Elven Curved Blade Build

[EagleJoust]

Anyone have a good ECB build for a merc? Thank you!

[jeem9000]

I would think you could build it the same way you'd build with scimitars. If you get the merc late, you could also go pure Dex build and not worry about STR.

[Cutlass Jack]

The only merc I did with ECB was an Elven Spelldancer Magus. An elven girl doing twirling dances with curved blade seems like a nice fit from an Roleplay standpoint.

[SomeGuy1]

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

The only merc I did with ECB was an Elven Spelldancer Magus. An elven girl doing twirling dances with curved blade seems like a nice fit from an Roleplay standpoint.

dats rough on a magus though, since curved blade is a 2h weapon and spell combat (prett much a magus' defining ability) needs you to have a hand free. An Eldritch Knight, on the other hand...

[Cutlass Jack]

Originally posted by SomeGuy1:

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

The only merc I did with ECB was an Elven Spelldancer Magus. An elven girl doing twirling dances with curved blade seems like a nice fit from an Roleplay standpoint.

dats rough on a magus though, since curved blade is a 2h weapon and spell combat (prett much a magus' defining ability) needs you to have a hand free. An Eldritch Knight, on the other hand...

Well I mentioned Roleplay for a reason. But you can still use spellstrike with an ECB. So not that bad if you plan for it.

I was just going all in on the Elf specific options. But any Elf in a class that starts with martial weapons will be good to go with a curve blade.

[EagleJoust]

Does spell strike outshine 2h damage though especially with all the Sr in the blood game?

[SomeGuy1]

Originally posted by EagleJoust:

Does spell strike outshine 2h damage though especially with all the Sr in the blood game?

the big benefit of Spell Combat (which is a separate ability from Spellstrike, though they are typically used together) is the ability to cast a spell and full attack in the same turn. Spellstrike then lets you get an extra weapon attack if the spell used is a touch-range damage spells. But you can also use other offensive spells, like Fireball or even debuffs like Slow (at least in pencil and paper, which admittedly is what I'm much more familiar with than this game).
The thing is, that if you want to maximize physical damage done with your weapon attacks... magus probably isn't what you want to do it with anyway. It doesn't have full BAB so you don't have as many attacks per turn.

Edit: also, if we're talking minmaxing, there's an arcana that lets you spellstrike with Hellfire Ray, and one of the magus archetypes can get sorcerer bloodlines. so yeah, it probably can do that disgusting amounts of damage to compensate for not getting 1.5x on str and power attack.

[SomeGuy1]

Anyway, as a serious answer to OP's question... Fighter 2/Wizard 8/Eldritch Knight 10

[pete3great]

Originally posted by SomeGuy1:

Originally posted by Cutlass Jack:

The only merc I did with ECB was an Elven Spelldancer Magus. An elven girl doing twirling dances with curved blade seems like a nice fit from an Roleplay standpoint.

dats rough on a magus though, since curved blade is a 2h weapon and spell combat (prett much a magus' defining ability) needs you to have a hand free. An Eldritch Knight, on the other hand...

I think that most people agree these days that 2H is fine for a magus, as are strength builds, because spell combat is just too fiddly in game. Unlike in the ttrpg, an Owlcat magus is more about the self-buffs than anything else.

[dennisd]

In kingmaker I played a vivisectionist with an elven curved blade.
With dex mutagen and equipment you get dex above 40 and with 10d6 sneak attacks flanking becomes devastating.

Should work even better in this game because you need no 3 level dip into rogue to get the dex to damage conversion.

[Yannir]

You could make them a Demonslayer Ranger. A trippy pet, Aspect of the Wolf and Tandem Trip. Enough feats to facilitate a Dex-based build that wants to do something more than being able hit things.