Two of my friends agreed to help me run a low level playtest for the swashbuckler. We opted to play first steps: even though it has been effectively retired for PFS play, it's common enough that nearly every PFS player has experience with it, and we've played it enough that we felt ok with just skipping the text boxes and setup. In addition to the swashbuckler, we used the level one pregen Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric for the party.
I built the swashbuckler in a relatively vanilla fashion. Sort of. I did make him an Ifrit, as I have a racial boon that hasn't excited me much, and the Ifrit's stats would make a nice swashbuckler.
Weapons:
MWK Rapier: 1d6-1, +1 to hit, 18-20/x2
MWK Longbow: 1d8, +6 to hit, x3
Feats: Combat Reflexes (eventually want to take combat expertise, improved dirty trick, improved trip/disarm, and agile maneuvers).
I've got two GM credit chronicles handy that will go to the final character, so I had some gold to spend on masterwork weapons, armor, and skill tools.
First steps I:
First encounter: Dire rats.:
Dire rats aren't particularly tough, nontheless I stood behind my party members and plinked away with the longbow. I intend to do this until I reach level 2.
With my +10 initiative I went first. I hit a rat with my bow on an 11 and did 3 damage, failing to kill it. (It's worth noting here that I hit with my bow on a eight or higher, but do an average 4.5 damage per hit, meaning that on average it will take this swashbuckler an average 2 hits to kill it, meaning he needs a probabl 3 attacks total. If I had been using my rapier at this point I would need a 13 to hit and do an average 2.5 damage; despite still needing only two hits on average, I'm almost half as likely to land a hit).
After that, one of the rats hit the Cleric for 1 damage. The party members killed all three remaining rats before I could go again.
Finishing the encounter, the swashbuckler was able to take 10 and walk up to the crate, tying a rope around it so we could recover the goods.
Second encounter: Creepy Orphanage Lady:
As the only party member with any social skills worth mentioning, my swashbuckler took the lead here. I rolled a 4 on my initial gather information check, netting a total 13, not enough to learn anything basic. If I had rolled a 10, or indeed a 6 or higher I could have reached the middle information DC, and an 11 would have made the highest DC.
We made our cleric make a heal check for the alcholism reveal, failed that too. The rogue managed the perception check on the search (Auntie was distracted by the swashbuckler via diplomacy and bluff)(which he did quite well, despite only having an advantage of one point over her sense motive). Unfortunately, the NPC cleric failed to distract the lady, and failed to get the kids to open up to her. Kyra has not been having a good day.
In the end, it was technically a success because we had managed to find the stolen goods, even though we failed the other checks.
Third encounter: The stupid puzzle vault. :
The swashbuckler really didn't do anything at all. The rogue pretty much handled the various skill checks with very little difficulty. It's worth noting that he would have had a 50/50 chance of half damage to get the key out of the acid. We just broke the jar from range, and used a tool to bypass the viper.
Lets move on, we had played this one enough that there isn't much to tell here.
Fourth Encounter: That blasted annoying imp[\spoiler:
Ok... this one is almost always rough. We gave the silver dagger to the rogue, seeing as how his SA ability might make it of the most use.
As always, invisibility at this low of a level was an absolute nightmare to deal with.
After a great deal of slow grinding progress, we did manage to bring it down.
We had a brief argument/discussion about the Swashbuckler's Opportune Parry ability. At first glance, we thought it would be useable if the swashbuckler was flat-footed or if the attacker was invisible. However, we eventually decided the line 'as if making an attack of opportunity' meant that you could only parry if you could potentially make an AoO against the same target (thus concealment, flat-footedness, etc. negates)(however with combat reflexes, Parry works while flat footed, giving the swashbuckler a psuedo-uncanny dodge ability. Nice). I was also able to use the recovery deed a bit to avoid an attack.
Anyway, no one covered themselves with glory, as no one had a good way to deal with invisibility at this point. The low point, however, came when the swashbuckler failed his first two saves against the imp's poison sting, resulting in two dex damage (lucky it was only two). With a fort save at level one of only +1 I needed a 12 to meet the Imp's poison DC. Perhaps I should boost con farther, given the weak fort save. But I want the higher Int for combat expertise, and I've already dumped wis and str. It's rough. For the record, I rolled a 3, a 10, and a 17 on my fort saves; boosting my con to 14 wouldn't have actually changed anything.
[spoiler=Encounter 5: Alley Ambush]
That obscuring mist effectively kept me from using my longbow, so I sucked at combat here.
I got lucky, and managed two crits in a row against the halfling barbarian (one of which was a successful parry/riposte), putting him down despite my low damage output (did 9 damage on the first attack, 8 on the second, and he put himself down by attacking at 0 hp on the next round).
Meanwhile, our rogue and cleric tag teamed and took down the enemy rogue on the first round, allowing everyone to pile on the cleric.
Other than a few magic missiles, neither our wizard or their sorcerer did much. At least, they didn't do much until the sorcerer used her color spray, hitting me, the rogue, and the cleric. Rogue and cleric both made their saves. I, with my -1 will save, did not. To be fair, I rolled a two, so a better ability score or a stronger save probably wouldn't have made much difference.
Thoughts:
He was a blast to play in the social checks. Especially given the way PFS murder hobos tend to skimp on the social skills he is likely to get to maintain the lead with charisma skills.
