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Two-weapon fighting with a Keen Kukri and a Heavy Pick.
Use Butterfly's Sting to pass 2x Kukri criticals to your 4x Heavy Pick.
How about a double weapon? They have the advantage of allowing you to switch between using them for TWF and using them as a two-handed weapon. That means that you can take a standard action attack that does 1.5x STR and power attack damage, while you use TWF with your full attacks. This can be useful on a ranger, which can easily do a strength based TWF build to take advantage of this.
Unfortunately, most of the good double weapons are exotic. Not too much of a problem for a human, half-elf, or tengu, since they can all get access to a double sword fairly easily. Dwarves and half-orcs also have access to racial weapons that are double (gnomes do too...but really?)
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How about a double weapon? They have the advantage of allowing you to switch between using them for TWF and using them as a two-handed weapon. That means that you can take a standard action attack that does 1.5x STR and power attack damage, while you use TWF with your full attacks. This can be useful on a ranger, which can easily do a strength based TWF build to take advantage of this.
Unfortunately, most of the good double weapons are exotic. Not too much of a problem for a human, half-elf, or tengu, since they can all get access to a double sword fairly easily. Dwarves and half-orcs also have access to racial weapons that are double (gnomes do too...but really?)
This is pretty solid advice. A variation on this would be to use your short swords/Kukri's/sun blades (or whatever you want) and be Half Orc with the Toothy alternate racial trait. This gives you a bite attack that is primary, deals 1.5 x STR and gets the 3:1 power attack damage for those times you are limited to a standard action or single attack. Has the added advantage over a double weapon in that you can use your bite in a grapple or when your hands are otherwise full. The downside is that you'd need to take multiple Weapon Focuses etc if you want to improve your bite at the same rate as your primary weapons.
if you're thinking about shortswords, you might want to consider just fighting with daggers... i know nobody wants to roll a d4 for damage as a melee guy, but the 1 dmg/hit you lose vs. using shortswords should be a small change compared to the static bonus damage you're stacking, and the benefit is that then all the focus/specialiaztion/weapon training/etc that you're stacking will apply to ranged attacks as well.
i'm not a big fan of losing armor training, especially in a dex build, but the two weapon warrion archetype has some decent bonuses- including getting 2 attacks for every AoO! if you do the dagger build you can freely switch between ranged and melee combat and are basically equally good at both... if you can squeeze in the feats for improved snap shot you'll threaten out to 15' feet and get tons of double AoOs! you'll definitely need/want a blinkback belt for that kind of build though.
if you're thinking about shortswords, you might want to consider just fighting with daggers... i know nobody wants to roll a d4 for damage as a melee guy, but the 1 dmg/hit you lose vs. using shortswords should be a small change compared to the static bonus damage you're stacking, and the benefit is that then all the focus/specialiaztion/weapon training/etc that you're stacking will apply to ranged attacks as well.
There is actually a trait, called river rat, that solves that problem. It gives a +1 bonus to dagger damage, which means it has the same average damage as a short sword at 3.5. Of course, it has a tighter damage range of 2-5, which can be nice I suppose.
paladins do make great 2wf guys, at least against evil things (and especially if they take oath of vengeance). i had one who was dex based with weapon finesse a wielded a small spiked bashing shield (i know there's some debate about spiked/bashing but my GM was down with it) and a sun blade- it was out of control against BBEG (he did have 14 str and PA, too- which helped). the big problem with pally 2wf is that they're soooo feat starved (and far less effective without smite).
Some day I do want to go the whole "1 level of every full BAB class and prestige class" just to see how it works in game.
poorly... although, that one time you fight a demon and get to be like "ok, i rage (for +4 str), smite evil (+Cha to hit, +1 damage), smite chaos (from Hellknight; another +Cha to hit and +2 damage), challenge it (+1 damage, and maybe +1 hit) and its my favored enemy (+2 hit/damage), soooooo... with power attack, i hit it with a 2 on the die, for tons of damage" would be kind of fun, lol
With the new Monk ruling that monks don't have an off hand, they can actually TWF with a heavy sword in each hand, with full Power Attack damage on each weapon. Temple Sword is 1d8, enlarge person kicks it to 2d6. The slower BAB can be a problem, though.
