How do dexterity based builds usually compare to strength based builds? I've heard that strength is usually the best way to go (which I approve of) but I'm curious as to why.
It's a bit of a hamfisted overgeneralization, but in the most generic terms, the system is built to favor offense over defense. Defense might help your character last until round 3, but strength makes it so you don't have to.
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I believe that strength builds are favored typically because it is easier to do a strength build, as you really only need one damage feat and a 2h weapon to get started. That said, dex builds can be pretty powerful if done right. Not so much melee as ranged, but there are some pretty nice agile builds, and a high dex 5th level gunslinger will destroy pretty much anything within 20-40ft of him.
IMO though, Intelligence builds are the most viable. Because do you know what classes use intelligence builds? That's right, wizards.
So, if someone picks say, the fighter, would their capability in/out of combat be about the same as if they had built using strength instead?
The dervish dance feat restricts you to one weapon (i dont know why, would this seriously be OP with longswords?) and requires you to be a dancer (what if your character hates dancing but wants to add dex to damage rolls?). And even after jumping through all those hoops, IIRC you dont get the 1.5x two handed bonus...
If anything, the dervish dance feat would be less powerful with a long sword. I don't even get how it's supposed to work, you dance so prettily that you can suddenly use a two-handed weapon in one hand?
If anything, the dervish dance feat would be less powerful with a long sword. I don't even get how it's supposed to work, you dance so prettily that you can suddenly use a two-handed weapon in one hand?
The dervish dance feat restricts you to one weapon (i dont know why, would this seriously be OP with longswords?) and requires you to be a dancer (what if your character hates dancing but wants to add dex to damage rolls?). And even after jumping through all those hoops, IIRC you dont get the 1.5x two handed bonus...
Dervish Dance works with a scimitar...it's one handed...confused havoc is confused.
Dervish Dance works with a scimitar...it's one handed...confused havoc is confused.If anything, the dervish dance feat would be less powerful with a long sword. I don't even get how it's supposed to work, you dance so prettily that you can suddenly use a two-handed weapon in one hand?
The dervish dance feat restricts you to one weapon (i dont know why, would this seriously be OP with longswords?) and requires you to be a dancer (what if your character hates dancing but wants to add dex to damage rolls?). And even after jumping through all those hoops, IIRC you dont get the 1.5x two handed bonus...
Oh, would you look at that, it is one-handed. not entirely sure why I thought otherwise.
Overall, I believe that most dex-based builds are more feat heavy. Whereas a dex melee build needs Weapon Finesse as a requirement, power attack is more of a bonus than anything else. Is this correct?
If anything, the dervish dance feat would be less powerful with a long sword. I don't even get how it's supposed to work, you dance so prettily that you can suddenly use a two-handed weapon in one hand?
The dervish dance feat restricts you to one weapon (i dont know why, would this seriously be OP with longswords?) and requires you to be a dancer (what if your character hates dancing but wants to add dex to damage rolls?). And even after jumping through all those hoops, IIRC you dont get the 1.5x two handed bonus...
The dervish part comes from real life arabic religious practices. It refers both to an individual that held the same basic position as a monk in Europe, as well as the whirling dervishes, a traditional religious dance among the Sufi. This makes sense since it was originally intended as a feat for the middle east stand in within the game.
Long story short: Spinning. You spin around and around, and you let that provide the force for your swings.
I agree though: you are probably better off just using an elven curved blade and getting 1.5x power attack than going with dervish dance. Same number of feats are required anyway (although they can be accomplished by level one depending of class and race choice).
The one handed, one weapon style of dervish dance is not really that good. The only class I know of that can pull it off well (dawnflower dervish bard) is still better off just going with bows or TWF. If you can though, just avoid the whole issue and go with a simple strength build.
Dex takes for more investment to work. However, you also get bonuses to AC, initiative, and better skills from Dex. Fighter's armor training ensures that a dex-based fighter in heavy armor offers the highest AC possible to fighters.
My party's fighter (Lore Warden) TWFs with Agile whips. Because fighters have so many feats, his feat-heavy build isn't hurting him. He's a monster with both damage and combat maneuvers.
There is also the problem that if for some reason you can not buy an agiel weapon your non dervish dance dex based fighter will be in huge problems.
Agile is more of a 'nice' thing to have than anything. You really should build you character around the idea that other bonuses to damage would be the main draw. That is why I suggested the elven curved blade, since it can get 1.5x power attack damage. Other options typically include maximizing TWF through sneak attack/favored enemy/weapon training/weapon specialization/etc. You might also get by using special trick builds like with whips, but those might run out of usefulness after a while. Dervish dance, by comparison, does non of these things, which is why it is usually just a feat sink for little profit.
