vivisectionist vs Arcane trickers?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Which one is better and why?

[Raikon]

Vivisectionist is one of the best classes in the game. It has way too many bonus feats, solid spells, spells you can even cast on others (like shield on pets), powerful mutagens, and a lot of sneak attack. It honestly has way to many things going for it.

[Yannir]

Depends on what you're going for. Arcane Trickster is a downgrade from anything that's not basically a full spellcaster and it's pretty specific in what it does. It adds Sneak Attack dice to spells that can Sneak Attack, until the capstone ability, without disturbing your Spellbook progression. Your BAB is too low to go for weapon attacks.

Whereas Vivi is basically the best Alchemist archetype. Bombs can Sneak Attack if I'm not mistaken. Good as both main and dip class.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Yannir:

Depends on what you're going for. Arcane Trickster is a downgrade from anything that's not basically a full spellcaster and it's pretty specific in what it does. It adds Sneak Attack dice to spells that can Sneak Attack, until the capstone ability, without disturbing your Spellbook progression. Your BAB is too low to go for weapon attacks.

Whereas Vivi is basically the best Alchemist archetype. Bombs can Sneak Attack if I'm not mistaken. Good as both main and dip class.

I was looking at the classes and wondered:
Why go arcane trickster.
Vivisectionist gets sneak attack without diping.
Untop of the class bonuses.

[Raikon]

Originally posted by Yannir:

Depends on what you're going for. Arcane Trickster is a downgrade from anything that's not basically a full spellcaster and it's pretty specific in what it does. It adds Sneak Attack dice to spells that can Sneak Attack, until the capstone ability, without disturbing your Spellbook progression. Your BAB is too low to go for weapon attacks.

Whereas Vivi is basically the best Alchemist archetype. Bombs can Sneak Attack if I'm not mistaken. Good as both main and dip class.

You are indeed mistaken. Vivisectionist is so powerful that the devs looked at each other and said they had to remove at least something, so they removed bombs.

[Yannir]

Originally posted by Raikon:

Originally posted by Yannir:

Depends on what you're going for. Arcane Trickster is a downgrade from anything that's not basically a full spellcaster and it's pretty specific in what it does. It adds Sneak Attack dice to spells that can Sneak Attack, until the capstone ability, without disturbing your Spellbook progression. Your BAB is too low to go for weapon attacks.

Whereas Vivi is basically the best Alchemist archetype. Bombs can Sneak Attack if I'm not mistaken. Good as both main and dip class.

You are indeed mistaken. Vivisectionist is so powerful that the devs looked at each other and said they had to remove at least something, so they removed bombs.

Oh. Right.

[Yannir]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Originally posted by Yannir:

Depends on what you're going for. Arcane Trickster is a downgrade from anything that's not basically a full spellcaster and it's pretty specific in what it does. It adds Sneak Attack dice to spells that can Sneak Attack, until the capstone ability, without disturbing your Spellbook progression. Your BAB is too low to go for weapon attacks.

Whereas Vivi is basically the best Alchemist archetype. Bombs can Sneak Attack if I'm not mistaken. Good as both main and dip class.

I was looking at the classes and wondered:
Why go arcane trickster.
Vivisectionist gets sneak attack without diping.
Untop of the class bonuses.

Octavia, a companion in Kingmaker, starts as Rogue 1/Wizard 1. It makes sense to go Arcane Trickster with her if you want something more spicy than just Wizard 19/Rogue 1. And you still get full spell-progression and level 9 spells. It's basically just a Wizard with Sneak Attacks.

Or you could do it with Ember as well.

Vivisectionist has a custom spell list and only goes up to 6th level spells. So they're not gonna be a primary arcane spellcaster.

[Kaze]

I usually Trickster Nenio... unless scroll savant stuff is more valuable than trickster and I'm doing it wrong?

[Xhal]

Arcane trickster can keep the spell progression of another class, which vivisectionist doesn't.

This isn't a straight up case of 1 is better than the other.

Arcane trickster is a prestige class than you pick after starting a spellcaster, when you want to keep progressing your spells while also progressing your sneak attacks.

Vivisectionist is a powerful base class on its own and is also amazing for a short dip to add sneak attacks and a mutagen to basically any build.

They both do different things.

You could for example :

Start as a sorcerer for a few levels. (9)

Take 1 level of vivisectionist to get sneak attacks and mutagen. Pick a feat to increase your sneak attacks to 2d6 meeting the requirement for arcane trickster.

Then take 10 levels of arcane trickster.

You end up as a 19th level spellcaster because arcane trickster keeps progressing your sorcerer spells and end up really powerful with a lot of sneak attacks to basically all your spells even fireballs.

While if you did something like 10 levels of sorcerer 10 levels of vivisectionist that would be a terrible build as your spellcasting levels would be split between the 2 classes.