From what I can tell, the biggest loss of going Daring Champion over Swashbuckler is not getting Opportune Parry & Riposte and the Evasion/Uncanny Dodge.
I was thinking I could mitigate the loss slightly by going 1 Swashbuckler/ 19 Daring Champion(Knight Errant). The main thing I lose is just 1 Precise Strike and 1 Challenge Damage(and 1 point off the Knight Errant Challenge ability but that's meh anyway), and the Daring Champion capstone ability. I might be able to work around the loss of the capstone by replacing it with 2 mythic feats.
So how good is OPR? Is it worth it?
If it's not worth it then I'm just going to go with 20 levels of Daring Champion.
I will say probably not... but take the dip anyway.
This is due to a rather strange fact about cavaliers- due to one of their class abilities, they actually do better with a 1 level dip into a full BAB class (or two levels of any other kind of class).
This is all due to the tactician ability. As you know, it lets you share a teamwork feat with your party... but you still need to qualify for the teamwork feat normally, and only the teamwork feats gained from tactician work with that ability.
One of the best teamwork feats is coordinated charge. One person charges- everyone else gets to charge outside of their turn. This is basically pseudopounce, since they are likely to start their next turn right next to the enemy they want to attack. So this carries obvious value for your party's melee members (and heck, maybe things like animal companions or summons as well).
The problem with using that for tactician is that is it slightly out of sync. You need BAB+10 to get coordinated charge. The closest chance to grab the teamwork feat with tactician is at level 9 (or BAB+9). Ergo, you would need to dip into other classes to boost up your BAB so you can grab the feat with tactician.
So overall- you want to take a dip anyway. So you might as well grab some nice abilities with that dip. Swashbuckler works well, since any abilities you grab work with the daring champion's pool.
EDIT- note- this approach might not be for you, since you did mention mythic feats... so I guess you can bypass the concerns here with certain mythic abilities, like the one that lets you move and full attack, or mythic vital strike. It may still be useful, but to a far lesser extent. Still... for everyone else, this is a very good trade.
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Also, Daring Champion isn't mounted, so the charging isn't as important.
If you're setting yourself up for it though, OPR is pretty amazing. You'll want a high dex and combat reflexes, and an Answering weapon. If you're only dipping, you might consider Inspired Blade Archetype. At a minimum it will give you one more panache (more if you've got INT too), but you won't get panache for dropping people anymore (you still do with crits)
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Also, Daring Champion isn't mounted, so the charging isn't as important.
If you're setting yourself up for it though, OPR is pretty amazing. You'll want a high dex and combat reflexes, and an Answering weapon. If you're only dipping, you might consider Inspired Blade Archetype. At a minimum it will give you one more panache (more if you've got INT too), but you won't get panache for dropping people anymore (you still do with crits)
I doubt he'll have much int with a Daring Champion since that archetype basically swaps int for cha.
This is due to a rather strange fact about cavaliers- due to one of their class abilities, they actually do better with a 1 level dip into a full BAB class (or two levels of any other kind of class).
This is all due to the tactician ability. As you know, it lets you share a teamwork feat with your party... but you still need to qualify for the teamwork feat normally, and only the teamwork feats gained from tactician work with that ability.
One of the best teamwork feats is coordinated charge. One person charges- everyone else gets to charge outside of their turn. This is basically pseudopounce, since they are likely to start their next turn right next to the enemy they want to attack. So this carries obvious value for your party's melee members (and heck, maybe things like animal companions or summons as well).
I'm not sure Coordinated Charge is worth it for lvl10 since it requires at least 2 teamwork feats so I'd need to squeeze in an additional one but I'm kinda tight on feats before lvl10. Plus I think my party only has 2 melees, myself and a Paladin.(maybe one more cause he hasn't spoken much)
Also, Daring Champion isn't mounted, so the charging isn't as important.
