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2020-11-26, 07:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Looking for help and feedback on this.
Epic Disciplines
You'll notice it's not quite done. Crypt needs 2 more maneuvers. Primeval has 2 to rewrite. Halo and Dread need several each. Ideas or input on these would be great.
Questions:
1) I like the unique rules for epic maneuvers. My concern is that people will frontload their epic maneuvers each encounter, leading to repetitive play. To counter this, should there be a rule that you can only initiate 1 epic maneuver each turn?
2) In contrast to the way normal disciplines work, everyone who takes an initiation feat can eventually learn all the maneuvers from that discipline. That means these disciplines' maneuvers are free to be connected and synergistic. How could this be done better?
General feedback also welcome. I've put my notes in red in the doc.Last edited by Elves; 2020-11-27 at 12:19 AM.
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2020-11-27, 01:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Please note that you are in epic play so you should get really cool out of combat stuff too.
For example final unrest should not dispel previous instances of final unrest because casters have been animating forever high quality undead(including undead that keeps absolutely all the abilities of the target) for like 6+ levels.
By the way why did you give a maneuver that can do "you can not be resurrected by non epic magic"?
You do not want epic maneuvers to resurrect the very dead people?
Soul-Sand Devil Shintai does not exactly compares well to literally any undead drain ability.Last edited by noob; 2020-11-27 at 02:06 AM.
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2020-11-27, 08:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
"Undead creatures created with Devouring Crypt maneuvers don’t count against the number of undead you can create or control by other means, such as the create undead spell"
I think that should be "Animate Dead"- you don't have any control from Create Undead.My homebrew:
Spoiler
Completed:
ToB disciplines:
The Narrow Bridge
The Broken Blade
Prestige classess:
Disciple of Karsus -PrC for Karsites.
The Seekers of Lost Swords and the Preserver of Future Blades Two interelated Tome of Battle Prcs,
Master of the Hidden Seal - Binder/Divine hybrid
Knight of the Grave- Necromancy using Gish
Worthwhile links:
Age of Warriors
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2020-11-28, 02:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
suggestions? ideally appended to existing combat mvs for space reasons.
For example final unrest should not dispel previous instances of final unrest because casters have been animating forever high quality undead(including undead that keeps absolutely all the abilities of the target) for like 6+ levels.
Final unrest is restricted because otherwise you could functionally double up on pinnacle maneuvers. For the same reason, considering making it be that you lose all Dev Crypt undead whenever you ready epic maneuvers from another disc.
By the way why did you give a maneuver that can do "you can not be resurrected by non epic magic"?
You do not want epic maneuvers to resurrect the very dead people?
Soul-Sand Devil Shintai does not exactly compares well to literally any undead drain ability.Join the 3.5e Discord server: https://discord.gg/ehGFz6M3nJ
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2020-11-29, 02:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
So, the first thing I noticed about these maneuvers is the XP and time cost to learn them. I'm sure you did them that way because epic spells also cost gold, XP, and time to learn, but while the biggest issue with epic spellcasting is that you can drop the research DC to single digits and get a ton of power for free, the second-biggest issue is that if you don't do that then epic spells are basically never worth the cost.
Looking at Blossoming Steel Strike as an example since it's one of the first in the document, learning that maneuver costs 30,000 XP, the same as 6 castings of wish (and while I know wish is among the best 9th-level spells and you're not trying to directly compare to T1 casters, six wishes can do a lot of good for an epic character even if they're just picking up inherent stat bonuses) and over one and a half times the XP needed to get from 21st level to 22nd. It also takes 15 days to research, when downtime is scarce at epic levels since parties are greater teleporting everywhere trying to save the multiverse from destruction all the time.
For all that, the actual benefit that the maneuver gives you is...three rounds of one conditional free attack per enemy at a moderate damage bonus (like a few free mithral tornadoes or raging mongeese), which is the kind of thing you'd expect to see out of a 19th- or 20th-level initiator (time stands still followed by Island in Time followed by Sudden Recover + time stands still, for instance), not a 22nd- or 23rd-level initiator, and while said benefit does stack with those 19th-/20th-level tricks, that doesn't make the whole setup worth it.
Now, looking at the discipline as a whole, to learn all of the Invincible Sword Princess maneuvers would require 365,000 XP and 182 days of downtime. That's just under half a full year of no adventuring and enough XP to otherwise take a character from 21st level to 34th level, and at the end of all that you're getting effects equivalent to wraithstrike (Soft Blade Kiss), limited wish (Lightning Stroke), a small fraction of implosion (Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade), and so forth. Which, again, are on the more powerful end as spells go and definitely are cool and relevant effects to have if you can pick them up at no extra cost at 21st level, but they're utterly beyond useless at their current cost.
For comparison, vengeful gaze of god lets the caster utterly obliterate any published creature (including the CR 57 Hecatoncheires) or deity within 2 miles of himself in a single shot, yet I guarantee that no one has ever researched or cast that spell in an actual game since the ELH was published, and that spell only costs a mere 150,840 XP and 76 days of downtime to research.
And all of this is on top of having to spend an epic feat just to be able to research these maneuvers in the first place, so instead of spending your 21st-level feat slot on stuff like "my longbow attacks have infinite range" (Distant Shot) or "I can make 5 attacks against everyone in reach" (Epic Whirlwind Attack) or "people I crit basically just die" (Vorpal Strike or Devastating Critical), you're spending it to gain the ability to at some later point be able to spend XP and time to pick up some epic maneuvers...and if you want one maneuver each from two epic disciplines, welp, that's a wait until 24th level at the earliest for you.
So I'd recommend cutting those costs by a factor of 10 at the absolute minimum--at 36,500 XP and 18 days of downtime for 9 maneuvers, you're looking at roughly one wish and 2 days per maneuver, which is much more reasonable albeit still costs almost 1.75 levels' worth of advancement--but would really recommend finding an alternate way to limit epic maneuvers known that doesn't involve those kinds of costs at all. And there's no need to be particularly stingy about it; even just flat-out handing out any two epic maneuvers of a character's choice with an Epic Martial Study feat would take a character until level 33 to pick up a whole discipline, and by that point they could have just taken 13 levels of wizard and gotten access to most of the same effects and much more besides.
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It's too-early o'clock where I am, so I'll go through all the maneuvers and give some more detailed feedback tomorrow, but after skimming through all the disciplines my general impression is that the feat benefits are on the very weak side and most maneuver effects are the equivalent of 6th- to 7th-level spells at best (or PrC capstones or other effects that a PC can pick up around 11th-15th level), which isn't great when 9th-level maneuvers are already hovering around the 6th- or 7th-level-equivalent mark. There are one or two gems in each discipline that are suitably powerful, flavorful, and mechanically unique, but otherwise everything could use a significant power-up across the board.
