A Desert Wind Feat

[The Viscount]

I don't particularly like most of the Desert Wind maneuvers, but I think there's some potential in them. I'm not sure what homebrewing has been done on them, so I made a small contribution of my own.

Student of the Four Winds [Feat]
You have learned that the Desert Wind is not the only wind to harness.

Benefit: By spending a full-round action, you may change the nature of your Desert Wind maneuvers and stances. Any fire damage dealt by the maneuvers becomes cold, electricity, or acid damage (choose one when you spend the action). Distracting Ember summons a Water, Air, or Earth elemental corresponding with your choice. Flame's Blessing changes fire resistance to cold, electricity, or acid resistance corresponding with your choice. This change lasts until you spend a full round action to change it again.


What do you guys think? At will didn't seem like a big deal to me as long as you can't switch it up willy nilly in combat, though Flame's Blessing seems much more useful now. Too strong? Not strong enough? Would this convince anyone to take more Desert Wind Maneuvers?

[Hanuman]

Well, have you seen this?
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255468-Homebrew-Martial-Discipline-Compendium

How I'd do it:

FEAT
Winds of Change [Combat]
Requires: One martial discipline.
Benefit: By spending a full-round action, you may set the damage type of all of the maneuvers in one discipline to deal another type of damage.
This damage change is separated into Physical (Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing and optionally nonlethal, this is a decent buff to the feat and doesn't necessarily need to be put in), Elemental (Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid and Sonic) and Exotic (Positive, Negative, Force, Hellfire, Divine/Holy, Vile, Desiccation, Scalding or Falling), for instance you may have all bludgeoning damage dealt as part of the maneuvers in a chosen discipline to deal piercing damage instead, or you may choose all fire damage to deal cold damage instead, or all hellfire damage to instead deal falling damage.
The first time you deal damage with a maneuver per round you may deal an additional 2 damage of the same type.
Positive and Negative damages bypass a creature’s ability to heal from it, damaging the creature normally and Vile damage does not prevent a creature from healing normally.
These changes last until you take a long rest.

This is generally what I think a feat should looks like in terms of what's balanced and what's going to give the t3 character maximum enjoyment out of the choice.

[Network]

I think Hanuman may be referring to this homebrew (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?67570-A-couple-ToB-things-that-fell-out-of-my-head) ACF for swordsages, except THAT homebrew is pretty scrappy, both flavor-wise and balance-wise. Yours is better IMHO.


FEAT
Winds of Change [Combat]
Requires: One martial discipline.
Benefit: By spending a full-round action, you may set the damage type of all of the maneuvers in one discipline to deal another type of damage.
This damage change is separated into Physical (Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing and optionally nonlethal, this is a decent buff to the feat and doesn't necessarily need to be put in), Elemental (Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid and Sonic) and Exotic (Positive, Negative, Force, Hellfire, Divine/Holy, Vile, Desiccation, Scalding or Falling), for instance you may have all bludgeoning damage dealt as part of the maneuvers in a chosen discipline to deal piercing damage instead, or you may choose all fire damage to deal cold damage instead, or all hellfire damage to instead deal falling damage.
The first time you deal damage with a maneuver per round you may deal an additional 2 damage of the same type.
Positive and Negative damages bypass a creature’s ability to heal from it, damaging the creature normally and Vile damage does not prevent a creature from healing normally.
These changes last until you take a long rest.
There are so many reasons this feat wouldn't work with the game rules I much prefer the Student of the Four Winds feat, if only because vile damage does not exist as a separate category but rather denotes that a given damage type does not heals, so changing a damage type into 'vile damage that heals' is pointless.

[The Viscount]

Thanks for the feedback.

As for Vile, I think it, like Hellfire and Scalding, are damage types in Next, or at least I'm guessing from the mention of long rests. I agree that since this is 3.5, it really doesn't mesh as well with the system of things.

EDIT: I tweaked the language of the feat a bit to make it clear the access is only to one energy type at a time, in case that was unclear

[AmberVael]

Hm. I'd be tempted to make it so that you can change elements when you ready your maneuvers rather than as a full-round action, but I don't see anything too terrible coming out of allowing change on the fly.

Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the larger problem of desert wind maneuvers having non-scaling damage and unimpressive effects, so while this is cool I don't really see it swinging things around for Desert Wind. I can't even really say it makes me more likely to pick up its decent boosts, because its not worth picking up this feat just for a couple of maneuvers.

[Hanuman]

Thanks for the feedback.

As for Vile, I think it, like Hellfire and Scalding, are damage types in Next, or at least I'm guessing from the mention of long rests. I agree that since this is 3.5, it really doesn't mesh as well with the system of things.

EDIT: I tweaked the language of the feat a bit to make it clear the access is only to one energy type at a time, in case that was unclear

Vile is from 3.5, it just makes it so HP lost with vile cannot be naturally restored or somesuch. Scalding is from core 3.5 as well.


