Shattered Kingdoms

I've skimmed over a few of these recent posts, but what about giving swashies blitz? A two handed blitz can't be all that bad? And maybe improve blitz a bit (more damage or more frequent use). I don't see why I can't do a long double slash with two katana or longswords etc.

something similar would be cool...cross-slash can be that thing, a one on one skill like hamstring or circlestab.
only able to use once every few rounds.

The additions I'm thinking about making are definitely based around the ideas that were presented earlier of creating some new commands based around fencing terminology. I do think the fencing terminology will add a new defining layer to the class and help to better distinguish them creatively from rogues and mercenaries. I will start with just a few at first and see how people like them and then take an iterative approach to further changes, as opposed to creating a lot of new commands immediately without any testing.

Perhaps try putting them on weapons as scripts first to allow for very fast tweaking and testing?

Necroing this again. There are tons of great ideas in here. Implement one or two or ten, plzkthnx.

LENGTHY POST WARNING!!! TL;DR@%% = I am completely awesome.

I still think swashbucklers should get guns. And they should be the only class that gets to use guns. Seriously when I think about a swashbuckler I think about a sword toting, gun wielding duelist that gets in fights for shits and giggles.

Also an AoE grenade ability would be awesome. Could buy them at a store, or buy the materials to craft them much like brew, and scribe to make consumable AoE grenades that the pbase can have fun chucking at each other.

Also one thing that I fail to see here, the penalty to to-hit for flying. Trip is useless against most veteran players of the mud because fly completely negates it, as do flying pets. Since this is the only skill that swashbucklers get to put other characters in the prone status, and keep them from say quaffing over 9000 heal pots during a battle, and keeping themselves from dying, I would say that this is a great oversight. In my experience with my current mercenary character, this penalty is negligible. I've been able to use both of my specs, the bill, and the crossbow to great effect in absolutely murdering the competition while at the same time having a penalty to my to-hit score from fly. In my opinion this should be increased so greatly that there's about a 30% chance of landing a blow while flying under the influence of the fly spell, even with weapon enchantments. This is one of the many reasons that swashbucklers are so bad, their skills are so easily negated.




Looking at their skill set there's not much that they really have going for them. Out of the nine weapon classes, they only get two, and due to their skillset restrictions, it even reduces the number of weapons they'd favorably want to use because of the finesse skill, and dual wield skill. So they're really just limited to one handed weapons, and very few of them at that. They lack the ability to truly utilize reach weaponry as the only weapon that they could possibly use for reach is the bandalore, and that is a highly limited weapon. If they want to make use of the rest of their skillset then bandalore really isn't all that grand of a choice either. Swashbucklers also lost out on the ability to use massive weaponry, which I think is a huge selling point for classes that can actually use them.

They also lose out when stances come into play regarding weapon speed. As a mercenary if I specialize in a weapon such as a rapier, or epee I get 5 attacks a round with it on aggressive, and 4 on defensive. As a swashbuckler I would get one less attack per round. While this wouldn't be a problem with riposte working as it did when I last played the class, things have changed with the inclusion of massive weaponry, and swashbucklers are lucky if they're able to get that skill working in their favor. Mercenaries, Barbarians, Paladins, and Hellions can defeat a swashbuckler with ease by denying them their bread and butter, the parry skill. Still, a huge problem for the swashbuckler class is that even with all the bonuses of dual wield>parry>enhanced parry>finesse>riposte stacking to make them the best class for the parry skill, it's just not enough. Swashbucklers just can't make up the difference in attacks, and it's sort of silly seeing all the utility they lose out on by being limited to just 3 weapon classes.

Sneak by itself is [REDACTED]. I always imagined being able to sneak right by aggro NPCs, but unless you're able to go invisible or hidden, the moment you walk in a room, even if your character is sneaking, the aggro NPC will attack. This has always been a caveat of mine while playing characters that had the sneak skill. How awesome would it be if your character could sneak right by a blue fytrysk? Yeah, that one that ate your first character when you started playing the mud.

Taunt also needs fixed to attack both the current, and maximum int scores of the target. This is the only skill they really have outside of dirt kicking that can threaten a caster class. This was a general complaint against the way maledictions worked though. Right now taunt is useless to use in attacking the int score of a victim, because a character can simply mod their way through the penalty. It's standard practice when facing a swashbuckler, and another reason the class sucks. Taunt, like trip, is easily negated.

Kick as a skill is a joke. Why does *any* class get this skill? Swashbucklers should lose this in favor of a skill that targets the victim's move pool. SK seriously lacks in skills and spells that target that pool. This could be one thing that sets them apart from the mercenary and barbarian, having a skill that targets the victim's moves and tires them out more quickly. While it won't make them truly unique due to energy drain and the <adhesive medical strip> given to a certain cabal, it will definitely give the class a unique flavor among the front line tough guys.

Swashbucklers could also lose skirmish, sling, and crossbow. Losing those won't actually hurt the class at all, and it makes little sense for a class that only has the second attack skill to try to utilize ranged combat. Even with a siege crossbow, I don't see it as being a threat.

This idea is awesome.

I actually like this idea but I'd like to add in my two cents since it got me thinking. It's sort of ripped from the specialize idea though, why not allow a swashbuckler to choose what sort of duelist he becomes, or what sort of style he uses, which is a one time choice that grants bonuses to whatever style he is using, sort of like how the aggressive stance grants bonuses to damage and to-hit. While these would probably be passive bonuses, it could give flavor to individual swashbucklers by making builds more diverse. An idea would be like a "tactical swashbuckler" would focus on making his opponent wearing himself out quicker, so his opponent would use up more moves with each attack and skill they use in the goals of making them reach 0 PE faster to run out of iterative attacks. A "magemurdering" swashbuckler's taunt could cause damage-over-time to a spellcaster's mana pool as they lose focus from being made fun of for eating too many jelly donuts, and sleeping with Adroan's mom. Or a defender swashi studied defensive styles so much that while in the defensive stance his swords act as though he is protected by a shield, and gains the damage reduction bonus as if protected by a shield. I'm sure there's plenty of other ideas that could branch out from this.

The "arms race" started back in 04, with Dulrik giving specialize to mercenaries and fury to barbarians. A few months later, it continued when he gave swashbucklers the finesse skill in an attempt to make them on par with other melee classes.

The solution is not to continue the arms race by giving swashbucklers new abilities, but to remove finesse, fury and specialize. There is no doubt that melee dominates this game. While this would be a significant nerf, I would wager that melee classes would still continue to be better than casters.

With fury, specialize and finesse gone, swashbucklers are suddenly competitive again and melee damage in general gets a much needed nerf.

I disagree on that front. Right now, at the end game a melee character is better than a caster, but still has to risk much more than any caster in order to participate in PvP. If the game shifts back towards casters and melee being equal in end-game ability, casters will be much more favored on account of how low risk they are.