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View Full Version : Stances that grant maneuvers, starting with the druid [WIP]



Just to Browse
2013-03-21, 12:57 PM
WARNING: The following is from my delusional post-finals haze of sleep-deprived and caffeine-induced insanity. Balance will probably be all over, and so my grammar too.



I'm sure someone's thought of this before, but I want to make stances that grant 'maneuvers', or tactical non-standard options. Since it follows a template, which makes creation easy, you can write up a host of classes that follow the format, so content-generation becomes much faster. You also get to do that awesome thing where you get to write up a bunch of cool names for discipolines like "Bladeweave Render" or "Fist of Time" (Honestly, you can never run out of cool names).

The idea is that every character gets regular access to new maneuvers and such--I'm thinking every fourth level, just because every other level is too much work to write and odd numbers don't match up to spells (which I will liberally steal things from) as easily.

Characters start at level X with 2-3 trees of abilities separated by theme (druids get plants, animals, maybe elements. Knights get mounted combat, knightly challenges, maybe holy/unholy magic). Players choose tree one to pick their stances from, and can cherry-pick related abilities off of another list. So your paladin could be a knight with the "Holy Might" tree that picks up minor mounted combat abilities, or he could get the "Knightly Challenge" tree and pick up minor holy-themed magics.

My favorite thing about this is that all classes are essentially homogenous in creation. In an ideal world you should be able to point-buy your chassis and then pick up whatever theme you wanted to nab stances, then cherry-pick minor abilities off some sort of master list. This is far away and I doubt I'd even generate enough content to make the idea feasible, but it sounds awesome in my head.

A lot of my biases are going to sneak in here. I prefer my games to be more padded sumo and less rocket launcher tag (more LoL, less DotA) with everybody doing a little damage, so hard battlefield control and action denial will probably be delayed and everything will have some sort of 1d6+X damage rider on it. I love debuffs to death so abnormally large penalties will be on everfthing. I'm also crap at ouot-of-combat content so these will be very combat-oriented.



So I've only done a little. My favorite archetype is the druid, so I'm trying my hand at her first.

Druid

Plants
If you choose this tree you may speak with plants as per the spell, as an extraordinary ability.

Disciplines

Grasping Vine (BFC)

Stance: You gain a constrict attack that deals 1d6 + the higher of your Strength or Dexterity. As a swift action, you can make maneuvers from the Grasping Vine discipline deal damage equal to your constrict attack if the target is successfully affected.
Specialize: Roots and vines that you use to activate your maneuvers will always grow somewhere in range for you. Normal people need to be at least near grass. (?)
Maneuvers (Sp): You can use the following maneuvers when in the Grasping Vine stance.

Entangle as per the spell within 20' radius (centered on self, full round action)
Half a target's speed (10-15 ft radius w/in medium range?, standard action)
Grapple 1 target in 20' range with vines, using your BAB for the attack and substitued Wis for Str. (standard action)


[Plant Name] Bulwark
Poison Touch


Animals

Elements

Nightgaun7
2013-03-21, 05:45 PM
Looking forward to more on this, was working on an initiator druid a little while ago.