In a fight he was lackluster. Of course, I need to remember that almost every class is lackluster at first level in the combat sense. At second level he aught to be better with weapon finesse, but his damage isn't going to start going up until his precision damage comes online. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. Long term, I intend to start taking advantage of combat maneuvers - dirty trick fits nicely with the swashbuckler theme, making him into a supportive melee character rather than a primary DPR guy. And the parry/riposte was a blast - it's a great mechanic to play, especially as I got lucky enough to quickly refresh my Panache. He was surprisingly resilient in melee; recovery and parry were useful and fun ways to negate melee attacks.
The poor saves hurt. Sure, I rolled crappy, but failed saves resulted in ability damage to my most important score, and took me out of the final fight.
A few thoughts and complaints:
Recovery was more fun than it should have been. However, it appears that using recovery means that you cannot take a 5' step on that round. So basically what you are doing tactically is to make your step outside of your turn. At low levels this isn't so much as a problem, as a full attack isn't any different than a standard attack; later on this may become a tactical issue that prevents me from using recovery. I wonder if explicitly allowing 5' steps to be used later would be worthwhile.
I didn't have much trouble recovering my panache, but I was also lucky with my crits. Everything fun the swashbuckler could do - parry, riposte, recovery, and derping-do (sic) required panache; once it's out the swashbuckler would get really boring to play. That worries me - boring is way worse than weak; I like playing monks because they're interesting, I don't like fighters because they're boring.
And, of course, my saves were poor. But we'll have to see what happens. A lot of the builds I'm considering would go a long way to alleviating that (like a 1-2 level dip into monk).
I'm very glad to hear it was fun even pre-finesse.
Am I right in assuming the lack of finesse is why you weren't engaging in melee? Or was it more a matter of the usual 1st level fragility?
Cheers!
Landon
Pretty sure he said he was going to use the Longbow as much as possible until level 2 due to his not yet having the 'Finesse' ability and therefore having a grand total of +1 to hit in melee even with a masterwork rapier.
I'm very glad to hear it was fun even pre-finesse.
Am I right in assuming the lack of finesse is why you weren't engaging in melee? Or was it more a matter of the usual 1st level fragility?
Cheers!
Landon
Yes. Pre-finesse I had an option of either attacking with my rapier and doing 1d6-1 damage with a +1 attack, or attacking with a longbow and doing 1d8 damage with a +6 attack. Even though ranged attacks prevented me from using class features (basically just some deeds), it was still kind of a no-brainer.
Of course, the obscuring mist in the last encounter forced me into melee, where I did ok in spite of the lower numbers; that was largely a matter of luck though.
Your strength penalty to damage should apply to your longbow too.
Ok, wow. I've been playing for eight years now and never noticed that (or had it pointed out to me before, which is stranger). I even went to the 3.5 SRD to see if it's a newer pathfinder thing. It isn't, I've just not played it ever.
That's embarrassing.
I don't think it makes much difference for playest purposes, I only landed one hit with the bow that did damage (the hits against the imp never got through DR). It still does more average damage than the rapier would, at a much higher attack score. I suppose at first level it would be worthwhile to pick something with a bigger attack die - a greatsword or greataxe; though falchion might be ideal - the rapier doesn't give any real advantages.
Your strength penalty to damage should apply to your longbow too.
Ok, wow. I've been playing for eight years now and never noticed that (or had it pointed out to me before, which is stranger). I even went to the 3.5 SRD to see if it's a newer pathfinder thing. It isn't, I've just not played it ever.
That's embarrassing.
I don't think it makes much difference for playest purposes, I only landed one hit with the bow that did damage (the hits against the imp never got through DR). It still does more average damage than the rapier would, at a much higher attack score. I suppose at first level it would be worthwhile to pick something with a bigger attack die - a greatsword or greataxe; though falchion might be ideal - the rapier doesn't give any real advantages.
What you want is a crossbow. You don't apply str penalties to damage with crossbows.
FWIW, I don't think First Steps Part 1 is retired yet. You can still schedule an event with it. First Steps 2 and 3 are retired, but I believe Part 1 isn't being retired until the replacement is released.
Another thought - it's easy to boost the swashbuckler's initiative. You start out with a +4 from dex, improved initiative is a common and popular feat, and reactionary is probably the single most-used trait. Not to mention later on dex boosts, that 500gp ioun stone, dips with a familiar for greensting scorpion, etc., not to mention Swashbuckler's initiative.
My ifrit swashbuckler has a +10 with no real effort at all at level 1, he went first in literally each encounter. That number is only going to go up.
But it makes me sad that he really doesn't have anything particularly awesome to do with it. No easy sneak attack, no self-buffs that he wants to get off before combat really starts, nothing really but a charge. I don't know what he aught to be able to do that would feel special; I suppose this really is a problem with any straightforward melee class. Of course, his damage potential really isn't likely to KO any particular opponent, either.
I guess just not being flat-footed is good enough.
But it still makes me sad. It feels like a missed opportunity.
Note also that swashbucklers have it easy in PFS. You can take Weapon Finesse as your first level feat, play three scenarios, and then take advantage of free first level retraining to switch Weapon Finesse out for another feat before playing your first second level game. It's a little cheesy, but not nearly as cheesy as the players who always play a barbarian at first level for its survivability and then retrain to their real character for level two.
