[E6 Class] Dervish

Zelc · Sep 20, 2007

Kunimatyu said:
Quick question for you, Zelc -- would you be interested in helping me create a basic "Dervish" class for my E6 campaign?

Ideally, what I'd like to do is create a capable full-BAB light-armor damage dealing class.

Things that I'd like for it to have:

* A dervish-dance ability that kicks in early on that lets them make full attacks while moving, BUT one that is worded such that it doesn't become a "splash" ability for other classes.
* Increased speed like a monk or barbarian (though perhaps only while "dancing")
* Two-weapon fighting as a bonus feat (I don't want to encourage 2-handed power attackers w/dervish dance)
* Skirmish +1d6 somewhere in the class levels, to increase the viability of their damage output.
* A two-weapon rend ability, as in E6 there's no way for anyone to pick that up.

Basically, a dervish would be a very mobile but lightly armored fighter focused around dual wielding, with a slight deserty flavor. It should be on par with barbarian THF damage, but with less staying power.

Well, here's a rough sketch:

Level
1 Two-Weapon Fighting, Slashing Two-Weapon Fighting
2 Dervish Dance, Fast Movement +5
3 Endurance, Shifting Dance
4 Two-Weapon Defense
5 Fast Movement +10
6 Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, Rending Dance

Slashing Two-Weapon Fighting: If you wield a one-handed slashing weapon in your off-hand, treat that weapon as a light weapon for the purposes of determining your attack penalty for two-weapon fighting.

Dervish Dance (Ex): Same as Complete Warrior's Dervish Dance, with the following exceptions. The Dervish can use Dervish dance a number of times a day equal to her character level. She gains a +1 bonus to attack and a bonus to damage equal to half her character level. She can remain in the Dervish Dance for a number of rounds equal to half her ranks in Perform plus her Charisma modifier (if positive).

Fast Movement (Ex): Same as Complete Warrior's Fast Movement.

Shifting Dance (Ex): While the dervish in a Dervish Dancing, attack of opportunities made against her suffer a 20% miss chance. This effect is not due to concealment; if the attacker also suffers a miss chance due to concealment, check each miss chance seperately.

Rending Dance (Ex): While in a Dervice Dance, if you hit the same creature with both your main hand and off hand weapon in the same round, you deal additional damage equal to 1d6 + half your Strength modifier. This extra damage is treated as the same type that your off-hand weapon deals normally for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction and other effects related to damage type. You can gain this extra damage no more than once per round against a given opponent.

If we use the Barbarian that has a +2/+2 rage until level 4, the Dervish largely keeps pace with him except at levels 1 and 4. That cements her as the best TWFer in E6, certainly.

Phew, that took a while. I probably won't be doing this very often...

Kunimatyu · Sep 20, 2007

I like the basic outline, though I think it has too many built-in good abilities compared to the Barbarian and Ranger.

Here's my take on it:

d8 HD, 4+Int skills, good Fort and Ref

1 Dervish Dance, Slashing Blades
2 Two-Weapon Fighting
3 Endurance
4 Skirmish +1d6
5 Whirling dance (+10 speed while dancing, longer dance)
6 Two-weapon rend

Dervish dance is 1/encounter, and keys off dervish class level to stop splashing. I may also have it fatigue the character post-dance, but only for a number of rounds = the length of the dance. What I need to do, is run the numbers and see how it stacks up versus a THF Barb.

Zelc · Sep 20, 2007

Well, Dervish Dance seems rather useless at level 1 when you only have one attack and no TWF

.

Giving them Skirmish will probably push their damage too high. Dervish dance can't grant more than +1 attack, or again it would push the damage too high (I changed it to +1 attack and +dervish level/2 damage). Two-weapon rend was tough to balance, because it's really good vs. low AC opponents (where TWF is good anyway) and not so good vs. higher AC opponents (where TWF is not so good).

Dev notes:
Level 1: Since Dervish Dance isn't so good without extra attacks and I didn't want to give Dervishes too much at level 1, I gave them TWF instead. It keeps with the scheme of having lots of attacks, although the dervish isn't so mobile at this point. Also gave them Slashing TWF instead of Slashing Blades to allow for greater flexibility and ease of number crunching

.

