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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kelleris" data-source="post: 3033261" data-attributes="member: 19130">Yikes!  That's probably more than necessary, I think.  Don't forget that the blink dog has a fair share of negatives to go along with all the other stuff - I can't speak a humanoid language without getting some kind of item, I have no hands for items and the like, I can't (and wouldn't anyway) wear armor, and my magic item slots are all screwy (especially since I want to be able to pass for a normal dog!).  With those changes, it looks even less worth the (now 3) effective levels I'm giving up to me than the 6 levels I was losing earlier.Also, the revised advancement you posted looks weakened rather than anything else.  It looks (unless I'm reading the chart wrong), that I'm giving up a HD size, Mettle, a familiar, and 2 points of BAB to move the spellcasting chart down 1 level, get freer bonus feat choices, and get the second use/day of the curse one level earlier.  That doesn't look like a balanced trade to me.  What do you say to using the Bard as the basis (I debuff instead of buffing, basically)?  So it looks something like this:Bard1d6 HD6 + skills/levelbardic music and bardic knowledgerogue BABgood Fort and RefCha-dependent spellcasting as noted in the PHBand the revised Hexblade would be -->Hexblade1d8 HD [one size better than the bard]4 + skills/level [one step worse than the bard, and I'd like to improve the skill selection to match, with your permission]cursing abilities (as listed except increase the uses/day progression from 1 extra per 4 levels to 1 extra per 3 levels)rogue BABgood Fort and Will OR good Will and Arcane MettleCha-dependent spellcasting identical to the bard's using the hexblade listand LOSE Mettle and Summon Familiar (about two feats' worth of stuff) entirelyNobody's ever accused the bard or the hexblade of being overpowered to my knowledge, so matching them to each other should be fine, power-level-wise, assuming you agree with me that bardic music and bardic knowledge are (together with losing Mettle, the familiar, and possibly arcane resistance) two good, solid abilities and roughly equivalent to the hexblade's cursing ability.  It's worth noting that the hexblade's spell list is substantially worse than the bard's as well.And considering the built-in drawbacks of playing a dog, I think you'd be alright leaving all the basic stats alone and just concentrating on the ethereal movement ability, which is where the meat of the blink dog's LA comes from in any case.  In keeping with the nature of the character, how about making them unreliable (Lupaz is extremely sensitive to minor variations in the ethereal, and thus subject to mishaps most blink dogs instinctively avoid).  Say, an automatic failure chance of 50%.  So I can only dimension door half the time I try to, and it can take me several rounds at the beginning of combat to start blinking, or to shut it off if it becomes inconvenient.  That way I can't rely on the abilities tactically, so they're more balanced for combat, but I can still do the creepy "appearing from nowhere" and "walking through walls" bits I'd like to be able to do.  If you're still worried, that failure chance could go all the way up to 75%, making those abilities almost useless in combat and only really good for movement and the like.How does that sound?  I know it's a lot more than your first thought there, but I've tried to stick pretty closely to existing models for the alt. Hexblade and I really think the basic blink dog stat boosts are essentially paid for by the drawbacks of being nonhumanoid, leaving the admittedly impressive teleportation abilities as the only real reason to tack on a +2 LA.</blockquote>

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