Help with TWF build

[Soultpp]

Hello, I'm new to posting here, but I've lurked for a while reading a lot of useful tips.

Now to the business of this thread. Our group has just recently started up a D&D campaign after our previous campaign (modern GURPS) met a slightly bittersweet end (one character died due for stupid reasons, another {mine} decided to 'go berserk' and suicide).

So first a couple of points about our group. I am the one who is most proficient with the rules, the rest love to play but tend to be a bit less inclined to picking up books (PDFs) and mostly just rely on me for anything rules (they seem very impatient with the mechanical aspects of character design a lot of the times). This does include the GM though he does tend to be 2nd most knowledgeable most of the time. And last point, is the DM's rule that we only use books that we have data sets for etools for. It probably sounds weird or dumb, but its a time management issue, without it we may not get a chance to play at all.

So I was going to just past a picture of the books in etools to save time, sadly Photobucket decided to be a jerk and wasted my time so I'm not going to have to type them out.

Arms & Equipment Guide
Book of Challenges (but its disabled)
City of Splendors: Waterdeep
CMP Bonus Data(whatever that is)
Complete Adventurer, Arcane, Divine, Warrior
Draconomicon
DMG II (Just recently acquired)
DMG
Enemies and Allies (Also disabled)
Epic Level Handbook (another new install)
Expanded Psionics Handbook
Hero Builder's Guidebook (Disabled again)
Magic of Faerun
MM 1, 2, 3 (2/3 are new)
Player's Guide to Faerun
PHB
Races of Destiny
Races of Faerun
Shining South
Stronghold Builder's Guide (Did you guess disabled? Yup)

The disabled ones were mostly because they did not seem to add anything of interest to our previous campaigns, but since we have em, we won't get rid of them, just in case. I have been looking for data sets for Complete Scoundrel and Drow of the Underdark because I'd love to use a few of the features in them, but so far no luck there.

Okay, so the introductory material is out of the way, on to true business. I am looking for help in working out a TWF build to use for a backup character, but thought maybe a little outside advice would help. I've looked over the TWF Offhandbook here but most of the recommended material is all in books we can't use. My initial inclination is to lean toward a fighter/dervish but I could use a few extra ideas and maybe more ways to move+FA. I'm not used to super complicated builds (more than 3 classes at once) but am not opposed to the idea, and I am the one of our group most inclined to optimize though from my reading even I'm obvious a novice at it.

As for the character, the only thing I have right now are the ability scores, which were achieved with the high-powered die roll method (5d6, drop 2 dice):

18, 18, 18, 17, 16, 15

Crazy high, I know.

The other issue I need advice on is that our GM has a somewhat hard time handing out wealth. I'm hoping someone can give me some suggestions to use to lead him to a slightly more generous position. For example, so far we've just reached Lv3 but have yet to get anything beyond our starting gear. I've tried to point out the wealth by level sidebar in the DMG but I'm not sure he has looked. Right now my only thought is to have my current character refuse to continue without some compensation for the danger, as she's no goody goody. (We do have a paladin, but the plan had originally been for it to be an Ex-paladin/blackguard. (I've managed to get everyone to look at building towards PrCs this time for a change) Owing to miscommunications, we originally thought that we'd be starting as Lv20s, but then found out differently and instead started at Lv1 but are still building towards the original Lv20 chars. As a side question to this, I'm also interested in advice (which of course I would pass on) as to what level we should start getting access to means of gaining inherent bonuses to stats (And how to value them against WBL).

Well, hope someone can help, and thanks in advance!

[Darrin]

You called...?

So. Dervish, eh? Well, let's see here... if Complete Scoundrel is out of the picture... then no Swift Hunter or Daring Outlaw. No Dragonfire Inspiration, either... and no Spirit Lion Barbarian, so Pounce is a little hard to come by...

Hrrm. Best I can find is Lion Tribe Warrior in Shining South. I think we can work with that... Dervish makes the scimitars light, and Lion Tribe says you can attack once with each at the end of a charge. Improved TWF and Greater TWF should still give you additional offhand attacks, because they are exceptions to the general TWF rules and that's what they're supposed to do. But you might want to check with the DM on that.

Ok, so, the fastest entry into Dervish:

Ranger 2/Fighter 2/Swashbuckler 1

Argh. I thought I had a work-around that involved dragonsplits (MM4) but I eventually noticed that's not in your list of sources. Well, I suppose a straight-up Dervish is somewhat decent, although there's not much bonus damage there. I thought I could do something with Power Attack + Shock Trooper, but you need another sourcebook... either MM4 for dragonsplits or PHBII for Versatile Unarmed Strike.

