I an currently building a character for a campaign we are about to start and i found the idea of a dual wielding grippli druid quite appealing. The basic idea is to use his animal companion (a tyrannosaurus) as a mount into battle, while dual wielding 2 tiny scimitars.
One would chose the nature fang archetype which should give me access to some ranger feats... ...and... well... is this at all viable?
Keep in mind: This is not supposed to be a super strong fighter, its more or less for the fun of it, but would that work?
It's going to be tricky unless you can manage Dexterity to damage somehow. Maybe agile scimitars?
Why are the scimitars tiny? Isn't a grippli a small creature, like a gnome or halfling?
Also, the scimitar is not a light weapon, meaning you'll have additional penalties, even with the appropriate TWF feats, which a typical druid won't have a lot of space for.
So even if this is a cool setup, I suspect it will be distinctly sub-optimal, so even if you've got one scimitar in each hand it will probably be more effective not to take the extra attack that TWF gives you. The to hit penalty trade off is too steep.
Maybe some other curved-bladed weapon would fit better, like a kukri?
I'm wondering why druid? With the Nature Fang archetype you're giving up most of your druid abilities (including wildshape). I feel like you could make a character that thematically would be the same just by going Ranger or Hunter instead. You would be less feat starved while still keeping the nature theme.
as for the weapons, you might try swapping out the scimitars for wave blades. They are basically the same thing but are light weapons meaning you don't suffer the same kind of penalties when dual wielding them. If you don't want to spend a feat on the exotic Weapon Proficiency that can be remedied either by slapping the training enchantment on one of them or grabbing an Opalescent White Pyramid Ioun Stone. If you've decided to go the ranger or hunter route the 2nd option becomes even cheaper as you can grab a cracked one for about 1/3 the cost (1.5k instead of 5k).
Assuming grippli-sized scimitars, effortless lace solves the problem of not being considered light weapons for the purposes of whether they can be used with Weapon Finesse and other feats. Whether that drops the two-weapon fighting penalties to those of light weapons is a little hazy. And you'd have to actually have (or make) effortless lace.
Kukri are simpler to make work, but druids aren't proficient with them by default.
Not bad. Scimitar and sickle together is also an option.
I wouldn't worry too much about armor class, though. Between barkskin and hide armor (or later a dragonhide breastplate), it can remain decent enough for the most part.
Thanks a lot for the input, guys!
I wasnt thinking of the light weapon problem, but of course you are right - the scimitars were purely a style decision and i can easily imagine the char to use something else.
@Lord Kailas - why druid and not ranger - also more of a style thing. As far as i see it, the nature fang druid is very similar to a ranger, but with more spells. Considering that my little frog is supposed to ride on a tyrannosaurus, shape shifting isnt a priority :-) also rangers get their pet only at level4 and i didnt want to wait that long^^
@Derek Dalton - I love that skirmish idea. Maybe i can go for smaller Dino, that might be even more stylish...