Ok so a long boring story short I was making a character that used the PrC Iaijutsu Master for a 3.5 game, the game was moved to Pathfinder and I am now looking to convert IM to pathfinder and want some input to make sure I don’t make it over/under powered. As oriental adventures is old material I am happy to post up any info on it as required, this post is way too long as it is so I didn’t want to make it any longer.
1st Weapon finesse (katana), Iaijutsu strike
2nd Lightning blade, Canny defence
3rd
4th Combat expertise
5th Strike from the void
6th
7th
8th One strike two cuts
9th Deflect Arrows
10th Strike with no thought
So this is what I have so far. As the iaijutsu focus skill that this PrC is built around is kind of silly the easiest solution seemed to be was to give it the Iaijutsu strike ability the samurai archetype sword-saint gets. Obviously the levels from SS and IM would stack for the purposes of determining the extra dmg die you get when using the ability. And IM lvl 10 would give the smaller action requirement and AC penalty that SS lvl 10 gets but not any of the debuffs as they are separate abilities from the SS level table.
I've filled in some gaps by stealing stuff from Duellist as it’s very similar thematically to IM. I also moved canny defence from level 1 to 2 (a no-no in the conversion rules I know) because I had to have Iaijutsu strike at level 1 and I thought that on top of the two things you already get at lvl 1 was a bit much.
Class ability changes:
Canny defence is different in 3.0; presumably just swapping it for the PF version is fine.
Lightning blade adds cha as well as dex to your initiative, in PF bonuses from class abilities are often based of your level in that class as opposed to ability mods, so I guess +1 to imitative per lvl in IM or per every 2 lvls depending on how overpowered you guys think a plus 10 to it would be.
Strike from the void presents a problem; originally it adds your cha mod to each extra dmg die u get from the Iaijutsu focus skill. In PF not only are the number of extra dmg die you get set according to urn level (instead of being determined by a skill roll) meaning this would give a lot of extra dmg whenever you use iaijutsu, also it has the same issue mentioned above about. So I guess make the bonus reliant on your lvl in the class but not direct +1 per level as the amount of bonus dmg that would give at later lvls would be ridiculous.
Strike with no thought means that if when a combat starts and the IM is within melee range of an enemy they get a free surprise round, before initiative is rolled, (regardless of whether any enemies are aware of them) in which all they can do is make a single attack action.
Now there are a couple of questions I have regarding this. Firstly it seems a little underpowered in comparison to say the kensai magus's lvl19 ability and also the description uses the phrase 'attack action' which is defined as a type of standard action but more than once I have seen it cause confusion as to what can and cannot be done. So I think a solution to both these is to either just swap this for the kensai ability or make it so that the IM can make a full-attack action in the surprise round but cannot trade it for a single attack and a move action.
Also I’m fuzzy on what effect having the surprise round has on the IM initiative, because normally when u get a surprise round you’re also placed at the top of the initiative table (I think)?