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View Full Version : Stealing speed from the world with a sword [PrC, PEACH]



Edge
2008-12-12, 10:38 AM
Done shamelessly in the style of Krimm Blackleaf. Tear it apart as you will.

Warpforged Adept
http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff334/SoullessEnigma/WarforgedSamurai.jpg
"Feel free to use your body as the anvil of your soul. I will use my sword as an anvil for the world." – Zibarra, Warpforged Adept Master.

For many, the warforged are front-line warriors, mere brutes who swing weapons to crush their foes. This, however, is a gross misunderstanding. A small, secretive school of warforged martial adepts know the full extent of warforged capability and make use of their mechanical precision, multitasking ability and magical nature to alter the world by slicing it at precise angles. This sundering of the world’s geometries of these combat forms allows the warpforged adepts to hone their agility and reactions to unbelievable levels.

HD: d8

Requirements
Race: Warforged
BAB: +6
Skills: Balance 12 ranks, Concentration 12 ranks, Martial Lore 4 ranks.
Feats: Adaptive Style, Weapon Finesse.
Maneuvers: Must know two 5th level strikes and at least one stance of the Diamond Mind discipline.
Special: Must not possess any of the Warforged body feats (Adamantine Body, Mithral Body, etc). However, warforged with the Unarmoured Body feat do qualify.
Must find and study under another Warpforged Adept.

Class Skills: Balance, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Hide, Jump, Listen, Martial Lore, Move Silently, Profession, Sense Motive and Swim.
Skill points per level: 6 + Int modifier.

{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|
+1|
+0|
+2|
+2|As Sharp As The Blade

2nd|
+2|
+0|
+3|
+3|Stance of the Striking Petal

3rd|
+3|
+1|
+3|
+3|Uncanny Dodge

4th|
+4|
+1|
+4|
+4|Evasion

5th|
+5|
+1|
+4|
+4|Superior Weapon Finesse

6th|
+6|
+2|
+5|
+5|Strike of Geometrical Placement

7th|
+7|
+2|
+5|
+5|Improved Uncanny Dodge

8th|
+8|
+2|
+6|
+6|Improved Evasion

9th|
+9|
+3|
+6|
+6|Mind Frees the Body

10th|
+10|
+3|
+7|
+7|Thousand-Blossom Stance[/table]

{table="head"]Level|Man. Known|Man. Readied|Stances Known
1st|0|1|0
2nd|1|0|0
3rd|1|0|1
4th|0|0|0
5th|1|1|0
6th|1|0|0
7th|0|0|0
8th|1|0|0
9th|1|0|1
10th|0|1|0
[/table]

Weapon and Armour Proficiency: A warpforged adept gains no new weapon or armour proficiencies.

Maneuvers: At 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th levels, you gain knowledge of a new maneuver from the Diamond Mind or Iron Heart disciplines. You must meet a maneuver's prerequisite to learn it. You add your full warforged adept levels to your initiator level to determine your total initiator level and your highest-level maneuvers known.
At 1st, 5th and 10th level, you gain an additional readied maneuver.

Stances Known: At 3rd and 9th levels, you gain knowledge of a new martial stance from the Diamond Mind or Iron Heart disciplines. You must meet the stance’s prerequisites to learn it.

As Sharp As The Blade (Ex): At 1st level, the warpforged adept’s reflexes become uncannily fast, almost instantaneous. The warpforged adept may add her Wisdom modifier to her AC. If the warpforged adept already adds her Wisdom bonus to AC, no further benefit is gained. If the warpforged adept possesses the battle clarity, battle ardour, battle cunning, battle skill or battle mastery class features, those class features now function off her Wisdom modifier, rather than her Intelligence modifier.

Stance of the Striking Petal (Ex): At 2nd level you gain a stance that allows you to speed up your attacks to an incredible degree. You may take a swift action to lose the benefits of your current stance to gain the benefits of this stance. Whilst in this stance, you may add your Wisdom modifier to your melee damage rolls in addition to your Strength (or Dexterity, see Superior Weapon Finesse below) modifier. In addition, whilst in this stance, your base land speed increases by 20ft.

Uncanny Dodge (Ex): At 3rd level, a warpforged adept can react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so. She retains her Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) even if she is caught flat-footed or struck by an invisible attacker. However, she still loses her Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized.
If a warpforged adept already has uncanny dodge from a different class she automatically gains improved uncanny dodge (see below) instead.

Evasion (Ex): At 4th level, a warpforged adept can 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. Evasion can be used only if the rogue is wearing light armor or no armor. A helpless warpforged adept does not gain the benefit of evasion.

Superior Weapon Finesse (Ex): At 5th level, you combine your grace with your innate warforged endurance. You may now use Weapon Finesse with a single type of one-handed weapon, other than the rapier. The chosen weapon is also counted as light for the purposes of two-weapon fighting. In addition, you may use your Dexterity modifier on your damage rolls instead of your Strength modifier on any weapon you can use Weapon Finesse with.

Strike of Geometric Placement (Su): At 6th level, you gain a unique strike, much like those granted to martial adepts. You must make a Concentration check as part of this strike. The DC of this check is your target’s AC. You then make a single attack, also as part of the strike. If the Concentration check succeeds, your target counts as flat-footed against your attack. If your attack hits, you may instantly teleport up to 50ft away as a free action. This strike is initiated as a standard action. This strike must be recovered and be readied to use, just like a maneuver. If you cannot recover maneuvers, you cannot recover this strike.

