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Ghost Dragon
2015-02-08, 09:21 PM
This is again another D&D 3.5 PrC I really liked the idea of and was very fun to play. Here it is as a barbarian subclass, give it a gander and give feedback and suggestions if you think something is not right. Cheers.

Path of the Dervish: Wild, exotic, and as dangerous as their whirling blades, the dervish epitomizes speed, quickness, and abandon. Their motions appear to be as random as they are graceful, but the steps of their lethal dance play out according to their own rhythm. Dervishes usually belong to nomadic tribes, travellers and gypsies are their kin. A dervish learns the dance of war as they grow up among family and tribe, gaining a special connection to slashing weapons and the flowing movements they make. She watches others as she travels, however, and brings new steps to the dance as she goes, relying on subtlety more than brute force.

3rd level Dervish Dance: Starting at 3rd-level, you become a whirling dancer of death when you rage. When you choose to rage you now enter a dervish dance, and for the duration of your dervish dance you make the following changes to your normal rage:

1.You have advantage on Acrobatics (Dexterity) checks and Dexterity saving throws.
2.When you make a melee weapon attack using Dexterity, you gain a bonus to the damage roll that increases as you gain levels as a barbarian, as shown in the Rage Damage column of the Barbarian table.
3.You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

The Dervish can treat any one handed slashing weapons as having the Finesse property. You can only enter a dervish dance while wielding slashing weapons, wearing no armor, and not using a shield. If you are able to cast spells, you can cast spells while in a dervish dance but only those that do not have a duration of concentration. Your dervish dance ends if you do not meet the normal prerequisites of raging, and if you fail to move at least 5 feet on your turn.
Additionally, you gain proficiency in the Performance skill and may use Dexterity in place of Charisma for any checks involving dance, your Reckless Attack and Primal Champion features may use Dexterity instead of Strength, and your speed increases by 5 feet while you are not wearing armor, or wielding a shield.

6th level Blade Dancer: You focus your dance into a particular style of fighting, learned from those you have encountered on your travels. Choose one of the following options:

Blade Step: When you are wielding a slashing weapon, and you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, you can move up to half your speed immediately after the attack and as part of the same reaction. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

Elaborate Parry: When you are wielding a slashing weapon in one hand and no other weapons, and wearing no armour and not wielding a shield, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.

Slashing Blades: When you engage in two-weapon fighting using only slashing weapons, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack. This ability does not stack with the two weapon fighting style gained from any other class.

Sweeping Strike: When you are wielding a slashing weapon that has the Versatile property in two hands, and you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can damage another creature with the same attack. Choose another creature within 5 feet of the original target and within your reach. If the original attack roll would hit the second creature, you deal your normal weapon damage but do not add your Dexterity modifier. The damage is of the same type dealt by the original attack.

10th level Dance of Death: Starting at 10th-level, when you make a melee slashing weapon attack using Dexterity, your weapon attacks deal an extra 1d4 damage if you moved at least 5 feet before making the attack. Additionally, your speed increases by another 5 feet while you are not wearing armor, or wielding a shield.

14th level Dance of a Thousand Cuts: Starting at 14th level, you can choose to enter the dance of a thousand cuts when you are in a dervish dance. If you do so, for the duration of your dervish dance, your Extra Attack class feature changes to Extra Attack (2). Once your dervish dance ends you suffer one level of exhaustion.

DiBastet
2015-02-08, 10:23 PM
i understand that may sound weird, but i actually use barbarian as the chassis for my adaptation; it's really all there

-no armor for a light dancer. check
-altered state of fighting that makes you more badass. check
-must keep momentum or dance is over. check
-initiative and general quickness and reflex abilities. check
-no dex option for barbarians. check

in my version the barbarian dervish can enter dervish dance instead of rage; works exactly like rage, but works DEX instead of STR. the other abilities are similar to yours.

