How do I make this?

[Clopin Silk]

For a while now I've had an idea for a character that could be fun to play. I want to build a super-agile, high-mobility close combat character that dual wields rapiers and is primarily dependent on DEX. However, I don't want to just go for a straight-up rogue, because I don't want to be set up for sneaking around, I want to be set up for madly leaping and capering around, and basically being an infuriatingly hard target to hit. Any ideas?

[Manyasone]

Well, depending on your availability of material and edition, people are going to suggest Tome of Battle or Path of War. So will I, to be fair. A stalker with trashing dragon/scarlet throne, definitely Veiled Moon for flashing around maybe some shattered Mirror for messing around with your enemies. All in all, you can make a very potent character using this

EDIT: basic stalker doesn't have shattered mirror but riven hourglass, which is time manipulation. Very potent. And for scarlet throne you need a stalker art. In any case, you'll need to read up ☺️

[DracoknightZero]

Well if its for Pathfinder i was reading a guide that could be of some help: https://docs.google.com/document/d/178CAoRPv-ST4ntUWwDFmkX5mi5Tm3pB1MGtoLXpG1D4/edit

The clue i got was to make a mobile dual rapier character, and i think most of the TWF setup can be modified to help out in that guide, otherwise.... i might have missed the mark completely.

[Gruftzwerg]

For a while now I've had an idea for a character that could be fun to play. I want to build a super-agile, high-mobility close combat character that dual wields rapiers and is primarily dependent on DEX. However, I don't want to just go for a straight-up rogue, because I don't want to be set up for sneaking around, I want to be set up for madly leaping and capering around, and basically being an infuriatingly hard target to hit. Any ideas?

This only works for lowlvl lowmagic campaigns. On later lvl the attack bonus of mosters get really high and you need tons of AC to compete. You need to fully focus & invest in AC to make it somewhat reliable. There are better forms of defense (misschances: blur, displacement) that are more reliable on the later levels.
Further the more the game progresses, the more it becomes RocketTag. The player/s need to burst the enemy encounter down, in 1-2 rounds. A high enough AC (if invested enough) will give you a few rounds more maybe, but you will lack the dmg for focusing only on AC (otherwise you won't have enough AC to matter at all and wasted gold, time & resources).

If it is for a lowlvl campaign in a good team, it could work out really well. But if you want to go for to the later level, I would look out for a decent "gish" build and focus more on dmg and defensive magic instead of a high AC.

[Clopin Silk]

Well, depending on your availability of material and edition, people are going to suggest Tome of Battle or Path of War. So will I, to be fair. A stalker with trashing dragon/scarlet throne, definitely Veiled Moon for flashing around maybe some shattered Mirror for messing around with your enemies. All in all, you can make a very potent character using this

EDIT: basic stalker doesn't have shattered mirror but riven hourglass, which is time manipulation. Very potent. And for scarlet throne you need a stalker art. In any case, you'll need to read up ☺️

Time manipulation you say? Interesting... very interesting. And what would your advice be for race?

[Clopin Silk]

This only works for lowlvl lowmagic campaigns. On later lvl the attack bonus of mosters get really high and you need tons of AC to compete. You need to fully focus & invest in AC to make it somewhat reliable. There are better forms of defense (misschances: blur, displacement) that are more reliable on the later levels.
Further the more the game progresses, the more it becomes RocketTag. The player/s need to burst the enemy encounter down, in 1-2 rounds. A high enough AC (if invested enough) will give you a few rounds more maybe, but you will lack the dmg for focusing only on AC (otherwise you won't have enough AC to matter at all and wasted gold, time & resources).

If it is for a lowlvl campaign in a good team, it could work out really well. But if you want to go for to the later level, I would look out for a decent "gish" build and focus more on dmg and defensive magic instead of a high AC.

Honestly, this is rule of cool more than anything else. And I'm cool with integrating other aspects at the higher levels. The important thing to me is the mental image of this lightning-fast maniac using twin rapiers (I have no idea why I find dual wielding rapiers so damn cool), poking holes in everybody.

