Any Maneuver in Path of War = to Diamond Nightmare Blade from ToB?

[BlueWitch]

I'm just now getting into Path of War stuff from Pathfinder. (Better late than never I guess xP)

But anyways, so I can take a short cut here, can someone tell me what discipline is closest to Diamond Mind from Tome of Battle?

Also, is there any Maneuver like Diamond Nightmare Blade?
(If you're not familiar, basically it let you do an attack that dealt 4x Damage and stacked with criticals if you made them.)

If they don't have a move like it I guess I kinda understand since it was pretty OP.

[Galacktic]

Scarlet Throne, and the following maneuvers:

Raging Zenith Strike (x2 damage)
Ruby Zenith Strike (x3)
Descending Sunset Strike (x4).

Scarlet Throne is a sort of combination of Diamond Mind and Iron Heart in terms of its mechanics.

[GrayDeath]

While not delivering the heights of Iron heart Surge or the overall usefulness of the Save replacers, that is.

[Ramza00]

While not delivering the heights of Iron heart Surge or the overall usefulness of the Save replacers, that is.

I am still working on a Path of War character so maybe I haven't "grok" all the different ways you can do things, but there are some good save replacers.

Scarlet Throne
Sanguine Perseverance (4th level). Sense Motive for a Saving Throw as an immediate action
Sanguine Perfection (5th level). Negative Conditions (23+) are delayed or stop for a number of rounds equal to your Initiation Modifier. Note by my reading if you were subject to a negative condition and you use your immediate action to activate Sanguine Perfection, and then another negative condition is placed on you, Sanguine Perfection takes care of both of them.

Riven Hourglass (aka the time manipulation discipline
Probability Twist (3rd level). A luck reroll for any d20 roll or damage roll, thus this also includes save rolls. Except it is not technically a luck reroll and thus it can stack with things that give you a luck reroll.
Temporal Body Adjustment (4th level). Prevent a negative condition, or remove a negative condition that is already affecting you and it did not happened, and thus it is now gone. In sum superior to Sanguine Perfection if you are only worried about 1 negative condition, but if you are going to face multiple negative conditions Sanguine Perfection is superior but as soon as your Initiation Modifier (so an Int of 22 with a Warder can control 6 rounds) runs out all the effects land at you all at once.

And that is not counting the dozen of other disciplines I am not thinking about right now. And in some things Iron Heart Surge is superior but IHS was kind of broken / unclear in intention it was meant cover those things. Likewise some of the Path of Wars stuff can block bad things from happening in the first place like a maneuver version of Favor of the Martyr.

[Galacktic]

While not delivering the heights of Iron heart Surge or the overall usefulness of the Save replacers, that is.

Not so! It has a catch all maneuver at fourth level (Sanguine Perseverance) that allows you to use Sense Motive in place of a save, and Sanguine Perfection at 5th level which is slightly less bonkers Iron Heart Surge in that it has a specific (giant) list of conditions and effects it can cleanse you of.

[BlueWitch]

Scarlet Throne, and the following maneuvers:

Raging Zenith Strike (x2 damage)
Ruby Zenith Strike (x3)
Descending Sunset Strike (x4).

Scarlet Throne is a sort of combination of Diamond Mind and Iron Heart in terms of its mechanics.

Omg thank you so much for this!
I got overwhelmed by the amount of new disciplines, so this saved me a lot of time! ^^
(Yes, I am just kinda lazy, but still, you've really helped me out!) xD

[Ramza00]

Omg thank you so much for this!
I got overwhelmed by the amount of new disciplines, so this saved me a lot of time! ^^
(Yes, I am just kinda lazy, but still, you've really helped me out!) xD

No it is okay. When there are 400+ options of maneuvers or some number I am doing from memory [and it may be wrong], it is overwhelming. It is even more than double overwhelming than having a list of 200 maneuvers.

[GrayDeath]

Not so! It has a catch all maneuver at fourth level (Sanguine Perseverance) that allows you to use Sense Motive in place of a save, and Sanguine Perfection at 5th level which is slightly less bonkers Iron Heart Surge in that it has a specific (giant) list of conditions and effects it can cleanse you of.


I am still working on a Path of War character so maybe I haven't "grok" all the different ways you can do things, but there are some good save replacers.

