Scholar of the Great Beyond and Lorekeeper are racials that give us a total of +3 to know:history and let is be a class skill. Nothing fancy here, just slap it on the sheet.

Balloon Headed gives us +1 perception and makes it a class skill however… also a -8 to escape artist to squeeze lol. Remember this because it could be a great laugh.

Skilled is half of the normal gobbo racial, we only get the +4 to stealth.

Phantom Hair Lash is our big thing that this archetype and character is all about. Instead of the phantom of the base spiritualist, and all its abilities, we get to manifest weapons from our magical hair. A considerable amount of homebrew applies here and we get to choose between TWF for 1d6 and 1d6, 1H for 1d8 and a free hand, or 2H for 2d6, all light, piercing, and finesse-able. As mentioned in the homebrew, she uses her hands to direct the lashes so whatever she manifests is treated as occupying her hand(s) even though she’s not holding it; you’ll need to manifest the 1H version or stop attacking for a round to have a free hand. With our dumped STR we’ll be dealing pretty poor damage so the 2H version is probably the most sensible at this time. We’re probably just gonna suck at Lv1 but that’s ok, you just gotta live a few levels. Note that these lashes cannot be used to manipulate objects because they’re too stabby but they can Trip, Disarm, and Grapple; which are unlikely to succeed right now.

Weapon Finesse and Piranha Strike are granted for free, sort of, by EITR and that’s what I play with. If you don’t play with EITR… you should cuz its great and really makes thing suck less but.. if you don’t then just bump.. I guess ALL the feats back by 4 levels as you pick these. Don’t do that… just use EITR. These let us apply our DEX to hit with our hair, and trade -1 to hit for +2 to damage (scaling per four levels) which may be necessary to counter our low STR damage penalty. The Stabby lashes are just gonna be more like tickly lashes for the moment…

Weapon Focus: Hair is just your basic +1 to hit with our hair. Being a partial BAB class this feat easily justifies itself but we’re really taking it to be eligible for the made-up WIS to damage feat. Wait… didn’t I just mention how EITR reduces feat tax? And now I’m submitting to a feat tax that I invented? Have I become the mad villain after all?

Knacks are our level 0 spells. Aside from the usual in Daze and Light, I noticed that we have two touch spells. Both are harmless buff spells, Virtue and Guidance, which you normally would not cast on a foe but… lets revisit this again at level 3.

LV1 spells are pretty sparce on the spiritualist; we don’t know many and we don’t get a lot per day and that’s rough right now. Right here at character creation I would suggest Shield and Mage Armor to help keep us alive and in play until we get more stuff to play with. You could just wear some light armor and go with another spell, we don’t take any spell failure. Chill touch will soon be a staple for improving damage. Other good options include Feather Fall for some helicopter hair, and Endure Elements to use your hair as a personal fan or a warm and fuzzy parka, Protection from alignment is ok, Touch of gracelessness could be good, same with cause fear but only for a little while; overall Lv1 spell options are underwhelming or off theme. It’s OK. Just hang in there.

Prehensile Hair Lashes are the interesting and fun part our magic hair. We’re giving up some of that spooky spiritualist stuff to have cool hair stuff and can use it for fun things. The huge homebrew section on that is pretty confusing but the basics are that theres a progression of how soon and how strong options are from this. I’ll try to mention each new threshold of improved function when you get it but I might forget despite the spreadsheet I made [edit: yea I forgot… I didn’t mention jack squat about it by the time I proofread this… I’ll do it now]. You get a pool of length to build your hair from and can do whatever you want with it as long as you have enough. Right now you can make a prehensile hair lash of up to 10ft that can squeeze under doors, reach and manipulate objects, and even hear/see/feel like you can. You can also use your hair to gain a climb speed of 5ft or lift yourself 10ft off the ground but watch out because you can easily get knocked down. This affects your attacks in no way whatsoever.

We DO get a +1 enhancement bonus to our Stabby Lashes though, which is nice.

The waiting has paid off! That’s not an ability.. I’m just rambling now. 2 levels of being pretty meh but the next two abilities are gonna make us be cool. Consider damage to be online now.

Spiritual Combat is our next big cool thing; its quite literally both Spell Combat and SpellStrike from the Magus. Right now we still don’t have many really cool spells to use this on but Chill Touch should be considered online. In addition, remember the Lv0 harmless touch spells? By granting the target a mere +1 to their next roll or +1 temp HP you get a free spellstrike hit just like the magus does using arcane mark- it’s hardly a bad trade given the feat we’re taking at this level and you can do it all day.

