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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Remote Silhouette [Martial discipline for running away]



Kazyan
2014-08-24, 01:41 PM
Remote Silhouette

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z228/Hauntinomin/1013917_1371614726240_500_260_zps244cfc58.jpg
"Nope nope nope nope that's a greater shadow and I only just figured out Mountain Hammer nope nope nope nope"

The Temple of Nine Swords was selective about the disciplines it taught, and one of those that didn't make the cut was something mostly practiced by kobolds, jermlaines, and general cowards. No one took Remote Silhouette seriously because no one considered it an actual fighting style, and they're probably right, but it bears many similarities to conventional disciplines. Remote Silhouette is simply a complex art of running away from battle when you've gotten in too deep, have spotted something you know you can't deal with, or otherwise just need to break off combat when your opposition doesn't want to do the same.

Remote Silhouette's key skill is Escape Artist. Its favored weapons are the dagger, unarmed strike, guisarme, javelin, and all surprise weaponsCS.

Because Remote Silhouette was never taught at the Temple of the Nine Swords, few martial adepts know of its existence, but it is possible for any martial adept to learn this discipline.

Unlike most disciplines, Remote Silhouette maneuvers do not count as maneuvers known, and are not learned conventionally. Instead, they are skill tricksCS, and thus follow all of the rules for skill tricks (but they are also maneuvers). Per the rules for skill tricks, one Remote Silhouette maneuver can be learned per two character levels. Remote Silhouette maneuvers are always considered readied except during the duration required for the skill trick to become usable again, during which it is expended. To learn a Remote Silhouette maneuver, the martial adept must have either an initiator level of at least twice the maneuver level or a number of ranks in Escape Artist equal to at least twice the maneuver level plus three. If the martial adept has both, the maneuver does not count towards their limit of skill tricks known. All Remote Silhouette maneuvers are Movement skill tricks.

When initiating a Remote Silhouette maneuver, things have gone south, and the initiator is in full fleeing mode. You cannot initiate maneuvers from any other discipline during an encounter after you initiate a Remote Silhouette maneuver, but you may still enter other disciplines' stances.

Maneuver List

1st

Tactical Withdrawal: Withdraw without provoking attacks of opportunity from more squares.
Accelerated Crawl: Crawl at half your land speed; compatible with Tumble.

2nd

Evasive Flee: Retain Dexterity bonus when running and gain +2 to AC.
Yellow Speed: +20 bonus to land speed when running away.

3rd

Decoys: As instant diversionRotD.
Detour: Run without straight-line requirement; avoid one attack of opportunity.
Sprint: Run at double speed.

4th

Smokescreen: Throw burst of smoke and "teleport".
Fortunate Escape: Reroll enemy's damage dice and take lower value.

5th

Instant Regret: Immediate-action 5-foot step away from threats.
True Avoidance: Provoke no attacks of opportunity this round.

6th

Lucky Escape: Minimize enemy's damage dice.
Where'd They Go?: Hide in Plain Sight with +10 bonus after breaking line of sight.

7th

Blast Off: Ride an otherwise-lethal area attack into the distant sky.
Clever Decoys: As instant diversionRotD, but pick which decoy is actually you next turn.


8th

Power Word: Nope: Immediately take your turn and run away.
Miraculous Escape: Enemy's damage dice roll zeroes.

9th

Do Over: Attack that killed you never happened; you ran away instead.

Maneuver Descriptions

Accelerated Crawl
Remote Silhouette (Strike)
Level: Any Martial Adept 1
Initiation Action: 1 move action or full-round action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round

You may only initiate this maneuver while prone. When you initiate this maneuver, you move up to half your land speed (if you initiated it as a move action) or up to your full land speed (if you initiated it as a full-round action), despite being prone; you crawl to your destination. You may Tumble during this movement, in which case, you take no penalty for an accelerated tumble.

Blast Off
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 7
Prerequisite: Any four Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: 10 miles
Target: You
Duration: Instantaneous

You may initiate this counter when you are exposed to an area attack that would reduce you to negative hit points or otherwise kill you. Instead of damaging or killing you, the force of the attack sends you careening upwards and backwards away from the source of the attack. Over the course of 2 minutes, you travel 10 miles laterally and 1 mile vertically, eventually landing somewhere 10 miles away from the combat. If you are stopped prematurely by e.g. a wall, you stop and land. You take no falling damage from this maneuver. After initiating this maneuver, you take nonlethal damage equal to your Hit Point total, minus 1.

This maneuver is a supernatural ability.