Scarlet Throne
Sanguine Perseverance (4th level). Sense Motive for a Saving Throw as an immediate action
Sanguine Perfection (5th level). Negative Conditions (23+) are delayed or stop for a number of rounds equal to your Initiation Modifier. Note by my reading if you were subject to a negative condition and you use your immediate action to activate Sanguine Perfection, and then another negative condition is placed on you, Sanguine Perfection takes care of both of them.

Riven Hourglass (aka the time manipulation discipline
Probability Twist (3rd level). A luck reroll for any d20 roll or damage roll, thus this also includes save rolls. Except it is not technically a luck reroll and thus it can stack with things that give you a luck reroll.
Temporal Body Adjustment (4th level). Prevent a negative condition, or remove a negative condition that is already affecting you and it did not happened, and thus it is now gone. In sum superior to Sanguine Perfection if you are only worried about 1 negative condition, but if you are going to face multiple negative conditions Sanguine Perfection is superior but as soon as your Initiation Modifier (so an Int of 22 with a Warder can control 6 rounds) runs out all the effects land at you all at once.

And that is not counting the dozen of other disciplines I am not thinking at once. And in some things Iron Heart Surge is superior but IHS was kind of broken / unclear in intention it was meant cover those things. Likewise some of the Path of Wars stuff can block bad things from happening in the first place like a maneuver version of Favor of the Martyr.

Huh, that actually slipped my mind somehow.

How did that happen?

Thanks for setting it straight!

[Aotrs Commander]

While we're on the subject... What's the power differential between ToB and Path of War? (specifally talking maneuvers here.) Are they reasonable to co-exist at the same time? I.e., could I just plot Path of War schools in as new schools?

We have a fair ToB presense in our parties (there's usually at least one character in every party with at least a dip), sp while on the one hand, I am NOT in an immediate rush to add more maneuvers right now (not in the least because it means making and cutting out the cards...) it would be nice to know this for future reference.

(If there's, like, a massive disparity, it's probably not practical for me to consider until I have another insane rules session where I have to revise EVERYTHING..)

[Galacktic]

While we're on the subject... What's the power differential between ToB and Path of War? (specifally talking maneuvers here.) Are they reasonable to co-exist at the same time? I.e., could I just plot Path of War schools in as new schools?

We have a fair ToB presense in our parties (there's usually at least one character in every party with at least a dip), sp while on the one hand, I am NOT in an immediate rush to add more maneuvers right now (not in the least because it means making and cutting out the cards...) it would be nice to know this for future reference.

(If there's, like, a massive disparity, it's probably not practical for me to consider until I have another insane rules session where I have to revise EVERYTHING..)

Overall, especially with splats (and Broken Blade in particular if you just stick with the core PoW rules) PoW is pretty far ahead of ToB power-wise. But they're similar enough flavor-wise and mechanically that you could full out replace the maneuvers from ToB with Path of War and your group wouldn't have to relearn anything, basically! I wouldn't allow them to exist in the same party though, especially the actual classes because the Path of War classes have actual class features on top of the maneuver progression.

[BlueWitch]

What are the main Tome of Battle class main counterparts?

Warblade = Warlord
Crusader = Zealot
Swordsage = Mystic

Is this about right?

EDIT: Also, is there any class like the Ruby Knight Vindicator?

I'm asking mostly if there is an ability like the Divine Imeptus one.
It let you take 2 Swift Actions!

[Ramza00]

Warder is kind of a mixture of Fighter and Crusader but being Int based focused on Combat Reflexes, except it is you Int Mod and not Dex Mod that determines your AoOs. It gets a zone of nope as its recharge mechanism that is weaker than Thicket of Blades but it enhances the reach covered without using expansion magic and it stacks with magic that increases the reach. Eventually if you want to go the thicket of blade route there is a 5th level Piercing Thunder stance superior to the 3rd level ToB Thicket of Blades in everything.

----

The problem with summarizing PoW classes is via class archetypes, martial class templates, organizations, and the trait unorthodox method each of these can swap your maneuver schoo/ around. Are you still a warder when you have 4 different manuever schools that are different with your main ones, plus different class abilities, and an animal companion?

