Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

So, been thinking a little bit about this would be curious what you more experienced folks thought.

Since unarmed strikes are a a light weapon, swashbucklers can apply their insightful strike damage to their punches. This has some pluses and minuses

Advantages:
- This is the only way that Swashbucklers can use Insightful Strike and Power Attack
- Can make use of Swashbuckler free disarm feat to steal weapons (if it works?)
- Weapon Mastery Unarmed unlocked with 4 levels of fighter rather than 12


Disadvantages:
- Piercing damage resistance with unarmed - although you can just take a weapon out when you need to.
- Need damage on glove slot, which means Bracers of the Peerless Archer are out
- Multiple Ability Dependence - Swashbucklers naturally are Int and Dex, and Monk / Unarmed PRCs generally use other abilities as well.


Some concepts:

16 Swash / 5 Frenzied Berzerker / 4 Fighter / 5 Duelist
16 Swash / 5 Frenzied Berzerker / 3 Fist / 6 Duelist
FB gives damage from power attack, and Duelist requires only one feat to qualify for to add into to AC when unarmored. For a high int build this is useful. Coupling with Fist of Forest means your tight on feats, but may be able to do a strength build with 15 or 13 in Int, Dex and 16 in constitution which, all added up, would be 9-12 AC which is equivalent to wearing Mithral Armors.

14 Swashbuckler / 16 Monk
Obvious one but makes me ask "Why" you would take Swashbuckler at all in this case.

12 Swashbuckler / 3 Cleric / 10 Sacred Fist / Fighter or Fist of the Foret
Cleric domains can pick up evasion for you, so you only need 12 swashbuckler. With fighter this build can make use of light armor, but I don't think a shield?

There may additionally be a Swashbuckler / 7 Duelist / Monk combination that makes sense.

Not sure if there are other builds that would do punching with a shield. Can you use a shield with Fist of the Forest?

Yes, FotF can punch with a shield. Also you simply go with STR, insightful strike (and generally speaking all swashbuckler abilities) will still apply as long as you're using a finesseable weapon.

Therefore you can go full MAD with STR, DEX, INT, WIS ! SB 7/ F4 / Monk 12 / duelist 7 with reasonable starting stats eveywhere and pumping STR can be pretty good I think.

Valefort wrote:Yes, FotF can punch with a shield. Also you simply go with STR, insightful strike (and generally speaking all swashbuckler abilities) will still apply as long as you're using a finesseable weapon.

Therefore you can go full MAD with STR, DEX, INT, WIS ! SB 7/ F4 / Monk 12 / duelist 7 with reasonable starting stats eveywhere and pumping STR can be pretty good I think.

I kind of like the idea of using Constitution instead of wisdom for a completely MAD build which is why I was thinking fist of the forest, even though it's kind of a pain to get.

And I meant that Sacred Fist can't use shield, which I think would violate the vows or something?

But it's definitely interesting that Fist of Forest can use shields and retain their Constitution to Dodge AC, I'll keep that in mind.