Hey, so in a campaign i'm running one of the players wants to play the swordlord archetype. I was reading it over and I noticed that the lore notes that the swordlords rarely fight in medium or heavy armor, for which they still have proficiency. And the whole class is built around the dueling sword- which itself seems more or less built around a prohibitively taxing, and-generally-less-good-than-the-alternatives feat tree to get to dueling mastery, a tree that is just as easy for any other fighter to get to as it is the Aldori. This seemed ridiculous to me. So i was thinking it would be an okay little change to say that Aldori get EWP (Dueling Sword) for free, but in turn lose heavy armor proficiency.
Thoughts? Does this seem fair? balanced? Should I remove medium armor proficiency as well? Or does it work fine as is and I should let the player work with it as written?
I'd say lose the med and heavy, but give EWP and WF for the ADS, that way it encourages Dex based characters, since they'd then be able to grab Weapon Finesse and Slashing Grace at level 1. You could also modify the other archetype abilities to function only in light or no armor.
Trading armor proficiency for an Exotic Weapon Proficiency seems fair, if it is tied into the archetype.
Actually I think the archetype works perfectly well as an entry into the Duelist PrC, but trading at least heavy armor proficiency for that EWP sounds good to me. This way you don't have to be a swashbuckler and can go for a quick soldier in breastplate or chain mail.
Thankee for the advice, just wanted to make sure this was kosher before I gave it the green light. I'm new to the whole house ruling thing. I'll definitely consider the weapon focus too - but that may be a bit much.