If you're setting yourself up for it though, OPR is pretty amazing. You'll want a high dex and combat reflexes, and an Answering weapon. If you're only dipping, you might consider Inspired Blade Archetype. At a minimum it will give you one more panache (more if you've got INT too), but you won't get panache for dropping people anymore (you still do with crits)
High dex and combat reflexes are a given. I'm not sure I'll be able to afford answering since I want to get a Keen weapon around lvl5 since Daring champion doesn't get it as a bonus feat.
I doubt he'll have much int with a Daring Champion since that archetype basically swaps int for cha.
The Inspired blade gets a minimum of 1 panache from int, but I generally don't feel it's worth the loss of kill Panache.
1 Weapon Focus, Fencing Grace(Human bonus), Escape Route(Tactician)
2 -
3 Combat Reflexes
4 -
5 Extra Challenge
6 -
7 Lunge, Chain Challenge
8 -
9 Improved Critical
10 Sieze the Moment or Broken Wing Gambit(Greater Tactician) (Does Broken Wing Gambit work if I parry it?)
11 Steadfast Personality
12 -
13 Critical Focus, Staggering Critical
14 -
15 Blinding Critical
16 -
17 Stunning Critical
18 Whichever Teamwork feat I didn't take at lvl10(Master Tactician)
Also, Daring Champion isn't mounted, so the charging isn't as important.
If you're setting yourself up for it though, OPR is pretty amazing. You'll want a high dex and combat reflexes, and an Answering weapon. If you're only dipping, you might consider Inspired Blade Archetype. At a minimum it will give you one more panache (more if you've got INT too), but you won't get panache for dropping people anymore (you still do with crits)
It is a pseudo pounce (again- immediate action for everyone else to do a charge, which probably puts them right next to their target when their turn starts). What martial doesn't like pounce? Barbarians have to deal with the same need for charging when they pounce, and people still drool over pounce.
There is a minor need for one character to lead the charge... but that could just as easily someone else's animal companion, summoned monster, etc. That is the advantage of getting it through the tactician ability- you can give the feat to literally any friendly unit on the board.
I'm not sure Coordinated Charge is worth it for lvl10 since it requires at least 2 teamwork feats so I'd need to squeeze in an additional one but I'm kinda tight on feats before lvl10. Plus I think my party only has 2 melees, myself and a Paladin.(maybe one more cause he hasn't spoken much)
Fair enough if you lack characters that benefit from coordinated charge.
Slightly better if your party has some form of summoning. Tactician works on all allies, so having someone that spams a bunch of allies onto the field really raises the value. I am not sure of your party's make up, so it is something to keep in mind.
I'm not sure Coordinated Charge is worth it for lvl10 since it requires at least 2 teamwork feats so I'd need to squeeze in an additional one but I'm kinda tight on feats before lvl10. Plus I think my party only has 2 melees, myself and a Paladin.(maybe one more cause he hasn't spoken much)Fair enough if you lack characters that benefit from coordinated charge.
Slightly better if your party has some form of summoning. Tactician works on all allies, so having someone that spams a bunch of allies onto the field really raises the value. I am not sure of your party's make up, so it is something to keep in mind.
We have a Paladin, me, a Ranger(wants to do trapmaking), and Life Mystery Oracle. I guess the ranger might have his animal companion, but I dunno what the oracle plans to do past healing. I should be the only newbie, so they probably know what they're doing.
We do have one other guy who said he was gonna be a wizard or alch, but he hasn't replied to any of our messages in weeks and the GM suspects he won't be joining us.
Also bump! Would love to see more opinions too. Am a newbie so it's good to hear everyone's opinion.
Consider that without parry and riposte the Daring Champion has only very little use for Charisma.
If you are interested in a positive charisma score anyhow then Swashbuckler is a worthwhile dip.
One interesting alternative to grabbing OPR for a Daring Champion would be to combine Crane Style/Riposte and Stylish Riposte, and pass out Paired Opportunists to allies. You gain 9AC from the whole chain, and get an AoO against any target that misses, one way or another.
