Zaphear wrote on Sep 15
th, 2014 at 8:25am:
However, after playing with it I'd probably do 12 bard 6 fighter 2 FvS and just say Fuck Evasion with the upcoming changes.
I think the Dex or even Cha based builds are all rather "fluffy" though.. lacking melee DPS kills the bard imo and you can't get anything as high as you can get Strength.
Well... first of all you can't Fuck Evasion as a swashbuckler, because you can't wear Medium/Heavy armor or Heavy/Tower shields, and as such your MRR will never be good enough to ignore spell damage like Evasion allows you to.
Secondly, I don't quite understand why do you think that no stat can reach STR level. DEX and CON (for dwarves) can be higher (before buffs and ED) than STR just because there's Eidolon necklace that gives you insightful +4, which is currently unreachable for other stats. Also, one of your deep Enhancement trees will be Swashbuckler that only offers DEX/CHA stat as options; racials give approx. same amount of stat if you min/max for them. Tenser's give you +4 to DEX and CON too. Thus the only advantage of STR is Rage spell, which is meager +2 Morale boost, but without Bard 15+ you lose +2 to all stats song.
True that 2 best Swashbuckler destinies (LD and DC) don't give DEX, but you can get either CON or CHA in them, making handaxe-wielding Dwarf or rapier-wielding Drow reaching at least similar numbers as STR-based Half-Orc, while also having an option to get extra damage/hit for finessable weapons from racial trees. But overall, it's not really feasible to get more than +4 stat from destinies (not for melee anyway, you generally don't want to pass T5/6 slots), which translates in just 2 damage per hit; Elf/Drow/Dwarf racials compensate for that nicely.