The Age of the Warriors - a ToB expansion book idea

[Eldan]

Well, don't we all love polearms with their massive, hard shafts, and their long reach, and the way you can grab them with both hands...


Okay, I'll stop now

[Nero24200]

Just dropping a link to Steel Mountain. It's not finished yet though, awaiting feedback and I also need to design feats and such.

[Tangpau]

Just started reading this thread and just finished reading ToB yesterday. But I have been working on a discipline for desert wanders for a while now and will begin working on new Base Class based on this discipline too.

[DragoonWraith]

For those who haven't seen it, here's my Dancer that I was talking about, the ToB version of a Bard (though TD1's Warrior-Poet probably fills the role even better, now that I've seen it). *shrug*

[elliott20]

we can still include it, and see what happens in the alpha and beta.

[LunarWolfPrime]

In my opinion dancer is better.

[I_Got_This_Name]

I was PMed a link asking for permission on the Lesser Disciplines. Go ahead with them. If you're using a standardized method to acquire alternates, standardize away.

If I wasn't doing something else, I'd strongly consider rewriting many of the maneuvers in Glacial Chill, since it doesn't actually do what I want it to do. It had two major design goals: 1) Match every one of the five main energy types to a discipline, Glacial Chill being the Cold discipline, and 2) Be a discipline that grinds your enemies away; fight like a glacier itself. I don't think GC hit its Design Goal 2 very well, and goal 1 may be flawed in and of itself, given that Desert Wind is such a weak discipline. I also filled out the ranks with maneuvers that didn't belong.

In fact, let me just post the list with design goals and themes, as best as I can reconstruct them (I didn't keep much in the way of notes):
Falling Wave: Four elements all get a discipline (Water). Erode, recover, yield.
Glacial Chill: Energy types all get a discipline (Cold). Endure and grind.
Leaping Gale: Elements (air), Energy (Electricity). Move around the battlefield and defend yourself. If I were adding new maneuvers, I'd add things that let you engage multiple opponents.
Masked Moon: Shapechanging. More shapechanging. A little bit more shapechanging. Top it off with some shapechanging. This is for Werewolves, Shifters, Changelings, and so on.
Rending Scream: Energy Type (Sonic). It ended up with fear and anti-group stuff in it.
Silver Pegasus: Mounted Discipline.
True Arrow: Archer Discipline. Should probably have the supernatural parts stripped out, now that I think about it.
Viper Fang: Energy (Acid). Poisons, vital strikes, and other brutalities.

They were going to all have prestige classes (the Moonshifter and Exile are the only two done when I got distracted), feats, maybe even tactical feats (but I had no idea what to put there), and legacy weapons. I think the Iron Bow of Gesen (classic D&D artifact) was going to show up as the legacy weapon for True Arrow.

On another note, I saw an NPC class a long time ago that would fit with this, although I haven't gone looking for it since. It was called the Initiate, and had access to one discipline, chosen on creation, with no recovery method. If I had to guess, I'd say d6 hit die and rogue BAB. Nonetheless, a dedicated Sublime Way NPC class is fully writable.

[elliott20]

As stated before, this also means that someone is going to have to come up with the requisite 2 feats and perhaps legacy weapon for the lesser disciplines.

[Shyftir]

I might be able to help with that, but first I want to finish my baby, Mystic Cobra. (Including feats and legacy weapon.)
Speaking of Legacy Weapons: Personally I think they are some of the hardest things to homebrew in connection with TOB, getting balance right on powerful items is tough IMHO.

[DragoonWraith]

As I said in the Chthonic Serpent thread, I don't think we need the Legacy weapons for each Discipline. After all, there are only the "Nine Swords", nothing in the fluff requires that every other Discipline have a counter-part. Beyond that, the Weapons of Legacy mechanic is terrible, and not really worth my time, at least. I have no interest in making one for the Chthonic Serpent.

[Haven]

Wow. Wish I was better with 3.5 so I could help, because this is a fantastic project. As it is, all I can offer is a little cheerleading for y'all. Seriously, what a brilliant idea; I really look forward to its eventual release and would love playing a campaign based on this book, since it sounds like it really simulates the origins of martial arts with so many ultra-specialized and competing disciplines. I can probably offer general proofreading/editing services later on, if you want.

[pyrefiend]

As I said in the Chthonic Serpent thread, I don't think we need the Legacy weapons for each Discipline. After all, there are only the "Nine Swords", nothing in the fluff requires that every other Discipline have a counter-part. Beyond that, the Weapons of Legacy mechanic is terrible, and not really worth my time, at least. I have no interest in making one for the Chthonic Serpent.

Seconded. Legacy weapons usually aren't even worth having.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Seconded. Legacy weapons usually aren't even worth having.

Yeah, the main reason I made a weapon for Ocean Tempest was to get the backstory in there without putting a wall o' text at the beginning, not because I actually expect anyone to use it. Then again, writing up a legacy weapon that just doesn't have any penalties might be worth it.

[Dante & Vergil]

Then again, writing up a legacy weapon that just doesn't have any penalties might be worth it.

What you guys could do is put this in as a varient for legacy weapons when you get the pdf together.

[elliott20]

Don't look at me. I can barely get the Legacy Weapon rules straight.

Okay, if we don't feel the value added of legacy weapons are worth it, we can just scrap that for now.