Clever Decoys
Remote Silhouette (Boost)
Level: Any Martial Adept 7
Prerequisite: Any three Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Double your move speed
Effect: Decoys
Duration: 1 round

This maneuver functions like instant diversionRotD, except that you do not have to choose which decoy is actually you until the end of the duration. Thus, unless all decoys are destroyed before the duration expires, you can decide to be one of the remaining decoys and thus take no damage. If all but one decoy is destroyed before the duration expires, you become that decoy. If several decoys are destroyed simultaneously (if this would reduce the number of decoys to zero), you must choose which one of the decoys you are, and then take damage normally. Use your initiator level in place of caster level for this maneuver.

This maneuver is a supernatural ability.

Decoys
Remote Silhouette (Boost)
Level: Any Martial Adept 3
Prerequisite: Any two Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Double your move speed
Effect: Decoys
Duration: 1 round

This maneuver functions like instant diversionRotD. Use your initiator level in place of caster level for this maneuver.

This maneuver is a supernatural ability.

Detour
Remote Silhouette (Strike)
Level: Any Martial Adept 3
Prerequisite: Any one Remote Silhouette maneuver
Initiation Action: 1 full-round action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Instantaneous

When you initiate this maneuver, you take a Run action, except that you do not need to move in a straight line. You may avoid provoking one attack of opportunity during this action. Your Run action must increase the distance between you and all enemy creatures in the encounter.

Do Over
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 9
Prerequisite: Any four Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Instantaneous

You predict your death a few seconds into the future, and bail out of whatever you were going to do in favor of living to see another day.

You may only initiate this maneuver when you would be killed or otherwise incapacitated by a creature. Whichever action the creature took doesn't happen, although they still lose their action. Instead, you take two full rounds of actions worth of exclusively movement, which may include other Remote Silhouette maneuvers or teleportation. You may not attack. These movements ignore obstacles or impedances that only came into effect last round, and must be movements that increase the distance between you and all enemy creatures in the battle.

Evasive Flee
Remote Silhouette (Stance)
Level: Any Martial Adept 2
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance

When you take a Run action, you do not lose your Dexterity bonus to AC. Instead, you gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC during any round in which you take the Run action.

Fortunate Escape
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 4
Prerequisite: Any one Remote Silhouette maneuver
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: Personal
Effect: Reroll damage dice
Duration: Instantaneous

You may only initiate this maneuver in response to a damage roll made against you. You reroll the damage roll, and take whichever result would deal less damage to you.

Instant Regret
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 5
Prerequisite: Any two Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: Distance traveled
Target: You
Duration: Instantaneous

You take a 5-foot step. This may cause you to break line of effect for a spell, bring you out of a creature's attack range, etc..

Lucky Escape
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 6
Prerequisite: Any three Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: Personal
Effect: Minimize damage dice
Duration: Instantaneous

You may only initiate this maneuver in response to a damage roll made against you. Treat all dice rolled in the damage roll as 1's instead of what they actually rolled.

Miraculous Escape
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 8
Prerequisite: Any three Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: Personal
Effect: Zero out damage dice
Duration: Instantaneous

You may only initiate this maneuver in response to a damage roll made against you. Treat all dice rolled in the damage roll as 0's instead of what they actually rolled. Any effect based on the number of damage dice in the roll treats the number of damage dice as 0 (for example, if an effect added an additional point of damage per damage die, no damage would be added).

Panicked Regret
Remote Silhouette (Counter)
Level: Any Martial Adept 8
Prerequisite: Any three Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 immediate action
Range: Distance traveled
Target: You
Duration: Your turn

You take your turn in the initiative order--move your initiative count to the current count, above the current creature's turn, and take your turn as an interruption to the current creature's turn. Your actions during this turn must be used solely to increase the distance between you and all enemy creatures in the encounter.

Smokescreen
Remote Silhouette (Strike)
Level: Any Martial Adept 4
Prerequisite: Any one Remote Silhouette maneuver
Initiation Action: 1 standard action
Range: Distance traveled
Effect: Smokescreen and teleportation
Duration: 1 round

You create a smokescreen around yourself, which functions like an obscuring mist spell centered at your current location with a radius of 10 feet. As part of doing so, you "teleport" to any square adjacent to or within the cloud. In reality, this is simply frenzied movement (this maneuver intentionally lacks the [Teleportation] descriptor) that somehow gets around obstacles through sheer force of cowardice. The cloud does not move with you, and it dissipates after one round.

This maneuver is a supernatural ability.

