Are swordmasters even worth recruiting?

[Justin_760]

I dished out 6,000 gold to hire a swordmaster, he has terrible stamina and health but great melee attack. Now after months of fights and thousands of gold on training hall sessions, after Ive gotten him to level 8, he got OLD. Massive debuffs across the board, his health is now at a ridiculous 40, and stamina at 60 despite heavy investment in the stat.

Are these guys even worth it? Even setting the price aside, it seems like they dont actually have any special benefit over the other classes. Ive seen the charts that show they have like the highest base melee attack, but its really not that much better than the other elite backrounds.

[Whatever100500]

Despite good Mdef, they simply can't do any frontline job due to low fat/hp.
Using them in backline is possible, but this way you make limited use of Mdef and still suffer from low fat/hp.
Still, a hypothetical swordmaster with 3 stars in Matk, Hp and Fat would make a good backliner (yep, still not frontline-worthy even then). And they *do* have best training events.

Old is curable via unique item, but only for one bro during whole campaign.

[turtle225]

Billhook or any single target 2Hander (not Cleaver) require very little fatigue to use. Add Pathfinder as well and you can get away with stupidly low max fatigue on these.

SM is a class that guarantees decent to amazing melee skill at the cost of lower durability and the inability to spam expensive skills like Rotate or Indom. Hp stars for Nimble are helpful. I would not go Forge even with Fatigue stars because hp will be too low still.

With hp every level even with no stars you can get into the 80's after Colossus which is totally fine for backlining and can be workable on the frontline as long as you are careful with him.

[Hurricane]

This crap... get old... curable for 1 bro only so yeh make sure you get a perfect one... best classes are raiders and hedge knights.

Tier 2 is farmers and nobles. Nobles get sick md and high resolve. I have 2 with like 55 md and 95 ma high resolve decent fat. Insane front liners that wont crumble

[Justin_760]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

Despite good Mdef, they simply can't do any frontline job due to low fat/hp.
Using them in backline is possible, but this way you make limited use of Mdef and still suffer from low fat/hp.
Still, a hypothetical swordmaster with 3 stars in Matk, Hp and Fat would make a good backliner (yep, still not frontline-worthy even then). And they *do* have best training events.

Old is curable via unique item, but only for one bro during whole campaign.

Damn, this is what I thought. I keep trying to make nimble duelist builds with swordmasters but they just dont seem viable, the amount of time it takes to train/level them up just isnt worth it when they can die in a single turn at any point from a unlucky crossbow bolt.

Anyone know a backround that would be better for nimble duelist builds?

[Lathanx]

Sword masters are trash unless you like a one swing per turn axe bro or a back line bill hook dingus.

Absolutely not worth the cost unless you get a perfect triple fatigue, triple melee defense star one. But even then i'd advise against them because of the low health, even if you take colossus 60hp is garbage.

[Lampros]

NO.

[suejak]

It's a complex background. Don't write it off, but avoid it until you know what you're doing.

Guys with a billion hours in the game decide that a swordmaster is a "dodge fencer". He's not; in fact, he couldn't be further from that.

Swordmaster is about a billion melee defense and a billion melee skill. He can also train other bros. If that appeals to you at some point in your BB life, pick one up.

Anyone know a backround that would be better for nimble duelist builds?

Anything with a lot of melee skill and health, a fair amount of fatigue, and good mdef from some source. Basically the same requirements as a nimble 2-hander (i.e., mostly HP and melee skill). Swordmasters can be fine for this role but you have to know what you're doing.

Easy answers are barbs, sellswords, raiders, thieves. Anything has a chance, but those backgrounds lend themselves to that archetype most naturally.

[Lampros]

Sellswords are better than the useless Swordmasters for a duelist build; and they were even before this Old Age nonsense.

[Whatever100500]

One thing I just noticed from wiki, is that swordmaster can only teach a very limited set of backgrounds: Adventurous or Disowned noble, Bastard and Squire.
Ok, but not particularly cost-effective or especially powerful backgrounds. So I never tend to have a lot of them.

Apprentices can also learn from SM in their event, but learning from a Hedge Knight instead would provide better stat boost.

Event-driven stat boosting via forever-in-reserve lvl1 farmhands or teach-once-then-dismiss-brawlers seems ultimately more useful.

[nightworg]

The old age event is a deal breaker for me to ever use this background. With old age they will on average start with 30 hp and 75 resolve naked. That is awful.

On top of that they are very expensive to buy and have the highest upkeep.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

One thing I just noticed from wiki, is that swordmaster can only teach a very limited set of backgrounds: Adventurous or Disowned noble, Bastard and Squire.
Ok, but not particularly cost-effective or especially powerful backgrounds. So I never tend to have a lot of them.

Apprentices can also learn from SM in their event, but learning from a Hedge Knight instead would provide better stat boost.

Event-driven stat boosting via forever-in-reserve lvl1 farmhands or teach-once-then-dismiss-brawlers seems ultimately more useful.

Squires are actually some of my favorites. Only a little expensive but very balanced in their stats. Raiders may have better base defenses and attack, but have horrible resolve. Sellswords also have horrible resolve and lower fatigue than a squire. In all cases talents are going to be the difference between mediocre and great, but bad resolve kind of prevents these other backgrounds from being versatile. Orc warlords, undead priests, geists, hexxen, or just getting surrounded are all issues for them given their almost irreparably bad resolve. (I guess you could use tryout to look for +resolve traits).

Adventurous nobles are good too, other than their ranged defense, which mostly means avoid making them BF while putting them into battle with crossbows.

[Belial]

SM are pretty awesome imo except the OLD event, this is awful yeah. You can heal it on one tho.
Also you can just load or alt f+4 to avoid this :)

[Flharfh]

If I recall correctly swordmaster has the highest base wage in the game, tied with sellsword and hedge knight. There are definitely better options available, especially when you consider the 'old' event.

[Cinex920]

yes but its difficult to skill him right and he will be strong with lvl 12 ... but if u skilled him right he can take out a whole army alone it gives a few youtube videos 2 vs 50 or something like that ... swordsman are unblanced strong withe the right stats

look on youtube for his channel. clock on videos and scroll down this dude knows the game mechanics very well

his youtube name : Imz Frozen

[smidlee]

I have been using a sword master in my current game on the front line with a greatsword. I saw some claimed they are terrible in the front and thought my doing a good job. I forgot that's because he had three stars in hp and one star in fat.
I got the event where he agree to take a pay cut which was nice but later I got old event which sucks.I will never hire another one and feel sword masters are a trap.