Level 2: Dervish dance. I found that giving them more than +1 bonus to attacks was too good (basically it would negate the TWF penalty, and then you're just attacking twice as often). Fast movement +5 for flavor, and to help with the dance.

Level 3: Endurance for flavor and request. Shifting Dance so this isn't a dead level, and so they don't get mauled the first time they dance an opponent with Combat Reflexes (well, they still probably will be, but it won't hurt as bad). Note to Dervishes: please do not dance with the hydra!

Level 4: Dead level, and I had to fill it with something. Again, increasing their defenses so they don't die to AoOs.

Level 5: Increased speed! yay!

Level 6: Slashing Rend was tough to balance, but in the end 1d6+.5*Str worked decently. And the obligatory Greater Two-Weapon Fighting.

Imp · Sep 20, 2007

Are you using splatbook feats at all? Because, Oversized TWF; and it's perfectly possible to imagine a variant dervish-type that uses, for example, flails, or just a plain ol' quarterstaff.

What about a Master TWF feat at 6th level that eliminates the -2/-2 penalty entirely?

Kunimatyu · Sep 21, 2007

Zelc said:
Well, Dervish Dance seems rather useless at level 1 when you only have one attack and no TWF .

I thought the small attack bonus made it at least somewhat useful to a 1st level character, similar to a low-level Knight using Knight's Challenge.

Zelc said:
Giving them Skirmish will probably push their damage too high. Dervish dance can't grant more than +1 attack, or again it would push the damage too high (I changed it to +1 attack and +dervish level/2 damage). Two-weapon rend was tough to balance, because it's really good vs. low AC opponents (where TWF is good anyway) and not so good vs. higher AC opponents (where TWF is not so good).

Is is possible to keep Skirmish and lose the +damage/2 levels thing? I think players enjoy +1d6 more than a small flat bonus, and it encourages them to stay mobile and keep their guy zipping around the battlefield.

Zelc said:
Dev notes:
Level 1: Since Dervish Dance isn't so good without extra attacks and I didn't want to give Dervishes too much at level 1, I gave them TWF instead. It keeps with the scheme of having lots of attacks, although the dervish isn't so mobile at this point. Also gave them Slashing TWF instead of Slashing Blades to allow for greater flexibility and ease of number crunching .

Level 2: Dervish dance. I found that giving them more than +1 bonus to attacks was too good (basically it would negate the TWF penalty, and then you're just attacking twice as often). Fast movement +5 for flavor, and to help with the dance.

I find your analysis of the +1 attack bonus very interesting -- I wonder how phrasing it as a reduction of TWF penalties would work? The "coolest" dervish dance would probably allow movement and TWF attacks with no loss of attack bonus. (Mechanically it's not that different, but I think something like that would really catch a player's eye.)

Zelc said:
Level 3: Endurance for flavor and request. Shifting Dance so this isn't a dead level, and so they don't get mauled the first time they dance an opponent with Combat Reflexes (well, they still probably will be, but it won't hurt as bad). Note to Dervishes: please do not dance with the hydra!

Level 4: Dead level, and I had to fill it with something. Again, increasing their defenses so they don't die to AoOs.

Shifting Dance is the first thing I really don't like -- 20% concealment versus AoOs just seems like it'll bog down gameplay a lot of the time. Also, as a side note: a character only provokes 1 AoO per turn by moving, so they won't get splattered by a Combat Reflexes guy.

Zelc said:
Level 5: Increased speed! yay!

Level 6: Slashing Rend was tough to balance, but in the end 1d6+.5*Str worked decently. And the obligatory Greater Two-Weapon Fighting.

I'm not sure Greater TWF (and the TWF Defense) need to be directly included into the class. Since this is being designed for E6 directly, we know that characters will have tons of feats already. In addition, I would think that granting these additional feats stacks the class with too many goodies relative to the Barbarian and Ranger, the two classes I think the Dervish is most similar to.

EDIT: Since I haven't said so already -- thanks so much for taking the time to put this together!

