Brawlers: Debuffing with STYLE

A note: I play primarily in PFS games where gameplay rarely getting past level 12 or 15.  That said, this guide is primarily for the lower levels but looks forward into higher level ranges as the brawler is mostly about building a solid base at early levels.

I would also like to make a note that while you can easily hyperfocus on one or two tricks with the brawler, I feel that you may as well make a lore-warden or an unchained monk as far as optimization.  The brawler’s strength comes from superior flexibility, and this guide aims to help you leverage that functionality of the class.

Forward

To many, maximizing the damage and maneuverability of a class is a priority.  Those people often argue as if there is no other approach to a class in a guide, and I have to disagree.  Looking at a brawler, the most striking characteristic is Martial Flexibility, followed by Brawler’s Flurry.  While you can certainly specialize in one action with a brawler, you would almost universally be better served if you did a level 1 monk and X levels in fighter, as you get almost the same outcome, save a few minor abilities.  Both have equivalent feats if you include Martial Flexibility, but on a timer.

Brawlers, and stay with me for a moment, are in my mind the wildcard of the melee classes.  They are the most adaptable, and can handle the widest range of potential encounters.  A Grappling LoreWarden would certainly have a higher CMB/CMD against grappling than a brawler, but only a brawler can be 80-90% of a LoreWarden specialist in every combat maneuver, and potentially a wide range of other situations.  At very high level play, combat maneuvers can begin to start trailing in power compared to other approaches, and thus static builds can often run into trouble.  Since a brawler doesn’t have to invest in focusing on a combat maneuver or style more than one (or in some rare cases two) feats, they are free to prioritize their baseline.

In my mind, this is, in a way, Paizo’s response to melee classes not having responses to a wider variety of enemies than mages. In my mind, I prefer to think of CMD as an opponent’s fourth save.  There are a limited number of maneuvers compared to something like spells and each takes significantly more investment.  However, unlike spells, there is rarely immunity, and bonuses vs. certain combat maneuvers simply means it’s easiest to use a different one.  Additionally, the swing for CMD/CMB is much larger than save DCs, making it much easier to boost CMB to numbers that promise success against a very wide range of targets without sacrificing all traits and feats to hyper-specialize in one area.  So while a Rakshasa has great saves, SR 25, decent unarmored AC (and great armored AC), and a mess of spells a brawler can reliably beat a CMD of 29, making any concentration checks significantly harder, potentially preventing it from maneuvering out of reach, and giving you something you can get answers from after the fight is over.

A brawler is not the best at anything, it is a master of everything a melee class can do.  You sacrifice effectiveness, but rarely enough to make a difference.  Use Brawler’s Flurry and have as many attacks as a rogue against lower AC targets or neglect it to maximize your chance to hit, right up there with specialized THF builds.  Grapple, trip, blind, nauseate, steal, bull rush, overrun, and reposition the nastiest of targets out of the way of your team.  Be a potential master of most styles on top of everything else.  By using Martial Flexibility to conserve your feats, you effectively get dozens of additional potential feats to spend, more with every foundation you build using those feats, all on top of the ability to retrain half of them on the fly every few levels if you decide something no longer works.

A brawler is a generalist that works.

This guide reflects this mentality and approach to the class, eschewing traditional approaches to character builds and hopefully opening eyes to the potential a brawler can offer.

Colour Coding the Guide:

Ripped right from Treatmonk.  It’s a standard because it works.

Red: Warning.  This is a poor option and should be avoided.

Orange: This is an OK option.  I'm not recommending it, but it's not bad.

Green: I recommend this option.  It is a strong choice.

Blue: A must have.  Your best possible option.

Attributes

The following recommendations are after your racial adjustments, whatever they might be.

Strength: This is your primary stat.  It impacts your CMB, CMD, damage, hit bonus, and your Knockout DC.  Unfortunately, you need a little something-something in your other physical traits since you’re a frontline class with low AC.  I would keep this fairly high, and never below 16.  Going for 20 is nice, but will likely cost you too much if you’re doing point-buy.

If you want a DEX build you can put this much lower at 13-14.  Don’t go below 13 though, and check the prerequisites for the various feats you might want to take with Martial Flexibility, you’ll still need Power Attack.

Dexterity: While not as important as Strength, Dexterity increases your CMD and AC, both important in a class that truly doesn’t have much in the way of defenses.  I’d suggest 14-16.

If you are going for a higher AC build, you might neglect strength in favor of dex, and use close group weapons or an amulet of mighty fists with the Agile enchantment to make up the damage gap.  If this is the case, max this out.  Minimum 18, but you might try for 20 if it won’t impact your CON or STR.

Constitution: Again, as a class with a legitimate need in all three physical traits, you need a high constitution in order to attempt to make up for your lower AC and you’ll be right up in the faces of disease and poison, so a good Fortitude save is invaluable.  At least a 14, but if you can pull a 16, do it.

