I'm still trying to figure out what to do with my Paladin 2/Something 1 after he got gutted by the ACG errata. I'd like to try something from the new Occult Adventures book, and as a paladin of Shelyn, the spirit dancer medium seems appropriate. Keep in mind that the stats and Paladin levels are set; it's just 3rd-level that I can rebuild.
The build is focused on tanking. He already has a set of +1 full plate, and he fights sword-and-board style, so I'm not getting rid of that. The Spirit Dancer will let me use the Archmage and Heirophant spirits to cast some higher-level buff spells ahead of time (I'm not sure what 1st-level spells I could pick up, since I have to deal with ASF on the archmage bonus spell. Hour/level buffs like false life, defending bone, or greater magic weapon would give me time to put my armor back on). Then in battle, I can go into Champion or Guardian spirits, depending on the situation.
Human Paladin of Shelyn 2/Spirit Dancer Medium 1
17/13/12/7/12/16
Traits: Observant, Deft Dodger
Paladin 1: Dodge, Toughness, paladin stuff
Paladin 2: divine grace, lay on hands
Medium 1: Spirit Focus (champion), spirit dance, medium stuff
Medium 2: spirit aura, +1 Str
Medium 3: Shield Focus
Medium 4: spirit bonus +2, 1st-level spells
Medium 5: Spirit Focus (guardian)
...and so on.
I'm considering swapping in Additional Traits for Magical Knack and something else, but I'm not sure what (Fate's Favored?).
Any thoughts, corrections, or suggestions?
I'm not sure that Spirit Dance is doing much for you over vanilla Medium, or that taking Spirit Focus twice is worth it. You probably want 20 rounds a day to last all the combats in a scenario. You have 5 at first, plus 4 for a point of Influence, limiting your surges. And you can't under-channel or use a taboo, further limiting your surges.
With +1 Full Plate and Paladin saves, Guardian is overkill. You already have the Lesser Power, but you can't under-channel to get additional surges. Until Medium 6(8th level), Guardian is getting you a couple of points of AC and some save buffs, but no group buffs.
I'd look at Marshal spirit too. Giving people clutch hits is great in the right group.
But overall, straight Medium Champion is hard to argue with. Under-channel to get extra surges and take a taboo that's basically subsumed under your paladin code already, and you've got 7 surges a day, +1 to hit and +3 damage, and a nice group buff (+2 non-spell damage is hard to pass up,)
You can fill up Cracked Vibrant Purple Prism Ioun stones between sessions with Archmage/Hierophant.
Well, I thought the Spirit Dancer was appropriate for a follower of Shelyn, but I see your point. I did like the idea of being able to choose between attack or defense buffs, based on what the fight looked like, but I'm not sure how useful that would be.
Can you even take Spirit Focus multiple time? The feat doesn't has "Special : You can takes this feat multiple time..." line.
Ooh, good catch.
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Some insightful analysis, Markov, but don't forget the utility of switching to the casters out of combat for spirit dancer.
For instance, if you have resist energy on your hierophant (medium level 4, 14+ Cha), you can switch to hierophant, cast your 2 spells as a prebuff, switch out, have 40 minutes of duration and still be able to go champion in the battles without having limited your 1st level spells that you can cast as champion, since you only used the 2nd levels that you can't cast now. Normal champions would not be able to do that, for instance. Alternatively, you could have resist energy on archmage and lesser restoration on hierophant, cast 1 resist, and save the other 2nd-level slot in case there's a need for lesser resto.
My little brother and his friend played spirit dancer and occultist at Gencon, and the friend (playing a nagaji spirit dancer from Nagajor with spirits representing each of the types of great mothers/nagas who brought forth the nagaji people from beasts, so he dances to imitate each type of naga) found some creative ways to make use of his flexibility. The more creative you are, the stronger spirit dancer can be.
That's true, having long term buffs from Hierophant or Archmage does help Spirit Dancer a lot, even if you always use the same spirit in a fight. Spirit Dancer seems rougher at low levels, but like it would kick in well around 6thwhen you get intermediate powers and have enough rounds to make it through a couple of fights. After that, the main drawback is losing Trickster for non-combat skill checks.
Thanks for the mini-faq on how Spirit Dancer Spell Slots are supposed to work. ;) It sounds like a Spell Dancer 4 with 2-1st level slots, and 4-1st/2-2nd Archmage/Hierophant slots would:
1) Have to share the 2nd level slots between Archmage and Hierophant.
and
2) Use up their Medium slots first even if they cast a 1st level spell in Hierophant/Archmage.
Yeppers, it follows the rules from one of the first FAQs that went up after I was on the design team (so over a year old now), the FAQ on temporarily gaining more uses of something.
And yeah, at 6th with intermediate, it gets even more fun, since if you decide to go with the 2nd idea and put buffs on archmage and triage on hierophant, you can swap to hierophant for not just after-combat triage spells but also for a bunch of channels to heal up hp!
Also, trickster can be useful to suddenly be awesome at what you need in a skillsy scenario, even if you didn't put any ranks in it, as long as you don't get blindsided by a fight. The one trick there is that the duration isn't long enough to keep it up for something long like researching in a library or hobnobbing at a dinner party. Trickster for that purpose would have been even better, I suspect, back in the faction missions days. "Looks like Baron Jacquo needs me to bring an engineer spirit today..."
Spirit Dancer Trickster also has to be able to guess which skill they'll need at the beginning of the day. So it'd have to be a faction mission that spread over two days, and needed 30 seconds or so of enginering work.
At least on paper, it looks like most of Trickster's power is in longer term skills. I'm really looking forward to the first time I get to take Linguistics and say yes, I do know Ancient Street Azlanti.
Yup, with those older faction missions, you usually got a note along with the briefing, with a bunch of days before you arrived at the destination, so it would work out.