The Age of Warriors (Project Revived!)

[Elves]

Nice find. Thanks.

[Storyteller_Arc]

So how can people help exactly? Because I doubt you want to do all of this work on your lonesome.

[D&D_Fan]

I should update that post, I think ultimately we decided on not having one specific trigger event. Instead the concept is that while the Temple of Nine Swords was a great codifying and centralizing influence, that also meant that practitioners became centralized around the 9 disciplines it favored. In its absence the other disciplines have been able to gain a more even share of traction.

Some of that star part could be put into the fluff section for the Far Realm discipline.

I wasn't expecting it to be used, but it's nice that my idea was considered. I will read more into the Far Realm Discicpline, and see if I can improve the story.

[D&D_Fan]

Far Realm Warrior: Backstory Idea
There was a project created by the High Ones (or so they are called), incomprehensible beings with sinister motives that have yet to be unraveled.

They have began a project involving the abduction of humanoids from the many worlds and infusing them with energy from the far realm. This can be done many ways, like symbiotic lifeforms, bombardment with Far Realm energies, and other stranger methods. They do this to create perfect mind controlled fighting machines. Sometimes, a mistake happens, and these experimental warriors are stranded on worlds, and their minds are free from control. They can use the full extent of their powers, and are truly a force to be reckoned with.

While not a Discipline in the same sense as others, those touched by the Far Realm have formed groups that embrace their newfound power, and look for ways to perfect it.

Unfortunately, this draws the attention of the High Ones, and they have been sending their own forces against these renegades.

[Elves]

So how can people help exactly? Because I doubt you want to do all of this work on your lonesome.

Great question.

New content. A great thing to do would be to help finish off the legacy weapons. These are the ones we still need.

- Bloodstained Gutter legacy weapon. A prison shiv (improvised weapon).
- Dancing Leaf legacy weapon. Possibilities include quarterstaff, rapier, or elven thinblade.
- Lightning Fox legacy weapon. Speed discipline with lightning theme.
- Oncoming Storm legacy weapon. This is the discipline for rogue and swashbuckler style fighting.
- Ninefold Damnation legacy weapon. A pitchfork.
- Stygian Nightmare legacy weapon. A scythe.

Legacy weapon format!
Legacy weapon abilities cheat sheet (these are just guidelines)


- Another thing left to do is to convert Dread Crown into an epic discipline. That means reducing it to nine powerful maneuvers that would fit any fiendish initiator.


- Make a shield-themed discipline. This is low priority, because PoW already has a good shield discipline.


---------------


If you don't want to make new content, contribute by PEACHing already posted content. You can use the "age of warriors" tag to find relevant threads I've posted.

If you want to post feedback for a necro thread, just post it here with a link to the original thread. (Or if I started the thread, PM me to bump it.)

[Storyteller_Arc]

Legacy weapons? I think I can do that. I had quite a bit of fun making some legacy weapons previously. Well, not just Legacy Weapons, but I did make full 1-30 legacy weapons, so I think I might be able to help there..

[Elves]

Cool. The only note is that each one should have at least one ability that relates to martial maneuvers, most commonly by letting you use a maneuver from that discipline.

[DracoDei]

Should probably also be one of the weapons associated with that discipline?
At least for ones that it CAN be. Mental Grip, for instance, probably has "telekinesis psionics" as its associated weapons or something. The fact that that might not be one of the disciplines that still needs a legacy weapon is beside the point. It is just for the sake of example.

[Elves]

Brainstorm: does anyone have ideas for a martial adept/druid PRC?

Linked to that discussion earlier about wolves holding swords in their mouths, it could be based on the idea of fighting with weapons while wildshaped....

Since our theurge PRC lineup has a new arcane/martial option (which you can see here), it seems like there should also be a new divine option, and something druid-themed is the obvious choice.

[D&D_Fan]

Brainstorm: does anyone have ideas for a martial adept/druid PRC?

Linked to that discussion earlier about wolves holding swords in their mouths, it could be based on the idea of fighting with weapons while wildshaped....

What about about a warrior who was slain and brought back to life by forest magics, and is imbued with the magic, but as they aren't a true a true druid, they can transform partially to gain some features of a creature but not all, so they can still wield weapons. I would call this subclass the Wild Shifter. In later levels they can imbue weapons with natural power while Wild Shifted. At high levels, they can "Multishift and gain features from multiple animals at once for maximum e p i c.

Please review/stat this concept if able.

[Vrock Bait]

I’m probably kind of late coming into this, but just wondering if there was already a discipline focused on killing casters.

[Elves]

I’m probably kind of late coming into this, but just wondering if there was already a discipline focused on killing casters.

Yeah, this was something that was planned at one point. I was going to go through these four disciplines and take the best maneuvers from each:
Sacred Might
Occult Sovereignity
Mystic Eclipse
Crescent Moon

Ultimately, for the sake of saving time, I thought we'd be fine with just our antimagic PRC:
Spellfire Banisher

But if you want to help do an antimagic discipline there's definitely space for it, and then the PRC above could receive maneuvers from it which would be thematic.


Can't immediately think of a good name though. Crescent Moon isn't descriptive enough, Mystic Eclipse makes it sound like you're using mysticism instead of fighting it.

[Vrock Bait]

Yeah, this was something that was planned at one point. I was going to go through these four disciplines and take the best maneuvers from each:
Sacred Might
Occult Sovereignity
Mystic Eclipse
Crescent Moon

Ultimately, for the sake of saving time, I thought we'd be fine with just our antimagic PRC:
Spellfire Banisher

But if you want to help do an antimagic discipline there's definitely space for it, and then the PRC above could receive maneuvers from it which would be thematic.


Can't immediately think of a good name though. Crescent Moon isn't descriptive enough, Mystic Eclipse makes it sound like you're using mysticism instead of fighting it.

Maybe “Burning Scroll” or “Broken Glyph”?

[Morphic tide]

The three options that come to mind for me are basically ToB-version Prestige Ranger, the piles-of-minions PRC you discussed with the Animist, and a Wildshape Initiator. I think that mixing the latter two would work best, partly to avoid the messy bookkeeping of leaning on mass Animal Companions to instead lean on well-established Summoning rules you'd be using earlier on, and partly for the potential unique focus of mass Elemental minions.

Disciplines could be a four-elements set and Scarlet Bravura, with features doing much of the tamer use of Natural Spell (summoning dudes while personally buff, and making oneself even more buff) and [Wild] feats (spend Wild Shape uses for benefits, possibly counting partial shifting to grab qualities of other creatures) while having the type of bonus be firmly non-stacking, and abilities to enhance the Animal Companion with Elemental properties alongside hastening and prolonging summons (perhaps by putting them "on hold" with an ability that mirrors the Animist's spirit feature), so fewer slots and turns are sunk into your on-demand Scarlet Bravura payoffs. The capstone could be having Wildshape as a Stance and expending Maneuvers for uses of it, allowing for indefinite function of the Wildshape side of the PRC so that the spellcasting can be wholly focused on utilities otherwise cumbersome for the initiation.

And yes, I fully recognize that this would be canning CoDzilla into an Initiator. That is indeed the specific goal I'd aim it for, so that it is very directly doing what a melee Druid already wants, but with Initiator abilities instead of Natural Spell and Wildshape abuse, paving a clear path for low system mastery players and offering breaks to the powergamers by costing a great deal of action economy and build resources no longer available for the standard CoDzilla, but becoming even more item independent in the process.

---

Attached to this, Stone Dragon could get a more proper Elemental association, with a couple of Acid effects and replacing Stone Dragon's Flight with one of them acting as an improvement on Stone-Weight Wings (which does need a maximum duration, if only from a decaying DC, for the sake of precedence). Possibly shift Earthwave and similar to Counter-based stomps that can be used to alter your received fall damage and amplify their effects based on it, normally acting as knockdown Opportunity Attacks for Chain Tripper playstyles, so you don't need to get large upward mobility to use some Stone Dragon maneuvers on your own terms.

Ocean Soul needs its Electric damage pruned if it's going to be a proper Water Discipline, but one thing I really like is how it has a touch of related wildshape effects with its Bite attack. Replacing the air-related storm aspects of it with more of that, a set of sit-still and drag in effects to make the use of net and harpoon as Discipline weapons mean something, would add a much more distinct playstyle to the Discipline, supported by the raw Cold blasting options, while still fitting in with its heavy crowd control focus. Adding some small measure of such to Desert Wind, Stone Dragon and the final flying Discipline would be lovely, even if it's just making some of the Stone Dragon durability be Natural Armor bonuses or giving wing-based Desert Wind mobility that actually gives Wing Attacks.

---

As for the Flying Discipline, I'd honestly scrap all the candidates you've given. They're all yet more of the get in, melee, move to the next target. This is done by Tiger Claw, Shadow Hand, Desert Wind, Lightning Fox, Scarlet Bravura... It is an area of mechanics repeated relentlessly because to be melee is to need to be close, and the thing they use to differ is that you get to go up while doing it from an early level. In large part, this is because mobility is generally sorely lacking, but if such a wide range of Disciplines are getting mobility to service the same end, the one that's focused on the mobility in its own right should be seeking a very different end with it.