Intelligence: With the brawler’s cunning trait, the only reason to have points in Intelligence is to have more skillpoints and improve their limited skill set.  Personally I hate low skill point builds, so I try to keep this at 8, but you can drop it to 7 for more points to distribute elsewhere.  Your job is to punch reel gud, so don’t sweat it.

Wisdom: While it doesn’t do anything for your build, as most martial classes, you have an atrocious will save.  If you still have some points left, put them here for anything you can get.  10-12

Charisma: You are not the face, you punch things in the face.  As much as one might wish, Brawlers don’t have much outside of combat.  Dump it to 7.  Alternatively you could keep it around 10-12 and use the intimidate skill and related feats to help debuff opponents, though your actions could be better spent beating the tar out of someone.  Particularly viable if you’re Half-Orc.

Stat Arrays

Races

Human: A good choice, primarily because the bonus feat allows you to get your baseline prerequisite feats out of the way on the first level, skilled supplements your viability outside of combat, and the floating stat bonus is what it is, great.  You can get away without getting the free feat though, so take it with a grain of salt.  Finally, the human’s FCB is a legitimate choice if you plan on using lots of combat maneuvers.  Grapples and Trip can be turned against you, and you want to maximize your CMD for when you roll terribly.

Elf: A hit to your primary survivability stat and bonuses to a secondary and a useless stat.  While the racial abilities allow you to make up for part of your terrible will save, it will lower your effectiveness overall.  Skip it.

Halfling: It’s already difficult getting a brawler to be combat effective, and small means a penalty to CMB/CMD, but stay with me.  If you were to use weapons with a dex build, utilizing the agile enchantment and the Agile Maneuvers feat… you might have something.  Your biggest problem is going to be dealing with size limitations on some maneuvers, you’ll take a small hit to damage, but your AC will be significantly more impressive.  If you dump STR, your CMD will take a bit of a hit too.  I’d pass, but you might be able to pull something decent off.  You’re slow though, which is going to cause problems.  Orange if you’re daring, red for you sane types.

Gnome: see Halfling, but with a bonus to con instead of dex.  Pass.

Half-Elf: Better.  Bonuses to useful skills, floating stat bonus, immunity to sleep, and bonuses to saves typically targeting your worst save.  Viable.  The skill focus feat is good to bring a skill into effective territory; this is especially so if you want to use something like Snake Style and put the feat into Sense Motive.  

Alternatively you can switch out the skill focus for the Duel Minded trait for a +4 to most will saves (!!!) and stop worrying about your weak save [thanks to Lemeres for noticing this].  Considering this option, I would put this just below Human as the best racial choice, simply because the extra feat early on is very helpful for the early levels.

Dwarf: Penalty in the right place, bonuses on decent (though not primary) stats, darkvision, and a bonus to CMD against trip and bullrush.  Not bad.  However, a penalty to your movement can be a killer, especially when going against mages who can negate nearly everything you can do with a single spell…  It could be fun, but the movement penalty is too much for me.

Half-Orcs: Darkvision, floating stat bonus, and ferocity that you can switch out for Sacred Tattoo.  A strong setup for a front line character.  Possibly a better option, especially in PFS and especially when your goal is to lay out damage as a front-liner strength build.

The Brawler’s Role

As far as I can tell, there is only one type of successful brawler, the flexible kind.  Regardless of what build you go for, this is the one thing you must keep in mind.  It doesn’t matter how good your build is, if you don’t use Martial Flexibility effectively, if you don’t know your feat options, the brawler will stand out in a party beyond the BDF.

The other thing to keep in mind is that combat maneuvers are your bread and butter, and they can be confusing to use.  Read carefully through the combat section of the Core Rule Book, and how bonuses apply to your combat maneuvers.  A few things to consider:

• Grappling – It’s about as confusing as you can get.  Make sure you know this backwards and forwards if you want to use it.  I could write an entire guide on this alone with all of its exceptions and potential bonuses, but in my opinion grappling is one of the stronger options for a brawler (grapple >> pin >> take a mage/BBEG out of a fight).  
• Certain Attack Bonuses Stack with CMB for Disarm/Trip/Sunder – Remember that bonuses to a specific weapon get added to your CMB during a maneuver check.  For example, the Brawling enchantment specifically calls out a bonus to Grappling, but that’s because by default that +2 hit bonus to unarmed attacks is added to disarm, trip, and sunder maneuvers; the three maneuvers you can replace an attack with.  
• Replace Attacks With Disarm/Trip/Sunder – You can replace attack rolls (even those on a charge attack) with trip, disarm, and sunder maneuvers.  Most other maneuvers require a standard action.  Combine this with Brawler’s Flurry and you can debuff a mess of opponents.
• Penalties to Your Attack Bonus Lower Your CMB – Cover, reductions from iterative attacks, and other situational penalties all impact your CMB.  Don’t forget to take these into account!
• High CMB/CMD – At level 8, you can reasonably get a base CMB of +14 (8 BAB + 6 STR).  Add in Maneuver Training, the brawling enchantment, weapon focus (unarmed), being able to take the improved/greater maneuver feats on the fly, and potions of enlarge, you can get your CMB above 20 on most if not all combat maneuvers.  According to average CMDs for most opponents, you’ll have 95% (don’t roll a 1) success rate at equivalent level to CR, 70% at +3 CR, and even odds or a little less at +6 CR.  You are a beast, and you can get these numbers with most if not all combat maneuvers, not just one.  Certain items can raise this even more for individual maneuvers.  Your CMD is also ridiculous, particularly with the Human FCB option.
• Open Handed Disarming – open hands mean you take the weapon in your hand if you want.  You’re considered armed, so you don’t need to take the normal -4 penalty.  This prevents your opponent from picking it back up, and leaves them to, often, run away or provoke with unarmed attacks.
• Sunder The World – You can sunder magic items like rings and amulets, not just weapons and armor.  It sucks to lose loot, but choosing between that BBEG using an item to negate your party’s combat effectiveness or outright kill a couple PCs and winning… it’s an option you’ll want to keep on the plate.