[Gruftzwerg]

a few things about TWF:
Imho it's a beginner trap and harder to build a good TWF build than a good 2h build as newbie. This is due the attack penalties TWF gets and on later levels these are killing your additional attacks from high BAB. So the extra attack form your offhand can get pointless in some scenarios (you hit with offhand, but miss with your 2nd mainhand attack).
Power Attack is the bread & butter for most melee build who wanna focus on dmg. Since it works with attack penalties you get less use with TWF (cause you already have some penalties, you have lesser to spare for Power Attack). When you add the Strength/Power Attack penalty for offhand, the Combination becomes totally useless most of the time.

Ranger:
Ranger can get the TWF feats for free. The cheesy part is, you don't need to have the required DEX for the feats and can focus purely on STR. The downside is, you get the feats somewhat late, compared to the availability if you would take them on a regular char.

Precision Damage:
Rogues, Scouts and other classes which add extra damage dice are good ways to support your TWF dmg output, since it (the precision dmg) doesn't further worsen your attack bonus, any extra attack due to TWF is welcome.

Feats:
TWF builds are feat-starving. The TWF feat tree is big and either leaves lil room for other feats or forces you to take a few levels of fighter. Maybe up to lvl 4 to get access to weapon specialization.

Monks unarmed or with Monk Weapons:
When Monks attack unarmed or with Monk Weapon they may choose to treat them as regular (no offhand) attacks. This doesn't give you the extra attacks, but lets you be a TWF char for the roleplay fluff without bothering with the TWF rules. (note: you can still go for regular TWF with monks, it's just an option monks have).

[Soultpp]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Yeah, Dervish seemed the best option available to me with what I had access to. More exotic weapons could have been interesting, and dragonsplits in particular look neat in the picture from the book, but alas.

Lion Tribe Warrior does look interesting, but I'm not sure that the Imp or Gr TWF would work there. Strictly speaking it says 'strike with each once', but in some ways that is a little unfair as by itself it means a high enough level character could get more attacks with only 1 hand than with two. So in the end I'd say that would be a judgement call for the DM as you suggested. He's fairly easy going with actual interpretation, so he may actually allow FA with both. :D

Now as to the class path you chose. I am pretty sure that it was for more than strictly Dervish that you chose that particular line up, so I'm curious as to the specifics. I need the extra help so I can learn what to look for myself. :) It can't just be for the feat selection, as you could do the same, as well as the skills, with pure fighter (with 1 more fighter feat). So there must be something about Ranger and Swashbuckler specifically that you think will add extra?

Well let's see if I can guess and you can tell me if I missed something... Ranger adds the spell list for wands and favored enemy for situational bonus damage, plus more skill points and access to Hide/MS. Swashbuckler has tumble as a class skill I see, and a further dip later for Int damage bonus. It also looks like you're trading 1 point of Will save for +2 to Reflex and a huge +4 to Fort. I can see the Fort being great to compensate for the low Fort from Dervish, and the lower Will should be fine with a few levels of Dervish's higher Will save.

So, anything I missed in that?

And also, how about the actual feat progression, and further ahead? I'll admit that our group tends to level up very fast. The DM perfers a 'milestone' system over the minor math of CR to XP calculations, and as a result we tend to level up every 3-4 sessions. This, of course, is part of the problem regarding wealth gain.



You bring up some valid points Gruftzwerg. I am aware of them though. :)

Ranger is only late in getting TWF if A> you cross class and B> you rely only on Ranger to get the feat. A pure ranger would actually get Imp and Gr TWF at the level they reach the BAB minimum going pure class, only the initial TWF is delayed until Lv2.

Precision damage is not a bad idea, and I was considering dipping into something that adds it, either rogue or scout.

Fighter 4 is probably the goal if I do an extensively multiclassed build, unless I find a way to stack levels for feat requirements in the books I have.

A monk is just not going to have the flavor I am looking for in regards to this character as compared to TWF.

I understand that TWF is a very feat-intensive build but I don't mind and have another concept in mind for a THF that I may ask for advice about on here later.

[Darrin]

Lion Tribe Warrior does look interesting, but I'm not sure that the Imp or Gr TWF would work there. Strictly speaking it says 'strike with each once', but in some ways that is a little unfair as by itself it means a high enough level character could get more attacks with only 1 hand than with two. So in the end I'd say that would be a judgement call for the DM as you suggested. He's fairly easy going with actual interpretation, so he may actually allow FA with both. :D


The key phrase is "using the normal rules for fighting with two weapons". Those appear on page 160 of the PHB, and they allow you to make one additional attack with your offhand weapon. That's just the standard rules.

Improved TWF and Greater TWF are an exception to the standard TWF rules, and they allow you to make additional offhand attacks. Lion Tribe Warrior doesn't say anything about what happens when you have Improved TWF or Greater TWF, so we treat them just as we would with the standard TWF rules: you get additional offhand attacks.

