Better throwing weapon class?

Question

I'm trying to compare a throwing specialist rogue (I'm thinking Two Weapon Fighting Knife Master) and Hurler Barbarian, but I'm having trouble visualizing them actually functioning.

Which class is more viable in combat and why? Notes from experience would be helpful to back up any math analysis.

The party is 4 with 1-2 melee. I'd like it to feel impactful by level 3 but I'd like to see concepts at level 12 or 15 because I'm most interested in scaling for a long high fantasy campaign.

All Paizo material is open but no 3pp; 25 point buy. If there is a better class that I'm overlooking, I'd be open to that too, but I thought some guidance would be in order (and I don't think many other classes have viable throwing options). If you use multi-classing, limit is 2 classes.

Answer 1

Throwing is notable for basically one thing: it can be both dual-wielding and ranged. And those combat styles share a common element: they focus on a large number of attacks. The thing about throwing is that it can, in theory, be both at once and get all the attacks.

This commonality actually goes a bit deeper: both of these combat styles get all these attacks through feats. Archery typically uses 6-7 feats.¹ Dual-wielders need at least 3.² Throwing itself often adds in 1 or 2 more.³ In a game where you only get 10 by default, and those slowly over the long course of the game, and several of them are burned on useless feats you need to get the real feats later, that is an untenable situation.

Thus, a good thrower is always going to have to involve bonus feats. Neither knife master nor hurler get any. If you use either, it will have to be done with some judicious multiclassing, but note that Pathfinder punishes multiclass characters extremely harshly.

The most efficient way to get bonus feats, of course, is with fighter. Fighter also improves your accuracy, particularly over the knife master, which is good because many of these feats involve attack penalties.

There are, kind of surprisingly, no fighter archetypes focusing on thrown weapons, though the two-weapon warrior has some benefit for you. Ultimately, though, its effects aren’t that good, and so we default to lore warden just because it’s the best general-case fighter archetype.

How much fighter to take is a question, but since you’re here for bonus feats, stopping after just 2 is very valid. Otherwise, it’s mostly a question of how much you want feats sooner rather than later. If you go in for the long haul, the hair’s breadth and swift lore features of the lore warden are pretty good, as is your first weapon mastery.

If you multiclass, barbarian is better than rogue; it has higher accuracy and it is less reliant on conditional bonuses. Sneak attack can be very difficult to apply at range. Hurler is nice enough, particularly with thrown weapons that often have very limited ranges, and it’s super lightweight which maintains compatibility with other archetypes. Elemental Kin is another ultra lightweight archetype that can extend your daily use of rage—very valuable when you’ve given up a fair amount of rage due to your fighter levels.

1. _{Point-blank Shot, Precise Shot, Deadly Aim, Rapid Shot, Manyshot, and then one or more of Clustered Shot, Hammer the Gap, or Improved Precise Shot.}

2. _{Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting. Ultimately, the large penalties on iteratives make these less valuable, however, so you could live without GTWF or even ITWF.}

3. _{Quick Draw and possibly Far Shot, though items, particularly blinkback belt, help avoid these.}

Answer 2

Weapon Throwing tends to be pretty bad in Pathfinder, and neither rogue nor barbarian do it any favors as they don't address the core underlying issues:

• It needs DEX to hit and STR to damage, splitting you across two offensive stats.
• It needs a lot of feats to even function (almost all of the normal ranged feats used with bows, but adding quickdraw and perhaps others)
• It needs a way to get your weapons to return to you in order to be effective turn-after-turn (Because throwing away your powerful magic weapons tends to be a bad strategy).

There are two more recently released options that can help you put together a viable build:

The Ricochet Toss feat allows your weapon to immediately return when thrown. This feat is easy to qualify for as a Fighter, but harder with other classes. Fighters also now have access to some other features that work well with weapon throwing, such at the Trained Throw Advanced Weapon Training. A Fighter with these two options helps to address all three bullets above.

Ricochet Toss

Prerequisite(s): Quick Draw, base attack bonus +6, weapon training class feature with a ranged weapon.

Benefit(s): When you make a ranged attack with an appropriate thrown weapon, the weapon returns to your hand immediately after the attack is resolved.

The other useful new option is the "Desna's Shooting Star" divine fighting technique. It is named "Way of the Shooting Star" in d20pfsrd and can be found on this page. This feat addresses bullet point #1 above and opens up the possibility for classes like Oracles or or Bards to be competent throwers while retaining most of their spellcasting prowess.

Way of the Shooting Star

Optional Prerequisite: A chaotic good bard of at least 2nd level can replace a versatile performance with the following initial benefit.

Initial Benefit(s): You can add your Charisma bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls when wielding a starknife. If you do so, you don’t modify attack rolls and damage rolls with your starknife with your Strength modifier, your Dexterity modifier (if you have Weapon Finesse), or any other ability score (if you have an ability that allows you to modify attack rolls and damage rolls with that ability score).