Trickster/black jacket swashbuckler idea

[Tomucci]

My basic concept is a jack of all trades utility character that can tank, disable and dps.

Pale elf / white that wends / drifter (might also consider old vallia / dissident or mercenary).

Might-8 / con-10 / dex-10 / per-22 / int-20 / res-20 (BB obv on).

Weapon sets: club (kapana taga) and flail (sun and moon) / morningstar (willbreaker) / duel blunderbusses (hand mortar and fire in the hole) / havent decided, maybe duel sabers for pure slash dps or sword and shield for tanking, maybe take a 5th weapon set and have both, maybe just leave it at 3

Armor ideas: either DoC breastplate for the action speed bonus and resources, fleshmender for the extra weapon set, or maybe reckless brigandine, between armored grace, nalvi and the bonus to action speed with engagement it'll keep me tanky without slowing me down.

Idea is obviously to have any tool available for the job;

For tanking I have mirrored image, fighter stances, vigorous defence, then potentially heavy armor that doesnt slow me down and a weapon set dedicated to sword and shield for even more deflection

Dps won't be the highest but between rogue and fighter abilities I'll still have bonuses to accuracy, damage, action speed, conversions for more consistency and some free attacks

Now the main focus, disabling:

Weapon modals (and passives) to lower resistances.

Arterial strike and confounding blind (targets fortitude and reflex respectively) in aoes from the blunderbusses.

Trickster abilities to target will.

High accuracy so these debuffs hit/crit, and high intelligence and tactical barrage to make them last as long as possible

All of this coordinated with other party members to give those poor slobs a chance to hit something for a change. Thinking characters like aloth and sarafen will have solid abilities that target particular defences.

Questions:

Will terrify proc disengagement attacks? Seen mixed info on this

Will quick switch stack with black jackets passive to essentially eliminate recovery time between weapon change?

Will the aoe size of the blunderbusses scale with int?

Are there any glaring issues with what I'm trying to do here?

 

 

[dgray62]

I'll try to answer a few of your questions, leaving it to others to address some of of the others. I have never played a Black jacket, so I can't answer the questions specific to that class. But have you considered an unbroken/trickster? That combo is well-known and can enable a much tankier approach.

As for terrify proccing disengagement attacks, the answer is "yes, but." That it, it will, but unfortunately not consistently. Sometimes the foes will just cower and do nothing, and sometimes they will attempt to flee, in which case you may get a disengagement attack. But in my experience this only happens some of the time. The key thing is that they need to be engaged by you for this to happen. So the more engagement slots you have, the more likely it is to happen. Hence going with unbroken with a shield would probably be advantageous. However, regardless of what build you chose, terrify is great CC, and makes trickster a great complement to this build.

As for armor, I recommend that you not use Fleshmender, as its AR is just too low for a front line DPS/tank build. DoC would be great for a melee MC like this, and Reckless Brigandine would also be good if you have a lot of engagement slots, i.e., particularly if you go with Unbroken.

Lastly, yes, the AOE of the mortars increases with INT. You can also increase them with food, pets and items that increase AOE size.

[Tomucci]

3 hours ago, dgray62 said:

But have you considered an unbroken/trickster? That combo is well-known and can enable a much tankier approach.

My intention isn't really to build a dedicated tank but a jack of all trades. I can see how that combo would be very powerful for a tank though.

Thanks for all the info.

[thelee]

On 1/29/2022 at 6:59 PM, Tomucci said:

Will quick switch stack with black jackets passive to essentially eliminate recovery time between weapon change?

yes. it's a neat and subtly powerful effect. for example, if you have the special axe from SSS, you can turn any might inspiration into energized just by rapidly switching into it repeatedly, and it won't cost you anything. as another example, if you like micromanagement, you can switch into a large shield right after each attack, and back to a normal weapon before your next attack comes up, maximizing your defenses without costing you offense (this is much easier to do consistently on turn-based mode). as another example, for trash fights you can load of 3 out of 4 weapon slots with guns and just switch through them real fast and not worry about reloading before settling on your final slot for the rest of the fight. still another example, load up a couple weapon slots with xbow/arbalest with their modal. if you need to interrupt someone, switching to one of those, fire it off, and switch back to a normal weapon.

 

On 1/29/2022 at 6:59 PM, Tomucci said:

Armor ideas: either DoC breastplate for the action speed bonus and resources, fleshmender for the extra weapon set, or maybe reckless brigandine, between armored grace, nalvi and the bonus to action speed with engagement it'll keep me tanky without slowing me down.

something to consider is there's an SSS medium armor that gives you -1% recovery time penalty bonus per poitn of athletics. it has increasing returns. with a fighter (who starts off with some athletics), maxed atheltics investment, and some gear with bonus athletics, combined with armored grace, you can have decent protection while also being super fast. (i think i got xoti as a monk up to a -25% armor recovery penalty which pretty much cancels out the medium armor penalty on its own; a fighter with starting athletics and the right background and the chameleon ring [fighters get +1 athletics] should be able to even better, plus also has armored grace)

Edited January 31, 2022 by thelee