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2020-11-29, 03:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Thanks for looking at the numbers. I had been going with Demented One's original numbers and didn't sanity check. Reduced to 10k/15k/20k/50k to start with, for total disc cost of 180k. Could reduce more; each one being about half a level seems right. The downtime I like, and finding a timeless plane shouldn't be hard in epic if time is an issue.
As for the power level, it's not just that I'm going with T3 -- I also think it would be nice to have epic gameplay be more coherent, as in 4e, rather than being such a crapshow. But the game is what it is so that may be a lost cause. I look forward to you looking at the maneuvers when you have time. Don't feel the need to read them all at once.
Blossoming steel you presumably take if you have Combat Reflexes and/or an AoO build.
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It's possible to change the framework. Maybe you learn or trade them out normally, but only in a martial adept class your IL is 21st+ in. And then as you say there could be an epic study feat.
Still would want to limit it to 1 epic disc at a time though, which is hard to do if using tradeouts.Last edited by Elves; 2020-11-29 at 10:55 AM.
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2020-11-29, 04:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
By raw you need to be in high epic levels to have the right to learn vengeful gaze of god: you do not have the right to research a spell dealing you more than twice your hit dice in feedback damage dice and this spell deals 200d6 feedback damage to the caster so you need to be level 100.
So yes it is a really bad epic spell that is out of the reach of most epic campaigns seeing the level needed to be allowed to cast it.
Furthermore literally all the deities have disintegration immunity and so are immune to that specific spell.
As I said before for the epic maneuvers "the casters have been doing better for 6+ levels"Last edited by noob; 2020-11-29 at 05:06 AM.
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2020-11-29, 10:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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- Boston, MA
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
My homebrew:
Spoiler
Completed:
ToB disciplines:
The Narrow Bridge
The Broken Blade
Prestige classess:
Disciple of Karsus -PrC for Karsites.
The Seekers of Lost Swords and the Preserver of Future Blades Two interelated Tome of Battle Prcs,
Master of the Hidden Seal - Binder/Divine hybrid
Knight of the Grave- Necromancy using Gish
Worthwhile links:
Age of Warriors
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2020-11-29, 11:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
They also described them as being level 6 or 7 spells like ninth level manoeuvrers.
you should try to get stuff as cool as eighth or ninth level spells with epic manoeuvrers if you want them to be a significant improvement over regular manoeuvrers and do not want your characters to fall too far behind casters.
Like give a pinnacle manoeuvrer where you create a reflection of any creature you met before for the glass branch(ice assasin equivalent)
(you make manoeuvrers based on a mirror giant pan dimensional monster and do not use all the potential of the theme: you could also have thrown shapechange but it is still the school to which you gave the most awesome looking stuff)
Or give a true resurrect on hitting ability to some other branch(an improvement over the heal on hitting already available as a regular manoeuvrer: you ought to have higher level effects with epic manoeuvrers)
Or yet give a mind blank equivalent stance(or boost) and/or a gain undead immunities stance.
But no you decided to grant things that that are not even the equivalent of eighth or ninth level spells.
Also some manoeuvrers are incredibly underwhelming like:
Heavenly Bulwark
Invincible Sword Princess (Counter) [Epic]
Initiation Action: Immediate action
Trigger: You would take damage
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: End of next turn
XP Cost: 10,000 XP
Training Time: 10 days
The Invincible Sword Princess cannot be wounded, cannot be slain. Blades shatter against her skin, flames wash over her without scorching, and even the wrath of the gods is turned aside.
The damage you would take is prevented, and you gain DR/- equal to your initiator level for one round.
Like getting dr equal to your IL: barely helps and it costs 10.000 xp: at that cost you could get magical items better than having that dr all day long: if you did take that you just wasted your xp for no reason.
It is so bad you can say you wasted your immediate action.
Because trust me: epic monsters and characters have attacks in spades so countering one and still taking the others is not enough.
Also Lightning Stroke is seriously bad: if you were playing at a table where you could not hit reliably opponents then you should have played a full caster and never an initiator: you should also add something that makes hitting worth it or else it is useful only at tables where you got that ability 12 levels too late because you had been unable to harm monsters for 12 levels.
Maybe turn lightning stroke in a boost that apply to all the attacks of the turn.
Or maybe turn it into an automatic critical hit that do not miss.
But right now it is underwhelming because the times where it serves you are times where you should have never played an initiator.
Shining adamant defence shows two major problems: you throw a high save boost but casters had been throwing around higher save boosts and it does not stacks with your save boosting items meaning that buying a +10 cloak of resistance instead is better: you save a lot of xp that way and you benefit from it all day long.(not that saves matters in epic play: monsters throws so many sod per turn the solution is not saves but immunities)
Impenetrable skin is the most useless stance I know: it gives +12 ac in epic plays where ac does not matters anymore for players because either they got trick to raise it to thousands or it is so low monster would still hit automatically if you added +12 ac because they gave extreme numbers to monsters so regular ac optimisation cuts down on other performances and you give up.
Maybe it should give some other effect like negate all attacks with natural weapons as the claws and bites shatters on impact with the skin.
Also "Immediate action action" is a typo in the initiate line: remove one of the two action in it.
Bladeswarm is underwhelming it performs comparably to that improved variant of magic missile called chain missile at level 3(apply a metamagic or two and it will match closely the damage like for example maximise and empower).(if wotc wrote a sixth level magic missile spell it would probably be stronger than this manoeuvrer)
The best you can do is like 30d6+10 times int modifier and that is assuming you use that giant crossbow(which is medium sized and an exotic weapon) which is probably considered cheesing it out.
You should let it at least apply all the effect of the magical modifiers of your weapon.Last edited by noob; 2020-11-29 at 01:07 PM.
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2020-11-29, 02:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
That's a cool idea.
Or give a true resurrect on hitting ability to some other branch
Or maybe turn it into an automatic critical hit that do not miss.
Shining adamant defence shows two major problems: you throw a high save boost but casters had been throwing around higher save boosts and it does not stacks with your save boosting items meaning that buying a +10 cloak of resistance instead is better: you save a lot of xp that way and you benefit from it all day long.
Impenetrable skin is the most useless stance I know: it gives +12 ac in epic plays where ac does not matters anymore for players because either they got trick to raise it to thousands or it is so low monster would still hit automatically if you added +12 ac because they gave extreme numbers to monsters so regular ac optimisation cuts down on other performances and you give up.
Maybe it should give some other effect like negate all attacks with natural weapons as the claws and bites shatters on impact with the skin.
Bladeswarm is underwhelming....The best you can do is like 30d6+10 times int modifier and that is assuming you use that giant crossbowJoin the 3.5e Discord server: https://discord.gg/ehGFz6M3nJ
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2020-11-29, 02:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2015
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2020-11-29, 02:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Replaced problematic "Soul-Sand Devil Shintai" with your ice assassin suggestion in Shattered Glass.