Class Abilities

Brawler’s Cunning: Saves you from the curse of MADD.  Great ability to set the build, and lets you explore the Combat Expertise tree and combat maneuvers without worry.

Martial Flexibility: This is what lets you adapt where others might flounder, and adapting to a situation is what you do best.  Suddenly have to deal with a multi-legged monster?  Grab Improved Grapple or Improved Dirty Trick and take it out of the fight.  Need to facilitate a tactical advance away from the enemy?  Go for Dodge and Mobility or a defensive style tree.  Opponent has adamantine equipment?  Disarm, steal, then trip and leave them on the floor without their precious equipment.  Can’t see the opponent?  Take the Blind-Fighting tree and show that mage that invisibility isn’t as great as they hoped.  You might not do any one of these things as well as a dedicated role, but you can do them all pretty well, on demand.  You are the muscle wizard, and polymorph is your bread and butter.

Martial Training: Nice.  Something that lets you take those fighter feats that make your unarmed attacks more effective, or lets you dip into Monk shenanigans if you didn’t tank your wisdom too terribly.  Also lets the Monk’s Robe increase your damage output a step or two.  Great if you want to exploit those areas, useless if you don’t.  

Unarmed Strike: Same as the Monk.  It lets you have half a chance in hell of keeping up with other front-liners on damage.  It also includes language that means magic fang and magic weapon function on your unarmed strikes, so there’s that.  It’s what you do.  Green only because some people dislike unarmed attacks and prefer to use manufactured weapons.

Bonus Combat Feats: You might be thinking, “I can take feats at will, who needs bonus feats?”  You do.  Outside of the prerequisite feats, you might want to focus on a particular combat maneuver, or try to counteract your terrible defenses, or make up for your monk levels of damage.  Whatever you do, you need more static feats.  The flexibility of being able to switch out the most recently acquired combat feat is nice for test driving new ideas in the field.  You get just a couple feats shy of a full fighter, AND spontaneous feats from Martial Flexibility.  You can afford to take the shallow pool approach a fighter never could.

Brawler’s Flurry: More free feats!  According to the Devs, the Two Weapon Fighting tree feats this ability grants you count as “having the feat” for the purpose of qualifying for other feats.  However, those other feats only come into play WHILE using this ability, and lasting until the start of your next round.  So you only get the shield bonus from Two Weapon Defense on rounds when you use Brawler’s Flurry.  It also gives you full STR damage bonuses on all your attacks.  Hot dog.

Maneuver Training: Like the Ranger’s favored enemy ability but for combat maneuvers.  A nice bonus to CMB and CMD.  I recommend putting them into the maneuvers you’ll use offensively the most, every point counts.

AC Bonus: General CMD bonus and AC bonus.  Minor, but okay.  Really not significant enough to make an impact, and at a slightly slower progression than the Monk’s.

Knockout: One of the more interesting abilities.  On top of everything else, we get a 1/day save-or-suck (capping out at 3/day).  On top of all that, it keys off of your STR or DEX, whichever is higher!  Most Brawlers will be rocking something around a DC 20 Fort Save by level 8.  Great for that first-round charge attack on the mage, and due to limited use, that’s probably all you’ll be using it for.

Brawler’s Strike: Sort of outside of the non-magical flavor intended here, I understand it was put there to balance the class, and is vital to using unarmed strikes.  You’ll have to use backup weapons while you level up, but can drop them at appropriate levels.  Once you hit 9th level you can drop all the close weapon group weapons you have and enchant your adamantium backups for sundering and DR bypass needs.

At 9th level with adamantium cestus, snake style, and a holy amulet of mighty fists, you can bypass practically any DR that you’re likely to run into without having to change equipment on the fly.  This is mostly true for PFS, home game experience may vary at higher levels depending on alignment based DR.

Close Weapon Mastery: This is what keeps using those close weapon group options viable.  It’s fairly slow progression, but it’s better than the norm by a big step.  A nice bonus that makes normally poor weapon choices more viable.  Blue if you’re doing a dex/weapon build.  

