Tengu
HD: d8
Level BAB Fort Ref Will Features
1 +0 +0 +0 +2 Ancestral body, Wing Baffle, Crow Trickery, Grace over strenght, Sound Imitation, +1 Dex
2 +1 +0 +0 +3 Scholar Body, Sky soul, +1 Cha
3 +1 +1 +1 +3 Crow Magic, +1 Dex
4 +2 +1 +1 +4 Crow Magic, Wind Feathers
5 +2 +1 +1 +4 Crow Magic, +1 Cha, +1 Dex
6 +3 +2 +2 +5 Crow Magic, Crow Feat, +1 Cha, +1 Dex
Class Skills (6+ Int Modifier,quadruple at 1st level): Balance, Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Listen, Sense Motive, Perform(any), Profession(any), Knowledge(any), Iajutsu Focus, Spellcraft, Survival
Proficiencies: The tengu is profecient with it's own natural weapons, simple weapons and the Katana (bastard sword)
Features:Ancestral Body:At 1st level the Tengu loses any other racial bonus and gains monstrous humanoid traits (basically darkvision 60 foot). The Tengu is a medium sized monstrous humanoid with base speed 30 foot and with a crow head wich provides a beak natural weapon that deals 1d4+Str modifier damage.
The Tengu also gains a bonus to natural armor equal to his Con modifier.
Wing Baffle: The Tengu has wings but they're too weak to lift him for now. Instead, young Tengus learn how to use their wings to distract their opponents during battle. The first time each round a Tengu attacks in melee it may do a bluff check opposed by the opponent's sense motive check. If he succeeds then the Tengu gains a circumstance bonus on attacks against that opponent equal to 2+1/5 his HD for that round.
At 4 HD the Tengu can fly at double his base speed with average maneuverability, but cannot use Wing Baffle while flying with his own wings.
Crow trickery: The Tengu can use disguise self, minor image and ghost sound as SLAs 1/day for each HD it has.
At 8 HD the Tengu can use Shout as a SLA for each 4 HD it has.
Save DCs 10+1/2HD+Cha mod.
Grace over Strength: The Tengu gains the weapon finesse feat even if he doesn't meet the prerequisites. In addition he can apply this feat to the Katana (bastard sword).
At 6HD, the Tengu can use his Dex modifier instead of his Str modifier for damage rolls on melee finesseable weapons and the katana (bastard sword).
Sound Imitation: The Tengu can mimic any voice or sound it has heard, anytime it likes. Listeners must succeed on a Will save (DC 10+1/2 HD+Cha mod) to detect the ruse.
Ability Increase:The Tengu gains +1 Dex at levels 1, 3, 5, 6 for a total of +4 at 6th level.
The Tengu gains +1 Cha at levels 2, 5 and 6, for a total of +3 at 6th level.
Scholar body: At 2nd level the Tengu shrinks to small size and his head becomes like that of an human, losing it's beak attack. It however can still wield medium-sized weapons without penalty.
Sky Soul: The Tengu becomes able to cast spells as a sorcerer of his level-1, with the following modifications:
-The Tengu counts as a divine caster (this means it doesn't suffer from armor arcane spell failure).
-The Tengu uses ofudas, small sheets of paper inscribed with mystical writings, as spell focus and material component for his magic. The cost of such ofudas is exactly the same as normal spell focus and material components (so this is basically a fluff ability).
-The Tengu adds the spells from the Air domain to his spells known for free at the levels he becomes able to cast them.
-The Tengu can learn spells from either the sorcerer/wizard, cleric or druid spell lists. He must choose what list he can learn spells from and then cannot change change this decision.
-However, whenever it levels up and learns new spells (including when this ability is gained), one of those spells must be from the Illusion or Divination school or have the Air descriptor.
-Tengus cannot learn spells with the Fire descriptor.
-The Tengu gains spell focus:illusion and spell focus:divination for free.
-If the Tengu multiclasses into a divine fullcasting class (aka that gets 9th level spells, like cleric, but not paladin) it may choose to keep increasing this kind of spellcasting instead of that class's normal spellcasting, in wich case both classes stack for spellcasting purposes. Multiclassing as cleric won't give extra domains in this case.
-If a Tengu picks up a Prc that advances spellcasting it may choose to keep increasing this kind of spellcasting as much levels that Prc gives although the Tengu class is technically just 6 levels long. So a Tengu 6/cleric 3/fullcasting prc 10 could reach 9th level spells.
If you have Oriental Adventures book, you may instead have the Tengu cast as a Shu-Jenga of his Tengu level-1, with the air favored elemental and prohibiting the fire element. Shu-Jenga levels stack with this ability for spellcasting purposes.
Crow Magic: At levels 3, 4, 5 and 6 the Tengu can gain of the following SLAs, each useable 1/day for each HD and with saves DC 10+1/2HD+Cha mod.
Mirror image, blur, Major Image, Invisibility.
Wind feathers: the Tengu gains SR equal to 11+HD.
Crow Feat: The Tengu gains a bonus feat from the following list(must meet the pre-requisites): dodge, mobility, spring attack, Improved Initiative, Weapon focus.
Comments
The Tengu is an ancient and relatively well known oriental monster altough the details of what they can actualy do are blurry.
Anyway they're suposed to be pretty skillfull, naturally magic and prefer trickery and finesse over brute strenght.
So they get 6 skill points per level, some SLAs, custom casting if you don't know/like the original shu-jenga, a strong incentive to use Bluff during combat, support for focusing on Dex in melee and some other stuff.
Only one good save and weak Bab hopefully help make up for the above.
The Tengu can go two distinct paths. Either you take just 1st level and then branch off to pure melee classes(notice you'll get juicy flying with just 1 Tengu level) for a "warrior" Tengu, or take the whole class and get a gish of sorts combining katanas with magic.
