twf rapier ranger/Dpirate/bard

[electric mayhem]

Anyone rolled a ranger/dpirate/bard , two weapon rapier specialist before?
How'd it go?
Pros
Cons

Spinning a fun RP character around this idea at the moment. Curious about mechanical ability on the server and ability to handle epic content.

[electric mayhem]

Got to love JEGs. Blew this idea up many different ways to show it doesn't work as initially planned.

Rapier doesn't work with power attack. Power attack was being used for the imp feats Fav Enemies for ranger bonus dmg.
Was going to make use of combat expertise as well as power attack... low and behold, forgot about not being able to activate 2 vanilla combat modes. Therefore Deadly Defense also became a non option as well.

Replacing idea with scimitars and seeing how it goes.
Added two weapon defense to help beef ac too.

[chad878262]

Ranger is not ideal when making a Dread Pirate build. Better to go something like B12/SB5/DP10/T3 for your Rapier build. Then you don't need PA, you go for DEX of 14 (18 w/ Bard spell or bracers) and Mithral Chainmail then max INT. This gives you double INT damage on your dual rapiers. Note that Dread Pirate gets ITWF at level 6, so taking ranger levels is redundant. Bard 12 gives you some decent, albeit situational and easily dispelled spell casting. However, I certainly still find Assassin spells useful, even with only 8-10 levels so 12 Bard levels will be at least as useful. Cat's Grace, Fox's Cunning, Inspirational Boost, See Invisibility, Heroism and Shadow Conjuration will all provide enough benefit to even consider Extend Spell and Practiced Spell Caster, depending on what type of area's you plan to frequent. Curse Song will certainly be useful as well and with 18 levels of high BAB classes you'll have 9 APR.

For your Strength based idea, I would actually build similarly, but replace SB with Fighter (B13/F4/DP10/T3) to gain 2 feats (1 has to be spent on Weapon Finesse) and an extra bard level for caster and song progression. I also would recommend you test out your idea for a STR build with Northlander Hewing to see which you like better. You basically give up your offhand attacks going from 9 down to 6, but do max damage. Will work best with higher damage weapons such as bastard swords and also works better with weapons that have low crit ranges like battle axe. Also, since with Northlander Hewing you are going to drop your offhand attacks you don't need Oversized TWF to wield two of the same weapon. Thus you could go Bastard Sword (or Battle axe) in main hand and then any light hand with good passive bonuses in offhand. Saves you a feat over IPA as well. Note that if you did go Rapier that Northlander Hewing will work with PA/CE thus you could have NH and CE active (odd as that sounds). However, the downside is that a Rapier only does 6 damage with NH and has a high crit range, making it a poor choice since Deadly Defense is basically just making up the damage you would have had anyway using a battle axe, while critting more often which generally does less damage when using NH.

Just a few things to consider that might help you refine your build idea.

[aaron22]

if two weapon rapier specialist is what you want then you could go Swashy11/Duel7/WM7/Temp5. PTWF.

i am essentially in love with the awesome synergy the 4 classes have.

that build would have good damage and alot of chances to crit. tons of SPs and really solid defense in melee (will save stinks). I play one right now and while its not perfect, it is pretty solid.

[Thorsson]

I would also agree that Ranger is a mistake with Bard/Dread Pirate. I made one that was Bd8/DP7/Te5/Dervish10 using Kukris and it worked very well. I recall someone else had a close idea and used F8 rather than Bard and got similar results.

Dervish could probably be replaced by WoD and work well. In all cases it works for all races, which is an advantage here I feel.

[electric mayhem]

Alot of food for thought.

Ended up getting an interesting build with the original three.
Ranger24/Bard3/DP3
Allows full spell range for ranger (cl28 with practised). All combat feats are free related to dual weapon fighting. Allowed to fill in blanks with weap fin. com exp, deadly def, lots of imp fav enemies (not pow fav en since Pow Att removed).
Gives the persistent bard inspire buffed with pirate and bardspell. (DP inspire alone is only 1min/DPCL and once per day).
Ranger spells, AC buffs, pet, HIPS(late, but still there), skill synergies.
AC: 21 before armor +buffs+extrastats etc
AB:35 before extras.

One thing i had in mind was ensuring crit dmg applied as often and high as possible. But also there was enough dmg being put out by the build to be able to handle DR mobs and Crit immune mobs. Hence all the bonus dmg with fav enemies and bonus inspire dmg.

Will chuck the other ideas into the pattern grinder and have a look at them as well. Thanks for them

if two weapon rapier specialist is what you want then you could go Swashy11/Duel7/WM7/Temp5. PTWF

.
I don't think duelist is a good idea for a two weapon fighter. Bonus dmg disabled according to the wiki notes. I'm guessing that was meant to be pirate?
And doesn't combat exp disable parry mode?

[chad878262]

I don't think duelist is a good idea for a two weapon fighter. Bonus dmg disabled according to the wiki notes. I'm guessing that was meant to be pirate?
And doesn't combat exp disable parry mode?

The only thing that would not work from Duelist is Precise Strike (1d6 damage). All of the other abilities, including Flourish (2d6 once/12 seconds) will still work. Still gets INT to AC, up to +5 deflection from parry ranks, haste, etc.

[electric mayhem]

Does the flourish apply to all attacks in the round or just the first?

[Egg Shen]

Just the first.