Awesome Blow / Improved Awesome Blow: With all the wacky abilities this class has, this is an interesting capstone.  Mostly I like the visual of knocking opponents around like popcorn kernels in a hot pan.  But since this uses your base CMB against their CMD, it’s not terribly effective against the sort of critters you’d be fighting at this level.  If you get to this point and want to make use of this, make sure you’ve focused on magic items that grant flat bonuses to CMB/CMD instead of items for specific maneuvers.  If nothing else it’s visually amusing!

Archetypes

Beast-Wrestler: Limits and strengthens some secondary brawler abilities.  Only worth taking if you know you’ll be dealing with specific non-humanoid (or giant) opponents.

• Beast Training - A limited version of a ranger’s favored enemy ability, except the bonuses go towards combat maneuvers only.  While combat maneuvers are the bread and butter of a brawler, this is a situational ability at best, despite the rather large untyped bonuses.
• Beast Defenses - limits your rather limited AC Bonus ability to the favored enemy types you selected above, but makes it ½ your brawler level instead of a static bonus.  Again, very situational.

Exemplar: Removes the brawler’s unarmed combat capabilities to gain some party buff mechanics.  Best after level 5, but due to limited uses of the class abilities, you’ll end up spending feats on increasing their usefulness, which will reduce your ability to be effective in combat.  Causes a brawler to become even more action choked.

• Call to Arms - Use a Martial Flexibility action to remove the flat-footed condition from all allies within 30 feet.  Only useful if the brawler gets a high initiative roll until 12th level, when it becomes an immediate action and allows the brawler to remove some situational penalties from their allies.
• Inspiring Prowess - Allows you access to some bard feats and the ability to flex and create a bardsong effect at a bard’s class level -2 and no need for the perform skill.  Nice, but you must maintain a line of sight with your allies for it to work, and you’re already choked with action economy at the start of fights.  
• Field Instruction - This is the archetypes golden nugget.  Give your entire team access to multiple teamwork feats regardless of qualification.  Downside is that you if you’re doing this, your direct combat contribution won’t be as significant.

Mutagenic Mauler: By massively shifting a brawler’s focus from adaptability to damage output, the mutagenic mauler makes for an interesting single-level dip in a full BAB class to gain access to a mutagen.  Not worth it for a dedicated brawler.

• Mutagen - Pretty amazing, but at a great cost.  Excellent for a single level dip.  It scales slightly in that you get access to a couple discoveries and increased damage output at higher levels.
• Beastmorph - If you dedicate your levels to the Mutagenic Mauler, this helps counterbalance the loss of Martial Flexibility.  Speed, vision, and alternative movement bonuses mean your heavy hitter can get up in your opponent’s face in short order.  However, every level past the first spent in this class won’t scale as well as other options.

Shield Champion: Probably my favorite for fluff and entertaining game mechanics and a fairly viable, if feat starved option.  The rules don’t specifically state you start with shield bash as a weapon proficiency, so you’ll have to buy it with a feat until it (probably) gets errata'd.  If you can manage the first few levels, use a dex build and put Agile on your shield spikes and your AC will be astronomical.  Consider mixing with the Winding Path Renegade and the unfolding wind school for extra range and defensive options.

• Weapon and Armor Proficiency - Gives you what you need.  It would be green if it included shield bash as a weapon proficiency you have, but that will probably be fixed in later versions.  Otherwise nothing impressive here.
• Throw Shield - Your bread and butter.  You’ll need quickdraw light shields and the quickdraw feat to effectively use this archetype. Past that, add spikes and start enchanting.  Free Far Shot feat with shields is a nice bonus along with ranged combat maneuvers.
• Champion Defense - At the levels you get this ability, you’ll probably have trouble making the saves.  Sort of a flop.
• Returning Shield - another golden ability for the archetype.  Allows you to use iterative attacks with a single throw along with some great higher level abilities like increasing the base die to your unarmed damage.  This is what lets you get around the vague limits concerning duplicate free actions in a single round.

Snakebite Striker: Good only as a single level drop for full BAB, SA damage, and save bonuses.  The feint and additional SA bonuses come too slowly, or are completely useless compared to the high cost to the class.  Red as a standalone class, orange for a single level dip in specific builds.

• Sneak Attack: Only orange because you get 1d6 SA damage at level 1, which makes it good for a dip.  Absolutely terrible improvement rate isn’t worth the loss of martial flexibility.
• Snake Feint: It’s a traaaaap.  Feinting is a pretty weak action, especially at higher levels.  It’s not worth losing the maneuver training stages.
• Opportunist: Not worth it at all considering you have to have 11 levels in the class to get it.

Steel-Breaker: Sacrifice your natural DR bypass abilities and typeless bonuses to CMB/D for a focus on sundering all the loot you’ll get from a fight.  I know I made a point to call out sunder as a viable option in a fight, but I wouldn’t want to make it my strongest trick.  Further, it requires Wisdom, which turns the brawler into a MAD class.

