New HLA's for Swashbucklers Options

[Sikret]

Swashbucklers will no longer have access to "Use Any Item" HLA. Instead, I decided to add other HLA's for them. So far, four HLA's are added:

They already had access to one warrior HLA; so, I decided to add three more (though the total numbers of these new HLA's they can pick are fewer than the numbers a warrior can pick):

- Hardiness
- Critical Strike
- Resist Magic

I also added one new HLA:

- Acrobatic Combat

Description:

By using this ability, a high level swashbuckler can improve his agility and fighting expertise (in both defense and attack) to an extraordinary level. Acrobatic Combat grants +6 bonus to AC and +3 bonus to THAC0 for 5 rounds.

Suggestions for more new HLA's are welcome.*

Thanks.

* Ideas for new HLA's should be original (not copied or taken from other mods).

This post has been edited by Sikret: Oct 21 2008, 10:06 AM

Reason for edit: Fixing typos

[geh4th]

I understand that Sikret is, as he said above, "not a big fan of adding attacks per round", but if I read correctly he also went on to say that this is buggy when going over 10 per round.

If I have the math right, adding a small number - even just 1/2 per round - might give the Swash some usefulness while not ever even approaching the 10 per round level. A vanilla Swashbuckler can't get more than 1 attack per round by profession; they can specialize in weapons but IIRC they don't get the extra attacks per round that warriors get. So a dual wielding Swashbuckler would never have more than 2.5 attacks per round, doubling to a maximum of 5 when improved hasted. There's no way to further increase it, is there?

I really feel that if a permanent ability is removed from the Swashbuckler...a very POWERFUL permanent ability...they should get something permanent in return. Or at least equally powerful.

My suggestion might work even if the extra 1/2 attack per round is ignored, but the idea was to permanently improve a HIGH LEVEL Swashbuckler's ability to stand up to bad guys in face to face combat. The signature of the class is being "hard to hit" and an "expert with weapons", which their class bonuses support, but does this AC bonus lose effectiveness at higher levels in an Improved Anvil environment? I've heard and seen that no matter how good your AC is, the strong bad guys WILL hit you.

The end result is that without more hit points, I think that a Swashbuckler is toast in combat without major compensation.


The question for each of us to ask ourselves is: what would make you WANT to have a pure Swashbuckler in the group? Most people want a thief, but only need modest thieving abilities in practice. The only Swashbuckler's I've generally heard about always dual-class to something else at level 10; nobody wants to "waste" a character slot on any form of pure thief, it seems. And of course as a dual, you don't get the Swash HLA's, making it a moot point for them.

Without something (like their HLA's) making people go "Oooohhh, COOL!" I don't see a pure Swashbuckler being a popular option. It'd have to be really good.

[Sikret]

I've heard and seen that no matter how good your AC is, the strong bad guys WILL hit you.

I've also heard this comment, but it's not true. An excellent AC will prove to be very beneficial and effective against the vast majority of enemies even in TOB. Sometimes, players merely think of some special enemies with excellent THACo's (such as the Ancient Dragon or Rakshasa Prince) and then make general conclusions which are not true. Enemies with such excellent THAC0's are very rare.