There's an awful lot of base classes for Pathfinder when it comes to third party, no doubt about that. A lot of the time there's so many options, many of which step on each other's toes, that it's hard to find one with both good fluff and mechanics or at least does something new in a clever way.
The War Dancer by Drop Dead Studios (the same folks who did Spheres of Power) is relatively obscure as far as base classes go. It has one review by Endzeitgeist, but no entry on the D20 Pathfinder SRD or other acknowledgement and discussion from what I see in the fandom. What I did see intrigued me from the sample pages: a warrior class with controller aspects whose supernatural dances can grant power over the battlefield. Such abilities range from supernatural swiftness to breaking tremors in the earth to trip up far away opponents. It doesn't have a lot of content (14 pages including the title) but I am far from disappointed by the purchase by how much it provides in that limited space.
Concept
The War Dancer, as described via the in-character story and the opening blurb, is a mystic warrior who studies signs and omens to gain insight into the world around them by whipping themselves up into a trance-like state not unlike a dance. By getting a bead on their enemies and the surrounding environment they can both subtly and overtly manipulate opponents into desired positions.
When it comes to the bare bones, the War Dancer has a full Base Attack progression, a d10 hit die, good Fortitude and Will saves, a small skill list but a modest 4 + Intelligence modifier per level, and limited spontaneous divine spellcasting (up to 4th level) with many abilities keyed off of Wisdom. Like a monk they are not proficient with armor, but can use all simple weapons, martial weapons, and shields.
War Dancers gain a monk-like
AC bonus, adding their Wisdom as a bonus to it and their Combat Maneuver Defense (resist disarm, trips, etc) as well. Oddly it does not work when the war dancer is using a shield in addition to armor and medium and heavy encumbered restrictions, making me wonder why they're proficient with shields in the first place.
They also gain
Style Specialization, which grants free proficiency in all exotic melee weapons which deal either bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. One damage type must be selected, and the choice cannot be changed or have other types added later.
Next we come to the War Dancer's iconic class feature, the
Dance. Like a Barbarian's rage it is a limited daily resource whose duration can be split up into individual rounds. The duration is 4 + Wisdom modifier + 2 bonus rounds for every class level after 1st. It's plenty of time to last for most battles, but when it comes to multiple encounters (such as dungeon-crawling) the dance must be wisely spent.
Basically there are 13 different kinds of Dances, which can be learned at 1st, 4th, and every 4 levels thereafter as well as via the new Extra Dance feat in this book. Each dance is divided into three steps, or tiers of power: basic, advanced (which is accessed at 5th level), and expert step (which is learned at 13th level). Dances are entered and begun as a swift action and start at the basic step. Accessing a higher step or activating another dance at once requires another expenditure of a swift action, meaning that you can't just off Expert all the time and have to build up to that power level like a Super-Saiyan charging their ki. War dancers can combine several dances at the same time at higher levels, with 2 simultaneously at 9th level and 3 at once at 17th level.
List of Dances
So enough talk, what are the available dances and what do they do?
Dance of Earth-breaking puts the user in touch with the land. Basic step deals 1d6 acid damage to weapon attacks, advanced allows the creation of tremors as a ranged attack to trip opponents on the ground with a Reflex save, and expert allows you to manipulate the earth itself, creating pits, walls,
stoneshape applications, and even moving around blocks of ground Minecraft-style!
This is a pretty good dance and is line with the martial controller aspect that the War Dancer's role is meant to fill.
Dance of Flames is another elemental-themed one (there are four), the basic step grants 1d6 bonus fire damage to weapon attacks, advanced allows you to create an area-of-effect flame attack centered on yourself, and expert allows you to conjure blazing pillars of fire to damage opponents and burn things in a 5 foot wide by 30 feet tall area. Nice, but in comparison to the other elemental dances it feels sort of lacking in that all its steps focus on damage-dealing as opposed to debuffs in addition to damage.
Dance of Flowing Water deals cold-based bonus damage for its basic step, while its advanced one is curious in that it manifests as a blast of water which can bull rush a target or break an object up to 60 feet away. This is more versatile in comparison to earth in that it can be used on flying opponents and to break down walls and chests, but bull rush doesn't trip which can be quite useful for melee. So I can't really say which one is better. The expert step does a cone-based area-of-effect attack which deals cold damage in the form of a flurry of icy shards.
Dance of Storm-Riding is the final elemental dance and it adds electricity-based bonus damage for its basic step. The advanced step allows the War Dancer to throw bolts of lightning from weapons as a ranged touch attack, and it can even be used in conjunction with two-weapon fighting (although it deals less damage than a bolt from a two-handed weapon). The expert step grants the effects of the
control winds spell except its duration lasts for as long as the war dancer continues to dance and its type, direction, or severity can be changed with a standard action.