But the persistence of dex builds seems like it comes from some misconceptions about people "needing" dex in a melee build. The most obvious of which is the idea that the few extra points in stealth matter that much when there are various items and enhancements that give large bonuses to skills. Also, a nonranger TWF build does not necessarily need to be DEX based given a good point buy (on 20 pts, you could easily go 16/16/14 after racial adjustments for a martial character without creating any dump stats, and with the 4th level ability increase into dex you can easily get the best TWF feats).
Dexterity might provide lots of defense options earlier on, but Strength-based guys can still get adequate defense. What's more, it's far easier to stack strength increases from various sources than it is dexterity, thus allowing them to more easily destroy everything in their way.
(Strength scores over 60 are pretty easy and have heard of builds with as much as 90. I've yet to hear Dexterity get over 50.)
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But the persistence of dex builds seems like it comes from some misconceptions about people "needing" dex in a melee build. The most obvious of which is the idea that the few extra points in stealth matter that much when there are various items and enhancements that give large bonuses to skills. Also, a nonranger TWF build does not necessarily need to be DEX based given a good point buy (on 20 pts, you could easily go 16/16/14 after racial adjustments for a martial character without creating any dump stats, and with the 4th level ability increase into dex you can easily get the best TWF feats).
I think the persistence of Dex builds comes from the fact that some people like the concept of the small, agile fighter keeping up with the hulking brutes. It's Bruce Lee vs. Andre the Giant.
Overall, to the OP:
There are three basic directions to take a combat character built on Dex: Two-weapon fighting, ranged, and Weapon finesse.
The ranged direction has a pretty obvious strategy: toss out as many missiles as you can in a round, and the damage adds up. Use weapon blanch or clustered shots to overcome higher DR, and use seeking weapons to overcome concealment issues.
Weapon finesse is hard to work by itself. Generally, weapon finesse only works with light weapons, which do very little damage by themselves. Even feats like Vital Strike only multiple in underlying damage die, which doesn't help that much. Lead Blades or Enlarge Person doesn't help much, either, because most of the light weapons go from 1d4 to 1d6, which isn't a big enough increase to waste the action on the spell. The only way I've seen really effective combat-oriented finesse builds is centered around either the Dervish Dancer feat or Aldori dueling sword feats/prestige class. Beyond those two builds, it's hard to make a plain old melee combatant that effective with weapon finesse.
Weapon finesse makes a great backup option for ranged characters, or a strong combat option for lightly armored, second-string fighters like rogues/ninjas and bards. Magus builds with weapon finesse work fairly well, but because the magus wants a hand free, it's very tempting to go Dervish Dancer (and I put the Magus into a different category than "straight combat" build). Since the Elven curved blade adds 1.5 times your strength and uses two hands, there's very little reason to use your Dex to hit and waste a feat on Weapon Finesse. For ranged characters who must use Dex to hit with their primary weapon, Weapon Finesse plus the Elven curved blade is my go-to melee backup option.
Two-weapon fighting builds are the strongest Dex-based combatants in my experience, but they probably work best with a balance of Str and Dex (as others have already mentioned). You only need a 15 Dex to start with. You'll need a 17 Dex around BAB 8, when you'll want to pick up Improved Two Weapon Fighting (which adds the second attack to your iterative, too). By then, you'll have two ability bumps to work with, and you should be able to afford a +2 Dex enhancement for lemeres' 16/16/14 build. (Greater Two Weapon Fighting requires a Dex of 19, at BAB 11, so keep that in mind if you want to plan that far ahead.)
On the other hand, you can go with a Ranger-based or Monk-based TWF build and have no Dex requirement at all.
Word of warning on TWF: Str damage is halved on your off-hand attack, and so is Power Attack damage. Double Slice fixes the halved Str damage, but nothing fixes the halved Power Attack. (Monks don't suffer this problem, because the flurry version of TWF has different rules.) With my TWF, I've done better carrying the same weapon in each hand so you can apply weapon-specific feats (Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, etc.) to both weapons with only one feat. If you want to do that, you'll want either light weapons or spend a feat for Sawtooth sabre proficiency. I've also made great use of a Barbarian dip for rage Str boost and the Furious weapon enchantment, but then you're veering away from a straight Dex build.
My overall advice is to figure out what you want your character to do--what are the top three-four "tricks" the character does--and build around those. "I want a Dex-based build" is a really broad, game-mechanic statement that doesn't actually say what the character is or does. "I want a two weapon fighter" is more concrete. "I want to run all over the battlefield with a weapon in each hand, stabbing people as I go past" or "I want to stand in one place and spin like a giant blender with 4-foot blades, chopping anything that gets close to me into smoothies" are two completely different visions of a Two-Weapon fighter, and two completely different builds.
I think that dex based fighters benefit greatly by dipping into rogue.
3 lvls of rogue gives him 2d6 snk dmg while only giving up one point of BA.He can even get more combat feats while there.He then benefits more from good positioning.
