What exactly were PoW disciplines trying to emulate?

[heavyfuel]

It seems pretty clear which tropes Tome of Battle tried to emulate with most of its discipline.

- Desert Wind = Fire Bending from Avatar
- Devoted Spirit = The typical tank/holy warrior
- Diamond Mind = Meditative fighters
- Iron Heart = Samurai / Swordsmen
- Setting Sun = Monks
- Shadow Hand = Ninjas
- Stone Dragon = ehhh, can't really think of anything
- Tiger Claw = Barbarians / Feral warriors
- White Raven = Commanders
However, Path of War seems like... it hasn't. Most supernatural disciplines seem less like "blade magic" and rather "straight up magic".

Now, I don't think this is a problem per se. I really enjoy PoW. But it does feel like they wanted to make at will spellcasters and just thought "Oh, let's call these spells 'maneuvers' and call it a day"

For example:
- Black Seraph / Silver Crane: Cool blade magic, but then you have maneuvers like "Shadow Raptor Swarm" or "Holy Rush" you go "whaaat". I guess they kind of fit some devilish/holy gish type characters
- Eternal Guardian: Tanking makes sense, but what is cursing enemies and using Shield Other tries to emulate?
- Radiand Dawn / Riven Hourglass / Shattered Mirror / Sleeping Goddess / Unquiet Grave/ Veiled Moon: How are these not straight up made up magic? I can't think of any relevant media that these disciplines are trying to represent.

Again, I don't think emulating something is a must, and "they wanted cool magic in the game" is a fair answer. Still, I wanted to know if they had something from popular media in mind when creating the disciplines.

[exelsisxax]

Your problem is that this is purely "I feel" and doesn't actually correspond to how PoW works at all. Most of the ToB disciplines are very similar in theme if not mechanics to PoW disciplines.

Then, we get to the supernatural disciplines, which are all explicitly mentioned as supernatural techniques in their descriptions. So yes, the discipline full of things for smiting evil monsters is themed around being an explicitly divine warrior like a paladin. Black Seraph is explicitly about harnessing and creating fear with magic. They wanted to make divine-style warriors work without spells, which is actually how they work in most media. You probably can't point to a single paladin in media not based on D&D, but characters that get called paladins often just look like fighters using silver crane.

This pattern follows for every supernatural discipline. Media is absolutely full of characters that can't actually be well-emulated without PoW because they A: use magic and B: don't use anything like spells. PoW covers an order of magnitude more of the fantasy genre than vancian casting does, because vancian casting doesn't actually do anything well that wasn't based on D&D.

Is it really so hard to accept that sleeping goddess is for making martial psionicists, unquiet grave is for martial necromancers, and radiant dawn is egypt themes in a can?

[heavyfuel]

This pattern follows for every supernatural discipline. Media is absolutely full of characters that can't actually be well-emulated without PoW because they A: use magic and B: don't use anything like spells. PoW covers an order of magnitude more of the fantasy genre than vancian casting does, because vancian casting doesn't actually do anything well that wasn't based on D&D

But that's exactly my point. A bunch of schools don't seem emulate media.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but it does seem weird. Sure, sleeping goddess is psionic martial arts, but was it created with a particular intent other than simplu having Psionics martial arts?

[Psyren]

1) Why do they have to emulate "media?" Anything modern in particular :smallconfused:
2) I don't think even ToB has the inspirations you think it does. Deserts have been associated with wind, fire, and dervishes long before ATLA came about.

[AMFV]

Some of the disciplines are pretty clearly influenced by certain conceptual ideas. I don't think you have that many direct analogues. Although to be fair you're really stretching to make those analogues for ToB. I mean you certainly could make a character like that using those disciplines, but they aren't all pervasive.

If anything PoW is superior because it manages to be a lot more cohesive design-wise with it's disciplines. They fit well into organized little boxes and tend to be thematically more structured than in ToB, where you'd have some stuff in each Discipline that was a complete head scratcher.

[heavyfuel]

1) Why do they have to emulate "media?" Anything modern in particular :smallconfused:
2) I don't think even ToB has the inspirations you think it does. Deserts have been associated with wind, fire, and dervishes long before ATLA came about.

1) They don't. I've actually mentioned that in my OP
2) Dunno, ToB came right around at the same time the cartoon was in its hayday. Not saying they obviously wanted to make fire benders, but it does seem like inspiration was drawn from ATLA.

[Psyren]

1) They don't. I've actually mentioned that in my OP

You said "emulating something" isn't a must; my point is that they might very well have been emulating something, just not something that was a contemporary tv show; it could have been something much older instead for all we know.



2) Dunno, ToB came right around at the same time the cartoon was in its hayday. Not saying they obviously wanted to make fire benders, but it does seem like inspiration was drawn from ATLA.

Eh, I still don't see why "martial art that lets you shoot fire" has to have anything to do with ATLA; seems more like a coincidence to me, especially since unarmed strike isn't even a preferred weapon for the discipline, which I would have expected if bending was truly the inspiration.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Veiled Moon et al. are explicitly stated to be supernatural. I think its a good thing that DSP did not limit combat classes to purely nonmagical means of combat. If the disciplines are mechanically and thematically interesting, and it is my opinion that they are, I think we can just appreciate them for what they are. You don't need to have spells to make a supernatural martial artist.

[heavyfuel]

Some of the disciplines are pretty clearly influenced by certain conceptual ideas. I don't think you have that many direct analogues.

That's certainly a possibility


You said "emulating something" isn't a must; my point is that they might very well have been emulating something, just not something that was a contemporary tv show; it could have been something much older instead for all we know.

Eh, I still don't see why "martial art that lets you shoot fire" has to have anything to do with ATLA; seems more like a coincidence to me, especially since unarmed strike isn't even a preferred weapon for the discipline, which I would have expected if bending was truly the inspiration.

Hey, it doesn't have to be contemporary. I'd actually think it was really cool if a discipline was made with something old in mind.

Good point on Unarmed Strike not being a discipline weapon for DW. Maybe it is coincidence after all


Veiled Moon et al. are explicitly stated to be supernatural

I know they are supernatural, but are they trying to emulate anything in particular?

[Manyasone]

I know they are supernatural, but are they trying to emulate anything in particular?
Veiled moon reminds me of old shinobi/ninja lore. Real life, not naruto nonsense.
Riven hourglass is based on Prince of persia, obviously.

Most will probably have some real life lore but maybe to obscure to find easily. Lots of cultures have legends about larger than life warriors