But I'm guessing we're all okay with the traditional enhancement feat and the tactical feat, am I right?

[DragoonWraith]

I certainly intend to do at least one of each for Chthonic Serpent, yes.

[Nero24200]

We could just rewrite the weapons to simply be weapons with enhancments that scale. Remove the penalties for using legacay weapons (like losing hit points etc) and instead of riturals, just say that as long as you have manuevers from a certain school, you gain these bonuses.

In fact, that could work well. If you say...remake the legacy weapon for the Iron Heart school, you could provide several different levels of benifits and say "If you have X manuevers (at least one of which is X level) you gain..." and so on, making it that someone who specialises more gains more benifits from the legacy weapon.

[elliott20]

considering the amount of rework that will involve, I think maybe we can hold off on that idea and revisit it later on.

I think my next big thing to do is going to be creating a flow chart that shows the various styles time periods and shows how things are related.

[DracoDei]

My life has been hectic lately(I know, I know..."Join the club"). I THINK I can finish the last few maneuvers that I started those months back, but I still would need to add a series of banana peel based ones... BUT Falling Anvil already is incrediably maneuver rich, so I don't think what I have done or not at any given point should keep the WHOLE discipline out of this project... is that OK?

For specifics, "Paper Thin Disguise" is going to be pretty easy, but even with it half-done finishing up "Dust Cloud Melee" is going to be difficult. I know in my head how I want it to work (although there is one aspect I could be talked into changing), but putting that into mechanics is tricky. The Banana peel ones should be reasonable easy, they are just trip-attempt generating traps that ignore the opponent's size modifiers. At higher levels you get more of them, longer range to place them, and maybe better IFF (Identify Friend/Foe).

[Saintheart]

Although I'm really pretty new at creating homebrews, guys, I'd also love the opportunity to write up some fluff for ... well, anything, really, as you may require for the book. If you needed some example of my ... er ... capabilities in that regard, see the "Dorokusai" monster from the Chthonic Serpent discipline. I'm not really that fantastic at mechanics, but I read Eric Lustbader's The Ninja and its two sequels a lot as a kid, and I like to think I absorbed a "feel" for martial arts writing from those books. But anyway, just sticking my mitt up. :)

[elliott20]

Although I'm really pretty new at creating homebrews, guys, I'd also love the opportunity to write up some fluff for ... well, anything, really, as you may require for the book. If you needed some example of my ... er ... capabilities in that regard, see the "Dorokusai" monster from the Chthonic Serpent discipline. I'm not really that fantastic at mechanics, but I read Eric Lustbader's The Ninja and its two sequels a lot as a kid, and I like to think I absorbed a "feel" for martial arts writing from those books. But anyway, just sticking my mitt up. :)

Don't sell yourself short man. That Dorokusai write up is AWESOME. I don't know about the rest of us, but for me, very few monster entries can instantly bring story board ideas to mind with just reading the write up. Dorokusai happens to be able to do just that.

Heck, the power of the Dorokusai you wrote up you could probably do an entire mini-campaign based around one.

DracoDei, don't worry about it. Falling Anvil is already in it's final tuning stage and that is good enough for me as is. If you do finishing tweaking it in the future and feel it needs to be updated, we'll amend it then.

[elliott20]

slight bump

[DracoDei]

Paper-Thin Disguise(old news), and the three Banana Peel-based maneuvers are up.

Thanks to zerombr for the basic idea of including banana slips... even if it took me three months to finally get around to it.

[elliott20]

Preliminary draft to the various disciplines and their relationships thus far.

this will be amended as people start setting more relationships and such.

Spoiler

Show

[Shyftir]

Mystic Cobra I've added level 4!

As for its origins: It should somehow be related to Devoted Spirit due to its origin as "the Sohei" discipline which is a temple guard kinda thing.
Maybe it was started by a guy who was functioning as a guard for the TotNS and was a low level initiator. He is cast adrift because he had formed no solid connections with any one school when the Temple falls and goes on to become a leader of a Sohei group at another temple. He develops Mystic Cobra as he tries to train his "troops"in a relevant martial discipline.

Okay, now to write that up as proper Fluff...

[Eldan]

Question: anyone interested in a little side project over the holidays? Specifically, a ToB battle league? We make characters of a certain level using classes, PrCs, maneuvers and feats from this book, then let them fight each other in a tournament over in the PbP section. Anyone interested? I could even try and draw up some arena maps.

[dangerprawn]

Question: anyone interested in a little side project over the holidays? Specifically, a ToB battle league? We make characters of a certain level using classes, PrCs, maneuvers and feats from this book, then let them fight each other in a tournament over in the PbP section. Anyone interested? I could even try and draw up some arena maps.

That sounds fun. I'd really like to test out my Fighter ToB variant.

[Sanguine]

Question: anyone interested in a little side project over the holidays? Specifically, a ToB battle league? We make characters of a certain level using classes, PrCs, maneuvers and feats from this book, then let them fight each other in a tournament over in the PbP section. Anyone interested? I could even try and draw up some arena maps.

Sounds fun count me in.

[DracoDei]

I don't think I should participate directly, but I am always interested in play-test data for my creations.

[Eldan]

By the way, elliott, I just had a look at the list, and it seems you listed a lot of PrCs by TDO as base classes instead.