People of the North Witchguard Question

[Joseph Wilson]

I did a search and did not see an answer to this question, so I figured I'd try starting a thread on it.

The Witchguard Ranger archetype looks like a lot of fun, but the wording on the Defend Charge ability seems a bit off. It currently reads:

Defend Charge (Ex) At 4th level, a witchguard forms a bond with a spellcaster he has sworn to defend. Once per day, this bond allows the witchguard to spend a move action to grant an adjacent spellcaster a +2 dodge bonus to AC and a +2 circumstance bonus on concentration checks. At 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter, these bonuses increase by 2. The bonuses last for a number of rounds equal to the witchguard’s Wisdom modifier (minimum 1). At 4th level and every 3 levels thereafter, the witchguard can use this ability one additional time per day. This ability replaces hunter’s bond.

As written, it sounds like the ranger is actually intended to receive this ability at 1st, not 4th, level. Thoughts?

[Cpt_kirstov]

This is how I read it:

4th level : bond forms(number of uses set at 1),number of uses goes from 1 to 2.

5th level: Bonuses change to +4

7th level: Number of uses goes from 2 to 3

10th level: Number of uses from 3 to 4, Bonus goes to +6

The main question I can see are should 'bond forms' set the number of uses at one(already factoring in the Once per day), or at 0 so that the number of uses bump goes to 1 to account for the at 4th level Once per day?

[Robert G. McCreary]

The witchguard does get the ability at 4th level (since it replaces hunter's bond), but there were copy/paste errors in the ability text. The corrected text should read (changes highlighted in bold):

Defend Charge (Ex) At 4th level, a witchguard forms a bond with a spellcaster he has sworn to defend. Once per day, this bond allows the witchguard to spend a move action to grant an adjacent spellcaster a +2 dodge bonus to AC and a +2 circumstance bonus on concentration checks. At 8th level and every 4 levels thereafter, these bonuses increase by 2. The bonuses last for a number of rounds equal to the witchguard’s Wisdom modifier (minimum 1). At 7th level and every 3 levels thereafter, the witchguard can use this ability one additional time per day. This ability replaces hunter’s bond.

So it breaks down like this:
4th level: +2, 1/day
7th level: 2/day
8th level: +4
10th level: 3/day
12th level: +6
13th level: 4/day
16th level: +8, 5/day
19th level: 6/day
20th level: +10

[Joseph Wilson]

Thanks for the clarification, Rob! That makes sense.

[CanisDirus]

Thanks tons, Rob, for the clarification!