[Rebel7284]

For mid-late levels, you should check out Swiftblade. Miss chance up to 50% against both melee attacks AND targeted spells! Some skirmish damage too.

Regardless of the build, you will need Oversized Two-weapon Fighting feat to do two rapiers effectively.

[Gruftzwerg]

Honestly, this is rule of cool more than anything else. And I'm cool with integrating other aspects at the higher levels. The important thing to me is the mental image of this lightning-fast maniac using twin rapiers (I have no idea why I find dual wielding rapiers so damn cool), poking holes in everybody.

Yeah I see.
But maybe you should consider a Str based DW build with going Ranger (doesn't need the Dex requirement for DW progression from class ability).



Further I would suggest going for a crit-heavy build. Rapiers already have a decent crit%, so investing in Feats or looking for additional boost should be your focus imho.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Dual-wielding rapiers gives you some awful to-hit penalties. Not a good idea unless you want to refluff a double-weapon, such as a Valenar double scimitar, from Eberron -- call them a special weapon consisting of paired rapiers that must be used together to work. (Though you'll want to wield a weapon with reach for AoOs; see below. Maybe an extending double scimitar?)

Also, you definitely want to look into the swiftblade (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070327), mentioned earlier.

In addition, take Combat Reflexes and Evasive Reflexes, along with Karmic Strike. Since AoOs are taken before the actions that provoke them, you take your Karmic Strike stance (which gives you a -4 to your AC), and any melee attack which would successfully hit you provokes an AoO, which you take prior to the actual attack. Instead, you use Evasive Reflexes to 5' step out of the way. Combine with a training dummy of the master to turn your 5' step into a 10' step, Opportunistic Tactician to make a 5' step in addition to an actual AoO (so your foe attacks you, and you smack it and dance out of the way before it actually connects), and the thicket of blades press the advantage stance to take two 5' steps at a time.

All of the above together means you can make an attack AND take two 10' steps away from any enemy within your reach that attacks you in melee. You might want to consider getting evasion, mettle, and some way to effectively take Deflect Arrows and ray deflection, too.

[mistermysterio]

Well, depending on your availability of material and edition, people are going to suggest Tome of Battle or Path of War. So will I, to be fair. A stalker with trashing dragon/scarlet throne, definitely Veiled Moon for flashing around maybe some shattered Mirror for messing around with your enemies. All in all, you can make a very potent character using this

EDIT: basic stalker doesn't have shattered mirror but riven hourglass, which is time manipulation. Very potent. And for scarlet throne you need a stalker art. In any case, you'll need to read up ☺️

Going to also suggest this, assuming you're playing pathfinder?

If you go with a PoW class, like a warlord or stalker, you can go with thrashing dragon for some high-damage two-weapon focus. You can take weapon finesse (which obviously works with rapiers) and deadly agility (to get dex to damage). Besides Thrashing Dragon, you can focus on veiled moon for teleportation, scarlet throne for more damage, primal fury for great charge mechanics, or mithral current for a sort of "i don't look threatening but I can kill you before you see me draw my weapons" kinda build.

Furthermore, you can focus a lot on counters (pick a discipline set with a decent number of good counters, like mithral current) and deal with avoiding damage that way. For example, with mithral current there are a lot of counters that enable you to avoid an attack and counter attack in the same move as an immediate action.

Anyhow, this is all assuming pathfinder AND that you are allowed to use 3rd party stuff (tomb of battle has similar options for 3.5 though).

:)

[ExLibrisMortis]

thicket of blades stance to take two 5' steps at a time.
That's the stance that lets you AoO people who take 5-foot steps, the double-5-foot-step stance is Press the Advantage. Stalking Shadow and Shifting Defense also work with 5-foot steps - Shifting Defense is pretty much Evasive Reflexes: The Stance.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

That's the stance that lets you AoO people who take 5-foot steps, the double-5-foot-step stance is Press the Advantage. Stalking Shadow and Shifting Defense also work with 5-foot steps - Shifting Defense is pretty much Evasive Reflexes: The Stance.Ah, my mistake. Stupid headache has me not thinking straight.

