Stormfist: Imagine a monk class that you want to take all the way to 20...

[Baphomet]

Stormfist

Mankind is sublimely adaptable, when it comes to making death. Men have made weapons of steel, weapons of their own minds, of beasts, of knowledge, names, even music. I am no different. I have made a weapon of myself.
-Harkess Farpath, Stormfist

http://i62.tinypic.com/2czor2v.jpg

Most adventurers' journeys towards greater power are external. They react to the constant threat of death and danger by honing some skill outside themselves to deal with it. A stormfist's journey is more of an internal one. They strain their minds and bodies beyond their limit, find what breaks down, and make it stronger so they can push further next time. The strengths they gain take five different forms, known as martial styles. The stormfist focuses on one style first before gaining skill with others. Whether the means they develop to further themselves is natural or supernatural in nature, they all come from brutally honest introspection. Stormfists therefore must fight unarmored and unarmed, as doing otherwise would disrupt their singleminded focus on themselves.

Adventurers: Many stormfists adventure primarily as a means to challenge themselves. While some small training grounds exist to teach the basic skills, they exist primarily as a means to point the stormfist in the right direction and allow them to figure the rest out on their own. To do otherwise would be to rob the stormfist of their understanding of the challenges they need to overcome.

Characters: Despite their lack of armor and weapons, stormfists are swift and durable and devastating at close range. Their individual strengths and weaknesses will vary based on the martial styles that they choose to specialize in.
While their unarmed strikes might be harder to magically enhance than a manufactured weapon, some stormfists focus on gaining skill with their fists that allow them to meet or even exceed the destructive potential of a magical manufactured weapon. Those who specialize in the Overpowering Force style have especially potent attacks, allowing them to strike faster and harder than others.
Stormfists also may find it more difficult to protect themselves without armor than others. However, those who focus on the Nimble Combatant style hone their prowess at avoiding damage so much that it may exceed the protection granted even by the strongest full plate.
Since they focus entirely on fighting while unarmed, stormfists lack the ranged attack options of many other characters. Those who specialize in the Fleet Spirit style instead use speed and mobility to give them range by closing the distance between themselves and their attackers quickly.
On the other hand, some stormfists deal with the potential damage they may accrue while moving into range of their targets simply by shrugging it off. Specialists in the Path of Resilience martial style can swiftly heal many different types of wounds, and have skills to make their bodies even more durable.
While they do not study the minutiae of magical theory and practice, stormfists know that magic flows through all things, even themselves. Their intense inner focus allows stormfists specializing in the Weavebreaker martial style to feel this mystical force and even manipulate it in simple ways with their body and will, allowing them to perform small semi-magical feats and to disrupt spellcasting foes.

Alignment: Stormfists are singleminded and honest with themselves, giving some a tendency towards lawfulness, while their focus on the individual self suits the chaotic. Some seek to elevate themselves to a lofty ideal in the pursuit of good, while others want power that nobody can steal from them in the pursuit of evil. Stormfists tend towards neutrality, but any alignment may be found among their numbers.

Religion: While stormfists may respect the power and influence of gods, religious study distracts and sometimes confuses the inner path that they walk. Most stormfists do not follow gods, but if they do, they are more likely to follow those gods who elevated themselves to godhood by their own merits or effort.

Background: A stormfist does not have to rely on anything but themselves. If stripped of all items or even of all allies, a stormfist still possesses an immense quantity of personal power. For some, this fact is incidental to their growth in the discipline, but for many, it is the reason for it. It is often the case that something in a stormfist's past led them to discover that relying on others is bad for them, or that inability to rely on oneself is bad for others.
Monastic training leads some to the path of the stormfist, but many reach the conclusion on their own. Stormfists do not often have dedicated training grounds or meet with one another on matters of their discipline.
Most stormfists begin their journey in poverty; one of the benefits of fighting without armor or weapons is that you don't need to be able to afford them to defend yourself. Some train on the streets or in the wilderness, or fight for the entertainment of others to earn their living.

Races: Any race capable of introspection can become a stormfist. Humans are frequent members of the class, due to their adaptability. Half-breeds like half-elves and half-orcs may take to the discipline as well, to defend themselves when they have little else to fight with. Elves sometimes take up the art as a matter of intrigue. Halflings on hard times might pursue this path as well. Dwarves, however, likely will not; their culture's focus on the smithing arts makes combat without weapons or armor nearly unheard-of. Some members of the more organized monstrous races also take up the discipline, such as gnolls and hobgoblins.

Other Classes: Stormfists get along with other classes whose power comes from honing a personal skill, such as psions, monks, fighters, rangers, and rogues. Many regard wizards poorly, since their power comes from the study of minutiae of the external world rather than personal hardship. They also tend to have misgivings about clerics and paladins, whose powers come from devotion to an external entity. However, some may instead appreciate those classes that can support and augment their personal abilities, such as Bards.

Role: With high saves, good damage output, and good mobility, the stormfist's job is always in the thick of combat. That job may vary based on how the stormfist chooses to allocate their style points, however. Some are best when moving through crowds of weaker enemies, clearing a path through them. Some are better at punching through enemy defenses and striking at critical targets. Others try to focus fire away from their teammates, moving in to support them in combat when able.

Alignment: Any.
Starting Age: Moderate.
Hit Dice: d10
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Stormfists are proficient with their natural weapons. They gain no other weapon or armor proficiencies.
Class Skills: Balance, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Decipher Script, Diplomacy, Disguise, Escape Artist, Heal, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (all, taken individually), Listen, Move Silently, Perform, Profession, Ride, Search, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Spot, Survival, Swim, Tumble, Use Rope
Skill Points at Each Level: 6 + int (x4 at first level)

Table: The Stormfist
Saves
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecialPrimary Style

1st
+0
+2
+2
+2
Martial Styles, Unarmed Mastery, Striking Discipline1

2nd
+1
+3
+3
+3
Bonus Style Point1

3rd
+2
+3
+3
+3
2

4th
+3
+4
+4
+4
Bonus Style Point2

5th
+3
+4
+4
+4
Strike Bonus +13

6th
+4
+5
+5
+5
Bonus Style Point3

7th
+5
+5
+5
+5
4

8th
+6/+1
+6
+6
+6
Bonus Style Point4

9th
+6/+1
+6
+6
+6
Strike Bonus +25

10th
+7/+2
+7
+7
+7
Bonus Style Point5

11th
+8/+3
+7
+7
+7
6

12th
+9/+4
+8
+8
+8
Bonus Style Point6

13th
+9/+4
+8
+8
+8
Strike Bonus +37

14th
+10/+5
+9
+9
+9
Bonus Style Point7

15th
+11/+6/+1
+9
+9
+9
8

16th
+12/+7/+2
+10
+10
+10
Bonus Style Point8

17th
+12/+7/+2
+10
+10
+10
Strike Bonus +49

18th
+13/+8/+3
+11
+11
+11
Bonus Style Point9

19th
+14/+9/+4
+11
+11
+11
10

20th
+15/+10/+5
+12
+12
+12
Bonus Style Point10



Martial Styles: A stormfist is a master of her own body, studying its inner workings and limitations through meditation, combat, exercise, and other strenuous activities. The knowledge gained through this study allows the stormfist to unlock hidden powers and perform amazing physical feats in disciplines called martial styles. This knowledge is represented by style points, and a stormfist gains a new martial style or increases her mastery in a known martial style by assigning these style points to it. Once chosen, style point assignment may not be altered. Each martial style listing provides a table with a list of benefits followed by a number. This number represents the number of style points that must be assigned to this martial style in order to gain the listed benefit. This table is followed by a full description of those benefits. Each martial style is considered to have 0 style points in it before the stormfist adds style points to it.
At first level, the stormfist chooses a primary martial style. Once chosen, primary martial style cannot be changed. She has a number of points in her primary style at each stormfist level given on Table: The Stormfist. She also gains 1 bonus style point to assign where she chooses at 2nd level and other levels indicated on the table (see Bonus Style Point below).
Abilities granted by martial styles require delicate precision and an unrestrained body. She loses the benefits of all feats and abilities granted by martial styles while wearing armor, using a shield, wielding a weapon, or carrying more than a light load.
Some benefits granted by martial styles have effects based on style level. A stormfist's base style level for any martial style is equal to the number of style points she has in that martial style plus half her stormfist levels (rounded down).
The save DC against an ability from a martial style, if it allows a save, is 10 + the style points in that martial style + the stormfist's Wisdom modifier, unless otherwise noted.

Bonus Style Point: At each even stormfist level, the stormfist gains a bonus style point. She chooses one martial style with fewer style points than her primary martial style. The number of style points she has in that martial style increases by 1.

Unarmed Mastery: At 1st level, a stormfist gains Improved Unarmed Strike and Weapon Focus (unarmed strike) as bonus feats. A stormfist’s attacks may be with either fist interchangeably or even from elbows, knees, and feet. This means that a stormfist may even make unarmed strikes with her hands full. There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a stormfist striking unarmed. A stormfist may thus apply her full Strength bonus on damage rolls for all her unarmed strikes (but see Striking Discipline, below).
Usually a stormfist’s unarmed strikes deal lethal damage, but she can choose to deal nonlethal damage instead with no penalty on her attack roll. She has the same choice to deal lethal or nonlethal damage while grappling.
A stormfist’s unarmed strike is treated both as a manufactured weapon and a natural weapon for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either manufactured weapons or natural weapons.
A stormfist's damage with her unarmed strikes differs from a normal person's. Stormfists' unarmed strike damage is governed by an unarmed strike level. Her base unarmed strike level is defined by her size category, as given on Table: Unarmed Strike Level. If the stormfist's size changes, for example if she is targeted by an Enlarge Person spell, her base unarmed strike level changes accordingly. However, effects that allow a stormfist to wield weapons as if a greater size do not affect her unarmed strike level. Certain abilities may give the stormfist bonuses or penalties to her unarmed strike level, and she gains additional bonuses to her unarmed strike level as she levels up (see Strike Bonus, below). Penalties to unarmed strike level cannot bring the unarmed strike level below 1. Unarmed strike damage increases by 1d12 for each unarmed strike level above 14.
If the stormfist has an ability from another source that alters unarmed strike damage (such as the Monk's Unarmed Strike ability), she chooses which damage value to use.

Table: Unarmed Strike Level
Unarmed Strike LevelDamageBase Level for Size

11Fine

21d2Diminutive

31d3Tiny

41d4Small

51d6Medium

62d4Large

72d6Huge

83d6Gargantuan

93d8Colossal

104d8-

114d10-

125d10-

135d12-

146d12-



Striking Discipline (Ex): A stormfist may choose to act in combat using three different disciplines, each of which inflicts damage and defends itself in a different way. The three disciplines are pummeling, lacerating, and impaling. The stormfist chooses a discipline to use, but may change that discipline as a swift action. She does not gain the benefits of her striking discipline while wearing armor, using a weapon or shield, or carrying more than a light load. The effects of each discipline are as follows:
Pummeling: The stormfist attacks by slamming her extremities into her target with as much sheer force as she can muster. Unarmed strikes made while using the pummeling discipline deal bludgeoning damage and use the stormfist's Strength modifier for attack and damage rolls (as normal). The stormfist also uses her sheer power to deflect blows, adding her Strength bonus (if any) as a bonus to AC. This bonus to AC applies even against touch attacks or when the stormfist is flat-footed. She loses this bonus when she is immobilized or helpless. Bonuses to AC granted by this ability do not stack with the monk's AC Bonus ability.
Lacerating: The stormfist employs glancing blows across the surface of her target, shearing it. Unarmed strikes made while using the lacerating discipline deal slashing damage and use the stormfist's Dexterity modifier for attack and damage rolls (instead of Strength). The stormfist also uses her limberness to reflexively roll with attacks, adding her Dexterity bonus (if any) as a bonus to AC (this bonus is independent from, and does not count as the stormfist's Dexterity bonus to AC). This bonus to AC applies even against touch attacks or when the stormfist is flat-footed. She loses this bonus when she is immobilized or helpless. Bonuses to AC granted by this ability do not stack with the monk's AC Bonus ability.
Impaling: The stormfist focuses all of her damage into as small an area as possible, making up what the attack lacks in force with precise strikes to structural weak points. Unarmed strikes made while using the impaling discipline deal piercing damage and use the stormfist's Wisdom modifier for attack and damage rolls (instead of Strength). The stormfist also uses her perceptiveness to intuitively avoid attacks, adding her Wisdom bonus (if any) as a bonus to AC. She loses this bonus when she is immobilized or helpless. Bonuses to AC granted by this ability do not stack with the monk's AC Bonus ability.


Strike Bonus (Ex): At 5th level, the stormfist gets a +1 bonus to her unarmed strike level and to unarmed strike attack rolls. This bonus increases by 1 every 4 levels thereafter.