It counts as an AoO where OPR doesn't and it doesn't require an immediate action, so you can get multiple counterattacks, you still have your swift action, allies can benefit, and it works with a Fortuitous weapon.
Consider that without parry and riposte the Daring Champion has only very little use for Charisma.
If you are interested in a positive charisma score anyhow then Swashbuckler is a worthwhile dip.
Oh yeah, I didn't think about that.
One interesting alternative to grabbing OPR for a Daring Champion would be to combine Crane Style/Riposte and Stylish Riposte, and pass out Paired Opportunists to allies. You gain 9AC from the whole chain, and get an AoO against any target that misses, one way or another.
It counts as an AoO where OPR doesn't and it doesn't require an immediate action, so you can get multiple counterattacks, you still have your swift action, allies can benefit, and it works with a Fortuitous weapon.
Riposte is 3rd party right? My gm gives a big solid no to that. One of the players already tried VERY hard to persuade him to allow some 3rd party stuff(it was mostly for flavor too). That dip in Monk woulda been awesome for my saves though.
he's saying crance style and crane riposte. As crane riposte can force a miss.
Actually, I'm saying Crane Riposte plus Stylish Riposte from the Weapon Master's Handbook, which is pure Paizo:
Any miss by less than 5 triggers Crane Riposte. Any miss by more than 5 triggers Stylish Riposte. Since Dodge, Crane Style and Crane Wing grant a combined total of +9AC (including the fighting defensively acrobatics bonus), misses are going to happen...
Actually, I'm saying Crane Riposte plus Stylish Riposte from the Weapon Master's Handbook, which is pure Paizo:
Any miss by less than 5 triggers Crane Riposte. Any miss by more than 5 triggers Stylish Riposte. Since Dodge, Crane Style and Crane Wing grant a combined total of +9AC (including the fighting defensively acrobatics bonus), misses are going to happen...
My bad, misunderstood the names, haha.
So, I'd need Dodge, Combat Reflexes, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Crane Riposte, Stylish Riposte, and then Paired Opportunists. I can get Dodge/Combat Reflexes from the monk's bonus feat, and Paired Opportunist from Tactician, but that combination would need 5 of my feats. Hmm... The mechanic is interesting, but I think that's too big a feat investment for me. It's a bit better than OPR, but takes a long time to take off and I'm kinda tight on feats. Especially for the first 10 lvls.
It is quite feat-intensive, though Combat Reflexes is presumably going to be on there either way. On a Human, after spending the first few feats on the usual necessary stuff, you start spending feats at 5 for the first part of the AC bonus; Stylish Riposte and the full AC bonus is in place by 7, and it's finished by 9.
1-(+Finesse) / Weapon Focus: Rapier / +Fencing Grace
3-Combat Reflexes
5(M)-Bonus: Improved Unarmed Strike, Bonus: Dodge, Crane Style
7-Bonus: Stylish Riposte, Crane Wing
9-Crane Riposte
I wouldn't really say that it's 'a bit better than OPR'; it's a complete game-changer defensively.
OPR lets you throw an attack roll at an enemy attack roll - which is a rather random prospect - and then if you succeed and spend your swift action, you can make a counterattack once per round. You must spend a point of Panache every time you do it until you get Signature Deed.
Stylish/Crane grants a major bonus to AC against all attacks instead of making you spend a point of panache to roll against one attack, and it counterattacks against most attacks that miss without needing to spend a swift action. Not spending your swift action means that you're free to use Dodging Panache to stack your AC even higher and potentially disengage, or free to double your Precise Strike damage.
Anyhow I totally get not wanting to go that road due to feat-cost. But it's some pretty crazy defense and counterattack power.
OPR can't have its cost reduced by Signature Deed or any other ability. You're always paying 1 for it.