Seeking Divine TWF advice


Advice


hi all. First I would like to establish a guideline for those who took time to read this or seek to offer assistance. I acknowledge up front that what im pursuing is not going to be a great character and that I know that TWF is very often subpar. Furthermore, TWF is usually even worse among non full BAB classes so im really handicapping myself. Now that we got that done here is my vision...

I want to make a TWF character that dual wields wakizashis and I absolutely refuse to play a non divine class while pursuing this. This character is being laid out for a campaign that will likely run from 1-20 and the players are encouraged to not discuss their characters because the GM likes to make things as true to life as practical (he feels a planned party is metagaming). I had initially desired to play a battle cleric of some kind so as to have full casting late game and TWF for the early game. This however was not to my liking because despite the many good domain options that a battle cleric would have for this I felt that I was always sacrificing features that the cleric has, a problem ive never had with cleric despite it being more MAD than most.

In my failure to make what I believed was a worthy cleric I have shifted my eye to the inquisitor. I believe with the infiltrator and preacher archetype combined with the nice skill list I can justify to myself and the group the diminished combat ability though I still plan to kick butt. My favorite class beside the cleric I feel that the class features and their scalability is a good match. Bane, Judgements, demon domain power, and more add up to fine DPS machine for many of previous characters.

Whats the problem? what do I need then? The order of feats and the choice of race is the principle problem I face to EVERY class for this concept. For example, Improved two weapon fighting and improved critical become available at around the same time for me (assuming a 3/4 BAB progression); so which one should you go with first when you have 3 attacks with a 18-20 crit range weapon? Having a 30 chance of a crit with 3 attacks vs having 4 attacks at 15% is easy to choose from but when that fourth attack has Bane, judgements, and such boosting its raw damage its not so clear to me.

Race is also a big issue to decide for me. Humans and half elves seem to be the main choice. Humans have the extra feat and skilled but the half elf gets exotic prof off the bat and has decent additions to skills and immunities. If I desired to be a mouth piece very strongly then the human wins hands down but I went infiltrator inquisitor more because of more utility not because it was on my desire list.

Almost there: With either the human or half elf I seem to have a problem at level 1. I want to be able to have TWF, weapon finesse, and be prof with wakizashi but unless I was a fighter with a bonus feat I cannot think of a way to get those three feats. As I will not be a fighter I must decide which of those is expendable till level 3. Advice?

Finally, how do you think that the proposed inquisitor will do in DPS compared to other TWFs? Is it a complete waste of time? is it bad but worthwhile because of skills and partial casting? Or is it actually good? Should I look at other classed? help needed.

thx for looking everyone. Ill take anything you got because this is new territory for me.


My worry here is that most divine classes are caster heavy, and that can be a problem with TWF (since you lack a free hand). Quick draw might be an investment later down the line.

War Priest seems to be more up your ally. They can grab the weapon focus/specialization feats to help get your attack bonus up to cover the BAB and damage up enough to help justify TWF. Also, bonus feats.

Divine favor spell with the fate's favored trait is an essential for the same reasons (for a +2 to +4 to attack and damage).

Inquisitor is good too though, since judgements are a great source for attack bonus and static damage bonuses. It also gets the divine favor trick (and it is a spontaneous caster, which just lets you throw as many of that spell as you need)

Now, here is a question- are you sure you want to do Dex based TWF? I know this sounds weird, but you said it yourself- you are having trouble getting all those feats together. Cutting our weapon finesse could help with that.

Doing a strength based TWF is not too hard on a 20 pt buy....although a bit more painful since you are a caster (which means a mental stat is needed). You just need DEX at 16, and then you raise it to 17 at level 4. That qualifies you for all the good TWF feats. Here is an example set of stats:

STR: 16 DEX: 16 (14) CON: 14 INT: 7 WIS: 14 CHA: 9

Note that I had to hard dump 1 mental stat and a bit of another. If CON is reduced to 12, I could get it to only 1 dump stat at an 8.

Anyway, with these options, you can make a TWF divine caster without too much trouble, and you can get some decent damage in with it as well.


I'm going to second the Warpriest. Human Warpriest keeps the divine focus, flows well into a martial build (Fervor is awesome), and handles feat-intensive styles as well as the Fighter does (In addition to the ten standard feats, you have one feat from your race, three from your FCB, and six from your class-- two shy of the Human Fighter. Plus you get Weapon Focus free, so really one shy). You also get Sacred Weapon, which is at least a mild increase in power for your weapons. It's not a lot-- at level 20, the difference between 3.5 and 9 damage per hit is kind of minimal-- but it's something.

What makes me leery of the Inquisitor is that you have to spend two uses of Bane to get your weapons up to par, though fortunately Judgements don't suffer from that. You also have less capability of using spells in combat; Warpriest has no problem utilizing their swift action to cast or use an ability, but after the first Judgement the Inquisitor isn't using his. That means, to me, that the Warpriest can greater emphasize his divine nature than the Inquisitor.


I don' have a lot to add, but 2 things occur to me:
Don't overlookthis feat if you go warpriest.

For your 1st level feats I would skip wakizashi and just re-flavour some shortswords until you get the EWP.


Some feedback for ya.

@dragonhunterq: I leaned towards skipping wakizashi in the beginning as well. at low levels a short sword is almost as good.

@lemeres: the main reason I have been fixated on weapon finesse and dex based TWF has been because my choice of weapon, wakizashi, is light. This in my mind freed up some points for attributes and since strength bonuses are diminished for light weapon damage I thought it fit well. I also like the idea of a higher dex character for some of the fringe benefits like saves and such but that is just the icing on the cake.
I had the same stats you put forward except I changed charisma and int (7 and 9 respectively) because of the infiltrator archetype.

@kestrel: thought about warpriest also. I did not go that way because I got tunnel visioned on demon domain I think. perhaps I should re-examine.

@all: I thought about a war-sighted oracle at one point and it would be able to get all three feats at level 1 but then how could you progress that? unlike rangers, inquisitors, warpriests it has no growth in damage that I can see that compares.

Grand Lodge

Brief real-world interjection: As a practitioner of Kenjutsu I am actually proficient with the wakizashi. While it is, indeed, a light weapon, cutting ability depends on technique and strength, not on coordination or dexterity. Many people conflate skill and technique with dexterity, but they are quite different.

That said, it's a fantasy game, so please let's have our fun with Dex to Damage.

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