Greetings fellow RPGers! First a hello from me, after a longish break. I hope you're all doing well in these turbulent times. Thankfully there's always the joy of RPGaming
I bought Pathfinder: Kingmaker last week and I absolutely love it. Great characters, interesting world and story so far, and delightfully challenging! The restartitis in Act 1 has been strong with this one, which is probably not surprising for someone new to the game and its many races, classes, archetypes, deities, bloodlines, feats, skills, and what not.
My first character going blindly into the game was an Ecclesitheurge, but I couldn't stop myself from reading bits about the game online. So I found out about Tristian the Ecclesitheurge, and I felt like playing something else. Experimented a bit with Arcane Trickster and Feyspeaker, and I'm also intrigued by the Deliverer (an Assassin operating as an executioner on behalf of their God is just badass). But I seem to have settled on a Thassilonian Specialist.
I'm going to introduce my character, and I might start posting updates in the coming weeks or months. This cannot be a no-reload run but knowing myself I'll play as if death is the end. BTW for those who do play no-reload, do you count knock-outs as game enders, like in Baldur's Gate? In a party a KO isn't death, but if you're playing solo it is.
There is no single-class wizard in the game, which is a good reason to create a Mage or Sorcerer. The lore behind the Thassilonian wizardry I find very cool with its history of seven rivaling rune lords who unlocked the true potential of their respective schools, each falling victim to one of the seven sins. Besides I find them very interesting mechanically: true specialists with two opposition schools which they cannot choose but which are decided by the school of choice. And having to dedicate both additional spell slots for each level to one spell of the chosesn school. (I would happily mod Baldur's Gate that way.) Here's the level 1 character sheet of my wizard Gerrit:
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Now I feel I almost need to apologize for the extremely min-maxed stats, but in my defense, playing on the "Challenging" difficulty setting has proven to be very hard for me in my first few ventures in Act 1. I'm not looking for an insane challenge, and prefer to role-play and enjoy the story which is more likely to happen with a competent character. Gerrit is True Neutral and may stray into good territory because I don't tend to enjoy playing evil. According to the race description tieflings have free will and can decide their own fate, so lore-wise we're good.
Gerrit is a Grimspawn Tiefling whose +2 to DEX and INT and -2 to WIS look ideal to me. Hopefully I didn't get myself into trouble long-term with this extreme stat spread. STR seems irrelevant unless you want to apply touch spells; I don't as I find it too risky. High DEX is great for Initiative, AC and Reflex saves. Good CON helps with the Fortitude save and hopefully offers a bit of survivability in terms of HPs. Max INT for the maximum amount of spells. WIS seems good mainly for the Perception skill and to boost the Will save. But perception will simply be a skill I won't invest in. And wizards get good Will saves as they level up (unlike Fortitude and Reflex), so that even 5 WIS seems manageable. Low CHA hurts Persuasion and Use Magic Device, but a Viper Familiar and level 1 Skill Focus: Persuasion produces a respectable Persuasion score of 6 at level 1, a score we intend to raise further as we level up.
As a Thassilonian Gerrit follows the path of Envy, focusing on suppressing magic other than his own. This seems to fit his heritage, since Grimspawn are apparently known to be saboteurs. In practice the path of Envy means Gerrit is an Abjurer mage who can cast neither Evocation nor Necromancy spells (although scrolls may still be read with the Use Magic Device skill I believe). I haven't studied all the spells yet, but I believe Envy allows Gerrit to retain most crowd control, buffing, debuffing, summoning, and utility spells at the expense of mainly direct damage (without giving up
all direct damage). Gerrit's level 1 chosen school slots are filled with Shield. What do you folks believe is the best Thassilonian specialization school?
Gerrit's principal skills next to Persuasion are the two Knowledge skills and Trickery (+4 DEX, +2 Grimspawn). His first wizard feat is Spell Focus: Conjuration, for Grease initially and perhaps other AoE stuff like Glitterdust and the Cloud spells. Other seemingly useful class and race benefits include a scaling innate AC boosting spell (Protective Ward), scaling fire, cold, electricity and sonic resistences (all tieflings) and acid resistance (Grimspawn). As an Abjurer Gerrit can get those resistances from an innate ability as well, and they don't seem to stack, so there is some unnecessary overlap there.
I intend to stay single-class first of all because I find the game complex enough as it is, and secondly because I'm not sure I like "shopping" for class feats without a reasonable explanation. (I've seen people recommend things like giving Valerie Thug levels, which is fine of course, and probably effective, but it's not for me.) Gerrit is only in Act 1 still, but since everything is new, it feels like we've already tackled some serious encounters worthy of a report.
That little arrow above the icon for the potion is so tiny that if you're not careful you'll end up clicking on the potion and drinking it yourself instead of feeding it to the enemy! 