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2020-11-29, 11:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Eh...the thing about XP costs is that you have to compare them with what you're giving up and delaying, and I don't think much of anything in epic is worth a significant fraction of a level.
When it comes to non-epic levels, people tend to avoid XP expenditures like the plague, because the classes that actually stay level-appropriate through the full level range (i.e. full casters on the magic side and initiators on the martial side) gain a whole tier of cool new stuff every two levels and Thou Shalt Not Lose Caster Levels (Or Too Many Initiator Levels). The only exceptions to that are crafting magic items, because crafting directly-relevant items and effectively doubling your wealth is just that good (and even then, people prefer to use crafting cost reduction feats, an artificer's Craft Reserve and Retain Essence, and similar rather than actually spend XP), and 9th-level spells like wish and gate because after 17th level there's not another tier of spells to look forward to in a non-epic game so you're not delaying anything...and even then, crafting a staff of power only costs 8,440 gp and casting wish only costs 5,000 gp, which is around 1/3 of the way to level 18 and around 1/4 of the way to level 20
In epic levels, the cool things you can get are pretty huge compared to the stuff you get below level 20, while the level gap between getting cool things is wider and the XP needed to level only grows over time. When you say something takes "about half the XP needed to go from level 23 to 24," the calculus there is not just "Am I willing to spend 11,500 XP on this?" but also "Am I willing to push back picking up both Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting and Death of Enemies by 5 or 6 sessions for this?" and the answer to that question is almost always "no."
It's your epic maneuvers, of course, but if I'm an epic-level PC and see an XP cost in the tens of thousands, I'm either going to ignore it as not being worth it no matter how cool it may seem or head straight to thought bottle abuse to deal with the exorbitant cost.
The downtime I like, and finding a timeless plane shouldn't be hard in epic if time is an issue.
The best options, therefore, only reduce the 180-day cost for a full discipline to 18 days, and that essentially makes it mandatory for epic initiators to abuse time traits. And even then that only gets you a single discipline; an initiator who wants to pick up all the maneuvers and is playing in a group that somehow manages to play to level 80 or something is looking at spending 162 days even after time shenanigans.
So as with the XP cost, I'd recommend slashing the time cost significantly, perhaps to a day or two per maneuver; call it a "training montage" if it helps make that seem more reasonable.
As for the power level, it's not just that I'm going with T3 -- I also think it would be nice to have epic gameplay be more coherent, as in 4e, rather than being such a crapshow.
Blossoming steel you presumably take if you have Combat Reflexes and/or an AoO build.
Compare Blossoming Steel to Epic Whirlwind Attack, which adds at least 4 attacks per enemy to a standard action, doesn't care where enemies started their turn since the character can move first, and only costs a feat slot, no XP or time. That's the kind of benchmark to which one has to compare these maneuvers.
Still would want to limit it to 1 epic disc at a time though, which is hard to do if using tradeouts.
That was exactly my point: that a spell they're expecting to be researched and cast by level 100+ wizards costs much less than maneuvers elves is expected to be researched and used starting at 21st level. The fact that the more expensive maneuver is much weaker than the much cheaper spell was just proverbial icing.
Furthermore literally all the deities have disintegration immunity and so are immune to that specific spell.
(Deities are still immune to VGoG thanks to their full transmutation immunity, so you're right for a different reason, but (A) the Hecatoncheires is still boned and (B) an equivalently-damaging Evocation spell would cost the same XP and could nuke all the gods just fine.)
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So, time for a full breakdown of the feats and maneuvers. These are going to be short and sweet in order to get through them all, so in addition to any notes I'll highlight names in red if I think a maneuver is noticeably underpowered and needs a lot of help, blue if I think the effect is sufficiently powerful, unique, or useful to be worth taking most of the time, gold if an effect actually ends up overpowered for an epic initiator, and left in black if it's average or mildly underpowered and a tossup as to whether it would be work taking.
When it comes to the discipline feats, since there could be quite a span of time between taking the feats and actually learning any of the associated maneuvers, I'm going to be rating the base benefits of the feats by themselves.
All of my ratings assume low-epic (21st to 27th or thereabouts), since they're available starting at 21st and I'm assuming a comparison to Epic Spellcasting in that an initiator is going to want to pick these up first thing and start researching maneuvers immediately; many of them might get a lot more powerful as they scale into the 40s and higher, but that level range is basically irrelevant for balance purposes. They also only consider the actual maneuver effects by themselves, not the effects in comparison to the cost needed to get them; with significant XP and time costs, or even much of a cost beyond one epic feat per one or two maneuvers, a lot of them would shift from black to red, blue to black, or gold to blue.
Spoiler: Invincible Sword PrincessUnconquered Sword: The +2 dodge bonus from fighting defensively is irrelevant at epic levels, and the difference between Str and Dex for a Str-primary martial character is likely to be no more than 12 or so points, so this is basically "spend an AoO for +14ish to AC against a single attack." Compare to the Factotum's Improved Cunning Defense, which is just "+12ish to AC at all times for no action cost," or Wall of Blades or Baffling Defense, which are only once per round but replace [initiator's AC] with [attack or skill bonus at least 3-5 points higher than initiator's AC] + 1d20.
Heavenly Bulwark: The fact this prevents a single attack regardless of damage is huge, and while the DR is basically meaningless to any epic enemies with Power Attack it does shut down swarms, minions, cohorts, and similar so it's still useful a good portion of the time.
Blossoming Steel: As already noted, compares very unfavorably to Epic Whirlwind Attack, even on an AoO build.
Dancing with Victory: Noticeable penalties are rare in epic (though I suppose you could abuse feats like Shock Trooper or Karmic Strike with it), and "apply normal AC to touch AC" is a low-level feat benefit (e.g. Deflective Armor and Shield Ward).
God-Smiting Outrage: The power level is reasonable (basically equivalent to, and stackable with, Power Attacking except without the attack penalty), but flat damage is boring and doesn't add any new capabilities; in fact, were it not for the ease of picking up extra attacks in epic, this would end up on par with or weaker than Strike of Perfect Clarity (+100 damage to 1 attack vs. +25 damage to 3 or 4 attacks).
Soft Blade Kiss: Just UMDing a wand of wraithstrike would nearly always be cheaper and more effective than using this.
Lightning Stroke: Auto-hit effects are very useful for delivering effects like vorpal or the like, so it's good power-wise, but again it doesn't really add any new capabilities.
Shining Adamant Defense: This maneuver's saving grace is applying to multiple saves in a round for a single counter, but the Diamond Mind save-replacers grant much higher bonuses for anyone who focuses on Concentration and come online a lot earlier.
