Swashbuckler

[FranOhmsford]

I don't understand this:

"Dashing Scoundrel: While Swashbuckling with nothing in your off hand, you gain +1 Damage per 5 Character levels and 7% Doublestrike/Doubleshot."

NO Thrower build would ever be without an off-hand item. They provide % damage procs, or in the case of armor piercing and red augments Spell Power boosts and other nice things. Also, it's the only way to have the set bonus from planar focus.

This is a BAD idea, and NOT conducive to a good thrower build. It is in direct conflict with an important source of equipment for all thrower builds today (Off Hand).

Not to mention that it is insanely superior to "Skirmisher" {7% Dodge while swashbuckling with a Buckler in your off-hand}! Unless that is...That's +7% MAX Dodge!


Why do I feel that this tree is aimed at making people NOT use Bucklers?


Oh and for the record - I was afraid of one thing when I first heard about this tree and it seems to have come to pass:

Why is this a Bard ONLY Tree?

Why can't Fighters, Rangers and Rogues swashbuckle without taking Bard Levels? Seemingly a heck of a lot of Bard levels too!


P.S. Will Repeater X-Bows be usable with this tree?
Because if not I cannot see anyone taking the Rune-Arm bonuses!

[Death_Mystic]

I say that either Warchanter or Swashbuckler should have the ability to add CHA to attack and Damage with finessable weapons somewhere in the tree. Preferably Tier 1 or 2, or by level 6 in cores. You could even put the limitation in that it needs to be a finessable weapon, while wearing a buckler or no shield and light or no armor.

[jakeelala]

You misunderstand what I am saying you constantly are generating adrenalines so you should be able to use an andrenaliine every 3 attacks or so if you can click fast enough. Other characters will not generate adrenalines nearly as fast. It is very clicky intensive, but very powerful to be able to constantly be using adrenanlines.

Adrenalines regen on 20s, not crits. And it's a 33% chance, not 100%.

From Fury Eternal:

"Passive Bonus: +1 Adrenaline max use. Whenever you land a Vorpal Strike on a melee attack, 33% chance to regain 1 Adrenaline use. Cannot train Fury Made Placid. Note: Also works on ranged attacks."

[jakeelala]

Stop with the throwers. Please. Swashbuckler has nothing to do with throwers. Please go play Shinobi if you want to throw shuriken. The Swashbucklers is a precision based melee fighters with bard/roguelike skills.

Half of this ENTIRE PRESTIGE REVOLVES AROUND THROWING.

Not my idea, it was the devs.

[maddmatt70]

You misunderstand what I am saying you constantly are generating adrenalines so you should be able to use an andrenaliine every 3 attacks or so if you can click fast enough. Other characters will not generate adrenalines nearly as fast. It is very clicky intensive, but very powerful to be able to constantly be using adrenanlines.

Bah my rust has come up. I forgot fury of wild adrenalines are gnerated with a vorpal strike and I thought a critical. Never mind what I posted before. They will need to upgrade the power of this enhancement. Oh well.

[ArkoHighStar]

I say that either Warchanter or Swashbuckler should have the ability to add CHA to attack and Damage with finessable weapons somewhere in the tree. Preferably Tier 1 or 2, or by level 6 in cores. You could even put the limitation in that it needs to be a finessable weapon, while wearing a buckler or no shield and light or no armor.

The real swashbuckler PRE used int (insightful strikes), I see no reason not to adapt it to use Char, if we are stuck with this being attached to bards.

[Mryal]

On to those one handed fighting feats, well, it cant be a natural fighting clone, because natural fighting is alredy underwhelming, it only works (well?) in animal form due to the passive % speed they get.

How about something different :

Passive : (to all characters,autogrant at lv 1) When fighting with a one handed melee weapon and anything on your other hand that isnt another weapon, you gain +10% melee damage.

First Feat : When fighting with a one handed melee weapon and anything on your other hand that isnt another weapon, you gain +30% melee damage.

Second Feat : When fighting with a one handed melee weapon and anything on your other hand that isnt another weapon, you gain +60% melee damage.

[HungarianRhapsody]

If you could combine Monk with Bard, then I'd say this was worth splashing. Since they're not compatible, I'll be shunning this like we used to shun Deepwood Sniper back before the enhancement changes.

