Duelist variant

[Tessarael]

Hey folks,

I wanted to ponder some changes to Duelist to make it more viable for a weapon/shield/no armor guy. Here's what I came up with. Let me know if you think it is balanced, what should be changed, etc.

Thanks,
Tess.

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Dodgy Duelist
Prerequisites (same): BAB +6, Perform rank 3, Tumble rank 5, Dodge, Mobility, Weapon Finesse
HD: d10
Skill points at each level: 4 + Int modifier
BAB: +1/level
Saves: poor Fort, good Ref, poor Will

Duelist levels stack with any other classes that have Uncanny Dodge. Must be wearing no armor to use Canny Defense, but you can use a shield that doesn't give an armor check penalty (e.g. Buckler, Masterwork Light Shield, Mithril Heavy Shield).

Abilities:
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1 Sneak Attack +1d6, Uncanny Dodge
2 Canny Defense (+1 AC up to INT bonus limit)
3 Enhanced Mobility
4 Sneak Attack +1d6, Canny Defense (+2 AC up to INT bonus limit)
5 Improved Uncanny Dodge
6 Acrobatic Charge, Canny Defense (+3 AC up to INT bonus limit)
7 Sneak Attack +1d6
8 Deflect Arrows, Canny Defense (+4 AC up to INT bonus limit)
9 Elaborate Parry
10 Sneak Attack +1d6, Canny Defense (+5 AC up to INT bonus limit)

Notes: the Canny Defense bonus doesn't stack, its a total of +5 AC at level 10, if you have 20 Intelligence.

4d6 of Sneak Attack may be a bit powerful, but comparing this to 10 levels in Rogue, it doesn't seem so.

So criticisms please ...

 

[hong]

I have a "duelist" PrC here, which you may want to steal ideas from:

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/flashing_sword.htm

Basically it fills the same niche as the regular duelist, and most light armour/swashbuckler types. I made it because 1) I like indulging my gearhead tendencies, and 2) I don't like the flavour of the regular duelist abilities, in terms of how they scale with level.

To explain 2) further, there's a subtle shift in D&D's paradigm as you advance from 5th level up to 15th. At low levels, the PCs are heroes: they can do exceptional things, but they're still basically ordinary human beings. At high levels, the PCs are _superheroes_, with super powers to match. Most high-level D&D characters can fly and teleport, they have tougher armour than a dragon, they can dispatch battalions of mooks with relative ease, and some of them can even raise people from the dead or kill with a touch.

Now it's true that unless you're a spellcaster, most of these powers are gained through magic items. You could say that the actual characters themselves, without their toys, are still just ordinary guys. However, in actual play, 15th level D&D often tends to resemble a supers game or a wire-fu movie rather than your typical low-powered Western fantasy.

With that in mind, if you look at the regular duelist's abilities, most of them are pretty low-powered in terms of flavour (although they may be quite powerful in terms of game mechanics). You become really good at charging people, or at parrying attacks; compared to what else you're doing at those levels, it's pretty mundane. It also leads to genre confusion, at least in my mind. Exactly how you're meant to "parry" a Gargantuan dragon's wing slam isn't really explained, for example.

Hence my attempted duelist replacement, which substitutes abilities with a more decidedly supernatural bent. By explicitly resorting to magic, it sidesteps issues of how a heroic-but-mundane character is meant to mix it up in a superheroic game.




What's that, you say? Stop hijacking the thread?



Oops.



Anyway, to give you some feedback on your class , it looks okay. Is there a reason you limited canny defense to a +5 max bonus?

 

[Tessarael]

Hey Hong,

I had a quick look at your Duelist of the Flashing Sword. It looks very nice for a high-powered/flashy campaign.

I guess one thing I want to do with the Duelist variant I put here is ensure it is balanced versus other standard alternatives. I always have a hard time pricing the specky abilities.

I don't envisage Canny Defense being limited at a +5 AC bonus. Rather, I envisage the same or slower (maybe +1 AC/3 or 4 levels up to max of INT bonus) progression continuing into Epic levels.

I wanted to slow down how quickly the AC bonus is achieved. In particular, it's a good motivation for taking the class to high and/or epic levels if you have high INT.

Cheers, Tess.

 

[RangerWickett]

I wanted to slow down how quickly the AC bonus is achieved. In particular, it's a good motivation for taking the class to high and/or epic levels if you have high INT.

Cheers, Tess.

And it's a waste if you don't have a high Intelligence. I don't see why flashy duelists need to have a high Intelligence.

Now, the problem to designing a good duelist prestige class, in my mind, are magic items. I can design a great duelist for a system without magic armor and bracers of armor. It's easy; you just give the duelist benefits that eventually are as good as or slightly better than full plate. But with magic items, you can't give a good bonus, because then people stack a Bracer of Armor +8 with a +10 class-based AC bonus, and you've gone and unbalanced yourself.

I've house-ruled the hell out of my game, because I prefer PCs to be the heroes, not their items. Thus, the duelist class is sorta close to my heart. In your case, I suggest a simple +1 AC per 2 levels progression, regardless of Intelligence.