I was looking at Inanna, who Ianna is based off of, the Goddess of love and war. One interpretation I saw was that this was the goddess of passion. Thus, the goddess of list… In battle and in bed.
This led me to the thought that the bladedancer might be tweaked a bit to reflect that passion. What do you think odd swapping out turn undead, and adding fighting fury and glamorous aura?
I love that idea. In fact, I might steal it for my own campaign and put it into the Auran Empire campaign setting.
Bladedancer is built off Divine 2, so you would only get two custom powers for trading away turn undead, and Fighting Fury counts as 2 powers. Maybe give them the similar Berserkergang proficiency as a custom power along with Glamorous Aura.
Thanks, Alex!
Direwolf, you’re right. Dang it. Your solution looks ok, or they could be powers that arrive at 5th level, I guess… Seems like a shame to give an AC penalty to the blade dancer.
Agree, but I also imagine them as more of a finesse character than a brute strength character, so I thought the attack bonus made more sense than the damage bonus of Fighting Fury.
Delayed powers would work, too.
Berserkergang is definitely a “brute strength” proficiency more than a finesse proficiency. Speaking of finesse, weapon finesse would be both very useful and very flavorful for the blade dancer. In my limited experience, at low levels, the blade-dancer tends to have worse AC and attack rolls than most other characters who would consider coming to the front line and their lack of ranged weapons makes high dex a lot less useful than it should be, weapon finesse could change that.
Also, I remember Alex mentioning that he might have preferred giving ruinguard-type powers to the blade-dancer (i.e. more special abilities that assist in melee rather than pure spell-casting power), so that is another change that might be considered. Trading cleric 2 for cleric 1 / thief 2 will give a net of 3 more powers to work with iirc, but this is definitely changing the character from finesse-cleric to finesse-melee with limited divine casting.
If we are considering delayed powers, might I suggest getting weapon-finesse or another melee-type ability at 1st level to keep the character interesting at 1st level (on second thought, you will probably want to keep your 1st level, lightly armored, healer-to-be off the front line).
On the subject of dropping turn-undead: could we make a proficiency that gives turn undead, or a limited form of turn undead to cleric-types that eschew it as a class ability? It seems like turning can be very useful to divine casters and it seems like it might also fit non-casting divine classes (like paladins). I’m thinking something akin to black lore of Zahar, but for 1/2 level turning instead of controlling, coupled with a couple extra smallish bonuses relating to fighting/resisting undead, life magic, healing(?), or the like.
My fault entirely on not noticing that Fighting Fury counts as 2 powers.
Bladedancer is more-or-less my favorite class in ACKS, so it’s fun to see everyone adapt it for different styles. In general, I think Turn Undead is not a close fit with the “feel” of the class and I like the idea of doing trade-offs.
To adapt the Ruinguard we need to add a new power, as Arcane Striking is arcane. Since divine casting is less expensive than arcane casting, and gives more and higher level spells more quickly, it should be less powerful.
Divine Striking: When the character successful strikes a target with a melee attack, he can expend one of his daily spell slots to increase damage. Damage is increased by 1d4 per level of the spell slot expended. This custom power counts as 1 power at Divine Value 1-2 and 2 powers at Divine Value 3-4.
As a build for the “revised” Bladedancer:
Level 1: Glamorous Aura
Level 2: Divine Striking
Level 12: Eternal Beauty (Agelessness)
Consider it yoinked for disciples of Innana/Anat in my Barbarian Conqueror King Setting!
Alex wrote:
“To adapt the Ruinguard we need to add a new power, as Arcane Striking is arcane. Since divine casting is less expensive than arcane casting, and gives more and higher level spells more quickly, it should be less powerful.”
In my opinion, the Divine Striking version replacing 1d6 with 1d4 is actually MORE powerful. This is because divine spells and levels are gained at a MUCH faster rate than arcane. Compare the Bladedancer with the Ruinguard:
At level 2 and 3 they have an equal number of spells for level, but the Bladedancer is level 3 before the Ruinguard is level 2. At level 6 Bladedancer (and beyond) it gets silly: The Ruinguard (still level 5) can use his 2nd level slot for 2d6 (7), while the Bladedancer can use his 4th level for 4d4 (10). If they both burn all slots for striking in a day, the Ruinguard does a total of 4d6, the Bladedancer 13d4.
At their final level (level 11 for spell progression) Ruinguards can do 3d6 in one hit, 10d6 per day while Bladedancers can do 5d4 in one hit or a total of 71d4 in a day. (And the Bladedancer has reached level 14 already.)
Other factors: Bladedancers have access to the Swift Sword spell, which doubles attacks, and as such doubles the potential usage of the Divine Striking power. They also have the Striking spell, adding 1d6 per attack.
Giving Bladedancers “Divine Striking” increases their potential to become the “Ultimate” combat class: Damage, defense, mobility, buffs, healing all in one package. Why would anyone play a Ruinguard except for flavour? Their “class schtick” is stolen by the Bladedancer who is already a pretty good combatant.
Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I’m about to use this variant in my campaign so I was interested in ironing this out.
Do you think it would step too much on the toes of the paladin (or at least what people think of when they think of paladins) to limit divine striking to chaotic foes (or lawful if it’s a chaotic bladedancer)?