The Age of Warriors (Project Revived!)

**NigelWalmsley** · 2020-05-26, 05:22 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Morphic tide

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.

IMO it's not really about giving that Devoted Spirit, but about giving the guy who plays straight Paladin 20 some love. Part of the advantage of Tome of Battle is lowering the optimization floor to play an effective martial, and while that might result in optimized martials being too good, I think that can be dealt with fairly easily (and, frankly, is still not a huge problem in the grand scheme -- A-Game Paladin + Devoted Spirit is still worse than a comparably optimized Wizard).

If you're really concerned, I would just pick something that's key to the A-Game Paladin and have the ACF trade off with that too.

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.

In fairness, "spellcasters" is a pretty big category of enemy, particularly if you consider that whatever options you're handing out there will probably also work against the various things that have SLAs. That said, it seems like most of the stuff you'd want to give out here would fit in Iron Heart or Diamond Mind.

Originally Posted by Elves

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.

WoW's big problem is that it's an MMO that has to keep producing content forever, so it ends up falling into certain traps that are a result of that. Your character can't do anything cool, all the badguys get level treadmilled into absurdity, and Blizzard's unwillingness to change the Alliance/Horde dynamic results in the plot repeating itself endlessly. If you disentangled the things where it keeps going "actually, this guy is a minion of this other guy, so now you have to go facestab him to really win", you'd have a setting that is broadly pretty reasonable.

**Morphic tide** · 2020-05-27, 02:16 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by 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.

There may not be a limit for how many extras you can pick up and how many you can swap, but extras still take 1k XP and swapping means the Disciplines stay competing for space. Any time you could get Broken Blade, you have to ask the question of if there's a better fit for what you want out of it. If you know you're going to be dealing with Initiators, then you likely know something more specific about their kind and can tailor your choice to something counteracting their particular specialty while also helping against any non-Initiators involved.

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.

Well, at the moment you're still linked the pure-upside AFCs for the existing Martials. The main "target" would be what the classes have that already does damage amplification. Rogue being reduced to 1d6 per 3 levels, would make it match the Psychic Rogue/Lurk and wouldn't actually be a net loss of damage from Maneuvers out-scaling the lost Sneak Attack. Favored Enemy being replaced in a similar fashion for a Discipline specialization effect does the same broader and slightly more damage without risking extreme stacking, and the same sort of thing hits Smite Evil on Paladin and Rage on Barbarian as things that need to be replaced with Initiating because stacking the bonuses generally causes things to die way faster than expected.

If we're doing variants for existing classes, then the Warlord could be cannibalized into one for the Marshal, or alternatively be rolled into a more supportive Crusader or more frontline Poet variant. It already directly takes the Marshal's Aura mechanics, and both the Poet and Crusader already do party support things quite well, with it being the priority of the Poet and the Crusader's main "hat" in ToB proper. Could also do a Prestige Animist variant like the Bard, Paladin and Ranger have, particularly if it keeps a genuine casting of spells function for it to act as another theurge option.

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?

The issue with trying to fit the whole mass of stuff you need to cover all the PC ability sets is that there's a number of subsystems that don't have any general hooks, with perhaps the biggest example being a high-level Totemist who literally doesn't have most of their item slots and runs on Natural Attack damage. If making a new Discipline is still on the books, then it'd probably be best fitting to go with a spellcasting hybrid Discipline, since such is a commonplace element of the game, can be tied back to existing content as mentioned with Jade Phoenix Mage, and gives plenty of reason for being "anti-caster" by way of a half-decent amount of Counters to Opportunity Attack for Concentration checks and being able to tap Abjurations for blunt negation.

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As I'm thinking of putting a variety of relevant things in the thread for the Claw of the Elements, which'll include some [Wild] feats actually worth the Wild Shape use and relevant to using Wild Shape as a Martial, I'm looking at the currently-linked Initiating monsters for some source material to eyeball the template, and the Aay-y'y has a huge chunk of an image link in its URL for some reason. As for the actually-relevant parts, the Hound of Reshar and Alabaster Raven, insofar as they're "completed" are... really stupid.

The Alabaster Raven is essentially gestalt Marshal/Bard/Initiator because it calls overall hit dice for all three, and given the Poet's existence the outright Bardic Music isn't particularly necessary. Being tiny and having base three Strength causes a great pile of issues for playability, since they can't get Reach, basically instantly fail Grapples, deal 1 damage per hit without the Maneuver benefits, and their carrying capacity is sufficiently low that they'll be stretching themselves just carrying their own gear if they try anything fancy with it. Alongside all the other issues with size categories and enormously polarized stats. I'd go with something like this:

Spoiler: Alabaster Raven redux

Show

Size/Type: Small Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 2d10-2 (11 HP)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 15 ft/Fly 50 ft. (Average)
Armor Class: 13 (+1 Size, +2 Dex), Touch 13, Flat-Footed 11
Base Attack/Grapple:+2/-4
Attack: Claw +5 melee (1d4-2)
Full Attack: 2 Claw +5 melee (1d4-2), Bite +5 melee (1d6-2)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Maneuvers, Swarming Strike
Special Qualities: Magical Beast traits, Bardic Call, Martial Resonance
Saves: Fort +2, Ref +5, Will +0
Abilities: Str 6, Dex 15, Con 8, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 16
Skills: Diplomacy +7, Hide +6, Perform +6, Sense Motive +1, Spot +1, Tumble +2
Feats: Weapon Finesse (B), Flyby Attack
Environment: Temperate and Cold hills, mountains, and forests
Organization: Pair or Kindness (flock of 3-300)
Challenge Rating: 2
Treasure: Half standard
Alignment: Usually Lawful
Advancement: 3-7 HD (Small); 8+ HD (Medium); By class
Level Adjustment: +0

You see a flock of snow white birds with sharp claws and beaks.

Alabaster Ravens are the mortal descendants of an avian spirit of cooperation whom the White Raven discipline was based upon. They are typically extroverted, energetic, collectivist, creative and aggressive. They have mercurial moods and are quick to make both friends and enemies, while slow to forgive or betray. For them, first impressions count.

They may choose Bard, Poet, or Warlord as their Favored Class and typically worship gods with the Air, Community, Law, Protection, Sky, Travel and/or War domains.

They automatically gain a skill rank in Diplomacy and Perform for each hit die they possess, and typically invest an additional two skill ranks into Diplomacy and one rank each into Perform, Sense Motive, and Spot.

Martial Resonance (Ex): Their claws count as favored weapons for the Divine Muse and White Raven disciplines and their racial hit dice count as Martial Adept levels for Initiator level.

Bardic Call (Su): An Alabaster Raven's racial hit dice count as Bard levels for Bardic Music uses, Inspire Courage, Countersong, Inspire Competence, Inspire Greatness, Song of Freedom and Inspire Heroics. This stacks with Bard class levels.

Swarming Strike (Ex): Anyone dealt damage by an Alabaster Raven that is then dealt damage by another Alabaster Raven or another creature using a White Raven Maneuver in the same round must make a DC 14 fortitude save or be nauseated as if affected by a swarm's distraction attack. Afterwards, they become immune to that particular alabaster raven's Swarming Strike for one round. The save DC is dexterity based.

Maneuvers (Ex): Alabaster Ravens know three Maneuvers, of which two may be readied, and two Stances, drawn from the Divine Muse and White Raven Disciplines. The Maneuvers are typically Rose Petal Strike, Douse the Flames, and Open Defenses. The Stances are typically Leading the Charge and Font of Inspiration. Every two Racial Hit Dice allows them to learn an additional Maneuver, every three racial hit dice allows them to Ready an additional Maneuver, and every four racial hit dice allows them to learn an additional Stance.

The overall result I'm aiming for is to be playable as just RHD progression as a basic Bardic Music using Initiator, but has few enough required that you can focus on being any of its three Favored Classes (switching from Warblade and Marshal to Poet and Warlord) and not be seriously behind or ahead a more conventional race (beyond the natural shenanigans of permanent Flight and above-standard speed on a support character at very low levels), particularly as the Bard's supporting Music is not delayed, and in return for delaying the Bard's other things, it gets a decent chunk of Dex and Cha, mobility, auto-covering some of your skills, and a highly on-point Initiating dip, adding Divine Muse to go with the Bardic properties. By making Swarming Strike cover White Raven Maneuvers, it can be used as a PC with the only party buy-in being somebody grabbing a White Raven Maneuver that does damage, so it's not a serious hurdle for the proper party beatstick to grab a few for their own interests.

As an encounter, my main focus was making the pair work well. So it gets two Stances to start with so the two won't be facing redundancy, Flyby Attack to not be in range of simple melee reprisal, Douse the Flames to shut off Opportunity Attacks for the other, and Open Defenses to further double-down on it being two focused on one party member, with Rose Petal Strike for the obligatory damage buff and token suggested Divine Muse Maneuver. CR 2 because you need the HP of having 3-5 levels under you (as they're faced in pairs) to actually have a serious shot at getting your hits in before they tag-team a party member down, and having the earliest reasonable encounter involve 2nd-level spells means a Wizard can just chuck a Scorching Ray and be done with the worst of the pain ~65% of the time.

With the Hound of Reshar... It's supposedly CR 6. Compared to the CR 7 Chimera, which is a dragon typed creature, it has an extra 4 AC, two more HP, seven more Strength to give its Bite superior damage and accuracy, and it has Initiating on top of those raw statistics to be doing even more damage on Standard Actions and recover health mid-fight. In addition to a great many details unmentioned. While I won't be digging through the mess of a writeout like for the Alabaster Ravens (the way I tend to do it eats a very large amount of time just going back and forth between the various derived elements), I'd suggest going over the numbers to roughly meet a "big dumb bruiser" with a statline in line with something two CR lower for the base statistics, then use Maneuvers to directly counteract the disadvantages that ensue. Perhaps apply the Elite array to the Dire Wolf, focused on Dexterity and Wisdom, then have the Initiating and weapon give a broadly similar output to, say, the Megaraptor.

