peterrco wrote: Have you considered the benefits of Armour Spikes?
You can use them as an off-hand weapon, but they don't actually use up a hand, so your primary weapon could be a two handed weapon (maybe with reach?) or you could stick to a one handed weapon and also carry a shield.
No go. It was recently ruled that an attack with a two-handed weapon eats up your potential off-hand attack, even if you could make that attack with a weapon not hand-associated. You can use a one-handed weapon with a shield and still make off-hand attacks with non-handed weapons (ie. unarmed strike, armor spikes, boot blade, etc).
Regarding the Taiaha, it's a one-handed weapon, but the Double property still requires you to use two hands to benefit from it so you must wield the Taiaha two-handed to use it as a double weapon in the same way a Medium character must wield a Small Quarterstaff two-handed to use the Double property on it, even though the size step-down would make it a one-handed weapon for them.
Gladius:
uses Shorthsword proficiency and does either Slashing or Piercing damage
lemeres wrote: Snow_Tiger wrote: I've been playing around with the idea of a strength based Twf ranger.
I didn't realize that could be better than one doing two handed fighting, so I'm sort of iffy on it, so I have 't I seen builds like this?
*comments written based entirely off of a misread* Whoops, didn't realize you said ranger. Yeah, those are easy to get strength based. Anyway, STR ranger's guide to the TWF ranger labeled "Ginsu" provides excellent advice.
Kazaan wrote: peterrco wrote: Have you considered the benefits of Armour Spikes?
You can use them as an off-hand weapon, but they don't actually use up a hand, so your primary weapon could be a two handed weapon (maybe with reach?) or you could stick to a one handed weapon and also carry a shield.
No go. It was recently ruled that an attack with a two-handed weapon eats up your potential off-hand attack, even if you could make that attack with a weapon not hand-associated. You can use a one-handed weapon with a shield and still make off-hand attacks with non-handed weapons (ie. unarmed strike, armor spikes, boot blade, etc). Yeah, he made the schoolboy error of using his reason to understand how the written rules combine in order to reach his conclusion.
Malachi Silverclaw wrote: Yeah, he made the schoolboy error of using his reason to understand how the written rules combine in order to reach his conclusion. There was this biologist who was doing some experiments with frogs. He was measuring just how far frogs could jump. So he puts a frog on a line and says "Jump frog, jump!". The frog jumps 2 feet. He writes in his lab book: 'Frog with 4 legs - jumps 2 feet'.
Next he chops off one of the legs and repeats the experiment. "Jump frog jump!" he says. The frog manages to jump 1.5 feet. So he writes in his lab book: 'Frog with 3 legs - jumps 1.5 feet'.
He chops off another and the frog only jumps 1 foot. He writes in his book: 'Frog with 2 legs jumps 1 foot'.
He continues and removes yet another leg. " Jump frog jump!" and the frog somehow jumps a half of a foot. So he writes in his lab book again: 'Frog with one leg - jumps 0.5 feet'.
Finally he chops off the last leg. He puts the frog on the line and tells it to jump. "Jump frog, jump!". The frog doesn't move. "Jump frog, jump!!!". Again the frog stays on the line. "Come on frog, jump!". But to no avail.
The biologist finally writes in his book: 'Frog with no legs - goes deaf'
Atarlost wrote: There are basically three candidates:
Dual kukri: This gives the best proc rate for the critical focus tree. At level 12 that's probably the way to go.
Dual heavy shield: Lousy crits, but with shield master you negate the TWF penalties and it's the only way to get a decent shield bonus to AC while TWFing and getting the benefits of the focus/specialization tree on both weapons. If you were playing from low level you'd do dual light shields to avoid the one handed off-hand weapon penalty before shield master.
Eastern Chain Weapon: The exact mechanics on several of these are hazy so your GM will probably have to do some house ruling, but you'll wind up with some sort of unique capability.
If you add EWP, you can go Wakizashi 1d6, 18-20x2, deadly. Larger dice and same crit as a Kukri with a +4 DC on a coup de grace. It also counts as S and P, not just S.
/cevah
Another option would be to wield a light weapon in your off-hand plus that same weapon but one step larger in your main-hand coupled with 6 levels of Titan Mauler. You'll still gain the benefits of all your Weapon-specific feats and abilities shared between the two weapons and two tiers of Massive Weapons will eliminate the wrong-size penalty so you're just left with a larger damage dice.
A more fringe option is to exploit the wording of Dervish Dance. It allows you to use your Dex modifier to attack and damage rolls "when you wield a scimitar in one hand and have nothing in the other hand". It presumes you'll only be fighting with the scimitar, but doesn't take into consideration the use of weapons that leave that other hand free such as armor spikes, unarmed strikes, etc. So, by very strict (and somewhat abusive) reading of the feat, even non-handed off-hand attacks would get Dex to attack and damage when you DD. Even better would be a Cleric of Sarenae/Monk who takes Crusader's Flurry along with their DD since Flurry lets you make all your attacks with a single weapon.
Malachi Silverclaw wrote: Kazaan wrote: peterrco wrote: Have you considered the benefits of Armour Spikes?
You can use them as an off-hand weapon, but they don't actually use up a hand, so your primary weapon could be a two handed weapon (maybe with reach?) or you could stick to a one handed weapon and also carry a shield.
No go. It was recently ruled that an attack with a two-handed weapon eats up your potential off-hand attack, even if you could make that attack with a weapon not hand-associated. You can use a one-handed weapon with a shield and still make off-hand attacks with non-handed weapons (ie. unarmed strike, armor spikes, boot blade, etc). Yeah, he made the schoolboy error of using his reason to understand how the written rules combine in order to reach his conclusion. LOL, I can be dumb sometimes. I hadn't seen that ruling, though to be honest it does kind of make a game balancing sort of sense.
The description on armour spikes is very clear that you can use them to make both attacks and off-hand attacks. (the only restriction discussed in the core rulebook is that you can't use it to make a second off hand attack, if you have already made one, which by impliction confirms that armour spikes are not hand associated, but still allow attacks)
I got the idea of armour spikes after reading the section on Gillmen in the Advanced Race Guide, where they give the Sea Knife equipment option, which explicitly states that you can make an off hand attack using them whilst also making a two handed weapon attack.
Still, the option to have two weapon fighting whilst retaining a shield bonus by using armour spikes, is well worth considering.
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