D&D (2024) Maybe this is a bit late, but let's talk about Rogue's Niche, and What Rogue Should Be.

Errol Flynn, Zorro, the Musketeers, and other Swashbucklers are supposed to be Fighters.

The Buckler in Swashbuckler is a Shield Rogues dont get proficiency in.

Interesting point. Counter-point, not a single one of those characters (except maybe the original Three Musketeers, because I haven't read the book) are EVER portrayed with a shield. Yes, yes, that was the original meaning for the term. And yes, yes, they were duelists so they were fighters.

But Zoro is a criminal, spy, and vigilante. He is a rogue, who just has flashy sword fights. Pirates are often built with swashbuckler as the subclass, because they are criminals and thieves... and have flashy sword fights. Honestly they FIT the rogue really well, with how they are shown in pop culture.

Swashbuckling should have been a fighting style with a die increase and +1 to attack with finesse weapons..But that's too close to 4e.

Also they forgot to put bucklers in the game.

They did not forget, they chose not to include them. Please stop making every decision they made seem like some grand error on their part.
 

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Honestly, it just seems obvious to me that Swashbucklers are rogues. Picture any swashbuckler from pop culture you want. Now picture Han Solo or Indiana Jones.

Indy and Han are both classically considered Rogues. What is the only difference between them and the Dread Pirate Roberts, Zoro, or ect? Instead of a blaster or a whip, they use a fencing foil. Personality and skill-set wise, they are nearly identical archetypes.
 

The assumption is equal levels of optimization.

With equal levels of optimization one-handed finesse weapons fighting or two weapon fighting with Finesse weapons deals less damage than a two-handed weapon a reach weapon or archery.

That is because they are finesse weapons, not because they are two weapon fighting. Optimizing for dexterity means you are better out of combat due to the skills attached to dexterity and can be very good with both ranged and melee

There is and should be a price to pay for this and this price and numerical inferiority in melee disappears when you use strength with two weapon fighting.

Further you could easily create your Two-Weapon Fighter character with a high strength. There is nothing against that or stopping you from doing that and if you do, you can do more damage than your reach fighters or your archers

Two weapon fighting only beats and damage one-handed finesse weapons or one-handed strength weapons. But one handers typically are playing for defense and again you get more power and defense with same levels of optimization.

But Two weapon fighting with strength weapons beats any other melee fighting style, when optimized it is the highest damage of all of them.

I get that this doesn't apply for finesse, but then you don't get to do finesse two handed weapons.

Two Weapon Fighting is not weak. It is only weak when you don't optimize for it o r when you insist on using finesse.



D&D is typically based on everybody in the group using similar levels of optimization. A dex based melee nonmonk character is lower in output than most other offensive or defense builds.

And is better at ranged attacks and is better at doing things other than attacking and is better in other pillars all else being equal.

That is the price you pay and frankly it is not high enough if you really want to balance things.
 
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Since there are claims that swashbuckler can't be a fighter instead of rogue because they are never seen with a shield I though that I'd drop this bit of historical lore that explains why...
It's almost like Alexandre Dumas & authors/directors/costume managers of some more recent rapier wielding fictional characters spent the tiny bit of effort to check what rapier wielders did with their offhand.
 

There's also free hand fighting, which is something D&D doesn't do very well, but is perfectly legitimate- fighting with two weapons at once is much more difficult in real life.
 


To be fair, in 3.5 swashbuckler was class of it's own. Not a very good one, but it was.

To be fair, decent amount of archetypes aren't single class when translating to D&D. That's why multiclassing is so popular.

As for bucklers, well, they are shields. So technically, they are in game. Equipment list in 5e is generic on purpose.
 

To be fair, in 3.5 swashbuckler was class of it's own. Not a very good one, but it was.

To be fair, decent amount of archetypes aren't single class when translating to D&D. That's why multiclassing is so popular.
though personally i do wish DnD had a better system for customising characters than multiclassing.
As for bucklers, well, they are shields. So technically, they are in game. Equipment list in 5e is generic on purpose.
yeah but like, you're saying they couldn't of given us maybe even just three choices of shield?

buckler: +1 AC, isn't required to be held in a hand (but prevents wearing a different shield)
shield: +2 AC,
tower shield: +3 AC, requires STR 16, versatile(+4 AC)

it's just two extra lines of text but they open up a whole lot of build/play decisions in them.
 

To be fair, in 3.5 swashbuckler was class of it's own. Not a very good one, but it was.

To be fair, decent amount of archetypes aren't single class when translating to D&D. That's why multiclassing is so popular.

As for bucklers, well, they are shields. So technically, they are in game. Equipment list in 5e is generic on purpose.
I don't remember the PRC in question well enough and somewhat agree with most of this... But there are limits to "generic on purpose", somewhere between gurps and 5e is a happy middle ground overton window where the system also mechanically supports some meaningful level of subjective distinction. The "generic on purpose" in 5e didn't just slip over the edge of that window, it put on rocket boots and ran screaming towards an edge of the horizon opposite gurps.
 

though personally i do wish DnD had a better system for customising characters than multiclassing.
I wish d&d has system for horizontal growth, not just vertical. But, we have what we have.
yeah but like, you're saying they couldn't of given us maybe even just three choices of shield?

buckler: +1 AC, isn't required to be held in a hand (but prevents wearing a different shield)
shield: +2 AC,
tower shield: +3 AC, requires STR 16, versatile(+4 AC)

it's just two extra lines of text but they open up a whole lot of build/play decisions in them.

They could. They could give weapons more differentiation than what we have now. Same with armor, same with shields.

Buckler should be special kind of shield. It's only one that is held like weapon and not strapped to your arm. Tower shields should give cover, not AC. But they went with generic shield, so we have what we have.

In my games, i made custom buckler. +1 AC, bonus action to attack for d4+str/dex mod and you can use it with any one handed melee weapon.

@tetrasodium


Swashbuckler was base, not prestige class, it came out in Complete Warrior.
 

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