[Baphomet]

Martial Styles

Fleet Spirit

Practitioners of this style focus on raw speed, pushing their bodies and wills to the absolute limit in order to achieve superhuman feats of quickness.



Table: Fleet Spirit
BenefitStyle Points

Heightened Agility1

Unbalancing Strike2

Limber3

Unbalancing Leap4

Parkour5

Waver6

Skyrunner7

Ripple8

Meteor Leap9

Harmonic Stillness10



Heightened Agility (Ex): The stormfist uses sheer willpower to force more motion out of her body than would usually be possible. She gets a bonus to base speed equal to 5 ft. per style level.

Unbalancing Strike (Ex): The stormfist is more adept at throwing her opponents off-balance. She has the Improved Trip feat, even if she does not meet the prerequisites.
The stormfist uses different methods to trip foes based on her strike discipline. If she is under the pummeling discipline, she performs a melee touch attack followed by a Strength check to trip, as normal. While under the lacerating discipline, she uses her Dexterity modifier instead of her Strength modifier during both the initial melee touch attack and the Strength check. She uses her Wisdom modifier while under the impaling discipline. The opposed check still counts as a Strength check, it just uses a different modifier.

Limber (Ex): The Stormfist has trained her legs to leap and control her falls with amazing precision and force. She may take 10 on jump checks, even if distracted or threatened. She is considered to have a running start for any jump she makes, even while standing still. Additionally, she no longer takes damage from falling any distance. She falls at a rate of 160 feet per round regardless of how many rounds she falls, but cannot fall more than that in one round. Falling does not require an action and is considered to happen instantaneously. If she exceeds that distance while in a position that does not allow her to move (such as being in the air without the benefit of any ability that allows her to fly or move while airborne) she ends her round there and continues to fall on her next turn.
She halves the DC to high jump. Additionally, when performing a long jump, in addition to the vertical height equal to 1/4th horizontal distance traveled during the jump as normal, the stormfist may voluntarily add additional height to a long jump by increasing the DC by 2 per foot of increase. Falling during a jump counts against the total distance she can fall in a round.
The stormfist may use her Dexterity instead of her Strength modifier for jump checks if she chooses to.
She gains a +2 bonus to jump checks per 5 feet of movement speed greater than 30 feet per round, instead of the usual +4 bonus per 10 feet of movement speed above 30 feet per round.

Unbalancing Leap (Ex): The stormfist can leap onto her opponents with great force, disorienting and knocking them prone. Whenever she lands from a drop of at least 20 feet, she may immediately make a trip attack against a single adjacent creature as a free action. If the intital touch attack to initiate the trip attempt is successful, the stormfist deals her unarmed strike damage as if she had performed an unarmed strike against the target (This does not require another attack roll, but does include damage type and appropriate ability score modifiers as if it were a normal unarmed strike attack), but with a -2 penalty to unarmed strike level.
This distance need not be purely vertical. For example, a long jump that included at least 20 feet of overall vertical descent would qualify.
For each additional 20 feet of vertical descent beyond the first, to a maximum of 80 feet, the stormfist counts as one size category larger for the purposes of that trip attempt. These additional size categories are used when determining which opponents the stormfist may perform a trip attempt against, for determining her base unarmed strike level for the damage dealt, and for determining her bonus or penalty to the opposed check based on her size. They do not alter her reach or grant any other bonuses or penalties based on size.
Since the use of this ability did not replace another type of attack, Improved Trip does not grant a melee attack after a successful trip attempt.

Parkour (Ex): The stormfist runs, leaps, clings, and slides with such intense focus that she can move in ways that seem almost supernatural. She can move through any obstacle without slowing, as if under the effects of a Freedom of Movement spell. She may move across any vertical surface as if it were horizontal, or across the surface of any liquid as if it were solid. However, if she ends her movement or performs any other action that causes her to stop moving while on such a surface, she drops immediately.

Waver (Su): In combat, the stormfist can shift and vibrate her body in strange and unpredictable ways that trick the senses. She acts as if under the effects of a Blur spell at all times unless she is flat-footed or denied her Dexterity bonus to AC.

Skyrunner (Su): The stormfist's will to move her body is so strong that it defies the laws of physics. She may stand, walk, run, jump, or otherwise move on nothing as if she were on a solid surface. The forces holding her aloft affect only her. She no longer drops if she stops moving while running on a liquid or vertical surface. She may choose to stop standing on nothing and drop as part of her move action or as an immediate action.
She behaves at all times as if she were in a plane with subjective directional gravity. She may change which direction she perceives as down once per round as a free action as normal, but does not need to perform a Wisdom check to do so. This change lasts until she alters her perception of gravity again or until she becomes unconscious. In addition to choosing gravity's direction, she may also choose its strength, between no gravity, half gravity, normal gravity, and double gravity. While experiencing the effects of half gravity, the DC for all Jump checks is halved and each 10 feet of falling counts as 5 feet for the purposes of determining how far she dropped (such as for her Unbalancing Leap ability). While experiencing the effects of double gravity, the DC for all jump checks is doubled and each 5 feet of falling counts as 10 feet for the purposes of determining how far she dropped. These changes to effective falling distance do not apply to the limit of how far she can fall in a round. While experiencing the effects of no gravity, she does not fall.
Items the stormfist carry encumber her based on their weight in normal gravity, even though they experience the effects of her personal gravity as long as they remain in contact with her. She no longer drops if she stops moving while running on a liquid or vertical surface.

Ripple (Su): The stormfist's ability to move unpredictably in combat improves. She acts as if under the effects of a Displacement spell at all times unless she is flat-footed or denied her Dexterity bonus to AC (different types of concealment do not stack).

Meteor Leap (Ex): The stormfist streaks towards the ground, slamming into it with such force that it causes a shockwave that knocks others off their feet. Whenever she lands from a drop of at least 80 feet, she may choose to perform a meteor leap as an immediate action. If she does, all other creatures less than one size category larger than her within 20 feet make an opposed check with the stormfist as if she were tripping them (acting as if the initial touch attack were successful and using all the relevant modifiers such as those based on size, but denying them the opportunity to attempt a counter-trip). The stormfist takes a -4 penalty to this opposed check. Creatures within half of this radius are affected more severely. They take a -4 penalty to their opposed trip check and are stunned for 1 round. The stormfist deals her unarmed strike damage to these creatures as if she had performed an unarmed strike against them (this does not require another attack roll, but does include damage type and appropriate ability score modifiers as if it were a normal unarmed strike attack), but with a -2 penalty to unarmed strike level. A successful Fortitude save halves the damage and negates the stunning effect.
For each additional 40 feet of drop beyond the first, to a maximum of 160 feet, the attack's radius increases by 10 feet and the stormfist counts as one size category larger for this attack. These additional size categories are used when determining which opponents the stormfist may perform a trip attempt against, for determining her base unarmed strike level for the damage dealt, and for determining her bonus or penalty to the opposed check based on her size. They do not alter her reach or grant any other bonuses or penalties based on size.
The stormfist may not trigger meteor leap and Unbalancing Leap from the same landing.

Harmonic Stillness (Ex): The stormfist may enter a trance-like state wherein her mind and body become attuned with the primal concept of motion. In this state, she appears to be standing still, but is actually moving the essence of her position through space in every direction simultaneously. She may activate this ability as a free action once per day, granting her the Quantum Step ability (see below) for a number of rounds equal to her Wisdom bonus (if any). She loses the Quantum Step ability and all of the effects it grants when that duration expires or when she voluntarily dismisses it, whichever comes first.

Quantum Step (Su): The stormfist has an internal movement pool of potential motion which she may make real. When she gains this ability and at the beginning of each of her turns, the remaining distance in her movement pool becomes 80 feet. The stormfist may teleport as a free action up to the distance remaining in her movement pool, subtracting the distance she teleported from it. The stormfist's threatened area increases by the size of her movement pool, but the range of her attacks do not change. If a creature provokes an attack of opportunity from the stormfist that she would not be able to make if not for this range increase, the stormfist may not make that attack unless she first reaches a position from which that attack would normally threaten.
The stormfist may teleport as part of any voluntary movement. This teleportation is subject to the same restrictions as her movement would be (such as the distance limits for that movement, the requirement that you move in a straight line while taking the run action, and the requirement that you end movement from a charge adjacent to your target), and distance traveled during the teleport counts against distance she may move during that movement.
Distance traveled during teleportation granted by this ability counts as distance moved for the purposes of all effects based on movement. Teleportation granted by this ability does not provoke attacks of opportunity.



Nimble Combatant

Those who practice in this style focus on using their agility to gain advantage over their opponents in combat.



Table: Nimble Combatant
BenefitStyle Points

Sense Danger1

Evasion2

Unyielding Reflex3

Patient Strike4

Unyielding Defense5

Combat Awareness6

Improved Evasion7

Intimidating Stance8

Unbreakable Defense9

Perfect Defense10



Sense Danger (Ex): A keen ability to avoid danger grants the stormfist a dodge bonus to AC equal to half her style level (rounded down, minimum 1).

Evasion (Ex): The stormfist learns to avoid even magical and unusual attacks with great agility. If she makes a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, she instead takes no damage. A helpless stormfist does not gain the benefit of evasion.

Unyielding Reflex (Ex): The stormfist has an aptitude for using her agility to find openings to attack. She has the Combat Reflexes feat.
Additionally, the stormfist may push herself beyond her normal limits to continue attacking. If an opponent provokes an attack of opportunity from the stormfist, but the stormfist has already used all of her attacks of opportunity during this round, she may attempt to make the attack anyway. She and the opponent make an opposed Dexterity check. If the stormfist is successful, she takes a -2 penalty to this Dexterity check, AC, and to attack rolls until the start of her turn, then makes the attack of opportunity. These penalties apply immediately after the check is made, and they stack. If the stormfist fails, she is denied the attack of opportunity, but takes no penalty. The stormfist fails on a tie.

Patient Strike (Ex): The stormfist can use an opening from a failed attack to strike her opponent in combat. Creatures provoke attacks of opportunity from the stormfist any time they miss an attack against her, even with a targeted spell.

Perfect Defense (Ex): The stormfist can focus entirely on defending herself and creating openings to strike instead of attacking. The stormfist has additional options while using total defense (by taking the total defense action), as follows. The stormfist may make attacks of opportunity. When using her Unyielding Reflex ability to take more attacks of opportunity than she would normally be allowed, the stacking penalty she takes to her opposed Dexterity check, AC, and attack rolls decreases to -1. When she provokes an attack of opportunity from an opponent by moving out of or within that opponent's threatened area, and that opponent does not take that attack of opportunity, that opponent provokes an attack of opportunity from the stormfist.

Combat Awareness (Ex): The stormfist is adept at dividing her attention and maintaining constant vigilance. Unless she is immobilized, she always retains her Dexterity bonus to AC and cannot be flanked.

Improved Evasion (Ex): This ability works like Evasion, except that while the stormfist still takes no damage on a successful Reflex saving throw against attacks, she henceforth takes only half damage on a failed save. A helpless stormfist does not gain the benefit of improved evasion.

Intimidating Stance (Ex): The stormfist can adopt a wide stance, keeping her eye on a large area, attacking and retreating in the blink of an eye the moment she spots an opening. When she takes the total defense action, she may choose to enter an intimidating stance for as long as she is using total defense. If she does, she occupies space and has reach as if she were one size category larger than her current size. Her size does not actually change.

Unbreakable Defense (Ex): The stormfist's ability to avoid harm and exploit openings increases. While using total defense, any opponent attempting to strike or otherwise directly attack the stormfist, even with a targeted spell, must attempt a Reflex save. If the save succeeds, the opponent attacks normally. If the save fails, the opponent attempts the attack, automatically misses, and provokes an attack of opportunity from the stormfist. The stormfist may use this attack of opportunity to attempt to redirect the attack back on the attacker, even if the attack was a ranged attack (such as an arrow or a spell that requires a ranged touch attack). If she does so, she uses her melee attack bonus if the attacking creature is adjacent to her, and her ranged attack bonus otherwise. This ability does not prevent the stormfist from being attacked or affected by area or effect spells.

Perfect Defense (Ex): The stormfist can hone her focus instantly to achieve a perfect moment of clarity in which she effortlessly responds to every weakness. Once per day, she can use the total defense action as a free action. When she does, she maintains the total defense for a number of rounds equal to her Wisdom Bonus (if any). During this time, she automatically succeeds the Dexterity check to perform additional attacks of opportunity with her Unyielding Reflex ability.



Overpowering Force

Those who grow in their knowledge of this style learn to focus and intensify the deadly power of their own bodies, bringing ruinous destruction to those who stand opposed to them.



