Mythic Swashbuckler Playtest (Swashbuckler13 / Mythic Tier 2)--Trouble in Heorot


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Drew Parrymore Swashbuckler 13/MR2 (effective character level 14)

Spoiler:
Str 7
Dex 26
Con 14
Int 12
Wis 12
Cha 18

Mythic Abilities Chosen: Absorb Blow, Retributive Reach, Ever-Ready, Mythic Combat Reflexes, +2 Dex

Traits: Fencer, Indomitable Will

Feats: Combat Reflexes, Signature Deed Opportune Parry, Extra Panache, Weapon Focus (scimitar), Greater Weapon Focus (scimitar), Dervish Dance, Improved Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Crane Riposte

Saves: Fort + 11, Ref +21, Will + 11

AC While Fighting Defensively And Using Boots of Speed: 32 (10 + 8 Dex + 5 Armor + 3 Nimble + 4 Fighting Defensively +1 Dodge + 1 Haste)

CMD While Fighting DefensivelyAnd Using Boots of Speed: 35 (10 + 13 Base + 8 Dex -2 Str + 4 Fighting Defensively +1 Dodge + 1 Haste)

Attacks With +5 Mythic Bane Scimitar While Fighting Defensively And Using Boots of Speed: +33/+33/+28/+23 for 1d6+31+2d6

AoOs While Fighting Defensively And Using Boots of Speed: +36 (+32 vs Large)

Gear (DRASTICALLY under WBL): +5 mythic-bane scimitar, +1 mithral chain shirt, +6 Dex belt, +4 Cha headband, +5 cloak of resistance

Drew was feasting at her favorite drinking hall, Heorot, covered in both magical grease and alchemical grease. Just then, a horrible monster broke through the wall and began ripping the arms off everyone. It was Grendel!

Drew bellowed a challenge and took a defensive stance, and Grendel leapt to that challenge. Grendel rushed forward and Power Attacked. Grendel got a 35, and Drew negated the attack with Crane Wing and Riposted with a Natural 2, hitting for 42.

Drew initiated a full attack. Two hits (including on a natural 3) and then two crits. Her damage was 39, 43, 61, and 62. So Grendel had taken 247 so far.

On Grendel's turn, he regenerated and entered a rage. He made a full attack without Power Attack. She parried his 37 with an easy Opportune Parry and Riposted for a crit for 58 damage. Then she parried his 43 with a 44 on Opportune Parry, so Grendel spent a surge to push his attack to a 50. She negated that with Crane Wing instead and Riposted for another crit, this time for 68. Grendel was still up due to Ferocity (at -5). His bite was true, (47) and the parry went wide, so Drew was hit for 24 damage. Drew then knocked Grendel unconscious. On her turn, she coup de graced him with an unarmed strike.

Drew healed up to full. She was ready to sleep this off, but she found a cryptic kenning written by the local bard about some kind of "mother". Expecting to fight, Grendel's mother, she told everyone in the hall to muster into the center of the room. But she wasn't expecting what was about to happen. One of the women, a victim of Grendel from a previous night, screamed as four infant grendels (Grendels with the Young Template) ripped her open from the inside and surrounded the stunned and horrified Drew.

Drew started to attack the little grendels. Four quick dervish thrusts weakened one baby grendel badly (180 damage, one crit and three hits).

The injured creature's blood fury triggered, and it attacked along with its brethren. The grendels were ferocious, but Drew managed to parry most of their attacks. Of 12 attacks, she only failed to parry 2 naturally, but the grendels each used Mythic Surges to attempt to turn a parry into a hit. Two of the four of them managed to do so, but Drew used her own Mythic Surge to increase the parry and re-negate the claw. So she would have been hit by two claws and one bite, but she uses Crane Wing on one of the claws. Fortunately, she parried the grab on the claw that hit. The two hits dealt 62 damage to Drew. Drew made one Crane Riposte and 9 Ripostes (she could have made 10 but he was down to 1 panache after the 9th due to only getting 3 crits).

On her own turn, Drew made four more attacks, including two crits, and she dropped another Grendel. This put her panache back up to 4.

The last two grendels made six attacks. Opportune Parry was enough to stop four of them, but then the grendels used Mythic Surge and one of them pulled ahead of the parry by too much for Drew to try to take it back. Drew used Mythic Surge on a different attack that barely beat the parry, however, and managed to parry it. She used Crane Wing and Riposte on the last attack that naturally hit, leaving the only attack that hit as a bite that used Brutal Surge. Drew took 14 more damage. She made one Crane Riposte and four panache Ripostes, with only one crit. This actually left Drew with only 1 panache. The first grendel drew close to regenerating up to consciousness

Drew made 4 attacks, including one crit, but this time she missed with her last attack. She dropped a third grendel, rising to 3 panache
The last grendel's attacks would all have been parried easily, but she decided to just not use Opportune Parry and instead Crane Riposte the last one. The last attack was a crit, dropping the grendel. Also, the first grendel woke up.

Drew attacked that prone grendel once, putting it into negatives (which gained another panache) but activating Ferocity, then she punched the unconscious grendels three times to stop regeneration, which killed the grendel she has knocked out with the crit riposte.

The staggered grendel used mythic surge on a grapple, but since it didn't have Improved Grapple, she stabbed it with her scimitar and knocked it out from the AoO. Ending her Boots of Speed, her first punch killed that Grendel that had just woken up, and her remaining two punches stopped regeneration for the other two.

