PrC: bouncy airborne sword fighter

[hong]

Yet another wuxia-inspired martial artist/swordsman. How many more of these can I crank out, I wonder?

Inspiration: movies like CTHD, Hero, Stormriders, etc

1-sentence summary: a swordsman who truly masters the way of swordsmanship is one who also masters himself.


CLOUD WARRIOR (or some other snazzy name)

Prerequisites:
BAB +6
Weapon Proficiency (all martial weapons), Dodge, Mobility, Iron Will, Leap of the Clouds (or Great Leap feat)
Balance 10 ranks, Jump 10 ranks, Tumble 10 ranks


Class statistics:
Hit Die: d10
Skill pts/level: 2
Class skills: Balance, Climb, Concentration, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge (religion), Jump, Tumble, Sense Motive, Swim.

[color=white]
lvl     BAB     Fort    Ref     Will    Special
1       +1      +0      +2      +2      Weapon Finesse, ki strike +1, AC bonus
2       +2      +0      +3      +3      Light step, evasion
3       +3      +1      +3      +3      Martial Finesse, improved arrow
                                          deflection
4       +4      +1      +4      +4      Acrobatics (+10), ki strike +2
5       +5      +1      +4      +4      Air walk, distant strike
6       +6      +2      +5      +5      Instinctive Strike
7       +7      +2      +5      +5      Acrobatics (+20), ki strike +3
8       +8      +2      +6      +6      Improved evasion
9       +9      +3      +7      +7      Greater air walk
10      +10     +3      +7      +7      Acrobatics (+30), ki strike +4
[/color]

Special abilities:


Proficiencies: the cloud warrior gains no armour or weapon proficiencies beyond those he already has.

AC bonus: the cloud warrior can add his levels in this prestige class to his monk levels (if any) to determine his level-based bonus to AC.

Weapon Finesse (Ex): at 1st level, the cloud warrior gains the Weapon Finesse feat. He can use his Dex bonus instead of his Str bonus on attack rolls with all light weapons.

Ki strike (su): the cloud warrior learns to channel the force of his ki into his sword blade. Any melee attack he makes is treated as if made by a weapon with a +1 enhancement bonus. This does not stack with any enhancement bonus the weapon itself may have.

At 4th level, the cloud warrior's ki strike bonus increases to +2. At 7th level it increases to +3, and at 10th level, to +4.

Ki strike cannot cause the total equivalent bonus of a weapon to exceed +10. If the bonus granted by this ability, along with existing weapon enchantments, is greater than +10, the excess is discarded. For example, a 10th level cloud warrior is wielding a +1 speed, holy, shocking burst longsword (total equivalent bonus +9). The cloud warrior's ki strike would normally grant him a +4 enhancement bonus, overlapping with the sword's own +1 enhancement bonus. However, this would take the total bonus of the sword to +12, so the excess is discarded to bring it down to +10. The sword's final enhancement bonus in the hands of the cloud warrior is +2.

Light step (Su): at 2nd level, the cloud warrior gains a +10 competence bonus to Move Silently and Balance checks. He can take 10 on any Move Silently or Balance check, even if circumstances would normally prevent him from doing so. It's practically impossible (-20 penalty) to track him, unless the tracker is using scent or some other non-visual means of detecting his trail.

Evasion (Ex): at 2nd level, the cloud warrior gains evasion. (yadda yadda)

Martial Finesse (Ex): at 3rd level, the cloud warrior gains the benefits of Weapon Finesse with any weapon of his size category or smaller. A Medium-sized cloud warrior also gains this benefit with the shortspear and quarterstaff, while a Small-sized cloud warrior gains the benefit with the halfspear.

Improved arrow deflection (Ex): at 3rd level, the cloud warrior can deflect incoming arrows, darts and other missiles, as per the Deflect Arrows feat. Unlike Deflect Arrows, he can use this ability a number of times per round equal to 3 plus his Dex bonus, if any.

