Delvers to Grow at 600 Points: Swashbuckler

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In a prior post, I took the knight to 600 points, and more or less ran out of things to spend said points on within the given modules at around 500. That didn’t mean there was no way to get to 600 – there was – but one had to start shoring up off-template weaknesses rather than boosting strengths.

I strongly suspect that the character template that will be most amenable to a full 600-point expenditure is the holy warrior…but for now, I’m going to jump to Fast Delvers and ring up the other combat monster type, the Swashbuckler.

The defining traits of Swashy McSwashypants are super-high DX and Weapon Master. They’re the “sewing machine” of super-stabbing (though anything other than an edged rapier if you do sword focus is probably a trap).

I’m going to create a classic sword-and-buckler swashbuckler (because that’s where the -buckler came from). Again, as with knight, this is not an exercise in build the most effective swashbuckler, but rather one to see where the Delvers to Grow method runs out of gas.

Swashbasics

First up, we’ll go all Inigo Montoya on this, as the classic swashbuckler. Inigo didn’t use an actual buckler, but was a wizard with a sword (the step beyond master if you read the book). So, we’ll slap on his two disadvantage modules, and see if we can avoid dissonance like we ran into with the knight.

We’ll throw Hero on there, as a classic trope, giving Charitable, Selfless, and Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions). Note that SoD (Adventuring Companions) is frequently a “mandatory” disad in some campaigns, as a hedge against the disruptive loner trope. That can be played well; it can also cause table-flipping rage. Even so: it’s part of it, and usefully so.

Money-Grubber is tempting, but doesn’t play well with Charitable, so we’ll do the “Leroy Jenkins” package that is Fortune’s Fool. Curious, Impulsiveness, and Overconfidence. Yeah, baby.

Again, because of the huge number of points, buying down disads is a likely place to start, and eliminating Charitable [-15] and buying Impulsiveness from [-15] to [-5] gets you a module’s worth of buy-back. That still leaves the basic defining traits, but they’re much less likely to get you killed or to give away your hard-earned everything.

Now the Basic modules: Swashy I and II

The Fast Master template is a huge +3 to DX, a bit of HT, and a point of ST. Then Even More DX and ST, Combat Reflexes, and Weapon Master/Bond right out of the 187-point gate. That puts us at ST 12, DX 14, IQ 10 (which we’ve established as a weak point for fighters at higher competence level), and HT 12, which is pretty much the starting point of all professional templates at the 250 point level. Delving is dangerous stuff.

Now I need two upgrades and the skills pack. Let’s start with skills. 20 points among weapon and shield; I favor weapon 16:4, because stabbing is my job. I choose Streetwise, Throwing, and Fast-Draw (Edged Rapier) for my options.

Now I need two starting upgrade modules, so let’s look at the Swashy-restricted ones first. Acrobat, Fight Faster, Not Left Handed, and Witty Duelist. Not Left Handed would be awesome except I don’t need it if I use a buckler, which is by default an off-hand weapon. Alas. Fight Faster is Extra Attack, always useful. That leaves Witty Duelist and Acrobat, and since one can already see we’re going to run low on choices fast here, it doesn’t matter which I pick, I’ll run into both anyway. So, I pick Witty Duelist for now.

Here Come the Upgrades

OK. Now to slap on something like 15 Upgrade Modules (I think I did something wrong with the knight in GCS, as I needed 16 at this point, but whatever).

First we pick up some of the more generic and always useful Fast Delver generic upgrades:

• Brute-ish gives more ST. “Multiple times,” which means no limit! Let’s at least get to ST 13, but more is better. Low-ST stabbers are rough, as they rely on thr-only damage, and deny some of the best per-die bonuses of Weapon Master. A Swash with a swung weapon and high ST is brutal.
• Faster Delver for more DX. Also “multiple times.” DX boosts everything you’re good at.
• Favored by Fate is again “multiple times” and really, up to four times would be just fine. Maybe even five if you double-up on Luck.
• Not Left Handed is a good choice for a Florentine fighter, but not so much for our sword-and-buckler expert.
• Quick gives extra IQ and its subsidiary boosts, and again can be taken “multiple times.” As with the knight, more IQ is good, especially for the thief (lots of Per plus IQ-based skill requirements) and the scout (same).