The other fun build is Sawtooth sabres: a long sword that can be wielded in your off hand without penalty. You still get half damage from Power Attack on the off hand, though.
So as I was perusing my list of PFS characters, I noticed 3 things missing: a dual-wielding melee damage dealer, a magus, and something to do with my Ifrit boon. Now this thread isn't about the Ifrit boon, I have another thread about that and I'm pretty sure I'm going to turn it into a blaster sorcerer. This thread is about the dual-wielding melee damage dealer. It seems like that is the one type of character I just don't know how to build.
Anybody got any suggestions?
There is my Guide to two weapon fighting for fighters and my guide to twf for rangers.
Both can be found in the guide to the guides section.
I'll have to do one for Cavalier's/Samurai next.
With the new Monk ruling that monks don't have an off hand, they can actually TWF with a heavy sword in each hand, with full Power Attack damage on each weapon.
is that a (very) new ruling? and if so, could you please post a link?
There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed. (emphasis mine)
this is clearly different from what you're saying...
the (sort of) recent ruling (that i'm aware of) was that a monk can flurry with only one weapon and make all their attacks with that weapon... that's similar (in effect) to what you're saying, except for the following: you only need to buy 1 temple sword; you can wield it 1handed (exactly as you described), or you can actually wield it 2handed if you want (doesn't increase Str dmg but technically should increase PA dmg accordingly); and, you don't need to invest the stat points and feats to take 2wf cause you get flurry for free.
the difference between the two only really arises if you're looking to 2wf with a monk who gave up flurry, or trying to dip monk to improve another 2wf build... in either of those cases it looks (based on the information i've included here) like this won't work the way you seem to think it does...
With the new Monk ruling that monks don't have an off hand, they can actually TWF with a heavy sword in each hand, with full Power Attack damage on each weapon. Temple Sword is 1d8, enlarge person kicks it to 2d6. The slower BAB can be a problem, though.
The other fun build is Sawtooth sabres: a long sword that can be wielded in your off hand without penalty. You still get half damage from Power Attack on the off hand, though.
Wait, are you talking about flurry of blows, or some other mysterious FAQ that I don't know about where you can dip monk (even a MoMS) and just take the TWF feats on your own.
Because if it is the flurry thing, then dual wielding temple swords would actually be rather silly when just two handing one would get you bonus power attack damage and save on buying another sword. This is because flurry of blows allows you to use a single weapon for all attacks.
They do lack off hands for unarmed strikes though, and a single level dip into monk (I like going MoMS to I can take more flavorful style feats such as boar or tiger style, where you can tear men apart with your bare hands), and then going ranger the rest of the way for a regular TWF build would actually work out rather well. The single level is just within Boon Companion's ability to cover, and since unarmed strikes count as a single weapon for the purposes of buffs, you could just cast greater magical fang on yourself to get a decent bonus to hit.
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I'm gonna say Sohei for an TWF character. You can eventually flurry (which is basically TWF+ for a sohei) with a Nodachi and get d10 damage with 18-20/x2 crit, 3:1 Power Attack bonus, and a Mithral BP/Kikko armor. That or a Brawler Fighter could do nice damage with the +3 damage on multiple attacks.
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Samurai, DEX-over-STR 7/19/14/12/12/12 20pt array, Weapon Finesse & TWF with Keen/Agile weapons. Dip urban barbarian. Extra Rage. Dangerously Curious. Buff self and horse with cheap consumables. Pantsloads of fun.I was about to reply to this with something really dumb, but thankfully I caught myself.
Just makesure you never get off your horse.
Why?
This guy didn't spend one dime on armor prior to buying Celestial -- he just burned through a wand of Mage Armor.
1st level: killed things with a crossbow or the horse.
2nd-5th level: strength raged with TWF'ing on horseback, or Aided Other while DEX-raging (attack bonus getting progressively insane).
6th+: +1/Agile wakizashi. DEX of 26 while urban/raging. d6+14 base damage versus challenged foe. d6+18 if Piranha Strike.
