Who wants to play D&D online again?

I'm TIFpatbat on Discord, if we go that route for the voice chat (which I would recommend)

Great, I guess I should make a Discord thing. Chatroom? Is that what they're called? Anyway I'll make one.

We could go into business together, I'm an arcane merchant!

I have very high charisma, and, also having seen the thing you read about how gnomes are not a socially favored class, have been wondering how to address the tension between "my guy has very high charisma, but gnomes are usually servants and the like".  I'll probably finish working out my backstory over the weekend, but it boils down to "my character has been involved in influencing politics behind the scenes in his function as a spy".  If you're going to go the route of playing a character of a higher social status, perhaps my cover could be as your servant (or the servant of another character who's more well-to-do, I dunno how wealthy most bards are in Pathfinder).  

As far as needing someone with social skills goes, as I said, I have very high charisma, as does patbat, but given what I've read about this campaign, it's probably for the best that we have multiple party members with good charisma?  And I know Viking, as of yesterday, specifically had kind of mediocre charisma, although he was toying with raising his charisma and sacrificing a slightly better stat, iirc.

I don't know if my character needs a high social status, or is just a commoner pretending to be higher status. Thinking something like 'Face' from the A-Team.  I don't mind being a flighty-seeming noble with some party members as my actual servants, but  being a middle class revolutionary with that as a cover is just as fine.  Bard seems to fit that, though, for the performance aspects.  Charisma helps with social skills, but having a high charisma doesn't mean the character has the 'mingling with high society' skills, necessarily.  Of course, we could all have skills like that and work just as well.  I get the impression that we're all going to be skulking around a bit, so having someone as a distraction while the rest of the group does their thing could be handy, but splitting the party is always more work for the GM, so maybe that's too much of a pain.

You don't necessarily need to be high status to be moving among the aristocrats as a bard, though. No one expects the entertainment to be social equals. The supplementary materials say there are two bard's colleges in the city you'll be in, with one being world-renowned, so you could have started making a name for yourself straight out of school:


If you're teaming up with Roy Batty's Pet Dove 's spy then your backgrounds would mesh since the one for that character is Young Reformer. You could both have that or yours could be Taldan Patriot. Two agitators for reform, one the outspoken critic, the other his quiet assistant and spy behind the scenes.

Face from the A-Team had the same energy as Face from 90s Nick Jr.

Bards just seem to be the closest class to 'actor' or something like that.  I figure Lotheed will bring us all together and then we can work on our cover stories, so I'm not as worried about who knows who pre-start, although I'm not opposed to any prior relationships.  It just seems like we might benefit from a human or elf 'front person' for the group.  

Either way, I'm probably leaning towards something bardy.  A little general purpose magic, some swordsling-ing and a lot of acting / rhetorical  skills.  Some sort of Aasimari might be fun, too.  Pronouncing judgment on 'problematic' aspects of society and advancing the Eutropia for Prom King angle.  I need to read up on them, though.  There's probably a way to tie all of it together. Aasimari bard commenting on societies ills through song, less of a firebrand than a wet blanket on the hardliners.  That or radicalized rhapsodic college guy. Either way, I'll come up with something over the weekend, after I've gone through some of the source books.  I was going to print out whichever one is 600 pages, until I realized it was 600 pages.

ETA: LOL - just got to the 'Taldan is a nation of duelists' part, so "duelist bard"  or some other hybrid with a dueling focus seems pretty workable.  

Maybe it could be whenever we have to take a boat.  Or a fear of horses.  But there were a lot of things about the A-team that made no sense, including Mr. T's deep wellspring of pity for fools and others. 

Despite being in the right age group at the right time, I never watched it, or Dukes of Hazard.  Which is why I forgot that Face was also their 'acquisitions' guy - he didn't always swipe stuff, sometimes he just 'knew a guy' who could get them what they needed.

So the Weapon Finesse feat lets you use your Dex modifier for your attack roll bonus, while the feats Slashing Grace, Fencing Grace, or Dervish Dance let you use your Dex modifier for damage bonuses. However, while Weapon Finesse is complemented by Slashing Grace and Fencing Grace, it doesn't work with Dervish Dance. See, Dervish Dance only works with scimitars and that's specifically not on the Weapon Finesse list. Also note that Fencing Grace only works with rapiers. If you want a scimitar it's doable since apparently Taldor's last war was with Qadira, a totally not Arab country to the south of Taldor.

Also note that Weapon Finesse only works with light weapons or the elven curve blade, rapier, whip, or spiked chain, or the dueling sword.

Anyway, if you're using a rapier then you can use Weapon Finesse and Fencing Grace together (provided you meet the prerequisites). For rapier specifically you need Weapon Finesse, Fencing Grace, Weapon Focus (rapier), and Dex 13. If you're going with dueling sword you can use Weapon Finesse and Slashing Grace together. For this one you need Weapon Finesse, Slashing Grace, Exotic Weapon Proficiency (dueling sword), and Weapon Focus (dueling sword).

Note that you don't need all the feats at once. You can start with Weapon Finesse and add the other ones as needed. 

That's all I can find for using Dex in place of Str for attacking, unless you wanted to be a swashbuckler instead of a bard. There's also the Swordlord, which is a prestige class which lets you use Dex for attacking. A prestige class is basically a class you level up into. There's a bunch of prerequisite feats and whatnot that you need before you can become a swordlord so it might take a while for you to get there.

Also, it's interesting that no one has made a human character yet.

Oh okay neat. Also you replied while I was editing my comment and added a ton of confusing crap. Basically go with rapiers if you want to keep it simple.

Yep, the site still says 9:00 PM EST on June 15, 2019 C.E. by the Gregorian calendar, for me, so it must take time zones into account.

I switched my feat from Power Attack or whatever it was called to Two-Weapon Fighting.

Is there anything I need to add or modify to my character sheet to make stuff work? Also if for whatever reason on a particular round of combat I decided to just attack with my primary weapon there wouldn't be any penalty to the attack rolls right?

I think I asked the part that you answered poorly. That feat has some penalties attached to it (-2 on attack rolls or something if I recall correctly due to the fact that fists are light weapons). The feat as I understand it allows me to attack with both hands at will but what isn't clear is what happens if I forego attacking with the off-hand. Would I still have that -2 penalty or just roll as usual?