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What can be done with this fighting style.
I dislike sword and board, and often TWF is too much hassle.
Are there any advantages to this style, feats that can increase the effectiveness?
I'm sure Combat manuevers factor in here well, but is that the only major advantage?
You can go magus and use the off hand to cast spells.
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I believe there's a fighter archetype that gives you some advantages to keeping that hand free, and the Duelist prestige class has abilities which only work with that style. There's also the Dervish Dance feat, which lets you use DEX for attack AND damage rolls when using a scimitar in this way.
I'm currently playing a monk/fighter who uses a falcata one handed on his turn, and before the end of his turn switches back to a 1 handed style to use crane wing and deflect arrows, on top of a decent AC (24 at level 4). It's surprisingly effective.
Details include 2 levels of master of many styles (for the crane feats) and sohei (so he always acts in the surprise round) and straight fighter otherwise.
Wield the one handed weapon with two hands.Your killing me smalls. :)
@weables
So, help me with the AC. short of magic items, how do you see your AC best rising with this character?Besides being defensive, what can you accomplish with this style that is harder for the other styles to replicate (THW is mostly straight damage, TWF gives some damage, crit seeking and some crowd control with lunge, sword and board often is defense and positioning).
And yeah, thank you for reminding me of that fighter archtype jiggy. but does finesse/dervish help with combat manuevers? otherwise I would think TWF would be better for the high dex characters.
AC is going to rise through enchanting his main armor, picking up items that grant shield bonii, and buffs, mostly.
and I apologize, I typod up there. he does wield the falcata in both hands on his turn, then switches grip to free a hand. Having crane wing, means even if something beats his decently high AC, he can simply negate an attack a round on top of it. It's a build that finds a middleground between offense and defense similar to the idea behind a sword and board combo, but at the same time is more offensive (2 handed falcata is pretty decent damage, 2.5 average damage behind a greatsword, with a MUCH better crit range) and more defensive (almost as much AC as a shield build, but crane wing and deflect arrows negate attacks entirely)
Nothing amazingly special. His AC will rise right about the level I want it, which is 20+character level. This is my baseline for having most mooks only hit the character one a 1, or the BBEG hitting him 1/3 the time at best. (a +10 to hit for example, hits him on a 14 or higher, about 1/3, which at level 3, is pretty rare to see a monster have). This means its very rare for him to be hit more than once a round, allowing crane wing to negate the attack, leaving him undamaged.
Thats playing odds of course, and sometimes it wont work, but such is life. The beauty of it, is it will also negate a crit, and you can wait until after the crit is rolled to negate it. So that being said, it has a lot of defensive advantages over your sword and board fighter (with 2 levels of monk saves too)
He's also not far behind the two handed fighter in damage. Sure, probably about 5-6 average damage less by 6th level when the fighter has weapon spec and weapon groups and he probably wont yet, but if he had higher offense and defense, he'd be pretty broken :)
So far its been a fairly frustrating experience for a DM, as he waded into a group of 16 viking warriors and came out without a scratch, though our negative energy channeling cleric actually did more of the damage. Happy with the character overall. More skills than the average fighter from the monk levels, nice defense, good offense.
It's not super specialized, because he's not theorycrafting. He's meant for a real campaign to deal with lots of different situations, and isnt a 1 trick pony
If you put together the suggestions in this thread, a free hand fighter/master of many styles/duelist using dervish dance with the crane style feats seems reasonably effective. (Note that dervish dance allows you to treat a scimitar as a one-handed piercing weapon for the duelist class).
One fun quality of having a free hand is that when you disarm something, you can catch the weapon instead of having it fall to their feet. Just run around disarming weapons and dropping them into your bag. Also lets you get short ranged weapons out, like a hand ax, for throwing in a pinch.
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One fun quality of having a free hand is that when you disarm something, you can catch the weapon instead of having it fall to their feet. Just run around disarming weapons and dropping them into your bag.
Simply having a hand free doesn't let you grab the disarmed item. You have to perform the disarm maneuver weaponlessly in order to gain that benefit. Doing so will make the attempt harder (to balance the improved result) by not letting you add weapon-specific bonuses (enhancement, Weapon Focus, etc) to the attempt and with the -4 penalty for an unarmed disarm as listed in the Disarm rules.
I'd go free-hand fighter/duelist myself, as noted. I wish free-hand fighter were a little better/ had been playtested more, but it's still a viable option.
