The Age of the Warriors - a ToB expansion book idea

[Eldan]

At least the Demented One's disciplines already have fluff origins, often even explaining why Reshar didn't include them in his curriculum. So if we expand on that, we have schools Reshar never bothered to learn about, or, in the case of Fool's Grip or Oncoming Storm, schools which were developed later as bastardized forms.
There might also be forms which Reshar wasn't able to learn, such as those learned secretly by small organizations which he might not have heard about.

[DragoonWraith]

And the divinely inspired disciplines like Golden Saint and Dread Crown.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Oh my... Maybe I can compile all my ToB things together...

Disciplines
Quicksilver Aegis

PrC's
Aberrant Armorlord
Al-shra'a Al-mharb
Angel of Death
Blade Incarnate
Blade Maiden
Blood Sage
Combat Artisan
Concealed Celestial
Crusader of Death
Demonspawn Harbinger
Doom Lord
Draconic Partisan
Eaglewing Striker
Ebon Phoenix Mage
Eldritch Blademaster
Eldritch Knight (Redux)
Harmonic Lance Adept
Hollowed Soul
Holy Deathless One
Huixxa Vo Nyarlathotep
Iron Slasher
Ironsword Speaker
Masked Demon
Occult Adversary
Prestige Paladin (Redux)
Prodigal Overlord
Sacred Fist (Redux)
Saurian Brute
Shrouded Ambusher
Soul Eater (Redux)
Soulfire Invoker
Spirit Archer
Spirit Craftsman
Spirit Lords (Champion, Skirmisher and Spellmaster)
Sword of Levakross
Unmasked Fiend
Unseelie Knight
Unveiled Dragon
Warforged Armorlord
Warped Angel
Weretouched Master (Redux)
Zealot of Salamander

ToB-Related Monsters
Shayal
Varkigon (scroll down a bit)

Artifacts
Basatan's Arm

Epic Progressions
Crusader
Swordsage
Warblade

Feats
Epic Martial Adept Feats
More Epic Martial Adept Feats
Martial Multiclass Feats
9 Epic Martial Discipline Feats

Someone already posted my Desert Wind variants, so yeah. That's about all I have so far.

[elliott20]

umm... oh wow... that's a lot. Nice.

[pyrefiend]

I made a discipline a while ago...
here it is: Witch Razor

[DracoDei]

#2 cuts down document size, at the cost of voting time.

Electrons are cheap, so why do we care?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Unfortunately, I did most of my ToB homebrewing on the WotC boards before I found my way here, and, well...suffice to say that most of those are gone for good. I do have a few things here, though:

Disciplines
Ninefold Damnation: The discipline from Hell, literally, which focuses on mimicking the Lords of the Nine.
Infinite Torment: A discipline from the Abyss, focusing on random effects and imitation of demons.
Ocean Tempest: A water/storm discipline to complement the fiery Desert Wind and the earthy Stone Dragon (includes discipline feats and a legacy weapon!).

Classes
Martial Soul: A ToB/incarnum dual-progression class; don't know if it's suitable for this particular project, but I thought I'd throw it in.

I think I backed up my Master of One and Martial Swashbuckler on my laptop; if I find them, I'll post them and add links to them.

EDIT: Sadly, they weren't on my computer, but the Wayback Machine came to my rescue:
Martial Swashbuckler: The swashbuckler is a 3-level dip class no longer!
Master of One: For all the arrogant, obsessive martial adepts out there who think Masters of Nine have got it all wrong.

[The Tygre]

Do we want to bring up that one discipline? Uh, y'know... that one with the tentacles and the Ecchinobi.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Do we want to bring up that one discipline? Uh, y'know... that one with the tentacles and the Ecchinobi.

*waves hand*

That's not the kind of discipline we're looking for. Move along.

[The Tygre]

*waves hand*

That's not the kind of discipline we're looking for. Move along.

...

You sure now? I'm just saying, let's not be too hasty in writing anything off.

[SurlySeraph]

Add the Far Realm discipline and Fax Celestis's ToB Core Class Update.