Table: Overpowering Force
BenefitStyle Points

Double Blow1

Critical Strike2

Ravaging Blow3

Echoing Critical4

Frenzied Blow5

Empowered Strike6

Forceful Blow7

Crashing Blow8

Unlimited Strike9

Critical Force10



Double Blow (Ex): The stormfist can draw on a limited reserve of inner strength to attack twice when she would normally attack once. Once per round, before any unarmed strike attack roll, the stormfist may declare that she is making this attack a double blow. If she does, she makes the attack as normal, then immediately performs a second unarmed strike attack using the same base attack bonus. She may choose a different target for the second attack. Resolve each attack separately. The stormfist can only perform a double blow a number of times per day equal to her style level.
Certain other abilities granted by this martial style count as a use of double blow and cost the stormfist one of her daily uses of this ability. These abilities are subject to the same use limits as her double blow. For example, she may not use her Ravaging Blow in the same round as her double blow, or twice in the same round, nor may she use those abilities if she does not have enough uses of double blow remaining to do so.

Critical Strike: The stormfist's unarmed strikes seem to find vulnerabilities in the opponents' defenses more easily. The base critical threat range for her unarmed strikes is 18-20.

Ravaging Blow (Ex): Rather than focusing on making more attacks, the stormfist may draw on her reserve of inner strength to hit harder and with more precision. Once per round, before any unarmed strike attack roll, the stormfist may declare that she is making this attack a ravaging blow. If she does, for that attack, she gains a +1 bonus to her unarmed strike level, a +5 bonus to her attack roll, and double the critical threat range with her unarmed strike. This effect doesn’t stack with any other effect that expands the threat range of her unarmed strike. This counts as her use of double blow for that turn and uses one of the stormfist's daily allotment of double blows.

Echoing Critical (Su): The stormfist finds that sometimes, she strikes opponents with such force that it creates an opening for another attack. When she scores a critical hit with her unarmed strike, she may immediately perform another unarmed strike attack using the same base attack bonus. She may choose a different target for the second attack. Resolve each attack separately.

Frenzied Blow (Ex): A stormfist can channel an immense amount of inner strength to go into an attacking frenzy. Once per round, before any unarmed strike attack roll, the stormfist may declare that she is making this attack a frenzied blow. If she does, she makes the attack as normal, then immediately performs two additional unarmed strike attacks using the same base attack bonus. She may choose different targets for these attacks. Resolve each attack separately. This counts as her use of double blow for that round and uses two of the stormfist's daily allotment of double blows.

Empowered Strike (Ex): The stormfist is more adept at causing harm, giving her a +1 bonus to her unarmed strike level.

Forceful Blow (Su): The stormfist can use her inner strength to call out destructive potential in ways that transcend physical damage. Before any unarmed strike attack roll, the stormfist may declare that she is making this attack a forceful blow. If she does, damage she deals with that attack is dealt as force damage (allowing it harm ethereal or incorporeal creatures normally). Creatures killed by this unarmed strike are are completely pulverized, their remains reduced to nothing but dust and bloody mist. If the stormfist strikes an object with this attack, she utterly demolishes as much as a 10-foot cube of inanimate matter. This destructive energy even demolishes force effects, such as Forceful Hand or Wall of Force, as if they were struck by a Disintegrate spell. This uses one of the stormfist's daily allotment of double blows but does not count as her use of Double Blow for that round (she may use this ability many times on different attacks she makes in the same round, spending a use of Double Blow each time).

Crashing Blow (Ex): The stormfist may draw on immense inner focus to strike twice with unmatched force and precision. Once per round, before any unarmed strike attack roll, the stormfist may declare that she is making this attack a crashing blow. If she does, she makes the attack as normal, then immediately performs a second unarmed strike attack using the same base attack bonus. For both attacks, she gains a +1 bonus to her unarmed strike level, a +5 bonus to her attack roll, and double the critical threat range with her unarmed strikes. This effect doesn’t stack with any other effect that expands the threat range of her unarmed strike. She may choose a different target for the second attack. Resolve each attack separately. This counts as her use of double blow for that turn and uses three of the stormfist's daily allotment of double blows.

Unlimited Strike (Ex): The stormfist is much better at maintaining her inner focus without tiring. Her daily allotment of double blows is unlimited.

Critical Force (Ex): The stormfist may clear her mind of everything except the purity and precision of her destructive potential. She may activate this ability as a free action once per day, granting her the Critical Dreadnought ability (see below) for a number of rounds equal to her Wisdom bonus (if any). She loses the Critical Dreadnought ability and all of the effects it grants when that duration expires or when she voluntarily dismisses it, whichever comes first.

Critical Dreadnought (Su): The stormfist automatically confirms all critical hits. When she rolls a value for an attack roll that would normally threaten a critical hit with her unarmed strike, but her target is immune to critical hits, she may treat that attack as if it were a critical hit for the purposes of triggering her Echoing Critical ability.



Path of Resilience

Pursuers of this martial style seek inner strength more than outer strength, surviving in combat with sheer willpower.



Table: Path of Resilience
BenefitStyle Points

Mending Will1

Resoluteness2

Persistence3

Tenacity4

Willful Sturdiness5

Purity of Spirit6

Reconstitute7

Deny Weakness8

Improved Tenacity9

Deny Death10



Mending Will (Su): The stormfist may knit her wounds back together by sheer willpower. Each day she can heal a total number of hit points of damage equal to her style level level times 5. She may choose to divide her healing among multiple uses, but each time it requires an immediate action or a standard action.

Resoluteness (Ex): The stormfist can take punishment beyond normal mortal limits. She no longer needs to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. She can swim, run, and march indefinitely without tiring, and exist comfortably in hot or cold environments as if under the effects of an Endure Elements spell.

Persistence (Ex): The stormfist keeps going when others cannot. She has the Diehard feat, even if she does not meet the prerequisites. Additionally, she is not rendered unconscious when her nonlethal damage exceeds her hit point total.

Tenacity (Ex): The stormfist can resist magical and unusual attacks with great resilience. If exposed to any effect that normally allows her to attempt a Fortitude save for a partial or half effect, the stormfist suffers no effect with a successful saving throw.

Willful Sturdiness (Ex): Scarred and healed in countless battles, the stormfist's body has hardened like adamantine. She gains damage reduction equal to her Wisdom bonus (if any). Additionally, her unarmed strikes count as adamantine for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Purity of Spirit (Ex): The stormfist has devoted some study into more subtle ways that harm might befall her body, and has worked to improve her overall wellness as a result. She gains immunity to all poisons and diseases, even magical diseases. She does not takes penalties to her ability scores for aging and cannot be magically aged. Any such penalties that she has already taken, however, remain in place. Bonuses still accrue, and the stormfist still dies of old age when her time is up.

Reconstitute (Su): The stormfist has learned to force her bodily healing to accelerate. She may use 20 hit points of the healing granted to her by Mending Will to gain fast healing 3 for 1 minute. When she does, the stormfist's severed body members, broken bones, and ruined organs grow back. The physical regeneration is complete in 1 round if the severed members are present and touching the stormfist. It takes 1 minute otherwise. Activating this ability requires three full rounds of concentration and provokes attacks of opportunity.

Deny Weakness (Ex): The stormfist has dealt with so much damage to her body that she can force it to function even when it shouldn't. She is immune to ability damage, ability drain, and energy drain.

Improved Tenacity (Ex): This ability works like Tenacity, except that while the stormfist still suffers no effects on a successful Fortitude saving throw, she henceforth takes the effects of attacks offering a Fortitude save as if she succeeded her save even when she fails it, unless the attack is harmless or also affect objects (for example, if affected by a Slay Living spell, the stormfist takes damage instead of dying on a failed save and no effect on a successful one).

Deny Death (Ex): The stormfist's familiarity with her own body is so absolute, that her soul clings to it more tightly than usual. Once per day, when the stormfist dies of something besides old age, she gains the Clinging to Life ability (see below) for a number of rounds equal to her Wisdom bonus (if any). She loses the ability and all of the effects it grants when that duration expires or when she voluntarily dismisses it, whichever comes first. Both this ability and the Clinging to Life ability function even while the stormfist is dead.

Clinging to Life (Su): The stormfist retains her place in initiative order while dead. Her hit point total cannot cause her to become dead, dying, or disabled.
At the beginning of her turn, if her hit point total is less than -10, it becomes -10.
If her body was destroyed (for example, if it was targeted by a Disintegrate spell), she may, as a move action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity and ignores the standard rule that the dead may not take any actions, pull just enough of her broken remains to continue back into existence within 10 feet of the location where she died.
If she is dead and still has her remains, she may, as a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity and ignores the standard rule that the dead may not take any actions, return to life with -10 hit points. This resurrection does not cause level loss as normal.



Weavebreaker

While not overtly magical themselves, practitioners of this martial style study the way that magical energy flows through the body and the world around them. They use the knowledge gained by this study to perform small semi-magical feats and disrupt magic from others.



Table: Weavebreaker
BenefitStyle Points

Primal Ward1

Primal Strike2

Determination3

Open the Weave4

Disruptive Reaction5

Ethereal Persistence6

Great Ward7

Improved Determination8

Dispelling Blow9

Ethereal Hum10



Primal Ward (Ex): The stormfist's enhanced understanding of primal elemental energies allow her to reconfigure her magical signature to resist them. The stormfist gains resistance equal to her style level to her choice of acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic. She may alter this choice as a swift action.

Primal Strike (Su): The stormfist has learned to make her attacks receptive to primal elemental energies, making her unarmed attacks count as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Additionally, she may choose to deliver those elemental energies in lieu of the actual physical force of an unarmed attack. If she does, the unarmed strike's damage type changes depending on her striking discipline when she made the attack. She deals fire damage for attacks made in the pummeling discipline, cold damage for the lacerating discipline, and electricity damage for the impaling discipline.

Determination (Ex): The stormfist can resist magical and unusual attacks with great determination. If exposed to any effect that normally allows her to attempt a Will save for a partial or half effect, the stormfist suffers no effect with a successful saving throw.

Open the Weave (Su): The stormfist has learned to detect ripples that her body makes in the ether, and has begun to notice patterns in the way that those ripples rebound off of other objects or creatures, giving her glimpses of a hidden world around her that she can use to locate and attack difficult-to-find foes. Her unarmed strikes deal damage normally against incorporeal creatures as if they had the Ghost Touch special property. Additionally, as a swift action, she may close her eyes and focus on ethereal vibrations, gaining an innate sense of the shapes of all objects nearby through a sort of ethereal echolocation that allows her to build a three-dimensional mental map of her surroundings. She is blind, but has blindsight out to a distance of 40 feet. Since the stormfist is intuiting the shapes of objects by their ethereal imprint rather than actually visually seeing them, line of effect for her blindsight can penetrate barriers, but is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of dirt or wood. This mental image encompasses the entire area around her, not just in the direction she faces. She may open her eyes as a free action to end the effect.

Disruptive Reaction (Ex): The stormfist has observed the ways that spellcasters can avoid her disruptive influence while casting, and has developed strategies to harry an opponent and circumvent those defenses. Creatures casting spells or using spell-like abilities in the stormfist's threatened area always provoke attacks of opportunity from the stormfist, even if the creature casts defensively or decreases the spell's casting time.

Ethereal Persistence (Ex): The stormfist's understanding of magical intrusion into her being broadens to encompass all magical effects, and she learns to better resist some of them. She gains spell resistance 10 plus her stormfist level. She may voluntarily suppress this resistance for 1 round as an immediate action. Additionally, she acts as if under the effects of a Nondetection spell at all times. The DC for the caster level check to overcome this nondetection is 15 + her stormfist level.

Great Ward (Su): The stormfist's ability to resist primal elemental energies improves. She gains resistance equal to 1/2 her style level (rounded down) to acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic. This resistance stacks with resistance from her Primal Ward.

Improved Determination (Ex): This ability works like Determination, except that while the stormfist still suffers no effects on a successful Will saving throw against attacks, she henceforth takes the effects of attacks offering a Will save as if she succeeded her save even when she fails it, as long the attack is a compulsion or is mind-affecting (for example, if targeted by a Hold Person spell, the stormfist is not paralyzed whether she succeeds her save or not).

Dispelling Blow (Su): Before any unarmed strike attack roll, the stormfist may declare that she will attempt to make that attack a dispelling blow. If she does, she takes a -2 penalty to her attack roll and unarmed strike level for that attack, and delivers the effects of a Greater Dispel Magic spell against the target of the attack if it lands successfully. She may use the targeted or counterspell versions of the spell, only. Her caster level for this spell is her style level. Unlike the Greater Dispel Magic spell, there is no maximum caster level bonus to the dispel check for this attack.