Acrobatics (Su): at 4th level, the cloud warrior gains a +10 competence bonus to all Climb, Jump and Tumble checks. He can take 10 on any Climb, Jump or Tumble check, even if circumstances would normally prevent him from doing so. At 7th level, the competence bonus increases to +20, and at 10th level, to +30.

Air walk (Sp): at 5th level, the cloud warrior can use air walk for a total of up to 2 hours per day.

Distant strike (Su): at 5th level, the cloud warrior learns the secrets of striking at his enemies from a distance, even while his sword never leaves his hand. His control of his ki is such that the force of his blows is transmitted to his foe.

When using this ability, the cloud warrior can use the attack or full attack action to make ranged attacks with a melee weapon against a foe up to 30 feet distant (no range penalties apply). This is treated as a ranged attack in all respects, ie the cloud warrior uses his Dex bonus as a modifier to the attack roll, and is subject to attacks of opportunity. Melee feats like Power Attack do not apply, while ranged combat feats like Point Blank Shot do.

Distant strike is a supernatural ability that can be used for up to one round per class level per day.

Instinctive strike (Ex): at 6th level, the cloud warrior can apply his Wis bonus (if any) to his melee damage rolls in place of his Str bonus. The Wis bonus is not multiplied by 1.5 for two-handed weapons.

Improved evasion (Ex): at 8th level, the cloud warrior gains improved evasion (yadda yadda).

Greater air walk (Sp): at 9th level, the cloud warrior can air walk at will.

 

[hong]

Design notes:

- The ki strike ability is specifically designed so as to limit the cheese possible with special weapon enchantments. Basically it's like a toned-down, always-on GMW.

- I toyed with either d8 HD and 4 skill pts/level, or d10 HD and 2 skill pts/level. In the end I decided that since the class was getting big bonuses to the most important skills anyway, extra skill points wasn't that big a deal.

- Air walk isn't really that big a deal either IMO, since by the time this class gets it, everyone else will probably have winged boots and similar means of getting around.

- IMO the most powerful abilities are the instinctive strike (Wis bonus to damage), bonus to Tumble checks, and improved evasion.

Comments?

 

[Ferret]

This is the kind of style I like to see in Monks.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Crouching Wombat Hidden Sausage?

Anyhoo, I think it's a bit overpowered. It's a lot of nice abilities that make STR almost useless, and the only real downside is the high prerequisites.

My suggestions:

1> Go with the 4+INT skill points and d8 HD. That way, a tank-type loses some HP and a Monk-type has a smaller class skill list (no Hide/Move Silently)
2> Weapon Finesse with ALL light weapons in one shot at level 1? At level 2 getting a +10 bonus to Move Silently, effectively making it worthless to spend skill ranks on that skill? Too much too soon, spread these out more.
For example, make Light Step be that he adds his class level as a competence bonus to Move Silently checks. That way, it's still +10 at the end, but isn't so hot right away. The Take 10 thing can stay, I guess, but it doesn't really seem appropriate if MS isn't even a class skill.
3> Limit the armor. You're giving the Monk inherent AC bonus, so say that these abilities only work in light armor. Besides, it doesn't make sense that a class involving acrobatic leaping would be able to wear any armor that slows your movement down.
3.5> Ditto for encumbrance: say that some of these abilities only work if you have light encumbrance.
4> Acrobatics: Okay, maybe this is just me, but people shouldn't be getting +30 bonuses for non-Epic classes under any conditions. And who needs to bother taking 10 when you've got that sort of bonus? +30 to three skills is just way too much.

To replace it, how about doing the same thing I mentioned for Light Step above and combine them into one ability? So, at class level 2, pick one of these skills: Balance, Move Silently, Climb, Tumble, Jump. You can now add your Cloud Warrior class level as a competence bonus to that skill's checks, as well as Take 10 with it under duress. Then, at levels 4, 6, 8, and 10 pick an additional skill from that list.

 

[comrade raoul]

As I'm sure you know, this seems very close to the Oriental Adventures blade dancer prestige class, complete with aerial movement, acrobatics, and weapon empowerment, which struck me at the time as a pretty well-done prestige class. Isn't one wuxia class enough?

The class gets an awful lot of special abilities. So you've got two good saves (and the ones that fighters tend to need most), AC bonuses, free finesse with just about any one-handed melee weapon, constant and nondispellable (but somewhat weakened) greater magic weapon, evasion (and improved evasion), improved arrow deflection (with, with a good reflex save, translates to very powerful defense against almost any ranged attacks), very large bonuses to five very useful skills, air walk (some limitations, then at will), distant strike, and instinctive strike.

All these abilities make it difficult to determine what the wuxia will actually look like in play. One imagines that this will be a class that will be very difficult to damage, especially at high levels: the mobility makes him tough to engage in melee combat, and the high reflex saves combined with evasion and arrow deflection make him hard to hurt with ranged weapons or most offensive spells (and the good will save offers a solid defense against other forms of magical attack). At this point, the inherent AC bonuses just seem to be icing on the cake.

Distant strike combined with air walk is an absolutely nasty combination: unless melee opponents have some form of flight, the wuxia will be able to deliver deadly full attacks for a number of rounds per day more or less without retaliation. Moreover, the fact that ranged feats apply to distant strike make it all the more powerful: being able to use Rapid Shot with your "melee" attacks is a huge advantage. And, again, opponents who try to target the airborne wuxia with arrows or spells will be at a significant disadvantage. Instinctive stike and ki strike only supplement an already impressive offense.

On the whole -- I think it's significantly overpowered and could use some significant toning down. Rather than going to the effort of weakening it, I'd again suggest using the OA blade dancer (or even, really, your earlier wuxia class, which I thought was pretty cool but can't find on your website) instead of this one. Both classes accomplish what seems to be the same goal, but both seem better balanced.

 

[hong]

Crouching Wombat Hidden Sausage?

Anyhoo, I think it's a bit overpowered. It's a lot of nice abilities that make STR almost useless, and the only real downside is the high prerequisites.

Prerequisites can balance (almost) anything, is pretty much my philosophy. That is, there's nothing wrong with a powerful PrC that also requires lots of feats and other things.

And making Str secondary is indeed one of the things I had in mind. Brawn is for tanks. This guy is not a tank, although he is supposed to be able to hold his own in combat.

My suggestions:

1> Go with the 4+INT skill points and d8 HD. That way, a tank-type loses some HP and a Monk-type has a smaller class skill list (no Hide/Move Silently)

Makes sense. Although Move Silently probably should actually be a class skill, given that one of the abilities gives a bonus.

2> Weapon Finesse with ALL light weapons in one shot at level 1?

Well, sure. That's what Weapon Finesse does in 3.5E.

At level 2 getting a +10 bonus to Move Silently, effectively making it worthless to spend skill ranks on that skill? Too much too soon, spread these out more.

Well, it's always possible that someone else out there will be getting +10 to Listen, from an item if nothing else. The point is that a lot of these abilities are essentially replacements for magic items. I'm a subscriber to the "magic items == super powers" theory, which is either a corollary or a contributor to the creeping HEROization of D&D.

According to this theory, magic items are essentially a way of providing many of the powers that would otherwise be designed into a character from the start, whether it's flight, teleportation, improved defense, resistance to energy, etc. Some classes (wizard, cleric, druid, monk, etc) have less need for such items, because their super powers are already built in, in the form of spells and other class abilities. Other classes (fighters and rogues) need these items, because their list of innate super powers is relatively sparse. The cloud warrior is an example of a PrC that attempts to provide a richer list of innate powers, rather than relying on magic items for everything.

Does this mean that the cloud warrior is thus broken? Not necessarily, because of how item pricing usually scales quadratically. Yes, a cloud warrior doesn't need to spend 12,000 gp on winged boots because he gets the flight (air walk) super power for free. This means he can get, say, gloves of Dex or an amulet of Wis instead. However, since most stat or bonus boosting items scale quadratically in price, there's a point where it starts to become prohibitively expensive, which keeps things in check.

For example, make Light Step be that he adds his class level as a competence bonus to Move Silently checks. That way, it's still +10 at the end, but isn't so hot right away. The Take 10 thing can stay, I guess, but it doesn't really seem appropriate if MS isn't even a class skill.

Not a bad idea. I'm basically going for the "walk on anything" ability, similar to what the ninja spy gets, but more flexible.

3> Limit the armor. You're giving the Monk inherent AC bonus, so say that these abilities only work in light armor. Besides, it doesn't make sense that a class involving acrobatic leaping would be able to wear any armor that slows your movement down.

Tumble and evasion only work with light armour/encumbrance anyway, and the monk AC bonus requires no armour. But yeah, I was going to add something like that but forgot.

4> Acrobatics: Okay, maybe this is just me, but people shouldn't be getting +30 bonuses for non-Epic classes under any conditions. And who needs to bother taking 10 when you've got that sort of bonus? +30 to three skills is just way too much.

Epic shmepic. As far as I'm concerned, the ELH has done exactly two things: distort people's perceptions of how exceptional characters below 20th level already are (you can disintegrate things, wade through battalions of mooks, kill people with a touch, and raise them from the dead -- that's pretty damn epic); and create a dumping ground for any harebrained idea or twinked out feat or spell. I really get tired of "it's broken, but it might work at Epic".

Not that I'm saying +30 skill bonuses are harebrained. In this particular case, I don't think the skills in question are that broken; certainly not Jump or Balance. Who needs +30 Jump (which you can get at 1st level from the jump spell) when everyone has winged boots? It's good for impressing the peons, but in terms of actual utility, there are better ways of getting places. Tumble is the most useful skill out of this lot, as far as I see. +30 may be on the high side, depending on what uses the DM allows for it, but I still wouldn't necessarily call it broken.

 

[hong]

As I'm sure you know, this seems very close to the Oriental Adventures blade dancer prestige class, complete with aerial movement, acrobatics, and weapon empowerment, which struck me at the time as a pretty well-done prestige class. Isn't one wuxia class enough?

Well, that depends on what sort of campaign you're after, no?

I don't think that just because one wuxia class exists doesn't mean you can't try to make another one. Certainly there are already tons of wizard, weapon master, swordsman or archer PrCs, but that never seems to stop people churning them out. Some archetypes are enduring.

Where multiple PrCs can serve a useful purpose is if you want to create a campaign with a particular focus, since they help to differentiate between characters. For example, suppose you want to run a campaign with relatively more wizards and less "mundanes" like fighters or rogues. To some extent, you can rely on spell and feat selection to differentiate between players (as well as good old-fashioned roleplaying), but eventually you're probably going to want to be able to use PrCs to differentiate between wizards who belong to different colleges of magic, or follow different philosophies, or specialise in different niches, etc. The same goes for wuxia PrCs, if you're running a game with that sort of flavour.

As for the existing wuxia PrC, namely the blade dancer, it has problems. These are caused essentially by how high-level D&D tends to be very much like wuxia anyway, in that everyone flies and teleports. This makes the blade dancer's own flying abilities somewhat moot, so the only way for it to stand out is via its sword fighting abilities. Unfortunately, these are also nothing to write home about. Hence even if you didn't want lots of wuxia PrCs in your game, there's still room for a better one than the blade dancer.

The class gets an awful lot of special abilities. So you've got two good saves (and the ones that fighters tend to need most), AC bonuses, free finesse with just about any one-handed melee weapon, constant and nondispellable (but somewhat weakened) greater magic weapon, evasion (and improved evasion), improved arrow deflection (with, with a good reflex save, translates to very powerful defense against almost any ranged attacks), very large bonuses to five very useful skills, air walk (some limitations, then at will), distant strike, and instinctive strike.

I should mention that Improved Arrow Deflection imposes a -5 penalty on successive saves (or whatever mechanic 3.5E uses to represent this). It's basically the feat on my D&D site.

I also wouldn't call Balance, Climb and Jump "very useful". Jump becomes almost irrelevant at high levels, as far as I can tell, as does Climb. Who needs to scale walls when you could just fly up?

All these abilities make it difficult to determine what the wuxia will actually look like in play. One imagines that this will be a class that will be very difficult to damage, especially at high levels: the mobility makes him tough to engage in melee combat, and the high reflex saves combined with evasion and arrow deflection make him hard to hurt with ranged weapons or most offensive spells (and the good will save offers a solid defense against other forms of magical attack). At this point, the inherent AC bonuses just seem to be icing on the cake.

When all else fails, a disintegrate will usually do the trick.

As for damaging them, recall the situation with the monk: strong on defense, but relatively weak on offense. Yes, monks are very survivable, but they also tend not to dish out a lot of damage compared to other classes. In practice, one of the biggest complaints about monks is that they're useless in combat. The class is clearly based on kung fu movies where martial artists kick butt in six million different ways, so this is a major disappointment for monk players who think their character should be able to do the same. The fact that they can survive all sorts of pain doesn't really compensate for the inability to grab the spotlight.

This cloud warrior is designed to be stronger on offense than the monk, but also weaker in defense. Hence the better BAB and slightly worse saves, and lack of SR and other defensive specials. Improved evasion is very nice, but it won't help against the aforementioned disintegrate, or a melee brute with 10' reach and improved grab. Perhaps dropping the HD to d8 would be in order, though.

Distant strike combined with air walk is an absolutely nasty combination: unless melee opponents have some form of flight, the wuxia will be able to deliver deadly full attacks for a number of rounds per day more or less without retaliation.

Which is really no better or worse than being peppered with arrows from a twink archer. In fact, it may be worse since the cloud warrior is unlikely to be maxed out with all the archery feats: PBS, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Manyshot etc, and furthermore can only do this within 30 feet, unlike a specialist archer. If I REALLY wanted this to be broken, I'd let it be usable at will.

Moreover, the fact that ranged feats apply to distant strike make it all the more powerful: being able to use Rapid Shot with your "melee" attacks is a huge advantage. And, again, opponents who try to target the airborne wuxia with arrows or spells will be at a significant disadvantage. Instinctive stike and ki strike only supplement an already impressive offense.

Not allowing ranged feats to be used would probably be a good idea, if that's a worry.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Originally posted by hong
Prerequisites can balance (almost) anything, is pretty much my philosophy. That is, there's nothing wrong with a powerful PrC that also requires lots of feats and other things.

Well, personally, I prefer the other way: PrCs should have fairly easy requirements to enter but have some sort of ongoing cost, whether it's a smaller HD, lower BAB, incomplete spellcasting progression, or whatever.

Although Move Silently probably should actually be a class skill, given that one of the abilities gives a bonus.

Makes sense, as long as you don't give Hide also. H/MS is probably the most useful 2-skill combo in the game, so giving only half of it isn't unbalanced.

Well, sure. That's what Weapon Finesse does in 3.5E.

Didn't know that. I'm glad they're making that change, it's one that we house-ruled long ago IMC, but I was looking at the class balance vs 3E.

Admittedly, Finesse in every weapon is like Martial Proficiency in every weapon: not really that much more useful than having it be only for one weapon.

Well, it's always possible that someone else out there will be getting +10 to Listen, from an item if nothing else.

The proliferation of and balance issues with cheap +skill magic items is a separate thread. I'm one of those people who considers them to be horribly underpriced, and I'd never let the players get an item that adds more than +10 to a skill, and even those will be rare.

The cloud warrior is an example of a PrC that attempts to provide a richer list of innate powers, rather than relying on magic items for everything.

Fine, but you're not removing their ability to wear those items as well, are you? Get +10 to Move Silently, buy a Cloak of Elvenkind, and you can now do the Hide/Move Silently combo without ever spending a skill point.

Tumble and evasion only work with light armour/encumbrance anyway, and the monk AC bonus requires no armour.

True, and there's also Armor Check Penalty issues. But that was one of my concerns: a Full Plate-wearing tank could take this class and use the massive skill bonuses to make many of the penalties of heavy armor meaningless. Who cares about losing 6 or 7 from a skill if you get a +30 boost?

Not that I'm saying +30 skill bonuses are harebrained. In this particular case, I don't think the skills in question are that broken; certainly not Jump or Balance. Who needs +30 Jump (which you can get at 1st level from the jump spell) when everyone has winged boots?

Well, assuming everyone has a very specific slotted magic item is probably a bad idea. After all, would you rather have Winged Boots, Boots of Speed, or Boots of Springing and Striding? And like I mentioned before, if you're giving the Winged Boots bonus to someone, they can now use that slot to wear the Boots of Speed instead, so you've effectively given them a free slotless item.

Tumble is the most useful skill out of this lot, as far as I see. +30 may be on the high side, depending on what uses the DM allows for it, but I still wouldn't necessarily call it broken.

It's not so much about the exact size of the bonus. It's just, WHY are you giving that bonus? Let's look at the skills in question:

Tumble, Climb, and Balance (you didn't give a bonus to this one, but since you're requiring 10 ranks of it and DON'T require ranks of Climb, I felt like adding it) have set DCs that max out in the 25-35 range. With Take 10 and 10 ranks, even a +10 bonus gives automatic success.

Jump: There's no set DC or anything, but you can't Jump farther than you can move. For a running jump, if you have no STR bonus and 10 ranks and Take 10, a +20 bonus means +35 feet, but you can't move that far without taking a double move. You also can't jump further than 6*height, so that's a pretty hard maximum. For standing jumps, the maximum drops faster, so you'll never get much use out of anything beyond +20.

Move Silently: Here's the problem. Opposed skill rolls benefit the most from skill boosts; against an evenly-matched opponent a +5 bonus swings the outcome from 47.5% win, 5% tie, 47.5% lose to 70% win, 3.75% tie, 26.25% lose (and if you Take 10, it's 70%/5%/25%). So, giving even a +10 bonus isn't just an almost-automatic success, it's causing the skill ranks the enemy spends on Listen to be worthless.

I think you should change the required skills for the class to include all five skills I mentioned, lowering the requirement to, say, 5 or 6 ranks. 10-rank requirements are fine for Rogue-type classes, but for something intended for the 2/4+INT skill point crowd? The Feat requirements will stop people from taking it at level 3 or something.
Personally, I'd make "Acrobatics" be that incremental sort of ability I mentioned, where the bonus equals your class level.
If you want, tough, you could do it like Favored Enemy; that is, at levels 2, 4, 7, and 10 you pick one of the five skills at a +5 bonus, and each one previously picked would increase by +5. So, a level 10 Cloud Warrior could be +20 Move Silently, +15 Tumble, +10 Jump, +5 Balance.

 

[hong]

Well, personally, I prefer the other way: PrCs should have fairly easy requirements to enter but have some sort of ongoing cost, whether it's a smaller HD, lower BAB, incomplete spellcasting progression, or whatever.

A feat spent on a prerequisite _is_ an ongoing cost, if it's not something you would have taken otherwise. Opportunity cost, boys 'n girls.

Admittedly, Finesse in every weapon is like Martial Proficiency in every weapon: not really that much more useful than having it be only for one weapon.

Indeed, another of the things I'm trying to do with this PrC is to specifically move it AWAY from being dependent on one particular weapon.

Fine, but you're not removing their ability to wear those items as well, are you? Get +10 to Move Silently, buy a Cloak of Elvenkind, and you can now do the Hide/Move Silently combo without ever spending a skill point.

So? A rogue could get boots of elvenkind and do exactly the same thing. The extra 2000 gp is chump change at high levels.

True, and there's also Armor Check Penalty issues. But that was one of my concerns: a Full Plate-wearing tank could take this class and use the massive skill bonuses to make many of the penalties of heavy armor meaningless. Who cares about losing 6 or 7 from a skill if you get a +30 boost?

Jump: irrelevant at high levels.
Climb: irrelevant at high levels.
Tumble: unusable in heavy armour.

Well, assuming everyone has a very specific slotted magic item is probably a bad idea. After all, would you rather have Winged Boots, Boots of Speed, or Boots of Springing and Striding?

My experience is that people have all sorts of items occupying all sorts of slots. One of my current characters has none of the above occuping the boots slot: he has boots of air stride, which combine doubled movement speed with air stride 2 hrs/day. The WotC modules themselves have NPCs wearing rings of resistance, amulets of protection, or whatnot. I see absolutely no problem with such chopping and changing as a general rule, although specifics may vary. Hence even if somebody has boots of S&S, they may put flight into the same item, or have a separate item providing flight, and so on. And at high levels, flight is one of the abilities that you absolutely DO need.

And like I mentioned before, if you're giving the Winged Boots bonus to someone, they can now use that slot to wear the Boots of Speed instead, so you've effectively given them a free slotless item.

Yes, I just said that, along with why it isn't necessarily broken. Your point is what, exactly?

It's not so much about the exact size of the bonus. It's just, WHY are you giving that bonus?

Because it fits the flavour of the class. And besides, if extra bonuses are of limited use beyond a point, then there's hardly a problem in terms of balance, is there?

Tumble, Climb, and Balance (you didn't give a bonus to this one, but since you're requiring 10 ranks of it and DON'T require ranks of Climb, I felt like adding it) have set DCs that max out in the 25-35 range. With Take 10 and 10 ranks, even a +10 bonus gives automatic success.

See OA for rules on extreme Tumbling. In particular, you can reduce falling damage by 10' for every +15 to the Tumble DC.

Jump: There's no set DC or anything, but you can't Jump farther than you can move.

With monk movement, boots of S&S, or an equivalent item, you can jump all over the place.

For a running jump, if you have no STR bonus and 10 ranks and Take 10, a +20 bonus means +35 feet, but you can't move that far without taking a double move. You also can't jump further than 6*height, so that's a pretty hard maximum.

Ahem. Leap of the Clouds.

Move Silently: Here's the problem. Opposed skill rolls benefit the most from skill boosts; against an evenly-matched opponent a +5 bonus swings the outcome from 47.5% win, 5% tie, 47.5% lose to 70% win, 3.75% tie, 26.25% lose (and if you Take 10, it's 70%/5%/25%). So, giving even a +10 bonus isn't just an almost-automatic success, it's causing the skill ranks the enemy spends on Listen to be worthless.

And as said above, anyone with boots and cloak of elvenkind can do exactly the same thing, for the huge, huge expense of 4000 gp. Recall that a 20th level PC has 760,000 gp worth of stuff, and even a 10th level one has 49,000 gp. Despite this, I've never seen or heard anyone say that spending skill ranks in Spot and Listen is worthless. They may be worthless for characters who aren't in the business of being scouts, but for rangers and rogues, they're still must-have skills. Rarely, if ever, do you have equal-level PC-class characters going head-to-head in an arena situation, and so your numbers are irrelevant: most, if not all of the time, a scout will be detecting monsters that _don't_ have huge competence bonuses to stealth, and a spy will be hiding from monsters that don't have huge competence bonuses to detect.

