
StSword |
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Well I bought this with my birthday money, and since this has had no discussion I thought I'd share a review for anyone interested.
This is an unusual class concept wise. Feral living vampires basically.
Mechanically, it's a front line warrior with d8s and mid attack bonus who makes up for their lack of top tier full attack bonus with class features.
But the class features are a doozy. They get a touch attack to do attribute score damage and give themselves an equal enhancement bonus to the attribute in question.
So if you've ever wanted a character who could run around with attributes in the high twenties, you should definitely consider this class.
They store these enhancement bonuses indefinitely in "motes," gem like growths.
But bandyborn can also flare their motes, to gain a benefit til the end of their turn.
The default result is that their enhancement bonus doubles, but they have class features that give them other options. A clever way to avoid MAD for an attribute dependent class, I feel.
I figure when dealing with a high stat, the enhancement would be useful enough on its own, but with whatever stats aren't so great the other options are going to seem more attractive. Well except for Constitution, the healing option will be quite useful, hit points from temporary enhancement aren't treated as temporary hit points after all. So either that or be real friendly with the cleric.
For those who prefer a more spellcaster approach, there is the bandy priest, who flares motes to cast druid spells, and can make "spirit motes" by inflicting a negative level which give them some spell-like abilities and can be flared to gain spell resistance.
I do have to wonder about the wording of sap. It says that "sapping a creature more than once" doesn't do more ability score damage, but I have to wonder if the intent was that you couldn't drain a target of the same attribute instead of giving the character blanket immunity until they heal the damage. That would give a bandbyborn very little to do if the DM throws one tough foe rather than many weaker foes.
And as a good concept sometimes does, I can see a campaign being inspired to expand beyond what we've been given here.