So here’s the trick, then: you simply cannot run out of Upgrade modules because other than Not Left Handed, which we don’t want for this character, you could potentially select all of these a ton. There are game-breaking ways to do it (character is already DX 14, so more than 6 Faster Delver selections pushes DX past 20).

Also note that the Swashbuckler is designed to be “like the Scout, but with stabby weapons” and eye-poking and fighting under severe environmental degradation is a thing. Dropping 25 points or even 50 points right into combat skills is totally within the game-plan here, and while “ooo, five Faster Delver boosts!” seems cool, two or three Faster Delver boosts and 50 points in skills is probably even better.

So we pick up Acrobat first, because it’s swash-only. Let’s spend 12 more upgrades spread around in the generic Fast Delver allowances, which is three each of the bolded ones above! Hmm. Let’s restrain ourselves, actually, at least initially.

• Two Quick, to push to IQ 12
• Three Brute-ish to hit ST 15, because ending on an even-number ST is bad for thrust-based attacks. Those also gives +3 Striking ST for ST 18
• We’re already DX 14, but more is better…let’s go three Faster Delvers too.
• We’ll again restrain ourselves so far to two Favored by Fate, picking up Danger Sense and Peripheral Vision.

That’s 10 upgrades there … and I still have 115 points (or so) to spend. If I want to reserve 65 of them for skills and the slush fund, that’s still two more. Well.

We really should pick up the Weapon Expert boost that we invented in the knight post. So that’s Weapon Master (All) for one, and … huh. No way to improve HT. Well:

Fitness Freak

You know how to move it, move it. Running, swimming, skiing, or anything cardio, you’re all over it. This module gives you a boost to HT, Basic Speed, and allows allocation of points among some athletic skills.

• Prerequisite: Fast Delver
• Attributes: +1 HT [10], +0.25 Basic Speed [5].
• Skills: Distribute 10 points among Hiking, Lifting, Running, Skiing, or Swimming.

This one’s heavy on “distribute skills” but it’s a good gateway for Fast Delvers to be pretty fit.

Skill Dump

Rounding out the end, then, I’ve left 65 (!!) points for skills. But honestly, the advantage-and-attribute bias on the Upgrade modules and the basic kit require it. One ends with Swashy having a single point in things like Brawling, Carousing, Climbing, Fast-Draw, Stealth, and Streetwise. Stealth is a potentially fatal miss.

Swashy already has Rapier-21 (assuming weapon bond comes in right, which it probably doesn’t), but swashbucklers can usefully boost skill to obscene levels allowing multiple pokes to the eye or even things like eye-poke, neck swing.

Striking ST may actually be too high, but there are 15 points dumped into it, so consolidating to ST +1 and Striking ST 1 gives base ST 19, ST 20 – the usual maximum – when striking. That’s brutal, and hits the breakpoint for swung attacks.

Some reach and range would not go amiss here, and plussing up thrown weapon, picking up a close-combat weapon like knife, and perhaps getting into the dueling glaive and or quarterstaff for reach 2 goodness would round out weapon skills. Heck, dropping 20 points into a balance of Rapier and Shield would be cool, and “more than rapier” would make some degree of sense here, including Main-Gauche (oh, guess we could have used Not Left Handed after all) and other swords.

But the skill list provided by Delvers to Grow is pretty anemic; dropping a bunch of the 65 points left over at this point into “breadth” would serve the Swashbuckler well.

By the end of this, though, the swash is crazy high in a lot of things, due to lavish spending on attributes. ST 19 (Striking ST 20!), DX 17, IQ 12, HT 13, but Per 15, Will 17, and Fright Checks are at 19 thanks to Combat Reflexes.

Basic Speed is 7.75, inviting another 5-point drop to give it a flat 8 (thus boosting Dodge even further), and this character is Usain Bolt, with Basic Move 11. That is some reach right there, as Move 11 enables the two-yard Step.

There’s more “growth” possible as well, since again, the character is uncapped in most, if not all, of the Fast Delver Upgrade Modules in a way that the knight and other Strong Delvers are not. Additionally, looking very hard at Exploits, p. 93 shows that the Swash can dump points into Blind Fighting, Kiai, and Power Blow skills without Chi Mastery … and Kiai is a favored exploit from PowerGamers I know. It’s an excellent acquisition even if you don’t like to squeeze the rules until they scream, though.

Interesting.