Shattered Kingdoms

I agree its an awesome RP useful idea/skill.

also scrolls would work good on swashies aswell as it works on rogues, both are witty, knowledgeable, streetsmart classes.

another skill that might boost the swashies



so basically this might be considered the DEX based berserk of barbarians. OR bullet-time for swashies

How about giving swashbucklers a damaging skill like every other melee class has?

Barbarians - Fury/Headbutt
Merks - Blitz
Scouts - Ambush
Rogue - Backstab/circle stab/hamstring


I like the focus idea, but I'd rather it go moreso along the lines of a confusion based skill.

The swashbuckler is moving his blaldes so quickly that you lose focus on your own weapon and get hit really hard in some sort of fashion.

I am thinking that it can only be used when grouped w/ 1 or more PCs, NPCs don't count. The increased damage from attacks would be 10-25% and the reduction to the change to dodge and parry would be 30%. The swashbuckler would be in melee range on F1,M1,B1 or F3,M3,B3 depending on who they were flanking. Some tweeks would be required, I am sure it would make for interesting tactics in group combat.

Interesting idea.

Perhaps...

Flanking
If the swashbuckler is following someone not in her group who is in combat with an opponent, then while she attacks that same opponent, she benefits from flanking. While flanking, the swashbuckler's attacks are more damaging and benefit more significantly from finesse. Further, talented swashbucklers who are flanking an opponent not focused on themselves enjoy more tactical opportunities, making it easier for skills including, but not limited to, disarm, trip, and kick to succeed.


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Leaving the safety of a group is cost enough for an ability. This creates a melee role that isn't particularly mastered already be another class. Also, this would be completely passive and, in theory, easier to code. It also gives them a reason to consider not spamming taunt.

Flanking sounds awesome too.

how about a combination of Flanking and Focus to get Rush
This can work either PvP, GvP, GvG,



something like this...
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W61lwKuu ... re=related

on another note:
Cross-slash anyone?

The less active skills a swashbuckler has, the more time he has to write songs about walruses.

This thread has some awesome ideas. Here's a few different ones.

"blend" - An indoors, city-based camouflage. The experienced urbanite knows crowds, man-made buildings and streets so well he can blend into any indoors surrounding with ease.

"footwork" - A master of fluid movement and great footwork, the swashbuckler gets a bonus to dodge, parry, and accuracy when he is indoors, with a lesser bonus being outdoors and in dry weather.

"hubris" - The more PCs there are in a room, the more of some bonus the swashbuckler gets (to parry/dodge, for instance) - but also gains an increased rate of failure on fleeing, and with enough people watching he loses the ability to eat/quaff, but then other skills (taunt) get a bonus on impact - reducing constitution with X amount of people in the room, etc. The details can be worked out.

"advance dual wield" - with ridiculous ambidextrous skills, the swashbuckler can willingly give up a one or both of his weapons and auto-fire throwing daggers from his inventory at his directed target. Daggers thrown in this way have a bonus to hit, and as long as he has daggers in his inventory, he may use them to parry/riposte. (This may be made easier by allowing the swashbuckler to, as long as he is wielding throwing daggers, still be able to throw throwing daggers - thus using throwing dagger accuracy/etc for his defensive skills).

The problem with a mass of active skills is that they're active. When do you see meleers do much more than bash/disable when fighting other melee? I don't see it much. Disarm is practically a joke anymore. Only thing you can do with the class is add layers of tactics, which would be things like I suggest - allowing throwing daggers to be a super-viable build for swashbuckler, and giving tactical advantage to cities like scouts/shaman have tactical advantages in the wild.

The problem with passive skills is that they are boring and they tend to elevate power level without requiring any skill as a player. I don't see many people arguing that swashbucklers are underpowered, so we don't have room for many (if any) new passive combat skills. Obviously in order for active skills to get used, there will need to be an appropriate reward for using them at the right time.