Prestige Warblade [WIP]

[Kuulvheysoon]

As mentioned in a different thread (which was about banning ToB entirely), we came upon the topic of gradually introducing martial adepts to the system. A bit later, this idea came out. A 15 level Martial prestige class, in the same vein as Prestige Paladin/Ranger, which would give access to a recovery mechanism and any 2 (of the original) disciplines, save Stone Dragon (more on that later).

GOALS:
Create a strong T4 prestigious class
Access to 2/3 disciplines only
A solid base for introducing Martial Adepts into a lower-tier game.



PRESTIGE WARBLADE

http://cdn.hitfix.com/photos/958296/Warrior-star-says-no-to-300-prequel.jpg

The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle is over, that even a god-king can bleed.
--King Leonidas, Prestigious Warblade and the final King of Sparta to the invading God-King Xerxes

Just as the Archmage is a Wizard who reached the pinnacle of his Art, so too is the Prestige Warblade a master warrior who takes his battle skill to the next level. Learning a few esoteric tricks of martial skill, they develop their skills to true mastery of a narrow set of disciplines.

And look really good doing it.


ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Skills: Any Discipline skill 8 ranks (that correspond with your Martial Study feat)
Feats: Martial Study (any), Martial Stance


Table: The Prestige WarbladeThis is completely useless space, I'll kindly ask for you to ignore it's existence. Thank you. More needed?Hit Die: d10



Level
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Special
Maneuvers Known
Maneuvers Readied
Stances Known


1st
+1
+2
+0
+0
Complimentary Philosophies
3
3
0


2nd
+2
+3
+0
+0
Blade Meditation
4
3
0


3rd
+3
+3
+1
+1

5
3
1


4th
+4
+4
+1
+1
WWW
6
4
1


5th
+5
+4
+1
+1
WWW
7
4
1


6th
+6
+5
+2
+2

7
4
2


7th
+7
+5
+2
+2
WWW
8
4
2


8th
+8
+6
+2
+2
WWW
8
5
2


9th
+9
+6
+3
+3

9
5
3


10th
+10
+7
+3
+3
WWW
9
5
3


11th
+11
+7
+3
+3
WWW
10
5
3


12th
+12
+8
+4
+4
WWW
10
5
3


13th
+13
+8
+4
+4

11
6
4


14th
+14
+9
+4
+4
WWW
11
6
4


15th
+15
+9
+5
+5
Stance Mastery
12
6
4


Class Skills (4 + Intelligence modifer per level):Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Knowledge (history)(Int), Knowledge (local)(Int), Listen (Wis), Martial Lore (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Spot (Wis), Swim (Str).

CLASS ABILITIES

Armor and Weapon Proficiencies: A prestige warblade is proficient with all simple weapons and all martial melee weapons (including those that can be used as thrown weapons). They are proficient with light and medium armor, and all shields except for tower shields.

Maneuvers: At 1st level, you learn three maneuvers from your chosen disciplines. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it (see Maneuvers Readied, below). A maneuver is considered an extraordinary ability unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate one.

As you gain more levels, you can learn additional maneuvers. You must meet a maneuver's prerequisite to learn it.

Upon reaching 4th level, and at every third level after that (7th, 10th, and 13th), you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place on one that you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe your restriction on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the old maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. You can only swap a single maneuver at any given time.

Maneuvers Readied: You can ready all 3 of the maneuvers you know at 1st level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you must choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready your maneuvers by exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to exercise again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in practice, you can change your readied maneuvers.

You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them since you chose them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your readied maneuvers can be used once per encounter (until you recover them, as described below).

You can recover all expended maneuvers with (determine refreshing mechanic).

Complimentary Philosophies: A true master knows that for every technique, there is another that supports it, enabling feats that no one discipline alone could acheive. At first level, you gain access to the discipline opened by your Martial Study feat and any other one discipline. You add the key skills of this secondary discipline to your list of class skills. In addition, you automatically gain proficiency with your secondary discipline’s associated weapons. If one of the associated weapons is unarmed strike, you receive the Improved Unarmed Strike feat as a Bonus Feat. If one of associated weapons is the bastard sword, you receive the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat for it as a Bonus Feat.
Desert Wind: scimitar, light pick, falchion, spear; Tumble
Devoted Spirit: falchion, greatclub, maul, longsword; Intimidate
Diamond Mind: rapier, shortspear, trident, bastard sword; Concentration
Iron Heart: dwarven waraxe, bastard sword, longsword, two-bladed sword; Balance
Setting Sun: short sword, quarterstaff, nunchaku, unarmed strike; Sense Motive
Shadow Hand: dagger, short sword, sai, siangham, spiked chain, unarmed strike; Hide
Stone Dragon: greataxe, greatsword, heavy mace, unarmed strike; Balance
Tiger Claw: kama, kukri, handaxe, greataxe, unarmed strike; Jump
White Raven: longsword, battleaxe, warhammer, greatsword, halberd; Diplomacy

Blade Meditation: At 2nd level, you receive the Blade Meditation feat for your primary discipline as a Bonus Feat.

Stances Known: You learn an additional stance from either of your disciplines at 3rd level. At 6th, 9th, and 13th level, you can learn additional stances. Unlike maneuvers, stances are not expended, and you do not have to ready them. All the stances you know are available to you at all times, and you can change the stance you are currently using as a swift action. A stance is an extraordinary ability unless otherwise stated in the stance description.

Unlike with maneuvers, you cannot learn a new stance at higher levels in place of one you already know.