[edit] Also, the fortuitous weapon enhancement allows you to make TWO AoOs, along with the two 10' steps I mentioned earlier.

[MisterKaws]

I'm assuming 3.5, so I'd say Swiftblade fits the bill nicely.

Yes, the goddamn caster class is the better Dex build. 3.5e logic at its finest.

[Clopin Silk]

I'm assuming 3.5, so I'd say Swiftblade fits the bill nicely.

Yes, the goddamn caster class is the better Dex build. 3.5e logic at its finest.

I have never expected this game to make any goddamn sense.
Also, I'm new to the forums, so could you please tell me how to make that my sig? Because 3.5e logic at its finest is just too good to pass up.

[Clopin Silk]

Dual-wielding rapiers gives you some awful to-hit penalties. Not a good idea unless you want to refluff a double-weapon, such as a Valenar double scimitar, from Eberron -- call them a special weapon consisting of paired rapiers that must be used together to work. (Though you'll want to wield a weapon with reach for AoOs; see below. Maybe an extending double scimitar?
Ah. That's... something of an issue. Honestly, the only reason I was going for dual-wielding rapiers is that I've seen it a few times in anime (I'm a huge anime geek, so sue me), and it always struck me as just insanely cool. If you could think of any weapons that would be better suited for this sort of build that also happen to evoke an awesome mental image when imagining someone actually using them, then by all means, let me know.

[Rebel7284]

Please confirm what system you are using so we can focus on giving you advice you can use. :)

Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting that I mentioned gets rid of the penalties for using two rapiers, but that's an extra feat that you could have instead spend elsewhere. The high feat tax is part of the reason dual wielding is considered suboptimal in most cases, but hey, power isn't everything!

How cool a weapon looks is subjective, I am partial to Spinning Sword because it both looks cool (steel whip!) and being a reach weapon that can hit adjacent is nice. It however costs you even more feats to use!

Best dual wielding weapons are probably Greatsword + Armor Spikes. You get the extra attack and still get to use Power Attack effectively.

For the Swiftblade build, I would do something like:

Fire Elf
Conjurer 6(using Abrupt Jaunt from PHB2, Combat Wizard UA) / Swiftblade 9 / Abjurant Champion 5

Feats:
1: Two Weapon Fighting
Wizard 1: Dodge
3: Weapon Finesse
Wizard 5: Mobility
6: Oversized Two Weapon Fighting
9+ Free

You can talk to the DM if the Evasive Reflexes + Karmic Strike combo works. It may not since they have to actually hit you to trigger Karmic Strike. If it does not, Robular's Gambit probably does, but requires a higher level.

Also, I am a fan of Elusive Target due to turning off Power Attack.

Also, if you end up using weapons that are Shadow Hand's favorite Weapons, Martial Study + Martial Stance + Shadow Blade allows you to add Dex to Damage. May not be worth it due to being short on feats already, but an option if you do want those few maneuvers. The Stance that adds 2d6 sneak attack is pretty nice. :)

You can also get Mobility and Improved Two Weapon Fighting from items.

[Troacctid]

The Elven Lightblade (from Races of the Wild) is a light version of a rapier that you can use in your offhand and counts as a rapier for feats like Weapon Focus and Improved Critical, so if you're willing to take Exotic Weapon Proficiency, you could use that.

[gooddragon1]

This only works for lowlvl lowmagic campaigns. On later lvl the attack bonus of mosters get really high and you need tons of AC to compete. You need to fully focus & invest in AC to make it somewhat reliable. There are better forms of defense (misschances: blur, displacement) that are more reliable on the later levels.
Further the more the game progresses, the more it becomes RocketTag. The player/s need to burst the enemy encounter down, in 1-2 rounds. A high enough AC (if invested enough) will give you a few rounds more maybe, but you will lack the dmg for focusing only on AC (otherwise you won't have enough AC to matter at all and wasted gold, time & resources).