I'm sure others would recommend Ninja or some feat/archetype/game hack.
I don't use the splatbooks in my games...so Rogue as a class still seems good to me :).
The problem is that basically everything ends up immune to sneak attack damage, or is smart enough not to be flanked, or something. It really isn't worth dipping into rogue for that.
Evasion is worth it.
It all depends on the class, and what you want to do...
But there are serious issues with dex-based melee.
The benefit sort of kills itself. Max dex bonus is a real thing with armor. If you have a 24 dex, you are pretty much stuck.
A mithral chain shirt has a max dex of +6, so you are limited there and aren;t getting full dex, but it remains your best option, to get a total of +10 AC.
Another character with a 12 dex who just uses strength can throw on some full plate to get +10 AC.
So that is issue number one.
The second is that there are costs required for dex based fighting, weapon finesse, dervish dancing (yuck for anyone but a Magus IMO), or even TWF.
TWF is probably the biggest ruse in the game. You get to pay double for your weapons, you have to have a 19 dex to fill it out, and just look at the options.
Lets say you use two short swords. So at level 11 with Greater TWF, you get 6 attacks. You deal 1d6+Str with both (say you have double slice) so you are getting 6d6+6xStr+6xEnhancement+4.5xPower Attack.
Now look at a two-handed guy. His strength is going to be higher, so lets say you have a 16 str, and he has a 22. Fair yes? That means we can say that he deals 3 times your strength on each attack. (+3 versus +9 total per attack)
So, his three attacks with a greatsword deal 6d6+9xStr+3xEnhancement+4.5xpower Attack
So, he is getting 27 damage from strength on these attacks, while you are getting 18. Power attack works out to the same. damage dice work out to the same. His enhancement bonus is going to be +1 higher in most cases since you have to pay double and he doesn't, so lets say he has +3 and you have +2. That means that you are getting +12 from enhancement and he is getting +9.
Overall, that means his damage potential is +2 per full attack higher than yours.
Of course, you also spent feats on TWF, Imp. TWF, G. TWF, and Double Slice, and are taking a -2 on every attack... and the two-hander guy didn't have to.
The only way to slide TWF into relevancy is to have a bunch of other static damage boosts... so really the only good TWF class is a fighter, who gets Weapon Spec and Weapon Training and can also use his high dex in combination with heavy armor due to armor training.
OR to be a rogue, where sneak attack can act as static damage. rangers can also get a benefit, since they do not need a high strength, which can keep their damage up there... but even then, the benefits for TWF are really pretty sad.
The ECB is specifically allowed to be used with weapon finesse. Not a bad idea, since finessers don't normally use a shield.
==Aelryinth
Im still not seeing how elven curve blade works for a dex builds? Its a greatsword with 18-20 crit range. That just screams str power attacking.
Weapon finess wont let you use dex for damage with it.
Agile
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Im still not seeing how elven curve blade works for a dex builds? Its a greatsword with 18-20 crit range. That just screams str power attacking.
It works for dex builds with enough strength for power attack, because you can get 3:1 power attack bonuses+agile for damage. Not as good as the strength builds (which probably use a nodachi anyway, because it isn't exotic), but better than the rapier ones.
Oh how I miss the days when an 18/00 STR was considered awesome :)
I dont:)
In order for a dex based fighter to really shine you need to be fighting in complicated environments and over diverse terrain.
If the enemy are using terrain obstructions and elevation differences to waylay the party or protect themselves from harm.
The ability to climb and use acrobatics/jump can really matter.
Unfortunately most games seem to take place in abandoned shopping malls with perfectly flat ground filled with monster and treasure stocked rooms bearing minimal furniture.
In that type of environment,full plate makes perfect since.
But if you send your PC's tromping thru the bog...suddenly your the A-hole lol.
Evasion is worth it.
Not really. Nearly all reflex save for half effects are laughably inefficient already anyways.
I've only ever seen such an attack decimate a party once, and that was from a dragon's breath weapon that was CR 10 higher than the party.
The rest of the time, everyone just shrugs off the damage and continue the fight.
Mythic has some strong tools for dext build.
I m currently thinking about an elven Paladin with 6 level of ranger to get Power Attack and Furious Focus without the prerequisites as well as favored ennemy, dext based using elven curved blade with mythic weapon finesse, armor master (champion path).
To play for wrath of the righteous, basically a demon hunter concept.
And the result is a s$%!load of damage, AC, initiative, skills, using urban ranger archetype it can even disarm traps as well as a rogue.
I'll post it later, currently on a tablet.
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Not really. Nearly all reflex save for half effects are laughably inefficient already anyways.
In my experience, Evasion is worth it for PCs due to both enemy save spells, and ally one. My rogue would have died a thousand times over, were it not for evasion. Same with my monk, and my Monk/Fighter multiclass. And thats only from a party sorcerer's fireball.