[3.5] Iron Tortoise (v2), a shieldfighter's discipline [ToB/LoB, Discipline]

[Pechvarry]

I like shields. I hate animated shields, and I hate bucklers. Let's get to business. (prepare yourself. this is long)

1st
Iron Shell - Will this scale well? Is this intended? It may be better to word it as simply "make an opposed attack roll with your shield, as if making a shield bash" and then stating the shield bonus to AC is a bonus. But then, I suppose it's pretty easy for this character to eventually get +18 shield bonus to AC.

2nd
Tortoise Trip - Most abilities that grant trip attempts have a line exempting the user from counter-trips (the opportunity for the opponent to trip you if you fail to trip them). It'd be nice to specify one way or another for this.

Turtle Shell Wall - As with Devoted Spirit's Shield Block, I'd suggest changing this to an untyped AC bonus. This way, you don't have to create an exemption for bonus stacking.

Enraging Strike and Tortoise Taunt
a Strike and a Boost version of the same thing. Not sure I'm a fan. I might suggest moving Enraging Strike up to level 3, removing the bonus to attacks, and in fact reversing it -- even if they succeed their save, they still take a -2 penalty on attacks directed against your allies.

3rd
greater snapping strike - damage seems kinda low. Maybe not.

defensive shell - as a boost, there's no reason not to use this during full round actions (or any time you're not moving anyway). If you state you can only use this while taking actively moving, that's not such a problem. Maybe you intend it to be used when the player has no intentions of moving anyway.

iron tortoise stance - needs cleaned up wording. typo of "neck" to "next", and I don't know what an extra attack of opportunity equal to his int mod means. You mean 1 additional per point of int mod?

4th
Taunting Turtle - following the example of White Raven's AoO-depriving abilities (Douse The Flames and Covering Strike), I think you should extend the penalties of this ability to 3 rounds. After the 1st round, you'd stop stop inflicting attack penalties, but those affected would suffer for them for 2 additional rounds.

5th
Shell Shock - this ability works on great wyrm dragons. The end.

6th - nothing

7th
cyclonic shell crush - is silly. But functional and potent. And also silly.

Iron Defender's Riposte - that's like the entire discipline in one move.

8th
Glorious Shell Shock - 3 dragons

Adamantine Turtle Lord's Stance - I really like this. One big reason tanking tends to fail in D&D is because of how the necessity to be near your allies makes you a big target for AoE.


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Some thoughts. I think some of the counters are a bit redundant, but you can keep them all. I think some Save counters would not go amiss. One that gives you Mettle and Evasion for a single save might be nice, for instance. More importantly, I'd like to see a Stance or some Counters that help all nearby allies on saves. As I said above, I really like the help in shutting down AoEing your crowd of folks, but it comes very late. Some earlier and more passive stuff could work wonders. For instance, a stance that simply provides adjacent allies with save boosts. You can rationalize Reflex and Will pretty easily, so you may as well toss in Fortitude and say "all saves".

I'm not a big fan of the many "taunt" type moves. Especially ones with relatively weak DCs (how many tanks can afford a high INT focus for their DCs?) I'd prefer to see more things that tank by virtue of practicality like Iron Guard's Glare and Thicket of Blades. You have some of this, and I can't really help you with thinking up others. I at least urge you to put in a decent fail condition for the taunts. Basically, every taunt after 1st level should still hamper your foe even on a successful save.