[Gralamin]

Another thing that should probably be done: Rework the stance progression of the classes. WOTC admitted they weren't really thinking when they made it, so the stance progression is kinda nonsense. I had tried reworking it once Here, which at least gives us a basis.

[Siegel]

Someone here did a class that was like a martial Sorcerer. At each time they could invoke a maneuver from any school. They didn't know any one but just instinctively used some. Don't know how it was done exactly but the idea was awesome.

[ErrantX]

Someone here did a class that was like a martial Sorcerer. At each time they could invoke a maneuver from any school. They didn't know any one but just instinctively used some. Don't know how it was done exactly but the idea was awesome.

I think that was Golden-esque with his Sublime Warmage. Or you're thinking of something different than me!

@OP: Also, the Suel Arcanamach isn't a Discipline, it's a prestige class!

-X

[DragoonWraith]

Oh, just remembered: πd6 has several Sublime rebalances of a few classes:

• Marshal
• Swashbuckler
• Assassin

Also, there is Tatsel Ganav's Firedancer.

And, as mentioned, my Holy Knight PrC merges maneuvers with a bit of invoking.

Finally, you listed the Discipline of Lost Lyrics as by Fax, but that one's by Kellus.

[elliott20]

thanks for the catches, guys. Apparently, I'm also a terrible editor too, so bear with me.

Keep these coming!

I think we'll keep this up for maybe another day or two and we should have enough to start compiling and putting everything together.

[elliott20]

just to keep the momentum going, I'm going to start putting together a document that has everything organized in it. thus far, I'm sticking to the book organization I put together in the earlier post plus I'm thinking about adding a section for homebrewing one's own ToB material and reworking older monsters with ToB maneuvers. But these new addition I think will require some of the homebrew vets to write, since my grasp of the material is not as strong as them. (Krimm and Demented One, I'm looking at you)

[elliott20]

to make managing all the different disciplines easier, I think I'm going to try to categorize the disciplines into groups so that when we start tying in the relationships with the original 9, we have a smaller list to work off of.

We have several dimensions for a discipline's relationship with the original 9

Lineage
the lineage describes the discipline's origins in relation with the Nine in rough terms. This is how we are going to handle disciplines that might bear strong resemblances to the Nine in terms of mechanics and flavor. Clear duplicates will be made into direct lineage, or ancestral lineage. However, I'm tempted to leave out Ancestral Lineage all together since a lot of these disciplines look to be far more refined than the original Nine already and it doesn't make any sense in my mind that these would be the ancestors rather than the progeny of the Nine. when the entry here is direct lineage/ancestral, I'll try to put a name attached to it establish WHICH discipline in question are we talking about. Default will be "not related" unless noted otherwise.

Not related - discipline has nothing to do with the original nine at all
Related - discipline might share a root in some aspects. (it possible that they share a common ancestral lineage)
Direct Lineage - the discipline is clearly inspired by the Nine
Ancestral Lineage - the discipline inspired one of the Nine

Relationship
Relationship describes the discipline practitioners general attitude towards the Temple of the Nine Swords that Reshar established. (and any derivative organizations) While there is no strict rules that prevent someone from learning techniques of an opposing school, this can give complications to doing so. Default here should be indifferent.

Indifferent
Friendly
Hostile

Does anybody have any comments on this method of organizing the disciplines?

[Golden-Esque]

Whoops, almost forgot. Solaris Arcanum was designed to be used in conjuction with a variant Warmage class. Here ya go.

[DragoonWraith]

Oh, some more: Heartshaper and the Bladed Thoughts Discipline (a Sublime Soulknife), Guardian of the Frozen Grotto and the Placid Lake Discipline (a Sublime Druid PrC), and Moonflame Adept (a Sublime wielder of Spellfire). The last references some Dancing Fox and Crescent Moon disciplines, but I cannot find those.

[vasharanpaladin]

I could make a class or two, and I got an Incarnum/Adept PrC from a friend I could add in. Would need time to compile, though.

