Sickles. Seriously, Sickles.

[Lauf]

Hello fellow builders!

I have a great love for sickles, but I can't make any sickle build make sense (with the exception of perhaps druid in animal form, but then you're not really wielding a sickle).
Not sure how to explain it, but whenever I try and put something together it just feels like I'm diving head first into stupid.

Mind you I'm not looking to min-max, just looking for some reasonable presence of sickles in a build, for example if there was a race that uses them, perhaps I could make a case for it, or if it was a monk / rogue weapon, I might be able to argue it doesn't make a difference that it's a sickle.

Any ideas?

[Yamani]

Hello fellow builders!

I have a great love for sickles, but I can't make any sickle build make sense (with the exception of perhaps druid in animal form, but then you're not really wielding a sickle).
Not sure how to explain it, but whenever I try and put something together it just feels like I'm diving head first into stupid.

Mind you I'm not looking to min-max, just looking for some reasonable presence of sickles in a build, for example if there was a race that uses them, perhaps I could make a case for it, or if it was a monk / rogue weapon, I might be able to argue it doesn't make a difference that it's a sickle.

Any ideas?

Grandmaster of flowers: Tier 2: A Flowers Bloom. Turns sickles into a Ki weapon.

[rabidfox]

Sickles are simple weapons, could pair with a melee alchemist using battalion brew.

[unbongwah]

Some sickle-specific options:

A) Swashbuckling + Swords to Plowshares turns sickles into 14-20/x3 weapons. [EDIT: there's a few heroic sickles plus Devourer's Reaping with +2 crit range so they become 12-20/x3.]
B) Olladra for Favored Weapon bonuses to sickles. Or level with a different deity and take Olladra's Blessing (Divine Crusader) at level 23.
C) Prescient Curve (GMoF) makes sickles into ki weapons.

Of course, you could just run a pure bard focused on sickles but one other build idea: Shadarkai SWF rogue 2 / bard 3 / Alchemist 15. Sickles are simple light weapons so they qualify for both SDK chain attacks and Vile Chemist bonuses. In epics you can run in Divine Crusader for Favored Weapon bonuses; or use GMoF's Mantle to be centered with sickles. Enhancement spread would be something like:

• 35-ish APs Vile Chemist for tier-5s (Greater Wave of Poison SLA, Chemical Body, etc) and +5 Imbue dice
• 17 APs racial for Greater Chain Attack
• 13 APs Swashbuckler for Dashing Scoundrel (+10% doublestrike) and INT to damage
• 8 APs Assassin for +3 Imbue dice or Acrobat for Haste Boost
• 7 APs Harper Agent for INT to hit and Know the Angles

Should be first-life friendly too since you just need max INT and enough DEX for Precision. If you don't have Harper Agent, take Battalion Brew for INT to hit and damage; also frees a few APs. You have a few more days to farm a ML:15 Kookie Kutter if you want to test it on an alt.

[magaiti]

Pair it with hammer, comrade!

[thwart]

Pair it with hammer, comrade!

Haha +1

And I am going to totally do this now.

[Lauf]

You people bring a smile to my face, thank you for the great ideas, definitely going to play around with those.

And a divine gnome with a sickle and a light hammer? that's got to be one of the funniest flavor builds

[Enoach]

I had fun with a Dark Apostate Follower of Olladra, I went with Death Domain.

Pair that with Reaper Armor cosmetic for some fun flavor - I even duel wield sickles for a bit.

[Fisto_Mk_I]

Haha +1

And I am going to totally do this now.

You must do this build:

[unbongwah]

There's a sigtrent build which dual-wielded hammer and picks. So everything old is new again.

A modern take could be, say, ranger 6 / paladin 14 of Olladra with tier-5 Tempest and tier-4 KotC. With Adept Combatant you have sickles, longswords, battle axes, heavy maces, morningstars, and warhammers as Favored weapons. Either STR+CHA-based or (with Feydark Illusionist) fully CHA-based.

Ranger 6 gives you the first two TWF feats and KotC gives Knight's Training; so that still leaves Precision, Swords to Plowshares, Improved Critical, and Greater TWF in heroics.

[magaiti]

For flavour purposes, I propose following weapons:
Savior, the Breaker of Chains (light hammer)
Hope, the Light Within (offhand version of Null)