Because of that, I suggest using it as the area-of-effect ranged Discipline, able to directly apply magical ammo to the area damage, with mobility being reactive, defensive, and not compromising attack success at the new distance instead of having anything to do with improving damage output on attacks that do hit or any deliberate aid to melee gap-closing. Turning ranged attacks into cones and lines, using Bludgeoning, Electric and Sonic damage, doing everything that comes to mind to have its offensive capabilities be very clearly "Blasting spells, but worse" unless you have good ammo and a good weapon, while its defenses are an utter godsend to the ranged Martial and the theurge that wishes to deal damage with its spells rather than its maneuvers.

The general design being that the Discipline is very good at not suffering from damage, but is very heavily reliant on external means to deal high-quantity damage in return, whether that be exceptional degrees of weapon expense to make its own Strikes keep up with other area damage options, using another Discipline for Strikes that do enough damage to work for tasks other than chaff-clearing to begin with, or even being a spellcaster dropping powerful Evocations from extensive safety.

[Elves]

The three options that come to mind for me are basically ToB-version Prestige Ranger, the piles-of-minions PRC you discussed with the Animist, and a Wildshape Initiator. I think that mixing the latter two would work best, partly to avoid the messy bookkeeping of leaning on mass Animal Companions to instead lean on well-established Summoning rules you'd be using earlier on

You make a good point about Animist being the natural initiator option for entering this class. That also brings in a dilemma because if it's designed to be animist/druid, it may not be friendly for other initiator classes to enter.

And yes, I fully recognize that this would be canning CoDzilla into an Initiator... but with Initiator abilities instead of Natural Spell and Wildshape abuse, paving a clear path for low system mastery players.

Absolutely, this has to be approached as a simplification. Druid is complicated, animist is more complicated than other initiators. If you just combine them, it would be a mess.

---

- The minions/"beastmaster" type PRC would be the one where you give your animal companions initiating capacity. That could definitely be class-agnostic, making it equally viable for a pure animist and a warblade/druid. This PRC would be easy to do as a simplification: no casting advancement, and for animists, by making them choose animal companions over sprites, it removes that entire sprite minigame.

- For a wild shape oriented PRC, I would think about either requiring or giving you something similar to the Shapeshift druid variant.

- Buffzilla-in-a-can. OK, but I think summoning should be toned down and avoided because it adds complexity. The one summoning connection I could sort of see is if an animist/druid PRC gave the ability to summon some kind of sprites with Summon Nature's Ally.

The "elemental" theme seems like another juggling ball added in that might be unnecessary.

---

The goal for this class should definitely be a simpler, more martial way of playing druid. Using maneuvers while wild shaped (or in a Shapeshift-like wild shape variant) seems like the easiest way to do that, but I think the buffzilla element can also be added. My first questions are:

• Does it advance spellcasting or no?
• What happens to the animal companion?
• Is it explicitly for animist/druid, or are other initiators also allowed in?



--------------------------------

[Ocean Soul getting] a set of sit-still and drag in effects to make the use of net and harpoon as Discipline weapons

✅ Good thought.

Especially because I think it's important to stay grounded in martial arts rather than making it just magic powers. This gives Ocean Soul a clear direction.

Attached to this, Stone Dragon could get a more proper Elemental association

in line with above, one of the things I like about Stone Dragon is it achieves an elemental association without going in-your-face supernatural or dealing energy damage.

Counter-based stomps.. acting as knockdown Opportunity Attacks for Chain Tripper playstyles

✅ Definite yes. At one point we were talking about Stone Dragon having maneuvers themed on "active tanking" in the form of physical barging and bashing, and this is a great example. The new Devoted Spirit maneuvers, which is the last discipline I have yet to do (the "new maneuvers" thread is out of date), should then offer maneu based on "passive" tanking.

And this is not like designing a whole new class or something, we're talking 2-5 new maneuvers in each case.

As for the Flying Discipline, I'd honestly scrap all the candidates you've given. I suggest using it as the area-of-effect ranged Discipline, able to directly apply magical ammo to the area damage, with mobility being reactive, defensive, and not compromising attack success at the new distance instead of having anything to do with improving damage output on attacks that do hit or any deliberate aid to melee gap-closing. Turning ranged attacks into cones and lines, using Bludgeoning, Electric and Sonic damage, doing everything that comes to mind to have its offensive capabilities be very clearly "Blasting spells, but worse" unless you have good ammo and a good weapon, while its defenses are an utter godsend to the ranged Martial and the theurge that wishes to deal damage with its spells rather than its maneuvers.

The general design being that the Discipline is very good at not suffering from damage, but is very heavily reliant on external means to deal high-quantity damage in return, whether that be exceptional degrees of weapon expense to make its own Strikes keep up with other area damage options, using another Discipline for Strikes that do enough damage to work for tasks other than chaff-clearing to begin with, or even being a spellcaster dropping powerful Evocations from extensive safety.

Take a look at the in progress draft for the second of our 2 archery disciplines:

Phoenix Feather

I haven't added anything except a high level meteor AOE and the capstone. When I get back to it, exactly what I want to do is make it AOE focused. And with the phoenix theme, some flight stuff would fit.

Please feel free to sketch in your own maneuver ideas on that page or post ideas here.


I realize you were looking at a flight disc as a prospective air discipline. Desert Wind is meant to cover both fire and air, and we can put in a few new DW maneuvers with a more wind/air theme. Earlier we were talking about its fire maneuvers being the aoe/damaging part and then the air maneuvers being mobility and soft battlefield control. Watch this space.

[RecordedChaos]

Definitely saving this! loved the old project and excited to see where the new one goes!

[Morphic tide]

You make a good point about Animist being the natural initiator option for entering this class. That also brings in a dilemma because if it's designed to be animist/druid, it may not be friendly for other initiator classes to enter.

The extent of it would be feat shenanigans and skill ranks, such that other Initiators and non-Druid casters by default have some issues qualifying at 6th level. Like how some Monk PRCs call for just Improved Unarmed Strike and some skills, rather than having feature requirements that actually mandate it be a Monk entering, rather than a Fighter who decided to take one of the worst feat taxes in the game.

- The minions/"beastmaster" type PRC would be the one where you give your animal companions initiating capacity. That could definitely be class-agnostic, making it equally viable for a pure animist and a warblade/druid. This PRC would be easy to do as a simplification: no casting advancement, and for animists, by making them choose animal companions over sprites, it removes that entire sprite minigame.

That's certainly a good starting point, though one of the things that stuck with me was Summon Nature's Ally being built into the Druid's casting feature, so they always have that castable, and we have a good number of "straight" Beastmasters already. One thing might be getting the crunch on the Animist's Sprites (which I actually didn't see mention of the rules for) be a Summoning effect, so the features built "for" Summon Nature's Ally also work on the Animist bodies, and thus the intended entrance doesn't have need of summoning acceleration because the Animist brings the body to use the summoning improvements on. Something that doesn't scale well with huge volumes of summons, even if it's just a bottleneck from Initiating by proxy instead of giving extra Maneuvers.

- For a wild shape oriented PRC, I would think about either requiring or giving you something similar to the Shapeshift druid variant.

Better shapeshifting, but strict inability to use normal spellcasting, is certainly one way to be certain it clashes with the standard CoDzilla structure. Dumping spell slots for healing on Swift Actions or getting to spend them for Enhancement bonuses scaling with the slot level, so you can still use the slots even though they're not formally spellcasting. "Stacking" the uses to grab qualities from a second creature plays well with having Wildshape as a Stance, especially as it could be done as a kind of "paraelemental" form where you throw Elemental stuff on top of an Animal or Magical Beast, instead of having a proper Elemental Wild Shape. Of course, since the original Wild Shape is "skipped", the functionality could be entirely overhauled to be formed around buffs rather than statline replacement, cutting down further on the options to go truly mad with Buffzilla, but qualifier transparencies matter a lot for certain feats and progressions into other PRCs.

- Buffzilla-in-a-can. OK, but I think summoning should be toned down and avoided because it adds complexity. The one summoning connection I could sort of see is if an animist/druid PRC gave the ability to summon some kind of sprites with Summon Nature's Ally.

Part of the thing is that we have a Discipline for "angry setup" in Scarlet Bravura, and if it's intended for Druid entry, the Animal Companion is mandatory, so doing nothing with it causes a dead feature because it's so reliant on scaling to be useful. The smoothing would be hanging most of the summon integration off of Share Spell, so the added bodies have to have that function to benefit from most of the effects. Opens up progressing into Familiar and Special Mount shenanigans later on.

The "elemental" theme seems like another juggling ball added in that might be unnecessary.

In the Wild Shape case, it's a matter of the Disciplines in use and some of the advancements, while on the solely minion-focused version it'd be a matter of being primarily about summoning Elementals instead of having a pack of Animals/Magical Beasts. The Elemental side of Druid is usually left without attention, and bleeding that into their other features so that they're doing some Elemental stuff even if they're a bear summoning bears with a bear companion can make it so they're always using "Wrath of Nature" as elemental effects, instead of being left to the more mundane plant and animal side.

