Oni said:
Any thoughts on the number of blood points an awakened dhampir can hold, or the blood point cost to use the various powers. Thoughts on adjustments (or if they are necessary)?
i think it works pretty well, actually.
the maximum Blood Points defined by level works better than basing it on an ability score, which would probably give too many points at earlier levels, and too few at the later levels
one way to 'test' the class would be to look at all the ways the powers could be abused. some examples...
level 1 - 3 blood points, Commanding Gaze - 3 times a day, not bad at all (something i'm not sure of -
charm person can be negated by spell resistance, so what would the Awakened Dhampir roll to overcome this - character level (hit dice) or PrC level?)
level 2 - 6 BP, add Night Speech - both powers useable a total of 6 times in a day
level 3 - 9 BP, Feral Shape (2 pts per) - the shapes allowed aren't out of hand, so this also ok (*note - i'm not sure if this is exactly true because of all of the polymorph re-writes, but the Awakened Dhampir could burn 2 BP on a shapeshift just to heal his character level in hit points, and turn right back a total of 4 times in a day at this level - this still isn't too bad IMO)
level 4 - 12 BP, Enhance - this could be trouble. by the time the AD (Awakened Dhampir) is 10th level, they could enhance Str and Dex 5 points each or one of those up to 10 points
and it would last for 10 minutes - that, IMO, is immensely powerful. some ways to limit this could be; limit the time to 1 round per AD level, limit the overall time to 1 minute, define the increase as an enhancement bonus (so it won't stack with cat's grace or bull's strength)
level 5 - 15 BP, Blood Regeneration, at level 5, that's a (possible) total of 15d8 self-healing a day, by 10th level, it's 30d8 a day. i'm not sure i would change this, but if you wanted to limit it you could add "The awakened dhampir may not spend more blood points in a given round than they have awakened dhampir levels" to limit the AD to 5d8 per use (giving up a whole round to the standard action) and 10d8 at level 10. (just to compare at 15th level, a paladin with an 18 Cha can lay-on-hands for 60 points, the monk's wholeness-of-body would cure 30 points)
level 6 - 18 BP, Mist Form, not bad at all
level 7 - 21 BP, Dread Gaze, you may want to define what level this is cast at, if nothing else, for duration (yes, that's a stretch, and there's that SR question again)
level 8 - 24 BP, Greater Feral Shape, again the shapes aren't that powerful (and an AD would better off doing Feral Shape if they just wanted the healing)
Level 9 - 27 BP, Fortify, this seems a little
underpowered to me. a forsaker, for example, has a 9/+4 DR at level 8, and 11/+5 at level 10. i know that it's based on destroying magic items, but the AD has to use his 'resources' as well (even though, it could be argued that blood is easier to come by
), and the AD could only get the DR for a maximum of 54
rounds in a day (6 uses, 9 rounds each)
and, by the time an AD is 9th level (or at least 14th character level), he will more than likely be facing opponents that can bypass the DR easily
i'm not sure of a good way to change this, though. it could be made scaleable (4 BP for 15/+1, 6 BP for 15/+2), or just be changed to an overall higher requirement (15/+3 or whatever...)
level 10 - 30 BP, Soul Touch, i wouldn't change it. it's essentially an
enervation a maximum of 6 times per day, requiring a touch attack (not a ranged-touch, so sorcerers and wizards get it easy). i would definitely add the 'gains 5 temporary hit points'
have i rambled enough?
i should have added IMO and IMHO to everything in this post...i hope it helps