TL,DR: consider making it a barbarian subclass instead; the whole chassis is there

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-08, 10:48 PM
i understand that may sound weird, but i actually use barbarian as the chassis for my adaptation; it's really all there

-no armor for a light dancer. check
-altered state of fighting that makes you more badass. check
-must keep momentum or dance is over. check
-initiative and general quickness and reflex abilities. check
-no dex option for barbarians. check

in my version the barbarian dervish can enter dervish dance instead of rage; works exactly like rage, but works DEX instead of STR. the other abilities are similar to yours.

TL,DR: consider making it a barbarian subclass instead; the whole chassis is there

Yep, you're right about that this lol, I'll check out yours too ;) I'll rework it for barbarian and resubmitt a thread for Barb subclass. Thanks Di :)

DiBastet
2015-02-09, 08:40 AM
I get all warm and fuzzy inside when someone calls me Di :smallredface:

You're welcome, I'm totally waiting to see it. I admit the other abilities for my dervish dancer are really lacking flavor, so I may just steal some good ideas from your!

Amnoriath
2015-02-09, 10:56 AM
As it is it combines some of the best features among the other sub-classes. Why does the have the Bear totem ability?

DiBastet
2015-02-09, 11:08 AM
You might want to consider and come up with a solution to the many barbarian abilities that modify str checks, attacks and value.

GWJ_DanyBoy
2015-02-09, 11:57 AM
Okay, you've created a Dex-based Barb. But it has a ton of overlap with other abilities.
3rd level: Barbs already get advantage on most Dex saves and Initiative, one of the more important dex checks. So now he gains advantage on acrobatics, stealth and sleigh of hand while raging? okay...
Also, why light armor? A dex-based barb has nothing to spend ability points on other than DEX and CON, so why not force him to use the Barbarian unarmored defense? All he needs is 14 CON to match the effect of studded leather.
The all-slashing-can-be-finesse ability should have a heavy weapon limitation. Without it, you could create a character with 8 (or less) STR wielding a greatsword or halbert like it was a gymnastics ribbon.

6th level: Why fighting styles? Barbs are untrained. There must be something more creative and thematic you could put here.

10th level: Let the bear totem have the resistances. Something like Evasion would be more in keeping with the theme.

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-09, 05:11 PM
As it is it combines some of the best features among the other sub-classes. Why does the have the Bear totem ability?

Yeh it was to try and keep the survivability features from the original Prc, in fact most of the choices I made were to try and keep to the original feel. I used existing features first to get the feel, so I'l look it over and try for something different but keep the feel.

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-09, 05:13 PM
You might want to consider and come up with a solution to the many barbarian abilities that modify str checks, attacks and value.

Will do, I have to say I had a look over the Barbarian class again last night and picked up on overlap and miss alignment with Str/Dex feel. :)

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-09, 05:25 PM
Okay, you've created a Dex-based Barb. But it has a ton of overlap with other abilities.
3rd level: Barbs already get advantage on most Dex saves and Initiative, one of the more important dex checks. So now he gains advantage on acrobatics, stealth and sleigh of hand while raging? okay...
Also, why light armor? A dex-based barb has nothing to spend ability points on other than DEX and CON, so why not force him to use the Barbarian unarmored defense? All he needs is 14 CON to match the effect of studded leather.
The all-slashing-can-be-finesse ability should have a heavy weapon limitation. Without it, you could create a character with 8 (or less) STR wielding a greatsword or halbert like it was a gymnastics ribbon.

6th level: Why fighting styles? Barbs are untrained. There must be something more creative and thematic you could put here.

10th level: Let the bear totem have the resistances. Something like Evasion would be more in keeping with the theme.

