Duelist build advice? Two Options

Ok guys, I need your words of wisdom here. I’m trying to decide what route I want to go with the last couple levels of the Duelist I’m building, and basically I’m going to end up having to choose between two fun sets of abilities (and no, I can’t mix and match between them). The options boil down to this…

Option 1:
Stunning Critical and Crippling Critical (the duelist version, not the feat version)
Obviously stunning critical is fun, and with the Duelist version of crippling critical (which is way better) not being a feat, it will stack onto Stunning to make my crits even better. With my other abilities, I’ll have a 30% chance of critting every hit, and with a many attacks as I’ll have this late in the game, that’s a pretty good chance of getting a crit every round or two. And with those two abilities stacking, those crits will be pretty ugly.

Option 2:
Snake Fang (and style) and Sickening Critical
Of course sickening critical isn’t as good as the other two, but at least it’s something. The main point here is the snake fang and the sickening is just thrown in to sweeten things up a bit (same 30% on each hit). Things to consider with the Snake Fang idea:
a) The feat gives you up to two unarmed AoOs every time an opponent misses you
b) I’ll already have the monk version of Improved Unarmed Strike, Weapon Finesse (I’m obviously DEX based), and since Snake Style makes your unarmed strikes piercing damage, I’ll get my Duelist bonuses. Thus, these AoOs will have a decent chance of hitting and will still do ok damage
c) With the defensive bonuses of Crane Style, Elaborate Defense, Canny Defense (the Duelist’s INT bonus to AC ability), a very high DEX, and a host of other abilities, not to mention whatever awesome armor I’ll have this late in the game, there are going to be a lot of misses on my character to take advantage of. *Especially* when you throw in the Parry ability, which can convert an attack into an automatic miss. And with Combat Reflexes and a high DEX, I’ll have the ability to capitalize on about as many misses as you’d care to shake a stick at
d) The GM has hinted that many of our encounters are going to be “quantity of enemies” focused.
So considering all those things, getting 8 AoOs per round is a very real possibility. Plus how fun will it be to Parry and get three AoOs (Riposte and Snake Fang) from it.

So there you have it: Extra good Crits or Lots of AoOs. I’m torn. What’s your vote?

In case you want it, I’ll post the details of the build below so you can see what else is going on here. Please keep in mind that while I really want your advice, I’m not interested in hearing how much better a completely different set of feats would be, or how your barbarian would beat my duelist.

Also, I should mention, we're doing an beefed up campaign with 25 point buy, ability point every other level (can't do same ability twice in a row), going up through 20th level (and maybe to 21 or 22). Needless to say, we will be facing appropriately horrendous enemies.

IF you're going to invest and focus in a scimitar, use it. If you want ot rely on unarmed, do Snake. In either case, you definitely want Crane to make the most out of your 1H fighting style.

I had this build (ideal race is Ophiduan, but Sylph if not allowed). Used unarmed strikes and a heavy wis focus, relying on the Guided weapon property to have wis apply to attack and damage, though also has weapon finesse to fall back on.

Has huge AC, snake and crane feat lines, thanks to Inquisitor, gets to roll 2d20 and take higher whenever tripping, and other nice things. Biggest weakness is the obscene cost of the amulet; much better off if any ally at all can provide greater magic weapon/fang.

Considering that it will eventually become Quantity over Quality, I would suggest build 2.

Build 1 is more like a One-on-One style of fighter.

IF you're going to invest and focus in a scimitar, use it. If you want ot rely on unarmed, do Snake. In either case, you definitely want Crane to make the most out of your 1H fighting style.

I had this build (ideal race is Ophiduan, but Sylph if not allowed). Used unarmed strikes and a heavy wis focus, relying on the Guided weapon property to have wis apply to attack and damage, though also has weapon finesse to fall back on.

** spoiler omitted **...

Like I said...

And just to clarify, this character will definitely still be focused more on fighting with the scimitar than unarmed. The unarmed (which I'm not taking as an extra feat; it just comes with monk automatically) is just an extra bit that works nicely, adds some nice abilities, and includes a little more flavor.

StreamOfTheSky wrote:

IF you're going to invest and focus in a scimitar, use it. If you want ot rely on unarmed, do Snake. In either case, you definitely want Crane to make the most out of your 1H fighting style.

I had this build (ideal race is Ophiduan, but Sylph if not allowed). Used unarmed strikes and a heavy wis focus, relying on the Guided weapon property to have wis apply to attack and damage, though also has weapon finesse to fall back on.

** spoiler omitted **...

Like I said...