Zelc · Sep 21, 2007

Check the edit in the Dervish Dance section.

Kunimatyu said:
I thought the small attack bonus made it at least somewhat useful to a 1st level character, similar to a low-level Knight using Knight's Challenge.

I guess that works. Still, I have to question why a class built around two-weapon fighting doesn't get two-weapon fighting at level 1. If I wanted to play a two-weapon fighting class, I'd want to do it from day 1, not switch over after 1000 experience points.

Is is possible to keep Skirmish and lose the +damage/2 levels thing? I think players enjoy +1d6 more than a small flat bonus, and it encourages them to stay mobile and keep their guy zipping around the battlefield.

Welll... they have to move to get Dervish Dance bonuses. The trouble with Skirmish is 1d6 is an average of 3.5 damage. Level/2 is either 1, 2, or 3 points of damage. Since the Dervish is already pretty close to a Barbarian's damage level, there could be some trouble with that (or if you take out the damage bonus, they'll be much weaker at lower levels). If you really want it though, I guess you could leave it in.

I find your analysis of the +1 attack bonus very interesting -- I wonder how phrasing it as a reduction of TWF penalties would work? The "coolest" dervish dance would probably allow movement and TWF attacks with no loss of attack bonus. (Mechanically it's not that different, but I think something like that would really catch a player's eye.)

It works great: "While in a Dervish Dance or something like that, the penalties for fighting with two weapons is reduced by 1." Easy. Reducing it by 2 to no penalty, again, could lead to balance problems.

EDIT: I just realized that if you do this, then it really would be useless at level 1 when they don't have TWF. *shrug*

Shifting Dance is the first thing I really don't like -- 20% concealment versus AoOs just seems like it'll bog down gameplay a lot of the time. Also, as a side note: a character only provokes 1 AoO per turn by moving, so they won't get splattered by a Combat Reflexes guy.

Sure, we can take it out. I put it in there so level 3 isn't a dead level. I honestly can't see anyone getting excited about getting Endurance.

I'm not sure Greater TWF (and the TWF Defense) need to be directly included into the class. Since this is being designed for E6 directly, we know that characters will have tons of feats already. In addition, I would think that granting these additional feats stacks the class with too many goodies relative to the Barbarian and Ranger, the two classes I think the Dervish is most similar to.

Greater TWF is something every single Dervish will want since it's a TWF class. It doesn't make sense to have a TWF class, then force them to burn their 6th level feat to get Greater TWF. To be honest, I only stuck TWF defense to avoid having a dead level there.

EDIT: Since I haven't said so already -- thanks so much for taking the time to put this together!

No problem, it's much easier to design classes for E6 and I had a template to work off of. I've probably used up my "new class" quota for this quarter though

.

comrade raoul · Oct 10, 2007

Kunimatyu said:
Dervish dance is 1/encounter, and keys off dervish class level to stop splashing. I may also have it fatigue the character post-dance, but only for a number of rounds = the length of the dance.

Good idea. More specifically, were you thinking of something like the following? (This is how I would elaborate the idea.)

--) You can initiate a dance once per encounter.
--) A dance lasts for a number of rounds to half your dervish level (rounded down) plus one round for every four ranks you have in Perform (dance). A first-level dervish can dance just dance for one round; a 6th-level dervish with maxed perform can dance for five. You can voluntarily end a dance early.
--) After you dance, you're fatigued for a number of rounds equal to the length of the dance. (Pick when you dance carefully!)
--) While you dance, the penalty for attacking with two weapons is reduced by two.

Here are some other changes I'd add, since I think as a fighting-performer it'd be fun to make the dervish more Charisma-centric.

--) Starting at 1st level: when you're wearing light or no armor and not wielding a shield, any you can apply your Charisma bonus (if any) to your AC.
--) At 6th level, you get a special rend attack. If you successfully hit a target with both a primary and an off-hand weapon, and if you can dance for at least one round after the current one, you can perform a "finishing" rend. (People with a better vocabulary than I might give this a cooler name based on terminology for ending dances with a flourish, maybe.) You deal 1d6 points of damage per point of Charisma bonus, plus an additional 1d6 for each round of dancing you have left. (A 6th-level dervish with a Charisma of 18, who could dance for three rounds after the current one, deals 7d6 points of damage--but ends his dance much earlier than he would otherwise.)

