Whirlwind Attack - Dual Wielding or Single Weapon Fighting?

Pantalion

So, here I sits, idly planning a Swashbuckling Mage, and it occurs to me; Swashies get Whirlwind Attack once they hit HLAs, giving them a cool ten attacks per round.

Now as the title says, what do you think would be better for a Swashbuckler planning to Whirlwind Attack? A single weapon fighter, or a Dual Wielder? Or perhaps even both, switching from one for day-to-day combat to the other for whirling?


Some relevant trivia:

Whirlwind, unlike the improved version Fighters can get, always has a -4 to hit penalty, but still gives 10 attacks/round.

Swashbucklers can put 3 points into Two Weapon Fighting, meaning no penalties with either hand, and an extra attack generally, but this costs 3/9 of their points, and specialisation is already taking up 2 per weapon, so it's pretty expensive, as far as proficiencies go.

Meanwhile Single Weapon Fighting costs 1 point, and when SWF is satisfied, gives +1 AC and critical hits on a 19 or 20. Since Swashies can specialise, putting points into SWF instead of TWF means specialising in an additional weapon, but given most people only use single specific weapon types the whole game, that may not be worth it to you.

By the time a Swashbuckler is level 25 (the max multiple of 5 for a multi-classed thief/mage) they have a neat +5 to hit/+5 damage per hit, regardless of weapon.

I'm not sure how Improved Haste or weapons like Belm would interact with it, but Whirlwind with two weapons I believe would give 9 attacks with the primary weapon, and 1 attack with the off-hand weapon.

Thief proficiencies can only go into: Short Swords, Long Swords, Katanas, Daggers, Short Bows, Scimitar/etc, Darts, and Light Crossbows, with use any item they can indeed equip Crom Faeyr, but they cannot be proficient with it, something worth bearing in mind if you enjoy rocking max strength all over the place.


Personally I'm leaning towards SWF for double the number of criticals, but I'm very happy to be proven wrong.

jolly_bb

@Pantalion what makes you think you can multi-class with a kit ?

You'll be a thief/mage not a swashie/mage. You could dual, but waiting till swash gets his HLAs and then waiting again to level your mage class higher up is like mid-ToB already.

THe only thief/kit is gnome thief/illusionist. I'm pretty sure there are no kit/mage multiclasses

You can also use shadowkeeper, but then why the question? Just increase the number of attacks per round as you see fit

Pantalion

jolly_bb said:

@Pantalion what makes you think you can multi-class with a kit ?

Pantalion said:

The game engine will bow to my vision for the character. If this means my Halfling Cleric/Mage is an Enchanter as well then so be it. If it means that my Monk is actually a dryad carrying around the Bonsai tree they're bound to, then you can bet that I'll be booting up Shadowkeeper to make that happen. Once the concept is in place, everything else comes from there.[/quote]

My character is not a backstabber, and did not train in backstabbery, but is a bit of a scrapper, and therefore he shall be using the Swashbuckler kit. Assuming that kits remain denied by the game engine to Multiclass characters, then this will be achieved via shadowkeeper directly.

As Swashbucklers do not gain additional attacks, it would be rather inappropriate to grant them in Shadowkeeper.

If the "mage" issue is confusing for you, please feel free to ignore that portion of the character, since it is doubtfully relevant to the effect of weapon choice on the performance of a whirlwind attacker.

Oxford_Guy

Pantalion said:

Swashbucklers can put 3 points into Two Weapon Fighting, meaning no penalties with either hand, and an extra attack generally,

Even with 3 points in two weapon fighting, the off-hand still gets -2 THAC0.

Isn't the main reason people use two-weapon fighting for secondary magic effects of some weapons e.g. magic resistances, extra attacks (e.g. from Kundane or Belm) - which actually get assigned to the primary weapon, as the off-hand weapon always only has one attack.

For whirlwind attack you want to maximise the damage from each hit, so two-handed weapons are usually best for this, but not usable by single-class thieves (apart from staves)

Pantalion

-2? Apparently it was misdescribed when I looked it up, thanks for the correction. Is it still +0/-4 for 2 pips, or was that wrong too?

I pretty much figured the same thing you did, TWF gives an extra slot for benefits, but does any benefit match the 5% increase in damage from SWF's extra crit chance when using whirlwind attack, and if not, is it still worth the extra 3 proficiency points to enable TWFing in the occasions you're not using Whirlwind? Or even taking Two Handed Fighting for using a staff (though without backstab, Staff of Striking isn't nearly such an optimal choice)?