Major thing to consider is that they don't really have room for a serious magic item at CR 6. They could be given a Disarm bonus of some description, making it clear that they will try to take your fancy magic weapon to use for themselves even before they down you, perhaps having the encounter description focus on them trying to take the loot and bolt if the going gets tough, or alternatively have them get NPC wealth by level and be using some inappropriate-to-most-PCs gear so it generally has to be sold for half. Could drop the unintelligent-with-class-levels clause, having them just be 3-5 Int Magical Beasts that can take class levels normally who, like my Alabaster Raven completion above, have an RHD pseudo-class of a somewhat narrow Initiator with monster-typical bonuses and some makeup for their problems. Possibly let them use Wisdom for skill points, likely restricting to the RHD "class skills".

Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley

If you're really concerned, I would just pick something that's key to the A-Game Paladin and have the ACF trade off with that too.

This is basically the thing. Swapping out the class's existing damage thing for Initiating substitutions (Sneak Attack, Rage, Smite, Favored Enemy, etc) to keep from just stacking those on top of Maneuvers to render the Maneuvers significantly harder hitting and/or more accurate than intended, which is liable to send them over the top. Granted, the Crusader can get a +6 bonus to their attack rolls if they take 30 damage in the previous turn at level 20, and Warblade gets to add Intelligence to Attacks of Opportunity at level 15, but these are ultimately rather slow progressions, as compared to the ~1.75 damage per level a Rogue can get per hit or the Paladin throwing out +Charisma to the attack roll from level one, and at low levels a Greatsword getting +2 or +3 to hit and +1d6+level damage is going to be fatal or near enough so a hefty chunk of the time.

In fairness, "spellcasters" is a pretty big category of enemy, particularly if you consider that whatever options you're handing out there will probably also work against the various things that have SLAs. That said, it seems like most of the stuff you'd want to give out here would fit in Iron Heart or Diamond Mind.

Actually, spellcasting isn't a very frequent thing on enemies from just how spectacularly bursty casters get, and Spell-Likes lack the usual hooks to be covered by a normal Martial, since they don't have components. Against SLAs, which are far more common than actual spellcasting, the only real option is flat-out counterspell effects, maybe SR if you're only concerned personally. Which is Abjuration, and thus a great fit for what has been demonstrated of Spells/Initiating through the Jade Phoenix Mage. Could make it general-purpose Spells/Initiating by riffing on Ruby Knight Vindicator slightly and make it get some effects that specifically ask for Arcane, some that ask for Divine, but most just want some kind of spell slot without caring about type. Could also have some spells using Maneuvers as Somatic Components, layering the actions one more layer high by having an attack as part of a maneuver as part of casting a spell.

**NigelWalmsley** · 2020-05-28, 08:00 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Morphic tide

This is basically the thing. Swapping out the class's existing damage thing for Initiating substitutions (Sneak Attack, Rage, Smite, Favored Enemy, etc) to keep from just stacking those on top of Maneuvers to render the Maneuvers significantly harder hitting and/or more accurate than intended, which is liable to send them over the top. Granted, the Crusader can get a +6 bonus to their attack rolls if they take 30 damage in the previous turn at level 20, and Warblade gets to add Intelligence to Attacks of Opportunity at level 15, but these are ultimately rather slow progressions, as compared to the ~1.75 damage per level a Rogue can get per hit or the Paladin throwing out +Charisma to the attack roll from level one, and at low levels a Greatsword getting +2 or +3 to hit and +1d6+level damage is going to be fatal or near enough so a hefty chunk of the time.

Honestly the only one of those that seems worrying is Sneak Attack, and even that could be mitigated by reducing the progression. A Bardblade can already get near-full maneuver progression and a big pile of bonus damage. My inclination is to accept some amount of power creep, because it will result in characters that are easier to build and play.

Actually, spellcasting isn't a very frequent thing on enemies from just how spectacularly bursty casters get, and Spell-Likes lack the usual hooks to be covered by a normal Martial, since they don't have components. Against SLAs, which are far more common than actual spellcasting, the only real option is flat-out counterspell effects, maybe SR if you're only concerned personally.

SLAs are vulnerable to a lot of stuff (and actually can't literally be counterspelled). You could get SR, or better saves, or various resistances, all of which have other uses. Offensively, they're just as vulnerable to being disrupted as regular spells are.

**Morphic tide** · 2020-05-31, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)

[QUOTE=NigelWalmsley;24533495]Honestly the only one of those that seems worrying is Sneak Attack, and even that could be mitigated by reducing the progression. A Bardblade can already get near-full maneuver progression and a big pile of bonus damage. My inclination is to accept some amount of power creep, because it will result in characters that are easier to build and play.
The thing is that it's throwing more damage on without cost. Rather than just bloat the output casually, I'd intensely prefer having them offload their existing damage mechanic into Maneuvers so they aren't gaining much simple damage and can't stack even more bonuses on top. So swapping out their existing mechanic for damage, whether in part or whole, to make "room" for Maneuver damage and cut off other attempts at compensating for poor baselines seems prudent.

SLAs are vulnerable to a lot of stuff (and actually can't literally be counterspelled). You could get SR, or better saves, or various resistances, all of which have other uses. Offensively, they're just as vulnerable to being disrupted as regular spells are.

From the SRD link, it seems they're only vulnerable to Opportunity Attacks, while regular spells aren't capable of being used in the first place when Grappled, Silenced, or under a variety of other incapacitation. So the main counterplay for Martials is there, but only that one, with Grappling accomplishing nothing.

---

Some brief thoughts on "Theurging" Disciplines:

Sleeping Goddess: I still stand by not directly using any Discipline present in another project, and this being in Path of War means any personalization will run into the issues responsible. For the sake of not mirroring a widely-known form of combat with Mental Grip's blatant Star Wars inspiration, I'd focus on rolling elements of the two into Infinite Shore as the Psionic Discipline. Creation effects seemingly at the "core" of Sleeping Goddess and spygames from Infinite Shore as the focus. In combat, the two directions are a field of dream-stuff weapons and masses of debuffs, with the former having bonuses to the rolls and gradualizing of AC and the latter having the riders go off if Touch AC is met, both helping with the still-using (since we're doing a full Variant for Soulborn) Poet's low BAB. The priority of non-combat utility would be a matter of lacking specificity, so that Boost you use to make a Longspear on the spot can just as well make dozens of feet of rope for a few PP, and there's nothing stopping you from taking the dream-self-travel Stance for intangible scouting.

Warrior's Soul: Giving it a theme apart from just Incarnum overlap is very important, as is distancing it from being so intensely specific to the Soulborn variant so it's a functioning Discipline on its own, and currently it's basically just a dumping ground for Incarnum combat ideas. The direction I have in mind is basically one part slapping Essentia bonuses all over The Art Of War, one part ripping off features from the Martials that are marginalized in the setting, and one part expanding on the Offensive Soulmelds into more general External Soulmelds for gear creation without actually costing a pile of Soulmeld slots, alongside a few of the more physical of the current lineup of Offensive Soulmelds. Basically make it about using Incarnum to access the knowledge of warriors of prior ages, with the Sublime Way as the means to use that knowledge effectively. Much the same flavor as the Seeker of Lost Swords, but by way of Incarnum for the "outdated" Martials instead of through Necromancy for other Initiators, resulting in a fighting style that is mostly switching between types of decently-optimized pre-ToB Martial, with a few save-or-suck abilities that just skip busywork of more sophisticated combat actions and pulling gear from the rear to apply the Maneuvers properly, all with numbers stemming from Essentia investment.

"Emerald Moon": Just a semi-placeholder name for Spells+Initiating, though I wouldn't be particularly opposed to it sticking. On top of building on the bones of Jade Phoenix Mage, some particularly anti-caster properties could be drawn in large part from Mystic Eclipse, (re)gaining slots for successfully screwing over casters rather than added bonuses for going after them. My suggestion for self-fueling is each Maneuver known giving a spell slot of half its level rounded down, and each Stance giving two such slots. These slots would, due to not being associated with any class, not be usable for actually casting spells, and I'd try to make the Discipline's methods of dealing with it favor Spontaneous casters, like a Stance having wording along the lines of "As you cast a spell, you may reduce the slot adjustment of applying metamagic to it by expending additional spell slots". That wording wouldn't work for prepared casters because you have to be able to apply the metamagic while casting it, which Wizards, Clerics, and Druids simply aren't allowed to do by default.

Spoiler: Example Maneuver

Show

Steal the Woven Strands
"Emerald Moon" (Counter)
Level: 4
Initiation Action: 1 Immediate Action
Range: Reach
Target: One creature or object

Your channeling of the Weave to empower the Sublime Way has progressed to understanding how to accomplish the reverse, applying uncanny martial achievement to disrupt and even drain spells.

When you see a spell being cast with its target, area, or line of effect being within your reach, you may initiate this Maneuver to make an attack roll to attempt to counterspell it, succeeding if the attack roll exceeds 11 plus the spell's caster level. If the caster is in reach, then you may have the attack roll be used for an Attack of Opportunity on the caster of the effect being dispelled before the counterspell attempt.

If the spell fails, whether from being counterspelled or from the Attack of opportunity, you may recover a spell slot of up to 2nd level.

Empowering: Expending a spell slot as you initiate this Maneuver provides a +1 bonus to the attack roll per two caster levels, up to +3 per spell level, and adds 1d6 damage to the Attack of Opportunity per spell level.

Not too sold on the name of the example Maneuver either, but the overall nature of the effect is that you can make a go of countering any spell that passes within reach, so if you have a Reach weapon, you can counter anything that passes within 10 ft. of you, thus allowing the beatstick to block Disintegrates headed for the squishy wizard reliably without being locked to standing directly between the origin and the target. This also means being able to block for several party members standing behind you, from more than just dead ahead.

The use of caster level scaling is to get some benefits scaling with multiclassing without needing to devise a way for them to compete with high-level slots, something Sleeping Goddess doesn't need to worry much about due to the granularity of Power Points and Warrior's Soul probably doesn't need much of because Incarnum can do a great deal of switching things around. In this case it's on the attack roll to back-hack CL scaling of a normal Dispel Magic check and keep the Concentration DCs something at least technically passable rather than turning into an auto-negate if you're in melee. Using an Attack roll in the first place makes it exceedingly likely already, given the number of ways to boost the things.