Victory Over All: The stacking bonus is going to be miniscule for anyone with enough of a Str focus to use the initial feat benefit, and the active block is actually worse than Wall of Blades or Baffling Defense because they can be applied against spell attacks and touch attacks.
Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade: The ability to kill someone without a save by dealing even a single point of damage to them, in a way that bypasses any possible protection like death ward or Transmutation immunity, is broken at every single level of the game (except perhaps 1st where a normal greatsword attack is a save-or-die effect) regardless of its usage limits or number of prerequisites--and that's before considering any combo potential with e.g. Bloodstorm Blade, Distant Shot, and a brilliant energy weapon.
The useful part of this maneuver at epic levels is the ability to bypass "actually I don't die" stuff like delay death, Stance of Immortal Fortitude, and similar, so reworking it to be a "no, you really do die" effect plus a moderate extra damage rider instead of an auto-kill would be good.
Spoiler: Celestial ImpetusAbundant Vector: Qualities like ghost touch and force and weapon material like riverine are available from low to mid level, making this feat very overcosted and bsaically redundant.
Force Veil: Anyone who cares about regularly flat-footing opponents picks up a reliable way to do so long before epic, and the extra damage is negligible. As a feat that a Sneak Attack-focused rogue could pick up at 21st level to free up some actions and resources it would be pretty cool, but on top of an initiator it's meh.
Articulated Transparency: The combination stealth and defense in this one is great (though "immune to most forms of damage" is misleading because after the force and energy damage caveat it basically means "immune to physical damage").
Prison of Duress: Combos with forcecage are awesome for casters because they can plop down AoEs to damage creatures trapped in it and do things to prevent trapped creatures from teleporting out. Initiators can do neither of those things, and they can't even attack trapped creatures because it's a solid cage, so any creature that could be meaningfully affected by this would be worse off (and the initiator better off) if the initiator just grappled them instead.
Reaving Potency: Highly niche. Yes, it can combo with two other maneuvers in the discipline, but two rounds to set up 2d6/IL damage isn't that impressive and the maneuver is basically useless otherwise the character has a feud with an epic Wizard/Abjurant Champion/Argent Savant or something.
Violent Repulsion: Near useless as-is, since there's no guarantee the character will have Craft (Sculpture) ranks when the discipline feat requires Profession (Sculptor). Assuming that was an error, it's not too bad since pushing someone 25+ feet away reactively is nice and there's no clause preventing the initiator's allies from AoOing the target, but it would have to have a much less restrictive trigger condition (and thus give it some utility and ally-protecting potential) to make it blue.
Auspice of Duplication: This is basically fission but with a shorter duration and harsh restrictions on actions taken.
Impenetrable Skin: See notes on above AC-boosting maneuvers.
Impulse Labyrinth: The base effect of shooting forcecages at people is actually really cool, but the bonus damage is fairly small, the cover against enemies within the area is negligible, and the fact that you can't attack someone outside the resilient sphere boundary (when many epic monsters have speeds in excess of 60 or 120 feet and combats often occur at considerable range) or once you've forcecaged them really cuts down on its usefulness.
Bladeswarm: As with Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade, "kill anything automatically, no save" is overpowered regardless of level or prereqs, the only saving grace of this maneuver being that delay death or similar will help you against this one. Even one weapon copy per initiator level auto-hitting would be stronger than a 13th-level-equivalent intensified chain missile spell, so try reworking it with some limits on how many attacks can be sent against a single target.
Spoiler: Devouring CryptRavenous Scorn: Constant nonmagical death ward plus a pseudo-healing effect is definitely worth an epic feat slot.
Entropy Nimbus: One negative level per hit is kind of anemic, but the duration plus the healing from Ravenous Scorn plus the ability to punch through immunity make it a reasonable pick.
Consuming Rapture: It's barghest's feast but faster and slightly more effective, basically, plus a bunch of extra temp HP. There are certainly cases when being able to hit them with soul consumption in the same round to prevent a revivify or similar would be handy, but that niche use plus the additional HP doesn't make it significantly better than the 6th-level version, and contingent resurrection effects are common enough in epic that when you would want a faster effect it wouldn't matter anyway.
Strike with the Risen: It's an widened-plus-a-bit-more mass snake's swiftness, but comes online 10 levels later, and can't affect your non-minion allies. Not particularly impressive.
Threat of Doom: It's Doomspeak, minus a saving throw, plus a restrictive trigger condition. Too niche and too many levels late once again.
Transumptive Necrosis: This would be fantastic if it laster longer than an encounter so you could turn a bunch of commoners into a very beefy zombie army (or very lack-of-beef-y skeleton army). As it stands, though, basic skeletons and zombies don't really add anything to epic combat, even with a lot of extra HD, unless you're a necromancer or Requiem bard or something who can buff them up into actual threats.
Embrace of the Last Sin: See above for the limits of temporary animation and plain ol' zombies and skeletons.
Final Unrest: Now this is worthwhile animation, since they keep their stats and you can keep them around for multiple combats even if doing so limits your options a lot.
Spoiler: Dread CrownHorrid Blackhallow Fighting Arts: Firstly:
...must know a 9th-level maneuver from...Infinite Torment [or] Ninefold Damnation...
That aside, turning large amounts of damage vile is huge in epic when copious amounts of healing (and contingent healing at that) is common and combat-time consecration is very rare. Definitely a useful pick.
Join Me in Misery: The concept is great, but this has the same pitfall as Iron Heart Surge: any conditions that would really be useful to transfer to an enemy are ones that prevent you from initiating the maneuver in the first place. It could be more useful if it had a clause allowing you to initiate it even if you couldn't normally do so, but even then you first have to have a debilitating condition or three get through all your defenses then manage to transfer it, which is extremely situational.
Strike of Ultimate Corruption: This is basically a longer-duration more-sticky morality undone, coming in 12+ levels later, and nothing in the description prevents the newly-evil and fiendishly-enhanced target from just attacking you immediately. Unless the entire campaign is about slaying celestials and paladins, this is too niche to be useful.
Creation-Swallowing Hellmouth Strike: Assuming the brief description means "create a gate and call a ton of fiendish minions through," that's a great transportatin and utility maneuver, but the exact details would be a make-or-break for the power level.
Spoiler: Exalted HaloGift of Conscience: See the Strike of Ultimate Corruption note.
Path Through the Imperfect World: This is basically One With Shadow, with a very minor boost in that you can also go through walls of force and harmful AoEs. Not enough of an improvement to be worth it.
Strike of Salvation: Free and unlimited true res is very handy.
Spoiler: March of AeonsKnight of Paradox: This is Spell Stowaway (time stop) with different prereqs and fewer restrictions, an excellent pick since Spell Stowaway is rarely used for other spells anyway.
