Sword Saint [PEACH]

[MammonAzrael]

This class, and all the Swordplay techniques, are inspired and from Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm sure it could use quite a lot of tweaking, and more Swordplay techniques, balancing, etc. PEACH away!

Sword Saint
Deadly, focused, and above all, fast. The Sword Saint is a knight that believes in the old saying "The best defense is a good offense." What does it matter what your enemy can do when he lies dead at your feet before he can do it? Pursuing any avenue strengthen their prowess in battle, Sword Saints have developed their own magical force, focused through their blades. Magically resistant creatures have no protection against such techniques, and in areas void of magic the Sword Saint is not one to cross.

Hit die: d10
Skill Points at 1st level: (2 + Int modifier) x 4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier.
Class Skills: Climb, Craft, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (History), Martial Lore, Profession, Swim

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special	Swordplay
1st	+1	+2	+0	+0	First Blood, Swordplay (Basic)	1
2nd	+2	+3	+0	+0	--	2
3rd	+3	+3	+1	+1	--	2
4th	+4	+4	+1	+1	Vehemence	3
5th	+5	+4	+1	+1	Improved Toughness	3
6th	+6/+1	+5	+2	+2		4
7th	+7/+2	+5	+2	+2		4
8th	+8/+3	+6	+2	+2		5
9th	+9/+4	+6	+3	+3	Swordplay (Advanced)	6
10th	+10/+5	+7	+3	+3		6
11th	+11/+6/+1	+7	+3	+3		7
12th	+12/+7/+2	+8	+4	+4		7
13th	+13/+8/+3	+8	+4	+4		8
14th	+14/+9/+4	+9	+4	+4		9
15th	+15/+10/+5	+9	+5	+5	Swordplay (Master)	10
16th	+16/+11/+6/+1	+10	+5	+5		10
17th	+17/+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+5		11
18th	+18/+13/+8/+3	+11	+6	+6		11
19th	+19/+14/+9/+4	+11	+6	+6		12
20th	+20/+15/+10/+5	+12	+6	+6		13

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A Sword Saint is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor (heavy, medium, and light) and shields (except tower shields).

First Blood: You gain a +1 morale bonus to initiative. This bonus increases by 1 every 3 levels (+2 at 4th, +3 at 7th, +4 at 10th, +5 at 13th, +6 at 16th, and +7 at 19th).

Swordplay (Sp): A Sword Saint taps into the ancient techniques and powers of the sword, focusing even his mind into a sharpened blade. A Sword Saint can use any Swordplay technique he knows at will.
----Swordplay techniques are spell-like abilities; using one is a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity. A swordplay technique can be disrupted just like a spell can be ruined during casting. A sword saint can make a Martial Lore check to successfully use swordplay if he is hit be an attack during the technique. A Sword Saint can use swordplay defensively by making a successful Martial Lore check to avoid provoking attacks of opportunity. Swordplay techniques are not subject to spell resistance.
----The save DC for Swordplay techniques is 10 + 1/2 sword saint level + the sword saint's Wisdom modifier. Swordplay is not subject to Arcane Spell Failure.
----You must be wielding a sword to use Swordplay techniques. Swordplay deals the damage of your wielded weapon. This includes bonuses from strength, enhancement bonuses, Power Attack, etc.
----There are three grades of Swordplay, and in order of power are Basic, Advanced, and Master. A Sword Saint begins play with knowledge of one Swordplay technique, which must be a Basic technique. A sword saint gains new Swordplay techniques as shown in the above table.

Swordplay techniques:

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Basic:

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Cleansing Strike:

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Range: 30 ft.

Cleansing Strike is a ranged touch attack that deals your melee weapon damage + 1d6/2 levels fire damage. A creature hit with Cleansing Strike receives a -2 penalty to attacks, saves, checks for 1 minute unless it makes a succeesful Fortitude save.

Judgment Blade:

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Range: 20 ft.
Area: 5 ft. radius burst

Judgment Blade deals your melee weapon damage + 1d6/2 levels cold damage, Reflex save for half damage. Creatures that fail the reflex save are paralyzed for 1 round unless they succeed on a Fortitude save.

Mindsap:

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Range: 30 ft.

Mindsap is a ranged touch attack that deals your melee weapon + 1d4 damage/2 levels. Creautres must make a successful Will save or receive a -2 penalty to caster levels for 1 minute.

Powersap:

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Range: 30 ft.

Powersap is a ranged touch attack that deals your melee weapon + 1d4 damage/2 levels. Creatures must make a successful Fortitude save or take 4 Strength damage.

Sanguine Sword:

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Range: 30 ft.

Sanguine Sword is a ranged touch attack that deals your melee weapon damage + 1d6/2 levels negative energy damage, you heal that amount of damage. Since undead are powered by negative energy, this technique cures such a creature of a like amount of damage, rather than harming it, and you take that amount of damage.

Advanced:

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Crush Weapon:

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Range: 30 ft.

Crush Weapon is a ranged touch attack that deals your melle weapon + 1d4/2 levels damage. This damage is also deal to the affected creatur's weapon (as if attempting to Sunder).

Crushing Blow:

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Range: 30 ft.

Crushing Blow is a ranged attack that deals your melee weapon damage + 1d8/2 levels sonic damage. A creature hit with Crushing Blow is paralyzed for 3 rounds and deafened for 1 minute unless it succeeds on a Fortitude save.