Not actually very well sold on Divination effects on reflection, since they're a bit hard to work with as combat abilities and the Jade Phoenix Mage has basically just "has reincarnated" as Divination stuff, and using Transmutation themes instead gives room to ground any Divine-specific properties in the Druid, which is rather little serviced in general. Would definitely still have the Arcane side bring some description of "damage aura" like the Jade Phoenix Mage has. Could split the nature of the bonuses, like the above example's damage bonus being on the Arcane and having a separate Spell Resistance bonus for Divine slots. Maybe have the healing effect be Fast Healing for the duration of the AC-granting Boosts based on spell level, with a Stance somewhere above 5th level that does it for "unlimited" HP?

**Elves** · 2020-05-31, 09:56 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Morphic tide

The thing is that it's throwing more damage on without cost.

Some degree of direct empowerment is implied -- you can eke good builds from the core martials with effort, but these ACFs were meant to make vanilla builds more viable. The assumption was DM approval required (eg, if someone's playing an optimized A-game paladin, they don't need it). Perhaps that's too wishy-washy for an optimization heavy game like 3.5. The intent could be changed so that it's about a higher roof, lower ceiling build that works well with no frills, similar to 4e essentials.

Either way, the intent -is- clearer if presented as a variant class rather than an ACF .

For paladin and ranger, replacing spells with mvs is obvious step. For fighter, there's nothing to change since the maneuvers fill the dead levels.

Rather than just bloat the output casually, I'd intensely prefer having them offload their existing damage mechanic into Maneuvers so they aren't gaining much simple damage and can't stack even more bonuses on top.

the relevant abillities are
- bbn rage
- monk flurry
- paladin smite
- rogue sneak attack
- ranger favored enemy

I don't think anything needs to be done for sneak attack (maybe slowing it slightly as Nigel suggests) or flurry. For the others, some maneuver interaction would be good.

For the sake of not mirroring a widely-known form of combat with Mental Grip's blatant Star Wars inspiration, I'd focus on rolling elements of the two into Infinite Shore as the Psionic Discipline.

Mental Grip I was originally eyeing to be the discipline for a Tome of Battle equivalent of the psychic warrior. Dropped that idea, so probably not including it. I also think it maybe goes too far away from karate and swordplay into just being magic.

Re combining the dreams and psionics disciplines: that's a pretty decent idea thematically, but I'm not sure if it works mechanically due to the power points gimmick being core to the psionic discipline whereas the dreams discipline is supposed to be core to the poet class, which is not psionic.

Warrior's Soul: Giving it a theme apart from just Incarnum overlap is very important

Here I have to disagree, its point is to be the "incarnum discipline" and that's a wide enough space in itself. Of course you're right that there should be some guiding principle to its maneuvers other than just "a bunch of random effects that you happen to be able to augment with essentia". The offensive soulmelds idea was one way of trying to get there, and doing more with the chakra slot/item slot theme would be appropriate.

Basically make it about using Incarnum to access the knowledge of warriors of prior ages, with the Sublime Way as the means to use that knowledge effectively.

And this seems thematically fitting.

Antimagic discipline: fueling the abilities with spell slots and giving virtual spell slots for knowing maneuvers seems overcomplicated. It also gives casters and theurges an advantage when the intent of the discipline should be to level the field between pure martials and everyone else, including theurges and partial casters. Basing anything on caster level has the same problem.

the overall nature of the effect is that you can make a go of countering any spell that passes within reach, so if you have a Reach weapon, you can counter anything that passes within 10 ft. of you

solid, although reach weapons and size enhancement are already very good strategies for melee.

As for adding magical capabilities to the discipline, I think that may be overconcepting it. If we were going to do the "arcane swordsage" thing, I think that would be its own whole thing. Most of the high level monsters in D&D are spellcasters, add that plus the caster-martial imbalance and antimagic is a useful enough space to furnish 25 maneuvers.

Brainstorming the basics:

- impose penalty on Concentration checks
- targeted dispel magic
- counterspell
- anti-divination
- see invisible
- see through illusions
- instagib summoned monsters
- when you harm summoned monsters, also harm summoner
- force polymorphed/shapechanged/wildshaped target back into true form
- cut through magical barriers (like walls of force)
- shatter mage armor effects
- gain SR
- caster loses spell slots on hit
- grab & tagalong with teleporting creature
- temporary mind blank
- disfigure hand or mouth, no verbal/somatic components
- spell reflection effect

**Elves** · 2020-05-31, 09:58 PM (ISO 8601)

By the way, I don't know if people saw, but on the front page I added a link where you can see the working documents for all the disciplines.

Almost all of them are WIP.

Discipline Directory (gdocs)

**NigelWalmsley** · 2020-06-01, 07:31 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Morphic tide

The thing is that it's throwing more damage on without cost. Rather than just bloat the output casually, I'd intensely prefer having them offload their existing damage mechanic into Maneuvers so they aren't gaining much simple damage and can't stack even more bonuses on top. So swapping out their existing mechanic for damage, whether in part or whole, to make "room" for Maneuver damage and cut off other attempts at compensating for poor baselines seems prudent.

But you're not giving them as many maneuvers as a Warblade or Crusader, right? So they need something to make up for that, and in most cases their non-maneuver mechanics are fine for that. At 20th level, a Barbarian's Rage is giving him +4 to hit and +4 damage. I don't think that's a worrying amount of power. Moreover, I don't think maneuver's primary strength is damage output, and I think that allowing optimized characters to be more powerful is probably good -- it's not like you're going to end up better than a comparably optimized caster, so overall the balance is getting better.

From the SRD link, it seems they're only vulnerable to Opportunity Attacks, while regular spells aren't capable of being used in the first place when Grappled, Silenced, or under a variety of other incapacitation. So the main counterplay for Martials is there, but only that one, with Grappling accomplishing nothing.

They're also vulnerable to things that attack common spell effects. The Diamond Mind save replacers are a good example of that. Having the ability to (basically) auto-pass saves is an ability that has very obvious utility for someone fighting spellcasters, while still being useful against a variety of other opponents. Energy resistance is another example. Though ultimately, I think that's probably an argument for just adding some additional Diamond Mind maneuvers. No need to create a whole new discipline.

(re)gaining slots for successfully screwing over casters rather than added bonuses for going after them. My suggestion for self-fueling is each Maneuver known giving a spell slot of half its level rounded down, and each Stance giving two such slots. These slots would, due to not being associated with any class, not be usable for actually casting spells, and I'd try to make the Discipline's methods of dealing with it favor Spontaneous casters, like a Stance having wording along the lines of "As you cast a spell, you may reduce the slot adjustment of applying metamagic to it by expending additional spell slots".

That seems like far more complexity than should be associated with a discipline directly. Hacking a bunch of extra resource mechanics on top of a subset of maneuvers (rather than making them a PrC) seems like it restricts character creation for relatively little benefit. What if you want to make the Iron Heart/Stone Dragon/Anti-Magic guy? That seems like a reasonable build, but if your anti-magic abilities require spell slots, it won't work properly.

Not actually very well sold on Divination effects on reflection, since they're a bit hard to work with as combat abilities

Do they all need to be combat abilities? One of the things I disliked about the original ToB was that there was no mechanism for e.g. a Shadow Hand Swordsage to have any shadow powers that weren't directly used for killing people.

**Garryl** · 2020-06-02, 05:47 PM (ISO 8601)

Hello,

As the creator of Sublime Tapestry, I'm glad that you're enjoying my material and wish to reference and expand upon it in your games and projects. However, two things:

1) The version of Sublime Tapestry you have referenced is an incomplete, outdated version. The current version of the discipline can be found at http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1351.0.

2) While I respect your desire to back up my work in a secondary location, I would appreciate it if you didn't plagiarize me, even if it's by accident. In your Google Document for Sublime Tapestry, I must insist that you provide appropriate credit and sources. I'm not going to be a stickler for the standards for academic papers or published works or anything like that, but at least indicate that I wrote Sublime Tapestry and link to the source from which you copied the discipline.

Thank you,

Garryl

Edit: P.S.: I would also appreciate the same consideration for the other maneuvers I've written that you've copied wholesale for backup (namely, the rushes for the main 9 disciplines). I suspect most of the other authors would like the same, too.

**Elves** · 2020-06-02, 05:56 PM (ISO 8601)

Hey Garryl, great to see you in the thread, your rushes are a fantastic addition to the TOB system.

I was planning on having all credits in the project be on the title page and the credit page. (Credits draft here, not fully updated). Let me know if that's ok with you; if not, I can certainly add your name in the doc.

You wrote Sublime Tapestry a while ago, any thoughts for changes you would want to make?

**Garryl** · 2020-06-02, 07:22 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Elves

Hey Garryl, great to see you in the thread, your rushes are a fantastic addition to the TOB system.

I was planning on having all credits in the project be on the title page and the credit page. (Credits draft here, not fully updated). Let me know if that's ok with you; if not, I can certainly add your name in the doc.

You wrote Sublime Tapestry a while ago, any thoughts for changes you would want to make?

If you've got the credits page somewhere where people can navigate to it through those Google Docs, or in an appropriate place in that finalized PDF you keep talking about, yeah, that is perfectly satisfactory to me for a freely accessible collection of fan work. You just spooked me with the link directly to the AOW discipline directory, which doesn't seem to have access to that information anywhere I could find.

I don't think there are any changes that still jump out at me for Sublime Tapestry. After I finished it in 2011, I made a few minor tweaks over the next several years, but those were just typos and formatting. This thread here has made me want to look into making a legacy weapon for it, but that's about it. Maybe also add extra effects to Closing Strike for some or all of the martial disciplines you're putting it together with in this project?

By the way, if you're looking for more ToB homebrew content to include (because obviously you don't have enough already to choose from, /sarcasm), I've made more stuff since the the old Age of Warriors project wound down. They're both collections (a few disciplines, a base class or two that uses them, and some supporting material), one for undead-themed and one for construct-themed martial disciplines, so I don't know if they'd have any way to actually fit into this project, but worst case scenario I get some shameless self-promotion, so what's the harm in mentioning them? More seriously, though, in terms of non-martial discipline content, I see you've got monsters listed on the index. I made the Amlenstakata specifically to showcase rushes in a monster, so it might be a good include.

