Class idea: Swashbuckler

[Guillard]

Hello people, I have a simple idea to fill some gaps in the available backgrounds at the moment, that imo are:

- no class available for melee dexterous fighters except for gladiator, wich has ranged skills, so its not a pure melee fighter.
- no class have acess to a simple buckler from start (except for spriggan).
- dexterous fighters are allways associated with ranged or stealthy skills, I think this class would help to solve this a little bit, although imo a new non-magic-stealth capable, dexterous species would do this work far better.

So, my idea for a swashbuckler class is:

Stats:
High DEX, average STR, low INT

Equipment:
sabre, buckler, cloak, leather armor

Skills:
short swords, dodging, shields, fighting

Please, help me shape this idea, I would like to see this in trunk very much, and bear with my horrible English as I´m a non native speaker. Thanks!

[dtsund]

Buckler, cloak, and the best short blade all given at player generation? That sounds rather overpowered.

[Guillard]

Yeah, you are probably right, a short sword would be better for balance. A cloak is equivalent to a helmet for a gladiator.

[KoboldLord]

We need fewer backgrounds that can't do anything but mash arrow keys to bump into monsters until the Temple, not more of them. Strength and dexterity are basically irrelevant, so the proposed swashbuckler background is functionally indistinguishable from a fighter that switches to trash leather armor scavenged from the floor on D1. The play experience will be exactly the same.

[danr]

I'd suggest a robe or animal skin instead of the leather armour. That would differentiate a bit more as you wouldn't start training armour.

Dex does boost your EV, but I'm not sure how much.

One thing that has struck me from working on my weapon selecting spreadsheet is that, on its own, many of the factors in this game could be considered "irrelevant", but when you add together the effects of multiple skills that all affect the same thing, player stats, and equipment stats, that is where you see the real difference.

For example, to calculate average weapon damage, my spreadsheet needs to know about 30-40 things (a rough guess). None of these factors can make a huge difference on its own because that would make that one factor too powerful. You need all the little differences that every factor makes.

I like the idea of this class. I wouldn't necessarily restrict it to short swords though either.

[Guillard]

I disagree with Koboldlord because STR and DEX fighters are very different, in fact they have opposite qualities, as danr said, DEX boost EV and bucklers, while STR boosts damage dealing, armor using and heavier shields, the offensive fighter tries to kill his enemies very fast and absorb the damage with HP and AC, while the swashbuckler would be a more defensive class relying in evasion and his buckler while killing enemies at a slower rate.

[MrMisterMonkey]

I agree with KoboldLord.

danr, it's hardly a difference; there are so many parallels and things that hardly affect it at all it's ridiculous. As I state below, too, there's pretty much no difference in gameplay, either, unless you branch out into stabbing or spellcasting or something.

Guillard, strength hardly affects damage dealing at all, and while I'm not sure how much it boosts heavier shields, as far as I know, it only reduces armour penalties, rather than helping boosting its benefits. As for starting a dex-based pure melee bumping into things party, start a gladiator (rather vanilla but you get a bit of extra stuff), assassin (take advantage of stealth/stabbing from dex and whatever), chaos knight (oh hey a god), crusader/reaver (and take advantage of not having horrible armour penalties or anything), or probably a ton of other things, and you can always decide to raise str or dex every 3 levels (and some species will get extra dex on top of that). As for defensive capabilities, heavy armour is actually quite good defensively, too, and the so-called offensive Fighter's shield is more protective than a buckler. In the end, if you don't take advantage of any of the extra benefits of having dexterity instead of armour (provided by As, En, Cr, Re, etc.), you're hardly distinguishable from an armoured fighter; it's all just bumping into things. If you're still not convinced this class adds nothing, please further elaborate and I will as well.