If it is for a lowlvl campaign in a good team, it could work out really well. But if you want to go for to the later level, I would look out for a decent "gish" build and focus more on dmg and defensive magic instead of a high AC.

I somewhat contest this. It is true that the monster stats as presented in the various books follow this closely. However, if you have a competent and diligent DM who is planning around the group it isn't always the case. That said, I've had both scenarios: Sometimes you have to optimize and other times your DM is reasonable and looks at what they're throwing at your group relative to your party composition rather than just looking at CR.

[Cerefel]

If you want to play this as a noncaster I'd recommend a Swift Hunter build for the extra AC and damage when you move around.

[Rebel7284]

The Elven Lightblade (from Races of the Wild) is a light version of a rapier that you can use in your offhand and counts as a rapier for feats like Weapon Focus and Improved Critical, so if you're willing to take Exotic Weapon Proficiency, you could use that.

+ Exotic Proficiency, - Oversized TWF.
Same crit and damage.

Seems like a net gain of 0, sadly.

Also, Hit and Run Variant Fighter 1/Wizard 5 is a valid entry too due to Dex to Damage against flat footed opponents, an extra feat (or extra 1d6 sneak attack if desired), and more weapon proficiencies. The casting progression loss hurts a lot though.

[Fizban]

I ended up going on for quite a while it seems. Dex builds really bug me in 3.5.

Anime characters seem to have a feat or property of some sort in their dual-wielding system that makes bigger weapons count as light weapons via rule of cool. If all you want is a pair of piercing swords, that's already the standard: shortswords are piercing-only light weapons and if it's not daggers it's usually shortswords. You could also try and Elven Lightblade, it's described as the same size as a shortsword but it has the rapier's 18-20 and is apparently you can use shortsword and rapier focus/specialization/crit feats with it. You might actually be able to stack them, the line is "treat it as a rapier or short sword," but lacks the definite "either" that would make it clear you can only do one at a time. With just the or focus shifts to the feats, run down the feat line and apply whatever works. But in the kind of game where that'd be a decent idea the DM would most certainly ban it, while the ultra-RAW players couldn't care less about weapon focus.

Either way, I'm fairly certain that dual-wielding thrusting swords is completely bogus. It looks cool in anime specifically because they are ignoring physics, spinny slashy stuff is at least somewhat plausible but the sort of contortions required to do what I've seen just wouldn't work if it wasn't animated. And while it's obvious a DnD character can indeed use two shortswords/lightblades/whatever, it's not parituclarly useful. ToB gives the maneuvers to make anything good, but they do just that: you can initiate maneuvers with your bare fist or a log as easily as you can a specialized sword. Diamond Mind, the only discipline with Rapier as an associated weapon, has maneuvers that mimic the advantages (flat damage multipliers) or negate the disadvantages (by replacing damage), rather than synergizing with the weapon itself. Aside from just trying to get extra sneak attack hits in, the main benefit to TWF is getting Rend abilities which deal extra damage if you hit with both weapons: the picture for Two-Weapon Rend in PHB2 shows quite clearly how this is a technique which should involve slashing, not piercing weapons.

The only piercing specific technique I know of is the Driving Attack feat, also PHB2, and it's not that great. Requires +14 BAB and giving up your extra attacks/not using a strike maneuver, to push back or trip someone. It's novel in that for a low-str character you can use it to push or trip using your damage bonus instead of strength modifier, but that's still paltry compared to the usual expected builds for that.

So we come back to sneak attack. The only reason to use a rapier/lightblade is for the 18-20 crit range, which combines with sneak attack in another feat most optimizers turn up their noses at: Telling Blow (PHB2 yet again). Telling Blow lets you add your sneak attack (or skirmish) damage every time you crit, so instead of flanking you can just fish for crits, but hey flanking is just so easy right? I think Telling Blow is a perfectly fine feat, you just need a character who's a frontliner rather than mobility.

