Shattered Kingdoms

A list of shortcomings is going to distract from the #1 highest priority defect which is that they're a front-row class that gets absolutely murdered in melee.

I like Finney's idea of giving swashies more damage mitigation in hedgehog stance. The reasoning behind it could be that the swashie rolls with the blows like an MMA fighter, reducing the impact of the blow even when he does get hit.

In the end of the day though I think that's really just a step to make the swashie closer to a mercenary or barbarian, and he still lacks, as Meissa said, a 'unique' trait.

He has 2 swords. Something could be done with that in mind. I really believe riposte and taunt are 'it' for the swashie, but they probably need to be tweaked to be reliable. The checks required to actually fire off a riposte are too many, and taunt seems to break too easily to depend on.

I'd like to see taunt losing its power to keep someone from recalling-retreating and instead being used to destroy casters. It could even be done in a way that it stacks with itself up to a certain number, so every time you taunt a caster you further disable their casting abilities.

Just let a swashbuckler choose between two passive skills designed to allow them to become unique. A mercenary chooses passive skill build options through specialize. A barbarian, somewhat arguably, chooses between passive skills in training MR. What does the swashbuckler have to make any two swashbucklers not the exact same pfile?

Has anyone brought up the idea of just giving swashbucklers an option to train heavy armor or __________? Whips comes to mind. Select whether you want to be a front row, damage mitigating swashbuckler or a mid-row, damage dealing swashbuckler? That kind of thing.

It makes sense that a light armor class will never soak damage as well as a heavy armor class. The extremely simple solution is to give a swashbuckler the opportunity to become a heavy armor class. It could be something like a juggle-like skill to offset the penalty of heavier armor based on dexterity checks or something. I don't know. Sky's the limit.

Add a passive build similar to MR. Limit it to ten trains in a similar manner.

Allow the swashbuckler to train a parry enhancement skill and/or a dodge enhancement skill.

This gives the swashbuckler the ability to enhance in a certain field, they can lend their defense to the weapons they wield, or they can devote themselves to dodging attacks. It would give some flavor as to what the individual wants for their build, a somewhat stout damage dealer wielding heavier weapons, or a light fighter who can turn light weapons into a blurry shield.

This idea looks fun and keeps things simple without having to add lots and lots of new skills, while addressing the main issue with them (Assuming armor was the big issue).

the lock-in room feature is rather useless as it tends to break in group PvP from others attacking the target rather often. They have trip anyway, which is the better prone inducing skill. I disagree with you on the parry point. When the skillset worked with my last swashbuckler, Arsilan, he was a great character. Now the skillset doesn't work, and you're left with a rather lackluster character.

And I always tended to use taunt for it's intelligence disrupting ability over it's room-locking ability, even though during the time I played Arsilan it was completely broken and almost certainly ensured that someone was going to die.

I thought the whole swashbuckler issue had already been assigned to the fact that every other class has to much assess to accuracy buffs. The idea of having a swashbuckler who can parry lots if broken because you will never have a significant amount of accuracy over a buffed foe.

I feel taunt needs to be changed to have at least 3 states maybe 4. These being taunt fail, taunt switch target/drop int, taunt locked into the room. Giving it an extra state means that the "rescue/disrupt' part of taunt can be brought up in probability well leaving the room lock "bash lock" at a reasonable level of success.

A "simple fix" which most likely would put them above the curve would be to let their enchants stack across weapons. I could be mistaken about this but it would also make more of a difference to small sized swashbucklers than larger ones as the damage enchantment is the same regardless of size. This would hopefully bring some of the subpar weapon pairings up to scratch as well. If as I expect it would be too over powered just make it so accuracy enchantments stack between weapons increasing swashbucklers chance to parry. This would at least let them parry really well.

Having accuracy pool together for a swashbuckler doesn't seem like a bad idea. It would help bridge the gap between light and heavy armor with the surplus of armor penetration and the added parry chance would help with defense. but it still has the potential to be over the top.

I know ideas are a dime a dozen but I'll throw it here, if anything, for your entertainment and theory-crafting.


How about a new type of swords that only swashbucklers know how to use.

We can call them 'Dueling swords'

Shotel, Estoc, Schiavona, Waloon sword would be some examples of what I'm thinking.

Then, since these weapons are practically unusable by any other class, they could have overall better stats to benefit the swashie's abilities. Maybe even a stat to increase chance for riposte.

I'm a great fan of the Shotel personally, as its a weapon designed to hit someone who's wearing a shield. Just like flail and whatever other weapons are unparriable, Shotel can be that one weapon that ignores those pesky shields.

Here's something for thought, What about a way for swashbucklers being able to use a shield as an aggressive weapon? Duel wielding a weapon and shield while getting off-hand strikes with the shield as a blunt weapon, perhaps give them shield block as well.