epic spellcasting for martial initiators?

[Stycotl]

so. any thoughts as to epic sublime maneuvers? with maneuvers levelled 1-9, it would work off of pretty much the same system. i am just trying to figure out what would be the equivalent of know (arcane). there was the old know (warfare) or (strategy) or (siegecraft) or whatever it was called.

i am thinking along the lines of the currently srd-endorsed epic magic system. i know a lot of people have their own variants because of the brokenness of epic spellcasting, but for the sake of simplicity, i'm not looking along those lines.

[RTGoodman]

I don't know anything about Epic spellcasting, but there's already a skill from ToB that's what you're looking for - Martial Lore. It's basically Spellcraft for Martial maneuvers. It's on pg. 28 of ToB.

[Mr. Friendly]

so. any thoughts as to epic sublime maneuvers? with maneuvers levelled 1-9, it would work off of pretty much the same system. i am just trying to figure out what would be the equivalent of know (arcane). there was the old know (warfare) or (strategy) or (siegecraft) or whatever it was called.

i am thinking along the lines of the currently srd-endorsed epic magic system. i know a lot of people have their own variants because of the brokenness of epic spellcasting, but for the sake of simplicity, i'm not looking along those lines.

There already is a skill for that - I forget the name of it, but it is in Bo9S and the initiators all get it. It's some skill related to IDing maneuvers.

Edit: Defeated by NINJA!!

But yeah, it's Martial Lore.

[Douglas]

You'd have to come up with your own seeds for it - the epic spellcasting seeds are not at all suitable for maneuvers - but the relevant skill is obvious: Martial Lore.

[Stycotl]

martial lore would replace spellcraft. though i have been pondering using it for both spellcraft and know (arcane) purposes with epic initiating.

seeds: yeah. still wondering about that too. honestly this post was mostly to be lazy and see if anyone has done all the work for me yet.

but, i am willing to come up with some fluff/crunch for the system if there is no viable one already in place.

[Mr. Friendly]

Here is a gleemax thread that might help:

http://forums.gleemax.com/archive/in.../t-842484.html

[Stycotl]

cool link. has some good stuff. but is not the epic spellcasting variant that i am looking for. all the same, thank you for posting. there were some good ideas for other things there that i hadn't seen before.

[Douglas]

martial lore would replace spellcraft. though i have been pondering using it for both spellcraft and know (arcane) purposes with epic initiating.

Oh yeah, there are two skills involved in epic spellcasting. Besides inventing your own new knowledge skill, the other obvious choice is using the key skills of the various disciplines. Each seed would be associated with one of the disciplines, and the appropriate key skill would be involved somehow with any epic maneuver using that seed.

Despite the parallel of Spellcraft and Martial Lore for identifying spells and maneuvers, I think I'd have Martial Lore replace the knowledge skill and use discipline key skills in place of Spellcraft. Discipline key skills match fairly well with Spellcraft as being the skill involved in actually doing things, while Martial Lore and Knowledge (Arcana) are about background knowledge. So, to develop (and maybe use) a Desert Wind epic maneuver, you'd have to make a Tumble check. Your ranks in Martial Lore would determine your number of epic maneuvers readied. Epic maneuvers that are combinations of different schools with different key skills could pick one as the main school involved, use the lowest skill modifier, or use the highest, whichever you think works best. I'd suggest going with the lowest key skill for involved disciplines to keep people from cherry-picking seeds for disciplines they don't use much and adding them on to something in their specialist school.

[Azerian Kelimon]

QUICK! TO THE HOMEBREW FORUMS!

*Batman Theme*.

[Stycotl]

Oh yeah, there are two skills involved in epic spellcasting. Besides inventing your own new knowledge skill, the other obvious choice is using the key skills of the various disciplines. Each seed would be associated with one of the disciplines, and the appropriate key skill would be involved somehow with any epic maneuver using that seed.

problem with using discipline-relevent skills as the know (arcane) equivalent is that you would somehow have to determine your daily epic maneuvers from that hodgepodge of skills.

Despite the parallel of Spellcraft and Martial Lore for identifying spells and maneuvers, I think I'd have Martial Lore replace the knowledge skill and use discipline key skills in place of Spellcraft. Discipline key skills match fairly well with Spellcraft as being the skill involved in actually doing things, while Martial Lore and Knowledge (Arcana) are about background knowledge. So, to develop (and maybe use) a Desert Wind epic maneuver, you'd have to make a Tumble check. Your ranks in Martial Lore would determine your number of epic maneuvers readied. Epic maneuvers that are combinations of different schools with different key skills could pick one as the main school involved, use the lowest skill modifier, or use the highest, whichever you think works best. I'd suggest going with the lowest key skill for involved disciplines to keep people from cherry-picking seeds for disciplines they don't use much and adding them on to something in their specialist school.

you have some cool ideas here. i had figured it kind of the other way around, that spellcraft (and martial lore) were the equivalent to applicable knowledge of the art, while know (arcane) (and whatever martial variant we decide on) represented the actual knowledge, rote, memory, what-have-you of the art.

looking at it with your example makes more sense, and offers an easier route to making a working system.

but, the spellcraft equiv still offers a problem. i am intrigued by the idea of using discipline skills as base skills for an epic maneuver, and therefore determining epic seeds.

but, i am thinking that this will still lead to frustration and confusion, and will impede the fluidity of a seed-system. while epic spellcasting is broken, it is still fluid, and easy to manipulate and understand. i think basing this off of skills is possibly the wrong way to go.

this is just off the top of my head, but i am imagining something like this for seeds:

