(3.5) [Discipline] Falling Anvil v.2 (P.E.A.C.H.)

[DracoDei]

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. You are the first person to critique individual maneuvers in quite a while.

It seems like the character using these abilities would wind up deader than a doornail rather quickly. Most of the other disciplines give you ways to mitigate or negate damage, whereas your seems to actively put it's user into harm's way.

The idea is more that in leu of your enemy doing bad things to you, you negate that... and this also causes a DIFFERENT bad thing to happen to you. Hopefully one of a much lower severity.

Cool, Fluffy, Terribly weak for an 8th level maneuver, not to mention it would probably get you very quickly killed by "invisible" opponents.

The only other stance (EDIT: I was wrong, see next post.) that grants continuous flight is also 8th level (Rising Pheonix) and while it does also do a piddlying 3d6 fire damage to any creature adjacent to you when you make a full attack, it doesn't let you get more than 10 feet above a solid or liquid surface... if you try to float over the edge of a moderately sized cliff (anything that would alter your altitude to be more than 10 feet) the stance ends and you plummet. As such, this is arguably a BETTER flight effect, especially outside of combat.

Hilariously Awesome, WILL eventually cause a party wipe

Well, you better NOT be talking about the damage all by itself:
At initiator level 7 (when you first get it) this maneuver has a maximum range of 1,400 feet, for a maximum damage per character of 3d6. At initiator level 20, this has a maximum range of 4,000 feet. At 1d6 per 500 feet, that works out to 8d6 damage... any party that is stupid enough that the healbot doesn't take the three rounds it takes to build the slingshot to top off anyone who would be in any real danger from that, pretty much deserves what they get in my book, especially since half the damage is non-lethal. Now, granted, if you happen to drop yourself in the middle of combat it could be problematic... but that sounds like a CHARACTER killer, not a PARTY killer to me, but I could be wrong.

As for missing the target on a bad Profession(Seige Engineer)/Bluff check* I would thing there are plenty of situations where you have a comfortable margin for error... still I could see this being an issue.

*Which is basically always going to be a bluff check for anyone not accessing the maneuver through a martial script or Cap of the Falling Anvil.

So... was it the possibility of the party glass cannon getting killed after getting dropped into an ambush, a miss dropping someone into a bad spot, the drain on the parties healing to keep everyone topped off, or did you mis-read and think that the damage was more than a mostly-flavor amount?

Making one attack per 3 attacks made against you is a very good way to get yourself killed, even with a slightly higher ac

You make a valid point in as much as if it is only SLIGHTLY higher, then it isn't high enough. Checking one the character currently playing in my game, it doesn't increase his basic AC, although it increases his touch AC. My Age of Warriors Testing character, OTOH, gains 10 points of general AC (17 for touch AC) when he kicks this in. Granted, that character has really pumped his Bluff checks (+2 Discipline Focus, +3 skill focus, MW Item of Bluff (shades), +3 custom magic item(Tongue-Stud of Glibness)). The MW item might not fly with some GMs, but then again, most parties won't have the guy with Falling Anvil access carrying around that many Fly potions, and I could have sunk the money into a better enhancement bonus on the tongue-stud.

The major thing you may have missed is this isn't really meant to be an offensive stance hardly ever. This is a panic button, pure and simple. It happens to be pretty darn good against touch attacks. On top of that, you also get: Slippery Mind, Improved Evasion, and Mettle.

I could MAYBE see bumping the AC up to as much as 15+Total Bluff Mod, and giving a +2 untyped bonus to all saving throws... or maybe some DR and/or SR or something. Also, I need to rewrite it to make it more obvious that you can use most defensive counters. Actually another possibility is that you can use strikes in it normally, but you never cause your opponent any harm. If that seems pointless to anyone reading this, I have a few words for you: Stone Bones, Iron Bones, Adamintine Bones, Stone Power... and in some odd cases: Crusader's Strike, Martial Spirit, Revitalizing Strike, Rallying Strike, and Strike of Righteous Vitality. EDIT: Actually, I am going to go see if I can put this benefit in right now as well as clarify the use of counters.


What do other people think? Anyone? Don't be shy!

Basically, what this school needs for balance is some better defensive options. That said, I'm playing a half troll swordsage with this school at the next opportunity I get.

The second highest type of compliment I ever expect a peice of my homebrew to receive is if someone uses it. You won't be the first, and hopefully won't be the last, but it is still high praise. The highest would be if they would actually get back to me after using it and tell me how it went (preferably in more detail rather than less). In the ranks I have given up on ever achieving we have actual publication (not necessarily for pay). It seems like all the attempts to create dead-tree editions fall through...



EDIT: Ok, Stretchy Dodge is now powered up in a large number of subtle ways, including the ability to make buffing/healing strikes (Stone Bones etc) and to recover maneuvers.

[DracoDei]

Well, it appears I somehow over-looked Shadow Hand's "Balance on the Sky". I might move "Not Looking Down" to a lower level, especially if I can figure another 8th level stance... then again, since Rising Pheonix is ALSO 8th level, that probably means that Shadow Hand is just better than Desert Wind in that respect.

[Jaerc]

Lol. This is terrific.

[Welknair]

{Scrubbed}

[averagejoe]

The Mod They Call Me: Thread necromancy.