Recurring Bloodshed: This is basically Repeat Spell for maneuvers. Useful in theory, but extra standard actions are easy to come by at epic levels, and since you have to initiate it before the maneuver to be repeated, it's wasted if that maneuver happens to roll too low to hit the second time around.
Hourglass Siphoning Prana: The fact that there's no dispel check required and you can "dispel" (Ex) abilities--and thus utterly hose epic barbarians, factotums, initiators, and similar--makes it defnitely worth taking. In a game where Mordenkainen's disjunction isn't nerfed or houseruled out, however (a very common thing to do in epic games), it would be an overpowered gold for the auto-dispel, so keep that in mind.
Killing Pendulum Stroke: Immunity to ability damage and drain is too common at epic levels, and the rate at which this reduces ability scores far too slow, for this to be useful in combat.
Transience of Strife: This is an un-augmentable temporal acceleration, 10 levels late.
Eternity’s Martyr: The free 21 to 84 damage would make this a pretty good pick, except that basically all epic foes will end the effect after 1 round unless they natural-1 their save.
Divergence Blade: An actual epic spell effect, and not a weak one. Excellent pick.
Excision of History: This is a good pick, but isn't blue because having to meticulously track actions in case they're reverted by this maneuver (like a psion with time regression has to do, but for everyone in the encounter) makes it enough of a pain to possibly avoid taking.
Renewal of Heartbeats: If "positive conditions" includes buff spells, this is red. Otherwise, a full tune-up is nice but losing a round of combat to get it definitely hurts.
Causality-Rending Mandala: Considering that you can stay in a stance as long as you want, this already allows someone to time-travel backwards anywhere from multiple encounters to multiple years--and even if they stick to using it within combats this maneuver adds all of the time regression fiddliness to every round of combat for its duration, so it's almost red at the same time.
Spoiler: Primeval God-MonsterFlashing Blood-Knuckle Fury: Extra full attacks and act-out-of-turn abilities are common enough that the ability to take a full attack out-of-turn is nice but not amazing.
Clenched-Fist Krodha Soul: This is black instead of blue because the base effect is nothing special and the ongoing effect is useless without having the other maneuver it enhances.
Many-Armed Wrathful Deva Method: I ran a campaign involving a four-armed warforged monk obsessed with adding extra limbs and thus extra unarmed strikes, so I know exactly how useful this is.
Fist Meets Fist: Negating 1 to 2 full attacks per encounter on average, with the potential for serious out-o-turn damage, is nice, but not blue given the dependence on another maneuver for full effect.
Crack the Sky: The lack of ability to aim the creature makes this effectively just +20d6 plus a more escapable mass time hop for all practical purposes, somewhat underwhelming for the level. If you could aim it, the unavoidable 1000 damage plus the ability to continue it through planar travel would make it blue.
World-Breaker Grip: While balanced against an otherwise-un-grapple-able opponent, this is basically an automatic 60d6 damage minimum per round against any grappleable opponent without freedom of movement. Limiting the +10d6 damage to just the first grapple check in a round would make it blue.
Pummel the Horizon: This is basically Distant Shot for melee attacks, which is fantastic, and the fact that it ends on a miss is a good balancing factor without being crippling.
Spoiler: Rainbow's EndRadiant Prism: Prismatic effects are too rare for this to be blue, especially in games where Mordenkainen's disjunction is common, but the combo potential (and its necessity for some maneuvers) is handy.
Aurora Walk: While the faerie fire bit is nice, flight and teleportation are too common in epic for the prismatic wall portion of this to be really useful. If you added in an "If you totally encircle an opponent..." clause to deal with that, similar to Ring of Fire, it would easily go up to blue.
Actinic Form: Very solid defense, not much to say.
Death Nova: A reasonable upgrade to Death Mark.
Lightspeed Charge: Great utility, and the mini-shadowpounce is nice too.
Prismatic Ward: A near-perfect defense plus a great counterattack.
Prismatic Onslaught: Avalanche of Blades without the "stop if you miss an attack" clause, I like it.
Seven-Ray Blade: Mostly useful for the reach against flyers and the corresponding ambush potential, but punching through damage mitigation is nice too.
Shimmering Echoes: Prismatic greater mirror image, nice.
Rainbow Finale: 45d6 plus four separate save-or-loses all at once in a huge AoE is too much, even before the Emerald Immolation effect. Having each creature be affected by a single random effect instead of all seven would probably bring it down to blue.
Spoiler: Shattered GlassDesolate Arbitrator: Punching through outsider immunities is exceptionall useful in epic when most major enemies are outsiders.
Sandstrike Blast: Basically a better Firesnake, not much to say here.
Sand Through Fingers Defense: Non-concealment-based miss chances are nice.
Soul-Sieve Transformation: Kinda Salamander Charge meets Rising Phoenix Stance, not much to say here either.
Transcendent Desert Creature: I assume, based on the clause about deities and Concentration, that "cease to function" for the second effect means "can't be acively used, but existing effects still keep going." If it basically means you have a 30-foot-radius divine-casters-and-outsiders-only antimagic field, this is gold.
Many-Faceted Mirage Technique: A flavorful way to gain extra attacks, not bad.
Knowing the Desolate Heart: A nicely flavorful effect and an excellent counter to basically any kind of opponent; fortunately, the on-save effect is reasonable enough to prevent it from being gold.
Counter-Pronouncement of Enthymematic Law: An incredibly useful effect with great flavor.
Swallowed in Eternity: Free ice assassins are incredibly abusable, given that you have total control of them and so can do things like targeting your party caster to get a whole extra set of spell slots for the next hour. Adding a caveat that you can specify how it attacks the target but you can't do anything else with it would remove that abuse and leave it at blue.
World-Grinding Sandstorm Devastation: The only downside of this maneuver is that it makes Athasian defilers jealous.Last edited by PairO'Dice Lost; 2020-11-29 at 11:12 PM.
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2020-11-30, 04:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Man, that must have taken ages. Tomorrow I'll look at your red and gold listings, so watch this space -- but wanted to let you know I appreciate it.
I agree Rainbow's End is in the best place right now. I thought the flavor text for that one was nice as well. I should point out for those who didn't see the credits that most of these discs are other peoples' work, just heavily modified.
As for cosmos-slaying glory blade, I feel it kind of has to be there for the shock factor. Note that as written, since it deals infinite damage, it actually would be blocked by delay death. Another point in its defense is that it's conditional on you getting in melee range and penetrating miss chance/etc, not an easy task against the bigger enemies like gods and casters.Last edited by Elves; 2020-11-30 at 08:35 PM.
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2020-11-30, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
It took an hour or two, but I spent most of the evening reviewing various homebrew so it was no biggie.
