Thinking Fighter, and thinking about Two-weapon fighting... but I'm not sold on anything yet, and I wanted to see if anyone would warn me away from any options. I seem to recall that TWFing is 'suboptimal', given that it's harder to overcome DR than using a 2-handed weapon, and you're largely limited to full-attacking.
Another route might be a longspear or polearm of some sort... that has a certain appeal.
Finally, is throwing viable? Seems 3rd edition had more support for thrower builds than PF, but maybe I'm missing something.
Any advice welcome, really, just getting some very vague ideas together.
CountMRVHS wrote: Thinking Fighter, and thinking about Two-weapon fighting... but I'm not sold on anything yet, and I wanted to see if anyone would warn me away from any options. I seem to recall that TWFing is 'suboptimal', given that it's harder to overcome DR than using a 2-handed weapon, and you're largely limited to full-attacking.
Another route might be a longspear or polearm of some sort... that has a certain appeal.
Finally, is throwing viable? Seems 3rd edition had more support for thrower builds than PF, but maybe I'm missing something.
Any advice welcome, really, just getting some very vague ideas together.
I quite like the idea of a Foehammer / Stalwart Defender using a longhammer and boulder helmet (w/ the three helmet feats). But it would require getting your DM to rule that the dwarven longhammer is part of the hammer weapon group.
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Well, two weapon fighting becomes advantageous if you have a constant extra bonus to each hit. The rogue's sneak attack is an obvious example. A ranger's favored enemy and a paladin's smite are other examples. Fighters also have a source of such extra damage from their weapon training (+4 to hit and damage usually). They also have weapon specialization and greater weapon specialization, which combined adds another +4.
While the Two-weapon fighter archetype is built around TWF, I tend to favor the brawler archetype. The reason for this is that you get a specialized form of weapon training with close weapons. The cestus is a particular favorite since it has stats similar to a dagger, but you can actually still use your hand fairly normally (except for lock picking...but please, you are a fighter...). A Brawler gets their version of weapon training much earlier (level 3), and it starts off with more damage (+3 to each hit, compared to the +1 at level 5 with other archetype) They eventually get +7 damage to each hit from their weapon training alone. With the specialization feats, you easily get +11 to each attack before adding enhancements, strength, and other sources of damage into the mix.
Another advantage of the brawler archetype since it gives you options to weaken adjacent enemies and as well as Attacks of Opportunity if they try to withdraw from you.
Nice, stuff to think about, thanks!
This idea really sprang from 2 things: 1) finally watching The Hobbit, and understanding for the first time how Dwarves can be awesome, and 2) Getting the Advanced Race Guide, wherein is the Stonelord archetype for a dwarven paladin. That *seems* like a solid (excuse the pun) option - I'm not entirely sold on fighter, in other words, just leaning that way.
Twin light shield Brawler Fighter is a fun option.
Nab some Quickdraw Shields, and the Shield Master feat.
Hmm, hadn't considered Brawler. I think I'm leaning more towards weapons, though.
Mobile Fighter looks interesting - thoughts?
Well, I can say this: The dwarves certainly have some amazing options for the Two Weapon Warrior archtype.
They have all sorts of weapons that are technically exotic that they consider martial weapons.
Examples: Dwarven Waraxe, Dwarven Double Waraxe (basically same as DWAX except that it is better for cleaving) and the Dwarven Dorn-Dergar.
That last one is truly an interesting weapon. It is technically a two handed weapon but with the right feats can be used one handed.
Not only that, but despite it being a reach weapon, with the right feats it can strike a guy right next to you as well.
Two really fun types to go with the Two Weapon Warrior dwarf?
Twin Dorn-Dergar fighter of doom. You use this in conjunction with the dwarf's cleave feats, plus that feat he gets when he wants to move after a cleave, spring attack, and the advancing magical weapon quality and you have a hammer twirling d***head of doom. Nothing, and I mean nothing is out of this mean mutha's reach. I don't even know how many 5 foot steps that SOB can take, but it's a hell of a lot!
For another cleave specialist, use the Double Dwarven Waraxe warrior. Not as feat taxing as the other, but you get good movement and insanely damaging criticals.
Shields are weapons.
Ask Captain America.
