Pathfinder Martial Mastery Question

[Keganaught]

Alright, so I was looking into martial versatility and martial mastery to make a fighter who is going to become the "King of Blades". Taking the normal Fighter and allowing him to use light and heavy blades weapon groups extremely well.
If I pick up weapon focus longsword and dagger and take martial versatility dagger and martial versatility longsword.
Would this allow me to use all heavy and light blades with weapon focus?
P.S. I would be getting weapon specialization and the greater form of focus and specialization. Not an Ideal set up but I thought it'd be fun for a character.

[Lord_Gareth]

Alright, so I was looking into martial versatility and martial mastery to make a fighter who is going to become the "King of Blades". Taking the normal Fighter and allowing him to use light and heavy blades weapon groups extremely well.
If I pick up weapon focus longsword and dagger and take martial versatility dagger and martial versatility longsword.
Would this allow me to use all heavy and light blades with weapon focus?
P.S. I would be getting weapon specialization and the greater form of focus and specialization. Not an Ideal set up but I thought it'd be fun for a character.

Maybe not. Do you know anything about the kind of campaign this character would be in? Are you comfortable with not having many or any active abilities?

[Keganaught]

The campaign is a random pick up when people are around magic and gods rule but I'm trying to keep this character as far away from them as possible just to do something different. And yes I realize this character wouldn't have hardly any active skills and I'll accept that. Really I'm just trying to make a character who can use any bladed weapon the same light or heavy.

[Lord_Gareth]

The campaign is a random pick up when people are around magic and gods rule but I'm trying to keep this character as far away from them as possible just to do something different. And yes I realize this character wouldn't have hardly any active skills and I'll accept that. Really I'm just trying to make a character who can use any bladed weapon the same light or heavy.

Hrm. Awkward to try and make work, though. I mean, just talking about classical D&D enemies from every edition (and PF) you've got ghosts, mummies, demons, devils, stirges...lots of things that're going to wreck your day.

From a practical standpoint, if I were you I'd invest in things that improve my melee attacks in general. Power Attack got a nerf but IIRC it's still better than not having Power Attack, and there's some places you can go from there. You're going to want to invest in ways of hitting enemies that would otherwise be hard to hit.

[Keganaught]

From what the DM has told me Magic weapons are like candy. So hitting different types of enemies wouldn't be a problem. That's why I wanted to see about just constantly switching (quick draw) to different bladed weapons no matter what he handed me. Example Ghost touch Greatsword and then switch over to dual (having the two weapon fighting feats as well) Holy Kukri's to take on demons and then switching to an unholy rapier to take on angels. It'd have to be a 16th level character but doing my math with the feats I'd still have 6 feats unaccounted for at the level being a fighter and a human.

[Lord_Gareth]

From what the DM has told me Magic weapons are like candy. So hitting different types of enemies wouldn't be a problem. That's why I wanted to see about just constantly switching (quick draw) to different bladed weapons no matter what he handed me. Example Ghost touch Greatsword and then switch over to dual (having the two weapon fighting feats as well) Holy Kukri's to take on demons and then switching to an unholy rapier to take on angels. It'd have to be a 16th level character but doing my math with the feats I'd still have 6 feats unaccounted for at the level being a fighter and a human.

Alright, that's great to know. So now at this point you should decide if you

A. Want to deal lots of damage with one big attack or

B. Prefer to TWF.

A word of warning: TWF takes a lot more set up, a lot more work, and much more optimization and if your game is Pathfinder-only it may be harder to do.

Doing lots of damage with one big attack is as easy as investing in the weapons you need and ways to Charge. TWF is going to require that you invest in some kind of Pounce so you can both move and attack, since unless all the monsters come to you you won't be able to use your big investment power. Is there any way you could pick up a Pounce of some variety, maybe a flight speed to go with (items can help you fly)?

Aside from that, TWF is also more feat-intensive and pays off better with sources of bonus damage available. Straight fighter lacks such sources and may be less than pleased by overall damage output.

Not trying to trash on the idea, just bringing up potential obstacles.

[Keganaught]

Well my original character was going to go TWF which taking TWF, TWF improved and greater would help the damage around level 16 with multiple attacks. I was also including those 3 feats before I got the 6 extra feats I still had. And seeing how a simple farmer was flying because of a cloak I'm fairly certain it wouldn't be to hard to get one. As for a pounce I'm not to certain. I could easily pick up some charging, cleave, combat maneuver, or something to that standard with the 6 feats I have before 16 then focus on that again afterwords.

[Lord_Gareth]

Well my original character was going to go TWF which taking TWF, TWF improved and greater would help the damage around level 16 with multiple attacks. I was also including those 3 feats before I got the 6 extra feats I still had. And seeing how a simple farmer was flying because of a cloak I'm fairly certain it wouldn't be to hard to get one. As for a pounce I'm not to certain. I could easily pick up some charging, cleave, combat maneuver, or something to that standard with the 6 feats I have before 16 then focus on that again afterwords.

Pounce definitely needs to be a thing with TWF, since otherwise if you move you do not get extra attacks at all. The availability of cheap magical items will be a huge boon to you, so I'd suggest that if you can pick up Pounce with a non-feat option (D&D had Psionic Lion's Charge as a power; you might have a similar option available) you invest in charging feats since that'll multiply the damage further.