I see a bunch of critical and scimitar-oriented stuff in the builds. If you're making a crit-happy scimitar user, I wouldn't bother with the snake style tree, you'd be diluting your feats and treasure on a 2nd weapon for questionable gain. If you want to focus on unarmed strike as your primary weapon, do snake style. But don't do any crit stuff, a 20/x2 crit to start with is too little, you need that 18-20. What do you want to do with the character?

EDIT: Based on what you said above, I'd do option #1, which seems to be build #2 in the feat progressions.

The other thing to consider here is how it affects sneak attack.
On the one hand, more AoO potentially means more sneak attack damage (at 4d6 per, plus befuddling strike), provided I'm in the right position (easier to accomplish with Following Step Up, good acrobatics, and various other things). As any rogue knows, when it comes to sneak attack, more attacks = more fun.
On the other hand, if they're stunned from Stunning Critical, that's free sneak attack right there, regardless of positioning.
So both options have something to offer sneak attack wise

Only two responders? Is there a better place to post advice requests like this?

Well, not many people like Prestige Classes. This would be the area for builds, but not many like talking about what they don't know.

On the other hand... I think if more people knew what was happening in your Campaign, they could suggest which would be better. Could you tell what is happening a little more?

I still like the sound of build 2.

Well nothing’s really happening in the campaign yet because it hasn’t started (launch is Wednesday—very excited), but as for what’s going to be happening: Beefed up campaign with higher-than-usual point buy and ability score gain. We’re going level 1-20 and a little beyond. Lots of planar travel, sometimes with slightly different rules of play on different planes. The GM has indicated that encounters will frequently be bigger on the “quantity of enemies” scale (though enemies in general will be tougher to account for our tougher characters). In short, he’s a very fair and fun GM, but he’s not going to be pulling any punches. Character death will be fairly frequent (at least compared to normal games), but we’ll have a pretty handy reincarnation-at-a-distance system set up where we’ll respawn at our home town, minus any equipment (this system is built into the gameworld/story). Thus, some combats will need more than one attempt to actually figure the right strategy and punch through, and I won’t want to rely too much on specific equipment since we’ll occasionally lose access to it until we fight our way back to where we were. We’ll be going longer without rest as well (none of that “I’m going to sleep for 8 hours in the middle of the dungeon” thing), though our per day abilities/spells have been *slightly* buffed so that casters won’t be hit unreasonably hard. Our party is five at this point: Ninja, Oracle, DPS caster, Arcane Trickster/Spellslinger, and me, the Duelist (yes I know we’re kinda light on tanking). Of us, two are very experienced, two moderately experienced, and one newbie (we converted him to Pathfinder from 4th Edition). So that’s what’s up.

And StreamOfTheSky pointed out that I goofed and switched the build order between the main post and the detailed post. You say you like the sound of build 2—do you mean the Snake Fang one?

Yep, Snake Fang sounds a bit more oppropriate for what you are describing. If it were a normal campaign, I would suggest the pure Duelist route because of the lesser amount and weaker amount of enemies. This build seems really good, even for a "Higher Tier" if you will. If only there was some happy middle ground. As appealing as that capstone ability for the Duelist is, it doesn't sound like it would be worth dropping Snake Fang. Because of the increase of your power, and the inevitable increase of the enemies, more strikes means that you will be hitting more and, thus, doing more damage.

After reading your latest post, I really think that you should decide after you play for a while. You will be going from level 1, and your problem starts from level 17. Room for decisions. What ever you do, think through very carefully. It is such a shame that the Schimitar is a Slashing weapon and that the Duelist works better with Piercing, but oh well.

Yep, Snake Fang sounds a bit more oppropriate for what you are describing. If it were a normal campaign, I would suggest the pure Duelist route because of the lesser amount and weaker amount of enemies. This build seems really good, even for a "Higher Tier" if you will. If only there was some happy middle ground. As appealing as that capstone ability for the Duelist is, it doesn't sound like it would be worth dropping Snake Fang. Because of the increase of your power, and the inevitable increase of the enemies, more strikes means that you will be hitting more and, thus, doing more damage.

After reading your latest post, I really think that you should decide after you play for a while. You will be going from level 1, and your problem starts from level 17. Room for decisions. What ever you do, think through very carefully. It is such a shame that the Schimitar is a Slashing weapon and that the Duelist works better with Piercing, but oh well.

Aha, but the beauty of it is that with Dervish Dance, Scimitar also counts as a piercing weapon and allows me to use my Duelist stuff with it (otherwise i would have just gone with rapier). That way, I don't have to worry about STR at all-- DEX will do to hit, to damage, AC, and still let me be duelist-y with the weapon. And yes, you are quite right that I'll have plenty of time to decide. And since we'll probably go to level 21 or 22, I'll likely end up getting crippling critical anyway.