Elven Battle Dancer Substitution Ideas. Pls help.

[Volvogg]

Hi All

I picked up the Dragon Compendium (great book btw!) and was thinking that the battle dancer would be suitable to use as a basis if one were trying to make an "elvish sword" dancer class. I believe with a few simple changes (via elven racial substitution levels) this can be accomplished. So here are my ideas so far. This is a work in progress so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dance of the Graceful Blade: The character can apply the weapon finesse feat to the longsword.

This ability replaces dance of reckless bravery.

Dance of Crashing Waves: This allows the character to make an addional attack while using a longsword in a round at her highest base attack bonus, but this attack takes a –3 penalty, as does each other attack made that round.

This ability replaces dance of the floating step.

Dance of Tempered Steel[sub lvl 17]: This improves the damage die of a longsword that is being wielded by one step.

This ability replaces dance of the soaring eagle.

I was also thinking of removing their unarmed damage progression. In return they would receive weapon focus (longsword) as a bonus feat at 1st level and the dancers strike ability would instead affect the longsword that the character wields instead of their fists.

So what does everyone think? Any input or suggestions are welcome!:)

[dnjscott]

DOUBLE POST

[dnjscott]

You could maybe do the -2 if you gain it at a high level... Exotic Weapon Master gets an ability thats not too different... flurry with a two-handed weapon. Also, in Eberron, a monk with Weapon Focus and Proficiency Longsword can treat it as a monk weapon, allowing you to Flurry of Blows with it.

I'd skip the extra dice and just give `em weapon Spec. I believe the Favored Soul gets it, so why not? It's actually better, too... avg. on 1D10 is 5.5, Avg. on 1D8+2 is 6.5. Plus its an existing ability instead of a totally new one.

As for the rest... maybe passing on the Damage Reduction Piercing to a weapon would make up for loss of damage? I'd probably want to give `em more feats, too, but then that's a bigger change than racial substitutes usually make.

[Volvogg]

dnjscott wrote:

You could maybe do the -2 if you gain it at a high level... Exotic Weapon Master gets an ability thats not too different... flurry with a two-handed weapon. Also, in Eberron, a monk with Weapon Focus and Proficiency Longsword can treat it as a monk weapon, allowing you to Flurry of Blows with it.

I'd skip the extra dice and just give `em weapon Spec. I believe the Favored Soul gets it, so why not? It's actually better, too... avg. on 1D10 is 5.5, Avg. on 1D8+2 is 6.5. Plus its an existing ability instead of a totally new one.

As for the rest... maybe passing on the Damage Reduction Piercing to a weapon would make up for loss of damage? I'd probably want to give `em more feats, too, but then that's a bigger change than racial substitutes usually make.

Thanks for the reply! I think I have come to the realisation that this should have been a variant class instead of substitution levels. So please see below for a revised version of the Elven Sword Dancer. Also, the size increase to a longsword bumps the damage to 2d6 not 1d10.

Elven Sword Dancer

Dance of the Graceful Blade: The character can apply the weapon finesse feat to the longsword.

This ability replaces dance of reckless bravery.

Dance of Crashing Waves: This allows the character to make an addional attack while using a longsword in a round at her highest base attack bonus, but this attack takes a –3 penalty, as does each other attack made that round.

This ability replaces dance of the floating step.

Dance of Tempered Steel: This improves the damage die of a longsword that is being wielded by one size category. Please note that this increase in size does not stack with other sources that grant size increases. Such as the enlarge person spell.

This ability replaces dance of the soaring eagle.

In addition to the above changes the character does not receive improved unarmed strike nor does she receive the improved unarmed damage progression. Instead an elven sword dancer receives weapon focus (longsword) at first level.