Single weapon fighting (either with or without a shield) is far enough behind TWF and THF in damage output that we would need to see MAJOR changes to make this worthwhile.

[SirShen]

5 AP, class level 3: Swashbuckling: Defensive Stance: You gain 1% Doublestrike and Doubleshot as well as +1 to the Enhancement Bonus of the weapon in your main hand. Swashbuckling requires wielding a Finesseable or Thrown weapon in your main hand, wielding a Buckler or nothing in your off hand, and wearing Light Armor or no armor. (Druids cannot Swashbuckle while in animal forms.)

^
Can you make it any shield (except tower) as well as buckler because for me this is forcing you to use buckler and nothing else and i for one hate being forced to take buckler or nothing else in off hand to use these enhancements. Its making it so eiche.

Why is finesse feat not given for free for taking swashbuckling?

I hope U22 has lots of named bucklers because at the moment there is only one that i know of and thats from cove.

[Cyprine]

the pnp edition of swashbuckler had the ability to use INT bonus to Damage with finesse weapon. Could be a good addition & offer multiclassing choices.
http://dndtools.eu/classes/swashbuckler/

Insightful Strike (Ex): At 3rd level, a swashbuckler becomes able to place her finesse attacks where they deal greater damage. She applies her Intelligence bonus (if any) as a bonus on damage rolls (in addition to any Strength bonus she may have) with any light weapon, as well as any other weapon that can be used with Weapon Finesse, such as a rapier, whip, or spiked chain. Targets immune to sneak attacks or critical hits are immune to the swashbuckler's insightful strike. A swashbuckler cannot use this ability when wearing medium or heavy armor or when carrying a medium or heavy load.

[Cetus]

Wrong. I will go on record and say I do care. Yes it currently doesn't exist, but it will. They want feedback on what would make those feats worthwhile [single handed fighting].

Also being able to gain evasion (granted at level 20) instead of having to annoyingly multi-class is a good thing in my book. Yes a lot of the elements are Roguish in nature (without the sneak attack), but fit for a bard. As I mentioned the tree needs more Sonic Spell power, I can see this tree working well in conjunction with the other 2 bard PRE's (if pure) or multi-classed with Rogue and Fighter.

Anyone can make FOTM builds and crush content, I did that too for a long time. But now, I'm having more fun with all these options. Flavor/RP is just as important in DnD and DDO as anything else. No one is forcing you to play this tree or even a Bard. You can keep playing your kensai-monk-bladeforges if that is what floats your boat.

You can relax with your nit-picking semantics, I made many points and the only one you seem to quote in red is that "NO ONE cares". You know what I mean, the tree is weak - and if you bring these swashbucklers into EE content, they'll perform terribly as-is.

[Cardtrick]

Why is finesse feat not given for free for taking swashbuckling?

This is actually a good point. Not that I would actually go dex based anyway, but I don't see any harm in adding a free weapon finesse to a tree designed to use finessable weapons on an incredibly feat-starved class.

[IronClan]

I picture using adrenalines +400 damage and massive crit range in fury of the wild all the time since approx every third attack or so attack will result in a critical in swashbuckler - that is going to make up for a lot of the damage differential. I have not calculated how much doublestrike a swashbuckler gets compared to other builds, but I think mathematically this a lot closer then you put forth and obviously an upgrade compared to warchanter.

Adrenalines are one shot deals, do you really propose that a few per rest one shot attacks in an ED make this tree viable? You can get high crit range and multipliers with TWF and THF and Druids can get Doublestrike very high.

Remember this tree MUST COMPENSATE FOR LACKING THF and TWF damage. It's very roughly HALF the DPS of those styles from the get go... so not only must it CATCH UP it must compete with the likes of Shuricannon's and Centered Kensei's or be relegated to flavor toons.

I am not adverse to flavor toons, I have my own stable of failed experiments, gimps, semi-gimps, surprisingly effective; but still gimps, and etc. you can bring your flavor toon to my LFM or Raid any time, however a lot of people are not as laid back as I am. And a LOT of people want the Bard to get buffed into being relevant again... this tree as it stands does not do that. It also fails to be "deadly" as a swashbuckler's main archetypical "Raison d'être" is swift lethality... this tree proposes one handed sawing down of 50,000hp oak trees. with d6 base a couple [W]'s and single 15-20X2 thunderforged weapon with a buckler in the off hand doing not a lot.