Good advice so far. If you know some general information about your campaign, that may help get more specific feedback. For example, the Twin Thunders feats are great for RotR, where you end up fighting a lot of giants.
Good point! I'm currently GMing RotR for our group, so that one's out :P
Actually, I'm not sure if/when this character would see a campaign. It's likely to be a homebrew world, probably made by me, and most likely it'd just be me & my wife playing, with her running an NPC for a bit of backup as we take turns GMing.
So this is all pretty hypothetical. But, I did roll up the stats this morning, so I have a bit more specifics to work with. Here are the raw numbers:
16
16
15
9
12
13
My inclination is to use the 9 for CHA, which means that becomes a 7 after racial mods. Use the 2 16s for STR and DEX, probably the 12 or 13 for INT (depending on if I want Combat Expertise - I'm thinking I don't), and use the other for CON, bumping that up to 14 or 15, then use the 15 for WIS, bumping it to 17 to shore up Will saves.
That would probably leave me in a pretty good position to go either TWF or 2-handed, depending on what I want to do, and have some decent ranged capability (maybe throwing axes as primary ranged).
Though I'm thinking about reach weapons lately... the glaive looks pretty nice.
You seem to have a good plan so far. I'll mention that the Dwarven Longhammer, Dwarven Longaxe, and Dwarven Dorn-Dergar all have reach. They are all cool in their own way, and dwarves treat them as martial weapons, so that's cool.
CountMRVHS wrote: Mobile Fighter looks interesting - thoughts? I don't think that an archetype focused on giving bonuses to movement is a great match for a dwarf. A dwarf with 20ft movement is less able to take advantage of Rapid Attack. The archetype also doesn't seem nearly as flavorful and unique as the Stonelord, but that's just my opinion.
If you are interested in throwing and dwarves, take a look at Sliding Axe Throw and Bounding Hammer, which both seem pretty fun.
The dwarven fighter in my campaign is proving to be quite well-rounded. We use a 25-point buy system so his stats are quite good. He is going for a TWF build using dwarven waraxe and light shield. I don't think he plans on going any deeper into TWF than just the first level of it (but I could be wrong), but with his feats he gets to keep his shield bonus to AC (and he has the highest AC in the group) and has two alternate weapon types for damage purposes (slashing and bludgeoning). He does good, consistent damage and can take a beating.
Thanks for the above!
My biggest difficulty is deciding which option to stick with - or wondering whether I can (or should) fit in a couple different fighting styles.
Dorn Dergar has a definite appeal - reach *and* adjacent capability, 2-handed to make the most out of PA... seems really versatile and cool. If I use just one (instead of TWFing with two) I may save some feats for other things.
On the other hand, if I go with a more conventional polearm like the glaive I could go for the Polearm Master archetype, which allows me to use that reach weapon at adjacent foes, and would allow for some nice visuals (there used to be a feat for this in 3.5 - Short Haft was the name, I think. I haven't found a feat that accomplishes this in PF, sadly.) A glaive also crits harder than Dorn Dergar.
Then there's the TWF route. A heavy pick in one hand and a Dwarven maulaxe in the off-hand seems like it could be nasty. Maybe eventually working up to 2 heavy picks (via feast) to consolidate bonuses. Maybe I'm just letting myself get suckered in by large crit multipliers, though. But c'mon, some ragged, rugged Dwarven miner flailing away with two heavy picks - I like that image!
So I guess I'm wondering - do I need to focus on one of these paths, or is it possible/decent to get some combination going? The TWF tree doesn't actually look that deep - I count 6 feats I'd probably need to get (but that doesn't count any feats I might need to wield 2 1-handed weapons). I'd like to get Power Attack - probably while wielding some kind of reach weapon - and open up some Cleave, Sunder, Overrun/Bull Rush options (especially the first 2). If I want to be decent at throwing I may want at leat PBS and Precise Shot, but these are secondary.
Doing all or most of this probably necessitates going the Fighter route, which opens up another conundrum since Stonelord is very appealing as well.
I love sifting through all these options, but coming to a decision is difficult!
CountMRVHS wrote: But c'mon, some ragged, rugged Dwarven miner flailing away with two heavy picks - I like that image! So cool!
Apart from taking the Two-Weapon Warrior archetype, are there any ways to reduce the penalties for TWFing with two 1-handed weapons?
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