Fighting styles

Melee weapon damage is the main job of Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers and Rogues. Clerics and Bards also have some interest. There are essentially four different categories of fighting style you can choose from. Those are two-handed fighting, two-weapon fighting and sword and board.

Sword and board
Sword and board is the name usually used to refer to using a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other hand during combat, as opposed to using a weapon that requires both hands to wield and use effectively. Although the expression uses the word sword, the weapon in question can be any one-handed weapon.

So, basicly, sword and board is for those who seek higher Armor Class as a shield will raise your AC.

Fighters, Barbarians, Bards, Paladins, Rangers and Cleric are proficient with shields but only fighters are proficient with tower shields. At low level, most characters that can use an heavy shield do so to minimise the damage they take. Most characters that do not use a shield are usually characters that either are not profient (like rogues) or that specialise in an other fighting mode. Even if one character aims to become a two-handed fighting expert, some players decide to wear a shield on because that reduce greatly damage. Those that do not usally prefer to learn to play their character early, so they are ready for higher levels.

As you gain level, most character gain more capacity to damage. More feats, more spells, better weapons, etc. Also, clerical healing becomes more available. Also, up to a certain point, low AC can become less viable. If your opponent can hit you on a natural 2, your AC is meaningless (a natural 1 being an automatic miss). Do not worry, that does not happen until around level 14, when you get to run quests in the Ruins of Gianthold and in the Orchard of the Macabre. This is why you see many high level barbarians, paladins and fighters walking around with two-handed weapons and fighters, rangers and rogues walking around wielding two weapons.

However, it would be false to say that Armor Class is totally meaningless at high level, but it is a fact that it takes greater focus on it for it to be effective, or at least, effective enough to be worth the sacrifice you make. For this reason, the two classes you see walking around with shields most often at high level are paladins and fighters.

Fighters got Tower Shield Proficiency, enhancements like Fighter's Armor Mastery and Fighter's Tower Shield Mastery and, mostly, their ammount of feats allow them to pick up Combat Expertise and Dodge easily.

Paladins are more turned toward defense because they got nothing pushing them toward DPS like the barbarians's rage, the insane ammount of Sneak Attacks rogues got or the free two-weapon fighting feats rangers get but they got Aura of Good and the enhancements boosting it.

Heavy Shields
Heavy shields are the basic shields, the most common used as most classes are proficient with them. Because they are not proficient, rogues prefer to use to use mithral heavy shields to avoid suffering the Armor Check Penalty on their attack rolls.

Light Shields
Light shields are mostly used by bards, wizards and sorcerers who seek some Armor Class while not not suffering the Arcane Spell Failure are prefered as made of mithral as they have zero ASF when made of this material. They have lesser shield bonus than a heavy shield.

Tower Shields
Tower shields grant greater protection than heavy shields, however, they also reduce their wielder's attack rolls because of their size. They are almost only used by fighters as they are the only class that is proficient with them since creation, all other classes have to get Tower Shield Proficiency to be able to wield them without the huge penalty to attack rolls! Their mithral form is much more popular as it allow higher maximum dexterity bonus to AC.

Two-handed fighting
Two-handed fighting is the top DPS fighting style for all strength-based character.

Two-handed fighting is, simply put, using a two-handed weapon. While wielding a two-handed weapon, your strength modifier to damage rolls is multiplied by 1.5. So, the higher your strength is, the more you will benefit from this fighting style. This is why most barbarians select this fighting style. The only drawback you have from selecting Two-Handed Fighting is the loss of the shield slot, and thus, lower AC.

While fighting with a two-handed weapon, you get glancing blows (which are additional numbers dealt to other opponents around you). The damage and frequency of glancing blows is increased by these feats:


 * Two-Handed Fighting
 * Improved Two-Handed Fighting
 * Greater Two-Handed Fighting

Two-weapon fighting
Two-weapon fighting is the art of fighting with one weapon in each hand. Normally, when wielding one weapon in each hand, you suffer a -6 penalty on attack rolls on your primary hand and -10 on your off-hand. Taking the Two-Weapon Fighting feat reduces those penalties to -4 in each hands. Finally, if the weapon in your off-hand is a light weapon, the penalty is also reduced by 2.

While leveling up your character, you may gain access to feats that increase your number of attacks per round; rangers get those feats for free.


 * Two-Weapon Fighting
 * Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
 * Greater Two-Weapon Fighting

The BAB at which you get your additional attacks can be found here.

While two-handed fighting rests on having a high strength score, two-weapon fighting does not require high strength to be effective. In fact, two-weapon fighting relies more on weapon effect that happens on hit (like Wounding), effects that happen on critical (like Puncturing), or damage that is applied on the two weapons like Backstabbing and Sneak Attacks. However, a high strength score is also a valuable option.

Dexterity-based
Some two-weapon fighters decide to go and get a very high dexterity score and to rely on Weapon Finesse. This is really popular with rogues as it also allow them to meet the dexterity requirements on the Two-Weapon Fighting feats. Rogues deal most of their damage from their Sneak Attacks anyway and the damage dealt by their weapon is minimal. This is option is much less popular with rangers as they get the feats for free but some ranger do go this way, mostly to get their high dexterity bonus on their ranged attacks.

Characters that are not rogues but go this way usually contribute with ability damage, the best being a Wounding Rapier of Puncturing, which is a very expensive weapon.

Strength-based
The second, and only other, way to build a two-weapon fighter is to go Strength-based. This path is usually chosen by rangers; however, barbarians also go that way if they decide to go two-weapon fighting due the insane strength score they can reach while raged. Barbarians usually go this way to take advantage from Critical Rage.

While straight DPS is very common on a strength based build, ability damage remains a very popular option, mostly on barbarians since they get better effect from Puncturing than any other class currently.