Prestige Class: Waverider of Valkur

[berhagen]

This describes my new Prestige Class, the Waverider. It is a swashbuckling, nautically aimed prestige class meant for clerics of Valkur, the god of seafarers, and sailors in the Forgotten Realms. Please give comments on balance, abilities and flavor. I am especially not too sure on the higher level abilities.

The Waverider

You are one with your ship, you ride the waves because it is your live, you wouldn’t know how to live without it. The thrills of exploration, naval combat make you feel you are living. You show by your travels what true seamanship is, and that Valkur protects those who have faith in him.


Requirements: Profession (Sailor)
Ability to cast: 3rd level divine spells. As a cleric must have the Ocean domain
Skills:
Profession (Sailor) 8 ranks
Rope Use 3 ranks
Balance 3 ranks
Climb 3 ranks
Feats:

Skill Focus (Profession (Sailor))
Weapon Proficiency (Cutlass)


Special: Must have sailed at a seagoing boat for at least 2 years.

Abilities:

BAB: As cleric
Good saves: Reflex and Will
Hit Die: D6
Skill Points 4+Int per level.

Class Skills: Balance, Climb, Craft, Healing Jump, Profession, Rope Use, Knowledge (Religion), Knowledge (Geography), Swim.

Weapons and Armor proficiency: the Wavetamers gains light armour proficiency, but not shield and proficiency with all simple weapons, as well as Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Harpoon) (S&F).

Spell progression as a cleric continues, however no other clerical abilities such as turning undead abilities are increased.

1 Superior Sailor, Sea Legs
2 Valkur’s Mighty Blade
3 Sailor’s Grace
4 Extra Domain
5 Superior Sailor
6 Valkur’s mighty blade
7 Sailor’s Grace
8 Valkur’s Blessing.
9 Superior Sailor
10 Valkur’s Mighty blade


Valkur’s Blessing: When you are shipwrecked or are swept overboard, you will not drown. You will instead wash up on a beach, at a place having enough potential food and water to support you indefinitely. This does however not protect you from Predators, Stupidity, or lack of skills. (or from hostile natives for that matter).

Extra domain: You gain an extra domain from the list of Air, Chaos, Good, Ocean and Protecion. You do gain the domain power, and another list of domains spells to choose from, you do not gain an extra domain spell per day.

Superior Sailor: Beginning at first level you gain a +2 bonus to profession (sailor) checks, this bonus increases to +4 at 5th and +6 at 10th level.

Sea legs: You are so accustomed to the movements of your ship, even in the strongests of storms that you no longer have to make concentration checks related to the movement of a ship.

Sailor’s Grace:

You are so experienced at working on your ship, climbing the ropes, and hoisting the sails that from level 3 onwards you get a +2 Bonus to Climb, Jump, Rope Use and Balance checks as long as you’re on a ship. This bonus increase to +4 at level 7

Valkur’s Mighty Blade

When using a cutlass, in the hands of a Wavetamer it acts as a Cutlass of Spellstoring +1 . At level 5 this increases to a cutlass of spellstoring +2. At level 9 it acts as a keen cutlass +2 of spellstoring.
If the weapon already has additional abilities, (such as frost, flaming) these still apply, and if the enhancement bonus is better than that conferred by the ability the highest of the bonusses is used.


edited the Valkur's might blade ability for clarification purposes.

 

[berhagen]

Notes on construction

Also some information on the construction of the class, and my ideas behind it: (so you can see where you think I might be wrong, give suggestions what you think would be better).

Notes on the construction:

Idea: To create a cleric that would do well on sea, with a swashbuckling flavor, something completely different from the “walking-hospital” or “tank” clerics. Abilities have in part been based on Seas of Blood (mongoose), countless ideas from those boards (subconsciously at the least) and on the 2nd edition Powers & Pantheons book.

Requirements:

Class:
Although according to Monte (and others) it is better to create prestige classes which work for more than one class, I didn’t do this with this class. Only clerics (or multi-class cleric/rogues) will effectively be able to enter this class.

This was a deliberate choice. Having the possibilities of a wizard to enter this class would have made it impossible to balance it for both. (as about every official and unofficial PrC for spellcasters in general (not made specifically for either divine or arcane) shows).

Rangers, and Paladins of the divine spellcasters didn’t fit the bill well either, as rangers tend to be a bit too nature oriented, whereas a this god doesn’t have any Paladins in his service. (He is Chaotic Good)

Skills:
Choice of skills is quite self-explanatory. It needs either a level 6 cleric (no Int modifier), to spend all his skill points at these skills, a level 5 cleric with intelligence bonus to spend almost all skill points in it. A rogue/cleric, which is quite close to the PrC anyway would also qualify at level 6. (cleric 5/rogue 1) without having to spend the largest part of his skill points at the required skills.

Abilities:

BAB: As it is a cleric with some rogueish streaks, he follows the cleric/rogue BAB progression.

Saves: Will saves as the cleric, fortitude isn’t really appropriate for him, but reflex is. Thus high Will and Reflex saves and low fortitude. (If the class is overpowered, this is can easily be changed to have only reflex as a good save, which doesn’t hurt the flavour of the class)

Skills: to make your way on a ship well, you will need more skills, it also fits with the cleric with some rogueish abilities idea of the class. The nature of the skills are the dexterity based ones, which one would need on a ship. I did not include tumble, as this is a very strong skill, which is not strictly necessary. (Don’t want to infringe on rogue and monk territory too much.)

Hitdice: Lower than the cleric to reflect the greater emphasis on agility and higher comparability with a rogue/swashbuckling type. Of course it was also included for game balance reasons.

Special Abilities:

Exotic Weapon proficiency (harpoon). A weapon that suits a cleric to this god, and sort of a compensation for having to have the cutlass weapon proficiency. The cutlass is in almost all respects equal to a shortsword, and thus wouldn't really warrant a feat for most players.

However for flavor reason I thought it should be added nonetheless.


Extra domain: ability as in about every cleric focused PrC in the FRCS, MoF, and F&P books.

Valkur’s mighty blade: comparable to the Selunite Silverstar’s ability of the Moonmace, Kelemvor doomguide’s ability, or Silvanus’s Forrest protector ability. (With Mace, Sword, and Maul respectively).

Skills: Divided into the profession (sailor) and other skills. This was done because the profession (sailor) is very integral to the class, and should be applicable also when on land, recognizing ships, or repairing it, while the bonus for the other skills would be far too strong if always applicable.

Sealegs is a fun ability, I don’t think anyone will think this one too strong.

Valkur’s blessing just fits in greatly with the class and the portfolio of the god, not too strong, but a fun ability nonetheless.

 

[Kip the Bold]

This class seems pretty cool and pretty well balanced...

I would recommend letting the sailor's grace ability apply off ship as well, to give the class a little more flexibility.

Valkur's blessing is a cool idea, but might create a few issues in actual play. Does it teleport you to a beach? If not, is there a specific time it takes to arrive at a beach? What if there isn's a beach for thousands of miles? That's just nit picking, but in the hands of a certain type of player that ability could be very annoying.

 

[Noldor Elf]

Class seems fine and as most powers are adaptions from similar PrC, it's most likely balanced.

One little note: Since Ocean domain is requirement for the class it should not be in the list of extra domains.

 

[Krug]

I thought he'd have a surfboard, dude!

 

[drowdude]

Personally I would up the HD to d8. I don't think it would throw the class out of balance, and I figure their HD should fall in place between rogues and fighters...


Other than that minor point I think class looks *very* kewl.