Enter ye olde sneak attack fighter (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#fighter). Trade feats for sneak attack with full BAB and HD, nothing fancy but it gets the job done. Combine with feat rogue (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#rogue) to switch the usual fighter/rogue combo: instead of higher skills you get higher hp/BAB while still having a dip class for feats.

The biggest problem as always is the dex focus. DnD 3.5 simply does not support dex only builds as a main option, you have to burn a bunch of feats to make it work less good. Most importantly, people imagine high dex characters as dodgy and unhittable, but that's simply not true: dex does not result in any more AC than armor outside of the most extreme and cash-intensive cases. Armor in DnD 3.5 comes from armor and magic items, not inherent character ability. It's much easier to make a strength focused build that happens to have 17 dex to fill up the AC on mithril full plate and reach ITWF than it is to cram on two more feats and a dip (Weapon Finesse, Shadow blade, and swordsage for the stance to qualify for Shadow Blade, and Shadow Blade doesn't apply to Rapiers and only maybe Lightblades if the DM is permissive).

Even easier if you use Gloves of the Balanced Hand to save a feat and drop the dex to 16. Yes, this means you will put less points into con, that's the price you pay. You can start dex at 15 and wait until 8th or 12th before boosting it to 16 to match the mithril plate, saves on point buy. It slows you down, but while it's easy to boost AC early on, it's much easier to boost movement speed in the end. You can also use Halfweight (Underdark) to reduce any armor to light armor, which would let you wear mithril Mechanus Gear for a full +12 base AC with no speed penalty-if the game's starting late enough, you can go Thug SA Fighter for more skill points and a light armor "restriction," then just use Halfweight heavy armor.

1st: SAF 1: TWF, Telling Blow, and if you're a human you have one feat free.
2nd-7th: pick up Exotic: Elven Lightblade at 3rd or 6th and a pair of Gloves of the Balanced Hand whenever appropriate, you have one feat free.
8th with FR or 9th without dip: Improved Crit (Rapier), FR dip leaves you another feat free.
12th: Two-Weapon Rend, bump dex to 16 if you haven't already and make sure you're wearing mithril full plate.
Optional:
4th: Swordsage 1, grab an assortment of maneuvers including Wolf Fang Strike, and Searing Blade for some stuff that ignores SA
9th: Martial Stance (Feat) for Assassin's Stance

But I really think that's all you need for a game that's not crazy optimized. Just TWF, Telling Blow, Improved Crit, Two-Weapon Rend, and a pair of gloves. A Sneak Attack Fighter keeps full BAB which will make a difference in accuracy, and there's plenty of feats free for other stuff. Worried about non-sneak attackable stuff? Buy the appropriate items, pick up Power Attack and a backup weapon, or dip some maneuvers, or all three. The fact is, people have been doing crit fishing builds since forever, and they generally find them to be fun and effective as long as the DM doesn't hose them and the party isn't high magic op. TWF+Telling Blow with Sneak Attack Fighter is just a different version of the same build.

Here's a trick: you know how you can't two-hand a Rapier for 1 1/2 str damage? Well for one, Power Attack doesn't care. For two, yf you're an elf use can use Racial Weapon Familiarity instead of Exotic Weapon Proficiency to get both the Lightblade and the Thinblade for a single feat. Both of them can use feats keyed to Rapier, so you take Improved Crit (Rapier), and get both. When you want more str damage you switch to the Thinblade which does not have the rapier's line prohibiting two handed damage bonus, so you get 1 1/2 str plus the full double power attack and your Improved Crit 18-20 for triggering Telling Blow. Being an elf costs you a feat but otherwise gives you this option for free