For example lets take an investigator which is a rogue and alchemist hybrid class. Well the investgator ca take the polymath class template losing 1 extract per level and the poison abilities and gain a 2/3rds progression of manuevers. Thus for example at level 9 instead of 3/4/5 plus bonus extracts a day it is now 2/3/4 plus bonus extracts per day and you get 8 manuevers know, 4 readied, and 3 stances with one of those 8 manuevers being 4th level, 2 3rd level, 2 2nd level, and 3 1st level.

Throw on Star Watcher investigator archetype on top of that that modifies alchemy and how you create star formulas via viewing the heavens you can apply wizard or alchemist benefits to you or your allies though you key in specific targets for these star formulas prior to battle. Thus combine you have a 3/4 bab character who excels at skill things, is a 6th level caster and 6th level manuevrs plus Studied Strike.

What 3.5 class does such a build correspond to? Some form of factotum / wizard / arcane trickster / manuever user hybrid? A chameleon prestige class?

-----

We can explain some path of war builds that correspond to tome of battle or other 3.5, but there are also a lot of strange and effective builds that do not correspond to 3.5.

[Aotrs Commander]

Overall, especially with splats (and Broken Blade in particular if you just stick with the core PoW rules) PoW is pretty far ahead of ToB power-wise. But they're similar enough flavor-wise and mechanically that you could full out replace the maneuvers from ToB with Path of War and your group wouldn't have to relearn anything, basically! I wouldn't allow them to exist in the same party though, especially the actual classes because the Path of War classes have actual class features on top of the maneuver progression.

*has a quick look*

Oof.

Yeah, okay, I'm either missing something or Broken Blade looks... Yeah. Little bit OTT, on first glance.

So, uh, yeah. Not gonna do anything with PoW for a good long while then, having just spent two-and-half-months flat (and still not done) upgrading more or less everything apart from the primary casters already, at least not until we've actually seen how that plays out...

Especially since it would require me to go through all of the ToB maneuvres and drag them up to the standard (since I object to making my players suddenly not have the not-spells they have been suing and likign for ages - I'd probably have a mutiny if Insightful Strike wasn't around.)

Shelve that idea for now, then, I think!

[Silvercrys]

I believe they've acknowledged Broken Blade and Primal Fury are a bit over tuned and are issuing errata for them... But given the current status of their other works (which seem to be "on hold") it's hard to know when those are coming.

I feel like you could probably nerf the problematic maneuvers from those disciplines and use Path of War and Tome of Battle side by side, for the most part, but I haven't actually done a direct comparison between them.

[Aotrs Commander]

I believe they've acknowledged Broken Blade and Primal Fury are a bit over tuned and are issuing errata for them... But given the current status of their other works (which seem to be "on hold") it's hard to know when those are coming.

I feel like you could probably nerf the problematic maneuvers from those disciplines and use Path of War and Tome of Battle side by side, for the most part, but I haven't actually done a direct comparison between them.

I did look over the aforementioned Scarlet Throne (since Diamond Mind is probably one of the most-used school) and it didn't seem to bad for the most part, though some of the higher level ones seem stronger.



I mean, like, to be clear, it's not entirely like I'm going "martials can't have nice things" so much as all this work I've put in has to been to try and make all the not-a-primary-caster classes, at least, have more equal things and I'd rather not skew it out again right away, y'know?

...

I suppose that one option (but again, down the line, I'm tryin' to wrap this stuff up, because I'm bein' a bit OCD about it) might be to fold some of the PoW schools into the ToB schools and then it's just like adding more spells to the spell list, isn't it? Might require a bit of tweaking, but whatever, it'd be a big job anyway, and that way, the ToB schools aren't at least entirely competing with PoW.

[Efrate]

PoW in general is higher power than ToB with maneuvers being slightly ahead in power, but classes being quite a bit ahead, and the overall strength combining those 2 is a fair bit higher. Part of it is pf has a higher floor, if a much lower ceiling compared to 3.5.

Disciplines are also more distinct and varied in what they do so you can have a much wider variety of concepts actualized. You have buffing disciplines, debuffing, controlling, combat maneuvers (including at range!), raw damage, natural attacks, etc. Two ranged disciplines in solar wind and tempest gale with an early stance that bypasses wind wall which is something archers really needed.