Drew then got another turn. She stabbed one of the unconscious grendels, then punched it to kill it. Then she punched the last one to stop regeneration.

On her last turn, Drew stabbed the final grendel and punched it, killing it.

Drew was forevermore hailed as the hero of Heorot and received free mead for life!

I realize I forgot to mention, but she easily made her Will saves vs fear that she only would have failed on a 1.


Lol, that was great!


For those wondering, it looks like Grendle is CR 19/MR 7, and the 4 Young Grendels are a total of CR 22, each with MR 7.

And the swashbuckler, effectively level 14 with a 13th level WBL, solo'd them.


Analysis: What if Drew didn't have any of the crane feats and relied completely on Opportune Parry? In that case, let's consider if she switched out her Dodge, Improved Unarmed Strike, and Crane feats for Skill Focus (Knowledge Local), Eldritch Heritage (Arcane), Improved Familiar (Valet Arbiter Inevitable), Paired Opportunists, and one more feat (maybe Toughness? maybe Extra Panache again?). The arbiter sits on her head wielding a size Diminutive longspear in one hand.

At this point, Drew loses one free counterattack per round but gets a +5 to hit with Opportune Parry and Riposte (1 for not fighting defensively, 4 for Paired Opportunists). The grendels can attack the inevitable if they want (even though it never attacks them and just sits there with a diminutive longspear), but it has regeneration, so it won't die and that gives Drew more breathing room anyway.

On the original grendel, I don't know if grendel would have spent a point to try to make his 43 beat her 49 parry (if he did, it would have succeeded because we know he rolled a 7, but it had a low success chance). Instead, grendel's Natural 19 bite attack, which previously beat the parry, would have barely lost to this version, so he would have surged that. This would have increased the damage she took from original grendel by 7. She would have still ended that fight with full panache.

On the baby grendels, round 1 she would have failed to parry no attack before surges and only one after surges (since they Power Attacked on the first round, so they were at +25 (or +20 for bite) to hit and she was parrying at +41, so it was virtually impossible not to parry). Her countersurge failed to remove the one claw hit, but she parried the grapple anyway, so she took less damage than with Crane that round (only got hit once instead of twice). However, she spent more panache on her counters (if she took Extra Panache, she would get herself down to exactly 1 panache by making all 12 riposting, counting crits and the one dropped below 0).

On the next set of full attacks, the additional bonus to parry also managed to cancel out one of the attacks that would have hit, so the same thing happened as with Crane defensively, but offensively she loses a riposte due to lack of panache (since she gained one last turn from Extra Panache, this cancels).

The rest happens as it happened.

If we instead replaced the crane feats with blank feat slots that didn't increase her parrying ability (or maybe assume the arbiter imploded instantly for no reason), Drew would have taken an extra claw hit from original grendel and been grappled (killing it anyway on her next turn), and she would have taken two extra claw hits (one of which was Power Attacking, ouch! but no successful grapples) from the babies. Given she healed in between the fights, which she did, she would have been standing at the end of that, but much less confidently.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

sorry to be a bother, but how did you get the +31 to damage? most i can get is +16... if you could explain your damage set-up, that would be great.


Cahina wrote:
sorry to be a bother, but how did you get the +31 to damage? most i can get is +16... if you could explain your damage set-up, that would be great.

I will try and help some...Dervish Dance gives Dex to damage with a scimitar: +8; Swashbuckler Precise Strike gives level to damage:+13; the weapon is +5: +5; Mythic Bane makes the weapon +2 better vs Mythic opponents: +2. That's +28 so far...


Add Swashbuckler Weapon Training which is +3 damage at 13th, =)


Exactly so Swashbucklersdc!


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

ah, okays. didn't see swashbuckler precise strike deed. that makes sense now. thank you.


I am not really sure what you are trying to prove here. Grendel is a terrible CR19 challenge given it has no ability to fly, no ranged attack and terrible saves. I would be more interested to see if you could do the same thing with an actual CR19/20 threat such as the Ancient Red Dragon or Balor.


andreww wrote:
I am not really sure what you are trying to prove here. Grendel is a terrible CR19 challenge given it has no ability to fly, no ranged attack and terrible saves. I would be more interested to see if you could do the same thing with an actual CR19/20 threat such as the Ancient Red Dragon or Balor.

To be fair, though, generally if you have no ability to fly, no ranged attacks, and weak saves, that means you should kick ass five ways to Sunday in melee, and she challenged them in melee and won, she didn't kite them from range (they would have killed the innocents if she tried anyway). Essentially, she beat it at its own game.

Considering that a level 1 Mythic Tier 2 Witch and a level 1 Mythic Tier 2 fighter of some sort (effective character level 2 in each case) can automatically kill a balor, though they die too, with a 95% chance (unless the balor rolls a 20 on its save against coup de grace), I didn't want to put a mythic PC against a non-mythic opponent.

Silver Crusade

Rogue Eidolon wrote:
andreww wrote:
I am not really sure what you are trying to prove here. Grendel is a terrible CR19 challenge given it has no ability to fly, no ranged attack and terrible saves. I would be more interested to see if you could do the same thing with an actual CR19/20 threat such as the Ancient Red Dragon or Balor.
To be fair, though, generally if you have no ability to fly, no ranged attacks, and weak saves, that means you should kick ass five ways to Sunday in melee, and she challenged them in melee and won, she didn't kite them from range (they would have killed the innocents if she tried anyway). Essentially, she beat it at its own game.

This.

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