• Exploit Weakness - requires Wisdom to function effectively, which will pull away from your primary stats for a mediocre bonus to sundering that Martial Flexibility can match in most cases without a check.
• Sunder Training - The best bonus this archetype offers, but it’s a case of too little too late.  Orange because it tries.

Strangler: another archetype that focuses on a single trick, this time grappling.  While it allows you to do some crazy grapple shenanigans and damage, it comes at the cost of unarmed strike and brawler’s flurry, which means your best way of dealing damage is locked to grappling.  Luckily you don’t lose martial flexibility, which makes this more viable than many other options.

• Strangle - Turns your brawler into a grappling nightmare at the cost of your ability to inflict battlefield control.  Your increased unarmed damage still comes into play during a grapple, but otherwise requires you take the feat this ability removes.
• Practiced Strangler - removes the penalty for grappling and helps protects you a bit from losing control of a grapple to a really nasty opponent.  But your CMD will be pretty impressive for grappling anyway, so it isn’t as good as it sounds.
• Sleeper Hold - More class abilities shifting towards grapple, but it takes longer to set up than the Knockout ability it replaces, which makes it markedly less useful.  
• Neckbreaker - Following the conversion of a brawler’s class abilities to grappling, but with a heavy penalty to high level grapple checks.  At this level, even with the impressive save here, the only necks you’ll break are those of unprepared mages, if you’re lucky.  It’s better than the ability it replaces, but only just so.

Wild Child: At the cost of your bonus feats and some other class abilities, you get an animal companion and integrates it into your maneuver training bonuses by granting it specialized combat maneuver tricks.  However, you don’t get all the bonuses like a hunter or the spells of a druid to turn your companion into a real monster.  You’re basically limiting the functionality of your brawler for a mediocre pet.

• Animal Companion - As the druid ability, for a good deal of your bonus feats.  A high cost considering you don’t have the means to buff your pet into a real monster.
• Hunter’s Tricks - Forces you to rely only on unarmed attacks, which isn’t a terrible thing.  Allows you to grant bonus tricks to your pet by using Martial Flexibility.  There are probably better things you could be spending your Martial Flexibility uses on.
• Maneuver Training - Turns your pet into a combat maneuver ally, except a lack of pet access to the deep maneuver feat trees and equipment slots means they’ll never be truly competitive at it, particularly at higher levels.  It also isn’t clear if it prevents attacks of opportunities.
• Wild Tricks - there goes your other free feats.  More tricks, and probably not worth it, though being able to choose from any the hunter has access to means you can give your pet some nice abilities.

Winding Path Renegade: The best archetype available, near levels of cheese.  Grants some excellent bonuses and free feats for only 3 of your bonus feats, and the ability to spend Martial Flexibility for temporary access to some of the good monk class abilities.  What’s even more impressive is that you can take this and Shield Champion together, which lends itself to a truly impressive ranged build.  You lose the non-mystical flavor though, so some people might not like it.

• School Focus - Untwisting Iron school isn’t useful in PFS, but the other two schools both offer some great (read: amazing) bonuses.  Unfolding Wind offers some interesting defensive options and some added functionality for thrown weapons (mixes well with Shield Champion!), while Unblinking Flame offers excellent move speed bonuses, bonuses to grapple damage, and an amazing freedom of movement ability at higher levels that also deals damage.  Double-plus good.  I’d give Unblinking Flame blue, Unfolding Wind orange (or green if combined with Shield Champion), and red to Untwisting Iron unless crafting is a thing you want to do for income or the party in a home game.
• Monk Moves - Extra access to immensely useful class abilities that combine very well with the brawler at the cost of a mediocre class ability.  I’m flabberghasted at how good this archetype is compared to the others.

Feats

Because of how the Brawler handles feats, I’ll rate these for permanent options instead of feats for Martial Flexibility.

Dodge – with a bonus to AC and CMD, this might be worth it.  It’s also worth considering going down the spring attack feat tree to help minimize the full attacks you’re likely to suffer, but consider that your offensive power also comes from being able to use Brawler’s Flurry.  At the very least, you can also pick up Mobility to allow you to run past the front-line units to sack the mages your debuffing abilities will help the most against.  It also unlocks a number of feat options with Martial Flexibility.

Slashing Grace – Thought you might use Slashing Grace to make up for the damage, eh?  Nope.  It only works on one handed weapons, and all the close weapons are light.  You could take a proficiency feat, but brawler’s flurry only works with those light weapons and monk weapons.  You’ll have to use the Agile weapon enchantment to make up for your combat damage.

Agile Maneuvers – For those brawlers who focus on Dex and still want to use combat maneuvers.  This will make your build possible.  Red for strength builds, Blue for a dex based Brawler.

Weapon Focus – grab it.  You need your hit bonuses as high as you can with TWF and power attack in the mix.  It’s also a prerequisite to many feats.  Adds +1 to your disarm, trip, and sunder combat maneuver checks if you make them using the associated weapon, be it unarmed or something else.

Weapon Specialization – This is one reason a brawler is going to have better unarmed attacks than a monk.  If you have a spare feat, go for it.  Great at level 4 when your damage is still struggling.  If you’re using weapons, it might still be a good idea as you won’t be getting THW bonuses.