Improved Uncanny Dodge (Ex): A warpforged adept of 7th level or higher can no longer be flanked.
This defence denies rogues the ability to sneak attack the character by flanking her, unless the attacker has at least four more rogue levels than the target has warpforged adept levels.
If a character already has uncanny dodge from a second class, the character automatically gains improved uncanny dodge instead, and the levels from the classes that grant uncanny dodge stack to determine the minimum rogue level required to flank the character.

Improved Evasion (Ex): At 8th level, the warpforged adept gains improved evasion. This ability works like evasion, except that while the warpforged adept still takes no damage on a successful Reflex saving throw against attacks, she henceforth takes only half damage on a failed save. A helpless warpforged adept does not gain the benefit of improved evasion.

Mind Frees the Body (Sp): At 9th level, the freedom of your mind extends to the entirety of your body. Whilst in a Diamond Mind stance, the Stance of the Striking Petal or the Thousand-Blossom Stance (see below), you may use freedom of movement once per encounter as a standard action. The freedom of movement effect lasts as long as you maintain the stance.

Thousand-Blossom Stance (Ex): At 10th level, you achieve a pinnacle of celerity and reaction. You may take a swift action to lose the benefits of your current stance to gain the benefits of this stance. Whilst in this stance, you may Run as a move action, rather than a full-round action. In addition, you may use two swift actions per turn, rather than just one. One of these swift actions may be an immediate action taken in another creature’s turn, as normal, but you are still limited to one immediate action per round.

Fan
2008-12-12, 10:45 AM
Are you TRYING to make chuck E(mbraced) Cheese possible again?:smalltongue:
Cause I can already see abuse.

Innis Cabal
2008-12-12, 10:49 AM
It actually looks rather balanced.

Really don't see any major abusive parts to it.

Edge
2008-12-12, 10:54 AM
It actually looks rather balanced.

Really don't see any major abusive parts to it.

Thank you.


Are you TRYING to make chuck E(mbraced) Cheese possible again?:smalltongue:
Cause I can already see abuse.

Care to point out the problems so they can be rectified?

PairO'Dice Lost
2008-12-12, 01:28 PM
Care to point out the problems so they can be rectified?

There are several effects that let you trade speed for other things, like using the extra speed for Jump checks and thus things like Feral Death Blow or Leap Attack that build off Jump, or various charge builds that gain bonuses based on how far you move. He's referring to a particular build (nicknamed Chuck) that uses speed boosts and the Hulking Hurler to kill basically everything from a few miles away.

The particular issue with that is the 10th level ability, because it gives you 4x speed in the stance. However, I don't see that as a big problem--first, it's a capstone ability, so it should be good; second, builds that take advantage of ridiculous speed are relatively rare; and third, taking all 10 levels of this would weaken the Chuck build since you couldn't fit in tons of spell shenanigans. Thus, I'd say you're fine keeping it as it is.

One question about the prerequisites: Is there any particular reason you're disallowing the Mithril Body feat? I can easily see why Psiforged and Adamantine Body are disallowed, but the class seems to be quite similar to the swordsage in concept (fast, precise, devoted to perfection) and those are allowed light armor. I don't see any problems with it, I was just curious.

Edge
2008-12-12, 02:40 PM
One question about the prerequisites: Is there any particular reason you're disallowing the Mithril Body feat? I can easily see why Psiforged and Adamantine Body are disallowed, but the class seems to be quite similar to the swordsage in concept (fast, precise, devoted to perfection) and those are allowed light armor. I don't see any problems with it, I was just curious.

The idea was that the class only be open to the most truly nimble and agile of warforged - i.e. those without a maximum Dexterity bonus to AC or an armour check penalty, and it felt odd to make a special exception for one type of body feat.

Thanks for the comments so far. :smallsmile:

Fan
2008-12-12, 10:00 PM
Thank you.



Care to point out the problems so they can be rectified?

Well, as pointed out except that complete Divine Errata makes the Chuck build much weaker, adn the presists no longer work. Thus this acutally makes it viable again.
With the captsone of coruse.

DracoDei
2008-12-12, 10:32 PM
Isn't there some sort of Wooden Body feat in an expansion book that actually LOWERS your Natural Armor, but boosts your max dex and/or lowers your armor check penalty? If I am remembering right then that should be allowed for this class.

Fan
2008-12-12, 10:34 PM
Isn't there some sort of Wooden Body feat in an expansion book that actually LOWERS your Natural Armor, but boosts your max dex and/or lowers your armor check penalty? If I am remembering right then that should be allowed for this class.

Same book. I think its Darkwood body. It gives DR, and removes the AC penalty down to -2... no max dex to my knwoldge.
Also just get rid of armor entirely, and go with moon Ivy should work.

Bluelantern
2008-12-13, 07:12 AM
Sorry, I am too distracted with the amazing warforged picture...

vasharanpaladin
2009-01-07, 12:34 AM
...So, I can only be a normal warforged (ie, one that HAS a max Dex and armor check penalty) if I want to take this class? As opposed to one that's taken the Unarmored Body feat?

Edge
2009-01-07, 02:58 PM
...So, I can only be a normal warforged (ie, one that HAS a max Dex and armor check penalty) if I want to take this class? As opposed to one that's taken the Unarmored Body feat?

No. The intent is that any warforged with a feat that improves its composite plating is ineligible for the PrC. A warforged with no body feat or with Unarmoured Body would qualify. I'll go and clarify that.

ErrantX
2009-01-07, 09:10 PM
Hmmm... I'm curious.

Why Swim? Why not Tumble? For a class that's based on speed and movement, seems that Tumble might fit better than a dude made of metal and rock learning to dog-paddle.

-X