I recently read the text regarding the chain coat medium armour, and when I saw it allowed you to wield spiked chains as one-handed weapons, all sorts of campy badass imagery popped into my head. So many chains it'd put Ghost Rider to shame.
Now, dual-wielding two one-handed weapons is its own can of worms optimisation-wise, but I'm envisioning using two whip-like lengths of chain, which implies reach. Trouble is that, unlike ye olde chains of 3.5th edition D&D, Pathfinder's spiked chain doesn't have reach, much less 15 feet of it like whips do.
I delved into the notion of using Large or larger spiked chains, but then I hit the handedness nightmare, and whether a two-handed chain that gets turned into a one-handed weapon by the chain coat could be wielded in two hands by making it Large, then apply levels of Titan Mauler to make it one-handed again... made my head spin.
Any suggestions for how to get as much reach as possible out of a pair of spiked chains for the least amount of investment?
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I still don't get why PF ruined the Spiked Chain so badly, or why the PF version is not a Simple Weapon.
But like Gray Warden said, Lunge Is probably your best bet besides Enlarge Person. However, something to keep in mind is that Spike Chains with Reach do not threaten both 5ft and 10ft away like they did, (the thing that made them worth being Exotic Weapons in 3.5), and that by dual wielding them, you are also loosing out on that two-handed Str and a half.
In theory, for the cost of a feat (Weapon Adept) you could move Spiked Chains from the Flails group to the Close weapon group so you can use them with Outslug Style (for extra lunge-ey goodness). You may want to take Weapon Adept twice for dual-balanced (reduce TWF penalties by 1).
My guess for why the Spiked Chain is so much worse in PF than in 3.5 was because it was *really* good in 3.5, and when you do an update/new version/new game you want to make sure that the "optimal" category isn't full of all the same stuff.
It's ridiculously expensive, but why not have a pair of Lashing Shadowcraft Weapons in the form of Spiked Chains? 14,500gp each (29,000 for the set) and as a Swift Action you can reach out and spike your enemies. They're masterwork and can be enhanced like regular weapons. Downsides are the price tag and that anyone you hit gets a Will save for minimum damage till next turn and +4 on subsequent will saves against the weapon (DC15 + twice enhancement bonus).
From Blood of Shadows