Scotley
Hero
By two-handed weapon do you mean like a Halberd or Greatsword or a double weapon like a Gnome Hooked Hammer or Dwarven Urgosh? I had a dire flail wielder once that I thought was pretty cool.
From a pure max damage stand point I gather from what I've read that a two handed weapon with optimal feats wins out. The big burly damage dealer can be fun but feels like a bit of one trick pony to me after a while. This is the easiest to design and implement.
Two-weapon stuff is a little trickier. Using the same weapon in each hand ala Dirztz (sp?) Drow of the twin scimitars gets you the most bang for your feat buck; although, I think Pathfinder doesn't really support a non-light weapon in the off hand perhaps in an intetional slight of one of Wizard's post popular and iconic NPC's? I like the twin short swords myself and have found it quite efficacious. By 4th level you can get the boost of weapon specialization in each hand which more than makes up for the slightly less optimal of the base weapons. Feat costs are always gonna be your biggest problem. You can have a damn fine double dagger wielding rogue if only you can afford the feats to be effective in both melee and ranged while boosting sneak attack damage to the max. Long about 5/6 fighter rogue is the sweet spot for that build when you add specialization, 3d6 sneak attack with special features and improved crit to the mix. Starting at 3rd level in a play by post that's never gonna happen.
I was having an interesting experiment in your ill-fated game with Gorgol the Scourge who fights with a scorpion whip and a long sword. He could do the standard two weapon routine or try using the whip a little further out or to trip. I thought it had potential even thought the second weapon damage was kinda weak if only because he had interesting options. If that game had continued until Gorgol could add weapon specialization and improved two weapon fighting as well as a couple d6 sneak attack he'd have been an ass kicker to be proud of. I don't think Mowgli wants us to reveal too much about our characters for this game, but I will say with cryptic quotation marks that my submitted character will have the option of using two 'weapons'. If you are willing to lay out the feats for an exotic weapon two-weapon fighter the Aklys has some interesting potential, it is a light weapon that can be used at range and does a very respectable d8 damage as well as being a trip and perform weapon. No other standard weapon can match it, some Kobold tail attachments do a d8, but that's pretty limited in application. It also offers the ranged trip. A brawler using kicks or elbows as his primary and the Aklys as his off-hand could have his primary hand free to help retrieve with weapon with its cord (a move action) between attacks. Tripping foes in the second rank could be great fun in those fights were spell casters or archer are protected by a row of melee guys. Indeed, you may well see such a fellow as a villain used against PC's in one of the games I run at a future date. But it would be feat intensive build. You'd need exotic weapon, two-weapon and improved trip as the price of entry. Arguably, the Brawler or monk would not need two weapon. Still, you would want lots of feats to optimize the ranged, two-weapon and melee aspects of the build. Might not be suitable for such a low level game, but long about 8th or 9th level this could be great fun with lots of attacks a round with one ranged and/or trip each round.
Avoiding exotics you could likely do something interesting mixing say a flail (with the potential for trips and disarms) with a Battle Aspergillam for that splash of special sauce. Add in some light hammers or star knives for the superior range in an off handed throwing weapon (hammers fly better than daggers, clubs or axes? Seems counter intuitive) once you've exhausted your splash.
So many of the interesting builds are just too feat intensive to be much fun at a game of this level. A human fighter or a fighter of one of the races that gets an exotic double weapon as a martial weapon is about the only way you can make the double weapon thing work and not feel sub-par. The limit of only one trait doesn't help. I've never built a character than I can remember around a double weapon other than the dire flail wielder. I think he was a 3.5 or maybe even 3.0 build. So, my memory is fuzzy at best. I won't say that a cool double weapon dude can't be build I just don't have any real experience with it. It will be all about the feats. I guess you do get the benefit of applying feats like weapon focus and weapon specialization to all your attacks, so there is potential there.
Even Leif's humble sword and board fighter is gonna be wishing for extra feats when you consider the fun he could have with a highly optimized shield bash and the extra damage of an exotic one handed weapon like a bastard sword or Dwarven war axe. Even without the bash there are a ton of cool shield feats. Especially if he finds a buddy to do some teamwork feats with.
Anyway, that's likely way more than you were looking for. I should really be working on my own character...
