| Isaac Zephyr |
I feel like I might be somehow missing something. For a rogue, Finesse Striker reads as follows.
Finesse Striker
When you attack with an agile or finesse one-handed melee weapon, you can add your Dexterity modifier to damage instead of your Strength modifier.
Cool, so my default thought was Agile and Finesse weapons are Dex to attack,but I got to weapons and it's as follows for Agile.
Agile
The multiple attack penalty you take on the second attack each turn with this weapon is –4 instead of –5, and –8 instead of –10 on the third and subsequent attacks in the turn.
A good ability by far still, but it lacks a certain Dex to attacks quality. Which is fine, there should be Str options with it, but even Finesse is a can. You can use Str on a Finesse weapon.
So it essentially brought to the forefront a kind of backwards (to me) concept. The weapon in question I was interested in was the Katar, not a great weapon, but it was part of an old character's thematic I was trying to recreate. The Katar is Agile, but not Finesse so to my knowledge it would work as follows.
Rogue with Katar would need Str to attack and get Dex to damage. The opposite is the normal Finesse Dex to attack Str to damage problem. Whilst Rogues for sure need Dex for other things, I can't help wondering why they would put weapons without Finesse in the Rogue's Finesse Striker ability. At the point they'd be using an Agile-only weapon, their investment in Str would make the entire ability why you're picking an Agile weapon a little redundant.
Now there is of course the second point in Sneak Attack, which also requires Agile or Finesse for melee. So this creates a small niche for the Agile-only Str build Rogue I suppose? But Finesse weapons are already optional, you can use Str with them, so even if Agile offered the same it wouldn't stop being an option.
I dunno, like I said, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm just overthinking it. Maybe I'm just a little sad I can't recreate that old character the same way.
Joe Jungers
|
I feel your pain. I played my first session last night - used a rogue - & was dismayed to discover that the sap also lacked the finesse trait (but had the agile trait), so I guess I'm happy that I could still use sneak attack with it. It just seemed kind of add that this weapon was the only one of the rogue's melee options that lacked the finesse trait. Perhaps an oversight?
For clarity's sake, here's the list of non-finesse, though agile weapons:
Simple Melee
* Gauntlet
* Spiked Gauntlet
Martial Melee
* Hatchet
* Lt Hammer
* Lt Pick
* Lt Shield Bash
** Lt Shield Boss
** Lt Shield Spikes
* Sap
Simple Ranged
* Blowgun
* Dart
Uncommon Simple Melee
* Clan Dagger
* Katar
Uncommon Martial Melee
* Kama
* Orc Knuckle Duster
Uncommon Exotic Melee
* Shuriken