How good is this ability?

[SangoProduction]

Cunning Celerity (Ex)
The bravo has an unnatural knack for getting himself out of danger, especially when he is on the move. At 2nd level, the bravo gains a dodge pool equal to 50%, plus 15% for every bravo level he attains after 2nd.

The bravo can expend an attack of opportunity and reduce his dodge pool in increments of 5% to gain an equivalent amount of miss chance (maximum 20%) against an attack that he is aware of. This miss chance stacks with other miss chances, although the combined miss chances cannot exceed the maximum miss chance he could apply using this ability. If an attack affected by this ability still hits the bravo, his dodge pool replenishes half the expended amount from the attack.

The bravo loses access to his dodge pool if he is fatigued, exhausted, or has lost his Dexterity bonus to AC.

If the bravo moves at least 10 feet on his turn, the maximum miss chance he can grant himself using his dodge pool increases to 50%. This dodge pool replenishes after 1 hour of rest.

Ignore the bookkeeping aspect of it.
It seems pretty powerful, but it's limited to a number of attacks, not rounds, and without a feat expenditure, and appropriate stat allocation, only usable once per turn at that. [Never mind. Gains Combat Reflexes as a bonus feat later.] It also has a pity mechanic where it refunds half of the used pool if it didn't work out... which is fairly unique in this space.

The 50% dodge chance can be relatively easily accessed with a means to 10ft step, or the fact that you're using Spheres, and thus can actually move with your move action (imagine my shock). But that allowance does eat up even more of the limited pool, when a lower chance has a chance of doing the same thing for less. I think the most important part is being able to explicitly, additively, stack the miss chance, up to the maximum.
Going from 20 to 40 is the same use of the 20% of the pool, but reduces expected damage taken by 25%

How truly meaningful is that? I don't know, that's why I'm asking.

[ciopo]

Feels weak to me, the pool is small with a fairly long recovery, relative to usage.

I would consider it okaysh if the stacking nature was uncapped.

Meaning if I don't move and are affected by distorsion, I could add a max of 20% for a total of 70%, or if I move and have blur, I could add 50% for a total of 70%.

Yes, that potentially means 100% miss chance.

Pool: I'd set it at 100%+20%/level(3rd onward), because that groks better with the max 20% per use when not moving.

1 hour recovery time is roughly equivalent to "whole dungeon". I'd lower it to a simplier "per encounter" pool.

As is, the vibes it gives me is "makes your blur count as distorsion for 2 attacks per day +1attack/2 level", and that's... weak, very weak

[Logalmier]

Neat idea, far too stingy. As a class feature, it fails to keep up with essentially every serious way of gaining miss chance. Moving Target from Athletics is extremely similar, and it keys off Martial Focus expenditure, a comparatively plentiful, and infinite, resource. Class features failing to keep up with talents (a pretty common problem imo) feels bad.

[Chronos]

There are lots of ways to get an always-on, or close to it, 20% miss chance, and fewer but still multiple ways to get an always-on 50% miss chance. And this is a long, long way from always-on.

Plus, of course, the annoyance of the bookkeeping. You can't balance an overpowered ability by making it annoying (I can't remember whose Law that is... Grod's?), but it doesn't exactly do an underpowered ability any favors, either.

[SangoProduction]

How does the perceived value change, with the context that at a later level, you instead get it for the entire round, but at half value?

[Logalmier]

How does the perceived value change, with the context that at a later level, you instead get it for the entire round, but at half value?

I think the apt comparison is Feather Fall vs the monk's Slow Fall ability. Is it neat that a level 20 monk can fall any distance while next to a wall? Yes. Does it change the fact that Feather Fall is a level 1 spell? No.

[ciopo]

How does the perceived value change, with the context that at a later level, you instead get it for the entire round, but at half value?

I would need more informstion, half value means what, we spend 20 but get 10? We spend 20 for one attack but still get 10 the rest ofthe round? We spend 40 to get 20, or 100 to get 50 if moving?

I suppose that 1-2/dungeon of .... 4ish rounds of blur... is.. meh

My feedback remains the same, I would feel it'd be interesting to play with if it would stack with blur/distorsion without being capped to blur/distorsion percentages.


If it later gains a feature to make it per round, I question why it wasn't a per round ability to begin with.

Assuming it's a 10 levels prc, a pool of 155 sounds bleh to me, it's 3 rounds of half powered distorsion and a leftover 5% , I'd tweak the numbers to be... probably 50 + 50 every even level, or possibly more. If that "half power but whole round" means spending 100 to have 1 round of distorsion, I feel the pool should have at least 300-400 points.

Depending on prerequisites and BAB and other features, if I am tk be honestthe most appealing thing right now seems to be the free combat reflexes.

It consuming AoO is actually cool, I'd consider that to be enough of a "cost" to drop the dodge pool concept altogether and simply go with "when you are attacked, you can spend one AoO to gain 20% miss chance against that attack, this miss chance stack additively with every other concealment miss chance you may have" and increase that % at higher prc levels. The "X% miss chance against that attack and Y% miss chance for the rest of the round" would also be cool, if made esplictly stackable with itself.

Of course, then you run into the "will just attack someone else instead" problem, but such is life