TWF, Rapier / whip as off hand weapon, small Rapier / whip as off hand weapon

[Tandriniel]

Hi,

Whips are on the forums these days, so I thought of a build with TWF whips, with all the feats it would require.

A few questions came up:

1) in 3.5, the Rapier was a medium weapon that could be wielded as light in the off-hand when dual-wielding. Did this go away?

2) What is the status of dual-wielding whips: would both count as medium weapons for TWF penalties?

3) Could a part of the solution be to use a whip sized for a small creature? (same reach/range, damage down one step, -2 for inapripiately sized weapon, correct?)

4) is there a better way to do TWF whips?

Thanks.

[Gauss]

Whips are 1handed weapons. If you try to use a small whip in order to make it light you wind up only fixing half the problem.

Medium 1handed whips: -4/-4
Medium 1handed whip+Small light whip: -2/-4

I think somewhere there are alternate whips. One of them might be a light weapon.

Edit: Scorpion Whip (UC p144) counts as a whip but does not appear to include the reach property.

- Gauss

[blackbloodtroll]

If you are proficient with whips, you can treat a Scorpion as a whip.
This includes reach.
It is still a light weapon.

Half-Orc with the Beastmaster alternate racial trait, or Hobgoblin with the Pit Boss alternate racial trait are choice picks for race.

Lorewarden Fighter for dex build, Ranger for strength build.

[Gauss]

BBT: Interesting. Not sure that is RAI but it appears to be RAW. Ok :)

Tandriniel: you have your two light whips then.

- Gauss

[blackbloodtroll]

I went through a whole thing when building a whip using Hobgoblin Inquisitor.

By the way, Hobgoblins have feat that allow them to pump allies by whipping them.

Where there's a whip, there's a way!

[Gauss]

ROFLMAO nice BBT. Id like to see that build sometime. Feel free to PM it to me.

- Gauss

[blackbloodtroll]

I will see about digging it up.
The campaign it was in died two sessions in due to loss of DM.

[Gauss]

Sorry to hear about that. Thanks for trying to dig it up. :)

- Gauss

[Tandriniel]

Thanks for the help :-).

[Cult of Vorg]

I'm pretty sure that the argument on what "treat as a whip" means was never officially settled. Still a GM call whether it only applies to proficiencies and other feats/abilities that require a whip (like weapon focus and equipment trick), or if it includes being able to use the equipment features (the 15' reach, downgrading from light to one-handed) of the whip.

I definitely prefer the awesome scorpion whip interpretation, and that could fix the attack penalties to -2/-2 as well as the trouble damaging armored targets prior to Whip Mastery, but if your GM doesn't like the idea I don't think there's an official FAQ or post about it you can quote to them, just many threads full of arguments or totally ignored. If my searches just failed, maybe BBT would be kind enough to link it for us.

Rapiers are not treated as light weapons. I'm pretty sure in 3.5 it was the whip that counted as light in the off hand, but that language didn't make it to PF, so whips only count as finessable one-handers.

In addition to BBT's excellent race/class advice, there's the classic half-elf exotic weapon trait, bard (arcane duelist or archeologist, but not if you wanted ALL related feats), and maybe even a cleric (Calistrian crusader?) dip for a non-fighter.

[Grick]

Cult of Vorg wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the argument on what "treat as a whip" means was never officially settled.

If anyone is interested in official clarification on how the Ultimate Combat (and, I'm assuming, Ultimate Equipment) Scorpion Whip works, there's a FAQ request thread here.