Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Need help with campaign-specific PrC [LEW - Dervish of Sairundan v3ac]
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="comrade raoul" data-source="post: 1845978" data-attributes="member: 554"><p>I'd say it looks roughly balanced, but the vast majority of the class's power comes from Wind's Fury and Storm's Fury, the latter of which is <em>huge</em>. I worry that most of the class's most interesting and unusual benefits -- the songs, identification, and (nerfed) dervish dance -- won't come into play all that often (nor will the enhancement bonuses, unless magical items are very rare in your game), leaving the class to function like a relatively straightforward melee fighter who does far more damage with his scimitars than anyone has a right to, and can move and avoid blows a bit more effectively than he'd otherwise be able to.</p><p></p><p>To keep the class interesting, I'd try to find a happy medium between your version of the dervish dance and the very, very powerful version in CW. The CW ability is very nifty (if, arguably, broken) because it lets you more more than five feet at a time and still make a full attack, letting you do two very nifty things: bring more than one weapon to bear against an opponent who was more than five feet away from you when you started your action (which is overcomes one of the major weaknesses of the two-weapon style), and attack an opponent multiple times before moving away from him (which is a huge advantage in any strictly melee exchange). Your version lets you do neither of these things: it's mainly useful for the very specialized purpose of distributing a full attack among a group of enemies who are clumped together but not surrounding you. It's probably going to be fairly unusual to be fighting enemies in that sort of configuration, and I wonder whether the enemies in question often be relatively harmless mooks. (Note that the ability as written seems to allow players to attack the air if they want to take consecutive five-foot steps -- I could, in theory, unleash nearly all of a full attack against some nasty beast with multiple attacks, take my standard five-foot step, use my last, weak attack that would probably miss anyway to attack the air, and then use dervish dance to take another step, preventing that opponent from taking a five-foot step to close for a reciprocal full attack of his own. Is this a loophole you'd want to plug?)</p><p></p><p>More generally, I think the class is balanced as written, but a bit lopsided (since the "fury" abilities don't come until high levels) and more boring than it needs to be -- mainly because most of it's power comes from storm's fury. I'd strongly consider eliminating storm's fury -- wind's fury is still quite good, and you may want to eliminate <em>that</em>, too, in favor of an arguably weaker but more flavorful ability that let the dervish add (all of) their Charisma bonus, rather than (half of) their Dexterity bonus, to their melee damage. (I'd also consider moving this to some earlier level -- perhaps 4th or so? -- since it seems as though it would be one of the signature abilities of the class.)</p><p></p><p>To compensate for the elimination of storm's fury, I'd (a) find some way to work in more abilities that boost genuinely mobile two-weapon combat (the most interesting mechanical innovation of the CW version) -- perhaps a (high-level) ability that allowed you to make one attack with each of your weapons during a spring attack -- and (b) would seriously consider adding the CW version's "thousand cuts" ability at 10th level.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="comrade raoul, post: 1845978, member: 554"] I'd say it looks roughly balanced, but the vast majority of the class's power comes from Wind's Fury and Storm's Fury, the latter of which is [i]huge[/i]. I worry that most of the class's most interesting and unusual benefits -- the songs, identification, and (nerfed) dervish dance -- won't come into play all that often (nor will the enhancement bonuses, unless magical items are very rare in your game), leaving the class to function like a relatively straightforward melee fighter who does far more damage with his scimitars than anyone has a right to, and can move and avoid blows a bit more effectively than he'd otherwise be able to. To keep the class interesting, I'd try to find a happy medium between your version of the dervish dance and the very, very powerful version in CW. The CW ability is very nifty (if, arguably, broken) because it lets you more more than five feet at a time and still make a full attack, letting you do two very nifty things: bring more than one weapon to bear against an opponent who was more than five feet away from you when you started your action (which is overcomes one of the major weaknesses of the two-weapon style), and attack an opponent multiple times before moving away from him (which is a huge advantage in any strictly melee exchange). Your version lets you do neither of these things: it's mainly useful for the very specialized purpose of distributing a full attack among a group of enemies who are clumped together but not surrounding you. It's probably going to be fairly unusual to be fighting enemies in that sort of configuration, and I wonder whether the enemies in question often be relatively harmless mooks. (Note that the ability as written seems to allow players to attack the air if they want to take consecutive five-foot steps -- I could, in theory, unleash nearly all of a full attack against some nasty beast with multiple attacks, take my standard five-foot step, use my last, weak attack that would probably miss anyway to attack the air, and then use dervish dance to take another step, preventing that opponent from taking a five-foot step to close for a reciprocal full attack of his own. Is this a loophole you'd want to plug?) More generally, I think the class is balanced as written, but a bit lopsided (since the "fury" abilities don't come until high levels) and more boring than it needs to be -- mainly because most of it's power comes from storm's fury. I'd strongly consider eliminating storm's fury -- wind's fury is still quite good, and you may want to eliminate [i]that[/i], too, in favor of an arguably weaker but more flavorful ability that let the dervish add (all of) their Charisma bonus, rather than (half of) their Dexterity bonus, to their melee damage. (I'd also consider moving this to some earlier level -- perhaps 4th or so? -- since it seems as though it would be one of the signature abilities of the class.) To compensate for the elimination of storm's fury, I'd (a) find some way to work in more abilities that boost genuinely mobile two-weapon combat (the most interesting mechanical innovation of the CW version) -- perhaps a (high-level) ability that allowed you to make one attack with each of your weapons during a spring attack -- and (b) would seriously consider adding the CW version's "thousand cuts" ability at 10th level. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Need help with campaign-specific PrC [LEW - Dervish of Sairundan v3ac]
Top