Edit: I hadn't realized you were also modifying the material that other homebrewers and I have written, not just copying it. That, I'm a little less comfortable with. I'll have to get back to you on that.

**Elves** · 2020-06-03, 06:51 PM (ISO 8601)

I had set aside time today to do the psionic theurge PRC, but didn't have any ideas, so instead I took a stab at variant PHB classes like we were talking about. So here for the sake of argument is my very quick take on it...

Gdocs link

Notes:

Spoiler

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BBN
- Removed trap sense
- Can’t choose whirling frenzy or spirit lion totem
- Totem barbarian ACF from UA baseline, added +str to intimidate

People in it for the pounce dip won’t take this variant. Hopefully the maneuvers make up for no pounce. Could add pounce at 6th as class feature, but maybe too much.

FTR
- Nothing removed. Maneuvers at odd levels.

There’s nothing to remove. Mvs fill dead levels. Straight empowerment.

MNK
- Haven't done this one yet
- No slow fall, wholeness of body, SR, dimension door, quivering palm, tongues, or etherealness
- Redo stunning fist as a class feature

No wholeness of body means no Dark Moon disciple (constant total concealment), but still allows invisible fist.

PAL
- Trades spellcasting for maneuvers
- Borrowed pathfinder paladin mercies (LOH bonus effects)
- Similarly, added list of smite bonus effects
- Celestial mount & warded mount ACF baseline

Concern: it has 4 things going (smite, LOH, mount, maneuvers) which seems like too much.

RGR
- Maneuvers in place of spells
- Replace favored enemy with “hunter’s quarry”
- Animal companion @3rd, counts as druid -2
- Supplementary abilities to enhance quarry, companion gets 1/2 quarry bonus

Favored enemy is problematic in practice and is DM-dependent. Removing casting removes mystic ranger/SOTAO so no balance concerns with mvs added.

ROG
- Remove special abilities (except compulsory improved evasion)
- Penetrating strike ACF baseline
- Need to add capstone

Similar to fighter, mvs fit in between sneak attack dice.

Originally Posted by Garryl

This thread here has made me want to look into making a legacy weapon for it, but that's about it.

Current idea, which you can either run with or not:

Spoiler

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The Hilt

“Sublime Tapestry is almost never practiced by itself. Alone, it is an incomplete style, like a sword hilt without the blade...“

A disattached hilt is all that remains of the Sublime Tapestry sword.

It’s worn strung on a necklace.

Omen: While holding the hilt, it feels like you have a whole, complete sword in your hand. This is a psychological symptom that doesn’t affect its true weight.

History

During the days of the Temple of Nine Swords, Reshar had a ceremonial sword made with all of the nine disciplines’ enhancements. The signs of all nine styles were stamped on its blade. It hung in the Temple’s great hall, a symbol of the school’s mission to integrate these formerly disparate styles. The highly symbolic sword was saved by fleeing adepts during the sack of the Temple, and it became the mascot weapon of the Sublime Tapestry discipline. (DC 15)

In the decades after the fall, there emerged a new style called Broken Blade, custom-made for fighting other adepts. The adepts of this nascent style gained rapid infamy for their victory in duels and tournaments,

[Unity Blade wielder duels famous Broken Blade adept, the blade gets sundered off.]

The idea is initially it's just a necklace but then at a certain level you can evoke a ghostly blade from the hilt.

By the way, if you're looking for more ToB homebrew content to include (because obviously you don't have enough already to choose from, /sarcasm), I've made more stuff since the the old Age of Warriors project wound down.

The clockwork warrior seems like it could be interesting as a variant crusader, I had at one point thought of doing something similar with a rigid maneuver order.

More seriously, though, in terms of non-martial discipline content, I see you've got monsters listed on the index. I made the Amlenstakata specifically to showcase rushes in a monster, so it might be a good include.

Adding.

Edit: I hadn't realized you were also modifying the material that other homebrewers and I have written, not just copying it. That, I'm a little less comfortable with. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Iteration and editing is always important to getting the best result. In the case of Sublime Tapestry, there were a few Broken Blade maneuvers that I swapped into Sublime Tapestry because they fit better there. That's IIRC the only big change made. Did you see something you didn't like?

----

Open question: is it worth doing an arcane swordsage? Realistically would have to be a hand-vetted spell list not an open system.

**Garryl** · 2020-06-03, 11:06 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Elves

Iteration and editing is always important to getting the best result. In the case of Sublime Tapestry, there were a few Broken Blade maneuvers that I swapped into Sublime Tapestry because they fit better there. That's IIRC the only big change made. Did you see something you didn't like?

It's less about liking or disliking the end result, and more about making sure that the right parts are accredited to the right people. I don't want credit claimed on my behalf for maneuvers JoshuaZ wrote for Broken Blade that you've moved into Sublime Tapestry, nor vice-versa do I want credit being given to him for maneuvers I wrote for Sublime Tapestry that you've shifted back to Broken Blade. Add in the fact that you're transforming our works, not directly quoting them, and the situation just gets a bit muddier.

I'm starting to understand why writers and publishers give fanfiction writers such a hard time. And here there isn't even any money or a proper copyright at stake!

At this point, I'm leaning towards suggesting that you make more changes to properly transform the work and give credit as based on what I wrote for Sublime Tapestry, rather than crediting me as literally writing what you have in your revised version. If you'd asked me about it with a plan to do this beforehand, rather than us scrambling to find an appropriate solution in the aftermath, that's probably what we would have agreed on. I don't have nearly enough knowledge or experience about these matters to be able to say much more.

**Elves** · 2020-06-04, 12:09 AM (ISO 8601)

If you want to be very specific about what's attributed to you I'd also be happy to put in a changelog and a link to the original version.

A meta discipline is a good idea to include and that's a good name for it, so that much I'd like to keep, but I certainly don't want you to feel tampered with. In a group project I think it's healthy to have a certain amount of "we're all the authors" mindset, especially when we're all anonymous and there's no personal gain involved (and it would take a novel to keep track of every offhand thing we each may have contributed), but you did the content and you have every right to say how you get included.

The simplest way would be giving a more detailed attribution breakdown, but let me know what you want.

**D&D_Fan** · 2020-06-04, 11:48 AM (ISO 8601)

What if there was a Fighter Subclass that is designed to use futuristic technology as opposed to the stuff standard D&D Uses so people can use it in future theme campaigns, or as a more combatative Anachronaut.

They would be able to Upgrade weapons, and wield laser weaponry that deals radiant damage like Litesabres and Phazers and stuff like that. If this doesn't fit then that's okay.

Also other special abilities. For example, Special tactics to gain advantage that were developed from the future, but you need to be smart. Also some time like abilities. Maybe minor Chronomancy like abilities.

The main points of this subclass would be to upgrade weapons, and also advanced tactics to deal more damage be more accurate or more. And Chronomancy. Basically a mix of Battle Master, Eldritch Knight and even Battle Smith or Artillerist for Artificer, and Chromancer from Wizard.

Thoughts?
It would be neat if someone tried to make this for whatever edition this is for.

**Elves** · 2020-06-04, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)

That sounds like a cool idea but this project is for 3.5e, not 5e.

**D&D_Fan** · 2020-06-04, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)

@Elves, I know. This would be for 3.5, but It would just use concepts from these 5e subclasses but take them in to 3.5e with some basic conversion.

I'm sorry, but I come up with ideas, and I have only played 5e. I can still have ideas, but you have to understand where I'm coming from. The ideas I'm making don't need to be tied to a specific edition.

If you want the raw info not tied to an edition.

Better Weapons: Has weapon upgrades in which you can either deal more damage, add special damage, improve accuracy, or add on debuffs when you hit.
Future Tactics: Can use futuristic tactics to gain an edge in combat, and gets more at certain levels. These can be simple things like "Get a bonus attack whenever you hit succesfully." The more advanced, like "use you opponents weigh against them: whenever they miss, you can cause them to fall prone." or very complex things like "Make an Intelligence check to discover weak points in armor or hide, and gain advantage."
Other Stuf: Some minor Chronomancy like abilities like dealing extra necrotic when you attack due to being out of sync with time, a mid level speed boost or dimension door type ability, and a minor time stop like ability at higher levels, and also not aging at a perceptible rate somewhere along the line.

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of how it works without being subclass specific.

**Morphic tide** · 2020-06-09, 11:24 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Elves

Some degree of direct empowerment is implied -- you can eke good builds from the core martials with effort, but these ACFs were meant to make vanilla builds more viable. The assumption was DM approval required (eg, if someone's playing an optimized A-game paladin, they don't need it). Perhaps that's too wishy-washy for an optimization heavy game like 3.5. The intent could be changed so that it's about a higher roof, lower ceiling build that works well with no frills, similar to 4e essentials.

Rather the point, by basically kneecapping the class's main existing hooks, other solutions to the question basically can't be stacked to make something stupid. Swapping out the spellcasting for Maneuvers is certainly one solid direction, and I'd mentioned reducing Sneak Attack to 1d6/3 levels initially. The Psychic Warrior progression seemingly works out pretty well, even if the Powers overshadow Fighter-ing.

Mental Grip I was originally eyeing to be the discipline for a Tome of Battle equivalent of the psychic warrior. Dropped that idea, so probably not including it. I also think it maybe goes too far away from karate and swordplay into just being magic.

Still think rolling the things together to make a for-this-project Psionic Discipline, to avoid confusion when people bring Path of War books to the table/chatroom, is something to do just so the project isn't stepping on already-published material in decent circulation. The resultant combination of Sleeping Goddess and Mental Grip would probably house the weapon creation as "fuel" for the telekinetic flurries.

And what is it about Mental Grip that makes it "too magic" as compared to being literally entirely gravity manipulation with Event Horizon, screwing with people's minds on a regular basis like Cosmic Imperator, Infinite Shore, Divine Muse and Soothed Beast, making routine use of Positive and Negative Energy with Narrow Bridge, and literally accessing other subsystems as with Warrior's Soul and Sleeping Goddess?