Crane Wing, part of the Crane Style feats, as well as Deflect Arrow both require one hand holding nothing to use. The former automatically negates one melee hit on you per round, the latter automatically negates one ranged attack on you per round. Both also require Imp. Unarmed Strike, but that's not so hard to pick up. Dipping Unarmed Fighter (to get Imp. Unarmed and Crane Style) would be helpful if not planning to play a Fighter already.
The big advantage, to me, is versatility. You CAN swing with both hands against low ac targets, and power attack away. You can leave a hand free for the environmental things. You can throw a weapon if your foe backs up. Depending on where you want to go, you can cast a spell, or at least use a potion.
Make sure that the GM enforces the hand limits. With a free hand, you can swing from a rope, open a door, grapple, etc. A sword and board fighter shouldn't be able to do those things. And a TWF fighter should be out of luck when grappled.
If those rules are not being enforced, those characters are getting something free that you are paying for. You won't compete.
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Human Lotus Master of Many Styles 2/Freehand Fighter 6/ (Going Duelist 10/FF2 but haven't gotten that far)
He is a Pathfinder (though not PFS, though could be)
Normal ATT/AC is +15/+10 AC 27 touch 23, When fighting defensively and Combat Exp ATT +12/+7 AC 33 touch 29. And can negate one hit with crane wing 1/rd then AoO them with sword which does 1d8+7 crit 19-20/x2
Saves +10/+11/+9
Str 8
Dex 20
Con 12
Int 16
Wis 16
Cha 10
H Dodge
M Improved Unarmed
M Touch of Serenity
1 Crane Style
M1 Crane Wing
M2 Crane Riposte
3 EWP (Aldori Dueling Sword)
F1 Weapon Finesse
F2 Weapon Focus (ADS)
5 Quick Draw
F4 Aldori Dueling Master
7 Mobility
F6 Combat Expertise
+1 Adamantine Agile ADS
Belt of Dex +2
Bracers of Armor +2
Ring of Prot +1
Wayfinder
Dusty Rose Ioun Stone (+1 insight AC, +2 insight CMB/CMD)
Headband of Wis +2
Cracked Dusty Rose Prism (+1 init)
Cloak of Resist +1
Eventually will get agile maneuvers, imp disarm, imp trip, imp repos maybe. Currently CMB is +6 (+2 vs disarm) CMD 31(37 defensive) with +8 vs disarm.
Eventually will get agile maneuvers, imp disarm, imp trip, imp repos maybe. Currently CMB is +6 (+2 vs disarm) CMD 31(37 defensive) with +8 vs disarm.
Don't get Agile maneuvers, you can do many maneuvers with a finesse-able weapon anyway, it's a wasted feat. Do get Fury's Fall for dex to trip checks twice possibly, though.
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What can be done with this fighting style.
I dislike sword and board, and often TWF is too much hassle.
Are there any advantages to this style, feats that can increase the effectiveness?
I'm sure Combat manuevers factor in here well, but is that the only major advantage?
In the case of a monk, he swings with one hand while keeping the other free to thrown shurikens, cast touch-attack spells (if a gish) or quivering-palms, etc.
@weables
Hm, interesting idea, but as I read it not viable.
To use Crane-Style you have to use a swift action, ok. But to switch to 2-Hand-Overkill Damage you would also need a swift action. So, unless I miss something this technique works only every other round. I do see Two-Hander fighting as stance, but maybe this is disputable.
Another downside is the fact, that crane wing lets you "deflect" only melee WEAPON attacks. Still sweet, but not against monstertypes.
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@weables
Hm, interesting idea, but as I read it not viable.
To use Crane-Style you have to use a swift action, ok. But to switch to 2-Hand-Overkill Damage you would also need a swift action. So, unless I miss something this technique works only every other round. I do see Two-Hander fighting as stance, but maybe this is disputable.
Fighting with your weapon in two hands is not a "stance" or "style" in game terms, so it does not necessarily require switching between that and crane style.
The issue of how easy/hard it is to switch between one-handing and two-handing your weapon has been debated a lot, as the rules don't actually say whether or not it takes an action of any sort to do so. Most people call it a free action to grip/release with your second hand, so there's no issue. Some GMs, however, have been scarred by cheese monkeys who put together some combo where you take about 17 free actions per turn to do silly things, and therefore call such a switch a swift (or even move) action.
So check with your GM. If you're not trying to do anything too silly, they'll probably let you change your grip as a free action.
Another downside is the fact, that crane wing lets you "deflect" only melee WEAPON attacks. Still sweet, but not against monstertypes.
Natural weapons are still considered weapons. If they weren't included, it would have said something like "manufactured weapons". I can dig up references for this fact if you'd like.