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Sicarius Victis
2016-10-09, 12:23 PM
I've been interested in homebrew for 5e for a while, now. It's nothing wrong with 5e in general, the classes just don't tend to cover the kinds of characters I tend to play. So after a while of looking at and commenting on homebrew, I figured it's about time I try to make something myself. So, I figured that I'd try my own style for a Swordsage/Kensei. Because we don't have enough of those on this site already. And so, this.

It's intended to be somewhere between a Swordsage and a Kensei, with the slightly more interesting combat abilities of a Swordsage combined with the Kensei's specialization in the use of one or two specific weapons. However, I didn't want it to be quite as limiting as the standard Kensei.

At the moment, I only have 3rd-level and 6th-level figured out, I'm still working on the rest.

The "Sublime Way" ability is based off of the Swordsage that the Middle Finger of Vecna made, and is simply a modified version of the wording taken from the site.

Link:http://www.middlefingerofvecna.com/2015/06/swordsage.html

And so...

The Sublime Way
While there are many difference between separate traditions, most share a single common goal: Perfection. Some seek it through mastery of the physical body, some seek it through mastery of the elements, and some even seek it through mastery of death itself. Some monks, though, look outside themself for perfection. They seek it through mastery of their weapons, through the joining of body and blade that their training creates, through the deadly dance of flesh and steel that most simply refer to as "combat". Through extensive training, these monks have become masters of the Sublime Way, a collection of some of the deadliest fighting styles created.
Many monks embrace some form of art. For those of the Sublime Way, however, war is their art. And they are experts at their craft.

Weapon Training
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you may choose to spend an hour training with any melee weapon you choose. This training may be done as part of a rest. After this training, that weapon is referred to as your Focus Weapon. All abilities from this subclass that require a weapon may use either your unarmed strike or your Focus Weapon.
You may only have one Focus Weapon at a time. If you make a new weapon your Focus Weapon while you already have one, the older one is no longer considered a Focus Weapon. If you have not done this with your Focus Weapon within 24 hours, it is no longer considered your Focus Weapon until you do this again to renew it.
Your Focus Weapon is used for many features of this tradition. In addition, you gain proficiency with it and may treat it as a monk weapon even if you could not originally.

The Sublime Way
Starting at 3rd level, you also gain an amount of proficiency in the use of various techniques to enhance your combat abilities.
Maneuvers: You may spend five minutes meditating and exercising to prepare up to five maneuvers, as detailed under “Maneuvers” in the Fighter class description. You may spend five minutes exercising at any time to reselect your prepared maneuvers. You may have a single maneuver prepared more than once. You learn to prepare one additional maneuver of your choice at 6th, 11th, and 17th level.
Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. This attack must have been made using either your Focus Weapon or an unarmed attack. You can use only one maneuver per attack. Once you have used a prepared maneuver it is expended and may not be used again until it is regained. You may regain a single expended maneuver of your choice by using your action to meditate. When you do this, you must maintain concentration on it until the beginning of your next turn, or else you fail to regain your maneuver. You regain all expended maneuvers when you roll for initiative at the beginning of a fight.
Superiority Dice. Your superiority dice begin as d4s, and change as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table. When you elect to use a maneuver, you may use a superiority die by expending 1 Ki point.
Saving Throws. When one of your maneuvers requires your target to make a saving throw to resist the maneuver’s effects, use your Ki save DC.

Weapon Mastery
Beginning at 6th level, your weapons become little more than an extension of your physical self. Whenever an effect would enhance your unarmed attack, trigger off of your unarmed attack, or allow you to make an unarmed attack, you may use that effect with an attack with your Focus Weapon. For example, you may use your Focus Weapon instead of your unarmed strike for the Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows bonus action attacks, and your Focus Weapon also gains ths benefit of Ki-Empowered Strikes.

That's all I have at the moment, I'm still working on other abilities.

Rerem115
2016-10-09, 02:28 PM
While I understand the Vancian system for magic (Literally, a wizard did it), it makes less sense for a martial class. Instead of having to prepare each maneuver, why not just have a pool that you draw from, and can retrain to change that pool?

PapaQuackers
2016-10-09, 03:06 PM
I've been interested in homebrew for 5e for a while, now. It's nothing wrong with 5e in general, the classes just don't tend to cover the kinds of characters I tend to play. So after a while of looking at and commenting on homebrew, I figured it's about time I try to make something myself. So, I figured that I'd try my own style for a Swordsage/Kensei. Because we don't have enough of those on this site already. And so, this.



It's intended to be somewhere between a Swordsage and a Kensei, with the slightly more interesting combat abilities of a Swordsage combined with the Kensei's specialization in the use of one or two specific weapons. However, I didn't want it to be quite as limiting as the standard Kensei.

At the moment, I only have 3rd-level and 6th-level figured out, I'm still working on the rest.

The "Sublime Way" ability is based off of the Swordsage that the Middle Finger of Vecna made, and is simply a modified version of the wording taken from the site.

Link:http://www.middlefingerofvecna.com/2015/06/swordsage.html

And so...

The Sublime Way
While there are many difference between separate traditions, most share a single common goal: Perfection. Some seek it through mastery of the physical body, some seek it through mastery of the elements, and some even seek it through mastery of death itself. Some monks, though, look outside themself for perfection. They seek it through mastery of their weapons, through the joining of body and blade that their training creates, through the deadly dance of flesh and steel that most simply refer to as "combat". Through extensive training, these monks have become masters of the Sublime Way, a collection of some of the deadliest fighting styles created.
Many monks embrace some form of art. For those of the Sublime Way, however, war is their art. And they are experts at their craft.

