Rystil Arden said:
Okay, I looked through. I still don't see any errors per se. So are all of the items homebrewed, then? What about the spells I don't recognise? It looks like for race, you're fairly similar to the standard Blink Dog, but you've removed three racial Hit Dice and in exchange given two abilities a 50% failure chance. For the class, you seem to have taken away Mettle and the Familiar in exchange for the curse being shockingly devastating. Not sure if either of those are balanced, but they definitely seem more balanced than being a Child, giving yourself -2 to all physical stats and then becoming "LA -1" and taking an extra level, so I doubt it will be a problem. Frankly, being a race with LA already puts you behind the people who take an LA +0 race and play a caster (doubly so for those LA -1 guys), but I see it as just part of the challenge, and Nissa will just have to be happy with Charm Person when the other people have Dominate
Looks like an interesting if unlucky little Blink Dog
The items are all from one source or another. Erm, I should note that. Except that I combined a couple of items into one (dogs are hard up for item slots, especially item slots that don't make me look stupid). And the
periapt is a riff off the
monk's belt (I checked with Isida about it upthread... somewhere...). The
shard, for instance, is a slightly modified
bag of tricks with a usage restriction. Anyway, I decided to go with tentative items for now (and keep a couple thousand gold for easier fadiddling), since it's the least concept-y part of the character.
Ditto for the alternate blink dog stats. Okay, I proposed them, but I did make sure to get approval. Spells are from a hodgepodge of sources based largely on what I felt suited the character and wasn't unbalanced, trying to stick to the bard and hexblade spell lists (with some restraints - I really wanted to take
heroism as a second-level spell like the bard, but decided that would be a bit much). The most important ones are
Phade's fearsome aspect (+5 Intimidate and can demoralize as a swift action for 1 minute/level, plus the RP goodness of being disguised as a horrible being of horrible horribleness) and
nightmare lullaby (flavored as creepy howling; it's a Long-range single-target confusion effect with a concentration + 2 rounds duration, so I can confuse people and just keep it up until they off themselves).
And the curse is actually that crazy in the hexblade proper at 7th level (which I count as, +1, due to the item), except that I've boosted it a bunch with, uhm, almost all of my feats. Stranegly, the de-fightering modifications to the Hexblade hardly affected the cursing at all - I would up with one more use/day than I otherwise would have had. They're marked, I think, with regard to their sources. What I actually gave up was fighter BAB and d10 HD for better skills and spells, for an end result that's kinda like a bard with cursing instead of bardic music and knowledge. Compare: a bard with all the feats and items spent on doing music could give +4 to attacks, most Will saves, and damage to all allies without having to worry about punching through a Will save. Not to mention all the other alt. bardic music feats I'd be picking up. So I think it's pretty balanced, especially since I'm using the bard as a power-level baseline. I call that a safeguard!
How 'bout it? Is the curse overkill? Maybe I should shuffle things around and put a little effort into melee (you know, more than +4 for 1d6 anyway). Right at the moment I'm thinking skills + low-light/darkvision/scent + my natural doggish inconspicuousness +
disguise self + maybe an owl familiar means good scouting, and the cursing will be my contribution to combat. Maybe mix it up after I get the
blink to work and just Aid Another, but it'd be nice to have some appreciable punch to go along with being the scariest, cursiest dog around.
What I'm really looking forward to is using a free action supernatural ability that requires no gestures or anything to screw with people. We start negotiating with someone? Wham, they have -13 on Bluff and Sense Motive. We know one enemy is going against another? Wham, the one we want to lose has -5 on almost everything for 24 hours. It should be entertaining, if I get to play. I can't win myself, but I can make sure someone loses.
)
