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Is this character legal, effective and cool?
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<blockquote data-quote="Gammadoodler" data-source="post: 9847586" data-attributes="member: 6914290"><p>Late to the party but a couple general notes. A fair amount of your feat space is devoted to ripostes, which rely on the enemy critically missing, but Swashbuckler AC scales more slowly than other martials in the system, and it doesn't look like you have any feats to boost your AC or lower enemies' attack.</p><p></p><p>Enemy crit fails on attacks do happen, but they're typically on 2nd & 3rd+ attacks (unless the enemy has a MAP avoidance ability..which I've seen fairly often) and on lower level enemies (who are often less threatening because they miss more often). So the reaction to riposte may come up less often than you'd like for how many feats are devoted to it. (It'll also be a competing reaction with your One for All - Aid reaction which, especially in the higher levels, has high-extreme value as an ally strike buff..and a high reliability trigger.)</p><p></p><p>TL;DR: You'll likely have fewer opportunities to use Ripostes than you might think.</p><p></p><p>And a word on Derring Do. It's a great feat, but it's usage does depend on having a plan to use skill actions that would have the 'bravado' trait (which for you would be Tumble Through, Bon Mot, and the help reaction on One for All) after you have panache and before you do a finisher and then regain panache. By the time Derring Do comes online, One for All 's value is going to be high enough to make it a difficult action to justify skipping on your turn, which would leave you with two floating actions on your turn. One or both of these will often be taken by move and strike/finisher.</p><p></p><p>Your turns likely will start with panache from the One for All reaction, and Tumble Through includes enough movement that you'll probably get to the baddie to use it, but it has no crit effect and exposes your PC to movement-based reactions. Bon Mot offers a significant will save/perception debuff, especially on a crit, but would either leave you without the action to move or to strike(if you needed to to get in or out of reach of your target), and your party would need will/perception-targeting abilities to take advantage of it.</p><p></p><p>TL;DR: While Derring Do is a great feat, it's more useful on a build with higher value skill actions that focuses more on keeping panache from turn to turn rather than using finishers.</p><p></p><p>All this said, I expect that you'd start to see all these things play out at the table long before you get to the level where these build decisions play out. And that might be more of an overall moral of the story. Build plans, especially on classes that have turn cycles (like the swashbuckler, magus and some others) are going to be challenging to evaluate until you've had some more time at the table with your party.</p><p></p><p>Building PCs is fun and it does help with getting a handle on the mechanics..Would just recommend holding it loosely.</p><p></p><p>Edit: I did forget about Wit's exemplary finisher feature at level 9 that gives the penalty to attack for an enemy you hit with a finisher. As such, ripostes are a bit better at least against the one foe you hit with a finisher..if you hit. Maybe still worth considering some way to buff AC in parallel if you want to lean into ripostes, but could be hard to find the actions/reactions to fit it in.</p><p></p><p>Edit 2: with respect to acrobat feats, mileage may vary, but I have had to use the Squeeze action exactly zero times as a medium-sized melee martial 17 levels into a published adventure. And any strikes you make before you perform your finisher mean your finisher has MAP making them less likely to hit and crit. The action compression might be worth it..but it might be worth looking into ways to reduce the MAP you might take for making a finisher your second strike instead of your only strike.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gammadoodler, post: 9847586, member: 6914290"] Late to the party but a couple general notes. A fair amount of your feat space is devoted to ripostes, which rely on the enemy critically missing, but Swashbuckler AC scales more slowly than other martials in the system, and it doesn't look like you have any feats to boost your AC or lower enemies' attack. Enemy crit fails on attacks do happen, but they're typically on 2nd & 3rd+ attacks (unless the enemy has a MAP avoidance ability..which I've seen fairly often) and on lower level enemies (who are often less threatening because they miss more often). So the reaction to riposte may come up less often than you'd like for how many feats are devoted to it. (It'll also be a competing reaction with your One for All - Aid reaction which, especially in the higher levels, has high-extreme value as an ally strike buff..and a high reliability trigger.) TL;DR: You'll likely have fewer opportunities to use Ripostes than you might think. And a word on Derring Do. It's a great feat, but it's usage does depend on having a plan to use skill actions that would have the 'bravado' trait (which for you would be Tumble Through, Bon Mot, and the help reaction on One for All) after you have panache and before you do a finisher and then regain panache. By the time Derring Do comes online, One for All 's value is going to be high enough to make it a difficult action to justify skipping on your turn, which would leave you with two floating actions on your turn. One or both of these will often be taken by move and strike/finisher. Your turns likely will start with panache from the One for All reaction, and Tumble Through includes enough movement that you'll probably get to the baddie to use it, but it has no crit effect and exposes your PC to movement-based reactions. Bon Mot offers a significant will save/perception debuff, especially on a crit, but would either leave you without the action to move or to strike(if you needed to to get in or out of reach of your target), and your party would need will/perception-targeting abilities to take advantage of it. TL;DR: While Derring Do is a great feat, it's more useful on a build with higher value skill actions that focuses more on keeping panache from turn to turn rather than using finishers. All this said, I expect that you'd start to see all these things play out at the table long before you get to the level where these build decisions play out. And that might be more of an overall moral of the story. Build plans, especially on classes that have turn cycles (like the swashbuckler, magus and some others) are going to be challenging to evaluate until you've had some more time at the table with your party. Building PCs is fun and it does help with getting a handle on the mechanics..Would just recommend holding it loosely. Edit: I did forget about Wit's exemplary finisher feature at level 9 that gives the penalty to attack for an enemy you hit with a finisher. As such, ripostes are a bit better at least against the one foe you hit with a finisher..if you hit. Maybe still worth considering some way to buff AC in parallel if you want to lean into ripostes, but could be hard to find the actions/reactions to fit it in. Edit 2: with respect to acrobat feats, mileage may vary, but I have had to use the Squeeze action exactly zero times as a medium-sized melee martial 17 levels into a published adventure. And any strikes you make before you perform your finisher mean your finisher has MAP making them less likely to hit and crit. The action compression might be worth it..but it might be worth looking into ways to reduce the MAP you might take for making a finisher your second strike instead of your only strike. [/QUOTE]
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