Phantom’s Grace is our homebrew ‘feat’ that basically swaps STR to WIS for anything we do with our Stabby Lashes; stabbing, grabbin, etc… Why were we using STR at all when hair has no STR? When I already said that the Prehensile Lashes use her WIS to determine their STR? Mostly because I had originally written this to be a DEX to damage thing but then changed my mind. But wait… aren’t we still using DEX to hit? Yes… lol. Recap: We have DEX to hit because shallotte’s motions direct the hair, WIS to damage because the phantom’s spirit empowers the hair, WIS to CMB also because of the phantom, and you can pretend you have agile maneuvers feat for pre-req purposes because I wanted to.

At this level our Stabby Lash gains a reach of 10ft allowing us to very effectively mid-line. We can stand behind our fighter or barbarian to avoid hits or having to cast defensively and still make our own strikes. We are now able to make attacks of opportunity on approaching foes as well, at least in standard rules, but attacking at reach will also provoke if we are threatened- kinda like how shooting a bow would; so there’s a bit to think about when using the reach. I added a perk clause in the homebrew where the combat maneuver bonus (not defense) increases as if this reach were from being large size so we get a +1 to CMB with the lashes. This is also additional length we can use for our prehensile lashes if we choose not to manifest any for combat.

Ectoplasmic Armor is just free Mage Armor any time you have a Stabby Lash manifested, pretty nice. This will get stronger later too. Picture this as a mesh of your own magic hair woven into a Kevlar vest or something.

Level 2 spells bring a few decent offensive options for spellstriking; Ghoul touch is a bit stinky but potent if they fail their save. Stricken Heart is pretty nice dealing a modest 2d6 damage but applying a no-save stagger for the round (a minute if crit). For defensive options there is protection from arrows to keep us safe from long range threats while we mid-line and False Life is a pretty standard alternative to healing. Again, the spells aren’t super impressive on the spiritualist and we won’t have many per day anyway.

Combat Reflexes will allow us to take greater advantage of our reach potentially making several AOO’s in a round if our positioning is good. This is really more of a foundation feat for others but it will get better when we get even more reach later and when we get the ability to do combat maneuvers in place of AOO’s.

All we get here is a boost to our Lash’s enhancement Bonus, now +2.

Deft Maneuvers is an EITR feat that is simply improved Trip, Disarm, Reposition and Steal all in one. You now gain a +2 with these and don’t provoke when attempting them vs foes who threaten you. Your reach helped with the provoking before because they couldn’t reach you back, now we can do it even when threatened, but would we still provoke from a non-target foe who does threaten us while we attempt a maneuver on a target at 10+ft? Unclear… but the +2 is a very helpful boost.  Note the difference between Disarm and Steal- Disarm is for held objects, Steal is for visible worn/carried objects.

Lv3 Spells bring us the good stuff, finally. Bestow Curse is a classic and solid debuff deliverable via spellstrike. Displacement is a fantastic defensive and will probably be the best one we get for a long time. Force Punch sounds fun and can spellstrike, but the fort save means it won’t often move the targets we’d most like to move. Vampiric Touch is an option for balancing damage and healing with no save. Ectoplasmic Snare is a flavor bomb here; its not a spellstrike but it does target REFLEX grappling foes and still entangling on a save- you have to concentrate to maintain which requires a standard action each turn but if the target failed their save it is worth the action. Consider this a better means of grappling at this level with a longer range and competitive bonus. Haste is worth a mention because its just too good.. if nobody else has it you can and should provide but you aren’t the ideal caster for it due to limited slots.

Our lashes gain the ghost touch property and another 5ft of reach for 15ft total. The reach is now pretty phenomenal and is something typically only achieved with crazy size increases but we get to stay small. In addition, we no longer provoke when attacking at reach while threatened so we can do our thing more freely. As for the ghost touch, its always hard to say how often incorporeal targets will be encountered but if it happens even ones this will feel pretty good- touch em up! Additionally, we now have a +2 size bonus to CMB (not D) because thems some Huge locks of hair to reach 15ft.

Grasping Lash is a homebrew feat I wanted so that this character could more reasonably attempt combat maneuvers. The hair doesn’t do amazing damage and that’s ok, it should be amazing for cool stuff we’ve seen in anime like grabbin baddies and whippin em around; combat maneuvers. Sure, we could just spend a standard and give up our attacks and spell combat but… we’re not full BAB so even with feat support and enhancement bonus we’re not at a big advantage. This feat lets us replace AOO’s with maneuvers, only one of each kind per round for sillies, but we can potentially stop foes who try to move through our reach and all are made at our highest attack bonus. Trip the first, Disarm the weapon of the second, and Grapple the third foe who tries to rush past, but you can’t trip them all. With 15ft reach and  likely 5 AOO’s per round, we can do a lot of shenanigans.

Our lashes upgrade to a +3 enhancement bonus at this level which, more than anything else, represents a pretty massive wealth boost. I haven’t given much thought to what we’d want to spend that saved gold on but we know we could use some +WIS  and +DEX items.

