More than an ordinary swordsman, a blade dancer combines peak physical conditioning with absolute mastery of the sword. Some are rakish, dashing swashbucklers, as quick with a joke or an acrobatic trick as they are with a blade. Others are hardened, cold-hearted killers who waste not the slightest movement as they viciously cut their opponents down.
When you select this archetype at level 3, choose three weapons from the following list: bastard sword, dueling dagger, longsword, punching dagger, rapier, scimitar, and saber. The weapons you select become adept weapons for you. Shortswords and daggers, while already part of the adept weapon list, are also considered Fencer’s Arsenal weapons.
Also at 3rd level, you become accustomed to the specialized etiquette and hierarchy of the sword fighting world. You gain proficiency with the Culture skill. You also gain a Culture specialty called fencing protocol. You can make a Culture (fencing protocol) check to attain various insights based on the culture of fencing, including:
Beginning at 6th level, you become the master of a precise, vicious cut in just the right place. Once per round, when you hit a creature with an attack using one of your Fencer’s Arsenal weapons, you may spend 2 exertion points to do ongoing damage to your target equal to your martial arts die, which lasts for 1 minute or until the target uses an action to stanch the wound. Constructs, Undead, and Oozes are not affected by this feature.
Beginning at level 6, you bring your weapons to bear faster than the eye can blink. You can draw your Fencer’s Arsenal weapons at any time, even when you are surprised and even when it is not your turn. Drawing your Fencer’s Arsenal weapons requires no action, and it does not need to be done as part of another action.
Beginning at 11th level, you become a master at defending yourself against incoming attacks. While wielding one of your Fencer’s Arsenal weapons, when you use your reaction to perform a parry, opportunity attack, or a combat maneuver, you can use this feature to do so without expending your reaction, up to a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus each round. You pay exertion costs normally, and any of these actions after the first without an exertion cost instead costs 1 exertion.
If you use a reaction to perform any other task (such as casting a spell), you cannot use this feature until the beginning of your next turn; likewise, if you use this feature you cannot use your reaction other than to perform a parry, opportunity attack, or combat maneuver until the beginning of your next turn.
Beginning at level 17, your gaze and your weapon strikes become one. Attempts by creatures to use a fear effect or the Intimidate skill on you provoke attacks of opportunity from you. If you hit such a provoking creature with the opportunity attack, the creature must make a Constitution saving throw against your maneuver DC or have the effect immediately canceled.
You have advantage on checks to penetrate nonverbal deception, such as Intelligence checks to disbelieve illusions and Insight checks to read another creature’s body language.
Finally, you learn how to replenish yourself even in combat. If you do not make any attacks in a round, at the beginning of your next turn you may roll your martial arts die and regain that much exertion. Once you do, you may not do so again until you finish a short or long rest.