Or instead of Telling Blow, you could try to str+dex+dex. Get your DM to allow a Lightblade to count as a Shortsword for the Shadow Blade feat. Combine the Shadow Blade feat with Champion of Corellon 2 to get str+dex+dex on things not immune to crits. Then back into Warblade for more Tiger Claw manevuers: Champion of Corellon's bonus feats don't help you and while the extra dex cap on armor is one of the only ways to get max AC from a class, you want those high level tiger claw maneuvers. I mean, you could just do a straight dex Fighter/CoC build, it will give you a tiny bit more AC, but you're back to spending a bunch of feats for dex equivalencies. Or you can look at it as paying a bunch of feats for initiative and reflex save bonus: did you want those? No, you wanted to stab things. Dex doesn't increase your max AC, that's the CoC there, but you could burn feats for max AC too with Heavy Armor Optimization.

Rather than the CoC though, I'd say if you don't like Telling Blow just go straight Tiger Claw Warblade. All the extra hits from Wolf Fang, Dancing Mongoose, and Raging Mongoose on a 15-20 weapon add up to a lot of crits, which fuel Blood in the Water. Blood in the Water is even usable against crit immune enemies: they take no extra damage, but technically you still get to confirm crits against them, which then give you an untyped bonus from Blood in the Water which does deal extra damage. Meanwhile you've got a couple other maneuvers for backup that are also upgrading as you go (unlike sorcerers, when you trade a manuever on the even levels you do get to upgrade it). The key is that this is still a strength focused build, because this is DnD 3.5. Take 15 dex, TWF, Two-Weapon Rend, and Gloves of the Balanced Hand. If you want more stabbing then hey, pile on the Weapon Focus/Specialization/Melee Weapon Mastery, more untyped attack+damage boosts to confirm and get multiplied. Warblades don't have heavy armor proficiency, but good 'ol mithril doesn't care anyway, so Mithril Full Plate with 16 dex is still capped.

And it all comes back to that lack of real bonus: all the fighter feats, all the warblade maneuvers, work perfectly fine with normal martial weapon proficiency Kukris. You can spend a feat on the Lightblade for +1 damage, but it's only ever had two real benefits: fashion statement, and the whole "both Lightblades and Thinblades can use Rapier focus/spec/improved crit" thing. Making a TWF build you don't care about needing a Thinblade for two-handing (a dexy PA build would use a Courtblade anyway), it's a nice bonus but that's about it. You could use a Thinblade and Lightblade together, drop the Lightblade to two-hand the Thinblade for PA on say an Emerald Razor or Mountain Hammer attack. If your only source of TWF is maneuvers that makes sense, but if you start taking feats it gets worse. If you've only got PA and TWF and use either to enhance the appropriate maneuvers that works, but if you later invest in Two-Weapon Rend and ITWF or Gloves of the Balanced Hand that Power Attack feat starts to look more and more wasted when you could just be building up Blood in the Water.

Hmm, I could see combining some Iajutsu Strike. Draw Thinblade-> Emerald Razor+PA+Iajutsu on round one, Draw Lightblade and TWF/Wolf Fang/Mongoose on subsequent turns.

[Demidos]

Petal (+2 LA, technically cohort only but that's kinda silly) gives +10 dex, +8 Cha, among other things. Dualwield what are effectively toothpicks. Get those toothpick-rapiers as aptitude, and take lightning maces and improved critical.

Take power attack and weapon finesse (or you get that as a bonus feat, I don't remember), and you're probably hitting even with penalties and full power attack. Get some sneak attack from either rogue or sneak attack fighter and take craven. Take staggering strike and other similar things to taste. Then go warblade.

At level 20 you have +40ish damage from craven and power attack alone, you crit on a 15-20, and every time you crit on any of your 8+ attacks you get another attack, and this is all before any manuvuers (there is one manuvuer that gives you +1 to hit/damage per crit in the last minute). Some way of getting hide in plain sight (like the collar of umbral metamophisis), and you're a practically invisible tiny fey utterly destroying everything in sight.