Sprint
Remote Silhouette (Strike)
Level: Any Martial Adept 3
Prerequisite: Any one Remote Silhouette maneuver
Initiation Action: 1 full-round action
Range: Distance traveled
Target: You
Duration: 1 round

Take a run action. Your move speed is doubled for the purposes of this run action only, and you must be running in such a way as to increase the distance between you and whichever enemy creature that you are aware of in the encounter which has the highest Challenge Rating

Tactical Withdrawal
Remote Silhouette (Strike)
Level: Any Martial Adept 1
Initiation Action: 1 full-round action
Range: Distance traveled
Target/Effect: You
Duration: 1 round

Take a withdraw action. In addition to your first square of movement not provoking attacks of opportunity, your next squares of movement (up to 1 + 1/5 initiator level) also do not provoke during this action.

True Avoidance
Remote Silhouette (Boost)
Level: Any Martial Adept 5
Prerequisite: Any three Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round

You provoke no attacks of opportunity for any reason for the duration of this boost.

Where'd They Go?
Remote Silhouette (Stance)
Level: Any Martial Adept 6
Prerequisite: Any two Remote Silhouette maneuvers
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Stance

You enter this stance after you successfully break all enemies' lines of sight to you, provided you have already initiated a Remote Silhouette maneuver during this encounter. You gain the Hide in Plain Sight ability, allowing you to Hide even while being observed. While in this stance, you substitute Escape Artist checks in place of Hide and Move Silently checks, and gain a +10 competence bonus to such checks.

Yellow Speed
Remote Silhouette (Boost)
Level: Any Martial Adept 2
Initiation Action: 1 swift action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round

You gain a +20 morale bonus to your land speed. This bonus only applies to movement in which you increase the distance between you and all enemy creatures in the encounter.

Wondrous Items

A trinket of trickeryCS can only grant access to a Remote Silhouette maneuver of 3rd level of lower. Two specialized versions for more powerful Remote Silhouette Maneuvers exist: the Remote Silhouette Trinket (Scholar) and the Remote Silhouette Trinket (Master). These function like a trinket of trickery that can only grant access to Remote Silhouette maneuvers, but the Scholar version can grant up to a 6th level maneuver, and the Master version can grant up to a 9th level maneuver. They cost 5,000 and 15,000 gp and have caster levels of 10 and 15, respectively. They otherwise function just like a trinket of trickery.

Construction (Scholar): Craft Wondrous Item, knowledge of a maneuver from the Remote Silhouette discipline; 2,500 gp, 200 XP, 5 days.

Construction (Master): Craft Wondrous Item, knowledge of a maneuver from the Remote Silhouette discipline; 7,500 gp, 600 XP, 15 days.

Tempestfury
2014-08-26, 02:38 PM
Okay... this is a rather... unique discipline. Definetly not one for most campagins or characters... and it is a rather unique way of granting you the maneuvers. On the one hand, to get a good selection of the maneuvers, you'll probably have to play a Swordsage in order to get them. On the other hand, any skill monkey will quite easily be able to grab a few of them, though only a Swordsage would be able to get the the higher levels imo.

I think its a bit to restricted in how you can take the maneuvers. An Initiator level restriction, a Escape artist skill rank restriction AND costing 2 skill-points, and the skill-trick restriction of only allowed 1 per 2 levels? Honestly, I think you should either go with either the Initiator level restriction (making it easier for martial adepts to grab it) or the skill rank restriction (making it easier for skill-monkies to grab), as will the skill-trick cost/restriction? That'll be more than enough. Though I do admit, I don't see anyone taking more than one or two of these, just to increase survivability.

Allnightmask
2014-08-26, 10:56 PM
Could we get a feat that allows the continued use of other maneuvers? Maybe a prerequisite involving a natural bonus against fear for some awesome halfling hijinxs, or one that requires a immunity to fear for some strangely mobile tanks?

Jeff the Green
2014-08-26, 11:41 PM
I like the idea, and the fluff, and the novelty. There are a few bugs that I think should be worked out, but they're pretty minor.

More thorough fisking:

Basic mechanics: I like the way you've opened it to all martial adepts with minor other restrictions paired with a limited number of maneuvers available. Most other disciplines I've seen either go too far in allowing anyone to sub out any discipline or they require a feat, or are super restrictive in who can learn them and what they must sub out.

I also like the fact that they're always readied. For a 'panic button' discipline, this is appropriate; you shouldn't have to plan to run away and you shouldn't have to wait for your deity to randomly grant you the power to run away. Likewise the fact that you can buy them as skill tricks.