As you can see, the elemental dances are overall pretty strong choices and relatively balanced against each other: energy damage, ranged attacks, battlefield control, they have all of that. The earth and wind expert steps tend to be more versatile than the cold and fire, though.
The
Disruption dance seems underwhelming, in that it focuses largely on static penalties and is best used with reach weapons. The dance's basic step imposes a penalty on attack rolls made by opponents within your threatened area (based on war dancer level, ranges from -2 to -6), while the advanced dance makes threatened squares cost double the amount of movement for enemies and negates 5 foot steps except for ones made to leave a threatened square. The expert step imposes a penalty to saving throws and armor class on threatened enemies (level-based as well, -1 to -5).
The
Duelist is a dance intended to encourage tanking in that bad things happen to an opponent if they don't attack you. As a free action you can mark a target for a duel once per round, and you gain a +2 morale on attack rolls vs. that opponent but -2 armor class vs. all other opponents. The marked target suffers -2 to attack rolls vs. anyone other than you. This would be an ordinary buff, except that it's bonuses
and penalties increase by 1 for every 5 war dancer levels you possess; you shouldn't be taking heavier penalties as you level, and you can't opt for a lesser bonus for a lesser penalty. The advanced step provokes attacks of opportunity from opponents who try to leave your threatened square even if they use a 5 foot step, and the expert step increases the bonus/penalty modifiers by 1 for every 3 war dancer levels you possess.
See, the thing about tanking is that you need a powerful incentive to force opponents to attack you. By focusing only on attack rolls, it leaves open so many other problems. Ranged touch attacks are still very capable of hitting, to say nothing of abilities keyed solely on a saving throw. Sure the penalties might get big enough to mean something at higher levels, but with an armor-free class you're opening up yourself for a hurting from other foes in combat.
Force Blades allows you to attack distant enemies or multiple enemies with a single strike in different ways, depending upon your Style Specialization.
The basic step for all three styles extends your reach by five feat for any weapon you wield.
Piercing: The advanced step increases the reach of wielded piercing weapons by 5 feet, and stacks with the basic step. The expert step allows you to attack all enemies in a straight line up to your reach, rolling attack and damage once and applying it to all targets. With
enlarge person, reach weapons, the lunge feat, and potentially other reach-enhancing tricks, this is a really good dance.
Bludgeoning: The advanced step applies the result of your attack roll with a bludgeoning weapon to all opponents within 5 feet of that target, dealing damage equal to your Strength modifier plus Power Attack adjustments if the roll is high enough to hit them. The expert step increases the radius to all opponents within 10 feet.
Slashing: The advanced step allows you to make an additional attack once per round as a free action to a different opponent within reach if you successfully hit an enemy with a slashing weapon. The expert step allows you to do this twice per round.
Even the 5 foot reach basic step is good, but the extra 5 feet for piercing makes the piercing application potentially the best as it's the most versatile. Slashing is good for extra attacks although it's not good when fighting single opponents. The bludgeoning damage is going to be small overall in that it doesn't add modifiers like energy damage, weapon enhancement, etc.
Forceful Dance is pretty straightforward: more potential damage, and its advanced and expert steps are also split up into damage types.
The basic step adds +2 damage made with melee weapons +1 for every 5 war dancer levels.
Piercing: You deal 2d6 sneak attack damage vs. flat-footed opponents at advanced and 4d6 at expert. A good way to qualify for certain sneak attack-based prerequisites.
Bludgeoning: treat the melee damage rolls for attacks made with bludgeoning weapons as the maximum result possible for advanced, and increase the damage of bludgeoning weapons by 1 die size. The text is unclear in several ways: the advanced can be taken to apply to all damage rolls, including bonus energy damage such as holy, flaming, etc weapons, while the expert doesn't provide an example. Does a 1d6 club now do 1d8 or 2d6 damage with this?
Slashing: Slashing weapons have their critical threat ranges doubled, and their critical multipliers increase by 1. This stacks with
keen weapons and Improved Critical, so you can have a keen rapier with threatens a critical on a 12-20 and does triple damage on a successful confirmation! And the expert step automatically confirms all critical threats! Bonus!
Harrowing is the prime debuffer dance by trading off damage in favor of negative status ailments. Basic trades away all damage on a successful melee attack to make an opponent flat-footed for one round, while advanced can make the target blind, deaf, or sickened for 1 round instead. The expert allows you to redirect the missed attack of an opponent to any other target within that creature's reach. This does not specify if this requires an action or is limited in use, so I assume the expert step can be used as often as opponents attack and miss!
Magic Splitting is the mage-hater dance, and it's kind of blah in that it only grants bonus feats for its steps:
Disruptive, Spellbreaker, and
Teleport Tactician for basic, advanced, and expert respectively. You can get these feats much earlier with the dance than by taking them normally, but if you get enemy casters within melee range you already have a big advantage against them.