[Clopin Silk]

Please confirm what system you are using so we can focus on giving you advice you can use. :)

Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting that I mentioned gets rid of the penalties for using two rapiers, but that's an extra feat that you could have instead spend elsewhere. The high feat tax is part of the reason dual wielding is considered suboptimal in most cases, but hey, power isn't everything!



I use 3.5. Also, I am kind of a huge rookie, so... yeah. And if twin rapiers are a poor choice, that leads to a new question; what are the coolest weapons that work well for this class?

[Rebel7284]

CoC would have been an OK class if the only prereq was being an elf. As it needs 4 mostly bad feats, it's utter junk, sadly.

Mosty plain Swordsage can do the dex fighting thing reasonably well with stance options like 20% concealment or +2d6 sneak attack and Wisdom to AC. Of course pales in comparison to Swiftblade's 50% miss chance and Wizard buffs, but may be good enough for a low powered game.

Hit and Run Sneak attack Fighter 1/Spiritual Lion Totem Barbarian 1/Swordsage 18

Round 1 : Charge in and full attack with Str + 2x Dex + Sneak Attack to damage, then Sudden Leap out.
Round 2: Turn Invisible, charge and full attack again.
Round 3: Random debuff strikes

Also note that Craven is a nice feat for anyone who uses sneak attack. Potentially a risky feat, but a nice feat anyway.

[Fizban]

Uh, that depends on what you mean by "coolest" and "class." There are multiple ways to attempt the build, and the answer is whichever weapon is allowed to work with the build. The default answer is always daggers, because everyone has proficiency, the next is shortswords because they've still on most classes you would use to make the build. If you want two TWF high crit weapons you have two options, kukris come free with any class that has full martial weapon proficiency, otherwise you're spending a feat at which point you can use whatever weapon you want-except the only other high crit light weapon is the Lightblade.

If you're using a rogue flanking sneak attack build it doesn't matter what you wield, you'll probably use daggers or shortswords, but note that this build is useless without a flanking partner-not very anime. If you're using a Telling Blow build you want a high crit range, which means either kukris or lightblades, and you can get kukris from Sneak Attack Fighter which is also better in a straight up fight anyway, as I already described int he build.

If you're trying to do a TWF dex to damage build then you either need a weapon from the Shadow Hand favored weapon list: dagger, shortsword, sai, siangham, unarmed strike, or spiked chain, or the Champion of Corellon list: longsword, rapier, lightblade, thinblade, courtblade, or scimitar. There is no weapon that appears on both lists, so you need to get the DM to either let you count a lightblade as a shortsword for the Shadow Blade feat, or get them to let you do it with the Aptitude magic weapon ability. Either way that build is using a lightblade, it's the only weapon that is allowed to work.

If you just do a Warblade, you can use any weapon you want. If you want lots of crits we're back to kukris, unless you don't like slashing in which case you spend a feat on lightblade for style.

Edit: for a complete newbie who's unsure of learning about about maneuvers, I would recommend the strength focused Sneak Attack Fighter+ Telling Blow build, where the most complicated part is writing down the changes to the fighter class, which is only a few sentences. Trying to focus on dex just makes things complicated. Remember that dexterity is not speed, it's finesse, high dexterity doesn't make you any better at zipping around the battlefield. A high strength fighter is plenty fast, more strength= more force=more speed when they swing that weapon. Sneak Attack Fighter will give you good hp and armor at level 1, you can have high strength for your attacks and enough dexterity to match your medium armor (later mithril heavy armor) and be just fine.

If you want movement speed, you can gain that from a lot of things. You could take one level of barbarian for fast movement, which applies in light armor (making your total speed 40') or in medium armor (so instead of being reduced to 20', you're back up to normal speed of 30'). You could be a different race that just has a higher speed: Nezumi from Oriental Adventures are nifty looking rat-men with a 40' base speed and a constitution bonus, you get speed and hp both.