Ethereal Hum (Ex): After intensive study of the ways that magical energies flow through the ether and through her body, the stormfist learns to enter a state of hyperfocus. In this state, she interlocks the energy in her body with the natural magical weave of the world, charging it with volatile elemental energy and twisting its conduits to away from herself. She may activate this ability once per day as a free action, granting her the Primal Aura ability (see below) for a number of rounds equal to her Wisdom bonus (if any). She loses the Primal Aura ability and all of the effects it grants when that duration expires or when she voluntarily dismisses it, whichever comes first.

Primal Aura (Su): The stormfist's body is cloaked in a swirling field of volatile energy that extends 5 feet in every direction from her body and moves with her. This energy is attuned to whichever energy type she currently resists with her Primal Ward ability. Effects dealing that type of damage are completely absorbed into this aura, granting the stormfist immunity to the chosen energy type.
All creatures take continuous 1d6 damage per two style levels each round that they remain within 5 feet of the stormfist. This damage is of the same type as the energy the stormfist resists with her Primal Ward. Creatures take this damage again immediately each time they attempt to make physical contact with the stormfist.
The stormfist cannot see normally through the energy field surrounding her. However, her intense connection with the ether makes her intuitively aware of rebounding vibrations in the magical weave. She is blinded, but has blindsight out to a distance of 120 feet. Since the stormfist is intuiting the shapes of objects by their ethereal imprint rather than actually visually seeing them, line of effect for her blindsight can penetrate barriers, but is blocked by 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of dirt or wood. This mental image encompasses the entire area around her, not just in the direction she faces. She sees the true forms of everything through this blindsight as if by a True Seeing spell.
Additionally, whenever an opponent attempts to cast a spell (or use a spell-like ability) targeting the stormfist, that opponent must succeed an opposed caster level check against the stormfist. The stormfist uses her style level as her caster level for this check. If that opponent fails the check, their spell is turned back on them. This only affects spells that have the stormfist as a target. Effect and area spells are not affected. This ability also fails to stop touch range spells.



Feats

Martial Style Aptitude
Prerequisites: Martial Styles class ability.
Choose one martial style with fewer style points than your primary martial style, and which you have not chosen when taking this feat previously. Your number of style points in that martial style increases by 1.
Special: You may take this feat any number of times. Each time, you must choose a different martial style with fewer style points than your primary style.

Martial Style Focus
Prerequisites: Martial Styles class ability.
Choose one martial style with at least 1 point. You have a +2 bonus to style level in that style. This does not increase your number of points in that style, it only boosts effects based on style level. The DC to save against any ability granted by that style increases by 1.
Special: You may take this feat any number of times. Its effects do not stack. Each time, you must choose a new martial style in which you have at least 1 point.

Dense Fists
Prerequisites: Unarmed Mastery class ability, count as smaller than Medium size for the purposes of determining base unarmed strike level.
The size you use for the purposes of determining base unarmed strike level is one size category larger than it was before you took this feat.
Special: You may take this feat any number of times, as long as you continue to meet the prerequisites. Its effects stack.

Items

Robe of the Storm
This simple-looking robe frees the wearer's movement and is laced with a subtle magic that makes the wearer's actions more precise and deliberate. If donned by a stormfist, that character has a +1 bonus to style level in all combat styles.
While worn by a character who is not a stormfist, that character has the stormfist's Striking Discipline ability (including the restrictions on when that character benefits from it) and unarmed damage based on their size from the stormfist's Unarmed Mastery ability. Such a character does not gain any other benefits from the Unarmed Mastery ability, nor any other abilities from the stormfist class.
Moderate transmutation; CL 12th; Craft Wondrous Item, Transformation; Price 24,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Belt of Bodily Mastery
This belt of woven rope adds one to its wearer's unarmed strike level.
Faint Evocation; CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item, Greater Magic Fang; Price 6,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

[Baphomet]

Much in the same vein as the Angelic Avenger, this is a new base class that tries to take the idea and aesthetic from a lower-tier core base class and work it into something much more powerful and suitable for higher-tier games. This one, in case you couldn't tell, is a reworked Monk. My goal is to wind up with something more powerful than the base class it reworks, but still not brokenly powerful. Preferably around tier 2-3, but I'm not terribly picky.

The idea is that the martial styles are like mini-classes all by themselves, but their power is at least partially tied to the stormfist's power. The first point gives you an ability that scales with style level. It should be something that isn't brokenly good if it scales evenly with character level and not uselessly bad if it scales at half character level. That way you're still rewarded for investing points into a style that you don't plan on maxing out. The second point gives you a static bonus that should be useful regardless of level, like a specific thematic bonus feat or special ability. The third point either enhances the ability from the first point in some way, or provides another consistently-useful static ability. To get points 4-9, the person must be prioritizing that style in some way, so these are the meat and potatoes of essentially a prestige class which specializes in doing the thing that the martial style is themed towards. To get a 10 point ability, the style must either be the stormfist's primary style or they must have completely neglected every other style and be 20th level or more, so it's essentially the capstone. Those abilities grant you a superpower once a day for your wisdom bonus in rounds, preferably one that synergizes well with the other abilities in that style. It should be the kind of thing that is too good to let you keep doing it for free all day, but still not so good that it'll let you solo an ancient dragon. Or a very old dragon. Frankly, you shouldn't be soloing any sort of respectable dragon.

Generally when performing this kind of exercise, I'm trying to keep the power level in line with the power level someone could get through a moderate amount of multiclassing and cheese with other classes. Just, not requiring the cheese, and trying to keep things in line so it doesn't get too out of hand. Lots of stuff this class grants is sort of self-contained, which makes it harder to cheese out. That said, I'm betting it's not impossible. If you can think of anything to completely break this, let me know and I'll see if there's some easy way to avoid that. Also let me know if anything is broken in general or worded weirdly or too powerful or too useless or whatever you want to let me know, really.

Current issues that I'd like to be addressed (feel free to address others if you see them):

-Does the Quantum Step ability work at all as written? I've changed its wording again.

-What tier is this?

-Are there any more interesting abilities I can grant to the overpowering force style? Right now it might be a little bland.

changelog:
-I realized how trivial it was to max out style levels with minimal style points, so I changed the way that's calculated.
-I changed the way the damage type for unarmed strikes is chosen so it interacts better with martial styles that want to play with that.
-added a new style (or rather, sort of split up abilities from other styles into a new style and filled in the gaps)
-changed the way to gain style points. You get more points overall, but half of them automatically go into one specific style chosen at first level.
-I've made a new capstone for the weavetearer style. I like that it's now basically an amalgamation of and improvement on a bunch of the other style abilities. I think maybe that makes up for how long it is.
-split mettle into mettle of will and mettle of fortitude and put them in different styles.
-changed HD to d10.
-changed feat for bonus style point to 1 per non-primary style. Now it's not possible to get all the improved evasions.
-added the 6th and final style.
-removed the 6th style. It didn't fit with the rest, its capstone was sort of lackluster, and its theme wasn't really cohesive. Moved some of the trip stuff it granted into fleet spirit. Five styles is enough.
-changed a lot of stuff to make it more competitive. Removed some earlier abilities or folded them together with others. Moved some later abilities forward. Now I have some gaps in the styles.
-realized that the ranger already has an ability called combat style. changed it to martial style.
-rewrote large swaths of stuff. Now I would consider it much more powerful.

[jedipotter]

Ok, so a 10th level monk gets only 8 style points, and can only put 6 in one style? And even 20th level is only +16, but only 11 in a style.

So to get a 10th level style ability, you need to focus all most the style points into that one Combat Style. So a monk can spend 10 points by 20th level to get all the abilities of just one style. It's like saying that the monk ''has to pick a style''.

The mix of all four(or more) styles just does not work. A 20th level monk could have 5 in all 4 styles, and not get any of the high level abilities.

And if you want a single ability, there is a huge point tax. And you get a bunch of abilities you don't want.

I see this monk running out of style points way too fast and just giving up on high level abilities or wasting the time getting tons of a abilities they won't use, to get one they will.

[Baphomet]

I've made a bunch of changes. Chiefly, I've split up the abilities had previously in 4 styles to 5; the evasion and mettle being in one style was just too much. I might still make a stealth style, maybe with some sneak-attack-esque thing and some invisibility or ethereal stuff in, or a grappling style with some sort of "negate freedom of movement" thing and some dimensional anchor stuff, but I think these 5 styles are in a good place. I don't want to add too many, or I risk having to fill them out with useless guff. It's really powerful for a martial class, I know, but I think it's still pretty alright.


Ok, so a 10th level monk gets only 8 style points, and can only put 6 in one style? And even 20th level is only +16, but only 11 in a style.

So to get a 10th level style ability, you need to focus all most the style points into that one Combat Style. So a monk can spend 10 points by 20th level to get all the abilities of just one style. It's like saying that the monk ''has to pick a style''.

The mix of all four(or more) styles just does not work. A 20th level monk could have 5 in all 4 styles, and not get any of the high level abilities.

And if you want a single ability, there is a huge point tax. And you get a bunch of abilities you don't want.

I see this monk running out of style points way too fast and just giving up on high level abilities or wasting the time getting tons of a abilities they won't use, to get one they will.

I've been thinking a lot about this. I had a post up responding to it, but I've deleted it since then. Basically, I've tried to design the styles in such a way that they won't be useless even if you just dabble in them. I've made sure the first point ability scales with style level and won't be useless if it scales half as fast (which it will if you don't put more points in the style) and the second point ability is some sort of static bonus that will remain useful. Hopefully none of the abilities are things they don't want or won't use. I still disagree that a mix of all four (now five) styles does not work. I also disagree with the nature of the "if you want a single ability, there's a huge tax" thing. If you take levels in any class just to get one of that class's high-level abilities, you're going to get a lot of stuff besides that one. The same thing is true here.

That said, I do agree that it won't "feel" right if they don't specialize in one style. I also think, to a lesser extent, it won't "feel" right if they don't at least dabble in multiple styles. But, I also don't want them to be able to max out two styles, and I don't want them to get so many points overall that they can't keep track of all the abilities they have anymore. I've been trying to think of some way to satisfy all of those ideas, but I'm coming up a little short. Maybe instead of assigning points, they get a more rigid system like "at these levels, learn a style you don't know. at these levels, all styles you know level up 1". Or maybe they could pick a style to specialize in, and that style levels up to max automatically, but then they also get level/2 bonus points to assign to any styles besides that one. That actually makes a lot of sense; the usefulness of the early abilities should be disincentive enough to use those bonus points to max out a second style, and I don't think I'd feel too bad if they completely neglected all of those because they really wanted to completely max a second style. It's like 5 am now though, I'll see if I can write something up to that effect tomorrow.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

@number of styles:
If you got 6-7 different styles and the monk can learn only 1 of them it's like a spellcaster that can learn only one school of magic. The Beguiler was so successful a class both mechanics-wise and flavor-wise because she could learn three. My suggestion is to give them just enough points for two styles. That way mastery of a single style by lvl 20 is a given, with the player having to decide whether they'll focus on mastering a second, or dabbling in several.



@suggested styles:
I was kinda disappointed that the "monk on steroids" didn't have a style that actually used steroids. :smalltongue: Well, not exactly steroids but a style focusing on knowledge of the body, the medical arts and alchemy so that the monk slowly improves her own body with such knowledge plus meditation. I.e. being able to heal herself and others based off the healing or alchemy skill, gaining enhancement bonuses by imbibing potions, gaining immunity to poison and disease through previous exposure, being able to poison her own strikes or apply poisons with contact, being able to cause maladies resembling a disease by striking specific organs, being able to paralyze wholly or partially, pinch people into sleep, strike people speechless and the like.

[Baphomet]

@number of styles:
If you got 6-7 different styles and the monk can learn only 1 of them it's like a spellcaster that can learn only one school of magic. The Beguiler was so successful a class both mechanics-wise and flavor-wise because she could learn three. My suggestion is to give them just enough points for two styles. That way mastery of a single style by lvl 20 is a given, with the player having to decide whether they'll focus on mastering a second, or dabbling in several.



@suggested styles:
I was kinda disappointed that the "monk on steroids" didn't have a style that actually used steroids. :smalltongue: Well, not exactly steroids but a style focusing on knowledge of the body, the medical arts and alchemy so that the monk slowly improves her own body with such knowledge plus meditation. I.e. being able to heal herself and others based off the healing or alchemy skill, gaining enhancement bonuses by imbibing potions, gaining immunity to poison and disease through previous exposure, being able to poison her own strikes or apply poisons with contact, being able to cause maladies resembling a disease by striking specific organs, being able to paralyze wholly or partially, pinch people into sleep, strike people speechless and the like.

