[3.5] Factotum Variant: Martial Dilettante

[Ernir]

Representing "mundane badasses" as we see them in most fiction within 3.5 can be kind of difficult. The non-magical classes within 3.5 are often rather limited in scope, lacking critical skills and flexibility. The (Feat) Rogue probably comes the closest, but that class has issues of its own. The "fixed" jack-of-all-trades class, the Factotum, fits pretty well... except that the Factotum is not a strictly mundane class, having both spell-like and supernatural abilities.

So I cut those out, and replaced them with everyone's favourite mundane stuff: Maneuvers. I seriously doubt that I'm the first one to come up with this idea, but I haven't seen it actually written down anywhere, so here it is!

Factotum Variant: Martial Dilettante

This variant Factotum does not gain the standard Arcane Dilettante, Opportunistic Piety and Cunning Breach class features, and instead gains the following abilities:

Maneuvers: Starting at 2nd level, you acquire a vague understanding of the sublime art of martial adepts. You know that with a bit of weird footwork and flashy hand movements, you can perform something that looks just like a martial maneuver.
At the start of each day, choose a number of maneuvers from any of the nine disciplines to know. You can choose one maneuever at 2nd level, and you gain additional maneuvers as shown on the table below. See table 3-1 on page 39 of the Tome of Battle to determine the highest-level maneuvers you can learn. You can select any martial maneuver up to that level, but Factotums face special restrictions - on any given day, you can not learn more than one maneuver of your maximum level, and you can never learn maneuvers that are supernatural in nature. You must meet the maneuver's prerequisites, as normal (choose your daily maneuvers one at a time, so that maneuvers with no prerequisites can make you qualify for those who do). Your initiator level is equal to your Factotum level, plus one-half your level in other classes, as normal.

Maneuvers Readied: You can ready the only maneuver you know at 2nd level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you must choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready your maneuvers by exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to exercise again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in practice, you can change your readied maneuvers.
You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them since you chose them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your readied maneuvers can be used once per encounter (until you recover them, as described below).
You can recover one of your expended maneuvers by spending an inspiration point as a move action.

Stances Known: Starting at 5th level, you can choose to know one stance from any of the nine disciplines. At 10th level and again at 15th level, you can choose to learn additional stances. You can select new stances to know at the start of each day - make this choice at the same time you choose your maneuvers known for the day (simultaneously, so you can use your stances to qualify for maneuvers, and vice versa). You can learn any stance for which you meet the prerequisites and is extraordinary (not supernatural) in nature. Unlike maneuvers, stances are not expended, and you do not have to ready them. All the stances you know on each day are available to you at all times, and you can change the stance you are currently using as a swift action.

Class level	Maneuvers Known Per Day	Maneuvers Readied	Stances Known Per Day
1st	-	-	-
2nd	1	1	-
3rd	1	1	-
4th	2	1	-
5th	2	2	1
6th	2	2	1
7th	3	2	1
8th	3	3	1
9th	4	3	1
10th	4	3	2
11th	4	3	2
12th	5	3	2
13th	5	4	2
14th	6	4	2
15th	6	4	3
16th	6	4	3
17th	7	4	3
18th	7	4	3
19th	7	4	3
20th	8	5	3

Cunning Circumvention (Ex): Starting at 11th level, your broad knowledge allows you to study an opponent and gain a brief flash of insight to breach her defenses. By spending an inspiration point as a free action, you can ignore a single target's damage reduction for 1 round.