Short Swords

[DreWalker]

I like the look of these Keen short swords ive got.

what is a good way to put them to use?

they have hide/ms keen aswell. I havent seen, or noticed people using short swords, that might be because of their stats not being as good as other options. but flavor is flavor

[chad878262]

Do they have Enhancement Bonus or just Keen and + Hide/MS? If they don't have Enhancement Bonus you can make them +3 with an item sold in Beregost (I think).

A couple options:
R21/A9 - Perfectly viable high sneak attack damage build. Alternative would be R19/NWN3/A8 for a bit more AB and movement speed Gets same sneak dice and same number of feats, but will lose one DC from death attack and some spell casting. Build would want to get 26 DEX (30 after Cat's Grace) and secondary skill would be INT for skills and death attack DC. Note it doesn't need Combat Insight since damage comes from sneak dice and you will likely have trouble fitting it in, though R19 feat may allow for it, up to you if it's better to take CI or Improved Sneak Attack.

W5/EK9/A8/AT8 - (Fighter/Mage/Thief) - I love this build that Thids pointed me in the direction of a while back. CL25, but it is SLOW to level since you don't get HiPS until ~level 24 and 9th level spells won't come until ~26 or 27 (I forget). However, you can give yourself tons of defense to be immune to a lot of stuff. The biggest issue is without your sneak dice damage is non-existent and you don't have Epic Precision, which is bad.

SB19/WM7/SD4 - Slow to come into it's own as you'll get SD around level 18, but since you don't rely on sneak dice HiPS is really more about defense anyway. Ideally this build would dual wield Kukri's in order to maximize wounding/weakening criticals, but Keen Short Swords can work too. You'll still be landing crits on 15 or higher after all. Note as discussed in recent threads such a build can be a bit frustrating against most (not all) high end bosses that are immune to stat loss. You will want DEX at 25 or 26 for perfect two weapon fighting and to maximize INT as much as possible. Grab Combat Insight for double INT to damage and you should do ok for a dual wielder without sneak dice.

F12/SB5/AK(WoD)10/SD3(or R3) - Same as above, but built to maximize non-crit damage with fighter feats, insightful strike and combat insight. Doesn't make as much use of keen property though.

F12/SB7/WM7/SD (or WD)3 - Could be F14/SB5, Swashbuckler gets more skill points and free mobility at 7 so depends on how you want to build it. Similar to the above build, but has more crits. Still focusing on lots of damage from double INT and fighter feats. Crits don't apply wounding/weakening, but lots of damage.

F12/SB5/WM8/T5 - Can settle for DEX 17 and still get GTWF for 9 APR. This allows you to maximize INT to damage. Not sure if the damage will be higher with max INT or getting DEX to ~25 for PTWF and 3 more APR since those additional 3 attacks are at progressively lower AB.

SB14/F4/WM7/T5 - Gets weakening Critical and Epic Precision (SB12) which does work to allow INT to damage to apply against crit immune, though I forget if it will apply half or full damage. Won't have as much damage as going Fighter 12 for Epic Weapon Specialization and Melee Mastery, but it will do better against Crit Immunes. This is likely a better split if you want to go for GTWF with max INT. However, another option is to go for Invisible Blade or Duelist levels in order to help AC with INT. Something like SB12/F4/WM7/D7 could still work for a TWF build and could apply up to +7 AC from INT.

There are many other ways to make dual short swords work. Heck, B27/T3 could be a STR based GTWF or INT based and do very well. Point is the above are just some ideas that give you 3 'paths' to consider, but they aren't the only 3. But since one is sneak attacker, one is caster with some sneak damage and the others are more INT based damage it gives you an idea of synergies that work with your weapons.

[Born2BeWild]

You log before i wrote back so
http://nwn2db.com/build/?280554 - current Zoop build, no weapon focus so you can use any weapon(I use mace case it got 2 vamp regen)
http://nwn2db.com/build/?294930 - another hin, single weapon and shitty will save so use at own risk.

[Sun Wukong]

Basically any build that uses stealth or prefers to dual-wield light weapons... Basically it doesn't make that much of a difference to medium sized creatures. Light and Tiny weapons have the same AB penaltied with two-weapon fighting.

For small races, such as gnomes and halflings, they do suffer a bit more of AB penalty.

[DreWalker]

ahh thanks guys