Finesse Vs. Strength

[Moe Ronalds]

Question: When is a high dex, light armored, rapier wielding fighter ever as or more effective than the typical high strength platemale wearing jock-fighter? In terms of raw damage the Strength themed character seems to always win. What about other areas? And what would they be good at that a typical rogue wouldn't be better at as well???

 

[Crothian]

High dex fighter can easily have spring attack as well as feats like Expertise to really drive up thier AC. They will hit and have more attacks then a rogue, and why they won't do as much raw daamge as a strngth based fighter, their movment around the combat board will allow them to negate attacks and hassle anyone.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

The high-dex fighter will also be lethal with a bow. The high-strength fighter probably won't do as well there.

 

[arwink]

Any place where armor will be a hinderance. So any time you're parties near water, trying to fight on narrow ledges, trying to fight a mobile battle, etc. Look at the skills that the armor check penalty affects, and you suddenly have a bunch of skills that can make combat interesting and give the dex-based fighter an edge.

That being said, most of the finesse based fighters I've seen take at least a few rogue levels to really round things out.

 

[mmu1]

When he's also a high level Duelist.

Otherwise, he'll never measure up.

He'll have advantages in terms of mobility and certain skills, but he'll be matched in terms of AC and outclassed in terms of damage. Weapon Finesee is nice, but it basically restricts you to weapons that do 1d6 damage, and without a good strength bonus, that's a real problem.

Also, Spring Attack and Expertise games are fun to play, but you have to remember that the only time you get to play them (assuming the rest of the party isn't willing to put up with watching your "Flit like a butterfly..." BS and taking all the melee damage while you hide behind the cleric) is if there's a more traditional tank in the group to take up the slack in terms of front line fighting and damage-dealing.

 

[Capellan]

Question: When is a high dex, light armored, rapier wielding fighter ever as or more effective than the typical high strength platemale wearing jock-fighter? In terms of raw damage the Strength themed character seems to always win. What about other areas? And what would they be good at that a typical rogue wouldn't be better at as well???

When he is also a twink archer

Mainly, I see weapon finesse as being more a feat for rogues, bards and other second line combatants than for most fighters (unless you are going the archery route, or just really want to play a halfling fighter).

It can also be very handy if you are multi-class arcane caster. Ye olde rapier-wielding elf fighter-mage comes to mind, here.

 

[-Ekimus-]

one sugestion.... Duelist

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Just my opinion but I have always felt that Improved Crit should have a dex requirement since it is a finesse type ability.

This would then be another logical advantage of the swashbuckler type fighters.

 

[Sanackranib]

dex vs str

when the dex dude has levels of rogue and can bluf and sneak attack.

 

[Ron]

I've tried the light armored fighter up to the tenth level. It was a very rewarding game, but it was clear that my character was not as good as our heavy armored dwarf. Not only he was unable to deliver more damage (even considering the high probability of criticals), but also he was quite prone of receiving blows as he was less armored.

However, a friend of mine tried an archer. His character switched to the Order of the Bow (a prestige class fromSword & Fist) and became, by far, the most deadly member of the party.