Deflect Arrows – A means of negating some of those incoming attacks while you close to an effective range.  A minor benefit.  I like it for flavor more than effectiveness, but it is great to ignore 1 attack a round while you deal with priority targets.

Combat Expertise – situational on its own, but required for so many other feats.  This is why you have Brawler’s Cunning.  Required.

Combat Reflexes – Some may argue for it, but I think it’s too situational.  I’d recommend taking it with Martial Flexibility as it comes up instead of spending a feat on it.  However, it is also a pre-requisite for some feats, so I prefer to judge it on that more than the extra AoOs.  If you’re playing a DEX build, this might be worth consideration, especially if you are enlarged and can play with your reach.

Power Attack – Required, hands down.  You need it for many feats and your damage needs the help.

Furious Focus – Typically you’ll be making enough attacks that this will have minimum benefit for you.  Since you can’t use vital strike with spring attack or charges, this is primarily useful in the opening round of a combat or during charge attacks.  This is situational at best unless you forgo using Brawler’s Flurry most of the time, which isn’t recommended.

Style Feat Trees – For the most part, these are going to be things you spend Martial Flexibility uses on.  However, you might consider taking feats in either Crane Style or Snake Style.  The former gives you some nice bonuses to your AC, improving your survivability, though your hit bonuses might revolt against you.  The latter gives you a decent method of negating most touch and ranged touch attacks and an out-of-combat function.  If you go for Snake Style, consider the feats Skill Focus (Sense Motive) and Alertness; both bonuses double when you get 10 ranks in them.  Damage builds might dip a level or two into Monk and take the Dragon Style line to maximize damage output.

Step Up – free 5’ step up to keep opponents from getting away from you.  More if you dig deeper into this tree.  You might consider the first feat in this tree, but it is probably better as a Martial Flexibility option.

Iron Will – Practically required if you ever want to make a will save with this class.  Remember you can only take it with your normal feats as your bonus feats are combat only.

Improved Initiative – Do it.  I’d personally wait until you get your required feats down (power attack and combat expertise), but after that you have a lot more room to play.  Going before enemy mages means you might start a grapple before they can do anything about it.  

Improved Weapon Focus: Mmm, okay.  It’s hard to keep up with enemy ACs later in the game, especially if you’re using your unarmed attacks, but you’re primarily going to be doing this with the expenditure of gold at this level.  Consider it if you have spare feats because the bonuses to certain combat maneuvers will be useful.  Halfway between orange and green, simply because hit bonuses are gold with a brawler.

Greater Weapon Specialization: At this level there are probably better things to spend a feat on.  On the other hand, Martial Flexibility eliminates the need to get a lot of feats.  If it wasn’t for your class ability, this wouldn’t even be worth considering.  Even with it, it entirely depends on where you’re taking your build.

Improved [Combat Maneuver]: Typically you can avoid taking these feats as you can use Martial Flexibility to get them, especially before level 8.  However, you may consider grabbing this for your combat maneuver of choice as you hit mid- and upper-level ranges.  This leaves you free to use Martial Flexibility to take defense options, dive deeper into the maneuver feat tree, or conserve uses for when you need to make other combat maneuver checks.

Greater [Combat Maneuver] and their associated trees:  There are better feats to take.  Don’t forget that specialization comes at the cost of flexibility, and that’s your thing.   Your Martial Flexibility feat will allow you to dig deep enough into a feat tree as you gain meet the feat requirements and level up.

Quick [Combat Maneuver]: take some of those feats you can’t switch out attacks for and switch out attacks for them.  As a feat to take, I think this weakens your foundation.  As a Martial Flexibility feat, I think you can suddenly blind a group of opponents with Quick Dirty Trick.

Pummeling Style Tree: Of the other styles you might consider, this one is of note.  It’s a great way to negate the worst of DR and potentially rack up significant damage, not to mention the potential for crit damage.  This is a great option if you’d like a permanent offensive style to take up any swift actions Martial Flexibility hasn’t already gobbled up.  The description isn’t clear that it works with brawler’s flurry, but due to the requirement and the similarity to the new Unchained Flurry of Blows, I would be surprised if it didn’t apply.  At level 12 you can take the second rank and have your own devastating pounce attack.  A FAQ confirms that it is restricted to unarmed attacks.  Rated Blue or Green, depending entirely on your preferences for a focus on control or damage.

Martial Flexibility Combos

There. Are. Tons.  Some are more obvious than others, but one could probably write a whole other guide about using this ability at various levels and situations.  Instead, I’ll reference a thread in the GITP forums that covers some of the wilder options, outline a few obvious choices, and leave the rest to your imagination.  I think it’s important to go through the feats yourself with regards to this ability; you need to be able to think on the fly about how to best exploit a situation, and no amount of guides will help you there.  I highly encourage trying out wacky feat combos during play!

