Hepzibah Malgaze's page

But the significant difference is swashbuckler has more incentive to actually use this skills in combat. Your rogue gains nothing from doing a little dance. They just waste an action doing it. They can get some benefits from Demoralize or Bon Mot, but less than the swashbuckler.

How so? A succesful Demoralize will leave them demoralized, a succesful Bon Mot will leave them... bon motted. As a rogue I can do either, or both, with better odds of success. I don't need an incentive to play my rogue like this if I'm doing it because I want to.

The whole swashbuckler class is built to encourage what would otherwise be dumb actions.

Um...

Yes, exactly. Focused Fascination lets you Fascinate on a Success rather than a Critical Success, which, since this is an incapacitaion effect, is the only way you can ever succeed against a higher level enemy. (And reliably succeed on everyone else, although it is rare that my Lvl 12 Battledancer fails to crit succeed at dancing.)

I see. Point to the Swashbuckler then, but I'm not convinced.

I'm thinking mainly about the first levels before you get to 10th. If we meet once a week for 3 to 4 hours, with some weeks inevitably off, reaching Lvl 10 could take a year or more. That's a long time to stick with it before my character starts being fun. And more often than not campaigns tend to fizzle out around then, just as your character is getting good, so you'll never get to enjoy being Errol Flynn.

So if I'm going to be doing any swashbuckling, I want to start swashbuckling now, rather than a year from now.

Getting panache from a failure helps a lot, but it's still a failure. I would much prefer not to fail. Then again, we didn't really get much information from this preview, so who knows? Maybe there is more to it. But from what I hear, I kind of doubt it.

(EDIT: I’ll note that even with the Three Musketeers, they aren’t generally depicted ganging up on one poor enemy).

Unless it's a helpless and unarmed woman, of course.

The Swashbuckler does the dance thing better, because there is a Level 1 Swashbuckler feat that is required to make the Fascination effect function in combat. Without that, it is impossible.

The Entertainer background gets you that feat.

I don’t feel like the Finishers capture the concept of a Swashbuckler. I don’t want to play a Swashbuckler as it stands in 2E, no. I want to play a class that fits the characters that would be described as Swashbucklers in media. At the moment, that’s most likely going to be a Rogue.

I think you may be right.

Let's say I want a dashing, swaggering character that seems to fit the idea of a swashbuckler. She will be using Tumble Through to move gracefully around the battlefield. But if I build her as a rogue instead she can do that even better, as she will have more ranks in Acrobatics and won't trigger reactions.

My Swashbuckler will also fight with witticisms (Bon Mot), or intimidation, or feinting, or doing a little dance. But as a rogue I can do *all* of those things, to the same effect and better, because I'll have more ranks in the relevant skills (and more skill feats to support them).

Thematically the one thing I would miss from the Swashbuckler class is riposte, but that's an ability that triggers so rarely that you almost forget that it's there.

It feels like a Rogue can be more swashbuckling than the Swashbuckler. Or am I missing something?

Of course when you get into the weeds it doesn't matter what Rogues can or can't do. Swashbuckler is a class, it works, and you can play it. But this is a role-playing game, and we expect much more from our characters than just being 'functional'.

So, about Zorro and so on...

The way I see it, there is no such thing in fiction as a swashbuckler class. A swashbuckler can be a fighter (Ivanhoe), a barbarian (Rob Roy), a rogue (Dick Turpin), a ranger (Robin Hood), a bard (Scaramouche), a soldier (D'Artagnan), a sailor (Sindbad), a pirate (Jack Sparrow), a spy (the Scarlet Pimpernel), a courier (Mikhail Strogoff), an archaeologist (Indiana Jones), or anything really. Probably not a swashbuckling cleric, but even that is not out of the question.

Swashbuckling is about exuberance, attitude and style, thrill-seeking to the point of recklessness, supreme confidence to the point of arrogance, and an absolutely massive dose of Romanticism. As a class this makes them hard to pin down and even harder to explain. "Are you like, a pirate?" No. "Oh, more like a musketeer, then?" No... but kind of?

If you agree with a law then you would follow it regardless of alignment. Likewise, if you believe anything a leader says is the true way then you would follow regardless of alignment.

Consider the following real-life anecdote:

A 4-year old child was about to eat a bowl of cereal. It was the special yummy cereal that she liked, and she was hungry. She wanted to eat it and had every intention of doing so.

At this point her mother, not looking, casually said, 'Eat your cereal.'

The child put down her spoon, pushed away her bowl, and said, 'No!'

Concerned, her mother said, 'But it's your special yummy cereal, you love it!'

'I can't eat it now!' the child protested.

'Why not?'

'Because you told me to!'

True story.

he is legitimately kind and courteous towards anyone who shows him any measure of respect and helps others when the opportunity presents (what better way to gain followers?).

What would he do to someone who does not show him the respect he believes he is entitled to?

My own instinct is that being power-hungry and seeing others as beneath him makes him Evil, but that's not necessarily true. I also think that people tend to confuse Good with being nice and Evil with being ill-natured. A character may be charming and pleasant to everyone around them, and still be evil, while another may be asocial and ill-tempered and still be good.

I'm going to go with Neutral Evil-ish. It really comes down to what he does when he doesn't get his way.

UPDATE: We followed everyone's advice and had a talk. The Sorcerer apologised to the Fighter. The Fighter also apologised back for something else that happened a few months ago and that may have led to this. I apologised to both of them for not being more understanding. They both apologised to me, and we all apologised to the GM.

It's a Christmas miracle! Or that's how I choose to see it, anyway. :)

We'll see how it goes. We won't be playing for a few weeks anyway, so there's plenty of time for everyone to get over it and hopefully return with a better attitude.

I do hope it won't become too 'vanilla', as some narrative drama is a big part of the fun, but there has to be a sweet spot between 'bland and predictable characters' and 'everyone at each other's throats'.

Thanks to everyone who offered their advice. It may not seem like it, but it was incredibly helpful.