Weapon Training
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you may choose to spend an hour training with any melee weapon you choose.

The wording there is redundant but I get the idea.

This training may be done as part of a rest. After this training, that weapon is referred to as your Focus Weapon. All abilities from this subclass that require a weapon may use either your unarmed strike or your Focus Weapon.

Ok so I don't necessarily ever have to use a weapon then.


You may only have one Focus Weapon at a time. If you make a new weapon your Focus Weapon while you already have one, the older one is no longer considered a Focus Weapon. If you have not done this with your Focus Weapon within 24 hours, it is no longer considered your Focus Weapon until you do this again to renew it.

So you're locking people out of dual wielding, which is fine because they want their open hand usually anyway.


Your Focus Weapon is used for many features of this tradition. In addition, you gain proficiency with it and may treat it as a monk weapon even if you could not originally.

I would just cut out the middle man and give them the proficiency in martial weapons that aren't heavy. They're supposed to be masters of training not masters of focusing on a particular weapon for an hour.

The Sublime Way
Starting at 3rd level, you also gain an amount of proficiency in the use of various techniques to enhance your combat abilities.
Maneuvers: You may spend five minutes meditating and exercising to prepare up to five maneuvers, as detailed under “Maneuvers” in the Fighter class description. You may spend five minutes exercising at any time to reselect your prepared maneuvers. You may have a single maneuver prepared more than once. You learn to prepare one additional maneuver of your choice at 6th, 11th, and 17th level.
Many maneuvers enhance an attack in some way. This attack must have been made using either your Focus Weapon or an unarmed attack. You can use only one maneuver per attack. Once you have used a prepared maneuver it is expended and may not be used again until it is regained. You may regain a single expended maneuver of your choice by using your action to meditate. When you do this, you must maintain concentration on it until the beginning of your next turn, or else you fail to regain your maneuver. You regain all expended maneuvers when you roll for initiative at the beginning of a fight.
Superiority Dice. Your superiority dice begin as d4s, and change as shown in the Martial Arts column of the Monk table. When you elect to use a maneuver, you may use a superiority die by expending 1 Ki point.
Saving Throws. When one of your maneuvers requires your target to make a saving throw to resist the maneuver’s effects, use your Ki save DC.

As has been pointed out the Vancian system has been completely abolished in 5e and I realize that it is used on The Finger but I don't really agree with it.

Weapon Mastery
Beginning at 6th level, your weapons become little more than an extension of your physical self. Whenever an effect would enhance your unarmed attack, trigger off of your unarmed attack, or allow you to make an unarmed attack, you may use that effect with an attack with your Focus Weapon. For example, you may use your Focus Weapon instead of your unarmed strike for the Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows bonus action attacks, and your Focus Weapon also gains ths benefit of Ki-Empowered Strikes.

This is quite dangerous as flurry of blows is specifically designed /not/ to let you use your Monk weapons with it for balance reasons. Forcing you to use your unarmed strike mitigates your damage by tailoring it to your monk level. As it is I could just take 6 levels in this archetype and 14 in fighter and be golden.

That's all I have at the moment, I'm still working on other abilities.

It's a bit sloppy which is understandable since it's your first homebrew, I make lots of mistakes like these all the time on first drafts, but you need to keep in mind the danger of feats and multiclassing when making any archetype.

Always try to work within systems already present for limited abilities, I.E. spontaneous over Vancian, and always try to evaluate why things are built into the system before you attempt to change them such as the flurry of blows situation.

Sicarius Victis
2016-10-09, 10:34 PM
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this. I really appreciate it.

It's intended so that you don't need to use a weapon for your abilities. One of my goals for homebrew in general is to avoid decreasing the value of things you get from the base class. If these abilities aren't usable with unarmed attacks, you lose a decent part of what you got from being a monk in general, and I feel like that's not the way a subclass should go.

There's really not much point in a monk dual-wielding anyways, TBH. Though I may try to come up with a way to make it work for the Sublime Way monk specifically.

To be fair, this is partially based off of the Kensei concept as well. That's why the "weapon focus" thing.

Also, they're supposed to be a counterpart to the Battlemaster, representing "day-to-day" variety as opposed to "round-to-round" variety. While the Battlemaster is reliably good with most weapons, melee and ranged, this one specializes in the use of only a few weapons at a time, and just melee. I'm going to drop the "has to have practiced within the last 24 hours" part, and I'm probably going to allow them to focus on additional weapons as they level up, increasing their versatility.

I agree, the Vancian style isn't really suited for 5e. The "expended" thing was intended so that they characters would plan ahead and think tactically about what they use, but it really just makes things stupid. I'll drop the "expended" part and just decrease the amount they can have prepared at a time. I'll keep the preparation, though. This is somewhat intended to be "Wizard" counterpart to the Battlemaster's "Sorcerer" style.

With Weapon Mastery, it was really intended for flavour more than anything else. But I can see the problems with it, so I have another possibility for it. They can use their weapon for Martial Arts and Flurry, allowing them to make use of whatever special effects they have with their weapon. That includes both standard weapon functions and magic abilites. However, the damage dice of the weapon are limited to no greater than the Martial Arts damage die. This means that people using d8, d10 weapons have to keep waiting to use their weapons for full damage, and greatsword/maul wielders will never get to Flurry for full damage with their weapon. So people using magic weapons and weapons with extra effects get to make use of those, but their damage potential will be limited to be closer to the level of their unarmed attack. How does that option sound?

So, yeah. I now have a few changes I'll likely be making to the base archetype, but I'm going to wait to see whether people think they're good ideas before I decide to implement any changes.

And seriously, thanks for the commentary.