As for cosmos-slaying glory blade, I feel it kind of has to be there for the shock factor. Note that as written, since it deals infinite damage, it actually would be blocked by delay death.
At minimum I'd add a saving throw against the effect as is standard for these sorts of things, and then adding one more "out" against it (the [Death] descriptor, a "doesn't work against non-solid beings" clause like implosion, or similar) would be good.
Another point in its defense is that it's conditional on you getting in melee range and penetrating miss chance/etc, not an easy task against the bigger enemies like gods and casters.
It's definitely tempting to give martial types a kill-basically-anything ability that ignores all kinds of defenses, but that sort of ability is such an all-or-nothing effect that (A) it gets stronger as the character levels because it's ignoring more and more defenses over time, not a good thing in a theoretically-unbounded epic environment, and (B) if there's this ability out there that slays everything in one hit and is only defended against by a handful of abilities, then eventually everyone needs to have one of those abilities to survive...and since the thing those abilities protect against is "all hit point damage" then any other damage dealers in the same party as an initiator with this maneuver are now totally useless.
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2020-12-01, 04:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Changed costs to 5k/10k/15k/60k for total disc cost of 150k and a real cost of 90k since the pinnacle is supposed to be a big choice not everyone will take: "I'll be behind in levels forever but this will be awesome every time I use it".
With these costs, 1st maneuver is basically a freebie if you take the feat. your first 3 mvs only cost 1 level which seems about right and is where many will stop. Lowest I would go is 6k/8k/12k/48k.
I don't think it's all that hard. It already says that you can only ready one epic discipline's worth of maneuvers at a time, so you can simply tack on that you can change the discipline if you re-ready maneuvers with Adaptive Style or similar and you're good to go.
Re: maneuver feedback
In regards to Causality Rending Mandala and Pummel the Horizon, I don't know if you caught this, but right now I have pinnacle stances still abiding by the 1/day restriction of other pinnacle maneuvers. Mandala's negative levels make this unnecessary, but do you think "Pummel" is too strong if unlimited use?
Spoiler: Invincible Sword PrincessBlossoming Steel: As already noted, compares very unfavorably to Epic Whirlwind Attack, even on an AoO build.
Dancing with Victory: Noticeable penalties are rare in epic (though I suppose you could abuse feats like Shock Trooper or Karmic Strike with it), and "apply normal AC to touch AC" is a low-level feat benefit (e.g. Deflective Armor and Shield Ward).
Soft Blade Kiss: Just UMDing a wand of wraithstrike would nearly always be cheaper and more effective than using this.
Victory Over All: The stacking bonus is going to be miniscule for anyone with enough of a Str focus to use the initial feat benefit, and the active block is actually worse than Wall of Blades or Baffling Defense because they can be applied against spell attacks and touch attacks.
Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade: The useful part of this maneuver at epic levels is the ability to bypass "actually I don't die" stuff like delay death, Stance of Immortal Fortitude, and similar, so reworking it to be a "no, you really do die" effect plus a moderate extra damage rider instead of an auto-kill would be good.
Spoiler: Celestial ImpetusAbundant Vector: Qualities like ghost touch and force and weapon material like riverine are available from low to mid level, making this feat very overcosted and bsaically redundant.
Prison of Duress: Combos with forcecage are awesome for casters because they can plop down AoEs to damage creatures trapped in it and do things to prevent trapped creatures from teleporting out. Initiators can do neither of those things, and they can't even attack trapped creatures because it's a solid cage, so any creature that could be meaningfully affected by this would be worse off (and the initiator better off) if the initiator just grappled them instead.
Could instead add that ability to the first maneuver, force veil, and lengthen its duration.
Force Veil: Anyone who cares about regularly flat-footing opponents picks up a reliable way to do so long before epic, and the extra damage is negligible. As a feat that a Sneak Attack-focused rogue could pick up at 21st level to free up some actions and resources it would be pretty cool, but on top of an initiator it's meh.
Reaving Potency: Highly niche. Yes, it can combo with two other maneuvers in the discipline, but two rounds to set up 2d6/IL damage isn't that impressive and the maneuver is basically useless otherwise the character has a feud with an epic Wizard/Abjurant Champion/Argent Savant or something.
Violent Repulsion: Near useless as-is, since there's no guarantee the character will have Craft (Sculpture) ranks when the discipline feat requires Profession (Sculptor). Assuming that was an error, it's not too bad since pushing someone 25+ feet away reactively is nice and there's no clause preventing the initiator's allies from AoOing the target, but it would have to have a much less restrictive trigger condition (and thus give it some utility and ally-protecting potential) to make it blue.
Auspice of Duplication: This is basically fission but with a shorter duration and harsh restrictions on actions taken.
Impenetrable Skin: See notes on above AC-boosting maneuvers.
Impulse Labyrinth: The base effect of shooting forcecages at people is actually really cool, but the bonus damage is fairly small, the cover against enemies within the area is negligible, and the fact that you can't attack someone outside the resilient sphere boundary (when many epic monsters have speeds in excess of 60 or 120 feet and combats often occur at considerable range) or once you've forcecaged them really cuts down on its usefulness.
Bladeswarm: As with Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade, "kill anything automatically, no save" is overpowered regardless of level or prereqs, the only saving grace of this maneuver being that delay death or similar will help you against this one. Even one weapon copy per initiator level auto-hitting would be stronger than a 13th-level-equivalent intensified chain missile spell, so try reworking it with some limits on how many attacks can be sent against a single target.
Spoiler: Devouring Crypt
Consuming Rapture: and contingent resurrection effects are common enough in epic that when you would want a faster effect it wouldn't matter anyway.
Strike with the Risen: It's an widened-plus-a-bit-more mass snake's swiftness, but comes online 10 levels later, and can't affect your non-minion allies. Not particularly impressive.
Threat of Doom: It's Doomspeak, minus a saving throw, plus a restrictive trigger condition. Too niche and too many levels late once again.
Transumptive Necrosis: This would be fantastic if it laster longer than an encounter so you could turn a bunch of commoners into a very beefy zombie army (or very lack-of-beef-y skeleton army). As it stands, though, basic skeletons and zombies don't really add anything to epic combat, even with a lot of extra HD, unless you're a necromancer or Requiem bard or something who can buff them up into actual threats.
Probably will go with the first. Any undead that are simple to play but you think would still be relevant?
Embrace of the Last Sin: See above for the limits of temporary animation and plain ol' zombies and skeletons.
Spoiler: Dread CrownAw shucks, I'm flattered.
Join Me in Misery: The concept is great, but this has the same pitfall as Iron Heart Surge: any conditions that would really be useful to transfer to an enemy are ones that prevent you from initiating the maneuver in the first place. It could be more useful if it had a clause allowing you to initiate it even if you couldn't normally do so, but even then you first have to have a debilitating condition or three get through all your defenses then manage to transfer it, which is extremely situational.
Strike of Ultimate Corruption: This is basically a longer-duration more-sticky morality undone, coming in 12+ levels later, and nothing in the description prevents the newly-evil and fiendishly-enhanced target from just attacking you immediately.
Spoiler: March of AeonsRecurring Bloodshed: This is basically Repeat Spell for maneuvers. Useful in theory, but extra standard actions are easy to come by at epic levels, and since you have to initiate it before the maneuver to be repeated, it's wasted if that maneuver happens to roll too low to hit the second time around.
Killing Pendulum Stroke: Immunity to ability damage and drain is too common at epic levels, and the rate at which this reduces ability scores far too slow, for this to be useful in combat.
Transience of Strife: This is an un-augmentable temporal acceleration, 10 levels late.
Eternity’s Martyr: The free 21 to 84 damage would make this a pretty good pick, except that basically all epic foes will end the effect after 1 round unless they natural-1 their save.
Renewal of Heartbeats: If "positive conditions" includes buff spells, this is red.
Causality-Rending Mandala: Considering that you can stay in a stance as long as you want, this already allows someone to time-travel backwards anywhere from multiple encounters to multiple years--and even if they stick to using it within combats this maneuver adds all of the time regression fiddliness to every round of combat for its duration, so it's almost red at the same time.
Spoiler: Primeval God-MonsterFlashing Blood-Knuckle Fury: Extra full attacks and act-out-of-turn abilities are common enough that the ability to take a full attack out-of-turn is nice but not amazing.
Crack the Sky: The lack of ability to aim the creature makes this effectively just +20d6 plus a more escapable mass time hop for all practical purposes, somewhat underwhelming for the level. If you could aim it, the unavoidable 1000 damage plus the ability to continue it through planar travel would make it blue.
Pummel the Horizon: This is basically Distant Shot for melee attacks, which is fantastic, and the fact that it ends on a miss is a good balancing factor without being crippling.
Spoiler: Rainbow's EndAurora Walk: While the faerie fire bit is nice, flight and teleportation are too common in epic for the prismatic wall portion of this to be really useful. If you added in an "If you totally encircle an opponent..." clause to deal with that, similar to Ring of Fire, it would easily go up to blue.
Rainbow Finale: 45d6 plus four separate save-or-loses all at once in a huge AoE is too much, even before the Emerald Immolation effect. Having each creature be affected by a single random effect instead of all seven would probably bring it down to blue.
Spoiler: Shattered Glass
Knowing the Desolate Heart: Free ice assassins are incredibly abusable, given that you have total control of them and so can do things like targeting your party caster to get a whole extra set of spell slots for the next hour. Adding a caveat that you can specify how it attacks the target but you can't do anything else with it would remove that abuse and leave it at blue.
to save you time: here are the ones I'd especially welcome your further thoughts on:
Spoiler
Pummel the Horizon: This is basically Distant Shot for melee attacks, which is fantastic, and the fact that it ends on a miss is a good balancing factor without being crippling.
Join Me in Misery: The concept is great, but this has the same pitfall as Iron Heart Surge: any conditions that would really be useful to transfer to an enemy are ones that prevent you from initiating the maneuver in the first place. It could be more useful if it had a clause allowing you to initiate it even if you couldn't normally do so, but even then you first have to have a debilitating condition or three get through all your defenses then manage to transfer it, which is extremely situational.
Transumptive Necrosis: This would be fantastic if it laster longer than an encounter so you could turn a bunch of commoners into a very beefy zombie army (or very lack-of-beef-y skeleton army). As it stands, though, basic skeletons and zombies don't really add anything to epic combat, even with a lot of extra HD, unless you're a necromancer or Requiem bard or something who can buff them up into actual threats.
Probably will go with the first. Any undead that are simple to play but you think would still be relevant?
Threat of Doom: It's Doomspeak, minus a saving throw, plus a restrictive trigger condition. Too niche and too many levels late once again.
Impulse Labyrinth: The base effect of shooting forcecages at people is actually really cool, but the bonus damage is fairly small, the cover against enemies within the area is negligible, and the fact that you can't attack someone outside the resilient sphere boundary (when many epic monsters have speeds in excess of 60 or 120 feet and combats often occur at considerable range) or once you've forcecaged them really cuts down on its usefulness.
Force Veil: Anyone who cares about regularly flat-footing opponents picks up a reliable way to do so long before epic, and the extra damage is negligible. As a feat that a Sneak Attack-focused rogue could pick up at 21st level to free up some actions and resources it would be pretty cool, but on top of an initiator it's meh.
- And then balancing the trio of Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade (single target), Rainbow Finale (AOE), and Bladeswarm (flexible/multi-target)
Last edited by Elves; 2020-12-01 at 06:39 PM.
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2020-12-01, 10:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
That's much more reasonable.
In regards to Causality Rending Mandala and Pummel the Horizon, I don't know if you caught this, but right now I have pinnacle stances still abiding by the 1/day restriction of other pinnacle maneuvers. Mandala's negative levels make this unnecessary, but do you think "Pummel" is too strong if unlimited use?
Spoiler: Responses to Responses
Blossoming Steel
Consider also that if you're looking at the combo of Epic Whirlwind Attack and Blossoming Steel, well, the character has spent two epic feats for the privilege; when you're picking between Epic Whirlwind Attack or the discipline feat, the maneuver loses out even if it came with the feat for free.
Cosmos-Slaying Glory Blade
Obviously calibrating damage numbers is harder when the maneuver has to work for such a wide range of levels and you have no idea what level the character is going to pick it up, but aiming overkill isn't necessarily the answer. Even a moderate amount of damage ("moderate" being relative--a maximized CL 20 disintegrate equivalent still hits a nice 240 damage) can be valuable if it comes with the "obliterate the target if they hit 0 or below" rider. Alternately, "infinite hit point damage" would be fine if it came with a Fort save to negate it like any other insta-kill effect. You just don't want to make something that basically ignores all defenses and responses because that narrows gameplay (by forcing certain precautions and reactions on both sides of the screen) rather than enhancing it.
Added to the "Abundant Vector" feat: "You may attack freely through force barriers, such as forcecages, walls of force, and resilient spheres."
Could instead add that ability to the first maneuver, force veil, and lengthen its duration.
Force Veil
Force Blade
You transform your weapon into unstoppable force that not even an immovable force can block.
Until the beginning of your next turn, your attacks freely pass through solid nonmagical objects and magical force effects and therefore ignore armor, shield, and cover bonuses to AC (but not natural armor bonuses) and any [Force] effects active on your target. Additionally, you deal +5d6 damage with each attack, and all of your attacks double their critical threat range and ignore hardness and damage reduction. For each object or effect you attack through, you may choose for your weapon to pass through it harmlessly, leaving no detectable cut or mark, or may choose to make a free attack (for unattended objects), Sunder attempt (for attended objects), or dispel check at +20 (for force effects) against it.