4^th Level spells finally brings us the real ones; the rock solid full flavor and high power combos. Right off the bat we gotta talk about Black Tentacles; its good and we all know it but now it has to be mystical magical raven hair instead of extradimensional loli grabbers- consider this a direct and massive upgrade over Ectoplasmic Snare. Etheric Shards is another banger on theme, rather than invisible energy shards its micron thin strands of razor sharp hair that slow, damage, and bleed creatures moving through lasting hours/lv for an OK combat cast or a phenomenal “don’t follow me” option. Wall of Bone is normally grabby bone-hands coming out of a calcium rich barrier but now it’s a grabby tendrils of hair coming out of a knotted veil of keratin; good for when you want more impassability than tentacles offers. Greater False Life, Freedom of Movement, and Enervation are all powerful but not necessarily thematic so I’ll only drop the names. Decollate, however, is one I’ve been looking for the opportunity to use but hadn’t found the right character yet; normally removing your own head is useless because what’s a head going to do? But when the head has prehensile and weaponized hair attached to it… you almost wonder what’s the point of the body instead. Sufficiently spooky for the possession theme, you should absolutely try to use this somehow; talk to your GM for rulings about how the hair is going to work when you normally direct it with your body but remind him that this is hardly an advantage, tell him I said “just let it happen”.

Constricting Lash is a homebrew feat just for this character that helps us feel like doing combat maneuvers is still a good idea over just dealing damage. We may not be full-attacking but if we succeed at a maneuver with our hair we still deal some damage. For now its just weapon dice plus enhancement but eventually it will be full including WIS and scorpion strike.

At this level we get an un-named ability that basically gives us a free weapon special ability for our lashes. You have to pick from the list in the Spiritbound Blade spell and the choices aren’t all universally useful but it is kinda neat. The Menacing weapon seems like a really great one but its wording makes it not quite what we were hoping for- if YOU are adjacent, and the target is flanked, then flankers get +4 instead of +2. Now… we don’t really want to be adjacent.. but we do want to be flanking. If you could convince your DM to let you grant this bonus just by threatening… it would be really strong, maybe too strong… otherwise you can get keen or ignore concealment. The other options probably just don’t work well for us.

Greater Reposition or Greater Trip are both solid options at this point, though reposition relies upon your allies positioning and ability to make AOO’s and trip doesn’t work on flying foes. Imagine a foe moves into your reach and provokes an AOO, you could reposition the foe into the barbarian’s threatened area giving him an AOO but what happens next? Does the foe get to finish his movement from that spot? If you Trip with an AOO then movement stops and you get to make an AOO. Reposition does have a kinda cool feat chain down the line though…

Level 5 spells do bring in some power but nothing feels as cool as the last tier. Overland Flight and Waves of Fatigue as generally good, but not terrifically interesting. Slay Living is the most powerful damage spell we’re going to get and not far off the spooky theme, easily worth taking to spellstrike with. Suffocation is a save or KO spell, stagger even if save, that kinda works if you imagine some hair choking them out. Wall of Ectoplasm could be flavored as a wall or hemisphere of hair that.. is spooky.. radiating fear effects- but its kind of a stretch. There are other spells worth taking at this level but none feel entirely appropriate- feel free to take what you need because, by this level, you’re invested and its better to keep the character relevant and alive.

All we get at this level is a bump to the enhancement bonus, +4 now.

By this point… everything we hope to do is online. You could take all of the greater maneuver feats so that all your AOO maneuvers get the +2 or you could finish some more interesting feat trees based on what you’ve already got. Greater reposition lets you move foes into allies threatened area to provoke AOO’s and then the Whipcrack feat lets you send your dance partner spinning off in a straight line, and Domino Crash lets you whipcrack a foe into another to reposition that foe too; quite silly but tempting just for the laughs. Greater Grapple and Rapid Grapple are nice but I already made 2 builds that focus on grapple. There are some great trip tree builds as well but I also already made a build that takes advantage of those via Overrun. Disarm and Steal might be neat if you wanna see all your enemies equipment falling away from them. Ultimately, take whatever you feel like at this point.

You get a second weapon special ability at level 16, as per spiritbound weapon, and enhancement bonus grows to +5 at level 18. The fearstacking weapon ability might synergize with any fear inducing spells you’ve taken along the way but otherwise it’s the same stuff. The Cap stone gives you a bit of extra length and the ability to manifest or change your lashes however you wish as an immediate action. I could be more creative with that but… despite capstones being among the most flavorful and class defining things they’re also the least accessed due to being 20^th level.

We get access to 6^th level spells where we can pick up Harm as ultimate spellstrike option. Banshee Blast is a cone with modest damage and a Panic effect, feels plenty spooky and offers control. Enemy Hammer is basically telekinesis for not merely throwing but swinging enemies around and it ruins their turn too, but if you imagine that it’s your hair doing the hurling then it tastes right. They get a save against each throw but not the effect itself which goes on for rounds per level. The damage is poor at this level but the range and turn denial is excellent if the target has a soft fort save.