Boiling water deals 1d6 points of scalding damage, unless the character is fully immersed, in which case it deals 10d6 points of damage per round of exposure.

Scalding isn't really known or important, I just like to list all the types.

I like "long rest" because it's shorter, you can use whatever words you want, it's your feat now ;)

[The Viscount]

Hm. I'd be tempted to make it so that you can change elements when you ready your maneuvers rather than as a full-round action, but I don't see anything too terrible coming out of allowing change on the fly.

Unfortunately, this doesn't solve the larger problem of desert wind maneuvers having non-scaling damage and unimpressive effects, so while this is cool I don't really see it swinging things around for Desert Wind. I can't even really say it makes me more likely to pick up its decent boosts, because its not worth picking up this feat just for a couple of maneuvers.

I had considered making it when you readied maneuvers, but with Adaptive Style changing it to a full-round and so many people taking it, I figured it would be simpler to just go straight to full-round. I feared it might not change much, but that's all right. If it were simply a feature of Desert Wind, would that be too much?


Scalding is from core 3.5 as well.
Well I'll be. Never stop learning, I guess. Sorry for doubting.

[Network]

Vile is from 3.5, it just makes it so HP lost with vile cannot be naturally restored or somesuch. Scalding is from core 3.5 as well.
Yes, but vile is a damage 'flag', like nonlethal or frostburn. So if an ability says the damage you deal becomes vile, it only adds the 'vile' flag on the damage type you already deal, so you have vile fire damage, vile piercing damage, and by the RAW of BoVD you could even have vile holy damage. The only difference between vile damage and normal damage is that vile damage does not heal, so vile damage that heals=normal damage.

[AmberVael]

I had considered making it when you readied maneuvers, but with Adaptive Style changing it to a full-round and so many people taking it, I figured it would be simpler to just go straight to full-round. I feared it might not change much, but that's all right. If it were simply a feature of Desert Wind, would that be too much?

Every time I try and think of an objection, I just remember the mechanics that already do this. All of psionics, for example. You've already noted the one potential problem point with this- Flame's Blessing. The immunity it eventually offers is already pretty cool, and being able to shift between any immunity is a pretty great improvement. It could probably be toned down a little, but otherwise I can't really think of a big problem with it- just an alleviation of some of the problems the discipline suffers and that needs correcting.

[Zaydos]

As a DM I'd be wary of the feat because of its effect with Flame's Blessing, a single feat giving you changeable energy immunity to 4 energy types even with a stance and ranks in Tumble is really strong. The rest is a little on the weak side because of the action needed to change it (I'd just make choosing it part of the maneuver or a move action), and runs into the problem that the boosts (the one truly scaling damage source in ToB) are the only thing it really helps with because the AoE fire damage effects are just so underpowered (non-scaling and start off with too small areas and too little damage to be relevant). That said I've allowed feats to allow you to deal other energy type damage with Desert Wind as part of the maneuver before and it does help.

[meltodowno]

Well, since it specifies manoeuvres, RAW it wouldn't effect stances, and hence Flames Blessing remains unaffected

[Network]

Well, since it specifies manoeuvres, RAW it wouldn't effect stances, and hence Flames Blessing remains unaffected
Nice catch! But specific trumps general, and the feat explicitely works with Flame's Blessing.

[The Viscount]

Fortunately this is the one time we can actually discuss RAI. I meant maneuvers as a catch-all, as they sometimes say in ToB, but I'll edit to add in stances for clarity.

[Hanuman]

Yes, but vile is a damage 'flag', like nonlethal or frostburn. So if an ability says the damage you deal becomes vile, it only adds the 'vile' flag on the damage type you already deal, so you have vile fire damage, vile piercing damage, and by the RAW of BoVD you could even have vile holy damage. The only difference between vile damage and normal damage is that vile damage does not heal, so vile damage that heals=normal damage.
Very good way to think about damage types, I generally thought of nonlethal as it's own damage type too... but I guess when it's applied it accompanies something to flag huh? Good catch.

[Network]

Very good way to think about damage types, I generally thought of nonlethal as it's own damage type too... but I guess when it's applied it accompanies something to flag huh? Good catch.
I haven't seen a single case where slashing damage stops being slashing because it has become nonlethal, and there are core weapons that explicitely deal nonlethal bludgeoning damage or nonlethal slashing damage. Nonlethal Substitution seems to be an exception, since it replaces elemental damage from a spell with nonlethal untyped damage.

It is made more obvious for vile damage (with stuff like Violate Spell giving vile electricity damage as an example), but looking at the Frostburn book again I am not sure about frostburn damage, so I may have made a mistake there (there is, however, frostburn Dexterity damage, while I have never seen 'fire Strength damage', for example).

[Hanuman]

Yeah I think it was instances like flagging and changing to untyped at the same time that threw me initially.

Damage flags are super interesting point of brew though, they would be very simple to make contextual like frostburn flag. If you start from a point of (cannot heal) then you can basically allow conditions to heal to be whatever you want, for instance you could set the condition at the time of application.