Basically, "Elemental" is the how of the bonuses I'd go for, rather than being another distinct set of abilities in use. Instead of becoming a chimeric monstrosity, you become a paraelemental beast. Instead of being required a pack of animals, you can have a crowd of elementals. It scales into the esoteric needs of high levels much more coherently, and keeps whatever particular kind aimed for distinct from prior examples of the theme in fashions beyond including Initiating in it.

The goal for this class should definitely be a simpler, more martial way of playing druid. Using maneuvers while wild shaped (or in a Shapeshift-like wild shape variant) seems like the easiest way to do that, but I think the buffzilla element can also be added. My first questions are:

• Does it advance spellcasting or no?
• What happens to the animal companion?
• Is it explicitly for animist/druid, or are other initiators also allowed in?

On the casting, I'm thinking of 9/10 for access to 9ths if exiting into full casting from Druid 3/Animist 2 entrance, or using 7/10 casting to cut down to 5ths if exiting into Initiator levels for similar spellcasting to Mystic Ranger. For Animal Companion, the idea I want to go for, with tying together as much of what Druids do into one combat direction as possible, would be giving it a modified Animal Companion ability that can be used to boost any effective Druid level, but on its own ties up a spell slot summoning it for the day. The progressions on this ability, extended to anything it's used to improve the effective Druid level of, would be general necessities of making up for a Cohort's item budget, limited to number bonuses, movement options, and other "must have" effects and based around doing so via Elemental thematics. Again, Elemental being the "How" rather than a separate skillset.

As for entry, a reason for going through the weirdness of a technically-permanent-summon variant Animal Companion would be to specifically justify not requiring the feature to enter despite features contributing to it. I'd pin the requirements as casting Summon Nature's Ally II spontaneously, either specifically as a Divine spell, or separately requiring 2nd level Divine spells, Knowledge (Nature) 8 ranks and possibly max Martial Lore for Druid 3/Animist 2, access to second-level Maneuvers, and at least one Maneuver from each of two of Scarlet Bravura and a "four elements" set (eg, one Scarlet Bravura and one Lightning Fox, or one Stone Dragon and one Desert Wind). Would be a very long Prerequisite line, but easy enough to meet within the "Druid-like" casters (few as they are) and any Initiator that happens to have Knowledge (Nature).

---

Since Animist is in need of simple completion, and is relevant to the matter of a Druid/Initiator Theurge from being the most-fitting Initiator, I'll start talking about doing that. One thing would be merging Befriend Animal God and Manifest Bond, so there's only one mechanic of using the Bonds for minions to worry about and a way of recovering Sprites when they die in Manifest Bond so you don't need either a rebuild or a fetch quest, or even worse both. Additionally, the mechanic itself needs to be reformatted to clearly spell out how it acts in terms of Known/Readied, particularly with regards to how often you change which precise Maneuvers you have. Using Spirit Bond/Backup Bond as Known/Readied lets it be "locking" the Maneuvers on each Sprite, so you don't get into weirdness with swapping what Maneuvers you have known on a Swift Action and Adaptive Style can be used to swap the whole set of "active" Sprites.

Sohei Wand as spellcasting needs to go. Flat-out Ranger casting is not okay, as Animist is intended access to almost every Discipline, thereby giving it a vast array of utility options already, and is meant to be an alternative to the Ranger, a simply different class that has much the same theme. My main thought for salvaging the idea is having it be a daily preparation of Maneuvers, but forsaking using them with a proper weapon (Fool's Grip and Bloodstained Gutter actually have this as an advantage), on top of not getting the Weapon Bond benefits. Double bonding then becomes an increased degree of prerequisite games, with a single "Wand" getting two Maneuvers of each level, which can be of either Discipline, allowing for essentially full access to the Disciplines. The same goes for a double-bonded Animal God having a lot more ability to meet prerequisites, at least at lower levels where you can't have many of them naturally.

Having the "lock" be on the Sprite helps a lot with Double Bond still working, as it'd allow for switching which two are in a given item and just stacking what they have, though it does still cause issues for prerequisites in the first few levels. And you can rebuild by running them through Sohei Wands, but this is just skipping the fetch quest of replacement Sprites to have some Maneuvers change over each day even without replacing the Sprites, letting the class be partly independent of environment at very early levels. Of course, this would require far less Bonds. Possibly as low as two active, two backup, for 20 "Readied" and 38 "Known" (if keeping the "floating" Stance and Maneuver), as compared to the Swordsage's total of 18 "Readied" and 31 "Known", counting Stances as further Maneuvers. Even then, the Animist's build-switching capacity causes absolute havoc on flexibility comparisons, so it could well be all the way down at just one "backup" ever.

Altering the Sprite mechanic's method of accessing Maneuvers to reduce the issue of having a staggering amount on hand for a third column of Initiating can allow for a higher quantity of total Bonds. Maybe be a Stance for each Sprite, then capping off at five Maneuvers known at level 20, so part of the capstone bonuses is the 5-requirements 9ths (as the Stance counts) off a single Sprite, and therefor the Animal Gods getting them. This makes the Animist much more cleanly compare to other Initiators in total Maneuvers, though the preferable amount for not being completely crazy in versatility with Sohei Wand as a rebuild tool remains four Sprites, for five Stances, twenty six Maneuvers Known, and eleven Maneuvers Readied (assuming the low-level enabler of the floating Stance and Maneuver remains). Almost equal in raw Initiating to Swordsage, but with the special goodies being about switching around regularly and being quite limited on simultaneous Disciplines.

If you want to respond to this part, quote it into the Animist thread so we can talk about it there. I'd do it myself, but that would be thread necromancy.

---

✅ Good thought.

Especially because I think it's important to stay grounded in martial arts rather than making it just magic powers. This gives Ocean Soul a clear direction.

The "main" line of Strikes for the "pull in" theme would probably best fit as making an attack with bonus reach/ultra-short throws (could do both as different subsets of the "line"), then pulling them adjacent to you. Another thought would be the Wake line being split, with Sea Turtle and Whale being defensive, Shark and Dolphin wanting short charges for maximum damage to the target and focusing on damaging those along the way, and Leviathan being part of the "pull in" theme by carrying enemies along with you to the "main" target for the "screw you for being near me" abilities to kick in on everyone along the way.

"De-mystifying" the Discipline, if desired, would be removing the cone of water impact damage from Sea Turtle and Dolphin, with the latter instead dealing damage to those passed by by drawing from iterative attacks, alongside making Icerime Bolt a 4th or 5th level Maneuver and replacing it with a thrown bonus, since the Discipline weapons all have range increments and literally nothing in the Discipline uses that. Heck, Nets don't even do damage by default, and Harpoons take a penalty if used in melee!

✅ Definite yes. At one point we were talking about Stone Dragon having maneuvers themed on "active tanking" in the form of physical barging and bashing, and this is a great example. The new Devoted Spirit maneuvers, which is the last discipline I have yet to do (the "new maneuvers" thread is out of date), should then offer maneu based on "passive" tanking.

And this is not like designing a whole new class or something, we're talking 2-5 new maneuvers in each case.

Okay, if a lot of the links are out of date, you should probably just link the google docs instead of old forum posts where you're working on them in one. Whirlwind Heir is still the old GiantITP version and not the redone Google Doc, for example. And most of the PRCs linked have broken tables from the forum software changing since their posting.

Take a look at the in progress draft for the second of our 2 archery disciplines:

Phoenix Feather

I haven't added anything except a high level meteor AOE and the capstone. When I get back to it, exactly what I want to do is make it AOE focused. And with the phoenix theme, some flight stuff would fit.

Please feel free to sketch in your own maneuver ideas on that page or post ideas here.

That 9th-level healing makes me thing that Phoenix Feather could be the point-blank shot Discipline. Tying mobility to active defensive properties, benefits for taking damage the prior round to punish enemies going after you or pay off low-level, low-damage AoEs being kept, have its mobility work perfectly fine for a melee character because the Discipline gets structured to actually support being an archer in melee. If one wants to play it safe and rely on the area damage from the air, that's fine, but the functions end up perfectly well supporting a melee character's mobility needs to do a lot of the leg work of a "switch-hitter" Initiator by meeting your ranged Strike prerequisites off your guarded mobility and recovery.

This would do a lot of work to distance it from Desert Wind, which already has area damage and is already given mobility, by making it so that the mobility is defensive and the Strikes/Counters want damage taken for bonus effects, rather than on-demand offense in all regards like Desert Wind has it. Though the Holocaust Cloak from Desert Wind starts bringing up questions with even trying for a retaliatory direction... There just doesn't seem to be enough room for Pheonix Feather to be AoE with some mobility to be properly unique with Desert Wind around because both break down to Fire + Mobility, unless it were implemented as a ranged weapon subset of Desert Wind.

Which honestly works out in a few ways, since confining archery entirely to new Disciplines is doubling down on the issue we have to begin with. A similar matter of getting a few sword-and-board Maneuvers into Divine Spirit and Stone Dragon may be called for instead of being quite so insistent on trying to get a Discipline focused on the mechanics not touched on, when you have to also be dodging thematic overlaps. Similarly, Setting Sun and Diamond Mind could get Thrown stuff, and Shadow Hand a touch of Improvised Weapon or Unarmed use. White Raven archery also makes a good deal of sense, given what it is the Discipline gets up to and how it's meant to compare to Scarlet Bravura taking the charge side to crazy-town.