Khyron

In general, swashbuckler is a wasted kit. A fighter/thief will be better in all but one way, the + to hit/damage swashie gets. More attacks, more hp, more equipment, more proficiencies and better HLA.
Also retains backstabbing ability. (for your munchkin desires, it's also perfectly reasonable to be a sneaky git backstabbing people with Angurvadal and then brandish the Carsomyr.. UAI is nice indeed)

So.. fighter/mage/thief seems to be the best solution, if you ask me. You'll level a lil slower, but what do you want the high lvl spells for anyway? On a combative caster, i usually just end up using a few defensive spells and fireshield red, then get busy chopping things left and right.

Mungri

The AC bonus is nice, otherwise I see no point to playing a swashbuckler beyond level 10.

Erm, also, Swashbuckler 10 > Fighter dual class gets lots of bonuses plus GWW, 2 attacks per round, and grandmastery.

Pantalion

Khyron said:

In general, swashbuckler is a wasted kit. A fighter/thief will be better in all but one way, the + to hit/damage swashie gets. More attacks, more hp, more equipment, more proficiencies and better HLA.
Also retains backstabbing ability. (for your munchkin desires, it's also perfectly reasonable to be a sneaky git backstabbing people with Angurvadal and then brandish the Carsomyr.. UAI is nice indeed)

So.. fighter/mage/thief seems to be the best solution, if you ask me. You'll level a lil slower, but what do you want the high lvl spells for anyway? On a combative caster, i usually just end up using a few defensive spells and fireshield red, then get busy chopping things left and right.

Well, from an optimisation perspective, Swashbuckler has 6 AC less than a Fighter/Mage/Thief, hits harder, levels faster, and gets level 9 spells, making for a much more survivable full-casting mage who is more resistant to being disrupted, making a much better at both magic and thievery whilst still being a capable combatant, especially with short bows at +5 damage a shot.

More importantly however, as you've said, F/M/T gives backstabbing and isn't a primary caster, that doesn't fit the character concept as well.

Mungri

Just a hint with using shadowkeeper to apply kits to multiclasses, when I tried this, I couldn't ever get the level 1 bonuses applied to the character. I tried making swashbuckler, kensai and druid kit multiclasses, but none of the level 1 bonuses were applied.

Oxford_Guy

-2? Apparently it was misdescribed when I looked it up, thanks for the correction. Is it still +0/-4 for 2 pips, or was that wrong too?

I think that's correct

Oxford_Guy

Mungri said:

Just a hint with using shadowkeeper to apply kits to multiclasses, when I tried this, I couldn't ever get the level 1 bonuses applied to the character. I tried making swashbuckler, kensai and druid kit multiclasses, but none of the level 1 bonuses were applied.

Did you ever try Fighter>Assassin in Shadowkeeper? Did it fail to apply poison and +1THAC0/+1 Damage abilities?

Mungri

I didn't check thaco but I didn't get level 1 AC bonuses or special abilities with kensai / swashbuckler. Furthermore a multiclass fighter / mage kitted with Kensai couldn't equip robes like a dual class.

Pantalion

@Mungri thanks for the heads up. If it's not updated to work in the EE engine already then I'll see about starting a single class Swashbuckler and then move into mage, it's comparatively easy to get spellcasting particulars in through Shadowkeeper if I remember correctly.

AHF

Mungri said:

Just a hint with using shadowkeeper to apply kits to multiclasses, when I tried this, I couldn't ever get the level 1 bonuses applied to the character. I tried making swashbuckler, kensai and druid kit multiclasses, but none of the level 1 bonuses were applied.

You can do this but you need to bring the character down to level zero and strip out whatever they have already gotten.

Step 1 - remove all weapon proficiencies
note your original HP
change all levels to zero
remove any thieving abilities (points and traps)

Step 2 - Load the hacked file and then level the chararacter up and save

Step 3 - Go in and edit the new save to set the original HP so you don't double count and save

Also, note that if you employ a kit with a mage multi-class that the engine gives you the extra spell per level bonus of a specialist mage regardless of the kit you pick. So a swashi/mage multiclass gets the bonus spells of a specialist without the restrictions. So you have to be careful about what you are trying to accomplish.