Kunimatyu · Oct 10, 2007

That 'finishing rend' idea is gold, raoul!

It also sets up some fun tactical choices, too -- once you've hit with both weapons during a dance, do you go for broke and end the dance?

I'm not totally sure that it's worth dealing damage based on rounds left in combat, though -- a lot of players may not keep perfect track of things, and that makes it even harder.

Here's my thought on fixing that: what if "dervish stance" is always on, but doing a Rend knocks you out of it for the rest of the encounter?

As a 1/encounter ability, most players will turn it on at the start of every encounter, since most combats are 1-5 rounds. HOWEVER, if a move like Finishing Rend knocks you out of the dance for the rest of the encounter (or, put another way, requires a minute of meditation to do again, thus functionally making it 1/encounter), then you have a serious choice to make -- do you lose your mobile TWF abilities in exchange for doing a lot of damage, or keep dancing?

In thinking about it, I think I'm actually okay with a Dervish dealing more damage than a Barbarian on average, provided the Dervish has a Ranger-ish AC and a d8 HD -- it doesn't seem unreasonable that a lower-HD class should be able to deal more damage under certain conditions, especially if they're going toe-to-toe in melee.

Zelc · Oct 11, 2007

While you dance, the penalty for attacking with two weapons is reduced by two.

I'd be reeaaaaal hesitant about totally eliminating the penalties for fighting with two weapons. If they have any way of adding extra damage to their attacks (probably with weapon enchantments from their friendly Bard/Wizard), their doubled attacks per round will really take advantage of that in a nasty way. How about once you gain the TWF feat, the Dervish Dance only drops the penalties by one point?

Kunimatyu said:
That 'finishing rend' idea is gold, raoul!

It also sets up some fun tactical choices, too -- once you've hit with both weapons during a dance, do you go for broke and end the dance?

I'm not totally sure that it's worth dealing damage based on rounds left in combat, though -- a lot of players may not keep perfect track of things, and that makes it even harder.

That is a great idea!

To address Kunimatyu's concern: what if it just dealt (cha mod)d8 damage instead? I'm assuming you won't have an easy way to super-size your Charisma in E6, and even a one-time 6d8 damage isn't that impressive considering how much other stats you're giving up. Consider: a wizard will be pumping that out in an AoE (well, 6 damage less than that with Ref half), and won't be nerfing his other spells to do that. Anyone with Greater Psionic Weapon can add 4d6 damage, usually without losing access to their main class ability (and it's just a full-round or move action to regain Psionic Focus). In fact, I think using d10's is a better idea, and you might be able to make a case for even using d12's (d20's are definitely pushing it

). 4d10 averages 22, 6d10 averages 33. 4d8 averages 18, 6d8 averages 27. Plus, the first kill matters more than the last kill, and using this ability to get the first kill means the Dervish is much less effective for the rest of the encounter.

Here's my thought on fixing that: what if "dervish stance" is always on, but doing a Rend knocks you out of it for the rest of the encounter?

As a 1/encounter ability, most players will turn it on at the start of every encounter, since most combats are 1-5 rounds. HOWEVER, if a move like Finishing Rend knocks you out of the dance for the rest of the encounter (or, put another way, requires a minute of meditation to do again, thus functionally making it 1/encounter), then you have a serious choice to make -- do you lose your mobile TWF abilities in exchange for doing a lot of damage, or keep dancing?

*shrug* I'm a fan of being x/day abilities in E6, since that automatically creates the opportunity for a feat that can be taken an infinite number of times. To be honest, I'm trying to figure out what to offer super-experienced Fighters other than Toughness

. Limiting it to 1 activation per encounter through fatigue is good. Granted, if the team finds some way around the fatigue... maybe using a hard cap of 1/encounter is better if you're worried about lots of Rends (limited by uses of Dance per day, of course).

