Glamourant Prestige Class

robjh

First Post
I have a custom pantheon and I'm trying to enhance it by adding in prestige classes suitable for the various churches. Here's my first post from the list -- Ar-Talath is a type of Sun/Agriculture god. I was hoping to find out from this forum whether the class is balanced and playable? Thank you. :)

Glamourant

The chosen champions of Ar-Talath are known as glamourants. These servants of the sun are selected from the most dedicated clerics and defenders of the church for special duty in the eternal battle against the powers of darkness. They are trained in the true powers of radiance, and can wield light as a potent weapon. They are especially deadly when fighting foes of the night and the shadow.

Glamourants often serve as the militant arm of the church of Ar-Talath. They will typically defend the church and its followers by patrolling the borders of farm lands, or defending farming communities from invaders. They also rove the open steppes, helping those in need and providing a needed presence in the wilds. Due to their small numbers, these warriors are specially trained in techniques of fighting while outnumbered. They have mastered several unusual combat techniques that are closely held secrets of the brotherhood.

The glamourants are equally capable of fighting from horseback or the ground, but prefer to use a mount for its mobility. When battle is likely, they will don the rainbow banners, a pole strapped to their back with a variety of beautiful multi-colored feathers attached. When moving at a run or a gallop, these feathers produce the eerie humming sound that often unnerves inexperienced foes.

Hit Die: d8

Requirements

To qualify to become a glamourant, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Alignment: Any non-evil, non-chaotic.
Skills: Spot 3 ranks.
Feats: Blind-Fight.
Spells: Ability to cast 3rd level divine spells.
Patron: Ar-Talath.
Special: Must make a ritual sacrifice at a holy place of Ar-Talath while a rainbow is visible. A character with levels in cleric must have selected the Sun domain.

Class Skills

The glamourant's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (int), Diplomacy (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), and Spot (Wis).

Skill Points at Each Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the glamourant.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A glamourant is proficient with all simple weapons, flail, light armor, medium armor, and shields.

Spells per Day: When a new glamourant level is gained, the character gains new spells per day as if she has also gained a level in a divine spellcasting class she belonged to before adding the prestige class. She does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained, except for an increased effective level of spellcasting. This essentially means that she adds the level of glamourant to the level of whatever other divine spellcasting class the character has, then determines spells per day and caster level accordingly. If a character has more than one divine spellcasting class before becoming a glamourant, she must decide to which class she adds the new level for purposes of determining spells per day.

Turn Undead (Su): A glamourant can turn or destroy undead as a good-aligned cleric. For the purpose of determining the success, her glamourant class levels stack with the levels of any other classes that also grant a turn undead ability.

Smite Darkness (Su): Once per day a glamourant may attempt to smite a creature of the darkness with one normal melee attack. She adds her Charisma bonus (if any) to her attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damage per glamourant level. These bonuses stack with any other attack modifiers that apply. The types of creatures that can be affected by this attack are those hindered, weakened, or damaged by direct sunlight, including creatures with daylight powerlessness or light sensitivity, and those that take skill penalties in bright light.

At 5th level she can smite darkness twice per day.

Dazzle Attack (Sp): At 2nd level, once per day per class level of glamourant she can attempt to perform a dazzle with one normal melee attack. On a successful attack the foe must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 10 + glamourant level + Charisma modifier) or be dazzled for 1 full minute. Sightless creatures, as well as creatures that are already dazzled, are not affected.

Captivating Weave (Sp): At 3rd level as a full round action, a glamourant can wield a one or two-handed melee weapon in a hypnotic pattern that captivates creatures within a 10-ft.-radius spread. This hypnotic pattern can be maintained from round to round using full round actions, but immediately ends once the action ceases for any reason. This ability is otherwise the same as the hypnotic pattern spell (caster level equals class level).

Enhanced Sight (Su): A 4th level glamourant gains the low-light ability of an elf. If she already has low-light vision, she gains enhanced low-light vision. This permits her to see four times as far as a human in conditions of poor illumination.

Power of the Light (Su): A 6nd level glamourant casts divine spells of type Light at +1 caster level. As a free action she can also cause any magic weapon she is wielding to radiate light as bright as a torch. This light goes out once she releases the weapon.