Re combining the dreams and psionics disciplines: that's a pretty decent idea thematically, but I'm not sure if it works mechanically due to the power points gimmick being core to the psionic discipline whereas the dreams discipline is supposed to be core to the poet class, which is not psionic.

The Disciplines need to actually be used, and making most of them require replacements is introducing a lot more system mastery "floor" to making use of the project. The Poet has the Imaginary Friends, a "Schrodinger's Cohort" feature, so giving them access to other subsystems isn't actually much a problem because they'll get them by proxy. Infinite Shore already overlaps with Sleeping Goddess mechanically with weapon creation, debuffs, and perception manipulation, the major broad functional difference seems to be just that Sleeping Goddess uses outright Psionics. The Discipline that's actually core to the Poet class is Divine Muse, which does its supposed job atrociously because for some god forsaken reason it's shoved full of direct damage when it's supposed to be emulating Bardic Music.

I can see a lot of directions to go with, but from the current structure, the Poet looks to be a backline support character, as opposed to the Crusader's frontline role, or the Warlord's... also frontline role... (maybe cannibilize for Sublime Marshal, or into the warrior-poet or a more supportive Crusader variant/AFC) Direct melee damage doesn't seem to be a common thing for it, as its chassis is utterly unsuited, with neither Fort nor Ref and d4 HD. One direction is having its personal fighting be centered on Dancing Leaf, compensating for a bad baseline (should still be at least d6, preferably d8) by having a mobility+defenses Discipline. Another would be embracing the "backline Initiator" with Soothed Beast getting a rework to fit a battlefield medic functionality, so they're second line that could respond in melee with a lot of tools wanting them close to improve the proper frontline, yet still in position to baffle attempts on the true backline, with Imaginary Friends giving it the capacity to make whatever role is lacking.

Here I have to disagree, its point is to be the "incarnum discipline" and that's a wide enough space in itself. Of course you're right that there should be some guiding principle to its maneuvers other than just "a bunch of random effects that you happen to be able to augment with essentia". The offensive soulmelds idea was one way of trying to get there, and doing more with the chakra slot/item slot theme would be appropriate.

The issue is that "Incarnum Discipline" is too broad a target, because the Totemist, Incarnate and Soulborn have rather different goals in mind for the subsystem. Mental Grip is almost purely telekinesis and Sleeping Goddess does some "mind-wounding" debuffs and has a lot of mechanics centering on dream-stuff, neither of them is a broadly applicable "Psionics as expressed via Sublime Way".

Focusing on the Offensive Soulmelds is fine, focusing on Incarnum-as-mentor is fine, mixing the two can work out with a bit of theme welding, but if the overarching theme is just "Fighting with Incarnum", you don't really have grounds to hold apart from Totemist or non-Initiating Soulborn fixes in combat method, and questions arise from why you can't get the Incarnate's shenanigans going. Again, Sleeping Goddess and Mental Grip narrow it down to a core method of application for the subsystem.

Antimagic discipline: fueling the abilities with spell slots and giving virtual spell slots for knowing maneuvers seems overcomplicated. It also gives casters and theurges an advantage when the intent of the discipline should be to level the field between pure martials and everyone else, including theurges and partial casters. Basing anything on caster level has the same problem.

...

As for adding magical capabilities to the discipline, I think that may be overconcepting it. If we were going to do the "arcane swordsage" thing, I think that would be its own whole thing. Most of the high level monsters in D&D are spellcasters, add that plus the caster-martial imbalance and antimagic is a useful enough space to furnish 25 maneuvers.

The thinking I was having was basically to knock out the heavy and blunt anti-magic alongside filling in the gap that having Incarnum and Psionics get explicitly-transparent Disciplines offers in one space, rather than having it be adding two whole Disciplines. The point of the CL scaling is to have benefits go up with level without demanding high-level slots be dedicated. And the issue with a Discipline dedicated to anti-magic is that it doesn't really have anything to do at low levels, and most of the properties of value are already contained in other Disciplines to make it not strictly needed, with Chthonic Serpent being very heavily about one of them as literally its purpose to exist.

I don't think there's actually enough to do with a solely anti-magic Discipline for it to be worth those 25 Maneuvers, in the sense of situations you'll want to use it in, nor am I sure there's the room for the ancillary mechanics like feats, items, PRC inclusion, and other such matters to be mechanics used outside metagamed modules. Sure, you can roll out a pile of variations and specific counters and all sorts of things, but gathering all those effects under one roof specifically to screw casters isn't likely to make for a Discipline people will take, but rather a showcase of what other Disciplines have anti-caster value to go take those and actually get something for the things that aren't spellcasters.

Yes, there's a lot of high-level enemies with spell access, but that doesn't particularly matter for levels 1-10 where such is relatively rare, or the encounters that have a major part of them be non-casters. The same issue faces any prospective giant-slaying Discipline, or an anti-Initiator Discipline, or anything else that goes after a given target. You aren't assured that target will actually come up, so the Discipline needs to be doing something more, be about more, than screwing over that single kind of target.

---

Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley

That seems like far more complexity than should be associated with a discipline directly. Hacking a bunch of extra resource mechanics on top of a subset of maneuvers (rather than making them a PrC) seems like it restricts character creation for relatively little benefit. What if you want to make the Iron Heart/Stone Dragon/Anti-Magic guy? That seems like a reasonable build, but if your anti-magic abilities require spell slots, it won't work properly.

Sleeping Goddess and Warrior's Soul do the same sort of thing, Event Horizon has a modal situation, Phantasmal Garden has sublist shenanigans, Sublime Tapestry is built on modifying other attacks, Coin's Edge is all about extra and altered dice rolls, and my suggestion is spending spell slots for bonuses. You don't need the slot to initiate the example Maneuver, but if you use one, it gets bonus accuracy and damage in the event of being used as an Attack of Opportunity, and a better chance of negating the spell even if that attack doesn't cause spell failure.

And you can just as easily snag the anti-magic tricks of any other Discipline, whether that be the SR from Dancing Leaf, the Grappling from Setting Sun or Chthonic Serpent, the Silence effect in Divine Muse for some god-forsaken reason, or anything that improves Opportunity Attacks, regardless of location. Lot of options in Bloodstained Gutter in particular for indirect anti-caster properties. Having a Discipline dedicated wholly to one function isn't going to be a widely used Discipline, it's going to be a cheat-sheet for fulfilling that function by mixing together other Disciplines that can do something else.

Do they all need to be combat abilities? One of the things I disliked about the original ToB was that there was no mechanism for e.g. a Shadow Hand Swordsage to have any shadow powers that weren't directly used for killing people.

The thing is that if there are no combat abilities within a sub-theme, them being within a fighting style is difficult to justify. Everything needs to tie into fighting in some capacity, and Shadow Hand has stealth and teleportation effects that give spywork benefits but also help with its combat routine. Essentially, because of what a Discipline is, a fighting style, a Maneuver or Stance being useless to fighting is a flavor break, and consequently any effect that can't be leveraged for some form of fighting doesn't really fit.

As for "not directly used for killing people", Shadow Hand has some stealth effects, and its mobility doesn't exactly require you to pop in behind a dude to shank him. You can use it to teleport through a window just fine. The catch to my understanding of the fluff constraints, again, is that they be usable to assist in combat.

---

With regards to rolling in Garryl's extensions, I'd suggest rolling Mechanist under Clockwork Warrior, to focus the core of the project more into Tome of Battle and mundane matters. The Magitech stuff is rather out of left field. On the Disciplines, I'd suggest having three total and relentlessly prune, merge, and cannibilize between the two to come to a final three instead of adding yet more questionably distinct Disciplines outright. Up front, I'd see about rolling parts of Entropy Dynamo, Akasha's Timepiece, and Crushing Juggernaught into a single "powered equipment" Discipline, working it more under clockwork and electromechanics rather than having magitech be a thing the project is concerned with. Maybe using the powered items as the special quality/wand and staff counterpart for the crafting while Warheart items cover the basic plusses? Possibly merge Shifting Steel and Lightning Fox into a single Discipline to provide Electricity in-house and avoid adding yet another Discipline at this point.

For the Undead one, I'd cannibilize Undying Call rather than bring it in as Undead-specific spygames, roll Frozen Night under Relentess Dusk to be one representative of "inescapable horror" and have Frozen Night's effects stop being so "Desert Wind but (Utter)Cold", and move Restless Bone restrictions to a requirement for added effect instead of for using in the first place, and possibly have mount creation be handled by Restless Bone while Relentless Dusk just uses them. Maybe swap out the specific creation effects for general-use creation, with the relevant things moved into the centralized list for Corpsecrafter. On the classes, I would turn Death Knight into an AFC for the final machine-based class to piggyback on Fortification overlap, while making a more proper Rogue-type from the Spirit Warrior by rolling in some of the legwork for Intangibility not pulled out of Undying Call, since there isn't really a direct stealth-oriented class in the project as of yet.

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Spoiler: Core Variants reply

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Originally Posted by Elves

I had set aside time today to do the psionic theurge PRC, but didn't have any ideas, so instead I took a stab at variant PHB classes like we were talking about. So here for the sake of argument is my very quick take on it...

BBN
- Removed trap sense
- Can’t choose whirling frenzy or spirit lion totem
- Totem barbarian ACF from UA baseline, added +str to intimidate

People in it for the pounce dip won’t take this variant. Hopefully the maneuvers make up for no pounce. Could add pounce at 6th as class feature, but maybe too much.

Rather than explicitly forbid, look at the things that are altered and break the compatibilities. If you're keeping the Totem Barbarian situation, make it your own version of Totem Barbarian, with most of the weight being on the Totem-specific Discipline. Decide on one to be universal, probably being Tiger Claw, then give each Totem a second specific to it, with some bonuses to smooth over the gameplay of that added Discipline. Make your own Lion Totem, make your own Rage overhaul, instead of just forbidding such things.

FTR
- Nothing removed. Maneuvers at odd levels.

There’s nothing to remove. Mvs fill dead levels. Straight empowerment.