In thinking about it, I think I'm actually okay with a Dervish dealing more damage than a Barbarian on average, provided the Dervish has a Ranger-ish AC and a d8 HD -- it doesn't seem unreasonable that a lower-HD class should be able to deal more damage under certain conditions, especially if they're going toe-to-toe in melee.

Well, the Ranger AC isn't that much worse than the Barbarian AC, and d8 HD is just 12 HP less than a Barbarian's in E6. If you want to give Dervishes higher damage, I'd recommend dropping the Cha bonus to AC, at least.

By the way, here's an interesting thought: a Quickdraw Dervish throwing weapons while dancing. If you want to limit that, you might want to mention melee only somewhere

.

Kunimatyu · Oct 11, 2007

Zelc said:
I'd be reeaaaaal hesitant about totally eliminating the penalties for fighting with two weapons. If they have any way of adding extra damage to their attacks (probably with weapon enchantments from their friendly Bard/Wizard), their doubled attacks per round will really take advantage of that in a nasty way. How about once you gain the TWF feat, the Dervish Dance only drops the penalties by one point?

I really think that it's worth some sacrifices in other areas to keep the dervish from incurring penalties when TWFing -- it really stands out as an ability, and gives the dervish something unique.

Zelc said:
That is a great idea!

To address Kunimatyu's concern: what if it just dealt (cha mod)d8 damage instead? I'm assuming you won't have an easy way to super-size your Charisma in E6, and even a one-time 6d8 damage isn't that impressive considering how much other stats you're giving up. Consider: a wizard will be pumping that out in an AoE (well, 6 damage less than that with Ref half), and won't be nerfing his other spells to do that. Anyone with Greater Psionic Weapon can add 4d6 damage, usually without losing access to their main class ability (and it's just a full-round or move action to regain Psionic Focus). In fact, I think using d10's is a better idea, and you might be able to make a case for even using d12's (d20's are definitely pushing it ). 4d10 averages 22, 6d10 averages 33. 4d8 averages 18, 6d8 averages 27. Plus, the first kill matters more than the last kill, and using this ability to get the first kill means the Dervish is much less effective for the rest of the encounter.

My thought: Roll Perform(dance), deal that much bonus Rend damage. Simple, and can be tweaked fairly high in E6 if the player wants to focus on it.

Zelc said:
*shrug* I'm a fan of being x/day abilities in E6, since that automatically creates the opportunity for a feat that can be taken an infinite number of times. To be honest, I'm trying to figure out what to offer super-experienced Fighters other than Toughness . Limiting it to 1 activation per encounter through fatigue is good. Granted, if the team finds some way around the fatigue... maybe using a hard cap of 1/encounter is better if you're worried about lots of Rends (limited by uses of Dance per day, of course).

How about we have the Dervish Dance as an ability that you can use a number of times per day = your dervish level + Cha mod, and it works like this:

Dervish Dance(Ex): As a swift action, you may move up to your full speed while making a full attack with melee weapons. You must move at least 5 feat between each attack, and you cannot reenter a square you just exited(though you may reenter it later in the turn). You may use this ability a number of times per day equal to your dervish class level + your Charisma modifier.

Slashing Blades(Ex): You treat the scimitar as a light weapon. While using light slashing weapons, your penalties for Two-Weapon Fighting are decreased by 2.

Rending Finish(Ex): When you hit an enemy with your primary and off-hand weapon in the same turn, you may roll a Perform(dance) and deal that much slashing damage to your enemy. If you use this ability, you may not Dervish Dance until you have meditated for one minute in a nonthreatening situation.

Zelc said:
Well, the Ranger AC isn't that much worse than the Barbarian AC, and d8 HD is just 12 HP less than a Barbarian's in E6. If you want to give Dervishes higher damage, I'd recommend dropping the Cha bonus to AC, at least.

By the way, here's an interesting thought: a Quickdraw Dervish throwing weapons while dancing. If you want to limit that, you might want to mention melee only somewhere .

I agree - Dervishes probably shouldn't get a Cha bonus to AC if their damage can edge out a barbarian's. And I just took care of the Quickdraw thing in the above abilities.

[E6 Class] Dervish

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