Shining Blade balance tweaks

[Kaedrin]

The Shining Blade in PnP is supposed to gain Brilliant Blade at 9th level as an option for buffing a weapon. This is supposed to bypass any armor the target is wearing (armor and shield AC) though it makes the weapon useless against Undead and Constructs. When I put the Shining Blade together I didn't give it a boost to make up for this loss. This means they could be losing out on up to 13 AB against living targets (full plate + tower shield).

What are your thoughts about balancing out this loss? Perhaps a few extra uses/day at 10th (from 6/day at 9th to 8/day at 10th)? A bonus caster level of spell progression at 9th level (making it a 6/10 caster instead of 5/10 caster) or two? Provide another spell option to the feat that provides an attack bonus (+2 to +4) though it would be limited by the +20 cap? Leave it as is?

[Loudent2]

I'm not familiar with the class so it's hard to say. You could probably just create an ability that conveys an AB Bonus instead. (An AB bonus would affect only to-hit rolls, not damage which simiulates the ability to bypass armor).

[nicethugbert]

I must think of this over the weekend. 10 hr shifts in the middle of the night don't help.

[profmonkeys]

I think Lou's suggestion is pretty appropriate. Sacrifice a little bit of max power for a bit of versatility and ease of coding.

Another thought which may or may not be feasible would be if it could make attacks from a weapon function as touch attacks. While it would not be perfect, it would be a pretty close approximation in terms of power.

[nicethugbert]

Touch attacks sounds exactly the same as the buff in question.

Would it be impossible or to cumbersome to calculate an AB boost per attack in relation to target?

[Kaedrin]

A touch attack isn't possible to do. AB per target isn't either as it is a bonus that has to be applied either per round or just once to the player.