rounser said:
If there's a Swashbuckler prestige class, everyone knows you're not a "real" swashbuckler until some arbitrary rules decide you're ready. Sure, you can roleplay it as if you were, but the rules are ignoring your attempts, not supporting them. That's bad game design, especially when there's no reason why certain prestige classes/kits shouldn't kick in from first level. Some you should have to wait for, such as Archmage, which is (for me) the iconic prestige class. Swashbucklers should be able to buckle their swashes properly from first level, IMO
Lo an behold! You can! You don't need any special rules to make a dextrous, lightly-armored warrior/rogue that has style, you just do it. Just like you don't need special rules to be an eagle-eyed archer, or a mounted knight, or any number of other simple concepts. Take the appropriate feats and skills, and
role-play the character. You'll still be a "real" swashbuckler (or whatever). If there's a prestige class that furthers your concept, that's a bonus, but the prestige class doesn't define who your character is - you do. I think you're focusing too much on what it says under "Class" on your character sheet.
I disagree. Unless you go to town with splatbooks, a handful of skill points, a feat or two and multiclassing will still require no small amount of imagination and handwaving to fill in the gaps.
Swashbuckler: fighter/rogue mutli-class, skill ranks in jump, tumble, balance, feats: ambidexterity, two-weapon fighting, weapon focus/specialization in rapier & dagger, dodge feat chain, expertise feat chain, wears light armor. Right off the top of my head. The only "gap" is how the character is played, and no splat book is going to help with that. What else do you need?
Back in 2E before kits, the only thing that differentiated fighters (for example) was their weapon choices. Kits allowed you to take a vanilla fighter and turn it into something else, usually by giving you new abilities for little or no cost. But now in 3E, you have feats, and those feats are the little abilities that kits once granted you - they're the mechanical differences between your character and other characters that have the same class levels. Background and personality differences, like kits often provided, aren't mechanical and are left up to the player to bring to life. And, with the (mostly) free-form multi-classing in 3E, you can express just about any concept by combining levels in the basic classes.
