Some Tips For Whip-Wielding Swashbucklers

[Neal Litherland]

I love taking mechanics that most folks don't bother with and making them work. Which was why I recently put together my Tips For Building a Whip-Wielding Swashbuckler. Just wanted to share that, as it's been on my mind for a while, but I just put the article together the other day.

[OmegaZ]

Neal Litherland wrote:

I love taking mechanics that most folks don't bother with and making them work. Which was why I recently put together my Tips For Building a Whip-Wielding Swashbuckler. Just wanted to share that, as it's been on my mind for a while, but I just put the article together the other day.

Awesome, I love whip builds! Thanks for making this.

[Meirril]

Biggest tip for a whip wielding Swashbuckler: Don't use a whip.

With Mysterious Avenger you give up a scaling dodge bonus, a bonus feat, Improved Critical and the combat bonus gets nerfed to require a move (eventually swift) action per opponent to gain exotic weapon proficency:whip, the ability to use whip with swashbuckler abilities, 3 extra charm life uses, and a set of skill bonus.

Basically this saves you 2 feats but in the long run costs you 2 feats and give you bad action economy which will cost you several rounds of full attacks every fight as you spend a move action to study targets or live without the to hit and damage bonus from your class ability!

Or you go the long way and spend the extra 2 feats. You can actually get around the exotic weapon proficiency by buying a Cracked Opalescent White Pyramid Ioun Stone (1,500 gp). By the time you get the feats to use the whip competently you should be able to afford the stone to save one feat.

Now lets look at the whip. There is a whole lot of negatives that need to be overcome with feats. Whip Mastery lets you do damage to armored and tough opponents, and you can do lethal damage. Also you stop giving out AoO when doing melee attacks. Yay?

Oh but we've got all that reach...and no ability to take AoO with it. So we spend our second feat tax and get Improved Whip Mastery which lets us threaten with that reach. Also can't do this before we get +5 BAB.

You can use an enchantment to get around the whip mastery feat, but its a prerequisite to getting improved whip mastery so you threaten with that 15' reach. Oh wait, no you don't. Improved Whip Mastery says you threaten out to your natural reach +5'. So for most of us that is 10' of threatened on a 15' reach weapon.

And you still need to invest in Weapon Focus: Whip, Combat Reflexes and Slashing Grace to make this worthwhile.

To recap: the shortest route to make this better than using a rapier is to take a sub-optimal Archetype that nerfs you heavily in the long run, and still invest another 2 feats to make the weapon usable then another 3 feats to make it actually good and this can't come on line until 5th level at the absolute earliest.

With just straight Swashbuckler using a magic item or racial ability to get a free exotic weapon it is still 1 more feat to catch up but avoid the bad action economy.

Or just take a rapier, and use one of those saved feats on Lunge. Sure you have 5' less reach and no threatning reach but you get to spend 3 more feats on doing something else.

[Dragonchess Player]

The best advice for a whip-wielding mysterious avenger swashbuckler? Multiclass at 2nd level into blade adept arcanist. Note that even though the Sword Bond class feature heavily implies a bladed weapon, the actual limitation is "the blade adept must bond to a one-handed piercing or slashing melee weapon" (and a whip is a one-handed slashing melee weapon).

Taking Weapon Focus (Whip) at swashbuckler 1 lets you take Whip Mastery at swashbuckler 1/arcanist 2. Starting at swashbuckler 1/arcanist 3, your bonded whip becomes a magic weapon that automatically scales as you gain levels. Choose Slashing Grace or some metamagic feat at swashbuckler 1/arcanist 4 (Intensified Spell might make sense; especially since you took Magical Knack as one of your traits, right?). At swashbuckler 1/arcanist 5, take the Spell Strike adept exploit and deliver touch spells using the whip's reach. At swashbuckler 1/arcanist 6, take the Extra Arcanist Exploit feat to take the Eldritch Blade adept exploit. Then switch to the eldritch knight PrC.

[MrCharisma]

Tip for a whip-wielding anyone: Readied actions are your friend.

Sometimes you don't want to be the damage dealer, you just want to stop someone getting past you (to the wizard/innocent-children/escape-rout). With a reach weapon (or whip mastery) you become a 25 foot wide circle of AoO's.

That's great and all, but with a readied action you can attack at the whip's full 15-foot reach, that's a 35 foot circle. What's that you say?

35 feet isn't enough? Well you can take a 5 foot step as part of a readied action, so that means that enemy has to skirt a 45 foot wide circle to avoid you (or 20 feet of reach from your starting position).

If that still isn't enough take the Lunge feat and it's now 55 feet (or 25 feet of reach from your starting position).

[Meirril]

MrCharisma wrote:

Sometimes you don't want to be the damage dealer, you just want to stop someone getting past you (to the wizard/innocent-children/escape-rout). With a reach weapon (or whip mastery) you become a 25 foot wide circle of AoO's.

Improved Whip Mastery. You don't get AoO with a whip until you get the Improved Whip Mastery. OP made the same mistake.