Hallowed Bolt:

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Range: 30 ft.
Area: 5 ft. radius burst

Hallowed Bolt deals your melee weapon damage + 1d6/2 levels electric damage, Reflex save for half damage. A creature that fails the Reflex save cannot cast spells or spell-like abilities for 3 rounds unless it makes a successful Fortitude save.

Northswain's Strike:

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Range: 30 ft.

Northswain's Strike is a ranged attack that deals your melee weapon + 1d4/2 levels damage. Whenever the attack roll is a natural 20, creatures hit by Northswain's Strike must make a successful Will save or die.

Master:

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Abyssal Blade:

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Range: 30 ft.
Area: Cone-shaped Burst

Abyssal Blade deals your melee weapon + 1d8/level damage, Reflex save for half damage. You take 20% of your maximum HP damage (rounded down).

Crush Armor:

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Range: 30 ft.

Crush Armor is a ranged touch attack that deals your melee weapon + 1d4/ 2 levels damage. This damage is also dealt to the affected creatures armor (as if attempting to Sunder).

Divine Ruination:

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Range 40 ft.
Area: 40 ft. line

Divine Ruination deals your melee weapon damage + 1d8/level holy damage, Reflex save for half. A creature that fails the Reflex save is confused (as the spell) for 3 rounds unless it makes a successful Will save.

Unholy Sacrifice:

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Area:20 ft. radius burst centered on you.

Unholy Sacrifice deals your melee weapon damage + 1d10/level Vile damage to all creatures (except you), Reflex save for half damage. Creatures that fail the Reflex save are pushed to the edge of the effect and knocked prone. Creatures damaged by Unholy Sacrifice are slowed for 5 rounds unless they succeed a Fortitude save. You take 30% of your maximum HP damage (rounded down).

Vehemence (Ex): At 4th level all damage you deal is increased by 10%. All damage you take is increased by 10%. This does not apply to self-inflicted damage. This ability increases an additional 10% every 4 levels (20% at 8th, 30% at 12th, 40% at 16th, to a maximum of 50% at 20th).

Improved Toughness: At 5th level you gain Improved Toughness as a bonus feat.


Edit:

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Edit #1

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• Added some fluff.
• Changed First Blood from ever 5 levels to every 3
• Changed Northswain's Strike to nat.20 save or die

[JakStone]

Right now, this class needs a lot of work. I love the inital concept, but here are my problems with it:

The techniques are broken. One of them allows you to force someone to make a save or die /every round/. At level 9, no less! Also, alot of them are variatons on the same theme: deals 1dx energy damage. There's a ton more original things you could do here - reduce land speed by cutting tendons, send opponents flying, block/redirect attacks, etc.

A ton of empty levels: Right now, the /only/ thing this class gains are the techniques. While they are powerful, it'd be rather boring, as a player, to not really gain anything new at levels 3, 7, 12, and 18. Look at all the things the warlock gains besides invocationsto fill out its levels, and add flavorful abilities.

Vehemence should be a per day or round thing, entering a state that gives you those modifiers. It's really disadvantagious for the player to be taking 50% more damage from attacks, especially when you consider what kind of damage a critical hit would be doing. Meanwhile, the advantage is extremely powerful. Both being always active is just odd, to me.

Those are my inital thoughts. Great starting point for a class, and i look forward to seeing what comes out of it.

[Grax Hellfire]

I definitely agree that the "save or die" is thoroughly broken.

The other techniques are broken as at will abilities. This would, in effect, never require the player to actually engage in melee, and grants free spells, with armor, no arcane failure, and weapon damage to boot! So I recommend either treating these as spells, as in with some kind of progression of use and accessibility, or drastically altering them.

Also, in note of the "boring" factor mentioned above, consider making this a Prestige Class, and shrinking everything down to five or ten levels. Then you could also set up some stiff prerequisites to make things seem less broken.

I like the idea of vehemence as a permanent effect, but perhaps cut it in half. 50 % is very steep.

[MammonAzrael]

*nod* I agree. Like I said, this is psuedo-ported over from Final Fantasy Tactics, so I expected it to be unbalanced. But i wanted to get it up so I could start getting responses and working on it.

More Swordplay options would be awesome, and I'd like to expand the list.

That's a good point about the empty levels, and Swordplay really being the only thing the class gets. that occured to me, but I'm not sure what else it should get. More feats? DR or healing like the Warlock? I dunno. Perhaps a little fluff will clear the path more?

As for Vehemence, I thought about making it a limited duration thing, like Rage or something The concept is that this is the fighter that really emphasizes "The best defense is a good offense." concept, which is partly why it's always on. It really makes getting the jump on someone, and winning Initiative important to this class.

Updating...

Edit: Ok, I changed a couple things, most notably Northswain's Strike and a bit of fluff. As for the dead levels, any ideas on what fits? Maybe something like Uncanny Dodge? Some type of Fortification? Evasion? Bonus to hit? I was also thinking that maybe a good Reflex save might be appropriate. The skill list bugs me, but I'm not sure what else to do with it. I'd work on some more Swordplay techniques, but my head is starting to hurt at the moment, so that'll have to wait until later. Thanks for the opinions, and I hope we can get this running smoothly!

Oh, and yeah, I thought about it as a PrC, and it might be more appropriate, I don't know.