I recommend against combing the 2 systems because you will likely only see the most busted or generic ToB and otherwise be all PoW. You will only likely see the save replacers, IHS, mountain hammer and time stands still. There is an equal or better option for pretty much everything in PoW. TBH pathfinder is harder than 3.5 in general with most monsters being updated to be more threatening so it works.

[Ramza00]

Edit: Ignore what I said and just read the PDF. The website I linked to is a mixture of errata and houserules, the PDF I am about to give is the only errata.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180219175427/http://dreamscarred.com/download/DRP271X_PoWErrata.pdf


Yeah there was some Path of War errata changing a little of balance, but also correcting some editor errors / making things more clear.

http://bpfindley.com/PoWErrata.html

Edit: Wow. Unhindered Step got quite an upgrade in the Errata. It is now Swift Action, Movement Modes +30 ft + 5 * Initiation Modifier ft Enhancement Bonus to all movement modes for 1 round and not just Enhancement Bonus of +30 ft to land. The problem with this 2nd level Maneuver that got an upgrade is that it is really good but is it good enough when you are limited to 4 to 10 maneuvers readied at a time? Is a better version of Swift Expeditious Retreat worth losing a save counter, or more damage, and so on when it takes 10 minutes to swap this maneuver out if its not part of your readied package?

Edit 2: Well they nerfed God of the Hourglass Stance for Gish characters and Gestalt. This impacts the build I am making except I do not care for it is level 15 and + play and you are already impressive at that level.

[Kris Moonhand]

*has a quick look*

Oof.

Yeah, okay, I'm either missing something or Broken Blade looks... Yeah. Little bit OTT, on first glance.

So, uh, yeah. Not gonna do anything with PoW for a good long while then, having just spent two-and-half-months flat (and still not done) upgrading more or less everything apart from the primary casters already, at least not until we've actually seen how that plays out...

Especially since it would require me to go through all of the ToB maneuvres and drag them up to the standard (since I object to making my players suddenly not have the not-spells they have been suing and likign for ages - I'd probably have a mutiny if Insightful Strike wasn't around.)

Shelve that idea for now, then, I think!

Yeah, Broken Blade is a pretty powerful Discipline. I personally like to trade it out for Fool's Errand whenever I get it. FE has less damage (mostly consisting of multi-attack strikes with only one or two "one big smack" strikes) but it's so much more flavorful and has neat CC elements. I'm especially a fan of the air juggle maneuvers like Tornado Slam and the Lesson IV: The Ladder stance, which lets you "climb" the air. It's very video game/anime and I love it.

[Elricaltovilla]

If you are looking at only adding in piecemeal bits of Path of War, I would recommend looking at the disciplines from PoW that do things that can't be done in ToB already.

The two ranged disciplines, Solar Wind and Tempest Gale are great examples. Both are relatively tame damage wise, and give your players maneuvers that can't be replicated by stuff from ToB.

I've seen people integrate PoW and ToB together without too much issue, but it works better using Pathfinder as a base. PoW was made with Pathfinder characters and Pathfinder challenges in mind. The base increase in power level that Pathfinder has makes it much more difficult to backport.

[Ramza00]

PoW in general is higher power than ToB with maneuvers being slightly ahead in power, but classes being quite a bit ahead, and the overall strength combining those 2 is a fair bit higher. Part of it is pf has a higher floor, if a much lower ceiling compared to 3.5.

Disciplines are also more distinct and varied in what they do so you can have a much wider variety of concepts actualized. You have buffing disciplines, debuffing, controlling, combat maneuvers (including at range!), raw damage, natural attacks, etc. Two ranged disciplines in solar wind and tempest gale with an early stance that bypasses wind wall which is something archers really needed.

I recommend against combing the 2 systems because you will likely only see the most busted or generic ToB and otherwise be all PoW. You will only likely see the save replacers, IHS, mountain hammer and time stands still. There is an equal or better option for pretty much everything in PoW. TBH pathfinder is harder than 3.5 in general with most monsters being updated to be more threatening so it works.

Agrees with this.

Path of War is a power increase, but it is not really higher "peak power" [and some things are tuned down from Tome of Battle]. How it gets a power increase is by increasing the floor and the midpoints to a higher power level while simultaneously not really increasing the scores of the top and in some ways lowering them.