3rd level:Hey there, yup you're right with the overlap, I used a fighter as the base for this originally and realised last night after looking over the babarian class I have over lap so I'll fix that up. As I stated in reply to Amnoriath, most of the choices were to keep the feel of the original PrC, and light armour was there for that, but I see your point in terms of what else do they have to put stats into. Possibly introduce some Charisma based features to encourage armor? Or just leave it alone and go Unarmored.
The feel of the dervish dance I wanted to be more subtle than rage, but with similar benefits which is why the dance you can cast non concentration spells but additionally have to move more than 5 feet to keep ragin. But good pick up on stealth and sleight of hand, they dont fit thematically so I'll fix that.
The all-slashing-can-be-finesse ability does have a restriction, it states any one handed slashing weapon, preventing use of two-handed weapons.
6th level: The fluff states the dancer adds steps to her dance as she advances and learns from outsiders on her travels. Wanted it in there as the Two-Weapon Dervish is iconic (another reason why I started with the fighter as a base class). I've changed it now so it is its own thing, hopefully keeping flavour but making it separate from Fighting styles.
10th level: Fair enough, was just a choice to give more survivability, but I see it's not a good idea to have two subclasses have the same ability.
14th level: seemed to OP so brought it more in line with the Frenzy ability but tweaked it make it different. Let me know if you think it is too similar.

I will make some changes, hopefully keeps flavour and fixes most of the above stuff. Cheers and thanks again for feedback :)

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-09, 10:01 PM
Rightio all, changed those things you all suggested. See what you think now. Thanks :)

DiBastet
2015-02-10, 07:44 AM
I'm a little more on the conservative side when it comes to subclasses, I think that less is more. This here may be a little more powerful than most subclasses, having more abilities than most, but I see no glaring issues, mostly style ones so that's all I have to comment.

I really like some of your ideas, so I'm gonna steal some of them for my own.

GWJ_DanyBoy
2015-02-10, 11:08 AM
I missed the one-handed slashing line before, so I retract my previous statement about ribbons. :smallsmile:

On the changes: I like a lot of what you've done. It's really looking like a monk/hunter-ranger/barbarian hybrid, in a good way. Here's my thoughts, plus I have a couple of questions, mostly for clarity reasons.

Blade Step: I'm not sure about how this works exactly, making it difficult to judge how powerful it is. Does the attacking creature finish their attack and possibly land it, and then you step away? Or does it completely lose it's action if you step out of reach? Or perhaps it doesn't lose it's attack action, but must find a new target?
Another way you could go with this idea is letting the barb chase enemies which provoke an opportunity attack, like the vengeance paladin ability.

Elaborate Parry: Have a virtual shield! There's a few cases where it's actually better than a shield since you get the AC and still have a free hand. This allows grappling, or casting of spells. You may want to adjust it slightly for balance.

Slashing blades: two-weapon fighting style. No problems here.

Sweeping strike: Mini cleave, or like a hunter ranger. Pretty cool.

Dance of a Thousand Cuts: I think this ability could be clearer. Maybe use specific numbers instead of open ones, as in "you gain an additional extra attack" instead of "you double your extra attacks", since the bit about doubling is confusing. Do you go from 2 attacks to 2x2=4, or from 2 to 1+1x2=3? Are off-hand attacks doubled?

Generally I like the hunter-ranger inspired abilities, since the two-weapon ranger is the closest thing to a dervish in the PHB.

Amnoriath
2015-02-10, 11:48 AM
Yeh it was to try and keep the survivability features from the original Prc, in fact most of the choices I made were to try and keep to the original feel. I used existing features first to get the feel, so I'l look it over and try for something different but keep the feel.

1. The Original has a lesser hit die and no damage resistance or healing of any kind. It only had a dodge bonus and a unique offensive mechanic as well as decent skills.
2. For the most part this is better but I would never give Indomitable Might to Dexterity. This attribute has far more uses than Strength and makes this far more versatile in what it does not including your add ons. As it is he would always be able to disable Hard traps, sneak around..etc. Instead I would make this as a choice rather than try to reintegrate everything about Rage on to this. This way it becomes more unique and strength based Barbarians still have some advantages.

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-11, 02:29 AM
I'm a little more on the conservative side when it comes to subclasses, I think that less is more. This here may be a little more powerful than most subclasses, having more abilities than most, but I see no glaring issues, mostly style ones so that's all I have to comment.

I really like some of your ideas, so I'm gonna steal some of them for my own.

I'm glad you like it, and go for it in terms of taking stuff ;). I agree about it does seem to have more in it than most subclasses, just trying to transpose as many things from PrC as possible, but I do want to try and "cut the fat" and make it leaner as I have had a look at yours and like its straight forward approach.

