I'm gonna be playing on a friend's Skull and Shackles campaign soon, and an image popped into my head. That's a badass pirate using a melee weapon on one hand (probably some sword) and a firearm on the other. My question is: How do I that without crippling my character completely to the point where I'm useless to the party?
My initial thoughts are going for Gunslinger at first level and probably going on until at least 5th. Then maybe proceeding as Fighter for the many feats I'll need. The DM will probably be using a very high point-buy and the Hero Points optional rule.
The issues I'm facing follow:
a) Which weapons? I think maybe the rapier (for Finesse and later agile enchantment) and a Pepperbox. The point is: How much am I gonna suck until I can get the 11.000 gp to even make this possible?
b) Funky TWF rules. I do know I can use a ranged weapon with two-weapon fighting, but how do I know whether a certain ranged weapon is Light or One-Handed? Specifically, the pistol and the pepperbox?
IF you are going to do this you have to have levels in gunslinger. I am currently doing a musket master1 and lore warden 7 and I regret not gunslinger 5.
the other problem is the feat heavy requirement. if you have a weapon misfire you are absolutely screwed with out grit. but you will need so many feats to do this. i would maybe just buy like 6 guns. an ago fighter all the way.
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a)If you're going to do the ranged/melee route, you'll be pumping dex. As such, I'd recommend a finesse-able melee. Rapier is a classic choice, and would serve you well.
b) Pistol and Pepperbox are both listed as one-handed weapons.
I've looked at this build too. The thing that keeps crippling it in my mind is the necessity of having a free hand to reload your gun (or turn a fresh barrel on a pepperbox). Also, until you get Sword and Pistol, you'll take AoOs when you fire your gun. With a straight-up gunslinger build (probably pistolero), you can shoot your gun at range and switch to your melee when engaged.
If you have scads of wealth or can talk your DM into letting you have multiple pistols, you can take advantage of quickdraw to draw, fire, and discard pistols throughout combat. This is actually fairly realistic considering the historical use of flintlock pistols.
What I'm considering is dipping monk with gunslinger. If you take one level of Master of Many Styles monk at 1st or 3rd level you can take dodge, crane style, and crane wing all with one level of monk. You also gain improved unarmed strike, and thus always threaten around you and can defend yourself in melee. Your hand is free and can be used to reload your gun whenever you need. You can negate one melee attack every round. You'll be fighting defensively at -2 attack for +4 ac, so your armor class will be good. You can afford the attack penalty as you're targeting touch AC. Your free hand is also available for holding onto ropes for swinging antics, for spinning the helm as battle rages, and for whatever shenanigans you wish. Sword and Pistol is still a good feat for you. It's not quite the swashbuckling look you were going for, but mechanically I think it's the strongest.
How about a level of Urban Barbarian (probably after Gunslinger 5)? +4 Dex rage would do wonders to supplement damage and AC.
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One of the other player's in our S&S game is doing the same thing. We're level 3 and so far it's been working just fine, so I'll see if I can't get him in here to post his build. Also, the neat thing about the pistol is that pumping dex isn't really a must since you're hitting against touch AC. In most circumstances that will mean a split between strength & dex won't hurt you very much. I think his character has 14 strength & 16 dex using 20 point buy...
Thank you very much, dude with an owl avatar. I'd really appreciate if you could get your fellow player to give me a few hints.
I was thinking that as a Gunslinger gets Dex to damage at 5th level (and the agile enchantment allows for Dex to damage in a melee weapon), I could dump Str and work pumping Dex.
I did that Used a rapier, and pu the agile on it. it works really well
Instead of the rapier, why not a scimitar? This would allow you to go for the Dervish Dance feat, letting you apply Dex to damage with the scimitar. It would free up some points out of Str so you could start with a higher Dex. It also fits the pirate theme very well.
The Dervish Dance requires one free hand, thus negating the entire Two-Weapon Fightint chain, sadly.
Rune, check out Opening Volley, it's in Ultimate Combat. It would be perfect for your sword'n'gun character.
Since you take the full -4/-4 with a gun as your off-hand I reccomend 2 things if your considering TWF.
1. Opening Volley is a must for this build if your using a heavier than light melee weapon. Using it shoot first to negate the TWF penalty on your melee attack, if you hit their usually much lower, Touch AC.
2. Consider using a light melee weapon like a cutlass and declaring your melee attacks as off hand. This puts you back at -2/-2 and if you use #1 then you can actually get a +2 to hit with your off hands.
If your not TWF and simply planning on using your extra attacks from high BAB then the feat is a great way to open up a fight by shooting then charge with a good sized weapon on your next turn..
Edit: Ninjed on opening volley. Though at least I gave them a link.
You might want to consider working some levels of duelist into the build. Precise Strike is the only thing that doesn't work with TWF, and any firearm is piercing, so they work with all of the other class abilities, including the 10th Lv one.
Sword and Pistol is neat, but I recommend the Deft Shootist grit feat (also from UC), as it is easier to get and covers reloading.
It is feat intensive either way; fighter levels can help with that, though a level of Gunslinger or two are a great help.
Switch Hitter Ranger would be a better option:
Shoot at enemies until they get in melee range and then draw your blade and stabbify!
Dudemeister has the right idea. The archetypical pirate wouldn't bother reloading, for the most part, instead discharging their pistols before drawing a cutlass. After all, most firearms were (and, in Pathfinder, are) fairly unreliable at a long range (excepting of course, cannon), and at a short range (read:boarding a ship) the likelyhood of keeping ones distance for any length of time is fairly slim.
The feat chain for sword and pistol is far too big an investment for most characters, and even a fighter would want to stick his feats elsewhere.
