It's official:

[I'm A Banana]

There have been more Swashbucklers played IMC than Fighters.

It's pretty funky. The Complete Warrior class has an in-between save, some nice Int/Cha based abilities, and some dodgin' and some chargin'. It manages to evoke 'agile fighter' without a sneak attack, and works great at the front lines, still.

Be it the noble swashbuckler/bard, the crusading swashbuckler/holy liberator, or the Indian-Jones-Esque Swashbuckler/Lasher....they seem to loooove it over being a 'tank'.

 

[RangerWickett]

Remind me how that class works again? How does it survive being front-line?

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

d10 for HP, AC bonuses, lucky, good reflex and fort saves, can take ten tumbling during combat. the lack of good armor hurts but the bonuses make up for it mostly. I however still perfer my sneak attacks and great swords.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Dunno, being only proficient in light armor and many of the Swashbuckler's abilities require the character to be lightly armored...

Though I have seen an excellent Fighter 4/Swashbuckler 3 wielder of a spiked chain combo. Now there's a survivable lightly armored front-liner. Youch.

 

[Liquidsabre]

d10 for HP, AC bonuses, lucky, good reflex and fort saves, can take ten tumbling during combat.

The Swashbuckler only gets Fort as a good save.

 

[sledged]

The Swashbuckler only gets Fort as a good save.

But they have grace which gives a competence bonus to reflex saves.

The Duelist and Bladesinger are PrCs are good compliments to the swashbucker especially those with high int scores.

 

[Liquidsabre]

But they have grace which gives a competence bonus to reflex saves.

Yes, so the Swashbuckler gets +1 Ref at 2nd level, another +1 Ref at 11th level, and a third +1 Ref (for a total +3 Ref) at 20th. Hardly what I'd call a good Ref save...

 

[Longbow]

I always wonder why a class like the Ranger has a good Ref save and the Swashbuckler doesn´t. Grace is not enough to remedy it, IMHO.

 

[Thalia]

Recently I played a Barbarian/Swashbuckler through from 1st level to 8th (2/6)...

I found her to be more than capable of holding her own in the front line, with her 40 movement, AC around 22-24 at 8th level, close to 90 hitpoints, 3 attacks a round (2weapon) with full BAB, reasonable (though not great) damage, and the flexibility to move around with her high tumble, climb and jump skills. She worked well with the party's rogue, often tumbling behind the bad guys to get into nice flanking positions and opening them up to a world of hurt...

Weak points:

The bad reflex save (kinda made up by high dex, but I agree with another poster in that the Grace ability is something of a joke.)

Bad will save (I think +2 total at 8th level) -- but then it is a Fighter-based class so what can you expect?

Precision-based damage. I think many people forget just how crippling this can be when you're facing undead or constructs. Even a lowly skeleton will be taking almost no damage from your attacks with a light weapon, and it doesn't matter how many times you hit them. Especially as so many Swashbucklers will choose to use the rapier as a weapon-of-choice (piercing damage only.)

...Oh yeah, and the Arcana Unearthed Rage variant Whirling Frenzy worked well with this build...

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Hardly what I'd call a good Ref save...

Agreed... All of my Swashbucklers have been rogue's, something that is much easier to do with the UA rogue variant that lacks a sneak attack.