Thanks for taking a look! Honestly, I only called the thread "Monk on Steroids" because I wasn't sold on the name "Stormfist" but hadn't thought of a better one. Don't you think a style that lets her heal others would kind of be stepping on the toes of the style that lets her heal herself? This class is supposed to be all about the self, after all. Plus, alchemy sounds like it requires equipment. Part of the major appeal of monk-like classes is that (theoretically) they don't really need equipment. Strip them naked and drop them in your dungeon and they're going to start punching holes in things.
Which is good news for the bard, who probably also specializes in being naked and dealing with holes.
I've basically done what you said with the styles, which also addresses jedipotter's concerns. Now you pick a style to focus on at 1st level. That one maxes out as you level automatically, and then you get just enough points at other levels to max out a single other style or dabble in a few more. Now I don't have to do that whole clumsy "no more than 1 plus half level" thing because it's enforced automatically by the speed at which you get points.

The more I think about it the more I'm realizing that less styles is better. This is a pretty good system for leveling up styles, I think. But, if there were a bunch more styles, I feel like I might run into the problem where there's lots of early abilities that should be iconic for the class, but players can't really hope to get them all without gimping themselves. Right now there's 5. One is the primary style, and she gets 10 points to assign freely to the other 4. If she's spreading them out, by level 20 that would get her 2 points in 2 styles and 3 points in the other 2. I could possibly see a single other style, making it an even two in all but her primary for the dabbler, but it might be good where it stands. If I did add one more, it would probably be a stealth one to allow for ninja-type characters.

I've made some more changes, and will add some more thoughts about priorities in the third post.

[Baphomet]

I have added the sixth and final combat style. It lets you hit harder when your opponent is denied Dexterity to AC, and also gives you some tricks to help you deny their Dexterity to AC, most involving tripping or invisibility. I am not sure I like the capstone. It doesn't feel like a proper superpower like the others do, and actually negates the need to use the first point ability. However, I spent a long while looking over feats, spells, PrCs, magic items, and handbooks intended for stealthy characters, and didn't come up with anything better. Something to do with sneak attacking, being invisible, or tripping people, or preferably a combination of those. Something that's worth being a 1/day limited round power at level 19. If anyone has any ideas for something better, I would love to hear it.
Barring any changes, and except for the addition of fluff, I would now consider this class finished. At least, out of Alpha and into Beta. Now all that remains is tweaking. I would love any input on that front.

[Baphomet]

I took out the sixth style. After a lot of consideration, I decided it wasn't really stylistically appropriate, divided up the useful abilities too much, and I really didn't like the capstone. I put some tripping stuff in the fleet spirit style, because tripping people does seem right. Sneak attack-ish and invisibility stuff really doesn't, though. There are other classes for that.

I also fluffed everything and put a little doodle up. With that, I'd say this is really for real finished, unless anyone has any answers for the stuff in the third post.

[Seerow]

Real abilities take too long to come online. Let's look at them why don't we?



Fleet Spirit
Skyrunner shows up as a 9th level freaking style. That grants a 4th level spell. At level 18 you are finally getting an ability Clerics have been utilizing since level 7.

Meanwhile, what are you getting at level 7? Improved Trip. The bonus feat a Fighter is getting at level 1. You don't even really get anything else to support the tripping in this style, so by the time you get it at level 7, it's already a waste of space. Anything you want to trip from level 7 on is going to be bigger and tougher than you, and you're going to have no chance tripping it.

Quantum Step is a cool ability, and the first thing I've seen in this class that might qualify as a tier 2 ability. 20ft worth of free action teleporting per turn is cool. The increased threatened area is kind of useless because as soon as you take advantage of it once, the benefit is gone, and this style doesn't really provide any synergy for AoO lockdown anyway.

The only real problem is this is your first really cool ability. It comes online at level 20. And it is usable once per day. Compare to a Sorcerer, who at level 18 could take the Dimension Jumper, Greater spell, and be able to teleport 60ft as a swift action every round for 18 rounds (good luck boosting your wis that high) and do that 4-5 times per day. And that is actually probably weak as 9th level spells go.


Nimble Combatant
Congratulations, you've made a style that results in a worse monk than the core Monk until freaking level 10. Heck even after level 10, your next 4 levels are getting you Imp Evasion and Imp Uncanny Dodge. I'm just going to throw this out there: A Monk 9/Barbarian5 (assuming you get around alignment issues) in a standard game is going to have everything a Monk with this style gets by level 14, and then some. That is a very unfavorable comparison for somebody aiming at tier 2.

Charging Strike... basically +1d6 damage on a single unarmed attack after a charge... if you charge 30+ ft. This is a 16th level ability. Are you kidding me? I have complaints about the Unarmed Strike levels in general, but I'll talk about those later.

Unseen Blow, 1/round treat the target as being flat footed. You have no sneak attack or similar ability, can't confer the flat footed to an ally, and are at a high enough level enemy AC's don't care. Why is this an 18th level ability?

And your capstone for this style follows the same pattern as the other, a 1/day ability with a duration limited to basically 1 encounter. Bunch of text wasted here to basically tell you that you a cleave equivalent ability and can move while taking a full attack. This is less cool than Quantum Step, and reminds me more of Dervish Dancer (that ****ty prestige class nobody takes). On the bright side, it is the capstone for a style that is awful, so it's not like I'm looking at the capstone saying "Man I wish I could get that but I don't want to be a nimble combatant monk!"



Overpowering Force
Double Blow: It's Snap Kick with a limited usage per day. Yawn.

Critical Strike: Oh yay, now my unarmed strike (which still deals 1d6 damage) has a 19-20x2 crit range! 2 style points in and I am living the good life of attacking with a short sword!

Ravaging Blow: +5 to hit is nice I guess? Still very limited uses per day, and it bumps your unarmed strike damage all the way up to 2d4. Allow me to express my extreme boredom.

All right I'm bored let's skip along until we find an interesting ability.

Huh, I got nothing. By the end you have a 2d4 18-20x2 crit weapon, and you can take a double ravaging blow (which pushes you up to 2d6 15-20x2). I'm not entirely sold on why I would want this over standard Flurry of Blows + Snap Kick, much less in comparison to 9th level spells.

Sure enough the capstone ability here follows the same formula as the others thus far have. Being able to use your fist to disintegrate things is cool. But disintigrate is a 6th level spell. That is coming online at level 11-12. You are getting this as 1/day at level 20. And yes you can do it every round for some duration during that 1/day, but if you're looking at it from utilitarian perspective, you're just not going to need to punch through a dozen wall of forces all at once. While being able to punch through a dozen per day would be pretty handy.

The extra damage is merely 'meh', since your unarmed strike level is 5, 6 during Crushing Blow. 10-12d6 extra damage per attack with the target getting a fort save against each attack. That's comparable with sneak attack, fewer things are going to be immune, but the damage is going to be resisted by vulnerable things far more often.





Fake Edit: Unarmed Strike Damage
At this point I thought it was really weird and went back to reread the Unarmed Strike level text. I read it originally and didn't see any reference to your base damage scaling. Going back, it seems I didn't see it because the Strike Bonus was listed as a separate ability that I overlooked. So some of the complaints above about unarmed strike effects were overblown.

This means that by level 20 you have a 3d8 weapon. Nimble Combatant's Charging Strike boosts that to 4d10, and Overpowering Force gets you 4d8 passively with 4d10 when you boost it. It does make the Crushing Dreadnought's damage significantly better (basically doubles the damage bonus on a failed save), but it's still ultimately just piles of damage, tied to melee attacks and granting saves. Would be okay if it was one tool in a larger arsenal, but not enough by itself. And ultimately, it is by itself because these 1/day capstone abilities seem to be the only thing you tried to put any effort into even sounding cool.

Path of Resilience
Mending Will: Yay you have healing as though a spell-less paladin of half your level!

Resoluteness: Endurance. Is this a joke?

Okay now I see a half dozen more abilities all keying off Mending Will, and not a single thing boosting the healing provided by it. Really?

Those abilities are all effectively worthless, because after your first encounter of the day, you're tapped out. So let's see what you're left with. Immunity to Poison and Disease. DR equal to Wis Mod. Half of Improved Mettle (seriously you can't even get fort and will, just fort?). And standard Capstone.

I feel like a broken record, but what is there in this style that makes the class t2 capable? Heck this one's even worse, because your capstone doesn't actually make it any harder to disable you, it just makes it harder to actually kill you. Your ultimate ability turns you into a cockroach for a couple rounds per day.

I just cannot overstate my disappointment in this style. Probably because I like defensive characters in general. But seriously there is nothing in this style that I would consider out of line giving to a 6th level character. Including full 10*wis mod healing and associated abilities. Yet it is supposed to stand for better than half of your 20th level character's capabilities.


Weavebreaker
Primal Ward-Resistance equal to style level? To 1 element? Even at level 1, resist 1 is pretty much useless. By level 6, resist 10 is standard. You don't get that until level 20. By level 11 a tier 2 character is rocking resist 30 if they care.

Primal Strike... wait making unarmed attacks count as magic for bypassing DR wasn't a part of the core chasis? *looks back* Huh apparently not. Take everything I said about Overpowering Force, and make it that much harsher.

That said, being able to turn your fists into elemental attacks at will is pretty cool, and the most interesting ability I've seen in the last three styles. This lets you bypass damage reduction at will against creatures without resistance to all 3 elemental types, and lets you hit elemental weaknesses. For a 2nd level ability, that's damn good. Considering most styles at this point are picking up bull**** feats like Lightning Reflexes and Endurance, I am shocked to see a genuinely good ability here.

....followed immediately by me finding the other half of Mettle. Why did Mettle get split between two styles again?

Open the Weave- Blindsight is cool. Why is it 5*half style level? Is getting blindsight with a range better than 10ft really too much for an 8th level character? *checks* Nope, it's a 2nd level spell to get blindsight of 30ft for 1min/level. That said, this is still looking better on average than the previous styles.

Ethereal Persistence-Did you actually think about this ability at all before putting it in? Spoiler: SR15 at level 10 is practically worthless. SR20 at level 20 is actually worthless. This is worse in every way than the spell resistance a bog standard monk gets. Why?!

Disruptive Reaction-As a 12th level ability you are gaining the equivalent of a feat (Mage Slayer) that you could qualify for at level 4. Except with more restrictions, and worse in every way. Because with Mage Slayer when the caster is forced to cast within your threatened area, you can do whatever you want with that AoO, including deal damage and use that damage to disrupt them, rather than just disrupting them.

Force Strike-Okay substituting damage types was a great trick at level 2. This is a level 14 ability. The chances that the target has DR you can't bypass, and resistance to Electric, Fire, and Cold aren't that high. It's nice to have another option, but not worth being the only thing you get this level.

Dispelling Blow-I get that you really love using style level as a modifier, but goddammit dispel is literally useless when you are using half your level as the modifier. Also let's remember that as your 18th level ability (actual tier 2 characters are getting 9th level spells now) you are getting a 3rd level spell (I won't even give you that it is a 5th level spell. Literally the only benefit of Greater Dispel Magic over Dispel Magic is the +20 cap over +10 cap, and you are capping the character at +10 anyway).

Primal Aura-Your capstone ability here is to gain a passive 5d6 energy damage ability and increased range on the blindsense to what it should have been all along. On the bright side you get the benefits of True Seeing thrown in. That sadly brings it up above some of the other capstones, but still as a 1/day thing it's not good.



-I keep going back and forth on how much AC nimble combatant should grant.

After reading this I just realized only one style gained Nimble Combatant, the AC bonus is based entirely on the Nimble Combatant Style level, and no other style has any form of boosting AC. The class itself has no armor proficiencies. That makes this class as a general rule squishier than a Wizard. While AC doesn't matter much past level 8 or so, at lower levels walking around with 10-12 AC will make you die quickly. Add to the fact that most of the styles don't actually get anything to help with providing other defenses against attacks (Fleet Spirit's miss chance effects are pretty much it), and you have a melee class who has serious trouble surviving in melee.






Anyway, overall review: This class is not tier 2. I would struggle to call it tier 4. The vast majority of style abilities are not level appropriate. In the case of some style combinations, I honestly wonder whether the class is even an upgrade over the Core monk. You'll end up with more unarmed strike damage, but generally will end up squishier and with a few abilities that scale extremely poorly.

Honestly, I like the core concept of having several styles, with the character mastering one style and dabbling in others. But this execution is sorely lacking. The class needs some sort of AC bonus regardless of style. You could straight up give the Monk's unarmored AC bonus and still have the one style grant the +1-10 AC without breaking anything. Honestly each style should get some form of offense, defense, mobility, and utility. Many of the styles get only a single one, or don't get anything noteworthy in any of the areas until mid levels, which is flat unacceptable.

