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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 783060" data-attributes="member: 4937">I understand the variaty of objections to my reasoning, but I find most of them to be somewhat of red herrings.If you don't think that this class is a repackaged fighter, what do you think it is?  It is a class intended to make low armor fineese based fighters viable, as both of you has said.  It is indeed a repackaged fighter.  That it has synergy with rogue by providing combat 'feats' with fineese weapons is hardly relevant.   Fighter has synergy with rogue by providing combat feats with fineese weapons and improving thier combat skills.   Duelist is only more so.   The main reason you see more rogue/duelists than fighter duelists is the tumble prerequisite - which itself is kinda odd because you don't get much acrobatic training as a fencer nor do you see much tumbling in real rapier duels.First, that is in and of itself not justification for the class.  If you are attempting to provide for a world the flavor that you don't have to roam around in heavy armor in order to be an effective combatant, then a better solution is to adobt a level based defence bonus alla Star Wars or Wheel of Time.  If you aren't attempting to provide that flavor, it doesn't necessarily follow that everyone choosing every combat style should be the equal in combat versus everyone else.  For one thing, there are inherent advantages to NOT depending on armor.   If you can not depend on armor and have as high of an ac and as good of damage as a fighter with armor, then you would be stupid not to do it.  After all, you are forgoing the need for an expensive peice of equipment, acquiring the ability to defend yourself when out of your armor (as sleeping or bathing or whatever), acquiring the ability to perform well in combats were honor forbids armor (as in certain formal duels), avoiding encumbrance, increasing your effective speed, and avoiding armor check penalties.   At least in my game, avoiding armor check penalties is a pretty big deal.   All these advantages should weigh against reduced protection and reduced damage.Now, it might remain true that even so you would lag so far behind armored fighters that 'duelist' was not a viable concept under the core rules.  Now, arguably, so what?   But, lets say you wanted to support duelists as a concept without adding a new defence bonus mechanism.   Well, nothing is to stop you from adding 'canny defence' et al as feats which have appropriate prequisites.   This would result in greater versimilutude - because characters would be able to choose acrobatic attacks without knowing canny defense, or choose canny defense without knowing how to do acrobatic attacks.   Maybe some of the class abilities would need to be written when converted to feats, but that's ok too.Yes, it might be that certain new feats would be created of more benifit to monks than fighters.  So what?  Fighters would still be able to at a given level take more of these feats, and by virtue of superior BAB would qualify for the feats at a lower level than monks.   (Some here would argue that mooks need the help anyway.)  What is so different about having the class more readily accessible to rogues than straight fighters?  By making them all feats, you make the abilities accessible to everyone who qualifies - even a wizard if you like.    And you do so without the worry of having to give full spell progression to make multiclassing worth while and all the other oddities of PrC's. So what if the duelist concept would possibly still lag behind 'big dude with a great sword concept' in a straight up fight with most things especially things that take brute force to overcome.   Big dude with a great sword has a harder time keeping his balance, swimming when dumped into water, isn't accepted in polite company off the battlefield, is possibly breaking city law wearing such ironmongery, can't run away nearly as fast when he needs to, takes a couple of minutes to suit up before he can go into battle, and so forth.   I consider that from an RP/adventuring angle a fair trade assuming the DM is doing something more than a maze of 30x20' flagstoned rooms with orc and pie.</blockquote>

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