Nezumi Barbarian 1/Sneak Attack Thug Fighter X
Starting stats: put your highest stat in strength, then a 15 in dex, then your next highest stat in con, then whatever.
Starting main weapons/armor: two kukris and a suit of scale mail. You'll upgrade to Breastplate and later Mithril Full Plate.
1st: TWF, fast movement, rage 1/day, speed 40' in medium armor, staring hp 12+con, starting skill points 6+int x4 (barbarian list)
2nd: sneak attack 1d6, skill points from now on 4+int (fighter+thug list)
3rd: Telling Blow -whenever you critical you add sneak attack damage (but only once, if you're flanking you just sneak attack on every hit anyway, this feat means you don't need a partner or a bunch of other feats or magic).

4th: sneak attack 2d6, +1 dex
5th
6th: sneak attack 3d6, Two-Weapon Pounce -you can attack with both weapons after moving (up to twice your speed) if you have a clear path in a straight line to the target
7th
8th: sneak attack 4d6, +1 strength
9th: Improved Critical (Kukri) -crit range is now 15-20
10th: sneak attack 5d6
11th
12th: sneak attack 6d6, +1 strength, Two-Weapon Rend -whenever you hit with both weapons on the same turn you deal an extra 1d6+ 1 1/2 strength bonus

And again, for magic items you get Gloves of the Balanced Hand instead of bothering with Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Belt of Giant Strength, etc.

What the visual? He's a rat man in medium armor who moves faster than a normal man can in light armor. He wields two knives with a wicked curves. If you're distracted he can give you massive gashes, and if you're not distracted he'll do it anyway.

[Rebel7284]

I use 3.5. Also, I am kind of a huge rookie, so... yeah. And if twin rapiers are a poor choice, that leads to a new question; what are the coolest weapons that work well for this class?

Alright! Welcome to D&D. It must be overwhelming to be getting several dozen options from a bunch of different sources thrown at you all at once. D&D is a pretty complicated system.

Fizban has the main options covered.
For the Swiftblade build, you can get nearly the same effect and save a feat by using a Longsword in the main hand and a Dagger in the off hand.

If you want something a bit fancier, take a look at Thunderlance Spell from Spell Compendium. Cast it twice and dual wield twenty foot beams of pure energy. Normally the spell lasts only rounds/level, however, if you take just one level of Spelldancer class (and Spelldancer's requirements overlap heavily with Swiftblade), you can then apply Persistent Spell feat to them to make it last all day! Yes, this makes the build more complicated. Yes you still need backup weapons in case someone manages to successfully dispel your lightsabers. This also only comes online once you have access to 4th level spells, so no earlier than level 7. However that's pretty much the coolest things you can dual wield as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: Just realized that Spelldancer can't persist "Invocation" spells, which I believe is the old name for Evocation, so you would need another way of doing this, such as three levels of Incantatrix class.

Edit2: After a bunch of googling, apparently there is a variant Transmuter wizard in Unearthed Arcana that can make any spell into a Transmutation spell, so giving up one of the Fighter feats to grab Thunderlance could work (even if Evocation is banned too!) Except for the issue of having to wait until level 7 which delays Swiftblade, but eh? Can't have everything. I guess at that point, Incanatrix is probably easier.

[CaPtMalHammer]

you could go some sort of monk/fighter/scout hybrid.

Take feats like mobility and dodge. vexing flanker. karmic strike, there is a feat that gives you AC when you provoke attacks of opportunity and that give you extra damage when flanking etc. More or an acrobat build. You take a lot of attacks against you but with a high Dex and Wis and feats should have a high AC. this allows the rest of your party the ability to move around the battlefield in a round not worrying about A of O. Is a lot of fun and when you do get hit you can hit back:) a little problem against some spell casters and archers but that can be taken care of I levels later as well.

[Karl Aegis]

Nimblewrights dual wield rapiers by default, if I'm recalling them correctly. They're in Monster Manual II, I believe. 3.0 content and constructs with a large amount of racial hit dice, but could work if you're willing to use them.