But yes, you'll want to check with the DM on that.



Now as to the class path you chose. I am pretty sure that it was for more than strictly Dervish that you chose that particular line up, so I'm curious as to the specifics. I need the extra help so I can learn what to look for myself. :) It can't just be for the feat selection, as you could do the same, as well as the skills, with pure fighter (with 1 more fighter feat). So there must be something about Ranger and Swashbuckler specifically that you think will add extra?


I had a much more complicated build worked out that combined TWF with Power Attack and Shock Trooper, but had to abandon it when I realized dragonsplits weren't available. But as far as Ranger 2/Fighter 2/Swashbuckler 1 goes, you get a bonus feat at every level so it's just a really efficient way to pack a whole bunch of bonus feats into five levels. You can start with Fighter 4/Swashbuckler 1 if you prefer, as you get three bonus feats either way, but starting with ranger gets you more skill points and offers more ACFs (which you don't exactly have access to).

Start with Ranger 1, as you get the most skill points that way. (If the Cityscape Web Enhancement is available, take the Skilled City-Dweller ACF (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) to swap your Ride skill for Tumble.) I usually swap Track out for the Trap Expert ACF (Dungeonscape) and swap Wild Empathy for the Spiritual Connection ACF (Complete Champion), but those aren't available in the sourcebooks you listed. The Arcane Hunter ACF in Complete Mage is also pretty nifty, if you're not doing the Swift Hunter thing. As far as Favored Enemy goes, undead are pretty common at all levels of play. For your 1st level and human bonus feat, take Weapon Focus: Scimitar and Lion Tribe Warrior.

Ranger 2 gets you TWF. You're stuck with light armor, but you probably wanted that anyway because you want to be a highly mobile Dex-based skirmisher. Once you get a darkleaf of mithral breastplate, you should be set for armor for awhile.

At level 3, Fighter 1 gets you Dodge. Take Combat Expertise as your other feat. You won't use it much, but it's a prereq.

At level 4, Fighter 2 gets you Mobility. Without the Cityscape ACF you may have to buy Tumble ranks cross-class, but I always like to see Tumble on a melee build even if it costs you double the skill points.

At level 5, you're still short on BAB to get into Dervish. Taking another level of Fighter doesn't help here, as you only get bonus feats on the even levels. And once you get into Dervish, it may be awhile before you take a non-Dervish level. So we want a one-level dip with full BAB that actually offers us something interesting... and that would be Swashbuckler, which gets Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. You're going to be TWFing with scimitars, so you're going to be a high Dex build just to get the TWF feats, so might as well get Weapon Finesse anyway. Swashbucklers also get Tumble as a class skill, so try and put all your skill ranks there to max it out. After that, you should be ready for Dervish.

Ranger 2/Fighter 2/Swashbuckler 1/Dervish 10/Something 5

Feats: Improved TWF at 6th, Improved Trip at 9th, Elusive Target at 12th, Greater TWF at 15th, and Sense Weakness (Draconomicon) at 18th. Actually, you can swap around those last four feats however you like, if you think you'll need Sense Weakness earlier or want to take Greater TWF at 12th.

The "Something 5" can be more Swashbuckler (adds Int bonus to damage), or gawd forbid Tempest 5 (I'm not a fan, but given your sources available, might be something you can live with). You could also take another level of Ranger for Endurance, then dip into Horizon Walker for immunity to fatigue (never worry about being tired after Dervish Dance).



So, anything I missed in that?


I think you've got most of it. The Fort/Will save doesn't concern me so much as getting the feats you need as early as possible. If a particular saving throw is a concern, you can try and address that with magic items or just take your lumps however they come at you.



This, of course, is part of the problem regarding wealth gain.


Well, my primary fix for that is Ancestral Relic, but it's in BoED and thus not available.

After that, your best bet is to point out the Wealth By Level table and remind the DM that if the PCs aren't getting at least that, then the Challenge Rating system will be borked, as the game assumes the PCs have access to enough magic items to make sure the Encounter Levels are appropriately matched.

If that doesn't change anything... scrape together 910 GP and find a 13th level spellcaster who can cast summon monster VII. Have him call up a djinn (just a normal one) and direct it to use his major creation SLA to create 20 cubic feet of vegetable matter (permanent duration). Before, I've suggested using this trick to create 20 cubic feet of Black Lotus Extract (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10040483&postcount=5), but since this has a market price over 80 million GP, it tends to obliterate the local economy (or just kill everyone with poison). Then I suggested using saffron (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10732292&postcount=63), but I had trouble nailing down its weight by volume. This post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10880626&postcount=7) identified a more reliable density for saffron (http://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/Spices-coma-and-blank-saffron), and it wasn't nearly as profitable as I thought it was. However, it turns out cloves (http://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/food-volume-to-weight/substance/spices-coma-and-blank-cloves-coma-and-blank-ground) are heaver than saffron, so 20 cubic feet is about 540 pounds. As per PHB p. 112, cloves are a trade good that's worth 15 GP per pound, so you can trade that in for 8100 GP. Use that to summon more djinns, rinse and repeat until you've got enough GP to make your DM blubber incoherently.