Rainbow Burst (Sp): At 7th level, as a full round action while she is being flanked, a glamourant can create a rainbow burst using a melee weapon. An explosion of color and light strikes each adjacent foe, and they must each succeed at a Willpower save (DC 10 + glamourant level + Charisma modifier) or be blinded and stunned for 1d4 rounds, then stunned for 1 round. Sightless creatures are not affected.

Turn Shadows (Su): An 8th level glamourant can turn or destroy extraplanar creatures from the plane of shadows as if they were undead.

Table: Glamourant

Base
Class Atk Fort Ref Will
Level Bonus Save Save Save Special
1st +0 +0 +0 +2 Turn undead, smite darkness 1/day
2nd +1 +0 +0 +3 Dazzle attack
3rd +2 +1 +1 +3 Captivating weave
4th +3 +1 +1 +4 Enhanced sight
5th +3 +1 +1 +4 Smite darkness 2/day
6th +4 +2 +2 +5 Power of the light
7th +5 +2 +2 +5 Rainbow burst
8th +6 +2 +2 +6 Turn shadows

At each level the glamourant also gains spells per day
as +1 level of existing class. (Not shown above.)
 

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Ok, you totally have to rip off Radiant Servant of Pelor for its Radiance ability - it causes all [light] spells cast by the character to have double illumination, and count as one level higher for the purpose of overcoming magical darkness. And it should totally be a 1st level power... it's very flavorful, with a kind of neat "ooh" value, but not at all unbalancing... just the kind of thing you want at 1st level.

You should make it 10 levels... that's just the standard. A neat twist on requiring divine spellcasting would be to instead require the ability to cast Daylight as a divine spell (pretty much the same thing, but it looks cooler).

-The Souljourner
 
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A neat prestige class, certainly, but it's got everything the cleric has and then some, so it's definitely kinda overpowered. The cleric's already the strongest core class (except when used strictly as a healing machine that never fights back, but only foolish folk or people playing a pacifist would squander the cleric's mightiness that way).

I'd be tempted to say, change their spellcasting ability to only progress at 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th level. Make 'em give up 3 levels of spellcasting ability if they want all the neat extra powers. Clerics and druids of this sort will still just barely gain 9th-level spells by 20th-level as a character, but only one such spell a day, so they'll be sacrificing something at least. Otherwise, this prestige class'd make clerics and druids even more superior to all other classes.

In any case, regardless, you need to revise Captivating Weave and Rainbow Burst. As they're written now, they're useable at will, and that's definitely too powerful. Captivating Weave should be useable once per day, plus once per day per point of positive Charisma modifier, maybe, at best. Rainbow Burst should only be useable once per day, possibly twice per day; it's the best stunning and blinding ability I've ever seen, and the DC to save against it is rather high.

You don't need to lengthen the class to 10 levels, prestige classes don't need to be standardized to 10 levels, that's just a stupid idea. Plenty of great prestige class concepts don't need 10 levels to be done. Some need only 3 or 5 levels, some can encompass 13 or more, they don't need to follow some stupid, pointless 10-level standard.
 

Unlike some (perhaps many) people, I don't necessarily think that just because a prestige class doesn't have a huge drawback to negate its benefits, it's overpowered.

This is a very specific and flavorful prestige class with very specific and flavorful abilities. Assuming some of them get tweaked (I didn't notice that the two abilities you mentioned were at will, for example), then I think it's fine. Not everyone is going to want to be a cleric of a Sun god. Not everyone is going to want to take the Sun domain... Certainly, not everyone is going to want their cleric to take blind fight and lose their good fort save.

Dazzle is pretty weak. Hypnotic Pattern is pretty weak. Enhanced sight is cool, but not spectacular. Rainbow burst is ridiculously good and needs to be toned down.

If Dazzle is a spell-like effect, it should take a standard action to use and be just like the spell. That's what spell-like means. Otherwise, it's supernatural (but I think spell-like works for that ability).

Same goes for Captivating Weave... should probably be only a few times a day.

Rainbow Burst should be supernatural, since it's not mimicking a spell, and it should be only 1-2 times a day... stunning and blinding for 1d4 rounds and stunned for an additional round is REALLY good. I understand that it's situational, but still...

-The Souljourner
 


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