[Keganaught]

This is what I have so far for feats this is the earliest and fastest way to get what I was looking for.

Two Weapon Fighting (1st level)
Double Slice (offhand does full str instead of half) (lst level)
? (1st level)
Weapon Focus sword cane (2nd level)
Weapon focus Greatsword (3rd level)
weapon specialization sword cane (4th level)
Weapon specialization greatsword (5th level)
Improved two weapon fighting (6th level)
Martial Versatility Weapon Focus, sword cane, light blade (7th level)
Greater Weapon focus Sword cane (8th level)
Greater weapon focus Greatsword (9th level)
? (10th level)
Greater two weapon fighting (11th level)
Greater weapon specialization sword cane (12th level)
Greater weapon specialization greatsword (13th level)
? (14th level)
? (15th level)
martial master (16th level)

At level 16 with all of that and pumping the 4 attribute points I have into strength making it (22) with out any other items. I'm at
+5 attack +7 damage light blade
+4 attack +6 damage heavy blade
with a +6 modifier in strength
having also +16/+11/+6/+1 for my base attack bonus at level 16.
with 4 attacks with my off-hand weapon.
TWF it offsets me at -4 for one handed and a -2 for light weapons.
so 19 to attack with my main and off hand for light weapon doing 13 extra damage for the first attack using TWF.
And a 16 to attack with a one handed weapon with 13 extra damage for the first attack using TWF.
Getting charge and pounce would of course help this a lot and having 4 feats still undetermined I can get those.

[Lord_Gareth]

If you dump the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specializations (and their sequels) you can probably replace those with more useful feats as well. not sure what specifically to suggest, but even acquiring, like, a Rend would net you more total damage, or Sneak Attack if you can get a hold of it and consistently flank with a buddy.

[Keganaught]

I can pick up two weapon rend at 14th level (do to other feats) which adds in an extra 1d10 on top of everything including weapon damage and enchantments and picking up Outflank (+4 to hit and on critical and an attack of opportunity to the other person with this feat) and then pick up combat reflexes at first level to get multiple attacks of opportunity. I'm not quite certain how to obtain pounce on this guy being human. I'd also have to pick up Quick draw early on which would take one more feat. Leaving me with 1 feat left. That is if I leave weapon focus and specializations, though I wouldn't need weapon versatility or mastery then.

[Darius Kane]

I'm not quite certain how to obtain pounce on this guy being human.
Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1 (Complete Champion), if your DM won't mind.

[Keganaught]

I just realized Improved Critical would work with martial versatility and mastery because it's a combat feat that picks a single weapon out. Increase critical on all bladed weapons sounds pretty sick.

[Keganaught]

Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1 (Complete Champion), if your DM won't mind.

He might allow that or let me get pounce a different way. But at least that's something to go on for now. So thank you that may be a big help.

[Darius Kane]

PF Barbarian can also get pounce from a Rage Power (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/rage-powers/paizo---rage-powers/beast-totem-greater-su), but not until 10th level.

[grarrrg]

P.S. I would be getting weapon specialization and the greater form of focus and specialization. Not an Ideal set up but I thought it'd be fun for a character.

VERY not ideal.
You do realize that Martial Versatility (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/arg-feats/martial-versatility-combat-human) applies to only one feat each time you take it?

So you'd have to take:
Weapon Focus (longsword) > Martial Versatility (Weapon Focus (longsword))
Weapon Spec. (longsword) > Martial Versatility (Weapon Spec. (longsword))
Greater Weap. Focus (longsword) > Martial ....

You get the idea.
It's not worth it for the Focus/Spec line, as each individual feat is pretty weak.
Martial Versatility is more worth it for feats like 'Improved Critical', where the effect is more noticeable, and would save you from wanting to put "keen" on every dang weapon you find.

[Darius Kane]

VERY not ideal.
You do realize that Martial Versatility (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/arg-feats/martial-versatility-combat-human) applies to only one feat each time you take it?
He knows, that's why he also took Martial Mastery.

[grarrrg]

He knows, that's why he also took Martial Mastery.

Oh.
Well that's slightly better.
But only slightly.
It doesn't kick in until level 16.
Still a horrible waste of 2+ feats in my opinion.

[navar100]

Ask your DM if you can use the Two-Weapon Warrior archetype from Advanced Player's Guide. If you don't mind giving up armor training and weapon training (you're specializing anyway) the archetype helps. You get extra damage, the ability to strike with both weapons as a standard action, and eventually not even have the -2 attack penalty. You still get all your feats to build with.

[Hylas]

Technically the build works, but like grarrrg said, it takes up a ton of feats and doesn't really give you that much bang for your buck. If I wanted to make a martial versatility/master build I'd pick a single group of weapons and go with that. To get the feats to apply to long blades and short blades you need to take each feat twice as well as both martial feats twice. To even take advantage of them at the same time you'd need two weapon fighting. I agree it's a cool idea but you're burning up feats to pretty much get a +2 to attack and damage.

If only there were a Tengu version of those feats that applied to all weapons granted to them by swordtrained, then I could recommend the build.

[Keganaught]

Alright thanks everyone. Yeah I realize this isn't a very good character to play as was just curious to see if it worked. Now that I know it does but the lack of actual uses for this guy sucks. So I'll just keep the idea and use him as an npc sometime. Currently my guy was set up to use TWF and sword canes. So I'll just stick with that.