Been mulling over possible things to do with the new ACG, and been toying over the idea of a two weapon warpriest. Maybe using a light pick, as weapon damage goes up with my level, and it's a light weapon with a x4 multipier. Any advice or suggestions on this idea? blessings? gods to worship? anything to help would be great
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Two-weapon is a bad style for a warpriest because of the 3/4 BAB. You can get around that by using bonus feats to pick up the improved TWF feat so you have more off-hand attacks than main ones, but you are still limited. To qualify for the decent TWF feats you will likely need to be dex based, which negates your heavy armor proficiency benefit.
The best option imo is to worship Pharasma and use daggers. River Rat is invaluable for twf, and Pharasma's deific obedience grants a +2 to hit, offsetting the the TWF penalty.
I was thinking daggers before light pick. The x4 is so appealing though
If wanted to do a TWF warpriest, you could look at a warpriest of Ackachek (the Mantis God). His favored weapon is the sawtooth sabre, an exotic weapon which is basically a long sword that you can use in your off hand as if it were a light weapon.
Sawtooth sabre gives you the flexibility of being able to use a single weapon two-handed for the extra strength bonus, and you still get to apply the same Weapon Focus/Specialization/Improved Critical, etc. to both weapons when you TWF. For extra fun, enlarge yourself and/or cast Lead Blades to kick your weapon dice up to 2d6 in each hand.
ohhh i like the visual flavor of this
The problem is the WP is more or less balanced around the assumption that the WP bonus feats will either be Weapon focus/GWF/Weapon Specialization/GWS or feats which do something very powerful.
TWF is not very powerful. You can definitely make the character but he'll likely be fairly weak due to TWF not being a strong style.
TWF would be done better by a sacred fist wielding deities favored weapons with crusaders flurry. Same mechanics but with different abilities.
Not to necessarily disagree with you, but I find it interesting that many people seem to think that Archery is viable for Warpriest but TWF less so, even though they have much of the same problems (Long Feat Chains, Multiple Penalties for more/stronger attacks, DEX to hit vs. STR for damage). Is this simply because of the range (which also presents Cover issues), feats like Clustered Shots, relative ease of finshing the archey feat chain, or is there something I'm missing, or have I misread the general opinion on Archer Warpriests?
Not to necessarily disagree with you, but I find it interesting that many people seem to think that Archery is viable for Warpriest but TWF less so, even though they have much of the same problems (Long Feat Chains, Multiple Penalties for more/stronger attacks, DEX to hit vs. STR for damage). Is this simply because of the range (which also presents Cover issues), feats like Clustered Shots, relative ease of finshing the archey feat chain, or is there something I'm missing, or have I misread the general opinion on Archer Warpriests?The problem is the WP is more or less balanced around the assumption that the WP bonus feats will either be Weapon focus/GWF/Weapon Specialization/GWS or feats which do something very powerful.
TWF is not very powerful. You can definitely make the character but he'll likely be fairly weak due to TWF not being a strong style.
TWF would be done better by a sacred fist wielding deities favored weapons with crusaders flurry. Same mechanics but with different abilities.
Archers can ignore Strength, while a TWF will either have to suck until they can afford Agile weapons (and burn another feat on Weapon Finesse) or divert points to Strength. And if you do go the Agile route, you have to enchant two weapons, so that's even worse.
Archers pretty much always get full attacks. A TWF really suffers with a single attack, while a 2HF is at least getting the 1.5 Str and 1.5 Power Attack.
Per Rory, I think a double weapon is the best choice if you do intend to try TWF with the Warpriest. Although you'd still likely be burning an extra feat on Dual Enhancement. The major downside is you can't use it while grappled like you could with a Light weapon.
TWF has its issues, but it thrives on static bonuses and bonus feats, both of which are available to a warpriest. Divine Favor + Fate's Favored trait is a huge boost to attack and damage, and bonus early TWF is a big deal. If a fighter at level 9 naturally has 4 more ab (3 more bab and 1 from training), the warpriest has +4 from a self-buff.
People always trope on about how horribly weak TWF is, but that's actually somewhat misleading; TWF is incredibly powerful in that it gives you far more attacks. The weakness comes from a whole ton of peripheral issues, and if you can at least somewhat overcome those, having double the attacks adds up fast.
Just as an example, a single level of Swashbuckler with Slashing Grace would allow you to run dex-to-damage with two sawtooth sabres. With 24dex at level 9 plus feats and Favor, a pair of +1 sawtooths can be doing 4.5+1 +7dex +2wepspec +4divfav = 18.5, and I'm not taking into consideration any special warpriest stuff other than just a level 1 buff and some bonus feats.
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I'm not saying that TWF can't be made to work, especially with a swashbuckler dip. The problem is that you are spending a lot of resources to overcome the weakness of the style, and you are ignoring one of the strengths of the warpriest, which is heavy armor and shield proficiency.
Agreed, no question its not necessarily ideal. I was just responding to the 'TWF is very, very weak' statement, because generalizations that encourage bland building annoy me. The most fun builds are often taking a weird, non-ideal concept and making it work well if not perfectly, and TWF is an ideal non-ideal. It's true that it ignores their advantageous proficiencies, though on the other hand there's something great about really using those bonus feats.
Its all very relative and situational of course - DR/charges/etc. - but taking the 18.5 damage above, 18.5 x 4 attacks = 74. A level 9 Warpriest making two attacks with a two-hander isn't likely to be swinging that even with power attack, and if he power attacks his ab isn't any better.