I realize you were looking at a flight disc as a prospective air discipline. Desert Wind is meant to cover both fire and air, and we can put in a few new DW maneuvers with a more wind/air theme. Earlier we were talking about its fire maneuvers being the aoe/damaging part and then the air maneuvers being mobility and soft battlefield control. Watch this space.

Hmm... This causes some thematic symmetry issues, since it means that Ocean Soul is Water/Air, Lightning Fox is just Air-as-Electric, Stone Dragon is just Earth-as-hardness, and Desert Wind ends up Fire/Air.

[Elves]

Re Druid / Initiator theurge

OK, so that paints a fairly clear picture. Any adept/druid can enter, but there are synergies that benefit animist entry -- animal companion/animal god stack, and there's a synergy between SNA and animist sprites (eg, maybe a class ability buffs your summons, which applies to sprites since they count as summoned).

Of course, since the original Wild Shape is "skipped"

It could just have druid 5/initiator 1 entry. Alternately, shapeshift druid ACF is available from 1st level IIRC.

7/10 vs 9/10 casting is just a function of how strong the class features end up being, IMO.

For Animal Companion, the idea I want to go for would be giving it a modified Animal Companion ability that can be used to boost any effective Druid level, but on its own ties up a spell slot summoning it for the day.

Using SNA to summon different forms of animal companion is a cool concept that could be an entire druid PRC to itself. For that reason, should make sure it doesn't distract from the main point, which is about integrating martial maneuvers and druid abilities.

There are ways to make it feed into that -- maybe the new ACs you summon are functionally much like an animist's sprites, possibly with initiating ability of their own (in a way, this ability could be an integration of what are currently contrasting class choices for the animist, of sprites vs animal gods).

But I'm almost loathe to do that, since that mechanic could be used for almost anything and almost feels like it deserves its own class rather than being stuffed into this one.

a reason for going through the weirdness of a technically-permanent-summon variant Animal Companion would be to specifically justify not requiring the feature to enter despite features contributing to it.

Since it's a theurge class that requires druid casting/druid features to enter, won't everyone have it by default?

Unless Shapeshift druid ACF were required to enter -- that takes away the default animal companion, so the summon-based animal companion from the PRC could be a new ability that provides some of the benefits of the class feature you sacrificed. Maybe. It's a possibility.


Re Animist

This was the first homebrew I did and it certainly needs changes as well as completion. I'll rez the thread and reply there as you ask.


Re Maneuvers

Ocean Soul: Sure, wake of turtle/whale/shark could be scaling variants of the same idea, rather than just upgrades.

the Discipline weapons all have range increments and literally nothing in the Discipline uses that. Heck, Nets don't even do damage by default, and Harpoons take a penalty if used in melee!

Another very good point.

No need to fully "de-mystify" -- it would be disappointing if there were no splashes of water -- but to give it a combat identity beyond that, with net and harpoon, is certainly a plus.

There just doesn't seem to be enough room for Pheonix Feather to be AoE with some mobility to be properly unique with Desert Wind around

My view is that the phoenix feather concept is arcane archery (delivering magical effects with arrows), with some healing and restorative effects thrown in to match the phoenix theme. Have to think about overlap, but only a few key maneuvers need be fire themed. Capstone, don't know how well balanced it is, but compared to inferno blast, it does less total damage in exchange for better targeting and the ability to heal.

For mobility, my main idea is shoot an arrow into a square, teleport to where arrow lands.

Which honestly works out in a few ways, since confining archery entirely to new Disciplines is doubling down on the issue we have to begin with.

A maneuver that's ranged or can be used ranged here and there is good. There are archery builds that already use TOB (the raging mongoose boost, famously). But having a couple of dedicated ranged disciplines is simple and fine.

Hmm... This causes some thematic symmetry issues, since it means that Ocean Soul is Water/Air, Lightning Fox is just Air-as-Electric, Stone Dragon is just Earth-as-hardness, and Desert Wind ends up Fire/Air.

Symmetry unnecessary IMO. Could have done something like a discipline for each skill as key skill, or all sorts of other schemas. Ultimately best to just have it be a handpicked list of good disciplines.

As-is, DW=fire/air, SD=earth, Ocean Soul=water. But correspondence to the classical elements isn't necessarily the end all be all. I could also see Desert Wind as simply "thermodynamics". Maybe even a cold effect or two, based on the rapidly cooling desert night.

For the druid PRC, Tiger Claw, Stone Dragon, Desert Wind, and Ocean Soul seems like a fine list. Maybe also Lightning Fox and White Raven.

[Elves]

Something very minor

This is the culmination of the "wall of blades" line. Does it need to be nerfed by ending automatically if you miss?


Bastion of Blades
Iron Heart (Counter)
Level: 8
Prerequisite: Three Iron Heart maneuvers
Initiation Action: Immediate action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: End of round

Raised and whipping around you, your sword is like a forcefield.

For the rest of the round, whenever a melee or ranged attack is made against you, you may make an opposed attack roll with a melee weapon you’re wielding. If your result is higher, the attack is negated. Hit or miss, each opposed roll after the first is made at a cumulative -2 penalty.

[DracoDei]

I can't say if it needs a nerf or not, but IF it does I think it would feel more "realistic" to increase the cumulative bonus rather than have it end on a failure.

[Morphic tide]

Re Druid / Initiator theurge

OK, so that paints a fairly clear picture. Any adept/druid can enter, but there are synergies that benefit animist entry -- animal companion/animal god stack, and there's a synergy between SNA and animist sprites (eg, maybe a class ability buffs your summons, which applies to sprites since they count as summoned).

Once more, I'd prefer casters other than Druid be able to enter it, provided they stick to the nature theme. Though perhaps requiring Animal Companion while having Animal God count for that prerequisite could be another direction to take the narrowing, so you end up needing Druid or Animist to get Animal Companion, but then the other receives far softer soft restrictions of skill list and a few specific spells/maneuvers that need met. The biggest issue that arises there is potential single-class entry via Ranger, though it'd be rather late from Mystic Ranger breaking the qualifications due to its removal of Animal Companion.

I do actually like the idea of some specific combinations getting single-class entry to PRCs, but it being early is a problem, as is the lack of costs to avoid spectacular combinations. Handing the A-Game Paladin free Initiating isn't going to go down well. The answer isn't free bonuses, it's uneven tradeoffs, so that multiple things looking to solve the problem can't be stacked. Sword of the Arcane Order Mystic Rangers are, again, extremely ridiculous until level 11, when the full casters finally have a spell level over them, because it's stacking two extreme solutions to the problem of Ranger spellcasting being superfluous.

Main thought is having the "Sublime variants" be the composite of two AFCs, each taking a chunk out of the base class's functions for Initiating effects, then a true Class Variant for the partial subsystem cases like Soulborn and Ranger that clashes with one of the two. So a "Sublime Mystic Ranger" under this paradigm would trade out Fighting Styles, tracking, and some skill points for Bard slots and an expanded list to do the lost effects with spellcasting and then some, and sacrifice Favored Enemy and personal mobility for the boosted Animal Companion and Disciplines decently suited to that style, while a "pure" Sublime Ranger would have instead traded off Fighting Styles, alongside their stealth effects, for directly analogous Disciplines (Tiger Claw, Iron Rain, and Shadow Hand, probably). Said "pure" Sublime Ranger would indeed still have partial casting, but it's the on-occasion baseline Ranger casting with very limited ability to enter PRCs, whereas the mixed version would be very blatant in being able to single-class the PRC we've been discussing by being rather close to just a base class version of it.

It could just have druid 5/initiator 1 entry. Alternately, shapeshift druid ACF is available from 1st level IIRC.

7/10 vs 9/10 casting is just a function of how strong the class features end up being, IMO.

With regards to entry, 6th is somewhat traditional for theurges on the basis of double 2nds, but even the 3/3 split doesn't quite have anything stick for Initiating, due to the half-IL rule causing a weird sinkhole for qualifications. 4/3, for IL 5, gives 3rd level Maneuvers but risks earlier access theurge PRCs being slipped in to the 6th level for fewer lost caster levels than intended for a final build. Having casting tradeoffs to justify the power of the features requires the features somehow make up for being down spell levels. This means either some truly astonishing endurance benefits, or features that have unprecedented amounts of sheer "do-everything" and such vast raw output that they wear t1 on their sleeve. Granted, a Wild Shape focused theurge class is one of the few places such abilities can be put without much fuss, but the big thing is that there's very few things that can possibly compensate for losing 9th level spells.

Using SNA to summon different forms of animal companion is a cool concept that could be an entire druid PRC to itself. For that reason, should make sure it doesn't distract from the main point, which is about integrating martial maneuvers and druid abilities.

There are ways to make it feed into that -- maybe the new ACs you summon are functionally much like an animist's sprites, possibly with initiating ability of their own (in a way, this ability could be an integration of what are currently contrasting class choices for the animist, of sprites vs animal gods).

But I'm almost loathe to do that, since that mechanic could be used for almost anything and almost feels like it deserves its own class rather than being stuffed into this one.

My main thought for keeping it tied in was pretty much to hang the bonuses off Share Spell, so you have a limited number of ways to get a body the group-buffs apply to. If you find the idea of a summoning Druid blending it with Animal Companion such compelling design space that it feels like it'd be overstuffing the "Druid/Animist" Theurge, the fact that both have Animal Companion, even if it's optional and modified on Animist, means that having it as a prerequisite still gives you at least two options to meet it, loosening the other side's choices.

Since it's a theurge class that requires druid casting/druid features to enter, won't everyone have it by default?

Unless Shapeshift druid ACF were required to enter -- that takes away the default animal companion, so the summon-based animal companion from the PRC could be a new ability that provides some of the benefits of the class feature you sacrificed. Maybe. It's a possibility.

The thing about giving it a variant Animal Companion is that it can then have features specifically benefiting Animal Companion, if only from Share Spell effects as mentioned to go with the direction of buff focuses, without necessitating it to enter or having those features be "dead" if you end up using Spirit Shaman for the casting. But then again, Animist has its own Animal Companion equivalent, and the wording wouldn't be difficult at all, so if you're Druid/Poet it all functions, and it also works out if you instead do Spirit Shaman/Animist. Since both subsystems can have the feature in question, adding the summon shenanigans that actively invite the nastiest splat-diving and playtime pileups of the game just to avoid formally requiring the feature isn't actually necessary to have entry flexibility.

My view is that the phoenix feather concept is arcane archery (delivering magical effects with arrows), with some healing and restorative effects thrown in to match the phoenix theme. Have to think about overlap, but only a few key maneuvers need be fire themed. Capstone, don't know how well balanced it is, but compared to inferno blast, it does less damage in exchange for better targeting and the ability to heal.

For mobility, my main idea is shoot an arrow into a square, teleport to where arrow lands.

A maneuver that's ranged or can be used ranged here and there is good. There are archery builds that already use TOB (the raging mongoose boost, famously). But having a couple of dedicated ranged disciplines is simple and fine.

The point of bringing up the capstone is how it suggests healing would be a major part of the Discipline. Having the reverse of what you mention, with a "ranged" Discipline that has a number of effects quite useful for melee, is also something to bring up, so by having the mobility effects be almost perfect for an in-and-out melee build because they're designed for an archer's escape, melee builds get an interest in taking Phoenix Feather Maneuvers that tie into their primary playstyle that offer prerequisites for good-enough Strikes to be a functioning backup ranged option, without needing bogged down in ranged-only effects they have extremely rare use for.

Mobility by way of teleporting to a fired arrow, for a primarily melee character, would be an action to get out the bow, an action to use the maneuver, then another action to get back out their melee weapon. Unless they invested fully into switch-hitting or are pulling shenanigans with a Hand Crossbow or Thrown weapon transparency to skip the weapon draws, this isn't functional. I'm not saying they all need a strong pile of such effects, but at least one of them should be viable to have some part taken for melee to meet requirements for dips into strong ranged attacks to use as backup options, enabling a switch-hitter because one of the ranged Disciplines has a lot of secondary effects that work well for melee, and Pheonix Feather having inbuilt healing marks it as a very good choice for this.

Symmetry unnecessary IMO. Could have done something like a discipline for each skill as key skill, or all sorts of other schemas. Ultimately best to just have it be a handpicked list of good disciplines.

As-is, DW=fire/air, SD=earth, Ocean Soul=water. But correspondence to the classical elements isn't necessarily the end all be all. I could also see Desert Wind as simply "thermodynamics". Maybe even a cold effect or two, based on the rapidly cooling desert night.

The point of poking at symmetry of the Four Elements is that it's a weirdly unexplored field of 3.5, which is one major reason I'd like to focus the bonuses of the Druid theurge around Elemental effects so that they'll be using that as their method at least as much as turning into the currently-level-appropriate bear, making it clear that it's forces of nature they are calling on for their damage. Lightning Fox does well enough as Air when it needs tracked separately from Fire, as attested to with Whirlwind Air.

For the druid PRC, Tiger Claw, Stone Dragon, Desert Wind, and Ocean Soul seems like a fine list. Maybe also Lightning Fox and White Raven.

I still think Scarlet Bravura is a better fit than mainline White Raven, since it gets some effects to keep your Animal Companion standing and works with a prospective "Druidic Avenger" take on the fluff. The other major direction for flavor being embracing the whole of nature to guide martial excellence. Broken Blade might work at a stretch, as an "anti-civilization" touch to go with the Druid's forbiddance of metal, though such would be making the PRC broader than most of the base classes for Disciplines and make it dangerously feature-complete.

Something very minor

This is the culmination of the "wall of blades" line. Does it need to be nerfed by ending automatically if you miss?


Bastion of Blades
Iron Heart (Counter)
Level: 8
Prerequisite: Three Iron Heart maneuvers
Initiation Action: Immediate action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: End of round

Raised and whipping around you, your sword is like a forcefield.

For the rest of the round, whenever a melee or ranged attack is made against you, you may make an opposed attack roll with a melee weapon you’re wielding. If your result is higher, the attack is negated. Hit or miss, each opposed roll after the first is made at a cumulative -2 penalty.

The cumulative penalty means that it's going to shut down incoming damage in duels, as the penalty to iteratives is larger, but between the single-round duration and it coping poorly with multiple semi-threatening opponents Full Attacking you, it seems a good direction over the initial Wall of Blades, and Manticore Parry loses the anti-ranged properties for getting to redirect to a different adjacent enemy. Single-turn protection from attacks at level 15 isn't anything special, given what Abjurations can start doing at level 3 with Protection from Arrows.

Honestly, since you have to have a better Attack bonus than the enemy, without any of the tricks to give bonuses to attacks because you just make an opposed roll, it could probably be level 7 and not break things. As-is, to block a Marut's first slam reliably with a full-BAB level 15 character, you need to get a +7 to have it be 50/50, and for a typically good 70% chance you need to get to +11 over full BAB. Getting base 18 Strength to meet the 50/50 off +6 Gauntlets of Ogre Strength does meet this, but at that you still go down to 40% for the second Slam. Meanwhile, at level 20, the Pit Fiend gets +30/+30/+28/+28/+28/+28, so you need to get +20 over full BAB to have a 50% chance on the final attack. That -2 per incoming attack is plenty enough for dealing with volume of fire.

The only case where it'd be prone to causing problems is shutting off spellcaster rays, since they rely on going after Touch AC instead of bothering with saves or armor, but I don't think people are going to complain a huge amount about Iron Heart getting a one-use Counter to shut Rays against them off for a turn all the way at level 15.


---

Also, as another aside, Path of War has Sleeping Goddess, by name and the same Maneuvers, so you can just link one of the Pathfinder SRDs with the Dreamscarred Press published version and whatever Pathfinder rule pages are needed to clarify for the system conversion instead of trying to dance around a locked thread. I generally suggest going over Dreamscarred Press closer and seeing where they have an already finished and decently tested Discipline for something you want to just point at, run the basic conversion work for, and add Rushes since DSP doesn't use them. There's another such issue since the name Broken Blade is taken by Path of War's unarmed Discipline.

Possibly merge the current rather situational Broken Blade with Sublime Tapestry, probably cutting down on the blunt nova tricks of Sublime Tapestry, namely Double Strike and other such direct "do more Maneuvers in a turn", to help make the room, while taking the Maneuver-copying and some counterspell-related anti-Initiating effects from the current Broken Blade, namely Return the Favor for the former and Throw Off the Master for the latter, as examples. Counters to just deny the Maneuver effects of an incoming Strike, forcing added effort rather than directly expending Maneuvers, basically roll the two into a combination of "meta-maneuvers" and "counter-maneuvers" housed in one Discipline-that-messes-with-other-Disciplines, having methods of use that don't require enemy Initiators, and stuff it can do that makes it work well enough on its own.

Importantly, Broken Blade copying can be merged with Sublime Tapestry counterparts to save on space, such as making Sublime Tapestry's Mirror Strike into a Counter to retain the effect of Broken Blade's Return the Favor, but be capable of using it as a Swift Action on your following turn to benefit from boost-your-next-attack Strikes, alongside being able to use it to copy your own Strikes on the same turn they were used. Which synergises well with Strikes that boost your other attacks, and makes Double Strike redundant by having a method to imitate its effect perfectly, albeit with worse action economy... That better justifies Resurgent Reaction letting you Counter without compromising your Boosts.

A similar thing is that Fool's Grip, Bloodstained Gutter, Oncoming Storm, and Chthonic Serpent are all takes on dirty fighting, with rather little mechanical "width" to any of them. Chthonic Serpent is an entire Discipline about the abuse of a single weapon type for two combat actions, Fool's Grip is nothing but improvised weapons, Bloodstained Gutter is incomplete and comprised of a single source of pre-existing rider effects, and Oncoming Storm... Actually pretty much works, because it's the only one of the lot with a proper multiple-approaches style of fighting as its inspiration instead of being built around a single extremely specific mechanical "seed". Could poach some bits of Dancing Leaf's overloaded defenses for some more variety in kinds of effect, certainly, but it seems no less varied than as-published Desert Wind at a basic overview, even if it's not very interesting in the variety of things it does due to them all coming out as variants of extra hits and dirty tricks.

I'd salvage Chthonic Serpent mostly for Ocean Soul, as Grapple with Reach is a rather blunt way to have "drag in and disable" work out, and dragging in someone with a net followed by repeatedly stabbing them with a trident is... Most definitely something that happened in the Colosseum, once upon a time.

Fool's Grip and Bloodstained Gutter are wholly overlapping thematically as ad-hoc fighting. I'd actually go with Bloodstained Gutter being the final Discipline, taking Maneuvers from Fool's Grip to make using Improvised Weapons work out (larger damage bonus than usual to account for lack of magic item properties), then possibly add some Unarmed that focuses more heavily on control effects than the Improvised Weapon line. Finally, replace Sneak Attack for bonuses to hitting people while they're down from the conditions the Discipline inflicts for a style of play that focuses on crippling enemies, then beating them to death, with the inclusions of Improvised Weapon above-standard-curve-bonus-damage (to make up for them not being able to be magic weapons) and Unarmed effects with annoyingly efficient riders (possibly on Counters, like Dancing Leaf's Whirlwind Gyre) to make the "dirty fighting" extend to independence from conventional equipment.

---

More on Dancing Leaf: As mentioned, it's spectacularly overloaded in defenses. It has all of four Strikes, and three of those are progressively better AC bonuses after the hit. The second-level Maneuvers consist of three active defenses and a counterattack. Despite being "evasive", the only two responsive movement effects are a Counter to move out of the way of a spell on the same level as outright Spell Resistance, and a 6th-level Counterattack that gives you all of a 5-foot step.

My thoughts are to take the existing Strike line and merge it with the pure +AC Counters and "basic" counterattacks, which takes nine of the current Maneuvers and packs them down to maybe four, then merge Turn Back the Wind and Whirlwind Gyre, alongside Step Past the World and Walk the Thorn-Strewn Path, for just one pure defense Counter at 2nd and just one anti-spell Counter at 4th. Then make Escape the Blade the start of a line of Rushes for moving with much reduced concerns, add a line of Strikes for backstepping after the not-much-boosted attack, and at least one Boost to give extra Opportunity Attacks and an alternate use of them. Possibly work Whirlwind Gyre into the general parry effects, with the chance to Disarm or Trip being if the incoming attack didn't meet your Touch AC.

The overall thought being making room for Dancing Leaf to get mobility by cutting down on redundant Counters, but preserve it as having nothing that's strictly offensive per the reason for it not being taught at the Temple. Ideally the counterattacks would be worded such that they could be used as Swift Action attacks instead of being hard restricted to use as Counters, giving access to two-hit Spring Attacks without the enemy needing to go for an Opportunity Attack as you retreat. Overall, move it from purely dodge-tanking to a defensively-focused melee Skirmisher, relying on Counters for on-pace damage output.

[Elves]

BTW Morphic, you obviously have a lot of ideas for this PRC and you're free to write it yourself if you want -- I'm trying to edit the project but by no means am I trying to act like "the only one who can do things". You could also draft and post specific class abilities if a class is too much.

For my part, before getting to the druid PRC I have to finish the incarnum and psionics theurge PRCs. And I guess revising animist is a precondition.

Handing the A-Game Paladin free Initiating isn't going to go down well.

I get your point about stacking multiple empowerment ACFs, but AFAIK there isn't anything as powerful as mystic ranger. Paladin with all the nice ACFs is still not great.

Multiple ACFs gets too complicated. There is a thought to be had about doing class variants rather than ACFs, but that's more work and in practice would result in straight-up empowerment anyway. Also, once you're completely refurbishing the Core classes, you're getting into the territory of "fixing 3.5", which I think is sort of like a distracting El Dorado.

Having casting tradeoffs to justify the power of the features requires the features somehow make up for being down spell levels. This means either some truly astonishing endurance benefits, or features that have unprecedented amounts of sheer "do-everything" and such vast raw output that they wear t1 on their sleeve.

Probably 8/10 as that's the precedent from JPM/RKV.

My main thought for keeping it tied in was pretty much to hang the bonuses off Share Spell

Which is why you want to count the manifest sprites as familiars? Does make sense, the paramount thing is making the statblock for the sprites extremely simple because these are supposed to come in and out in combat on the fly. The set hp like a familiar fits with this, other stuff may make it too complex, but can always give the sprites Share Spells by fiat.

If you find the idea of a summoning Druid blending it with Animal Companion such compelling design space that it feels like it'd be overstuffing the "Druid/Animist" Theurge, the fact that both have Animal Companion, even if it's optional and modified on Animist, means that having it as a prerequisite still gives you at least two options to meet it, loosening the other side's choices.

Yeah, I think it's an idea that wouldn't be done justice by being stuffed in here. AC makes a good prereq.

melee builds get an interest in taking Phoenix Feather Maneuvers that tie into their primary playstyle that offer prerequisites for good-enough Strikes to be a functioning backup ranged option, without needing bogged down in ranged-only effects they have extremely rare use for.

I see now what you're saying about locking people between ranged and melee in a way that doesn't need to be so bifurcated.

This teleport mv will work with thrown weapons. Melee weps can be thrown and it's a move action to pick them up if they were thrown at empty space. Maybe you can keep them in your hand.

The cumulative penalty means that it's going to shut down incoming damage in duels, as the penalty to iteratives is larger, but between the single-round duration and it coping poorly with multiple semi-threatening opponents Full Attacking you, it seems a good direction over the initial Wall of Blades, and Manticore Parry loses the anti-ranged properties for getting to redirect to a different adjacent enemy. Single-turn protection from attacks at level 15 isn't anything special, given what Abjurations can start doing at level 3 with Protection from Arrows.

Ok, so I won't do the ends if you miss nerf. Nerf, if applied, would increase penalty.

The only case where it'd be prone to causing problems is shutting off spellcaster rays, since they rely on going after Touch AC instead of bothering with saves or armor, but I don't think people are going to complain a huge amount about Iron Heart getting a one-use Counter to shut Rays against them off for a turn all the way at level 15.

Also wall of blades can already do this and you're much less likely to face multiple rays in 1 turn than multiple attacks.

Also, as another aside, Path of War has Sleeping Goddess, by name and the same Maneuvers, so you can just link one of the Pathfinder SRDs with the Dreamscarred Press published version and whatever Pathfinder rule pages are needed to clarify for the system conversion instead of trying to dance around a locked thread.

That was ErrantX also obviously working from Demented One's discipline. Demented One approved the discipline for AOW before that and has this in his sig: "I'm fine with people using my homebrew in anything, including fan-compilations and wikis, as long as you credit me."

I have taken a look through some of the POW discs. Iron Tortoise seems solid and would probably be the basis of any shield disc we did, though I don't feel a pressure to even have one for that reason. Can't see a ton of stuff to change.

Possibly merge the current rather situational Broken Blade with Sublime Tapestry

I did swap some maneuvers from one to the other in order to clarify the themes -- BB fighting other adepts, Tapestry affecting other maneuvers. Here are the current WIP drafts:

Sublime Tapestry
Broken Blade

Broken Blade is niche but has an evocative theme, I think it's distinct enough to keep.

Counters to just deny the Maneuver effects of an incoming Strike

yeah, that's a good one for BB since it neutralizes but doesn't introduce the balance risk always involved in straight up action denial.

A similar thing is that Fool's Grip, Bloodstained Gutter, Oncoming Storm, and Chthonic Serpent are all takes on dirty fighting, with rather little mechanical "width" to any of them.

First of all here are the draft links:

Bloodstained Gutter (complete)
Chthonic Serpent (complete)
Onc storm (WIP)
- Fool's Grip I haven't taken a look at yet.

Chthonic is fine because tripping is a well-defined and common strat in 3.5. Something does need to be done about fools grip, possible cut. Oncoming storm redundancy is a concern -- bloodstained and shadow hand both cover elements of rogue fighting. Very possible to dish it. Brought it in to be the staple discipline for the swashbuckler variant class -- I see its emphasis as "duelist" stuff (with that gimmick of delayed damage). That may or may not be distinct enough, also bleeds into Iron Heart.

Finally, replace Sneak Attack for bonuses to hitting people while they're down from the conditions the Discipline inflicts for a style of play that focuses on crippling enemies, then beating them to death

Dope idea and easily achieved with a scaling 1st level stance and/or strike that give +attack and damage vs prone/crippled foes.

Only thing to keep in mind is that it's unfortunately hard to have a "style of play" that goes beyond one maneuver because people get so few and choose them in such a scattered way.

[quote]More on Dancing Leaf:[quote]
It suffers from being different scaled versions of just a few effects. Focus on counters and very few strikes is thematic, but condensing the maneuvers into ones that scale certainly leaves room for non-counters with defensive riders, and yes, rushes would be fitting. Impressed how you're actually going through and looking at all this stuff.

Speaking of which, since it was brought up higher on the page, do you think we should do a dedicated mageslayer discipline? Alternative is to scatter anticaster effects among several disciplines, including Iron Heart and Witch Razor.

[Elves]

What if we just got rid of maneuver prerequisites? Other than IL.

I don't necessarily want to, just throwing out the thought.

Or could remove them for all but capstones, which still leaves the most flavorful part of prereq-gating.

The primary function prereq-gating serves is to make discipline items and TOB class dips less powerful.

But as a balancing mechanism for the maneuvers themselves, it's pretty ineffective. And it adds an element of arbitrariness that possibly doesn't need to be there in terms of restricting martial adepts from choosing the capabilities they want.

[NigelWalmsley]

Removing prereqs seems like a generally good idea. It greatly simplifies the process of building a martial adept, and makes it much easier for characters to develop organically. It does somewhat weaken the incentive to make a character who is a Shadow Hand guru or Desert Wind master, but I think the fact that those characters are conceptually compelling is probably all the incentive people need to make them.

[Elves]

I do like the idea. At the same time I want this to have a sense of being official, and not like too radical of a departure. Probably it's best to just include no prerequisites as a variant rule, like fractional BAB.

[DracoDei]

I think that if you include that optional rule you should make sure to mention that it may dilute the flavor of needing to train with great dedication to learn a masterful technique, with the basics being required to learn the advanced techniques. As a middle state between the two, maybe say that if you trade out a maneuver for one in the same discipline when leveling up you get to count the old one even though you know longer "know" it?

[NigelWalmsley]

I do like the idea. At the same time I want this to have a sense of being official, and not like too radical of a departure. Probably it's best to just include no prerequisites as a variant rule, like fractional BAB.

Not to be rude, by I'm pretty sure the ship sailed on "sense of being official" when you decided to write unpublished third party material for a book that's ten years and two editions out of date. Just do the thing that is most mechanically compelling.

I think that if you include that optional rule you should make sure to mention that it may dilute the flavor of needing to train with great dedication to learn a masterful technique, with the basics being required to learn the advanced techniques.

Doesn't the fact that you need to be a 15th level character to learn an 8th level maneuver convey that fine?

[Elves]

It's more like sense of continuity. The benefit of it being a variant rule is that the prereqs, IMO, remain useful for regulating the maneuvers you can access through items. As a variant rule I'd word it like this:

"Ignore the “Prerequisites” entry for all maneuvers, except for 9th level maneuvers and epic maneuvers. Learning a maneuver still requires a sufficient initiator level. Maneuver prerequisites must still be fulfilled when accessing a maneuver through an item."

That said -- point taken.

[Morphic tide]

BTW Morphic, you obviously have a lot of ideas for this PRC and you're free to write it yourself if you want -- I'm trying to edit the project but by no means am I trying to act like "the only one who can do things". You could also draft and post specific class abilities if a class is too much.

For my part, before getting to the druid PRC I have to finish the incarnum and psionics theurge PRCs. And I guess revising animist is a precondition.

Getting started on in under the name "Claw of the Elements", with entry being as level 8, and consequently the Knowledge (Nature) and Martial Lore are set to 10 ranks (7+3 for class skill) for a 4/3 split one way or the other that needs the last pre-entry level being an Initiator to get the Martial Lore. Going to use regular Wild Shape and IL as Druid level for brevity and transparency instead of needing to work out the expected output curve and come up with alternate rules to meet that and boilerplate all the counts-as properly.

As for Psionics theurging, one thing I did with one of my own PRCs (was the last PRC contest before those just kinda stopped) was have the normally-dead Manifesting levels instead give levels of Psychic Warrior manifesting. This makes it full progression for a lower-power Manifester that's fully on-theme, while also avoiding being completely dead to higher-power Manifesters. Unfortunately, spellcasting doesn't work in nearly the same way.

I get your point about stacking multiple empowerment ACFs, but AFAIK there isn't anything as powerful as mystic ranger. Paladin with all the nice ACFs is still not great.

Multiple ACFs gets too complicated. There is a thought to be had about doing class variants rather than ACFs, but that's more work and in practice would result in straight-up empowerment anyway. Also, once you're completely refurbishing the Core classes, you're getting into the territory of "fixing 3.5", which I think is sort of like a distracting El Dorado.

For reference, here's the A-game Paladin. It stacks trading out Turn Undead for an extra slot per level with Illumian to get their bonus slots off Strength with Sword of the Arcane Order to get Wizard spells with Battle Blessing to turn a considerable number of rather good buffs into Swift Actions. And also stacks Harmonious Knight and Smite to Song and Song of the Heart and Words of Creation to turn their Smite Evil into +8 Inspire Courage at level 15, with an item around to bring it to +12. And it has a tripled Lay on Hands pool.

In total, its party-wide buffstack without getting into spells at 20 is +6d10 HD, +23 to Attack rolls, +17 to damage per attack, +4 Fortitude and +12 to Saves vs. Fear for 5 rounds. It is very much powerful enough, being easily the equal if not the better of a traditional Bard at party support bar uses per day. It may not outright break anything, but giving this access to Devoted Spirit as nothing but upside? It has hideous accuracy and a vast effective health pool, handing it strong single hits at full BAB and per-encounter healing out of Devoted Spirit means it basically can't die and will land every single hit.

Which is why you want to count the manifest sprites as familiars? Does make sense, the paramount thing is making the statblock for the sprites extremely simple because these are supposed to come in and out in combat on the fly. The set hp like a familiar fits with this, other stuff may make it too complex, but can always give the sprites Share Spells by fiat.

Familiars do have Share Spell to begin with, with the most complicated thing to regularly come up probably being Deliver Touch Spells. Although it turns out I was wrong about the defensive bonuses, Familiars get +1 Natural Armor every two levels and Improved Evasion to start with, and have scaling Intelligence. They still have a terrible baseline and have fewer things laying around to make them useful for high-level combat, so they'll still be inferior to the Animal Companion in most cases. Especially if there's some Companion templates, like I mentioned giving as one option to expand on Maneuver access for Animist and a locked-in element for Sublime Ranger to distance it from Ranger+

I see now what you're saying about locking people between ranged and melee in a way that doesn't need to be so bifurcated.

This teleport mv will work with thrown weapons. Melee weps can be thrown and it's a move action to pick them up if they were thrown at empty space. Maybe you can keep them in your hand.

Thrown weapons are fine, probably just having it call for a Ranged attack/weapon without specifying it be a projectile weapon. Returning is a +1, so spending ~4k GP on a backup ranged weapon that doubles as your combat mobility is a fine enough expense. It's ultimately your project, even if you seem to keep failing to update what's linked in the OP, I'm just looking at what there is and thinking about streamlining down the sheer bulk of it to something more managable and with lowered redundancies.

That was ErrantX also obviously working from Demented One's discipline. Demented One approved the discipline for AOW before that and has this in his sig: "I'm fine with people using my homebrew in anything, including fan-compilations and wikis, as long as you credit me."

I have taken a look through some of the POW discs. Iron Tortoise seems solid and would probably be the basis of any shield disc we did, though I don't feel a pressure to even have one for that reason. Can't see a ton of stuff to change.

The main thing is making sure about the balance point sticking between ToB and PoW, and being sure the translations between the two don't openly break anything by checking the dangers (Maneuver refresh, extra actions, multipliers, etc), alongside accounting for where Pathfinder has provoked differing balance points with its reliable access to extra Enhancement bonus. Trying to make Age of War a "sandbox" that gives specified conversions handling the various issues arising from back-porting Path of War is likely last-leg, if ever, material, though.

I did swap some maneuvers from one to the other in order to clarify the themes -- BB fighting other adepts, Tapestry affecting other maneuvers. Here are the current WIP drafts:

Sublime Tapestry
Broken Blade

Broken Blade is niche but has an evocative theme, I think it's distinct enough to keep.

The issue I have is that none of the base 9 Disciplines are niche. They don't have situational bonuses that are outside the player's hands to meet, while the entire point of Sublime Tapestry is that it doesn't work on its own, and Broken Blade is nearly useless against non-Initiators. A Discipline is an extremely valuable level of access, and eating one of them for basically Favored Enemy (Martial Adepts) and nothing else is something that will be seen only by characters with a spectacular surplus of options. Since both are based around the intricate understanding of the Sublime Way's underpinnings, and both can directly copy other Maneuvers as an overlapped mechanic of extreme significance, merging the two into one general manipulation Discipline gives it a capacity to be focused on largely lacking of either apart.

The point is, essentially, that they burn a Discipline slot on a "maybe I can use this if", rather than "I'll use it to do this" like the original Nine. Dancing Leaf is also a "niche" Discipline, but that is due to its focus on a specific area of general combat that leaves it lacking in offenses, rather than being of only occasional use like Broken Blade or being what-I-already-do-but-better like Sublime Tapestry. Again, merging the two, you get one "messes with other Disciplines" Discipline, taking the two approaches to such a thing and uniting them under one roof. It's fine if the final Discipline bloats to 30 Maneuvers, since you're already giving the original nine extras that drive them there.

If you insist on Broken Blade being its own thing, make it be generally anti-Martial with a few properties that make it especially painful against Initiators, but mostly center on the general pattern of how Martials function to screw them over, like high-value Strength and Dexterity penalties (NOT damage, but rather stuff like a 3rd level that gives -6 to each). Terrible at dealing with mass Fighters, but quite able to wreck squads of Initiators from those few specifically-anti-Initiator bonuses getting it scaling multi-targeted decently. And also change the name to Shattered Sword or something just to not have the naming issues with the PoW Unarmed Discipline.

First of all here are the draft links:

Bloodstained Gutter (complete)
Chthonic Serpent (complete)
Onc storm (WIP)
- Fool's Grip I haven't taken a look at yet.

Again with the work documents not in the OP. Focusing on Bloodstained Gutter as to not get bogged down in comparison of the two originally-completed Disciplines, it seems the direction I was suggesting with Bloodstained Gutter about mixing in Unarmed stuff was already taken, in a rather similar fashion. Though you seem to use "heavy" weapon in several places, which isn't a thing in 3.5. I take it you meant Two-Handed? Stranglehold is weird because they call out a specific action as that type of action, and both it and Chokehold being at 1st level contributes to that being rather... bloated. Perhaps make Stranglehold 2nd level and deal a set amount of damage to begin with? Arterial Strike is also bad compared to most with only one damage per turn and no scaling, where others have up-front damage or various implicitly scaling properties.

And I also dislike some of the special rule stuff going on, and in this case it isn't actually a central part of the Discipline like it is for Sleeping Goddess. Dealing Nonlethal damage is only occasionally important, and given the nature of the Discipline, the benefit doesn't entirely fit and could be baked into the few fitting Maneuvers. Possibly convert Rain of Pain into, or add a new Stance for, Two-Weapon Fighting benefits alongside giving the Improved Unarmed Strike feat, intending to leverage the matter of being able to mix Unarmed Strikes into regular combat as if an off-hand weapon but being quite workable for hacking into Monk PRCs the way Shadow Hand gets used to cheat into Rogue stuff.

I'd also have Sucker Punch be locked-in as such, requiring it be an unarmed attack, and make it responsive in some way, perhaps a Counter with a Trigger of "a creature loses Dexterity to AC/becomes Flatfooted in reach". Then the +4 is normally needed for the lethal damage, but if you get that from somewhere else, or just don't care/want it to be nonlethal, you have +4 to the attack roll against the already-denied-Dexterity target.

Chthonic is fine because tripping is a well-defined and common strat in 3.5. Something does need to be done about fools grip, possible cut. Oncoming storm redundancy is a concern -- bloodstained and shadow hand both cover elements of rogue fighting. Very possible to dish it. Brought it in to be the staple discipline for the swashbuckler variant class -- I see its emphasis as "duelist" stuff (with that gimmick of delayed damage). That may or may not be distinct enough, also bleeds into Iron Heart.

Could make Oncoming Storm the offensive side of the melee Skirmisher style, all getting around and hitting things all over the place as the Swashbuckler does, and for that matter the Scout class's "move 10 ft. for damage and AC" feature (which is... Skirmish, hence me describing Dancing Leaf as defensive Skirmishing by bleeding some actual mobility into its mass of mobility-flavored AC). Prune the most "Rogue" bits for some more Swashbuckler, with the charge-without-AoOs, flanking bonuses, and other such attack-facing mobility effects.

Dope idea and easily achieved with a scaling 1st level stance and/or strike that give +attack and damage vs prone/crippled foes.

Only thing to keep in mind is that it's unfortunately hard to have a "style of play" that goes beyond one maneuver because people get so few and choose them in such a scattered way.

The main thing is having the pieces interact with several other pieces if you're looking for multi-Maneuver playstyles and have a few different ways to handle a given function, for more of a "net" of Maneuvers that make for a series of two and three Maneuver combinations. Such as my suggested reworking of Dancing Leaf giving it a bundle of ways to emulate Spring Attack to simply not be in range of reprisal on top of its access to Dodge AC.

It suffers from being different scaled versions of just a few effects. Focus on counters and very few strikes is thematic, but condensing the maneuvers into ones that scale certainly leaves room for non-counters with defensive riders, and yes, rushes would be fitting. Impressed how you're actually going through and looking at all this stuff.

It's not an in-depth dive, I don't really have the focus for intense number-crunching and comparing all 20+ Maneuvers of several Disciplines, but I'm very quick to pick at patterns and where they overlap. I've spent a lot of time ranting about the worldbuilding of Warcraft, including the places it manages to underdo societal change over time.

Speaking of which, since it was brought up higher on the page, do you think we should do a dedicated mageslayer discipline? Alternative is to scatter anticaster effects among several disciplines, including Iron Heart and Witch Razor.

I'd go with the scattered effects, or have the mechanics centered on what screws over casters within the normal combat rules over another pile of doesn't-really-work-otherwise like Broken Blade. A Discipline is a very large unit of access, so dedicating one to screwing over a single type of enemy isn't very good form. As a new Discipline, it could also be the conclusion of, or an imitation of, the Jade Phoenix Mage, merging spellcasting and Initiating on the Discipline level like Sleeping Goddess does for Psionics, with an emphasis on Abjuration and Divination for the spell properties.

What if we just got rid of maneuver prerequisites? Other than IL.

I don't necessarily want to, just throwing out the thought.

Or could remove them for all but capstones, which still leaves the most flavorful part of prereq-gating.

The primary function prereq-gating serves is to make discipline items and TOB class dips less powerful.

But as a balancing mechanism for the maneuvers themselves, it's pretty ineffective. And it adds an element of arbitrariness that possibly doesn't need to be there in terms of restricting martial adepts from choosing the capabilities they want.

As you'd mentioned, it does a lot to constrain ToB dips and Maneuver-granting items from being excessively powerful. As a proper Alternate Rule, it'd need to follow the example set by Shadowcaster of flipping from prerequisites to benefits in some capacity. This could mean an alternate save DC formula such as 10+Man. Known+Ability, making a Shadow Hand specialist have very good odds on all of their saves instead of just decent ones on the high-level Maneuvers with them and causing all the save-dependent Maneuvers to be bad if they're one-offs, or it could be a boost to attack rolls, or getting extra Maneuvers of the Discipline, or whatever other bonus for specializing you could look at.

While the save DC suggestion doubtlessly has some issues with being inflatable, there's generally few enough Maneuvers Known to keep it from getting much past spellcasting after the mid levels, and the effects are generally not as powerful so a higher chance for success is less of a problem. Sure, a Swordsage that's dumped literally everything into one Discipline could throw a DC 40 save-or-probably-die without too much pushing, but that's taking rather close to every Maneuver there is to take... And spellcasters get AoE save-or-dies as their weaker 9ths. The other major upside is that it means save-focused characters have a reasonable alternative to dancing through MADness in the form of substituting ability bonus with taking more Maneuvers of the Discipline, so a Swordsage looking for saving throws can work perfectly fine with only 14 Wisdom to make room for better physical scores by specializing a bit more than would be optimal under the normal rules.

Could cap by IL to avoid the spectacular pushes of Swordsages putting their everything into one Discipline, and cut into the output for mixed builds.

[Elves]

Do note Morphic that we're using Demented One's system for alternate disciplines where there's no limit on how many you can learn. No need for that when people are already limited by maneuvers known and (unless removed) maneuver prereqs.

Getting started on in under the name "Claw of the Elements", with entry being as level 8, and consequently the Knowledge (Nature) and Martial Lore are set to 10 ranks (7+3 for class skill) for a 4/3 split one way or the other that needs the last pre-entry level being an Initiator to get the Martial Lore. Going to use regular Wild Shape and IL as Druid level for brevity and transparency instead of needing to work out the expected output curve and come up with alternate rules to meet that and boilerplate all the counts-as properly.

Ok, cool. (Personally I've been turning away from skill prereqs as unnecessary.)

On Core classes: I have thought more about doing variant classes instead of ACFs. Eg, I like paladins and would enjoy a functional "true blue" paladin that doesn't make smite weird like PF does. It's just low priority IMO.

If you insist on Broken Blade being its own thing, make it be generally anti-Martial with a few properties that make it especially painful against Initiators

A good call. Even with it being the case that you aren't losing anything by learning Broken Blade, it's still too niche to spend mvs on unless it's more fully "anti-martial". Though that does provide a reason to do a full "anti-caster" disc as a counterpart. Or maybe trying to weave it in so that Broken Blade is the general "PVP" disc?

Though you seem to use "heavy" weapon in several places, which isn't a thing in 3.5.

Fixed.

Could make Oncoming Storm the offensive side of the melee Skirmisher style, all getting around and hitting things all over the place as the Swashbuckler does

Yeah, I think that's the direction to go with.

It's not an in-depth dive, I don't really have the focus for intense number-crunching and comparing all 20+ Maneuvers of several Disciplines, but I'm very quick to pick at patterns and where they overlap.

Well it's appreciated, and the fact that I'm not doing the revising right away is just because finalizing the disciplines is something I want to do last, after the PRCs and base classes.

I've spent a lot of time ranting about the worldbuilding of Warcraft, including the places it manages to underdo societal change over time.

Ha, I do know the franchise and my impression is it's intentionally a comic book rule of cool kitchen sink where caring about consistency immolates your mind. Mechanically, I think there are cues D&D can take from WOW and similar games though. Doing this project has made me see the flaws in 3.5 and realize how nice it would be to have an edition that took away the baggage and had cleaner and more intentional kit design while not going "back to basics" the way 5e did.