Desert Wind (Seed)
-energy (or evocate, blast, or whatever you want to call the sub-seed)
-movement (to include tumbling, flight, skirmish effects, etc)

Shadow Hand (Seed)
-stealth (to include concealment, hide-n'-plain-sight, etc)
-shadow (to include negative energy damage, etc)
-precision (to include sneak attack, nonmystical ability damage, etc)

White Raven (Seed)
-movement (to include charging, etc)
-morale (to include inspiring allies)

Diamond Mind (Seed)
-precision (to include touch attacks, masive damage, etc)
-

...where the seed would be the discipline itself, and would have ability directions, or sub-seeds that would be based off of what discipline it belonged to. we would need to come up with a good number of sub-seeds for every discipline.

even if we go the discipline-skill route, i think that this is how we could go about doing the seed.

anyway, these are just spur of the moment ideas. am still open to the discipline skill idea.

[Stycotl]

i suppose that since it looks like this is becoming a homebrew project, rather than a see-if-anyone-else-has-already-done-it thread, that i will go to the homebrew forum for it. upon reflection, since this would have been homebrew no matter who did it, i should have gone there first. sigh. hindsight in my case is still pretty blind, but a lot better off than ny foresight.

thanks for the thoughts. i will post the link when i get around to making it. aaron out.

[Reel On, Love]

Maybe we could not base epic initiating on the most broken subsystem in the game.

[Stycotl]

Maybe we could not base epic initiating on the most broken subsystem in the game.

already covered that point, reel. if you don't agree, that's fine. you're welcome to do what you want with it. i'm sticking with the epic spell template.

[Stycotl]

ok, other thread up on the homebrew forum. please direct comments there. thanks, aaron out.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...35#post4083035

[Aquillion]

Oh yeah, there are two skills involved in epic spellcasting. Besides inventing your own new knowledge skill, the other obvious choice is using the key skills of the various disciplines. Each seed would be associated with one of the disciplines, and the appropriate key skill would be involved somehow with any epic maneuver using that seed.

Despite the parallel of Spellcraft and Martial Lore for identifying spells and maneuvers, I think I'd have Martial Lore replace the knowledge skill and use discipline key skills in place of Spellcraft. Discipline key skills match fairly well with Spellcraft as being the skill involved in actually doing things, while Martial Lore and Knowledge (Arcana) are about background knowledge. So, to develop (and maybe use) a Desert Wind epic maneuver, you'd have to make a Tumble check. Your ranks in Martial Lore would determine your number of epic maneuvers readied. Epic maneuvers that are combinations of different schools with different key skills could pick one as the main school involved, use the lowest skill modifier, or use the highest, whichever you think works best. I'd suggest going with the lowest key skill for involved disciplines to keep people from cherry-picking seeds for disciplines they don't use much and adding them on to something in their specialist school.

The problem with this is that when it comes to magic, knowledge is how you do things (hence, spellcraft, which really represents 'practical magical knowledge'--eg recognizing spells as they're cast--is used for most epic magic things.)

With martial abilities, it's different. I would expect you to have to use Martial Lore to invent new epic manuvers, and your tumble (or whatever is appropriate to the discipline) to determine how good you are at it -- in other words, your uses per encounter. The other rolls could go either way, but it just doesn't make sense to me to have Martial Lore determine your number of uses per encounter... unlike with magic, that is purely a matter of physical ability, not insight. Someone with high Martial Lore and relatively low tumble (or whatever) should have no problem coming up with many epic manuvers, but should be more limited in actually executing them.

[Dhavaer]

Knowledge (local) seems to have a fair bit of use relating to martial adepts (it gets an entry in ToB, in any case).

[Keld Denar]

I can see a sufficiently high Swordsage making an epic hide check and dumping like 20ish neg levels on someone for a near autowin. That would be imba. Even if it didn't kill them, the 20 level difference would be crippling. Especially if you made that a boost, and applied it to every attack in a full attack with epic 2WF and some other stuff to make like, 20 attacks in a round. lol...

[Arbitrarity]

If they are "sufficiently high", then that's feasible. However, if you simply remove most mitigating factors (10 minute initiator time? NO.), and remove perma/long term buffs, I can see it working.

Tippy has said that epic spellcasting mostly breaks due to stupid DC mitigation, and permanent buffs, and ToB excludes those.

You might note that Enervating Shadow Strike actually has a save, so manuvers based off it might as well, unlike, say...
Arcane Thesis/Metamagic reduction epic feat Split Ray, Twinned, Ocular, Intensified, repeating, Energy Drain. Potentially a 9'th level slot, with enough metamagic reduction, or maybe a bit higher.
*coughs*
That's 128 negative levels in one round, and another 128 the next. Full round action, but touch attacks, unlike swordsage. Also all with full BAB. Also can be used again with Greater Celerity, for a maximum total of 512 negative levels over 32 touch attacks.

[Stycotl]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...35#post4083035
i would appreciate it if you guys would post on the linked thread now that this has turned into a homebrew issue. you guys have some cool thoughts, and i want to se them. but i don't want to keep having to check both threads in order to get your input, and i doubt that you guys want to have to check them both either.

thanks, aaron out.

[Chronos]

Also can be used again with Greater Celerity, for a maximum total of 512 negative levels over 32 touch attacks.

You'd miss out on Ocular with the Celerity one, since you need to spend actions to store the spells in your eyes, and then spend another action to release them.

It's still pretty insane, though. It basically turns combat into "Did the enemy have Death Ward/Ray Deflection/Globe of Invulnerability/Spell Immunity/Veil of Undeath up? If yes, nothing happens. If no, enemy dies a horrible death.".