[Wids]

Arming your dual-wielding Dex-whore isn't all that easy.

So ever since I created her, I've been sorting out which weapon(s) I want Tirah to wield for whenever it's time to throw down. Even though she's not your usual kind of [name of ill-reputed, sneaky Class goes here], her melee weapons still have a few common standards to meet or exceed:

• It must be compatible with human-sized dual-wielding. Nothing bigger than a rapier, and nothing bigger than a short sword in the off hand (unless I want her Attack rolls to suck, and I don't).
• It must be compatible with Weapon Finesse.
• It must be compatible with Sneak Attacks.
• (Optional) Small or Tiny weapons are preferable. Tirah's a courtesan, as per her backstory. Courtesans don't wear very much, and you're certainly not going to see one walking around with a scabbard or a frogged battle axe clapping against her thigh. She doesn't want to scare people off, yet she wants to have something handy in case a "guest" turns nasty. So a weapon which can be hidden anywhere -- inside a boot, under a pillow, inside a miniskirt, through her cleavage and inside her bodice, et cetera -- would be perfect.
• (Optional) Two of the same type of weapon would be nice. If I decide to spend Feats on weaponry, it's cheaper to go that route. Weapon Focus: Rapier and Weapon Focus: Handaxe are two Feats, so why not take only Weapon Focus: Handaxe and just wield two handaxes? You can spend the extra Feat on something else, and you probably won't miss the rapier all that much.

(But then again, the incentive for not taking weapon Feats is flexibility. Taking Feats to improve your mace-wielding is good and well, but it also limits you to maces and puts you in a terrible dilemma if you find a handaxe which totally rocks. Do you pass up that Handaxe of Wounding, or do you start wielding the handaxe and effectively waste a Feat? Tough choice, right?)

So while I was chewing over the various weapons which suit these standards, I realized something: Kukris suck. For one, no starting character of any Class can wield a kukri, not even a Monk; you have to take Exotic Weapon Proficiency just to equip one. For two, it's like the kukri tries to be both a dagger and a rapier yet doesn't quite succeed at being either. It's as heavy as a rapier, and its footprint is two-thirds the size of the rapier (thus, you can stuff more kukris inside a backpack), yet it has the dagger's sucky damage. It also has the rapier's Critical Threat range, but that's only 1 point broader than a dagger's Critical Threat range, so big whoop. Also, it deals Slashing damage, as opposed to Piercing damage from both the rapier and the dagger..but again, big whoop, because creatures which resist Slashing also tend to resist Piercing. That's why Rogues hate fighting skeletons...that and the whole "Undead ignore your pathetic Sneak Attacks" thing.

So frankly, I don't think that the kukri is worth the Feat. Neither is the whip, but the kama might have potential. (If we're including ranged weapons, the shuriken's nice too. You can stuff 1,750 shuriken inside a one-pound backpack. How much does that backpack weigh after you've stuffed it with 1,750 shuriken? One farging pound. To Hell with physics!)

It's a pity, though, because wielding two Sharpshadow Blades would be nice for Tirah's stealth game. But if kukris aren't all that good, then she might be better off with something that she can already wield. I might even be a little daring and go with the dagger: Daggers can fit anywhere, they only weigh one pound and three of them can fit inside a rapier's footprint; thus, you can carry three daggers for every one rapier. This would be a good idea if I want Tirah to have a weapon for every occasion without breaking her Encumbrance. ("Okay, I have my Dagger of Sleeping for warriors, my Dagger of Intelligence Poison for Wizards, the holy dagger with a Bludgeoning pommel for undead, the Slowing Dagger for those sneaky, speedy enemies who attack seven or eight times a round, the Goblin Killer dagger for goblinoids, the Fire Dagger for frost monsters and the dagger which grants me immunity to death magic in case we run into bodaks or banshees. Let's roll.")

Sure, the dagger's damage isn't all that hot, but that's what Sneak Attacks are for. Besides, remember: My main character in the server's last incarnation wielded a whip for her main weapon. If I can suffer through a whip, I can slog along with a pair of daggers.

But yeah, kukris. Why would anybody want to wield a kukri, anyway?

[DarkRanger]

Because they look cool in your inventory(even though you've got to squint at the character model to distinguish it from a shortsword) and Gurkhas are like Spartans.

[Wids]

Well, about that. I never liked how you can't change anything about a kukri's appearance aside from the colors; even CEP content doesn't add anything to kukris (and we're talking about content that lets your rapiers look like actual rapiers (with basket hilts and straight, two-edged piercing blades), your throwing axes look like chakrams, your short swords look like those little double-bladed hand weapons that the Yautja/Predators wield, your scimitars look like those Uruk-Hai blades from the Lord of the Rings movies, et al).

And on top of that, a kukri weighs as much as a shortsword and has the same footprint size as a shortsword. It can Crit on an 18 (as opposed to the short sword's 19), but it downgrades its damage from 1d6 to 1d4 in return, so you might as well save a Feat and just get a cool-looking shortsword. It's Tiny, so gnomes and halflings (and goblins) can easily wield it in the off hand, but that's it for the good news.