I'd suggest doing something important on the Dungeoncrasher levels, so that you lose some value in stacking, even if it's not very important to the output. An inversion of the Warblade's thing, switching around between methods of focus rather than what's focused in, might be a good pick for such a function, since it'd allow for some early-game options to be taken and then swapped for better scaling feats later.

MNK
- Haven't done this one yet
- No slow fall, wholeness of body, SR, dimension door, quivering palm, tongues, or etherealness
- Redo stunning fist as a class feature

No wholeness of body means no Dark Moon disciple (constant total concealment), but still allows invisible fist.

I'd say keep the Slow Fall, SR and Tongues, unless there's some important AFC that the other losses don't break. If you're removing Wholeness of Body, then there ought to be something added to recover health, and rather oddly there doesn't seem to be a Monk-friendly source of self healing among the mass of Maneuvers. Soothed Beast being adjusted to contain some such outright healing as a frequent measure, displacing some of the honestly-overloaded active defense going on, might work if having Monk get baked-in pacifism is a thing you're willing to do.

PAL
- Trades spellcasting for maneuvers
- Borrowed pathfinder paladin mercies (LOH bonus effects)
- Similarly, added list of smite bonus effects
- Celestial mount & warded mount ACF baseline

Concern: it has 4 things going (smite, LOH, mount, maneuvers) which seems like too much.

I'd remove Smite, or maybe shift it to an automatic minor bonus for hammering at opposed Alignments, and have the Mercies filled in by getting some kind of condition removal on Devoted Spirit. Or rip out some redundant functions in Soothed Beast to make room for giving it condition-focused actual healing to go with its suite of damage prevention, then give that for more mechanics to use to protect the improved mount in the form of the active defenses and recovery-oriented healing so you can actually be using the darn thing on some decent basis, instead of just bolting on AFCs to upgrade it and basically hope it doesn't get completely gutted.

RGR
- Maneuvers in place of spells
- Replace favored enemy with “hunter’s quarry”
- Animal companion @3rd, counts as druid -2
- Supplementary abilities to enhance quarry, companion gets 1/2 quarry bonus

Favored enemy is problematic in practice and is DM-dependent. Removing casting removes mystic ranger/SOTAO so no balance concerns with mvs added.

I'd see about working the Maneuvers in with Fighting Styles, so that it has a relevant Discipline. Obviously Twin Spirit, generalized to permit as wide a space of Animal Companion and Mounted combat as possible, but then also Army of One or an Archery Discipline. Hunter's Quarry sounds like it could be its own separate thing that's stackable, unless you're tying it into the Maneuvers, and I can't shake the idea of having one of Twin Spirit's feats add your Initiator level to your effective Druid level which would make this Ranger have full progression even if they decided to take a tour of PRCs, rather than rolling an advancement acceleration in as a rule.

ROG
- Remove special abilities (except compulsory improved evasion)
- Penetrating strike ACF baseline
- Need to add capstone

Similar to fighter, mvs fit in between sneak attack dice.

Again with referencing existing AFCs to roll in, rather than thinking about handling the functionality of them in a different and possibly Initiating-specific way. Why not have it be 2/3rds Sneak Attack dice like the Lurk, and roll the penetration into doing the attack with a Maneuver? So that it doesn't just bluntly have more damage and can't do the attack-spam blender stuff on the normally-Sneak-Attack-immune creatures.

In general, they should probably get two Disciplines and 2-4 Maneuvers to begin with, so they're functional Initiators, even if they're clearly less so than the proper Initiating classes in exchange for their significantly heavier non-Initiating functions. Such is also a major concern I have with the current lineup of added base classes, since they get far more serious features than the existing Initiators. It's yet another reason for me wanting the Animist's actual-spells stuff to be crafting, as that keeps it from being just another character ability on top of a usually-better-than-Swordsage Initiator setup.

**Elves** · 2020-06-09, 01:04 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoilering responses for readability.

Spoiler: Sleeping Goddess

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I'm currently revising SG. Removing its dream themes so that it doesn't step on the the toes of Infinite Shore and instead rolling in some of the telekinetic elements of Mental Grip. Its current state is also somewhat stepping on the thematic toes of Diamond Mind. So the goal is to have it keep some of the original subtlety, but add more explicit psychic stuff to make it a clear psychic warrior discipline.

Added a note --

"Note: The Pathfinder RPG’s Path of War supplement, by Chris Bennett, includes a different version of The Demented One’s original Sleeping Goddess discipline. Use that version if you’re playing Pathfinder. We recommend this version if you’re playing D&D."

I simply don't think it's a problem to have a different version, especially when ErrantX's edit has some things that aren't a good balance fit with the default TOB content.

Spoiler: Poet

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The Discipline that's actually core to the Poet class is Divine Muse, which does its supposed job atrociously because for some god forsaken reason it's shoved full of direct damage when it's supposed to be emulating Bardic Music.

The current state of the poet disciplines is placeholder, they need to be overhauled in order to make a coherent playstyle for the class.

I can see a lot of directions to go with, but from the current structure, the Poet looks to be a backline support character, as opposed to the Crusader's frontline role, or the Warlord's... also frontline role...

Animist vs Machinist form obvious thematic contrast. Poet vs Warlord also seem to provide a contrast of peaceful vs warlike, and that could be reflected in their mechanics -- two leader types with different approaches. Passive vs aggressive, or something like that.

Direct melee damage doesn't seem to be a common thing for it, as its chassis is utterly unsuited, with neither Fort nor Ref and d4 HD.

Its "strike while the iron is hot" bonus is supposed to let it use single-attack strikes effectively.

For a TOB bard class, there's also an idea DragoonWraith did, a "dancer". That would be a much simpler concept to deliver on -- just a bard who tumbles around with movement abilities and has special bardic dance abilities instead of bardic music. I think "poet" with imagination abilities could feel more special. But hard to say until I go back and revise the class. Since I'm currently drawing a blank on the psionic theurge PRC, I think I'll go right ahead to the base classes and do just that.

Spoiler: Machinist

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With regards to rolling in Garryl's extensions, I'd suggest rolling Mechanist under Clockwork Warrior... The Magitech stuff is rather out of left field.

I say variant crusader because its maneuver mechanic is a variant of the crusader's mechanic. Machinist should stay base class name because of the contrast, animist vs machinist.

Hey, that actually gives me an idea...

D&D Fan suggested a futuristic tech warblade variant. What if, to fit with the machinist, there were three magitech/steampunk variants for the core TOB classes? Crusader: "Clockwork Warrior", Swordsage: "Akashic Timesage", and then Warblade as a space marine or something.

Not sure if that would remotely fit in the project, just an idea.

As for machinist disciplines, probably condensing Entropy Dynamo and Crystalline Optics into 1.

By the way Morphic, how's the druid PRC going?

**Just to Browse** · 2020-06-09, 10:07 PM (ISO 8601)

I'm gonna beg for a simple, possibly low-tier, class that narrowly focuses on a single discipline. Like granting all maneuvers & stances from 1 discipline and barring everything else, with minimal other class features.

I enjoy working on things that are small-ish in scope, like the stuff that comes up in Request a Homebrew. Legacy Weapons seem like an easy way to do that. But I've looked at the format & cheat sheet, and it's still a little hard for me to understand. All I've used are the terrible weapons WoLs in Bo9S. Are there some not-terrible WoL examples I can look at?

Also, I can work on sublime class variants or individual maneuvers if that's something you need. But based on the first few posts, WoL are the biggest hole to fill right now.

EDIT: lol I just noticed you were talking about variants right above. I can just draft a few if people want, and you can give feedback.

**Elves** · 2020-06-09, 10:44 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Just to Browse

I'm gonna beg for a simple, possibly low-tier, class that narrowly focuses on a single discipline. Like granting all maneuvers & stances from 1 discipline and barring everything else, with minimal other class features.

An alt Psychic Warrior with Sleeping Goddess access could fit.

I enjoy working on things that are small-ish in scope, like the stuff that comes up in Request a Homebrew. Legacy Weapons seem like an easy way to do that. But I've looked at the format & cheat sheet, and it's still a little hard for me to understand. All I've used are the terrible weapons WoLs in Bo9S. Are there some not-terrible WoL examples I can look at?

Yeah, taking on one or two of those would be great. I added some descriptive text to the first page post.

I don't know if they're particularly great, but these revisions of the Nine Swords show the power level I'm imagining.

Or, if you want a much more specific ask: brainstorming class features for the psionics/TOB theurge PRC.

The brain is a part of the body; mental and physical perfection can’t be achieved in isolation. There are some who believe that those who remain blind to their psychic potential will never grasp the scope of the Sublime Way, while those who indulge their psyche but neglect their bodies will never achieve enlightenment through psionics.

By honing their minds and bodies with martial arts and meditation, some of these adepts reach an elevated level of consciousness. Their minds reach out across space and even time, communing with all who have or will reach this level of enlightenment, regardless of where in space or time they stand.

Based on this flavor text, what class features can you think of that would provide gameplay synergy between psionics and initiating?

I'm looking for things that would either

a) fulfill the fantasy of "communing with other enlightened minds across space and time"
or
b) fulfill the theme of "mind and body working in synergy".

Spending power points and expending psionic focus are the obvious interactions, but it would also be nice to have something that doesn't hinge off of that, which is what I'm missing.

I'm also missing a strong ability for a). Originally the class was going to be Mage of the Arcane Order except for maneuvers, but that's mechanically unrelated to the psionics theme, so I'm looking for a different way to fulfill that flavor element.

**Just to Browse** · 2020-06-09, 11:44 PM (ISO 8601)

PsyWar + Psionic discipline sounds interesting. I'll mull that over.

The WoL description seems a little unfinished, but I see where it's going. I'll try and make one example and post for feedback before I do anything else.

For the Psionic/Initiator theurge, do you have an existing class and you're trying to fill some holes, or are you looking for core class features?

**Elves** · 2020-06-09, 11:52 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Just to Browse

The WoL description seems a little unfinished, but I see where it's going. I'll try and make one example and post for feedback before I do anything else.

Oh you're right, just realized, those are a bad example since there was no need to include backstory/rituals. Look at the Shadow Hand one, just follow that format but for the non-epic rituals.