I share Tempestfury's concern about the skill trick limit. If you want to encourage people to take Uncanny Trickster and Battle Trickster, this is fine, I guess. The real problem is that the characters that benefit the most from skill tricks are the ones that are most likely to want to use Remote Silhouette maneuvers. There are something like 3 skill tricks that benefit mostly casters; the rest are for skill monkeys. As is, no one can learn more than half of the maneuvers in the discipline without special investment and even then they'd be unable to take any other skill tricks. This really needs to change.

I'm not as worried about them requiring Escape Artist ranks, paying 2 skill points, and requiring martial adept levels. This isn't a powerful discipline, but 2 skill points for a maneuver, even one as restricted as these, is cheap. I'd maybe require EA ranks equal to the level +1. That's equivalent to max cross-class points at 1, 3, 5, etc., and if someone is willing to sink that many points into Escape Artist and pay the skill points to take these, I say let them.

I also don't think Allnightmask's suggestion is super fitting. If this is for cowards, and particularly if some of the maneuvers are supernaturally powered by fear, it's inappropriate for the stalwart and fearless to be able to use these techniques. From a trope perspective, it's rarely the heroes with iron wills that know how to run away well and not be there when someone attacks them, but it's absolutely fitting for heroes like Silk of the Belgariad or Butters of the Dresden Files (pre-Ghost Story).

Individual Maneuvers:

Accelerated Crawl. I like this, and it's entirely appropriate for a maneuver available at 1st. I'd clarify whether tumbling decreases the distance you can travel, though. As written I'd be inclined to say it doesn't, but I don't know if that was your intention.

Blast Off. This is kind of awesome. I don't know how relevant it will be, since at 17th level area attacks aren't the most dangerous effects, though. I'd consider dropping it down a bit.

(Clever) Decoys. I'm not sure whether the level is justified for this. It's a 1st-level spell, and while, yes, you can use it a theoretically very high number of times in a day, in reality you'll use it maybe four times. Plus casting it doesn't prevent you from casting fireball the next round.

Do Over. This is well done, I think. It's a limited-but-cheap time stop.

Evasive Flee. Mechanically fine. I don't like the name. 'Flee Evasively' or 'Evasive Flight' are more appropriate, since 'evasive', an adjective, can't apply to 'flee', a verb.

Fortunate Escape. Decent; no particular praise or criticism comes to mind.

Instant Regret. Same thing.

Lucky Escape. I like this one quite a bit, actually. At level 11 it comes a bit late, but it's good enough to make up for it. I'd suggest clarifying that you can see the damage roll, though. It's clear in Fortunate Escape, but not so much here.

Miraculous Escape. Ditto here; I think I know what you want, but it's ambiguous.

Power Word: Nope. Mechanically I like it. The name I don't like so much. Entirely personal taste, but it's more flippant and metagamey for me.

Smokescreen. Ooh, yes. Maybe this should be supernatural too, though.

Sprint. While I like the idea, I'm uncomfortable with the wording. While I get that you don't want this to be used to close with someone, a lot of times (particularly in spread-out battles) you can move away from almost all of the enemies but end up a little closer to one, and this seems like a perfectly acceptable use. It may also bog things down as you figure out the new and old distances and compare them. I'd prefer something like requiring the initiator to move further away from the most dangerous enemy/force/whatever wording is appropriate. Basically, you can leap out of the fire and into the frying pan.

Tactical Withdrawal. I've wanted something like this for a while. I'd consider letting the initiator to avoid all AoOs/AoOs from a number of extra squares equal to 1+1/4 ranks in Escape Artist/etc.

True Avoidance. This seems to be too high of a level.

Where'd They Go? I'm a bit confused. By activate do you mean 'enter'? Or can you be in it constantly?

Yellow Speed. You mean +20 foot bonus, yeah?

Items:
How much is the basic version?

I came from the PEACH Exchange, so if you're up to looking at the Haematurge in my sig, I'd be most appreciative. And if you PEACH the entire thing, I'd owe you a couple PEACHes.

Kazyan
2014-08-27, 12:54 PM
Thanks for the feedback. I've adjusted individual maneuvers according to Jeff's advice. Although, I've left Clever Decoys at level 7--I feel that the ability to retroactively decide which decoy is actually you is good enough to justify its level.

Regarding the troublesome prerequisites, I've basically left them alone, except that you only have to fulfill one or the other. If you fulfill both, the maneuver doesn't count towards your limit of skill tricks--so if you really want to learn the whole discipline for some reason, you can.

I will review the Haematurge; just give me some time to do so.