A monk is just not going to have the flavor I am looking for in regards to this character as compared to TWF.


If you can get access to the Variant Fighting Styles in the SRD, then Cobra Strike Monk can get you Dodge and Mobility. That would free up Fighter 2 to take some more interesting feats, maybe get Improved Trip and Elusive Target online much earlier.



I understand that TWF is a very feat-intensive build but I don't mind and have another concept in mind for a THF that I may ask for advice about on here later.


One of the best ways to TWF is greatsword with armor spikes or unarmed strike. But you're still missing a couple things to get that to work with dervish... mostly PHBII for Versatile Unarmed Strike.

[Soultpp]

Everything looks good to me I think. Looking at it, I can see that starting with 2 Ranger dip is the far superior option to pure fighter as a means of reaching Dervish. If it weren't for that tumble in Swashbuckler, I'd wonder if I wouldn't be better served just going Ranger 3 for Endurance. The earliest (not counting inherent bonuses) that my dex will hit 20 is probably Lv12 unless I neglect the 17 stat until then, so Finesse would not help any until mid-late game barring magical assistance.

I'm currently looking at arranging the stats as 18,18, 17,18,16,15 which is an initial sacrifice of HP for an extra 4 +1/lvl skill points since I can 'fix' the HP later but there is no retroactive skill point gain. Stupid high stats can sometimes squeeze room for other feats I've found. (I'm a rather lucky roller, but only ever for D&D. Maybe I should try shooting craps? :D )

Continuing on, unless I split Dervish with Horizon Walker much earlier, the fatigue immunity is wasted on Dervish Dance since Tireless Dance removes that at Drv9, still might look at it for other terrain benefits.

Well, if he continues to vacillate over the treasure (or just never give us any) I may have to go the Jinn route, or at the very least I may be able to derail the campaign at least a little by having my character (currently a human Warlock) come down with a serious case of the greedies. ^_^ It's ironic that saffron and cloves are the same value in D&D though considering just how huge the difference is in modern pricing though. ($2000 vs $12-15 per pound) Oh well, cloves it will be. :D Of course just making em is the 'easy' part, right?

[Darrin]

If it weren't for that tumble in Swashbuckler, I'd wonder if I wouldn't be better served just going Ranger 3 for Endurance.


If your goal would be to get into Horizon Tripper, then that would probably be better than the Swashbuckler dip.



The earliest (not counting inherent bonuses) that my dex will hit 20 is probably Lv12 unless I neglect the 17 stat until then, so Finesse would not help any until mid-late game barring magical assistance.


I had forgotten about your ability scores, and that your Str would be the same as Dex for most of your career. Hmmm. Samurai (Complete Warrior version) might be worth a look instead of Swashbuckler. Samurai doesn't get tumble, but does get EWP: Bastard Sword, which gives you a bit more damage on your primary weapon. However, it doesn't work with Lion Tribe Warrior.



Continuing on, unless I split Dervish with Horizon Walker much earlier, the fatigue immunity is wasted on Dervish Dance since Tireless Dance removes that at Drv9, still might look at it for other terrain benefits.


Ah... yes, sorry. Forgot about that.



It's ironic that saffron and cloves are the same value in D&D though considering just how huge the difference is in modern pricing though.

The A&EG has saffron at 65 GP per ounce, which I think might be more historically accurate, but the 3.5 PHB takes rules precedence. If you can convince the DM to use the A&EG, then 20 cubic feet of saffron should be... 184,496 GP. That should get you a few trinkets (or books thrown at your head).

[Soultpp]

I had forgotten about your ability scores, and that your Str would be the same as Dex for most of your career. Hmmm. Samurai (Complete Warrior version) might be worth a look instead of Swashbuckler. Samurai doesn't get tumble, but does get EWP: Bastard Sword, which gives you a bit more damage on your primary weapon. However, it doesn't work with Lion Tribe Warrior.

So, with the Samurai dip, it would basically change it to Bastard/scimitar combo is what you're saying? Might work, but I was thinking of doing a little bit of crit-fishing by maybe adding Imp Crit (assuming the cash flow remains low) or keen on the weapons if I can manage, whichever is more cost effective given the circumstance really. Oh and then there is the WP:Scim that would be lost for that hand I guess. Still, its worth considering, though I think Ranger may have a better skill set to spend points on... So many decisions. :smallbiggrin: