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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Redthistle" data-source="post: 6984215" data-attributes="member: 6778305">I'm only familiar with the 4e bladeling, which lacks either an automatic or save-vs. type of damage to opponents in a grapple. Adding it here makes so much sense, especially since it is automatic damage. Imho, if it were save-vs., it would have to be a Wisdom saving throw at disadvantage, because only a fool would attempt it, in line with the (newly invented) common proverb, "Never grapple a bladeling, and pray to all the gods that a bladeling never grapples you."I am a bit skeptical of the "Magical" in Magical Slashing in the Coat of Spines trait, though. To my way of thinking, the damage should only be physical, not magical, slashing damage. Perhaps your purpose in proposing that was to make sure that even a creature resistance to non-magical damage would still be effected by this feature, which may be reasonably argued. Perhaps scaling that by character level would make more sense, akin to how a monk character's unarmed strikes begin to overcome resistance to nonmagical damage at 6th level with the Ki-Empowered Strikes feature.The amount of damage (character level plus Dexterity score) strikes me as a balanced application.____________________________________________________________________________________The Razor Storm feature, compared again to the 4e bladeling, covers similar areas of effect. In 4e, it was a 5-foot burst for Razor Storm; if using a grid, that works out to 8 squares surrounding the bladeling, compared with the 15-foot cone's reach here, which only reaches 6 squares: 1 square at 5 feet, plus 2 at 10 feet and 3 at 15 feet. Improved Razor Storm (4e) and this 5e Razor Storm bursts cover equal AoE.   The frequency of using it was greater in 4e, being an Encounter power (for those unfamiliar with 4e, that means it could be used once per combat encounter, assuming that no immediately following combat encounter was linked to the preceding combat in, for example, a combat-chase-combat sequence). Given the once-per-long-rest frequency of this 5e version, overall, its availability is considerably less, but that satisfies the 5e goal of balance between races quite well. Let's face it, 4e was overpowered compared to 5e.As to damage, which scales reasonably here, the one change to consider here would be continuing damage, which 4e included with Improved Razor Storm, but this does not.Since the damage type is Piercing, I'm inclined to favor the idea of adding an ongoing damage effect that needs to be saved against at the end of each turn by any target struck by the blades, with the ongoing damage ending with a successful save. Perhaps the ongoing level of damage could be equal to the bladeling's Constitution modifier, representing the relative robustness of the blades expelled.</blockquote>

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