Wich source is better? Blade of Orien question

[Swaoeaeieu]

Hello playground!

I am starting a new pathfinder campaign but the DM is incorperating some Eberron material so i wanted to go with the blade of Orien PrC. The DM is willing to just copy the normal BoO or the 'pathfinder version' (https://sites.google.com/site/eberronpathfinder/conversion-info/classes/prestige-classes/blade-of-orien) What i see is that they have some differences but wich one is better is something i can't see with my limited knowledge of 3.p.

Can someone tell me wich one has a clear advantage?
As another question: what is a good starting class before i take this PrC? A martial class, fighter or barbarian levels?

thanks in advance guys!

[Swaoeaeieu]

Ok. I'm bumping this for good luck and then i'm off.
Can anyone please give me an estimate wich of the 2 versions is better/more balanced/holds up better in high levels?

[Zweisteine]

I don't have access to the original class just now. What are the differences between the two?

[Pluto!]

This gets weird because they're based on different versions of the dragonmark feat and SLA, and the PF revisions of each are more powerful than the original.

If we assume that the 3.5 feat goes with the 3.5 class and the revised feat/SLA go with the PF class:

In the original's favor:

Benign Transposition power at ECL 8.
Blink power at ECL 12.
Better skills (Stealth stuff, 4+Int skill points)


In the revision's favor:

More uses of Dragonmark.
SLAs don't ever provoke, can always transport others.
SLA CLs that scale into high levels. (eg. ECL 15 the 3.5 version has CL 6/60ft teleports, the PF version has CL 13/130 ft teleports)
5 bonus feats.


Overall, Benign Transposition and Blink are both strong abilities, but the extra 5 feats and 5 activations of the classes' features are both just huge, so I feel pretty confident that the PF version is going to be more powerful for almost every purpose.

(The Dragonmarked PrCs really suffer from the Shadowcaster's problem of getting cool stuff to do, but too few activations to reliably do that cool stuff in each of a day's encounters)

[Keld Denar]

I like Hexblade as a leadin to BoO. Dark Companion and Hex help raise the DC on the hostile teleport, which can be very nasty if you used it to throw a person off a cliff or a moving train or simply into flanking position between two rogues. A level of Dragonmark Heir or so probably couldn't go wrong either to give you extra longevity.

[Swaoeaeieu]

I don't have access to the original class just now. What are the differences between the two?

If you own the book (Dragonmarked) i think it is ok to look it up on the dndtools site.

Pluto! gave quite a good summarie of the differences. They get some of the abbilities on different levels. But the original gets the blink spell. but the pathfinder version gets the bonus feats wich give it more combat-like teleporting.


In the original's favor:

Benign Transposition power at ECL 8.
Blink power at ECL 12.
Better skills (Stealth stuff, 4+Int skill points)


In the revision's favor:

More uses of Dragonmark.
SLAs don't ever provoke, can always transport others.
SLA CLs that scale into high levels. (eg. ECL 15 the 3.5 version has CL 6/60ft teleports, the PF version has CL 13/130 ft teleports)
5 bonus feats.


Overall, Benign Transposition and Blink are both strong abilities, but the extra 5 feats and 5 activations of the classes' features are both just huge, so I feel pretty confident that the PF version is going to be more powerful for almost every purpose.

i have been looking at them a bit closer and i think you are right. The PF version doesn't get blink, wich is a shame, but the extra feats are really cool and the early levels are stronger. So ill go with the PF version. Thanks for the help Pluto!

The rest of the party are moestly new players, so the dm wants to keep some the start simple. So ill go with fighter or a rogue variant as a start i think.

But thanks again guys!