-----

The problem with combining Tome of Battle and Path of War what often happens in practice, is that people pick and choose the best Tome of Battle maneuvers, some that were often broken, and combined it with the power level increase of Path of War. Do we really need Iron Heart Surge or White Raven Tactics when Path of War have more restrained versions / better balanced of the same thing? On the subject of mountain hammer there are several Path of War maneuvers that are 2nd level that ignore Damage Reduction and Hardness, and some also add a damage boost on top of that. For example Temporal Burn (Riven Hourglass) does the same thing as Mountain Hammer flavored as time related manipulation that ignores DR, Hardness, and +2d6 additional damage.

It is better in practice often just try to go pure Tome of Battle or pure Path of War. Maybe you need to homebrew / change 1 or 2 maneuvers and import it into Path of War, but your instinct should be minimal importation and not try to do 50 / 50 Tome of Battle and Path of War.

[TiaC]

Yeah there was some Path of War errata changing a little of balance, but also correcting some editor errors / making things more clear.

http://bpfindley.com/PoWErrata.html

Edit: Wow. Unhindered Step got quite an upgrade in the Errata. It is now Swift Action, Movement Modes +30 ft + 5 * Initiation Modifier ft Enhancement Bonus to all movement modes for 1 round and not just Enhancement Bonus of +30 ft to land. The problem with this 2nd level Maneuver that got an upgrade is that it is really good but is it good enough when you are limited to 4 to 10 maneuvers readied at a time? Is a better version of Swift Expeditious Retreat worth losing a save counter, or more damage, and so on when it takes 10 minutes to swap this maneuver out if its not part of your readied package?

Edit 2: Well they nerfed God of the Hourglass Stance for Gish characters and Gestalt. This impacts the build I am making except I do not care for it is level 15 and + play and you are already impressive at that level.

That errata is someone's house rules, not Dreamscarred material.

[Ramza00]

Edit: Disregard this old post, I was wrong.





That errata is someone's house rules, not Dreamscarred material.

It is linking to the official dreamscarred pdf they did as errata. One that used to be here.

http://dreamscarred.com/path-war-errata/

But as you can see this page can not be found with the site redesign.

It can be found in the wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180219175427/http://dreamscarred.com/download/DRP271X_PoWErrata.pdf

DRP271X_PowErrata.pdf

And that website is just someone putting that pdf in text since not everyone likes pdfs.

[GrayDeath]

Well, I am sof ar still trying to convince our DM to switch to allowing all PoW, or even switching out ToB for it, but so far all he ahs done is remove Desert Wind in Favoure of ELemental Flux (but forces people to only have 2 Elements available until Level 14) and port in Silver Crane and Black Seraph as Alignment Disciplines.

But in general, as long as you stay out of Broken Blade and Fury, you SHOULD not experience too much trouble.

[TiaC]

It is linking to the official dreamscarred pdf they did as errata. One that used to be here.

http://dreamscarred.com/path-war-errata/

But as you can see this page can not be found with the site redesign.

It can be found in the wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180219175427/http://dreamscarred.com/download/DRP271X_PoWErrata.pdf

DRP271X_PowErrata.pdf

And that website is just someone putting that pdf in text since not everyone likes pdfs.

No, because I have that PDF, and it didn't include maneuver errata. The link you just gave is completely different from what's on the page.

[Ramza00]

No, because I have that PDF, and it didn't include maneuver errata. The link you just gave is completely different from what's on the page.

I apologize, while the PDF I linked to is the real errata, it does not have the maneuver errata. The first website I linked to is houserules plus the real official Dreamscarred errata.

It seems dreamscarred never released any maneuver errata and/or balance change...even though in Jun 14th 2017 they said they would do so at a further date. They purposefully said this is all the Path of War and PoW Expanded errata for everything besides Maneuvers and that pdf is 11 pages long per Dreamscarred Press.

I am thus going back via edit and striking through my previous wrong posts indicating I was wrong.

[Kris Moonhand]

I would just like to point out that all official PoW errata has been applied to the classes and feats that are found on the Library of Metzofitz (link in my sig). And while I don't personally agree with all of the changes to maneuvers on bpfindley's site, many of them are quite good.