Let me see if I can summerize the hurdles:
Bard class is way behind for melee (feats, enhancements)
This tree doesn't even compensate for the loss of DSP to TWF or THF
This tree doesn't compensate for the loss of DPS due to Bard class

Weak melee class + weak combat style + weak tree = what exactly?

[Cardtrick]

If you don't give this tree -- or one of the other bard trees -- a means to massively boost reflex saves, the Evasion capstone is not going to be of any use whatsoever.

It doesn't apply until level 20 anyway, so it's not worth talking about Evasion in the context of anything less than epic level traps and spells.

This tree has no enhancements to boost reflex saves. The bard's innate reflex save progression is good, but that's not even close to enough by itself. Unlike other classes, a bard can't splash paladin or monk to improve saves (of course, you'd lose the capstone by splashing anyway).

Unless you're planning on a drastic reduction in the DC checks we have to make in high level epics in the very near future, this Evasion is going to be virtually useless.

I would suggest some combination of the following:

+2 Reflex saves per Swashbuckler core (total of +12, which is probably still not enough)

New bard song offering major save boost (perform skill / 4, maybe?) with a reasonable duration

Divine grace equivalent (cha modifier to saves)

Purchasable enhancements iin the tree with reflex save boosts

Every point spent in the tree adds .5 reflex saves, rounded down (like how spellpower works in a lot of trees)

[Chaimberland]

I like the tree over all but can we get evasion any earlier?

I think evasion needs to remain at cap. Its a great reward for going pure.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Also being able to gain evasion (granted at level 20) instead of having to annoyingly multi-class is a good thing in my book.

Getting Evasion in the capstone would be a lot more impressive if it allowed you to take 20 levels in a good class instead of Bard...

[IronClan]

On to those one handed fighting feats, well, it cant be a natural fighting clone, because natural fighting is alredy underwhelming, it only works (well?) in animal form due to the passive % speed they get.

How about something different :

Passive : (to all characters,autogrant at lv 1) When fighting with a one handed melee weapon and anything on your other hand that isnt another weapon, you gain +10% melee damage.

First Feat : When fighting with a one handed melee weapon and anything on your other hand that isnt another weapon, you gain +30% melee damage.

Second Feat : When fighting with a one handed melee weapon and anything on your other hand that isnt another weapon, you gain +60% melee damage.

This is the crazy part: someone is going to accuse you of proposing something "over powered" when the truth is that +60% is still 20% behind a TWF's 1.8 attacks AND THATS IF THEY WERE USING PLAIN +1 WEAPONS... the reality is the TWF has .8 more attacks to get on crit (Dragons Edge and Crippling flames) procs, more bursts, more Heartseekers, more Lightinging II strikes, more neg levels' and stat drains, righteous red augment procs etc. etc.

This fundamental flaw in SWF has not been addressed by the Dev's or responded to when brought up on the PC forums. All putting a buckler in your off hand does is nearly half your DPS potential...

[SirValentine]

You've turned Swashbuckle into a verb!

EXCELLENT

I believe the correct usage would be:

"You've verbed Swashbuckle!"

[Steelstar]

Vargouille, can you explain this? (Or someone from the Players' Council, if it's been discussed more there.)

I think the wording is a bit unclear, and I suspect that this is the ability on which the success or failure of the tree will depend. What specifically does "ignoring other bonuses" mean?

The wording is unclear, and will be adjusted on our end. Here's a slightly clearer version:


While Swashbuckling, the following weapons receive Competence bonuses to their critical profiles:
Dagger, Shortsword, Throwing Dagger: +1 Threat Range, +1 Multiplier
Light Mace, Sickle, Dart, Shuriken, Throwing Axe, Throwing Hammer: +2 Threat Range, +1 Multiplier
Kukri, Rapier: +1 Multiplier
Handaxe: +2 Range
Light Pick: +1 Range

These bonuses act like Rogue Knife Specialization for any stacking purposes, and do not stack with Rogue Knife Specialization itself (as they are both Competence bonuses).

[Teh_Troll]

This is weaksauce. I mean come on . . . IT'S A FRIGGIN BARD . . . you could easily err on the side of over-powered and be safe.