[Baphomet]

Real abilities take too long to come online. Let's look at them why don't we?
I was under the impression that all abilities that acted as always-on versions of spells tended to come online a little later than someone could get the spell? That said, you may be right about some of them. I'll try to address this all one-by-one.



Fleet Spirit
Skyrunner shows up as a 9th level freaking style. That grants a 4th level spell. At level 18 you are finally getting an ability Clerics have been utilizing since level 7.

Meanwhile, what are you getting at level 7? Improved Trip. The bonus feat a Fighter is getting at level 1. You don't even really get anything else to support the tripping in this style, so by the time you get it at level 7, it's already a waste of space. Anything you want to trip from level 7 on is going to be bigger and tougher than you, and you're going to have no chance tripping it.

Quantum Step is a cool ability, and the first thing I've seen in this class that might qualify as a tier 2 ability. 20ft worth of free action teleporting per turn is cool. The increased threatened area is kind of useless because as soon as you take advantage of it once, the benefit is gone, and this style doesn't really provide any synergy for AoO lockdown anyway.

The only real problem is this is your first really cool ability. It comes online at level 20. And it is usable once per day. Compare to a Sorcerer, who at level 18 could take the Dimension Jumper, Greater spell, and be able to teleport 60ft as a swift action every round for 18 rounds (good luck boosting your wis that high) and do that 4-5 times per day. And that is actually probably weak as 9th level spells go.

I agree with some of this, and some of it is even worse than you said, but some of it is better. As written, you actually get the Improved Trip ability at level 9 at the earliest. Which, I agree, is dumb. I will try to rearrange to move it up. But, you get air walk at level 17 and quantum step at 19, which is marginally better than what you said but still a problem. That said, I think there's an appreciable difference between constant air walk and air walk for a little while if you prepared the spell.

Did you check out Stunning Leap? It's really the workhorse of the style if you're a specialist in it. It lets you make a free trip attempt if you drop from a large height onto another creature. You get bonus virtual size categories for that attempt based on how far you fell. Since size category increases seem to dominate the tripping scene, this seems like a pretty good answer to bigger and tougher creatures. Since you can run up walls, are extremely fast, are really good at jumping, and don't take fall damage, getting height is usually not a problem. It's a bit situational, assuming you have high vertical surfaces nearby to jump from...until you get constant effect air walk, and can run up nothing. Or even better, until you get the ability to teleport 20 feet up in the air as a free action.

The whole mess is a little weird, though, in that it needs several abilities together to pull off what I wanted to be the token stunt of the style. One of the big problems I had with the design of this stuff is that I have this list of abilities I want to put together into a style, but it's hard to find a good order for it. This style is a perfect example. I didn't want to leave people who just dabbled in the style to be possibly left with a few pieces of a broken puzzle, which left me in the position of having to frontload the abilities that someone would maybe find use for anyway. But also, I had a handful of other abilities that I thought belonged in this style, but aren't necessarily part of the whole "find ways to drop on stuff so you can trip them" puzzle. Most importantly, the blur and displacement effects. Combat Reflexes is a great feat but it's not really thematically cohesive and it's taking up valuable room at the front of the style. I'll drop it. Since I'm moving the rest of the stuff forwards, that opens up some real estate at the back of the style. I think the ability to alter your personal gravity seems pretty neat but on rewriting I think it would probably make more sense to use that to sweeten the deal with the air walk thing. Now I'm short an 8th or 9th point ability.

I'm confused why you don't think this style has synergy for AoO lockdown. You can potentially trip several creatures in a turn just by moving a lot, and standing up from prone provokes additional AoOs. Without Quantum Step, you can keep trying to trip guys each turn and try to lock down the ones you position yourself next to when you stop moving. With Quantum Step, you can either lock down a larger area with normal trip attempts or get a hard lock on adjacent creatures by flinging yourself 20 feet up in the air and dropping on them immediately after they stand up even after taking your AoO against them. Still, I was perhaps a little overly cautious with the potential move pool. I'll bring it up to 80 feet, so a medium character can slam down as a huge character on one opponent or flash around to a much larger array of them.

EDIT: Figured out I was seriously undervaluing the benefit of miss chance granting effects. Waver and ripple moved up, Skyrunner moved down more. You can get an item to have constant 20% miss chance at level 15, Waver is 30% miss chance at level 11 now after the move. You can have an item for 50% miss chance for 15 rounds per day at level 18, this is constant 50% miss chance at level 17. Now you're getting skyrunner at 13. That's the upper end of the range you gave in the post below, but I figure it's offset by the fact that it's more powerful than a standard Air Walk spell and the gravity manipulation shenanigans synergize so nicely with the other abilities. You're less likely to have made flying a priority before this too, since you can reliably jump about 25 feet in the air just by virtue of skill ranks and speed bonuses by level 10 anyway.

I liked the idea of what you suggested to improve lockdown capabilities below, but I have a personal vendetta against stuff that causes a lot of bookkeeping (like having to keep track of different durations on multiple creatures from one ability). So, I've tried to make it a 1-turn deal. Basically, it's an AoE trip attack plus damage and 1-round stunning. It's harder to use than the unbalancing leap because the distances involved are doubled, but on the other hand you can double gravity to get it back where it was. I've also added damage to the standard unbalancing leap. It's less than a normal unarmed strike, but you can make up the difference and even exceed it by adding height to your jump. At this point, you might have more damage potential with your move actions than with your standard actions.

I'm actually really happy with this style now. I think a character with these 10 abilities feels very monk-ish, is reasonably powerful, and gets up to some things in combat that you don't really see too often. Thanks for your help! Now on to the next style.



Nimble Combatant
Congratulations, you've made a style that results in a worse monk than the core Monk until freaking level 10. Heck even after level 10, your next 4 levels are getting you Imp Evasion and Imp Uncanny Dodge. I'm just going to throw this out there: A Monk 9/Barbarian5 (assuming you get around alignment issues) in a standard game is going to have everything a Monk with this style gets by level 14, and then some. That is a very unfavorable comparison for somebody aiming at tier 2.

Charging Strike... basically +1d6 damage on a single unarmed attack after a charge... if you charge 30+ ft. This is a 16th level ability. Are you kidding me? I have complaints about the Unarmed Strike levels in general, but I'll talk about those later.

Unseen Blow, 1/round treat the target as being flat footed. You have no sneak attack or similar ability, can't confer the flat footed to an ally, and are at a high enough level enemy AC's don't care. Why is this an 18th level ability?

And your capstone for this style follows the same pattern as the other, a 1/day ability with a duration limited to basically 1 encounter. Bunch of text wasted here to basically tell you that you a cleave equivalent ability and can move while taking a full attack. This is less cool than Quantum Step, and reminds me more of Dervish Dancer (that ****ty prestige class nobody takes). On the bright side, it is the capstone for a style that is awful, so it's not like I'm looking at the capstone saying "Man I wish I could get that but I don't want to be a nimble combatant monk!"
A lot of this seems to be colored by the fact that you're trying to look at each style in a vacuum. You get 20 style points, 10 go to your primary style automatically. Each style is not the entire class, the class is made so that you need those points in other styles to round out your character or else accept that you're intentionally avoiding those class abilities and accept the consequences of that. your hypothetical level 14 nimble combatant specialist has +14 AC. That's on top of his full dex bonus (in a class where dex is important) and bracers of armor or whatever other non-armor AC boosters you use. At level 14 they've probably got something in the range of 26-32 AC, and most of that applies against touch attacks and while flat-footed. That's really probably too good. Maybe instead I have it not apply to touch or while flat-footed, or maybe only half?

That said, this is probably the style I am least happy with right now, and it suffers a lot because I didn't really have a cohesive vision of what it was going to do. My vague idea was "fleet spirit is about going fast for the sake of goesfast, nimble combatant is about going fast for the sake of quicker combat reactions."

It might be neat if I made this one focused more on attacks of opportunity. Now that fleet spirit doesn't grant combat reflexes, maybe this style should. Since the AC bonus is definitely going to be its first level ability, maybe something that grants AoO when your opponent attacks you but misses? The opposite of Karmic Strike. And I've got all this stuff relating to attacking while on the move, maybe something where taking an AoO against me because of my movement provokes an AoO against you?

The capstone here really is the worst of the bunch. I could probably just make it a higher-level ability that's always on. Not sure what to do when reworking it, though. Unlimited AoOs? Use Quantum Step as this style's capstone and make another one for Fleet Spirit?

It's getting late, I'll keep working on this tomorrow.

[Seerow]

I was under the impression that all abilities that acted as always-on versions of spells tended to come online a little later than someone could get the spell? That said, you may be right about some of them. I'll try to address this all one-by-one.


A little later, yes. The problem is you've got them coming online more than half a game later. 2-4 levels later is generally appropriate. 6 levels on the outside for a really potent ability that is normally super limited in duration. But just to take out a specific example, Airwalk is a 4th level spell that lasts 10 minutes per level. A 7th level Cleric who wants to spend all of his spell slots on it can keep it going for around 3 hours. By 11th level, every time he casts it the ability lasts for 2 hours. Casting it 2-3 times per day will last an entire adventuring day with time to spare. Getting it at will around level 10-11 is good. Getting it around 12-13 is okay but at this point you've probably bought an item to do something similar already. Getting it at level 17 is a slap in the face.


But, you get air walk at level 17 and quantum step at 19, which is marginally better than what you said

That was my bad. Somewhere along the line I got it into my head that it was gaining abilities on even numbered levels, which caused a lot of my specific level callouts throughout the post to be off by a level in one way or the other.


Did you check out Stunning Leap?

Actually I had glazed over it, assuming it was a jump attack that stunned targets you hit. Finding out it is just tripping with bonus size categories actually makes it worse than I imagined, not better.

That said, even with that the Fleet Spirit style is still probably one of the best ones. You get exceptional mobility (big bonus move speed, always on air walk, teleportation)and solid defense (always on miss chances). That makes it more competitive than basically anything else on the list, even if its offense is lacking.


But seeing your explanation for it, I can see what you were going for. You're imagining a character running leaping around the battlefield, probably taking a double move and leaping onto each enemy, knocking them down and taking the free improved trip attack. That isn't at all what I got out of it at first reading (due mostly to not having read the text for stunning leap), but I can see that working. The problem is as the primary offensive trick of the style... it's lackluster. It encourages you to spread your attacks among multiple enemies, your attacks aren't particularly dangerous, and many enemies just don't care about getting tripped. Tripping is generally seen as a low level tactic for tier4/5 characters for good reason.

Imagine for a moment that you had stunning leap as two separate abilities. The first ability works pretty much how stunning leap does now, but is tweaked to be more of a single target ability (it's really hard to get 20ft+ of vertical height on more than one creature in a round anyway, even with your great move speed), and have the stunning leap trigger a single attack that hits for heavy damage in addition to the free action trip. I'd go for something like multiply damage for every 20ft of height above the target (and start with +1 size category on the trip attempt for the first 20ft, capping at +4 size categories at 80ft).

The second one shows up at a later level, and is a special full round action that lets you affect every creature within 1/2 your move speed, forcing them to make a reflex save. All creatures in the area take your unarmed strike damage + x. on a failure they're stunned for 1d4 rounds and knocked prone. A successful save means they take only half damage and are knocked prone, no stunning. Ability usable every 5 rounds, or wis mod times per day, or something along those lines.

You end up with a very similar flavor, but a much more cohesive active lockdown element. I'm not sure how to work that into the AoO/off turn lockdown element, because I still feel like there's not much there supporting AoOs until the capstone.




A lot of this seems to be colored by the fact that you're trying to look at each style in a vacuum. You get 20 style points, 10 go to your primary style automatically. Each style is not the entire class, the class is made so that you need those points in other styles to round out your character or else accept that you're intentionally avoiding those class abilities and accept the consequences of that.

This is a valid point. But I treated each style as being in a vacuum because of how they are set up. You can't just cherry pick abilities to shore up your gaps. You have to go through all of the abilities to get a higher level ability. And as you've pointed out, all of the styles are a mishmash of abilities. If you did something like make it so each style had a distinct focus, then you pick one style as your primary focus, and you can either have one secondary focus just as high as your primary, or you could spread it around a bit to be good in multiple areas.

For example, say we broke apart all of the current styles, and instead had a Mobility style, Damage, Defensive Style, Utility Style, Control Style. With each style getting 10 abilities that build off each other and contribute ONLY to that role. Then what you are describing would work. I decide I want to focus most heavily on mobility, then as I level up I invest a few points in damage, a couple points in control, and a couple points in defense, I end up with a mostly well rounded character.

