely choose to bond with your wepaon instead.
Either way, this is definitely sub-optimal.
Ranger: Ranger
is a great choice for an undine, thanks to both the Wisdom bonus and several
Ranger abilities that rely on terrain and synergize with racial options that do
the same. You’ll definitely want Amphibious, Deepsight, and Terrain Chameleon,
for example.
Rogue
[Ninja]: A bonus to Dex is obviously good for an undine Rogue, and either Flesh
Chameleon or Terrain Chameleon will probably be helpful, depending on what your
Rogue focuses on. I also like Water Sense for either a Rogue or, even better,
for a Ninja, who can turn invisible and still sense other invisible creatures
as long as they are in contact with water.
Sorcerer: As with
the other elemental races, undines get a bonus to Charisma when using Sorcerer
powers if they take the water elemental bloodline, and they can trade
away their racial cold resistance without fear since the bloodline grants
better cold resistance at 3rd level. Water Sense is still the best option for
that trade. The favored class option is alright, but I don’t find that caster
level checks are useful a lot, and being underwater only affects casting for
those that can’t breathe water, which your undine will be able to thanks to the
Amphibious trait. As far as casting fire spells, you can take the Steam Caster feat to fix that too, but you
shouldn’t be trying to cast fire spells underwater anyway… several spells that
normally deal fire damage will be cold damage for you thanks to your bloodline.
Summoner: This is
a decent option, thanks to the aquatic eidolon base form. You don’t get a
Charisma bonus, and the favored class option is only marginally useful, since
you shouldn’t often be moving more than 100ft from your eidolon.
Witch: There’s
nothing good or bad about this option, and there aren’t really hexes that work
better underwater or anything like that, so I don’t have much to say here.
Wizard: I like
this mostly because of the favored class option, which lets you add Cleric or
Druid spells to your spell list, which is NICE! You’d think that the Water
elemental school would be a good choice, but one of the main powers involves
gaining a swim speed, and you already have that.
Racial
Favored Class Options:
Bard: Countersong
is one of the least-used Bard abilities, and you only get a bonus to it when
the effect you’re trying to counter comes from an aquatic creature. BOO!
Cleric: You’re
not going to have to overcome the spell resistance of aquatic creatures that
often. IGNORE!
Druid: In an aquatic campaign, you’ll likely come upon
many aquatic animals, so this bonus will be helpful. Obviously if you’re not in
water, this is useless.
Monk: Extra
uses of Stunning Fist is great, as it can be an encounter-ending ability.
Tossing on grapple resistance is just icing on the cake. This is excellent!
Sorcerer: You’re
not going to be making checks to cast underwater, since you can breathe underwater.
Bad choice!
Summoner: The Life
Link ability already has a range of 100 feet, so you really shouldn’t need to
make use of this favored class option at all. Take a skill point instead.
Wizard: Adding
spells from other spell lists to your own is excellent, and in some cases
overpowered by a significant margin. You should take full advantage of this.
Racial
Archetypes:
Watersinger (Bard): This is an excellent
archetype, as it lets you create flank-buddies for yourself or your teammates
without having to use spells up. Couple this with the ability to make a ladder
or bridge for your party when needed, and possibly sicken or reposition foes
from range, and you’ve got a lot of really great options here, even if you’re
not going to be in the water during your campaign. In fact, this is probably
the only reason I would ever make an undine character, personally.
Undine Adept (Druid): This archetype will
make one of the best underwater Druids out there, no question. You don’t need
to use either your racial ability or a feat on becoming amphibious, since you
get that at 2nd level, and a free Augment Summoning feat is excellent. The
later Wild Shape isn’t great, but it’s worth the trade-off.
Racial
Feats:
Aquatic Ancestry: In most cases, you won’t
want to use one of your precious feats on this ability, since you can instead
just gain it at first level with the Amphibious racial option.
Elemental Jaunt: All four of the
elemental-touched races can choose this feat, and while it’s a powerful
ability, I don’t think it’s worth using a feat slot on for most characters. If
your undine is a spellcaster, she should eventually have access to this spell
anyway, and if she’s not a spellcaster, you’re going to want to use your feats
on combat abilities and let the caster of the group worry about things like
plane shifting. Overall, this just isn’t going to be an optimal choice.
Hydraulic Maneuver: This is an excellent
option for casting classes, since you can use this with your spells, not just
your once/day racial spell-like ability. Adding either dirty trick or disarm to
a spell that already pushes your enemy around is really nice. However, I still
like Nereid Fascination more in general, so this can’t be blue for me.
Steam Caster: This feat is nice if you
plan to use fire spells underwater, but honestly you shouldn’t need to… there
are so many other types of damage that work perfectly well underwater.
Triton Portal: This is an excellent option
for non-casters, since it will definitely come in more handy than a single
casting of hydraulic push. Summoning a small water elemental doesn’t
seem like much, but you can use it for flanking, so it’s worth consideration.
Water Skinned: Umm… just go get a bucket
of water. Seriously, this is not worth a feat at all, for anyone.
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