Redirection is all about shifting enemies around on the battlemat. Basic step forces opponents to take a 5 foot step whenever they make a melee attack against you and miss even if they already took one that round (must end movement in a safe place, no pit-falling for you!), while advanced allows you to make a
reposition combat maneuver as a free action on a successful attack roll. Basic and advanced step abilities can only be performed once per round, but the expert step lifts this restriction provided you use said abilities on a new un-targeted opponent each time in that same round. Considering that you can move about opponents with the earth, water, and wind elemental dances in addition to other things, this feels underpowered in comparison save for its very good expert ability.
Unhindered Movement is all about going fast. The basic step increases your base speed by 20 feet. The advanced step increases this by another 10 feet and allows you to move through opponents' threatened areas without having to roll an Acrobatics check or if you fail said check. You still provoke an attack of opportunity, but with this dance you keep on moving (normally your movement would end in that square where you got attacked). Expert step allows you to use
dimension door as a move action with a range up to your movement speed, but you cannot take additional creatures with you.
Unbreakable is our final dance, focused purely on a strong defense. Basic grants a +2 dodge bonus to AC with an additional +1 for every 5 war dancer levels, advanced grants evasion as well as +1 on all saves per 5 war dancer levels, while expert grants improved evasion and the AC and saving throw bonuses now improve every 3 instead of 5 levels. Not very flashy, but a strong choice to pick when pairing it up with other dances at once.
So that's all of the dances. Most of them have cool potential, and very few are underpowered.
The rest of the class features
So what else can a war dancer get beyond 1st level dances, an AC bonus, and free exotic proficiencies? Well, quite a bit actually.
At 2nd level the class can perform a
Guided Strike as a swift action, which is effectively a
true strike spell except it's a supernatural ability and can be used additional times per day every 4 levels after 2nd.
At 3rd level a war dancer gains
Flow of Combat, which allows the war dancer to roll a Sense Motive check as an immediate action vs. an attack they're aware of and when they're not flat-footed. The Sense Motive result substitutes their normal armor class when resolving that attack. While it is not a daily resource and can be good for making up for the lack of armor if you find various means to boost Sense Motive skill bonuses, the expenditure of a swift action can be hard when you might need it for other things that round. It can only be used vs. one attack as opposed to all attacks that round, further limiting its potential
4th level grants Uncanny Dodge and its Improved Cousin at 8th. Nothing new here.
The 20th level capstone ability,
Masterful Dance, allows a war dancer to begin with both the basic and advanced steps of a dance whenever they start dancing. This is nice, but at that level things are so balls-to-the-wall crazy it doesn't really stand out. The interesting thing about Pathfinder is that classes now have unique 20th level abilities to encourage a sense of accomplishment for reaching this pinnacle. However, the majority of games don't reach that tier of play, in part because actually running the game quickly becomes a nightmare. But this is not the War Dancer's fault and more the fault at the underlying D20 framework itself and the capstone tradition encouraged by Pathfinder.
Spells
The War Dancer gains spells at 4th level, and has a caster level equal to their class level minus 3, much like a ranger or paladin. Unlike rangers and paladins, war dancers are spontaneous divine casters, and they pick spells known which they can cast without the need for memorization. The class' spell list is widespread in the sense that it draws from a multitude of existing class spell lists from the cleric to the ranger to the sorcerer/wizard. However, the majority of spells the war dancer can cast typically involve self-improvement, combat applications like healing and buffs, and the like over the more utility spells such as
fabricate and
scrying. What they do gain is quite good, with spells which can fit a variety of applications. At 1st level you get things like
endure elements, feather fall, mount and
resist energy, while at higher levels you get the
cure x wounds, darkness, dispel magic, freedom of movement, keen edge, silence, versatile weapon and more than a few communal (multi-target) spells. This is just a small sampling as opposed to a full reprint, in case you're wondering.
Thoughts so far: The war dancer's a pretty solid class. It is melee-focused but has a few ranged tricks up its sleeve; its saves tend to be good on account of its only poor one (Will) being boosted by Wisdom being the key ability; a swift
true strike is good for when you need a guaranteed roll to hit an enemy. More than a few dances are really good, providing ranged attacks, reach, critical threats and battlefield control, and given how short combat lasts in Pathfinder round-wise, it can hold its own for several encounters. They don't get many spells but the selection they can choose from is quite nice. It's not going to win any points when it comes to out of combat utility or sheer magical power that is the Cleric/Druid/Wizard trio, but it can do a lot of things the Fighter and Monk can't easily do.
For a melee character the lack of armor and shield bonus really hurts, and while a Sense Motive-based defense might be able to partially mitigate this, the War Dancer's still very vulnerable to surprise attacks. With all the big buff monsters with reach and huge Strength scores, the war dancer's low AC kind of pushes them into utilizing reach builds to make up for this.
Next time we'll cover the rest of the book, from how war dancers typically operate in the world, to new feats, spells, and archtypes!