Run with a good str score and a moderate dex score. Try to get your hands on a brace of pistols and take the EWP, Deadly Aim and (maybe) the Quick Draw feats. You should have decent damage without having to worry about the to-hit chance too much, thanks to the touch attacks from your pistol, and the damage from your class (weapon spec, sneak attack, favored enemy, inspire courage) will only supplement this. You can then spend whatever feat or two you have left on Power Attack, Improved Initiative, Combat Reflexes, Iron Will... whatever floats your boat.
Alternatively, run with a pure gunslinger, and spare some feats for your cutlass fighting (power attack, weapon focus, etc.) to bring that up to par.
Just my two coppers. Take em as you will.
Wow, that's an awesome feat (it kindda made this build a lot better). Thank you very much for this suggestion, folks (Maerimydra, Eric and Talonhawke). I'll find a place for it somewhere after I get the must-have feats (Weapon Finesse, Two-Weapon Fighting, etc).
The problem with the Cutlass is that it's actually a one-handed weapon, not light. It's my weapon of choice otherwise.
Dang thought the cutlass was a light slashing. Try a gladius then (having slashing availble as a damage type is always a good thing.)
Ditch TWF and go for having a mix of useful feats for both weapons. Opening volley gives you until the end of your next turn to use the bonus and i honestly don't see why you would want to be shooting the gun (and provoking AoO) at melee range, which is the only point where you would be able to use both. Not to mention that the amount of guns in your bracer effectively limits how many rounds you can spend Two weapon fighting.
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This came up recently, and I posted a build on that thread.
Looking it over, you could move the gunslinger levels up in the build if you wanted to postpone some of the feats.
Edit: I agreed with Bladerock. TWF is a waste in this kind of character. Fire the pistol and either drop it and draw another or close to melee with your agile rapier.
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I think, perhaps, he may be interested in having a flashy, awesome character while remaining functional rather than being as powerful as possible while using those two weapons. This was our player's dilemma, and while he's not incredibly powerful in a fight, he's still a perfectly effective character, even alongside our primary melee character. A cutlass in one hand and pistol in the other is just... well it's friggin cool.
Solid suggestions, everyone. Although I do realize a switch-hitter is maybe more viable mechanically (and I'll probably end up doing that sometimes), I'd really like to be able to keep on using the pistol.
As far as I see, disregarding particular situations, I should be able to keep on doing so this way:
Round 1) Enemy is 5 ft away. Ranged attack, 5 ft step in, melee attack.
Round 2) Enemy is adjacent. Melee attack, 5 ft step out, ranged attack.
That makes for a convoluted although dynamic tactical style that could suit me well.
Where do you guys think Rapid Shot goes in this mess? I'm not saying I am going to take it or anything like that, just curious (specially since it's a requisite for Sword and Pistol, another feat I probably won't take).
My DM threw me a bone (he played with TWFers his whole D&D life and knows how much it sucks compared to two-handed barbarians) and said I could use a scimitar as a light finessable weapon. I actually suggested to him to maybe lower the damage die to a d4 (so it would be mechanically equal to a kukri) but he said it won't be a problem.
Since he was such a nice guy I'll refrain from using the Dervish weapon cord, which I personally believe to be cheesy (and hard to picture during a fight).
So the penalties are lessened, and this is now looking to be a pretty viable (although not overpowered) build.
@Thorkull: I took a look at the other thread and found some quite useful information even though it's not precisely what I intend. What do you feel about using the Pistolero archetype and not getting Fighter levels? It has a scalable plain damage bonus (9th, 13th, and 17th) and a per day +d6s.
So considering the House Rules above, how do you feel about this?
Gunslinger 1 Weapon Finesse, Two-Weapon Fighting
Gunslinger 2
Gunslinger 3 Deadly Aim
Gunslinger 4 Opening Volley
Gunslinger 5 Power Attack/Piranha Strike
At level 5 I'll have an attack bonus around +11 (5 BBA, 5 Dex, +1 Masterwork). That means I can make two attacks with a +7/+7 (using both Deadly Aim and Power Attack). If I make the ranged attack first (which should be real easy to hit), I get a +4 on the second attack (so it's +11). The ranged attack will deal 1d8 + 2d6 + 5 (Dex) + 4 (Deadly Aim) and the melee will deal a pitiful 1d6 + 1 (Str) + 4 (Power Attack/Piranha Strike).
Those assume simple masterwork weapons. When I get the +1 agile weapon my sword damage will scale with Dex but not much beyond that.
Since I'm pumping Dex and shooting touch ACs, I could probably drop getting Precise Shot and focus on bumping sword attacks (since the firearm ones will pretty much bump themselves with class abilities).
edit: Actually after level 5 I could pretty much pack my bags and move over to Fightertown. Any good archetypes? The Two-WEapon Warrior seems like I could use the Weapon Training bonus to both weapons despite they being vastly different groups.
I was thinking of doing the same thing when we get around to Skull and Shackles. I was planning on Pistolero or Mysterious Stranger, using a cutlass in my main hand with a double barreled pistol (and eventually a revolver if the GM allows it) in the off-hand.
I was planning on building towards the sword and pistol feat, eschewing dervish altogether, and relying on opening volley to up my hit rate. Theoretically better against low AC's but worse against DR. Pistolero helps with that, given the precision damage, which stacks with sneak attack if you dip into rogue. I'm leaning towards Mysterious Stranger at the moment, because we are thinking we want at least two people with leadership for extra crew members.
Looks solid, man. I'd forgotten about Piranha Strike. I think you're right about the two weapon fighter, too. If you're hurting for damage after that (I doubt it) beg for some gloves of dueling from your kindly GM.
Have fun!