Of course, even there you run into the problem that in splitting your secondary points like that, you have one set of high level abilities, then a handful of complementary low level abilities. So what you ideally want to do is let the player cherry pick level appropriate abilities out of other styles. So at 10th level I can pick the rank 5 ability of any style that isn't my primary style (since I already have that one) that I want. This also brings you closer to spellcasters, basically you have a character somewhat akin to a sorcerer with 2 spells known of every spell level, but with styles instead of spell schools.

Heck from there you could even give styles multiple abilities at each level and say "pick one". Or create more styles (for example you could make multiple different damage styles that change how you deal your damage).




But all of that is getting pretty far away from the initial concept. With the styles as they currently are, where they are a mish-mash of stylistically appropriate abilities, you have to look at the style in a vacuum, because there is no way that you can say "I want to shore up my weakness to _____" and have that happen. So as it stands, each style needs to be self sufficient to some degree, with the main difference between them being the specifics of how they meet their baselines, and what they specialize in.

[Baphomet]

I'm gonna be jumping around here with the responses. It's kind of long, though. I've changed a lot of stuff, have a lot of holes in my styles now. Take a look and let me know if the pacing is alright for the blanks that have been filled in, and also let me know if you have any ideas to help me fill in the missing ones.

On style level (tl;dr: style level is double or more what you seem to think it is)

Hopefully you've figured out now that style level is style points + 1/2 class level, not just style points. It's designed in such a way that your style level always equals your class level in your primary style, unless you take the Combat Style Focus feat to bump it up higher. If you put your first style point into a style at level 10, your style level in that style is 6 (1 point + half of 10). At level 20, even if you never put any more style points in that style, it's 11.


Mending Will: Yay you have healing as though a spell-less paladin of half your level!

[...]Including full 10*wis mod healing and associated abilities[...]

healing as a paladin of your full level, 20 * Wis mod.


[...]I get that you really love using style level as a modifier, but goddammit dispel is literally useless when you are using half your level as the modifier[...]

Using your level as your modifier.


Primal Ward-Resistance equal to style level? To 1 element? Even at level 1, resist 1 is pretty much useless. By level 6, resist 10 is standard. You don't get that until level 20

You get resist 20 at level 20.


Ethereal Persistence-Did you actually think about this ability at all before putting it in? Spoiler: SR15 at level 10 is practically worthless. SR20 at level 20 is actually worthless. This is worse in every way than the spell resistance a bog standard monk gets. Why?!

SR 20 at level 10. SR 30 at level 20. It's the same as the spell resistance the standard monk gets if this is your primary style.


Open the Weave- Blindsight is cool. Why is it 5*half style level? Is getting blindsight with a range better than 10ft really too much for an 8th level character? *checks* Nope, it's a 2nd level spell to get blindsight of 30ft for 1min/level. That said, this is still looking better on average than the previous styles.

20 feet at 8th level.

Again, this is a case where I don't know if that change alters much about your analysis, but it's worth pointing out.


On Mettle being the way it is (tl;dr: Mettle is way better than Evasion, Improved Mettle makes no sense and is overpowered no matter how you word it, I write too much):



Half of Improved Mettle (seriously you can't even get fort and will, just fort?)




....followed immediately by me finding the other half of Mettle. Why did Mettle get split between two styles again?


Hang on now, this one I actually put a lot of thought into. Reflex saves are, by and large, less valuable than Will and Fort saves. Especially when you're only negating specifically things that deal damage and offer reflex saves to half it. Also, when you get down to it, Improved Evasion is really not much of an upgrade over Evasion. Classes that get Evasion probably aren't failing too many Reflex saves to begin with. In the rare case that they do, they're taking half damage instead of full with Improved Evasion. To quote this pretty cool guy who reviews homebrew classes, "Allow me to express my extreme boredom."

On the other hand, what kind of things allow Will and Fort saves? Things that just flat-out kill you if you fail them, or make you kill your teammates and then yourself. Mettle (the Hexblade ability, which I think was the first one to get it) lets you negate the penalties for failing on things that have lesser effects (not negated effects) on a save. Theoretically, a spell X that kills you if you fail a save and does some damage to you if you succeed a save is better than a spell Y that just kills you if you fail a save. So which one of those should Improved Mettle affect? If it affects X only, that means that now spell X deals damage on a failed save while spell Y kills you on a failed save, and neither do anything on a successful save. Y is now better than X, which is weird. If it affects both X and Y, then X damages you if you succeed and does nothing if you fail, and Y never does anything. Which essentially makes Improved Mettle "you automatically succeed on all Will and Fort saves". Personally, I think that's too much.

So to answer that question, you'd turn to sources that already grant Improved Mettle and see how they worded it, right? Well, in all my googling, I've only found two of them. One is by already having Mettle from some other source, wearing a Tabard of Valor (Complete Champion), and having less than half of your maximum HP. The other is to be level 30 with 10 levels in Void Incarnate (which also splits it up into will and fortitude, but gives you the regular and improved versions of each by level 10).

Tabard of Valor just says "If you already have mettle from a class feature or some other source, you instead gain improved mettle, which halves the harmful effects of a spell on a failed Fortitude or Will save while still protecting you entirely on a successful save." Wait, halves the harmful effects? What does that mean? Now that raises new possibilities for how it should work. Does it only affect "Will Half" and "Fortitude half" effects, but not "Will Partial" or "Fortitude Partial" like Mettle does? Does it take the full effect from a failed save and then halve it somehow? What happens when a spell half-kills you or half-dominates you? Even in the case of direct damage, if you fail your fort save against Disintegrate by a 20th level caster, do you take half of 40d6, or do you take 5d6?

Void incarnate is a little more explicit. "if subjected to an effect that allows a Fortitude save for a partial or half effect, the void incarnate takes only the partial or half effect on a failed save (and no effect on a successful save, just as with mettle of fortitude)." Then that again, but for Will, at a later level.

The Void Incarnate wording is what I wound up going with before. But now that I'm talking about it again, that really bugs me. "effects that offer a reflex save to deal half damage" sort of make sense. It's forced to make sense by the way things are generally designed, in part because Improved Evasion is part of some core classes so people think about them when designing things. Someone decided that most spells that offer Reflex saves deal direct damage and let you save to halve it, and that wound up usually being the case. The same doesn't hold true of fort and will saves, because Improved Mettle only shows up in one poorly-worded item in one splatbook and on an epic PrC from the web. That means you get weird behavior out of it. For example, a spell that says "if save failure, die, else do other bad thing" is worse than one that says "if save failure, die."

I'm editing this now, because I've come up with something that makes sense and actually fixes the problem. So, I want some way to divide up the things that induce Will and Fort saves in the same way that you divide up things that induce Reflex saves. Improved Evasion only works against damage spells, right? There's this whole other realm of reflex-save-inducing things that aren't damage spells, and as far as I know none of the damage spells that allow a Reflex save negate the damage if the save succeeds under normal circumstances. That means that Improved Evasion is essentially "If this is a reflex save spell that induces damage, you automatically save against it if you fail, and automatically ignore it if you succeed". The important dividing line between "things that offer reflex saves that evasion affects" and "things that offer reflex saves that evasion doesn't affect" isn't whether or not it negates on a save, it's essentially whether or not it does damage. I just need to find an equivalent dividing line for things that offer Will saves and things that offer Fort saves and then auto-succeed the saves against those things, while leaving the other things that offer fort and will saves alone. So what's a bucket of stuff that the developers are generally paying attention to for will saves? compulsions and mind-affecting effects. Also figments, but illusionists have a hard enough time already and the style that grants the will save portion of mettle already comes with Blindsense. How about fort saves? A few creature types are flat-out immune to things that offer fort saves...unless those things also work on objects. So, I'll pare down my two halves of mettle into those things, and now the two halves of improved mettle can be "you auto-succeed fort saves unless the effect is harmless or also affects objects" and "you auto-succeed will saves against mind affecting effects and compulsions." Now it's not blanket immunity to things that require those saves, but it does divide the things they apply to into sensible portions.

Now on to why I split them up. Just because Hexblade made this Mettle keyword and lumped both the will and fort versions of evasion into that ability doesn't mean that other classes should need to do that, too. In fact, plenty of them don't. I originally did have evasion + improved evasion in one style, and mettle + improved mettle in another. But that meant that someone could get the improved versions of both. Which means someone could be basically immune to anything that requires a save. Another reason is that personally, I would rank either half of mettle individually better than evasion. The consequences for failing Will and Fort saves are a lot more dire than the consequences for failing Reflex saves, in my opinion. If one style grants mettle and improved mettle and another grants evasion and improved evasion, the first one is a lot more powerful than the second. Now that I've split them up, if you spend your points right, you can get all 3 of the lesser versions by level 12. Level 8 if you spend a couple feats on it. You can't get all three improved versions. I think that's fair.


On Fleet Spirit: I really like it now, how about you?

On Nimble Combatant (tl;dr: You made a lot of good points, there's an AC bonus independent of this style now, I've pretty much rewritten this style from scratch)



After reading this I just realized only one style gained Nimble Combatant, the AC bonus is based entirely on the Nimble Combatant Style level, and no other style has any form of boosting AC. The class itself has no armor proficiencies. That makes this class as a general rule squishier than a Wizard. While AC doesn't matter much past level 8 or so, at lower levels walking around with 10-12 AC will make you die quickly. Add to the fact that most of the styles don't actually get anything to help with providing other defenses against attacks (Fleet Spirit's miss chance effects are pretty much it), and you have a melee class who has serious trouble surviving in melee.

My first reaction was "that's why you don't dump Dex!", but you do have a point. That's one area the default monk wins over this one. While the default Monk has MAD issues, we can probably assume they have about 16 Wis at level 1 and probably in the mid-20s (once you include items, tomes, etc) by 20. That means their AC bonus (at least, the part that's not coming from bracers of armor etc. or Dex) goes from about 13 to about 21 from level 1 to 20, while the stormfist's goes from 11 to 30, and that's only if Nimble Combatant is your primary style. While the stormfist wins in the end, the monk is considerably less squishy in the beginning.

So, after some consideration, I put a new clause in each strike discipline that grants the token ability score bonus from that discipline to AC independent of any martial style, and halved the bonus from Nimble Combatant. Since the stormfist is less MAD and you're taking your choice of ability score to add, the stormfist definitely winds up ahead this way. In fact, at level 20, if you get 30 Dex, get some +8 bracers of Armor, make Nimble Combatant your primary style, and use the lacerating discipline, you wind up with 48 AC. That's actually competitive with monsters of that CR in the way that most classes' AC boosts are not.



Unseen Blow, 1/round treat the target as being flat footed. You have no sneak attack or similar ability, can't confer the flat footed to an ally, and are at a high enough level enemy AC's don't care. Why is this an 18th level ability?

Good freaking question. No idea. It's out.

I'm basically rebuilding this class from the ground up. The gimmick is attacks of opportunity and the normally-worthless total defense action.

The first piece of the puzzle is something to grant more than one AoO per round. Combat Reflexes is a good start, but that's an easy pick for a level 1 feat and that's not enough AoOs for me, so I'll sweeten the deal even more. Now you get even more AoOs with a successful Dexterity check, at the expense of making it less likely that you'll succeed and hit the more you do it.

The next piece is more ways to get them. Since AC is a big deal for this style, someone missing an attack against you seems like a good candidate.

To boost that one even further, now taking the total defense action allows you to take AoOs and diminishes the penalty for successive uses.

The ability to threaten a larger area is a no-brainer.

Finally, maybe some combination of the Sanctuary spell and the snatch arrows/exceptional deflection feat?

So now you are really good at retaliating, but nobody wants to attack you. So, how about the ability to take an AoO when someone could have attacked you, but didn't?

Since most of that stuff is tied to the total defense action, it would be kind of fun if the capstone was the ability to take a total defense action once a day as a free action and have it last for Wis rounds. Suddenly you can double move or attack and move or full attack and still get a lot of AoOs and bonuses. Round it off by giving a combination of uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge in one ability, to make the AC bonus stick at all times. Done.


On Overpowering Force (tl;dr: This is the only one I pretty much totally disagree with you on, except about the capstone. I incorporated that into the class and now have a new one.)

I know you misunderstood how unarmed strike levels work when you wrote this, but I still feel like a lot of this analysis is way off the mark.


Double Blow: It's Snap Kick with a limited usage per day. Yawn.

It's snap kick with no attack roll penalty and with your full ability modifier usable as many times as you probably need it by the level you could normally get snap kick, and available from level 1. It's an extra freaking attack every round even if you don't full attack. By level 9 it's two extra attacks per round. This is strictly better than flurry of blows, at the expense of being level/day. As in, 20 times per day at level 20, in case you forgot the bit at the beginning of the post. There's no pleasing some people.



By the end you have a 2d4 18-20x2 crit weapon, and you can take a double ravaging blow (which pushes you up to 2d6 15-20x2). I'm not entirely sold on why I would want this over standard Flurry of Blows + Snap Kick, much less in comparison to 9th level spells.