[elliott20]

not to mention the compile time it takes from me to put it all together in one document.

Guys, just FYI, we're at the point where we have more than enough material to get the book started. So, while we could always use more base classes, PrCs and disciplines, we're at the stage now where I think we can start thinking about how to put it all together. This is why I'm starting to write about how I want to categorize and manage the relationships between the disciplines.

Fluff writers and authors of these awesome homebrews, this is the time for you to start thinking about how you want the disciplines to fit into the over all setting.

If you can think of any form of categorization that might be helpful later on, please feel free to let me know. I'm thinking these are the possible categorizations beyond just the basic 'lineage and relationship".

Geographical
Era
Lineage
Faction
Alignment
Divine
Arcane
Psionic

Keep the material coming, but let's also start to think about how we're going to handle the stuff we already have.

[vasharanpaladin]

Got one up now.

[DragoonWraith]

Here's a useful (I think) chart:
{table=head]Discipline | Source | Skill | Crusader | Swordsage | Warblade | Special
Acidic Fog | KB | Escape Artist | | Alt | |
Army of One | TD1 | Intimidate | Alt | | Alt |
Black Heron | EX | Intimidate | Alt | Alt | Alt | No training; requires demonic possession
Black Lotus | Zak | Sleight of Hand | | | | for Sublime Assassins only
Black Rain | TD1 | Spot | Alt | Alt | Alt | Requires Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Firearms) feat
Bladed Thoughts | Yue | Autohypnosis | | | | for Heartshapers only
Broken Blade | JZ | Martial Lore | Def | Def | Def | * Also requires maneuvers from other disciplines as pre-requisites
Chthonic Serpent | DW | Use Rope | | Alt | Alt |
Coin's Edge | TD1 | Profession (Gambler) | | Alt | |
Dancing Leaf | TD1 | Escape Artist | | Alt | Alt | Also available to Firedancers
Desert Wind | ToB | Tumble | | Def | |
Devoted Spirit | ToB | Intimidate | Def | | |
Diamond Mind | ToB | Concentration | | Def | Def |
Dread Crown | TD1 | Intimidate | Alt | | Alt | Must be Evil
Falling Anvil | DD | Bluff | Def | Def | Def | No training; lose access to Devoted Spirit, Diamond Mind, Tiger Claw, and White Raven disciplines permanently
Falling Star | Fax | Spot | Def | Def | | *
Falling Wave | Name | Swim | Alt | Alt | Alt | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of Desert Wind (which may be then gained through the feat)
Far Realm | JM/TLN | Knowledge (The Planes) | Alt | Alt | Alt | Requires Terrible Secrets feat
Fool's Grip | TD1 | Tumble | | | Alt |
Frozen Zephyr | KB | Balance | | Alt | |
Glacial Chill | Name | Survival | Alt | Alt | Alt | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of Iron Heart or Desert Wind (which may be then gained through the feat)
Golden Saint | TD1 | Diplomacy | Alt | Alt | | Must be Good
Holy Word | Fax | Truespeak | Alt | Alt | Alt | No training; Requires Truespeak Training feat
Iron Heart | ToB | Balance | | | Def |
Kaleidoscopic Dream | TD1 | Tumble | Alt | Alt | | Also available to Soul Disciples
Leaping Gale | Name | Jump | | Alt | | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of Stone Dragon (which may be then gained through the feat)
Lost Lyrics | Kel | Perform (Sing) or Perform (Oratory) | Alt | Alt | Alt | No training; Requires Swordsinger feat
Masked Moon | Name | Disguise | | Alt | Alt | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing certain schools: Desert Wind or Shadow Hand for Shapechaning Swordsages, or any two of Desert Wind, Diamond Mind, or Shadow Hand for non-shapechanging Swordsages
Narrow Bridge | JZ | Knowledge (Religion) | Def | Def | Def | *
Ocean Soul | Fax | Swim | | Def | | *
Oncoming Storm | TD1 | Sleight of Hand | | Alt | Alt | Also available to Firedancers
Placid Lake | Yue | Move Silently | | Def | | also for Guardians of the Frozen Grotto
Quicksilver Aegis | KB | Balance | Alt | Alt | | Also available to Soul Disciples
Rending Scream | Name | Intimidate | | Alt | Alt | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of White Raven (which may be then gained through the feat)
Scarlet Bravura | TD1 | Perform (Oratory) | Alt | | Alt |
Scarlet Rose | Nero | Perform (Dance) | | Def | Def | *
Setting Sun | ToB | Sense Motive | | Def | |
Shadow Hand | ToB | Hide | | Def | |
Shocking Sky | KB | Intimidate | | Alt | |
Silver Pegasus | Name | Ride | Alt | | Alt | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of White Raven (which may be then gained through the feat). Maneuvers can only be used while mounted.
Sleeping Goddess | TD1 | Autohypnosis | Alt | Alt | Alt | Non-Swordsages require a Power Point pool
Solaris Arcanum | GE | Spellcraft | | | | for Warmages only
Stone Dragon | ToB | Balance | Def | Def | Def |
Tiger Claw | ToB | Jump | | Def | Def |
True Arrow | Name | Spot | Alt | Alt | Alt | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of Stone Dragon (which may be then gained through the feat)
Twin Spirit | TD1 | Ride | Def | Def | | *
Viper Fang | Name | Heal | | Alt | | Requires Lesser Disciplines feat, or replacing knowledge of Desert Wind, Setting Sun, or Shadow Hand (which may be then gained through the feat)
Way of the Gear | Imp | - | | Def | Def | *
White Raven | ToB | Diplomacy | Def | | Def |
Witch Razor | Pyre | Spellcraft | | Def | | *[/table]
Def = Available to that class without any special requirements
Alt = Available to that class by either training, replacing other disciplines, or taking a feat or similar.