Not to necessarily disagree with you, but I find it interesting that many people seem to think that Archery is viable for Warpriest but TWF less so, even though they have much of the same problems (Long Feat Chains, Multiple Penalties for more/stronger attacks, DEX to hit vs. STR for damage). Is this simply because of the range (which also presents Cover issues), feats like Clustered Shots, relative ease of finshing the archey feat chain, or is there something I'm missing, or have I misread the general opinion on Archer Warpriests?The problem is the WP is more or less balanced around the assumption that the WP bonus feats will either be Weapon focus/GWF/Weapon Specialization/GWS or feats which do something very powerful.
TWF is not very powerful. You can definitely make the character but he'll likely be fairly weak due to TWF not being a strong style.
TWF would be done better by a sacred fist wielding deities favored weapons with crusaders flurry. Same mechanics but with different abilities.
People think archery is viable for a WP because it is, and TWF is in fact less so. Just look at the stats. An archer WP with 14 str, 17 dex can get pretty much everything he needs and the 14 str is only for + damage. The TWF WP needs a as high as he can get for strength, at least 17ish dex for prereqs and he's doing all that so he can spend half his time moving between targets not benefiting from his additional attacks.
It's not that the WP is bad at TWF, it's that TWF is pretty crappy for everyone who lacks a pounce mechanic.
I was just responding to the 'TWF is very, very weak' statement, because generalizations that encourage bland building annoy me. The most fun builds are often taking a weird, non-ideal concept and making it work well if not perfectly, and TWF is an ideal non-ideal.
I see this from the other angle, I've found players who have wanted to use TWF become quickly discouraged because they get to use the mechanic less than they would like due to movement, and when they do use it they end up hitting less often and for less damage per round than a very simple 2h build would have.
...TWF is pretty crappy for everyone who lacks a pounce mechanic.... I see this from the other angle, I've found players who have wanted to use TWF become quickly discouraged...
TWF is definitely one of those things that has huge style appeal, but easily turns out badly for people who aren't being careful about how they do it - aren't rejecting anything that doesn't add up when crunching situational numbers and throwing away concepts that won't work. People run it badly or witness someone else doing so, and then 'TWF sucks' gets written on their memory for good, reinforced by others with the same anecdotal outlook. They don't sit there and think about things like static bonuses and calculate comparisons to see where there may be niches for it; they don't get to suddenly hack something to pieces with a full attack that makes a 2-hander salute when the opportunity is there, because they didn't build to really work that opportunity. TWF can work reasonably well - or even surprisingly well - in *some* builds, but once bitten...
I haven't worked through the math of this particular option, but Sacred Weapon would work wonders for a light shield. I wonder how a strength-based weapon-and-shield warpriest with a single shield-bash (go dual talent?) would play out.
Here's a TWF warpriest done with sword-saint style in mind, rather than pure optimization:
Hachiman Taro, Warpriest of Shizuru
Human, Dual Talent; Fate's Favored & Reactionary
Weapons: Katana, Bodywrap of Mighty Strikes
16/18+ (+item)
15/17
12 (+FCB)
10
13 (+item)
8
1. Two-Weapon Fighting / + Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike
3. Improved Unarmed Strike / + Dragon Style
5. Power Attack
6. + Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
7. Dragon Ferocity
9. Weapon Focus: Katana / + Weapon Specialization: Katana
Charge is a two-handed power-attacking katana, plain and simple - with typical gear, at level 9, lets say: 4.5+3, +2wepspec, +10str, +6powak, +4divfav = 29.5.
On a full attack, the 1-handed katana drops from 29.5 to 24.5 and ab drops by 2. The payoff is two unarmed strikes: 4.5+3, +10/7str, +2powak, +4divfav = 23.5/20.5. Average damage potential becomes 92, where the two-handed katana would have been 59 - though of course you would have more resources to spend on it.
AB is 7 points lower than a comperable raging barbarian (-3bab,-2twf,-2str)... until you add +4divfav and +2sacwep. With the fact that power attack is costing one less point for the warpriest, the difference is cancelled out.
Further on, instead of wasting feat and ability on Greater TWF, Two-Weapon Rend is selected; eventually both the unarmed strike and the katana are inflicting greatsword base damage.
EDIT: swapped in Dragon Style + Ferocity for scary crits and damage, dropped Double Slice and Dual Enhancement. By RAW it would seem Dual Enhancement doesn't mean you don't spend two rounds of Sacred Weapon, you just start them together... meh.
Battle Poi is an option. It does fire damage, and allows you to TWF without the TWF feats so you can go str-based. There is something awesome about a full plate wearing warrior swinging fire at you.
Fire has some interesting/fun feats to go along with it.
Burn! Burn! Burn! +1d4 fire damage per attackFire Hand (Combat) +1 non-typed hit with melee fire attacks
of course you'd have to be a goblin for those.
One plus for the TWF warpriest is easy access to a pounce-like effect at 10 with quicken travel blessing.
In the long-run, it also gains more attacks than the Sacred Fist, because of non-Claw natural attacks that you can gain - however, that's only if you're a Kobold, which means you're also losing out on extra feats at lv6 and lv12; Humans or human-subtype creatures can do this even better, but only after lv12.
If games are going to lv15+, you get more iterative attacks than a Sacred Fist because of Natural-Attacks-&-TWF vs just Flurry, AND you get more Feats, buuuuut... it is a LOT of bookkeeping and planning.
Taking Sacred Fist is just simpler; you get the same effect as TWF without having to think about it... though only with Monk weapons and Unarmed Strikes.