Stance Mastery (Ex): At 15th level, you can have two stances active simultaneously. When you use a swift action to initiate or change your stance, you can initiate or change one or both stances.

[John Longarrow]

Three quick things...
1) I'd ditch the pic/quote. Sparta was one of the most repressive and tyrancial kingdoms around. Persia was much more liberal at the time of the battle of Thermopoly.

2) Are you trying to have the number of maneuver know/readied equal to a warblade of similar class level or character level?

3) Looking at plugging in the existing Warblade specials or looking for help with new ones that could be more fun?

[Kuulvheysoon]

Three quick things...
1) I'd ditch the pic/quote. Sparta was one of the most repressive and tyrancial kingdoms around. Persia was much more liberal at the time of the battle of Thermopoly.

2) Are you trying to have the number of maneuver know/readied equal to a warblade of similar class level or character level?

3) Looking at plugging in the existing Warblade specials or looking for help with new ones that could be more fun?


I can look for a different picture - it's there mainly a pop reference.
I haven't decided on a maneuvers known/readied prgression yet - I'm inclined to go about a dozen known, with 5/6 readied at 15th level.
I'm going to be looking for different abilities - I want it to be open to any class, not just Int-focused ones.

Thanks for the input.

[Dienekes]

Three quick things...
1) I'd ditch the pic/quote. Sparta was one of the most repressive and tyrancial kingdoms around. Persia was much more liberal at the time of the battle of Thermopoly.

I'd debate that one. This is the period where everyone had slaves, Sparta did have more of them in proportion to population, but in pure number and area Persia has them trounced. It also doesn't help that Persia was a conquering nation that did subject others and enslave more, while for the most part Sparta was fine simply being left to do it's own thing and play power politics in Greece.

That's not saying that many of Sparta's practices weren't barbaric. But propping up Persia, or basically anywhere else, as better is going to be contested. Except for the Romans, Mongols, British, and Aztecs, they're pretty much the victors when it comes to brutal oppressive regimes/conquests (some got better after the slaughtering was done). I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue otherwise for them.

[Amechra]

Eh, the Spartan system literally only worked because they oppressed and brutalized their slaves into the ground. Of course, the ones recording all this information were Athenians, and guess who didn't get along?

That's right, Athens and Sparta.

So I question the veracity of such records.

Still, back to the class!

If you are going with the classic Warbade disciplines, you should make the class Int-based. After all, the saves for most Warblade maneuvers are Int-based anyway, iirc.

Besides, despite what the guys over in charop tell you, a little bit of MAD isn't a bad thing; chances are if you are taking manuevers from a Warblade discipline, you have a positive Int already. +4 items are relatively cheap, so getting one for Int is fine.

If you have a 13 to start with (positive modifier + qualifying for Combat Expertise, and therefore half the good Fighter feats), that boosts you to a 17. Sink a level-up point in there, and you get a respectable +4 modifier.

Of course, I'm making the following assumptions:

1. You are going to restrict this guy to the Warblade disciplines (by this I mean Disciplines that Warblades can get native access to, including Homebrew disciplines); otherwise, why call it a Warblade (the name is kinda silly when you think about it.)?

A. If you go this route, I'd restrict the maneuvers you can pick with Martial Study to those from such disciplines; just a bit of consistency.

2. You don't have access to 9th level maneuvers until 20th level, so you should probably get a maneuver known then.

3. You already get the skill associated with your Martial Study as a class skill; in fact, iirc, if a class has access to a discipline, they automatically get those discipline's skill as a class skill.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Good points, all.
Eh, the Spartan system literally only worked because they oppressed and brutalized their slaves into the ground. Of course, the ones recording all this information were Athenians, and guess who didn't get along?

That's right, Athens and Sparta.

So I question the veracity of such records.As I mentioned, I picked it for the pop culture reference.


Still, back to the class!

If you are going with the classic Warbade disciplines, you should make the class Int-based. After all, the saves for most Warblade maneuvers are Int-based anyway, iirc.

Besides, despite what the guys over in charop tell you, a little bit of MAD isn't a bad thing; chances are if you are taking manuevers from a Warblade discipline, you have a positive Int already. +4 items are relatively cheap, so getting one for Int is fine.

If you have a 13 to start with (positive modifier + qualifying for Combat Expertise, and therefore half the good Fighter feats), that boosts you to a 17. Sink a level-up point in there, and you get a respectable +4 modifier.Really, I'm just calling it the Prestige Warblade as a placeholder - Really, it's a Martial Adept of any 2 disciplines, so you can get a weird combination like Iron Heart/Setting Sun.


Of course, I'm making the following assumptions:

1. You are going to restrict this guy to the Warblade disciplines (by this I mean Disciplines that Warblades can get native access to, including Homebrew disciplines); otherwise, why call it a Warblade (the name is kinda silly when you think about it.)?

A. If you go this route, I'd restrict the maneuvers you can pick with Martial Study to those from such disciplines; just a bit of consistency.As mentioned, IT's got access to any 2, and the Warblade name is a placeholder. Maybe I should call it a Prestige Martial Adept?


2. You don't have access to 9th level maneuvers until 20th level, so you should probably get a maneuver known then.If my math is correct, this class will hit IL 17 at 14th level (ECL 19), and I've just reorganized the Maneuvers Known to give maneuvers at 14 and 15, giving them the possibility of snagging both captone maneuvers.


3. You already get the skill associated with your Martial Study as a class skill; in fact, iirc, if a class has access to a discipline, they automatically get those discipline's skill as a class skill.How could I have forgotten, ugh - I'll remove adding the primary discipline's key skill to your class list right now.

Thjanks for the input!