Non-ToB Defaults have been marked with a *. Alts without notes use The_Demented_One's training system.

The authors:

• DD = DracoDei (1)
• DW = DragoonWraith (1)
• EX = ErrantX (1)
• Fax = Fax Celestis (3)
• GE = Golden-Esque (1)
• Imp = Imp_Fireball (1)
• JM/TLN = John "Jack Mann" Beattie and The Logic Ninja (1)
• JZ = JoshuaZ (2)
• KB = Krimm Blackleaf (4)
• Kel = Kellus (1)
• Name = I_got_this_name (8)
• Nero = Nero24200 (1)
• Pyre = Pyrefiend (1)
• TD1 = The_Demented_One (12)
• ToB = Tome of Battle (9)
• Yue = Yue Ryong (2)
• Zak = Zakaroth (1)

That's 18 authors; someone should try to make sure we contact each of them and get their OK to include and potentially change their work. That's only fair.

Also, something I consider useful to know: with all of these in play, Crusaders have 8 disciplines by default, and 16 others they can get through training or feats or whatever; Swordsages have 15 defaults and 23 alternates, and Warblades have 10 defaults and 19 alternates. Quite a bit more than the 3/6/5 from ToB, but they're proportionally appropriate, I think. Some of the defaults (those marked with *'s) are not from ToB but listed as just available to one of the classes; we may want to limit some of them. There are also three disciplines that are not available to any ToB class, having been made specifically for various homebrewed classes.

[elliott20]

wow, beautiful work there.

I'll try and contact the authors in question to get an okay.

[DragoonWraith]

OK, here's my take on some rules that should (IMO) be added to the book:

Alternate Disciplines
Most martial adepts have a list of what are known as "alternate disciplines". The typical example of a given adept does not have access to any of these disciplines, but specific members of the class may have knowledge of the discipline in one of two ways.

The first is to have neglected training in one of that class's ordinary disciplines. Any martial adept may choose to start play having no access to one or more disciplines that the class normally has access to, having been replaced by the same number of disciplines from the alternative list.

Any character who takes an alternative discipline for a class that does not have the discipline's associated skill as a class skill, loses as a class skill the skill associated with the neglected discipline, and gains the alternate discipline's associated skill.

