Kynes Ruby Arnlis: Female martial half-jann falchioneer/dervish [please critique]

[JiCi]

Okay, I've updated the stats:
- added vest of resistance (as cloak)
- added the heavy fortification ability to the bracers

Should be better now. What do you think ?

 

[Kat']

As for the falchion in one hand. Well, historically, the falchion is not a two-handed weapon; it's not a great scimitar, it's a one-handed, European chopping sword. And since it only deals 2d4 points of damage, it's not exactly overpowering as a one-handed weapon, even with the increased crit range. Basically, when a character takes the prestige class, he can use the falchion like a bastard sword.

Understood, though 2d4/18-20 x2 would be a high damage output for a 1-h weapon. It's comparable to the elven blade, which is an exotic weapon and requires a feat to wield.

For the historical part: Falchions are indeed one-handed swords, historically speaking, similar to scimitars but with a counter-blade along the tip allowing them to be used for straight thrusts. The so-called "great falchions" or "war falchions", which were used two-handed, were rare and exotic even then. Which is why I believe that the creator's original idea with a "two-handed falchion" was in fact to depict the german longknife. See this picture from Vienna's history museum, and compare the weapon's size size to the gauntlet's at the bottom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Long_Knife_Vienna.jpg. Been there twice, the thing is REALLY impressive.

The drawback for getting to use the falchion in one hand is this: you have take a prestige class to do it. That, in my opinion, is more limiting than the Monkey Grip feat, which allows you to use any two-handed weapon in one hand.

Depending on the class's prerequisites and benefits granted, this doesn't have to be a drawback...

And Monkey Grip sucks, really, because of the -2 penalty to attack rolls which makes it basically not better than Power Attack for martial weapons, and only mildly interesting with exotic weapons. Let's compare Monkey Grip damage output with Power Attack:
Longsword medium: 1d8 (avg. 5,5) PA grants +2, large 2d6 (avg. 7), difference 0,5
Greatsword medium: 2d6 (avg. 7) PA grants +3, large 3d6 (avg. 10,5) difference 0,5
Maul medium: 1d10 (avg 5,5) PA grants +2, large 2d8 (avg. 9), difference 1,5

So it's not even as good as Weapon Specialization... ugh. And Monkey Grip does not open the way to more interesting feats like Melee Weapon Mastery, for example.

Kat, I'll happily send you a comp copy of the Falchioneer if you'd like to take a look at it. If you still think it's overpowered after that, let me know. I'm always open to critiques and advice on any of my products.

I'd be glad to. Just PM me.