How bout 12 bard 6 ftr 2 rogue.  Either pdk or human for extra feat.  Take all the shield feats etc, however take tier 5 swashbuckling for coup de grace and exploit weakness.  You will get cure critical wounds, ddoor, and fom.  Strength based with light hammers or maces for 2 times range and one multiplier or handaxes.  With the hand axe you take anvil of thunder for the stun on crits which has great synergy with exploit weakness and take headmans chop for extra crit multiplier with the handaxe. 

Atombomb wrote on Sep 10^th, 2018 at 10:54pm:


That's a 87 AP before racial. Shr plz.
When I did a similar life, I went with something like 33 in kensai, 13 swash, 8 harper, 13 stalwart, 8 free.

Also works nicely in Shadowdancer. If you choose this option, you can go down to Rogue or Artificer 1 and use Evasion from ED.

Seems like between tomes and equipment you should be able to get enough INT to trap and still go strength-based. So long as INT isnt your dump stat you should be fine.

crunch wrote on Sep 11^th, 2018 at 12:07pm:


I can see it.

How many fighter levels are you thinking? Atom's original 12 fighter/6 bard/2 rogue build or Doodle's recomended 12 bard/6 ftr/2 rogue variant? I think the build with more bard levels has greater potential; bards already do sickening swash damage with even just a few fighter levels; while all the bard levels offer access to really good spells.

Doodle wrote on Sep 11^th, 2018 at 12:52pm:


I'm going to run that as my last dwarf life, it looks like a solid and quick build.

5 Foot Step wrote on Sep 11^th, 2018 at 2:35pm:


Are there any especially good light maces?

noamineo wrote on Sep 11^th, 2018 at 3:06pm:



No.  But since it is an overlooked weapon you might find red slot and even red slot plus dr break fairly cheaply on the ah.

5 Foot Step wrote on Sep 11^th, 2018 at 2:35pm:

Do you mean Scourge?  Aasimar don't get bonuses to light maces (or any other weapons aside from deity based stuff).

There's not much synergy between Scourge and swashbuckling.  Scourge get bonuses to light maces, but the lack of good, end-game named light maces kills the deal.  You'd essentially be stuck with Morninglord's, Nightmother's and LGS.  Scourge toons work far better with the heavy blunt weapons, but obviously that rules out swashbuckling.

There is far more synergy between Gnomes/Deep Gnomes and swashbuckling, especially on an Intelligence-based build with Int-to-hit/dmg, Insightful Reflexes, KTA, trapping skills, etc.  They get bonuses with light hammers, light maces, and light picks so you'd at least have a few decent options for named weapons at various levels and end-game.


noamineo wrote on Sep 12^th, 2018 at 11:19am:

No.

With the new changes to power surge, 12 bard would definitely be more viable.

Swashbuckler just needs some slight MP boosts. The devs should tack on 20~ mp somewhere in the tier 4 and tier 5 spaces of the swash tree. That should get it to be close to its contemporaries.

The raid weapons are where you want to be. Pain has IDeception + fetters. Flow has fetters + guardbreaking and lets you use Van Ritchen cane for its loaded damage dice. Savior has 27d6 proc dice and paralyze. Against strahd, you probably want to use the echo for the immense light damage, 30d6 on crit + brazzen proc x3 vs vamps, and 9d10 undead bane on hit.

VKF is a fine secondary tree for it, kensei is a better tier 5 than tier 5 swash, but you probably want tier 5 vkf. If you're willing to stretch the ap, something like tier 5 kensei or vkf, tier 3 swash, tier 4 vfk or kensei, and the second core in vanguard would be an all dps set up.

Might actually be interesting, could do 12 bard/8 barb, get uncanny dodge/improved uncanny dodge, damage reduction, etc. Or drop it to 4 barb and throw in 4 rogue, add in evasion and trapping. Could also still do the 12/6/2 split and still get some decent value. That may actually make more sense than 6 fighter levels.

I dunno how viable it would ultimately be, but it sounds possible.

The barb crit bonuses also apply to the buckler. 18-20 x4 base on Van Richten's with my occult slayer