The character may also trade proficiencies in weapons associated with the neglected discipline in favor of those associated with the alternate discipline. They can only gain proficiency in an exotic weapon associated with the alternate discipline if they lose proficiency in an exotic weapon associated with the neglected discipline, only gain proficiency in a martial weapon associated with the alternate discipline by losing proficiency in an exotic or martial weapon associated with the neglected discipline, etc., and in all cases can only gain as many proficiencies as they lose. They cannot lose proficiency in any weapon that is associated with both disciplines. They may trade in as many or as few weapon proficiencies as they like.

The other way to gain access to an alternate discipline is to train with a master of the discipline. A master is defined as one who can initiate 5^th level maneuvers from that discipline. Training requires one month and the expenditure of 1,000 XP. When training is complete, the martial adept may add the discipline to the list of disciplines from which maneuvers may be learned with levels in any class that has the discipline as an alternate discipline, and may further replace any number of maneuvers already known from any class that has the discipline as an alternate discipline with maneuvers from the new discipline. Unlike the normal method of replacing maneuvers, however, any maneuvers lost must be replaced with maneuvers of a level no higher than the lost maneuver.

The martial adept also adds the skill associated with the discipline to the class list of any classes that have the discipline as an alternate discipline. The adept does not, however, gain proficiency in any additional weapons.

This should make it easier to write classes, since you can just say "these are the alternate disciplines", rather than explaining the rules behind them every time.

This assumes we're using The_Demented_One's system; I happen to like it best, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything, heh.


Oh, and I forgot to mention before: your link to Untamed Essence is wrong; it links to Krimm's alternate Desert Wind disciplines. That, and Way of the Gear does not indicate what its associated skill is.

And I updated the table with the Far Realm discipline (linked to by SurlySeraph earlier, I think you missed it) and the Bladed Thoughts and Placid Lake disciplines (linked to by me earlier). That brings our author count up to 18. It also means we are currently at a cool 50 disciplines.

[elliott20]

ahh good catch. I've been kind of neglecting to put time into proofreading my stuff simply because I'm just trying to get as much info as I can together and try to organize it. I'll make the changes the later tonight when I get home.

also, that's a good point. I'll add that to one of the beginning sections of the book.

I've also begun writing a "how to use this book" section. hopefully, this will give any newcomers to the book a good idea of how to assimilate the material into their game.

[DragoonWraith]

Oh hey, look what I found. Just a simple list, rather than any attempt to integrate all of them, but wow, is there a lot of material out there.

[Scarlet Tropix]

This is a project of such pure win that I cannot wait for its completion.

I may not have any ToB homebrew of my own, but I'm perfectly willing to help compile and/or write fluff. I have no life to distract me, after all.

[DracoDei]

Technically, as currently written, only sword-sages get Falling Anvil maneuvers the usual way. Everyone else just gets their maneuvers from incompatible schools transformed as soon as they use Martial Study to take a Falling Anvil maneuver. That mechanic may need alteration, but you tell me. Also, people need to nag me to figure out a BUNCH more incompatable disciplines from the chart, because as it stands there is very little disadvantage to taking Falling Anvil with the expanded list compared to what there was with the original... I also am very willing to hear suggestions on the matter, or, if I get TOO overwhelmed by other things so I fall behind, I would be willing for someone else to figure out that part.

I also will point out that a lot of these need the associated 2 feats (one tactical, one pre-requisite to the tactical) and perminant maneuver granting items created (counterparts to the White Raven Crowns, Desert Wind Cape etc). The maneuver granting items basically just need fluff and which slot they take up. The feats are hard enough they might not get written for all the disciplines, but it would be nice to have them for as many as possible. Legacy weapons would be a nice bonus if we can come up with a few, but those are a major undertaking I think (as shown by the fact that none have been created to date that I know of). Then again it is possible that the type of homebrewer who has a talent for discipline creation doesn't usually happen to be the type who has the skills for legacy weapon creation.... now that I think of it, I don't know that I have EVER seen a legacy weapon on these entire boards.