u/sascha177

Been fiddling around with my Swashbuckler-Tav and I *think* I found the weapon combo with the highest potential damage for her. Though I do wonder if there are others that will do more, either on a Swashbuckler or on any other class/sub-class, so:

1 Rogue/1 Fighter/10 Rogue - I took the level in Fighter for shield-proficiency initially (she's a Wood Elf), but kept it when I went to dual daggers/shortswords to keep the fighting style, added weapon proficiencies and medium armor.

Abilities at level 12:

STR 8 - DEX 22 - CON 14 - INT 8 - WIS 12 - CHA 17 (<- Patriar Memory... gotta fix that 😄)

Feats are: Athlete for increased jump distance and +1 to DEX - ASI +2 to DEX and Savage Attacker.

Fighting style is currently Defense, but I might change that as her AC is already quite high using Armor of Agility. I did want maximum AC as I was using Cold Snap before whose special ability fires when enemies miss her, but...

In any case...

Off-Hand: Knife of the Undermountain King for damage re-rolls and higher CRIT-chance. Don't need the Shadow Blade passive on a Swashbuckler, really.

Main Hand: Bloodthirst. Mainly for its Aura of Murder passive which is kinda key to this build.

Even though Swashbuckler lacks a proper Extra Attack, you can still get two attacks in per turn, even without a Bloodlust Elixir. Disarming attack will trigger the Aura of Murder condition, but even Sand Toss will do so... even though it's not really a weapon attack. I've tested and re-tested this and it works every time.

So... use Flick o' the Wrist on armed enemies or Sand Toss on unarmed ones and select "Don't react" when prompted for Sneak Attack. Then use Sneak Attack as your second attack and get ready for some insane damage numbers. Bloodthirst is only a dagger, true, but that doesn't matter on Sneak Attacks and all that added damage is d6-based piercing and thus doubled on targets that are vulnerable to piercing. I've seen triple digit piercing damage using this tactic - the added damage from Elemental Weapon or things like Strange Conduit Ring is near trivial compared to that.

Not even sure I'll still need Savage Attacker when I use Organ Rearranger - it will probably produce slightly higher overall results as dice can be re-rolled one more time and *everything* gets re-rolled (not just 1s and 2s), but having both on the character seems a bit redundant.

So... have I found the optimal weapon(s) for this build or are there better ones? Note: I do not have access to the Bhaalist vendor, so I don't think I can get a different source of Aura of Murder for her.

I'm quite late to the party, but here goes anyway:

Unless you want to play one for RP-reasons... don't.

YTers calling this one "outclassed" by Open Hand are perfectly correct, IMO as it is a less powerful version of a punchy Monk with worse/less useful abilities and a bit of booze-flavor sprinkled on top. Though the whole alcohol/drunk thing feels a bit half-hearted and kinda irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

On the plus-side: The unique preview attack animations and the DM-specific sounds are quite amusing.

And that's... pretty much it when it comes to the positives. Sadly, there seem to be no unique DM-interactions/dialogue choices anywhere - at least none that I could find. Not even during the Thisobald scene where you'll just get the regular Monk-lines/-options.

I had hoped that the drunk-set would make this class better, but Punch-Drunk Bastard, the first item from the set to drop plus probably the most useful one, is ... kinda underwhelming. It's not a Monk-weapon as it carries the Two-Handed trait so it won't trigger the bonus martial arts attack. Plus it probably won't scale off DEX if your STR is lower than DEX. Its extra damage can also be a bit counterproductive as you'll be hitting friendlies with it if you're not careful with your positioning. Plus I managed to destroy a book with it that was marked as a story-item and which was lying around during a fight. So... pretty meh. If they had made it a quarterstaff instead of a greatclub, this thing would be way more interesting for a DM Monk. As it is, I'd rather use Cacophony at this stage and forgo the perma-advantage Punch-Drunk offers.

The rest of the set comes in so late in the game that you will have *way* better options for your amulet- and chest-slots. So, again: Unless you want to role-play as a drunk murder-hobo or something, there's no need to buy either of those two items.

Drunkard-items aside: What really hurts the class in comparison to OH is the lack of any useful traits coming in past level 4 or so. Especially level 6 DM is laughable when compared to what you're getting from Open Hand at that level. "Redirect attack" seems to work OK and also a bit differently from what the pop-up describes. I've seen it trigger multiple times with no other enemies in melee-range and Tav would simply attack the enemy who missed him - kinda like a Battle Master's Riposte or something. Plus you'll eventually get a less restrictive version of that ability from an item anyway - albeit not until you make it to the Lower City.

Ki-recovery via booze sounds fun and useful, but it's not nearly as good as OH's Wholeness of Body. Plus it's another reason why the drunk-set kinda sucks for DM because the first drop of booze you'll drink during a day will trigger the recovery-effect - so if you chug a bottle before your first fight of the day to activate those items, you'll have effectively wasted your recovery as it will still be depleted if you use it on a full "ki-account".

Some general info: I went with a 4 Rogue/Thief / 8 Monk-split to not lose that third feat, plus DM beyond level 8 seems rather underwhelming, anyway. I'll usually play OH Monks without Tavern Brawler and daily STR-elixirs these days, but with DM, I did relent to get a bit more damage out of the guy. High half-elf, Booming Blade, GWM and Cacophony worked pretty well and probably still would work well, but most of the DM-stuff will only really work with unarmed attacks, so I switched him to dual shortswords and Tavern Brawler. Ambusher (from the dragonborn-lady in Rivington) works pretty well on him as the main weapon plus Undermountain King in his off-hand as a pure stat-stick.

Anyone have experience with that paste long-term? Mine's been on my CPU for ~ 2.5 years now and while temps seem fine, I'm starting to wonder if I should get ready to break out that tube and the isopropyl and swap in some fresh paste.

For context: I'm using a Lian Li GA II 360 on an i7-14700KF.

Idle temps are anywhere between high 20s and mid 30s, depending on the weather as my room doesn't have AC. Temps under normal gaming load are roughly in the high 50s to mid/high 60s and higher CPU-load temps peak in the low/mid 70s - haven't run a torture test in a while, but things like shader-cache generation in certain games will push the CPU to or near 100 percent quite often.

I'm not OCing and running the chip at Intel's recommended power-settings, so PL1/2 = 253W.