ProTip For Smooth Play: Print out or write down the feats, trees, requirements, and exact text of combos you’d use so you don’t have to dig through books mid-game.  If you want to spare the trees, focus just on the feats you plan on using 90% of the time.  Also, make sure you fully understand what each combat maneuver does, and where any of the numerous penalties can occur.

Everything else is just a matter of digging into feat trees, exploring what different feats can do for you, and trying things out in-game.

Combat Maneuver Trees: Can’t afford Improved [Combat Maneuver] at your level?  Grab it for free as you need it.  Later on you can take some of the initial feats as you level to allow you to dig further into their respective trees.

Quick Combat Maneuver Feats: As a sub-section of the above, it’s good to remember these exist, and they allow you to use Martial Flexibility to turn around and blind a group of opponents, or move a small group behind you after tripping and disarming them.

Dodge Tree: puts you towards spring attack, which can make you a more mobile attacker.  Might be worth grabbing dodge as a static feat too, but most times you’ll want full attack actions to use Brawler’s Flurry and maximize your battlefield control ability.  Other times you’ll want to be able to duck in, disarm, and duck back out.  When it’s the latter case, this is where you’ll go.

Style Trees: Need some specialized function or ability?  Read through them all. You’ll probably not have the Wisdom or Stunning Fist feat prerequisites for half of these, but Snake, Crane, Pummeling, Dragon (first level), and Boar are all useful.

Blind-Sight Tree: It requires 10 ranks in Perception before you can start digging into this tree beyond the first feat, but good to keep in mind for when those soft mages decide to throw out invisible and you’re short a Hand of Glory.

The Step-Up Tree: As you’ll have something to say to most enemy mages, this isn’t a bad choice for Martial Flexibility.  Situational enough to avoid taking it as a feat, useful enough to want it on a moment’s notice.

Skills

I’ll stick to highlighting the ones that are important to note.  You won’t have many points to distribute, but the 4+INT points means you’ll at least get between 2 and 5 a level, depending on your race and how badly you tanked your INT.  It’s not worth it to dump points from your favored class bonus into skillpoints.  You need the CMD or HP bonuses more.

Acrobatics: Get points in this.  Dipping through combat is always a useful ability.  If you’re using a DEX build, this is only going to be more impressive.  Important to slipping past the defensive line and saying hello to the squishy mage.

Climb: Since it keys off of Strength and it’s a class skill, drop a point into it.  You might as well be good at it as so few others will be.  Orange for dex builds.

Escape Artist: No, just no.  You’re a combat maneuver expert.  You’ll probably be outpacing most NPC’s ability to escape your grapples, much less keep you in one, and should have even odds or better against most opponents at a CR equivalent to or 3 above your level.  Ignore even if you’re a dex build!

Knowledge (Dungeoneering): Your one monster knowledge check!  Drop in at least one skill point.  Max it if you’d like to improve that out-of-combat viability.

Knowledge (Local): Right up there with Perception in common skills.  Max it.  You’ll struggle for that out-of-combat viability.

Perception: Not a class skill, but useful.  If you took a trait to make it a class skill, even better.  Max it out as it is the most used skill out there.

Sense Motive: This is situational.  If you decide to go for Snake Style, you’ll want to max this out as it’ll improve your touch AC against nasty spells.  Otherwise you’d get more out of dumping points into other social skills or into your knowledge skills.

Swim: Similarly to Climb, get at least 1 point in it for the initial bonus in case you have to make checks on the fly.  If the cleric falls in the drink, someone will need to pull them out before they drown, after all.  Orange for dex builds.

Favored Class Bonus:

For the most part, I would recommend dropping them into extra HP.  You’ll need every point you can get.  However, if you’ve chosen human as your race, you might consider the racial FCB.  +1 CMD vs. two Combat Maneuvers.  Many maneuvers give the opponent an opportunity to tag you back if you fail, and most opponents capable of resisting you will have pretty high CMBs, especially later on.  I recommend Grapple as one of them just because of how often grab comes up, trip or disarm are other good ideas, depending on your build.  Sunder if your GM is a jerk.

Equipment

This can depend on what you want to specialize in, so I’ll focus on items that are a bit more specific to a Brawler’s unique abilities; unarmed combat and combat maneuvers.  

Belt of Stat Bonus: Pretty obvious.  You can decide to boost it to a +4 later on, or add on other physical attribute bonus types, depending on your build preference.

Brawling Enhancement to Armor: Amazing if you’re using unarmed attacks and a great way to make up the gap TWF and power attack cause.  Practically a slap in the face to the current monk.  Probably the first thing you want to buy with any significant money.

Cloak of Resistance: Pretty standard.  Your will save is garbage and you’ll need every point you can get your grubby little hands on.

Gauntlets of the Skilled Maneuver: An untyped +2 to CMB for one type of combat maneuver.  Pick your favorite flavor and enjoy the bonus.

Wayfinder + Dusty Rose Prism Ioun Stone: If your GM allows resonant powers, or you’re playing PFS, this gets you an untyped +2 CMB/CMD bonus and +1 insight bonus to AC.  Not a bad choice.

