Ignore the noise around you and listen to the music inside you [3.5 Base class PEACH]

[Owrtho]

Have you thought about making some spelldances just increase DC faster to extend? If your flight one was DC + 3 to extend (putting it at 30 for base DC 12) and this one say cost DC + 4 to extend, you're looking at DC 39 for AMF, which puts it out of low level realms, but leave lower effects open, and inadvertently drop the DC to get the final routine at higher levels.

If you follow this, then at 8th, the DCs become 24 and 31, making the AMF still a bit tough, but doable, and flight more than reasonable.

That could work quite well. Given that some spelldances already alter the extending rules it wouldn't be that big a change for a given dance to change something that minor. That said I'd need to put specific rules for the choreographed spelldances, likely in the area of that you count all extensions as being at the DC increase of the current portion.

It would be cool, true, if they spent 6 turns in combat to get their tornado off, but in point defense situations, if the group has an estimate on when, they can set it up before hand, and have the tornado/AMF ready.

While that's true, I'm not hugely concerned about the tornado in that situation, as a low level character will then find it difficult to keep up with subsequent DCs to sustain it for long, while a high level one won't be that big a deal if they throw out a tornado. That said, as I noted before the real issue is the out of combat utility use, such as using an AMF to get past magical traps or the like.

I may have misstated too. Here's what happens at base use. Extend the dance 3 times, treat creatures as 1 size smaller. At the same time, hit Second Routine, creature size resets, so extending it has no benefits at all unless you get into 9 rounds or are level 8+. This seems out of character as compared to the rest of your spelldances.

Ah, I see your issue there. There is actually a reason for that. Specifically, the increase in routine already has the same effect as the extend effect. Really, the extend effect is to increase wind strength past those of the routines. Also do note that increasing the routine is optional, so if one wants to keep it at the current routine but still have it impact larger creatures they may do so (for example if they want to keep it more a gust of wind effect rather than making it a tornado).

There is also the fact that extending it has the benefit of keeping the spelldance going, and allows the dancer to change the direction the wind is blowing (particularly useful if the dancer moves and wants to keep it focused on her enemies).

Still, it just occurred to me that the manner I altered the wording is still a bit off from the intended effect, and I may alter it slightly. I may also change it to adjust the size creatures are treated as every two extensions rather than every three.

Owrtho