Impulse Labyrinth
Hmm. Perhaps creating a huge circular sheet of force by swinging your weapon in a circle overhead, and then smashing it into pieces that just "happen" to fall into a maze-like pattern? It's a bit of a stretch, but has much less of a magical flavor.
Consuming Rapture
Strike with the Risen
Transumptive Necrosis
Perhaps instead of going the army route, animating a single stronger minion would be best. Something like, the initiator activates the maneuver, keeps track of all the creatures he kills during the duration, and at the end of the round he totals up all the HD of the creatures he killed and animates the last one he killed as something big based on that (e.g. "10+ HD: devourer; ...; 20+ HD: Nightwalker; 30+ HD: Deathbringer" and so on), repeating the same effect every round for the rest of the encounter. It makes the actual maneuver slightly more fiddly to resolve, but running the minions is dramatically simplified.
Embrace of the Last Sin
Unfortunately, I can't think of any alterations that don't either make it too powerful, allow abuse, or add even more complexity, so it's probably okay as-is.
Transience of Strife
Perhaps instead of granting a free round of not-doing-much it can instead grant an extra swift action that can only be used to initiate a boost that round or "absorb" the lost swift from a counter in the previous round? It has the same gaining-extra-time theme, follows on naturally from Stance of Alacrity's free extra counter, and has better synergy with the initiator's actual playstyle.
Rainbow Finale
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2020-12-06, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Hmm, one good potential source of inspiration/comparison I haven't seen mentioned yet are the [Epic] Warlock Invocations (Epic Insights). Epic invocations are at-will instead of 1/encounter, but you also don't get a whole discipline of options to choose from, so I think it balances out. The high end of the epic invocations is shades at-will (plus displacement and immunity to shadow effects, but the big thing is shades at-will); the low end is Souleater Incarnate which is, in fairness, mostly terrible due to its prerequisites, but also not very impressive compared to the other ones even if you're guaranteed to be facing incarnum wielding enemies.
I've only skimmed the Epic Maneuvers so far, but I noticed that the Auspice of Duplication (which I've been mentally calling "Echo Form" after the Slay the Spire card) is labelled as "finnicky". I think you could get away with removing some of the restrictions to make it simpler. That would make it way more powerful, but it already compares unfavorably to the epic invocation Eldritch Sculptor, which lets you cast two Eldritch Blasts per turn as a full-round action, doubling the damage/debuffs/[stuff] at-will. (Eldritch Sculptor is actually considered one of the weaker epic invocations, too).Originally Posted by Darths & DroidsOptimization Trophies
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2020-12-16, 12:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
Feral Death Blow is already Fort SOD. Will ship with infinite damage, with +500 damage & ignore gotchas as a nerf if someone complains.
Force Blade
SpoilerYour weapon turns to pure translucent force, which nothing can resist.
Until the beginning of your next turn, your melee attacks pass freely through solid objects.
- They ignore armor, shield, and cover bonuses to AC (but not natural armor bonuses).
- They ignore object hardness and deal +6d6 force damage.
- When you attack through a solid barrier, first, as part of the attack, make a normal melee attack against that object. If you succeed in breaking through it, you may proceed to make your attack against your target. If you don’t, your attack ends.
- If you attack a target you can’t see through an opaque barrier, they have total concealment against you. However, if they can’t see you’re attacking, your attack catches them flat-footed.
In addition, your melee weapons can’t be sundered during this maneuver.
Not really, unfortunately; when it comes to undead there's a pretty sharp tradeoff between "at all effective against non-mooks" and "easy to run in large groups."
An initiator doesn't have nearly as many options and maneuvers have short enough durations that any kind of "pre-buffing" they try to do with boosts or counters in the stopped time is going to be shortened considerably
But you're right that TOB classes aren't pre-buffers. If you think the stuff I said above isn't enough, I might just change it to letting them attack (perhaps the attacks don't resolve till it ends so you don't know if it hit or took them down, hence risk of wasted atks).
Yep, that works.
SpoilerYou explode into a stupendous burst of prismatic light. Roll 1d8. Targets in the area suffer all effects on the following chart that are equal to or less than the result of your roll.
1: 10d6 points of fire damage (Reflex half)
2: 10d6 points of acid damage (Reflex half)
3: 10d6 points of electricity damage (Reflex half)
4: Poison (Fortitude save; death/1d8 Con) [Creatures only]
5: Petrification (Fortitude negates) [Creatures only]
6: Insanity (Will negates) [Creatures only]
7: Sent to a random plane (Will negates) [Creatures only]
8: You and your equipment are destroyed. 1d8 rounds later, you reform where you were, returned to life as by true resurrection, except that you’re reincarnated as a different race of your choice. All your equipment is returned exactly as it had been. If the space you would reform in is occupied, you appear in the nearest empty space. This effect only targets you, not anyone else.
So on average it's just the energy damage and 1 SOD.
A second option would be that it's a unique pinnacle in having 8 charges usable throughout the day; each time you use it it has one of the effects from above (must be in order).
Which of those two is better?Last edited by Elves; 2020-12-16 at 12:49 AM.
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2020-12-18, 02:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Epic Martial Disciplines - 9 special disciplines of 9 maneuvers each
It's the "save or" part that makes the difference with Feral Death Blow; "if I hit, you die, even if you're in tip-top shape" and "if I hit, you have a 40ish% chance [for similar-level martials] to die, otherwise you take a bunch of damage which sucks but almost certainly won't kill you unless you're already beaten up" are two very different scenarios.
But, alas, epic save bonuses keep increasing while maneuver DCs don't so simply adding a Fort save would make the maneuver worse over time, and death ward is common enough at epic that adding the [Death] descriptor would simply make it irrelevant. I can't think of another good limitation to bring it in line at the moment, so I suppose using it as-is is fine.
You're forgetting readied actions. Plus there's taking potions, activating items, etc. Although maybe something where you can take a readied action w/o changing your initiative count when triggering it would be a good effect to incorporate into this mv, replace it with or make a nonepic mv for.
But you're right that TOB classes aren't pre-buffers. If you think the stuff I said above isn't enough, I might just change it to letting them attack (perhaps the attacks don't resolve till it ends so you don't know if it hit or took them down, hence risk of wasted atks).
But seriously, while an initiator could certainly start picking up useful buffing items to get the best bang for their gold out of this maneuver, it's not really a native capability like is for casters, hence the concern. Letting them attack freely is probably swinging too far in the other direction, but I like the free readied action as a compromise.
On reflection it doesn't because rolling a die for each creature in a mile could be impossibly obnoxious.