Wayfinder + Clear Spindle Ioun Stone: another Ioun stone resonant power.  Remember those terrible will saves?  This one gives you permanent immunity to mind control attempts cast by evil mages as per the second effect of Protection From Evil.  There has been a lot of discussion on the Paizo forums over exactly what this covers, but it seems like it’s come out as immunity to spells that give the caster direct control over your actions (domination, charm, suggestion, etc…) and not things like confusion or hold person.  A narrow application, but if you know you’re going to deal with these, it’s worth it.

Monk’s Robe: It’s called out in the Martial Training ability so it’s great right?  Yes and No.  If you’ve got all the money in the world to throw at it, it’s a pretty good item for an unarmed brawler.  However, it’s 12k gold which is a lot at earlier levels, and there is question as to if it stacks with your AC bonus ability or if it only gives you the Monk’s ability.  They have the same name, but are written differently.  The unarmed damage is identical though, so there isn’t a question there.

NOTE: This is no good for anyone who uses a weapon instead of unarmed attacks, as the text for Close Weapon Mastery states it keys off your class level, not your unarmed damage or effective level for unarmed damage.  Whomp whomp.

Cestus: This thing is great for the unarmed focused brawler.  It offers slashing damage, you’re already proficient with it, can be made with special materials for early DR bypassing, can’t be disarmed, and leaves your hand open.  The last two parts are important.  When disarming if your hands are free you can take the disarmed weapon into your hands instead of dropping it at their feat, making it harder for your opponent to get their weapon back.  Further, you can still use unarmed attacks even with your hands are full.  And when it comes to grappling, your hands are open so no penalty.  And while it doesn’t explicitly state this, if it follows other glove-like weapons, you cannot be disarmed.  It starts as only 1d4 damage, but will increase as you level up.  The -2 penalty to delicate manipulation is a non-issue for you since the only traps you’ll be disabling are the ones you trigger.  

Also, if you have Snake Style, you can deal all three damage types without having to use Martial Flexibility!

Amulet of Mighty Fists: Do you use your unarmed attacks?  If so, then it might not be a bad idea.  It’s expensive as it can be, but 16k for all your attacks to have the Holy enchantment seems pretty great if you’ll be fighting those sorts of things.  Outside of that anything that adds damage, or bane if you run into something regularly enough.  Ghost Touch is also a viable candidate for this, potentially on a second amulet so as to save money.

Shirt of Immolation: If you’re a grappler, this is a good one, especially on top of armor spikes.  Keep in mind that if you’d like to grapple some civilian for interrogation and not outright murder them, you might want to rethink both.  Otherwise, go bananas.

Swarmbane Amulet: At 3k, it’s a pretty sure deal to pick up one of these.  You’ll always do full damage to swarms and you can ignore the distraction ability.  Never worry about the worst parts of swarms again.  

Armor Spikes: Same rule for this as for the Shirt of Immolation.  If you want to kill or knock unconscious your grapple target, go for it.  But you can’t turn it off, so make sure you’re okay with always doing damage.  Otherwise, free damage with a successful grapple check!  Slap a few enchantments on it and deal elemental damage too.  You can even use these to threaten nearby squares if you’d prefer not to use other weapons.

Amulet of Natural Armor: it depends on where you want to take your brawler’s equipment, but a higher AC never hurt.  The only down-side is there is some strong competition for the neck slot.

Ring of Deflection: One of the better types of AC bonuses you can get.  Expensive as can be, but worth the investment.

Cat’s Grace Boots: An option for your footwear.  Keeps your arches aligned and lets you pull some fun secret agent moves around cliffs and airships.  You hit terminal velocity (Pathfinder maxes out falling damage at 200 feet, or 20d6) and land on your feet for a maximum of 20 points of damage.  You’ll probably have to change your pants afterwards, but for only 1000gp it opens up some fun options and is a great early game pick.

Boots of Fly: More reliable than potions, and more expensive.  Still, it’s good to have the ability to take flight on command.  At least you’re not blowing 750gp every time you use it and get dispelled.

Boots of Haste: Fly or haste?  Haste or fly?  Both are probably fairly handy, and both will be prepped by most mages.  For PFS, I’d go for Boots of Flying instead of Haste, simply because most mages will be more willing to pop Haste in a fight.  However, you’ll use Haste a lot more often.  If you don’t have a dedicated and willing mage in a home game, reach for speed.

Mithral Heavy Shield: Much like with a mage, it doesn’t do much to impact you and offers you a means of increasing your AC.  Keep in mind that it negates your AC Bonus class ability, so you’ll be missing out on the CMD bonuses, though your flat-footed and general AC will be much higher as a result.  If you use weapons, you might want to use a buckler or use Shield Bash for your offhand option.

Agile Weapon Enhancement: Dex build requirement.  Necessary if you want to maintain your damage output.  At 8300 gold + the cost of the weapon, you will struggle with damage in the first several levels.  Alternatively you could drop it on an amulet of Mighty Fists, but your neck slot is already pretty crowded.