For the Psionic/Initiator theurge, do you have an existing class and you're trying to fill some holes, or are you looking for core class features?

It's a PRC, not basing it on any preexisting class, just at the stage of brainstorming features and then will see how to order them. So far, have:

Spoiler

Show

Harmony of Mind and Body (Ex): Your martial arts clarify your mind. When you finish performing a maneuver with an initiation time of one full-round action, you regain your psionic focus, if applicable. This only takes place the first time each round it would have an effect.

In addition, so long as you’re psionically focused, you can’t be uncentered.

Mind Over Body, Body Over Mind (Ex): As an immediate action, you may use your Fortitude save modifier when making a Will save, or vice versa.

X (Su): Whenever you manifest a psionic power, you gain one temporary power point that can only be used to augment Sleeping Goddess maneuvers. These temporary power points stack, but vanish the next time an encounter starts or ends.

X (Su): Once per encounter, you can initiate a free usage of a maneuver you know by spending as many power points as it would cost to manifest a psionic power of the same level.

A TOB psywarrior base class could have something like the 3rd ability, or its power point store could simply be used for empowering Sleeping Goddess maneuvers and fueling psionic feats.

**Elves** · 2020-06-10, 12:06 AM (ISO 8601)

That "free power point" clause in Sleeping Goddess kind of bugs me just because none of the other disciplines give out perks in that way.

Instead, maybe have a clause in each Sleeping Goddess stance that gives you power points to spend on SG maneuvers?

Eg, 1st level stance could grant 1 pp per round to spend on empowering SG maneuvers.

**Morphic tide** · 2020-06-11, 04:33 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Elves

Spoilering responses for readability.

Spoiler: Sleeping Goddess

Show

I'm currently revising SG. Removing its dream themes so that it doesn't step on the the toes of Infinite Shore and instead rolling in some of the telekinetic elements of Mental Grip. Its current state is also somewhat stepping on the thematic toes of Diamond Mind. So the goal is to have it keep some of the original subtlety, but add more explicit psychic stuff to make it a clear psychic warrior discipline.

Added a note --

"Note: The Pathfinder RPG’s Path of War supplement, by Chris Bennett, includes a different version of The Demented One’s original Sleeping Goddess discipline. Use that version if you’re playing Pathfinder. We recommend this version if you’re playing D&D."

I simply don't think it's a problem to have a different version, especially when ErrantX's edit has some things that aren't a good balance fit with the default TOB content.

Maybe focus more on rolling the effects under Mental Grip for the final product, or do some manner of name change for the final composite result. My issue is more the confusion of the overlapping name in case people want to use both versions in the same campaign and having enough distinction to use them as separate Disciplines, even if they do mostly overlap from their common origin.

And the suggestion of having the Stances generate PP instead of having some as an automatic perk for learning the Maneuvers would be a huge difference to justify having them both present in a 3.PF campaign. I'd still look at having the Maneuvers give PP in some cases, such as having a Psychic Vampire based effect, and they'd need to be "temporary PP" to not stack up to free high-level Powers, but it's a very good starting point. Thought a blunt per-round PP amount can't get to 3 until you feel healing should be a non-expense, as the Psychic Warrior can use Body Adjustment to heal 1d12 HP or 2 Ability Damage off of 3 PP. Maybe a 5th or 6th level Stance for 5 PP per round.

With regards to a Sublime Psychic Warrior, my main thought would be having it take the feats down a notch and mandate alternating between Powers and Maneuvers. The Psychic Warrior list has a vast breadth of enabling effects, so having it keep normal Manifesting would make for a lot of major effects the Discipline doesn't need to concern itself with, mostly surrounding healing and weapon enhancement. As for the PRC features you mentioned, the second unnamed one is vastly more expensive than Psychic Renewal and limited to once per encounter in exchange for not consuming Psionic Focus. Which is already something counteracted by Harmony of Mind and Body, and something that has a great many ways to get it back fast because it fuels a lot of things.

Spoiler: Poet

Show

The current state of the poet disciplines is placeholder, they need to be overhauled in order to make a coherent playstyle for the class.

Animist vs Machinist form obvious thematic contrast. Poet vs Warlord also seem to provide a contrast of peaceful vs warlike, and that could be reflected in their mechanics -- two leader types with different approaches. Passive vs aggressive, or something like that.

Its "strike while the iron is hot" bonus is supposed to let it use single-attack strikes effectively.

For a TOB bard class, there's also an idea DragoonWraith did, a "dancer". That would be a much simpler concept to deliver on -- just a bard who tumbles around with movement abilities and has special bardic dance abilities instead of bardic music. I think "poet" with imagination abilities could feel more special. But hard to say until I go back and revise the class. Since I'm currently drawing a blank on the psionic theurge PRC, I think I'll go right ahead to the base classes and do just that.

The point being made about the chassis is that it can't realistically survive melee because it has such small health and melee-important saves, I'm well aware of Strike While the Iron is Hot covering the attack bonus needs. The "dancer" form could split the difference on Marshal features, I suppose, having granted movement as a major feature but allowing it to cover themselves so they can Spring Attack around their terrible hit die and Maneuver access randomness. This also means having such an effect without needing to bring in White Raven or give such redundancies to Divine Muse.

Whatever the case, Imaginary Friends is a frankly insane amount of power for a class feature in general, let alone for the feature-light Martial Adepts, so unless it's grounded in extremely thorough ways to the Poet's vulnerabilities or resources, it'll be prone to game-breaking uses.

Spoiler: Machinist

Show

I say variant crusader because its maneuver mechanic is a variant of the crusader's mechanic. Machinist should stay base class name because of the contrast, animist vs machinist.

Hey, that actually gives me an idea...

D&D Fan suggested a futuristic tech warblade variant. What if, to fit with the machinist, there were three magitech/steampunk variants for the core TOB classes? Crusader: "Clockwork Warrior", Swordsage: "Akashic Timesage", and then Warblade as a space marine or something.

Not sure if that would remotely fit in the project, just an idea.

As for machinist disciplines, probably condensing Entropy Dynamo and Crystalline Optics into 1.

I again point at you mentioning Mental Grip as "too magic", as well as the Warheart crafting and two currently present Constructs. Going with the primary "mechanical" option being flat-out Magitech works primarily if you're implementing it on some level as a Divine vs. Arcane contrast. Steam/clockpunk instead of magitech is what I'd angle for, since there's plenty of things already around for magitech concepts. Again mentioning using it as an alternative for further item crafting types to try and fill things out for a "Sublime Artificer", even if that's just the final form of the Mechanist.

Spoiler: Druid PRC

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By the way Morphic, how's the druid PRC going?

...Running into a pile of issues trying to figure out wording and placements to fill out the table as a Wild Shape entry each level (Large at 4th/ECL 11, Magical Beast at 8th/ECL 15, use as Stance at 10th, every other level just a daily use), then another function. Don't think I've actually touched it in a week. Decided on a number of things odd to PRCs, including specifically granting Natural Attack, Unarmed Strike, and armor proficiency because the Druid has a specific list of proficiencies, so unlike every other class they're non-proficient with Unarmed Strikes, and their Natural Attack proficiency only covers those gained with Wild Shape rather than being a static Proficiency, meaning that technically a Druid isn't proficient with Natural Attacks in their native form. Alongside having a Maneuver Known each of the first three levels and a Stance at 2nd, so it can very rapidly self-qualify from its static properties so that preceding Animist Initiating stops being "locked up" with the first two PRC levels.

Feature-wise, the Wild Shape is IL-scaling for duration and max HD, with 4th, 8th, and 10th giving functional changes instead of an added use (Large, Magical Beast and using it as a Stance, respectively), and the inbuilt form of giving Initiating to the Animal Companion is based on bonus hit dice to try and upgrade lower-"tier" companions and draws specifically from things known by the character so it's sort of proxy Initiating, but is just adding the PRC levels to Druid levels rather than covering the IL transparency because that seems like a natural fit for a Twin Spirit feat.

The slot dump for healing is done as basically uncapped Cure line (1d8 per spell level + caster level), but not being subject to usual halved healing to Living Constructs and such from not being a Positive Energy effect even though it's still limited to living targets, used as a Move Action or as part of Wild Shape, and if you do use it as part of Wild Shape the healing on Wild Shape gets bumped to the full suite for a full day and night of rest, spelling it out as a dependent clause ("Thereby healing") such that it carries over any alternate or improved rest recovery. Given that the capstone is competing with gaining 9th level spells, I'm not stressed by the healing output that hits with the 10th level.

Then there's the Bonus Feats. Because when you're struggling to fill a table, Bonus Feats are the usual resort. In this case, it's not just a blunt Bonus Feat entry, but rather every 3rd level gives either a locked-in [Wild] feat, or a flexible feat for Wild Shape forms so you can get at the things they use to function without getting into weirdness. And that's what I have done so far, with my current thoughts being slot dump for Elemental damage at 4th, expanding Share Spell at 5th when it has an assurance of things to do with a Spell Like clause, some form of durability boost for a 7th level slot dump, doing the part-elemental thing at 8th to go with Magical Beasts sometimes being that sort of weird, then the capstone probably being partial Maneuver transparency with the slot-dumps.

On the casting, I think I'm going 8/10 with the lost levels being with the Cure-like slot dump and the Share Spell improvement, as those are sizable boosts to the spellcasting width and come in before the full decay of game balance that makes any lost casting intolerable. And 10th is competing with 9th level spells, so game balance is long dead by then and thus there's not really any justification for not giving a tick along. This means that Caster 4/Initiator 3/PRC 10/Caster +3 would be 15th level casting, losing 9ths in exchange for at-will Wild Shape, spontaneous Cure-like slot use, damage bonuses, and durability, and an about full-sized chunk of Initiating for per-encounter output. Consequently, their entire combat routine ends up needing nothing of direct spellcasting, meaning they're free to dedicate every slot to utility. Conversely, Caster 3/Initiator 4/PRC 10/Initiator +3 still gives 11th level casting for 6th level slots, still offering plenty enough utility casting to be a big impact and enough slots to have the slot-dumping features be in good use.