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-11, 02:36 AM
I missed the one-handed slashing line before, so I retract my previous statement about ribbons. :smallsmile:

On the changes: I like a lot of what you've done. It's really looking like a monk/hunter-ranger/barbarian hybrid, in a good way. Here's my thoughts, plus I have a couple of questions, mostly for clarity reasons.

Blade Step: I'm not sure about how this works exactly, making it difficult to judge how powerful it is. Does the attacking creature finish their attack and possibly land it, and then you step away? Or does it completely lose it's action if you step out of reach? Or perhaps it doesn't lose it's attack action, but must find a new target?
Another way you could go with this idea is letting the barb chase enemies which provoke an opportunity attack, like the vengeance paladin ability.

Elaborate Parry: Have a virtual shield! There's a few cases where it's actually better than a shield since you get the AC and still have a free hand. This allows grappling, or casting of spells. You may want to adjust it slightly for balance.

Slashing blades: two-weapon fighting style. No problems here.

Sweeping strike: Mini cleave, or like a hunter ranger. Pretty cool.

Dance of a Thousand Cuts: I think this ability could be clearer. Maybe use specific numbers instead of open ones, as in "you gain an additional extra attack" instead of "you double your extra attacks", since the bit about doubling is confusing. Do you go from 2 attacks to 2x2=4, or from 2 to 1+1x2=3? Are off-hand attacks doubled?

Generally I like the hunter-ranger inspired abilities, since the two-weapon ranger is the closest thing to a dervish in the PHB.

On Blade Step, wanted it to be able to step away but still allow creature to attack different target, but then if it has used all its movement and no other target was available it would lose its attacks (perhaps all attacks if it makes multiple) so upon reflection it's too OP so changed it for Vengeance Pally feature which suits the feel perfectly anyways (thanks for pointing that one out).

Elaborate Parry: Yup you're right again on that one, changed to be +1 bonus comparable to the fighter defense pick.

Dance of a Thousand Cuts: Yep again clarity is good, only intended it to be 1 extra attack making a total of three (two handed weapon is not included in doubling so max 4 attacks with TWF) so will fix that up, and also take away the whole on a crit or drop enemy to 0 get another one, that's to OP too.

Glad you're liking it more now, lol so am I :)

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-11, 02:41 AM
1. The Original has a lesser hit die and no damage resistance or healing of any kind. It only had a dodge bonus and a unique offensive mechanic as well as decent skills.
2. For the most part this is better but I would never give Indomitable Might to Dexterity. This attribute has far more uses than Strength and makes this far more versatile in what it does not including your add ons. As it is he would always be able to disable Hard traps, sneak around..etc. Instead I would make this as a choice rather than try to reintegrate everything about Rage on to this. This way it becomes more unique and strength based Barbarians still have some advantages.

1. Yep when I said survivability I was refering to the Elaborate Parry of old, but you're right that it does not originally have any more survivability options, so should I take away Evasion?
2. I hear what you're saying there, I made a change to original 'Dervish Dance' so they only got advantage on Acrobatics checks not all Dex checks as it didnt make sense to be awseome at stealth and slight of hand/disabling traps while raging. I would like to change it but I'm not sure what you ment in the above point about making it a choice? Choose what exactly? whether to take Dex instead of Strength on Indomitable Might, or choose one dex check to make Indomitable Might work on, or did you mean something else? Thanks for feedback btw, really liking how its coming along and it would not be where it is without you guys comments :)

Ghost Dragon
2015-02-11, 04:01 AM
Righto, have tried to stream line it, no more Indomitable Might, no extra skill changes apart from 3rd level ones, and 10th level dance of death now is just constant extra damage but with movement nessecary whether in or out of rage (used pally improved divine smite as balance reference.) This way it is hopefully a little less is more (Thanks Di), clarity and flavour is there and Strength becomes a tertiary stat if good athletics and use of Indomitable Might is wanted.

Thoughts?

Ps thanks again all for input, really enjoy this process when you guys give feedback, tis fun :smallwink: