Swashbuckler or Swashbuckler(level 10) -> Fighter? Which would you pick if you had to choose?
I've been wanting to play around with a swashbuckler lately but I've been wondering if I should leave him as is or dual him to a fighter. Overall which of these two would be better in the long run?
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Later you'll get awesome HLAs and thus spike traps and ability to use any item, including A LOT of useful stuff.
Plus your AC bonuses will reach extremely low figures.
As I see it, in the case of Fighter/Thieves, a multiclass is better than a dualclass.
The most important problem in my opinion is that of the HLAs, namely the Thief ones. Are they worth it for you? There is no doubt that there is some powerful stuff here, especially Spike Traps which are incredibly (over?)powerful. UAI is also quite good, especially considering items like the Scarlet Ninja-tô which you are unlikely to be using anywhere else.
However, while the power is undoubtedly there, it is not unequivocally the correct choice. Depending on your mods, game settings (Nightmare Mode?) and overall party makeup, you may not get everything out of the Thief HLAs - or want to. Me personally, I just straight refuse to use Spike Traps (in their vanilla version anyway). They are too good. They can kill pretty much anything on their own (including various dragons, beholders, liches, etc.) and they just scream for "abuse" of AI or reload knowledge. Of course, and I cannot stress that enough, this is a PERSONAL choice. Objectively speaking, they are one of the most powerful things you can be doing.
The next problem is that of the Fighter levels. What do you get from that? Two things above all: better THAC0 (Thieves cap at a base THAC0 of 10, Fighters cap at 0) and Grandmastery. The latter is, of course, the more relevant one by far - and incidentally also something you do not get as a Fighter/Thief multiclass. Indeed, GM is in my opinion THE overwhelming reason to dual into Fighter from pretty much any class - but as before, the caveat is personal setup and preference. Depending on your mods etc., the value of Fighters and/or their APR may go up or down. Also, a Fighter/Thief dual will in fact get not only get Greater Whirlwind later on to match dual-class APR, but they can also get UAI to enable use of Scarlet Ninja-tô, which adds +1 APR as well (note that this may not matter if you have other +APR weapons to spare). If you do not put too much emphasis on APR (for whatever reason), then the biggest argument for dual-classing quickly weakens.
Perhaps you should think of the Swashbuckler->Fighter as more of a Fighter, and less of a Thief. It is basically a single-class Fighter that just happens to be able to detect traps and pop locks (and, depending on when you dual, dispel illusions or sneak around). You also get some useful combat bonuses from the Swashbuckler part (+2 THAC0/damage at lvl 10, which isn't huge but still quite nice to have) as well as the ability to use a few useful items that are usually restricted to thieves (e.g. Thieves' Hood etc.).
If you plan to go for more utility and less direct melee combat, i.e. you prefer to use backstab, traps, etc., then you are probably better off with a Fighter/Thief multiclass. You can catch up to the Swa->F (henceforth known as Swaffy) in damage later on in the game, and if you have no qualms about using Traps of Mass Destruction, then you'll have fun with Spike Traps, too.
The only variant I do not really like is remaining pure Swashbuckler. To expand on that a bit, it is by no means a "non-viable" (gods I hate that term) class, but it requires some work to live up to the alternatives. Using double +APR weapons, a high level Swashbuckler can in fact put out a truly impressive amount of damage - but only at that high level. On levels below, say, 30 or so, you will generally fare better with the two above-mentioned alternatives - not to mention that hogging two coveted +APR weapons will earn angry frowns from the rest of your party's melee (assuming of course you have any). It is a bit of a connoisseur's choice I think, which is not to say that there's anything wrong with that, just that it may require some getting used to. I should perhaps also note that at high levels, Thieves run into some redundancy problems because their thieving skill points don't do anything anymore - and since Swashbucklers can't backstab, that tends to only happen more quickly because you don't need stealth all that much.
TL;DR: Swaffy - if what you actually want is a Fighter, who just randomly happens to be able to also pop locks and find traps; F/T Multi - if you want the best of both worlds and don't mind war crime tribunals for use of Spike Traps; Single Swash - if you know what you are doing and want something spicy to work with.
But that's just me and my silly prejudice. Many people love thieves and have no qualms about Spike Trap proliferation and the likes. For them a F/T may be the better choice (or something else altogether like idk Kensai->Thief or whatever).
I'd never condone a swash->fighter. If you only care about traps and locks then stop caring and just brute force them and instead have a much more competent party member.
Fighter/thief I also don't like simply because a fighter/mage/thief is better. I mean seriously, why F/T when you can throw spells like stoneskin and mislead into the mix?
I'm not a huge fan of SC thieves. As said, you'll run into abundant skill points sooner or later, even with an assassin, and especially so with a swashie. I like the RP behind swashies, but would prefer if they recieved some kind of bonus for fighting with longsword+buckler, like an extra APR and AC, since it was the way they fought IRL. With that said, I usually prefer rogue classes for charnames to be MC or DC. Nowadays, since I've played alot, I'm open for keepering whatever I feel like, so you could choose to MC a swashie/fighter. The fighter would be there mostly for APR, since it's the only real drawback of a swashie. I mean, it takes XX+ hours before you reach HLA's (depending on playstyle etc), and you prolly want to have fun up until that time, so don't just plan for that.
With that said, I wouldn't bother with dualing from swashie to fighter. I would either choose the more powergamey option of creating a MC one or keep her as a swashie all the way through for RP reasons.
(A swashie mage on the other hand.. I know it's not what you asked about, but it's a very funny combo).
Single class demihuman Swash is pretty strong I think and is competitive with the swaffy. Sure, it loses APR from time to time but it makes a nice tank and it does take a while to max out DT/OL/ST/DI/PP and I'd say the Swash set of HLAs are stronger than the fighter set.