I think you should change the required skills for the class to include all five skills I mentioned, lowering the requirement to, say, 5 or 6 ranks.

If you want to design such a PrC, go right ahead. In the meantime, I'd be grateful if you disabuse yourself of the notion that my design philosophy is the same as your philosophy.

 

[hong]

Take 2! Changes:
- added Endurance as a prereq
- changed HD to d8, and skill pts/level to 4
- added Move Silently as a class skill
- added the bit about abilities only functioning in light/no armour
- removed Climb from the list of skills Acrobatics affects
- added a -5 cumulative penalty to Improved Arrow Deflection
- swapped Instinctive Strike and Distant Strike around
- reworded Distant Strike
- reduced bonuses from Acrobatics


Prerequisites:
BAB +6
Weapon Proficiency (all martial weapons), Dodge, Mobility, Iron Will, Endurance, Leap of the Clouds (or Great Leap feat)
Balance 10 ranks, Jump 10 ranks, Tumble 10 ranks


Class statistics:
Hit Die: d8
Skill pts/level: 4
Class skills: Balance, Climb, Concentration, Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge (religion), Jump, Move Silently, Tumble, Sense Motive, Swim.

[color=white]
lvl     BAB     Fort    Ref     Will    Special
1       +1      +0      +2      +2      Weapon Finesse, ki strike +1, AC bonus
2       +2      +0      +3      +3      Light step, evasion
3       +3      +1      +3      +3      Martial Finesse, improved arrow deflection
4       +4      +1      +4      +4      Acrobatics (+10), ki strike +2
5       +5      +1      +4      +4      Air walk, Instinctive Strike
6       +6      +2      +5      +5      Distant strike
7       +7      +2      +5      +5      Acrobatics (+15), ki strike +3
8       +8      +2      +6      +6      Improved evasion
9       +9      +3      +7      +7      Greater air walk
10      +10     +3      +7      +7      Acrobatics (+20), ki strike +4
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Special abilities:

The cloud warrior's special abilities only function when wearing light or no armour, and when carrying no heavier than a light load.

Improved Arrow Deflection (Ex): at 3rd level, the cloud warrior can deflect incoming arrows, darts and other missiles, as per the Deflect Arrows feat. Unlike Deflect Arrows, he can use this ability a number of times per round equal to 3 plus his Dex bonus, if any. A cumulative -5 penalty applies to each deflection attempt after the first. The cloud warrior can deflect arrows as long as he either has a free hand, or is armed with a melee weapon.

Acrobatics (Su): at 4th level, the cloud warrior gains a +10 competence bonus to Jump and Tumble checks. He can take 10 on any Jump or Tumble check, even if circumstances would normally prevent him from doing so. At 7th level the competence bonus increases to +15, and at 8th level, to +20.

Instinctive Strike (Ex): at 5th level, the cloud warrior can apply his Wis bonus (if any) to his damage rolls in place of his Str bonus, where applicable. The Wis bonus is not multiplied by 1.5 for two-handed weapons, but is still limited by the Str rating of a mighty composite bow.

Distant strike (Su): at 6th level, the cloud warrior learns the secrets of striking at his enemies from a distance, even while his sword never leaves his hand. His control of his ki is such that the force of his blows is transmitted to his foe, without the need for physical contact.

When using this ability, the cloud warrior can use the attack or full attack action to strike a foe up to 30 feet distant with melee weapon(s). His attacks are treated as ranged attacks (no range penalties apply), not melee; thus he uses his Dex bonus as a modifier to the attack roll, does not threaten an area, and is subject to attacks of opportunity. He does still add his Str bonus (or Wis bonus, if higher) to damage, however. Melee feats and abilities such as Power Attack and Cleave do not apply, but ranged combat feats and abilities do.

Distant strike is a supernatural ability that can be used for up to one round per class level per day. Activating Distant Strike does not require a separate action to actually using it.