Should sword saint go with low str and high dex or try get high on both? estoc with finesse could be great.
Depends what armour you're going to use.
Oh wait, Sword Saint.
Hmm. Dex is better I think.
Yeah go Dex and try to pick up an Agile Estoc later on.
Agreed, I think it’s a mistake to try a STR based Sword Saint. I’m playing as a regular DEX based Magus with weapon finesse and fencing grace, which seems to work with spellstrike and spell combat even though I hear that it shouldn’t in the p&p version. Your Magus needs to be able to get up close and personal and a Sword Saint needs to do it without armor. You want that extra AC. For a Sword Saint, strength is a dump stat.
If you play as human, you’ll have enough feats to take slashing or fencing grace from level 3. The only problem in the prologue is that you should really make your chosen weapon an estoc, which means your Sword Saint won’t be able to use the rapier the game gives you. You’ll have to get by using only simple weapons until you can buy an estoc at Oleg’s.
Zero Credibility an estoc is better for a Magus than a dueling sword because it has a larger crit range (18-20 vs 19-20) and your crits apply to touch spells cast via spellstrike. If you take improved criticals down the line it becomes 15-20 as opposed to 17-20 for a dueling sword: estoc makes you a magical damage dealing machine. I think that’s worth the tradeoff of not getting the extra 2 AC from dueling mastery. Although for a sword saint I admit it’s a tougher call. By the time you’d get it at level 5, you’ll have mirror image and your spells will be renewable by tapping your arcane pool.
You get the chosen weapon by default, same with the clerics and inquisitors with their deities favored weapons. I was thinking 16 int, which is enough to get lvl 6 spells. I can't decide between sword saint, eldritch archer, tactician inquisitor and sacred huntsmaster...with mastodon abviously, my own miniature mammoth would fucking cool.
You do? They must have patched that in, because I got a rapier on day one.
Keep in mind that a Sword Saint adds his INT bonus to his armor class, so you get more out of intelligence than most other classes. Also, you’ll go through a lot of spells—I would go with 18 but you can get away with 16. Might want to play as an elf for the +2 to DEX and INT, but then you’ll have to wait a couple extra levels for fencing/slashing grace.
EDIT: you can take fencing/slashing grace from level 1 as a human.
Edit 2: here’s how I would do it:
STR: 7
DEX: 18
CON: 12
INT: 18
WIS: 10
CHA: 10
Your attack bonus will by +5 at level 1 with weapon finesse, and your DMG with an estoc will be 6-12 with fencing grace. 15% chance of rolling a critical.
You could dump some CHA and WIS down to 7 and 8, to send your DEX or INT to 20, but I like having a PC who doesn’t fail all of his diplomacy rolls and WIS under 10 makes you too vulnerable to anything that targets will (or dump WIS & CHA to 7 and 7 for 16 CON for a more resilient character). Kind of a glass cannon, but that’s the point. You only get 1 extra AC from your intelligence per level, until you hit your INT bonus, so by level 4 this guy gets 4 more AC.
At level 7, INT gives you a bonus to intiative. At level 9, you can apply your INT bonus to critical confirmation rolls. At level 11, your INT bonus lets you make additional attacks of opportunity per round. And, again, you really need those extra spells because you’ll be casting Shield and Mirror Image a lot and it’s a pain in the ass to carry enough rations to frequently rest in dungeons.
tl;dr if you’re a Sword Saint don’t stint on INT.
