Battle Dancer (Class) and Sohei.

[ekarney]

I've seen the Battle Dancer class around a bit whilst traversing books to think up creative new enemies.
and honestly it's an interesting class. It sucks, but it's interesting, same deal with the Sohei.

And my question is, how could both of those classes be improved? Both as enemies or player classes. Because there's a lot of really interesting concepts in both of the classes, it's just that they both suck.

[Pluto!]

Sohei could be cool if it had actual casting, going up to level 5 or 6 spells, especially if it could cast them in its Frenzy. That would be my starting point, tweaking as needed past then.

Battle Dancer just needs to do something. Anything. Nearly all its abilities are oriented at making up for its disadvantages compared to the NPC Warrior class, not in actually outperforming it. There are like 3 total abilities that give the Battle Dancer something to do that a magic weapon and armor wouldn't, and they all come way too late in the build. The easy answer would be tacking on spells or maneuvers. The harder answer would probably involve taking notes from PF's Soulknife.

[Necroticplague]

I'd go with a route similar to what PF did with a bunch of classes. Instead of giving it pre-set dances every few levels, make it like a Rogue Talent, and you unlock a new ability every odd level. At the very least, that's a sensible first step.

[StreamOfTheSky]

There was a thread about an improved Battle Dancer class just like...yesterday: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?441337-Battle-Dancer-%28Class%29-3-5-borrowing-from-PF-concepts