**D&D_Fan** · 2020-06-11, 09:39 AM (ISO 8601)

What happened with my future fighter idea? Was it just scrapped? It's okay if it was, I'm not mad.

**Just to Browse** · 2020-06-11, 08:04 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Elves

That "free power point" clause in Sleeping Goddess kind of bugs me just because none of the other disciplines give out perks in that way.

This is a tough sell to me. A core conceit of 3.5e psionics is that you have power points and you spend them across the day. Temporary PP is a legit mechanic, but I don't think it should be a central mechanic.

I'm not against giving extra benefits for certain disciplines for aesthetic purposes. Players are opting in to the complexity of a psionic + initiator effect, so they can handle the complexity as well as the aesthetic weirdness. One alternative you could consider is replacing part of the normal discipline benefit (such as key weapon and/or key skills) with the power points, so that the discipline feels more like a tweak on the normal rules than an extra component attached to it.

Originally Posted by D&D_Fan

What happened with my future fighter idea? Was it just scrapped? It's okay if it was, I'm not mad.

I don't think it resonated with people. It's futuristic, it sounds like it's 5e, and it doesn't really sound like a discipline. If you're interested in the 5e fighter archetype, you may be able to request in the Request a Homebrew thread. Or just brew it yourself and solicit feedback.

**Elves** · 2020-06-11, 08:58 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Just to Browse

This is a tough sell to me. A core conceit of 3.5e psionics is that you have power points and you spend them across the day. Temporary PP is a legit mechanic, but I don't think it should be a central mechanic.

In that light, IMO, it makes a great deal of sense insofar as part of ToB's shtick is moving away from per-day and instead balancing around indefinitely repeatable use. The idea is that these temporary pp could ONLY be used to augment maneuvers, so it's not completely changing the psionics system the way it would be otherwise -- it's really more like an internal token system for the discipline itself that happens to crossover with extra benefits for psionic characters.

Stance pp drips are also a better solution because they require more buy-in -- a stance is a significant investment for a martial adept -- but in exchange for the bigger buy-in they let you use the system in a more functional way if you are not a psionic gish (5 pp per day at, say, level 18 is just not very functional or exciting).

That said, it seems like an important ability for the psywarrior variant class would be letting temp pp drips from SG stances be used for normal psionic powers, perhaps for 1 minute per day or something.

And the psywar would presumably have its own normal daily store of pp -- either solely for use with maneuvers, or to split between maneuvers and psionic casting.

I don't think it resonated with people. It's futuristic, it sounds like it's 5e, and it doesn't really sound like a discipline. If you're interested in the 5e fighter archetype, you may be able to request in the Request a Homebrew thread. Or just brew it yourself and solicit feedback.

You're free to take a stab at writing it yourself, though. The way it would fit into this project is as a warblade variant class.

On that note:

I copied over Garryl's clockwork warrior as a crusader variant.

While I'm not sure how well it would actually perform, I think the idea behind this class variant is great. It takes the two big class mechanics (granted maneuvers and steely resolve) and puts a twist on them.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see done for the warblade and swordsage. Warblade is hard though, because its class features are pretty generic.

**Just to Browse** · 2020-06-11, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)

In that light, IMO, it makes a great deal of sense insofar as part of ToB's shtick is moving away from per-day and instead balancing around indefinitely repeatable use. The idea is that these temporary pp could ONLY be used to augment maneuvers, so it's not completely changing the psionics system the way it would be otherwise -- it's really more like an internal token system for the discipline itself that happens to crossover with extra benefits for psionic characters.

But isn't the point of the crossover to cross the two components over? A per-round mechanic sounds a lot more like essentia or a whole new subsystem, especially if you're making it only usable for maneuvers.

I also think "more interesting" is pretty subjective. My question is: What does a player want when they pick up a Psionic discipline?

Is it to have psychic themed powers? Then we don't really need a subsystem. Give em Mental Grip.
Is it to play a martial gish? Then I don't think we should make them sit in 1 discipline's stance to play optimally
Is it to abuse the resource system for free cheap powers all the time? Then don't limit the PP.

The only place I see your suggested subsystem being useful is if people want extra rules for their initiator, and also happen to want to play a psionic discipline. That doesn't seem very well-targeted to me. I know I wouldn't enjoy it, because it sounds annoying to track.

I actually like ErrantX's choice to give most of the PP based on the highest maneuver known and have them scale less with level.

**Just to Browse** · 2020-06-11, 09:43 PM (ISO 8601)

On Sublime PsyWar:

I'm a fan of cutting the optimization ceiling and adding an optimization floor. Reducing the number of powers known doesn't really do that, and honestly reducing power level access probably won't do it given how powerful some of the low-level powers are (expansion, defensive precognition, that claw power).
Since the PsyWar is basically the self-buff class, so I'm not big on forcing alternation between manifesting & punching. It would probably cut the optimization ceiling, but I don't think it would do so in a fun way. I want a sublime psywar to be able to play with their toys.

Given those considerations, I'm more interested in a blanket replacement of feats with maneuvers. Removing all feats reduces how quickly PsyWars can hit their stride with things like Knock-Down, Shock Trooper, Robilar's Gambit, etc.

Removing PsyWar ACFs is also an option. Shouldn't be too hard, since the only ACF-based features are the level 1 & 2 feat and the Ride skill.

Given that, here's my take.

Sublime Psychic Warrior
The Sublime Psychic Warrior can blend the teachings of the manyfold swords with their own psionic prowess.

Class Skills
Eliminate Ride from the Sublime Psychic Warrior's class skill list.

Add Martial Lore to the class skill list.

Gain
Focused Discipline: At level 1, choose a martial discipline with a key skill of Autohypnosis. This is your focused discipline. It is used for your stances and maneuvers.

Stances Known: At level 1, you learn all 1st level stances from your focused discipline. Whenever you reach a class level that grants a new maneuver level, you learn all stances of the new maneuver level (see Maneuvers).

Maneuvers: At level 2, you learn all 1st level maneuvers from your focused discipline.

You must ready maneuvers before you use them. A maneuver used by a Sublime Psychic Warrior is considered an extraordinary ability unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate one. You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels, as shown on the table below.

Spoiler

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Initiator Level	Maneuver Level
2-4	1st
5-7	2nd
8-10	3rd
11-13	4th
14-16	5th
17-19	6th
20	7th

Maneuvers Readied: At level 2, you can ready 3 maneuvers at a time. Unlike most initiators, the number of maneuvers you can ready does not change as you advance in level. You ready your maneuvers by exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to exercise again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in practice, you can change your readied maneuvers. You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them since you chose them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your readied maneuvers can be used once per encounter (until you recover them, as described below).

After you regain your psionic focus, you may spend a swift action to refresh all of your expended maneuvers.

Lose
The Sublime Psychic Warrior does not gain any Bonus Feats.

**Elves** · 2020-06-11, 10:16 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Just to Browse

But isn't the point of the crossover to cross the two components over? [...] My question is: What does a player want when they pick up a Psionic discipline?

You're right, that has to be the starting point. Mechanically it has to mean that a character who uses psionics gets perks for choosing SG maneuvers instead of other maneuvers. Spending pp to augment is a good way to do that, because it provides more flexibility rather than a direct power boost and also mitigates action economy conflict that might prevent a gish from getting the full benefit from both their power sets (ie, even if they use their actions on maneuvers instead of powers, their psionic classes contribute by allowing pp augment).

(Another way would be interactions with psionic powers. It would have to be general stuff like "you can continue concentrating on a psionic power while initiating this mv" or enhancers like "extend duration of power by 1 round". Maybe throw a couple things like that in, but it's a direct empowerment rather than increased optionality the way augments are, which makes it feel more compulsory.)

Goal of disc is: a) fulfill trope of psychic martial arts, b) provide mechanical synergy with real psionic classes.

Shouldn't require B in order to fulfill A because you need significant investment in psi classes before you get enough pp to comfortably spend some on mvs while not neglecting your psi powers. Restricts builds too much if disc requires >5 lvls in psi classes before augment feels good to use.

The only place I see your suggested subsystem being useful is if people want extra rules for their initiator, and also happen to want to play a psionic discipline.

It's the same subsystem, it's just giving non-psi characters an allowance.

A daily pp allowance that can also be used for powers does have a pro -- it creates synergy by making dips in a psionic class more appealing as a swordsage who has invested in SG. Probably they would be used more for powers than maneuvers -- having 10 extra power points to go with your psion dip is appealing. That does create crossover pressure but possibly in the wrong direction, and again in a way that feels compulsory. But maybe it's not a problem. I see the strength in the PoW allowance, where there's pressure for a psi gish to have their highest level maneuver be Sleeping Goddess but after that there are diminishing returns.

Then again, the fact that PoW has already done that mechanic may be an argument for the AOW version going a different way.

Originally Posted by Just to Browse

I'm a fan of cutting the optimization ceiling and adding an optimization floor. [...] I want a sublime psywar to be able to play with their toys.Given those considerations, I'm more interested in a blanket replacement of feats with maneuvers.

Agreed.

You know all maneuvers from that discipline.

Problematic -- especially if this is meant as a relatively ezplay class, 30 maneuvers plus 20 powers is too much to keep track of.
A start would be giving only 2 5th level and 1 6th level power known, which cuts it down by 5. Still too much. This may be a problem with Sleeping Goddess getting too big after absorbing the best Mental Grip mvs.

Class should get all maneuver levels, it's only getting 1 discipline.

After you regain your psionic focus, you may spend a swift action to refresh all of your expended maneuvers.

maybe FRA to regain focus and regain all mvs?
or maybe theurge synergy, regain 1 mv as swift action when you expend focus as part of a power?
Trying to think of other ideas.

I'd like to see a couple of new class features that provide synergy to tie the class's two ability sets together, that's always the thing with theurge classes.

Agreed that getting rid of bonus feats and keeping psionic casting is more exciting.

--

Edit: although, a potential issue with the ErrantX daily allowance is readying SG maneuvers for 1 encounter only, spending pp allowance, then readying other maneuvers for other encounters. It's not a balance issue but it may not be a great incentive to create.

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