(Now that I mention it, Thayan! Whose mountain would I have to climb to get this server some of those CEP weapons? There are some really, really sweet-looking longswords and daggers in that content...much better than the Bioware stuff, I have to say. :) )

[Bishop Edward]

(Now that I mention it, Thayan! Whose mountain would I have to climb to get this server some of those CEP weapons? There are some really, really sweet-looking longswords and daggers in that content...much better than the Bioware stuff, I have to say. :) )

If we had CEP content I might be tempted to recreate my Kara-turan Samurai who duel-wields a Katana and a matching wakizashi-styled shortsword... the lack of a proper wakizashi model is what's prevented me from doing so thus far...

Also, Wids... a mountain climbing entendre, really?

[Wids]

Okay, so it's a bad "What do I have to do..." variation. How about the classic "Who do I have to kill...?" ;)

And yes, the wakazashi shortswords are pretty neat too. So are the butterfly knife shortswords, the main gauche daggers, the stiletto daggers, the Scottish claymore (or claidh-mor) greatswords and the alternate axes. It would be nice if CEP gave battle axes and dwarven waraxes different models (which is something that Bioware didn't exactly do for us), but at least the CEP battle axe/dwarven waraxe bits look pretty sweet (and much, much sharper than the Bioware axes look). :)

[Claymora]

I always found Kukri's great for rogues and other dex fighters because of the increase in damage output. Because ideally, you'll be eventually taking improved crit: kukri and want to have a pair of keen kukris... as a result, you end up with a lovely crit range which increases dramatically the number of attacks your making that have longsword or better potential.

[Wids]

Well, I suppose that if you took Improved Critical: Kukri and found a pair of Keen kukris, you would be pretty well off. That's pretty much one of my characters' secret of success, only she wields a single Keen rapier instead of a pair of kukris. And she still lands Crits like a maniac (on a d6 Damage die, at that).

But it still seems like the shortsword is still on par with the kukri; your Crit range shrinks to 15-20 (from the kukri's range of 12-20), but you gain a d6 Damage die instead of a d4, so each Crit deals 2-12 base Damage rather than 2-8. So I have to wonder if the kukri's really all that much better than the shortsword...better enough to justify taking Exotic Weapon Proficiency, that is.*

Man, I wish I'd applied myself better in high school Statistics and Probability class. Gotta crunch some numbers and figure out which one does more harm in the long run. Not that Rogues or any other "glass cannon" Classes should be getting themselves into prolonged fights, of course....

(Know what would really be nice? Magic items which give Barbarian Speed, Monk Speed or higher running speed in general. I've had some success playing the whole guerilla ambush game (Hide and wait, Sneak Attack when the enemy comes by, run away, round a corner and break line of sight, Stealth Mode, stop running and wait, Sneak Attack when the enemy chasing you comes by, run away...), but that only works on enemies who don't run very fast.)


* Of course, if you're from a Small character race, dual-wielded kukris outshine dual-wielded shortswords any day. -2 to hit is plenty more sufferable than -4 is, right?

[Bishop Edward]

Man, I wish I'd applied myself better in high school Statistics and Probability class. Gotta crunch some numbers and figure out which one does more harm in the long run.

Short answer: Short sword.

Longer, but still simple, explanation: Everything on this server which is immune to crits (which is more than most).

Even longer caveat: Only weapon-mastering the kukri and dual wielding it would justify its usage IMHO; and as I've learned, dual wielding AND weapon-mastering proficiently simply require too many feats to be viable on this server (even more-so if they aren't your main character that you can wrack up the notoriety and time required to get to higher levels).

[Wids]

Good point. Even aside from the usual undead, elementals and oozes, there are those random creatures which are randomly gifted with immunity to Critical Hits and Sneak Attacks. I wouldn't say that most creatures on the entire server have that immunity, but the percentage does vary by location (which is why characters who depend on Crits and/or Sneak Attacks do well to avoid crypts, where the amount of creatures with that immunity is pretty close to 100%).

But still, I find the dagger appealing for its light weight, small footprint and decent Critical Threat range, even if its damage isn't very good. Light weight = less encumbrance, which means more capacity for loot and/or better odds of escape if something damages your Strength. But it would be nice if we could also throw the daggers, like characters in tabletop D&D can. The most successful player-character in my online D&D campaign is a Rogue (soon to be Rogue/Assassin), whose only weapons are a shortbow and 17 daggers. He hasn't had to use the shortbow yet, and yet he's already racked up quite a body count, despite only wielding daggers.

[Wids]

Just a few samples. Neat, huh? :)

I couldn't find my Old European rapiers and my main gauche daggers, but I was using CEP 2.4. Those might have been part of CEP 2.3, but left out of CEP 2.4 for whatever reason. I'll have to dig around a bit.

So how would someone go about extracting the weapons from the CEP resources, and possibly changing their bits from Color entries to actual Top/Middle/Bottom entries, so that these bits would be accessible through the Tailor Models? Just for curiosity's sake. ;)