We now have two races with exceptionally high dexterity (Illithoids and male Keph) and no real advantages otherwise (Especially the Keph. Poor Keph.)

It seems glaringly, gratingly, hurtingly obvious that there's a class which cares about dexterity in the works somewhere, but Estarra (And Roark) only know when that's coming out. Until then, male Kephera will be sub-par, without any really viable class choices.

So I'm proposing (Along with my deeply ingrained love of swashbuckler-type characters) ways to let warriors take advantage of dexterity instead of strength.

Outright changes:

Chance of poison working depending on dexterity. I'm not sure, though, what influences that right now.
Give warriors Dodge - Not as good as bards, doesn't increase with skill, only works for leather armour or less.

Skill additions:

New knighthood (Or possibly just blademaster and pureblade - Pureblade needs love) skill - FInesse.

COMBATSTYLE FINESSE
You can only use this combat style while wearing leather armour or less. While using finesse, your dexterity will influence weapon damage instead of strength.

Artifacts:

Feather of Adroitness - Must be attached to a hat; the hat is not made nondecay, but will reset along with the feather to your inventory. While wearing a feathered hat, you won't be able to put on any armour heavier than leather. Your dexterity will influence weapon damage instead of strength.

Oh, and to make high-strength warriors happy:

Rune of Brutality - A weapon etched with the Rune of Brutality will cause deep wounds depending on the user's strength, not dexterity.

ETA: I do see an issue with making Faeling warriors even better. Any suggestions?

ETAA: How about this - Any "finesse" effects also give a speed bonus, which is non-cumulative with racial bonuses and in fact replaces it even if it's worse. Then you can balance finesse damage by altering the curve; it doesn't have to give the same bonus as strength.

Issue with this: Shadowlord Faelings, Elfen Lords.

Both have high dex.

Elfen Lords are already, imo, the best specialization race out there.

Shadowlords are kind of weak at the moment due to the lower strength, but modify dex enough to make Kephara males plausible, and I think Shadowlords would be massively overpowered as well with their speed.

I did propose a fix - Using any sort of finesse bonus takes away speed. Then you just have diminishing returns; make it so 18 dex, with finesse, is roughly equivalent to 14 strength. So it'll be advantageous for Illithid and Kephera, maybe some other race, not so much for Elfen, probably not for Faelings.

Keep in mind also that most warriors kill with deepwounds (Or so I'm lead to believe) which already rely on dexterity (I think).

Str and weapon precision are the biggest factors in deepwounds, dex is pretty minimal. It mostly affects the chance to hit with a stronger affliction, although I heard it gives a tiny bit to the wounding amount. Also a question, if you make them able to only wear leather or nothing how would they take any hits? Dodge with no increases in strength isn't going to do much.

Dex matters little for a warrior

Dex opens up the chance for afflictions earlier.. that's it... Say, Critical is around 2000 wounds... at 2000 wounds you would have more chances of getting an affliction with more Dex, but it isn't noticeable either way because Warriors depend on strength to give those 2000 wounds and by the time a low Str and high Dex race achieves 2000 wounds a high Str warrior would've achieve at least 3000 wounds so chances are already high and Dex is moot by now

I'm afraid you are incorrect. If deepwounds were dependant on DEX a lot, most people would invest heavily in DEX and not STR. They're not stupid, you know.

DEX does affect wounding, but on a very minimal basis. A single point of dexterity gives about 10% of a single point of strength's wounding increase.

That being said, it's hard to balance a dex-based warrior without making shadowlord faelings overpowered. And your proposition to make 18 DEX count as ~14 STR isn't that good either - 14 is too low.

The solution would be to make a dex-based class which does NOT use the wounds system.

Yeah.. a heavy Bleeding class would be awesome

What I'm proposing here is a quick addition to make high dexterity races viable as warriors; they don't need to be good.

However, just changing illithoid and male kephera stats already might be better, once we know how good they actually are.

What about warriors with acrobatics instead of athletics? I think that was mentioned once before.

I think the brokenness of fullplate + dodge would only be offset by warriors not wanting to lose flex.