By the end you have a 4d8 18-20x2 crit weapon that gives you another free attack every time you crit, and you can take a double ravaging blow (which pushes you up to two +5 4d10 15-20x2 attacks, either one of which grant you another free attack when you crit), or you could attack three times and, again, attack again if you crit with any of them. That's your standard action, now you move. Or maybe you full attacked on your turn, and that was your attack of opportunity. Your attack bonus is higher (thanks to the free weapon focus and strike bonuses) so you probably hit more times with that one action than the monk did with his full-round flurry. The snap kick argument makes no sense to me. You're saying a monk can do more with his standard flurry plus a feat, than this style can do without a feat? A) I disagree, and B) even if that's the case, the Stormfist can take Snap Kick too. And apply it to each attack of a double blow.

I've actually never dealt with Snap kick before, can you trigger a snap kick off of a snap kick? Does the penalty apply before the first attack, before the second attack, or after the second attack? If the answers are "no" and "before the second attack", then at level 8 (the earliest either of them can get Snap Kick), the stormfist can do an attack at +8, two at +6, and one at +4 as a standard action or even as an AoO, or do one at +8, two at +6, one at +4, one at -1, and one at -3 as a full-round action. The monk with flurry and snap kick can only do one at +5, two at +3, one at +1, one at -4, and one at -6 as a full attack. Not to mention if any one of the stormfist's attacks crit, she gets another attack, which she can also use snap kick on to make two attacks and two more opportunities to crit. There's actually probably a pretty twinky build in there somewhere.

If your complaint was that boosting the potential for straight up damage is not enough to make it interesting, fine. I can understand that. Maybe I can find some other use of the allotment of double blows that does something more interesting. Maybe you have some suggestions there? But if your complaint is that this doesn't allow you to do enough damage, I don't know what to tell you.



Being able to use your fist to disintegrate things is cool. But disintigrate is a 6th level spell. That is coming online at level 11-12. You are getting this as 1/day at level 20. And yes you can do it every round for some duration during that 1/day, but if you're looking at it from utilitarian perspective, you're just not going to need to punch through a dozen wall of forces all at once. While being able to punch through a dozen per day would be pretty handy.

This I can get behind. You're right, the times when this provides a bonus over what you can already do are too situational for it to work as a capstone. If you can get at somebody to hit them, you're probably already pulverizing them. Maybe I take away the bonus d6s (lord knows I'll approve of anything that skips waiting for players to add up more handfuls of dice) and make the disintegration effect an always-on thing? My one concern isn't how many Walls of Force someone can punch through, though, it's how many walls, full stop. As in, this guy is now running through the dungeon, blasting out 10-foot-cubes of wall instead of waiting for the rogue to pick the lock (or at least waiting for the wizard to dig out that wand of Knock) like a civilized bastard. Or running around the base of the castle and removing that structurally-integral bottom bit piece by piece. If I went the "always on, no bonus damage but always destroys dead bodies and chunks of inanimate matter and walls of force" route, I'd want it to be around a level where it's not too unreasonable to expect a single dude to be able to topple a castle

Actually, maybe that goes on the list of "cool things you should be able to do with Double Blow uses that aren't just adding more damage"


On Path of Resilience (tl;dr: please elaborate?)

Starting with Mending Will. This ability was actually sort of strange and didn't fit with the others. It's the only 1-point ability that incorporated the Wis mod (which is sort of a bad thing because you could hypothetically offset not taking points in the style by increasing your Wisdom a bunch) and the only one that took an action to activate. I've made it style level * 5 and gave it the "use as a swift action or while unconscious" thing from the start. I've also taken out the things that let you cure other kinds of detrimental effects, in favor of making you flat-out immune to those effects later in the style.



Resoluteness: Endurance. Is this a joke?

Look, I know Endurance is a bad feat. The important thing is you don't need to eat or drink anymore. If it had instead said "You no longer need to eat or drink" and didn't have Endurance on there, would you have liked it better? That's less food you have to encumber yourself with, or else it's freeing up a ring slot you would have used for ring of sustenance. And it evokes imagery of monks fasting or Buddha. At least most of the stuff Endurance grants make sense with the style, and now you've got it out of the way for free if you need it as a prerequisite for something (which is the only reason anyone ever takes Endurance anyway).
I was just going to throw the lack of need to sleep or breathe in there too, but hey, at that point, you're right. Who needs Endurance at all, when I can just make you immune to anything it boosts your save for? That better?
And now that you meet all the conditions for endurance, I might as well just give diehard, because that fits with the style. I'll put the "not unconscious from nonlethal damage" clause in there too, to fit with my theme of giving away feats plus another thing somewhere around 2-3 points into each style.




Okay now I see a half dozen more abilities all keying off Mending Will, and not a single thing boosting the healing provided by it. Really?

Those abilities are all effectively worthless, because after your first encounter of the day, you're tapped out.

I think part of this perception might be due to your misunderstanding of how style levels work. Now that it's 5 * style level, you have 100 HP of healing at level 20, and probably somewhere around 230 HP. When it was level * wis, you probably had something like 160. This is technically a downgrade, but it's still a significant chunk of your total HP that you can heal per day. To help close that gap, 7 style points now gets you the ability to use 20 HP of healing to get fast healing 3 for 1 minute and let you regenerate lost body parts.



Heck this one's even worse, because your capstone doesn't actually make it any harder to disable you, it just makes it harder to actually kill you. Your ultimate ability turns you into a cockroach for a couple rounds per day.

Would you mind elaborating on this one? The ability specifically states that you don't become disabled as in the status condition, so I'm assuming you mean disabled as in "the word meaning that you aren't able to do stuff". But, I'm still not sure how. I thought I had worded it so you could still do all the things you could normally do unless your body was destroyed, in which case you get to rebuild it as a move action. Did I miss something? It's been edited since you saw it last, but all I did was take out the references to things I've given you immunity to already, and removed the Will save to rebuild your body.


On Weavebreaker (tl;dr: agreed with you on most counts, made a lot of changes.)

Weavebreaker is the style that was hurt the most by your misunderstanding of how style level works, and I'm not sure you read all of the abilities all the way through here, too. I'll work with what I can tell you have a point on until I get some more input.



Primal Ward-Resistance equal to style level? To 1 element? Even at level 1, resist 1 is pretty much useless. By level 6, resist 10 is standard. You don't get that until level 20

Since this is double what you thought it was, it might make it better, plus you can change it as a swift action. Good resistance to one element that you can change is, in my opinion, better than mediocre resistance to all elements, or even good resistance to two elements you can't change. Nonetheless, I'm also thinking I could give +half style level to all elements at a higher level. Actually, since I've taken the force damage option out of this style, I'll go ahead and put that in its place now.
How is resist 10 standard at level 6? I understand the spell's only level 2, but this is better than most permanent forms of energy resistance and comes earlier. MIC puts a ring of energy resistance 10 against one type of energy that can't be changed in the 13th-level loot tables. The Warlock gets resist energy 5 to 2 types that can't be changed at level 10.



Primal Strike... wait making unarmed attacks count as magic for bypassing DR wasn't a part of the core chasis? *looks back* Huh apparently not. Take everything I said about Overpowering Force, and make it that much harsher.

That said, being able to turn your fists into elemental attacks at will is pretty cool, and the most interesting ability I've seen in the last three styles. This lets you bypass damage reduction at will against creatures without resistance to all 3 elemental types, and lets you hit elemental weaknesses. For a 2nd level ability, that's damn good. Considering most styles at this point are picking up bull**** feats like Lightning Reflexes and Endurance, I am shocked to see a genuinely good ability here.

Your analysis of Overpowering Force was the only one I disagreed with on most of the things you said, though. Where did you see a style give Lightning Reflexes? Did you mean Combat Reflexes? I thought that was a good feat.



Open the Weave- Blindsight is cool. Why is it 5*half style level? Is getting blindsight with a range better than 10ft really too much for an 8th level character? *checks* Nope, it's a 2nd level spell to get blindsight of 30ft for 1min/level. That said, this is still looking better on average than the previous styles.

So it's 15 foot blindsight at level 7 and 20 foot at level 8, but moving on.

I actually didn't know what you meant by it being a second level spell. The only one I knew of was the Blindsight spell in Spell Compendium, which is a 3rd level cleric/druid spell that gives 30 ft, 1 minute/level blindsight. On googling it, you're right, there is one for sorc/wiz 2 in the player's guide to faerun and the underdark book (which I don't have). Odd, since see invisibility is also sorc/wiz 2 and is worse than Blindsight. Nonetheless, on rethinking it, there's really no reason it needs to be style level/2. Might as well make one less thing that requires bookkeeping and make it a flat 40 feet, 120 feet for the capstone.

I really feel that at-will blindsight is pretty competitive at level 7. It's a nice ability. It's also sweetened by the fact that you can see through walls with it, unlike normal Blindsight. Nonetheless, in the absence of the ability to do force damage in this style, I've explicitly given unarmed strikes Ghost Touch at this level, too.



Force Strike-Okay substituting damage types was a great trick at level 2. This is a level 14 ability. The chances that the target has DR you can't bypass, and resistance to Electric, Fire, and Cold aren't that high. It's nice to have another option, but not worth being the only thing you get this level.

The main benefit of that is that it hits incorporeal and ethereal creatures, which tied with the weavebreaker style's theme of "screw the usual ways that casters stay out of combat". That said, putting the ability that can make your attacks out of force and the ability that can make your attacks destroy force in the same style or even the same ability would make thematic sense, so I might want to move it to overpowering force. That said, the "attacks count as adamantine" has to go somewhere and I wouldn't want that and the "attacks count as force" to come from the same place. Maybe I'll put it in with the path of resilience in the same place as they gain DR, and fluff it as having her body hardened by battle.



Ethereal Persistence-Did you actually think about this ability at all before putting it in? Spoiler: SR15 at level 10 is practically worthless. SR20 at level 20 is actually worthless. This is worse in every way than the spell resistance a bog standard monk gets. Why?!

Despite your misunderstanding of style level being pretty critical here, there is a point to be made. If Weavebreaker's not your primary style but you spend all the points you need to pick up this ability, it's going to be pretty worthless unless you also spend all the rest of your points in Weavebreaker too. 6 points in your non-primary style is a pretty significant investment, but it's not so significant an investment that someone couldn't do it. I've changed it to stormfist level instead of style level. I've also moved it back a point and added a nondetection clause.



Disruptive Reaction-As a 12th level ability you are gaining the equivalent of a feat (Mage Slayer) that you could qualify for at level 4. Except with more restrictions, and worse in every way. Because with Mage Slayer when the caster is forced to cast within your threatened area, you can do whatever you want with that AoO, including deal damage and use that damage to disrupt them, rather than just disrupting them.

Fair enough. I took out the special conditions for the AoOs. Now this is a little worse than Mage Slayer because it only applies to you (your allies can't also attack the mage while you threaten them) but a lot better than mage slayer because it also lets you AoO quickened spells.



Dispelling Blow-I get that you really love using style level as a modifier, but goddammit dispel is literally useless when you are using half your level as the modifier. Also let's remember that as your 18th level ability (actual tier 2 characters are getting 9th level spells now) you are getting a 3rd level spell (I won't even give you that it is a 5th level spell. Literally the only benefit of Greater Dispel Magic over Dispel Magic is the +20 cap over +10 cap, and you are capping the character at +10 anyway).

This is a case where I think understanding how style levels work makes all the difference. And unlike Ethereal Persistence, this is so deep into the style that I actually think changing it to stormfist level would be a detriment. If someone doesn't have weavebreaker as their primary style but they still put 9 points in it and then stopped, they'll still have 19 style level by level 20. In fact, I'm thinking of explicitly removing the cap on caster level for this version, just in case someone takes the martial style focus feat to bring their style level above 20. Or wears one of the items I'm thinking about making that also raise style level.



Primal Aura-Your capstone ability here is to gain a passive 5d6 energy damage ability and increased range on the blindsense to what it should have been all along. On the bright side you get the benefits of True Seeing thrown in. That sadly brings it up above some of the other capstones, but still as a 1/day thing it's not good.

Wait, what about the free spell turning? That part was pretty important, I thought. I guess it wasn't worth mentioning when you thought style level was the same as style points, though.

[Baphomet]

Unabashed self-bump here because I have made a lot of changes and I feel like it's getting pretty well-polished at this point. All the styles are all filled in and I feel like all of them are pretty nifty. Some of them are a little less interesting than others, but I think all of them offer a set of mechanics that aren't the sort of thing you see much on other classes, and all of them should be very relevant in combat. I'd really like it if someone could give it a thorough once-over and let me know what they think.