The Age of the Warriors - a ToB expansion book idea

[DracoDei]

The discipline should be pared down to maneuvers that are generally useful, and it should have the normal number of maneuvers, IMO.

I rather think that would completely ruin the feel of the discipline.

Also, two 9th level maneuvers - including a 9th level stance - doesn't sit well with me, personally.

The 9th level Stance thing was a bold move... it I remember the in-thread commentary correctly, the reviewers liked the idea at the time. I would recommend contacting the creator and getting him to come here to further discuss things... perhaps with quoting key portions of posts by himself and others from the Narrow Bridge post itself.

[Dead_Jester]

I made a new ToB base class, could anyone plz PEACH it?

The Sublime Matador: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=157657

Also, can I use the homebrew disciplines for this class, or do I have to ask every author individualy?

[dspeyer]

Go ahead and use homebrew disciplines. We've added discipline to PrCs without asking *either* author :-)

[Dead_Jester]

Thanks for the info. Now I only need to design a new discipline an I'll post it here.

[The-Mage-King]

Know what we need? An Incarnum using Discipline.

Really. There are some nasty things that Incarnum can do, and combining it with ToB would be flavorful.

[Dead_Jester]

Know what we need? An Incarnum using Discipline.

Really. There are some nasty things that Incarnum can do, and combining it with ToB would be flavorful.

I had an idea for one, but probably would need help to do it. Do you want to work on one when we're done our current projects?

[The-Mage-King]

I had an idea for one, but probably would need help to do it. Do you want to work on one when we're done our current projects?

Eh... Maybe. I'll try to finish Hero's Edge soonish, and we can talk it over in PMs. I'm thinking something along the lines of investing Essentia into the stances, and giving benefits on strikes/boost/counters depending on how much you have invested in your active one, using the standard rules for that...

[dspeyer]

We already have two prestige classes, the Blade Incarnate, and Incarnate Knight.

[Dead_Jester]

We already have two prestige classes, the Blade Incarnate, and Incarnate Knight.

Yes but both of those only boost existing maneuvers. I think we really need to design new maneuvers that are adapted to the incarnum system (boosts would be easy, but strikes and counters are harder).

As for starting now, I have to finish my own discipline, but feel free to start before or PM any ideas.

[Morph Bark]

Know what we need? An Incarnum using Discipline.

Really. There are some nasty things that Incarnum can do, and combining it with ToB would be flavorful.

I actually was planning to do just that after I finish my Truenaming discipline.

I also considered pact magic in combination with ToB... but that seemed undoable.

[Dead_Jester]

I also considered pact magic in combination with ToB... but that seemed undoable.

Just make vestiges that grant maneuvers when they are bound, so your maneuvers known vary according to who you have binded.

[Morph Bark]

Just make vestiges that grant maneuvers when they are bound, so your maneuvers known vary according to who you have binded.

That could be a possibility I suppose... a martial discipline based off bound vestiges granting the maneuvers. Each could grant one stance, two strikes and either a counter or a boost. Level 1 vestiges could grant level 1/2 maneuvers, level 2 vestiges level 2/3 maneuvers, etc.

I'm going to add this to my notes to get back to later. Perhaps I should also make a class that uses Pungeon Pendragon, an Incarnum-based discipline, a binding-based discipline and a psionics-based discipline. Hmmm, ideas, ideas! Yummy!

[DragoonWraith]

I wrote a Vestige who gave a few Maneuvers when bound, actually. The idea of an entire class based around the idea is awesome.

[DracoDei]

Just make vestiges that grant maneuvers when they are bound, so your maneuvers known vary according to who you have binded.

That hews pretty close to the Eternal Blade's fluff actually.Yes? No?

[Eldan]

For the hybrid prestige class contest, I started wriiting up an eldar aspect warrior, a binder-warblade gish. I was also writing aspects of khaine as different vestiges giving maneuvers. I.e. Fire Dragon -> Desert Wind and Stone Dragon, Howling Banshee -> Diamond Mind and Tiger Claw and so on.

[dspeyer]

I wrote a Vestige who gave a few Maneuvers when bound, actually. The idea of an entire class based around the idea is awesome.

I only skimmed the vestiges explanation, but why a class? Wouldn't a set of vestiges be enough in themselves?

[DragoonWraith]

I mean a class who binds the usual Vestiges, but instead of getting the usual powers, gains maneuvers. I think it would be very interesting.

[SurlySeraph]

A binder/initiator dual-progression stance would certainly make sense.

Also, I wrote a new PrC, the Ambition Adept. Tell me what you think.

[JoshuaZ]

Yeah, I see what you mean.

JoshuaZ claims several of the maneuvers are very specialized - that concerns me. The discipline should be pared down to maneuvers that are generally useful, and it should have the normal number of maneuvers, IMO. Also, two 9th level maneuvers - including a 9th level stance - doesn't sit well with me, personally.

The specialization level isn't higher than many of the disciplines (essentially just that there's a lot related to undead). As DracoDei observed, the general response to the 9th level stance seems positive. The balance level fits (since you will generally need to take a feat to get it). I had considered making it only usable a certain amount of time daily but that seemed not to work. I think pairing the number of maneuvers down further may be doable, but difficult without damaging the fluff substantially. Having two 9th level maneuvers in this form is balanced as far as I can tell.

If the number of maneuvers in the discipline is reduced, it would make the most sense to reduce those at the lower levels where there is a lot. Bloody Wound could probably be easily removed. If others agree, I'll go and remove that. (After that I don't see any obvious further reductions and note that someone just posted in the thread wanting more anti-undead maneuvers so, um yeah...) Do you think there are serious balance issues with the discipline as it currently stands?

To avoid double posting I'll also address here the discussion above about vestiges and ToB and note that Krimm made a PrC that centered around getting maneuvers from vestiges. That PrC is already included in Age of Warriors.

[Morph Bark]

Bump because this thread deserves to remain on the first page.

On added note, I finally added the 9th-level maneuver to my Pungeon Pendragon discipline. Would anyone perhaps like to comment on it or any other maneuvers so that I may improve upon it?

[pyrefiend]

Bump.

This project may have organization issues. We (pretty much) know what needs to be done, but most of what's happening in this thread is new disciplines and prestige classes being suggested, linked, or discussed. Are there enough dedicated contributors that we can start assigning them to sections? Do we have enough material already that we can just use what we have for the project?

[dspeyer]

We do have some priority-inversion issues, partly because the stuff that really takes us toward a finished product is less fun than adding more disciplines and classes.

What worries me more is decisions. To really be a coherent work, we're going to need to make canonical rulings on issues where we either don't have consensus or don't have the attention of everyone who is entitled to a say. So far we've been putting these things off, but we can't do it forever.

[pyrefiend]

Well that sounds like a good place to start, at least. Instead of letting these issues dissipate, we can take a vote, PM the creators of whatever material may be involved, and hopefully make some progress here.

What are the most important questions about this project we have to resolve?

[dspeyer]

Off the top of my head (there are surely others):

Accessing new disciplines from old base classes

Probably separate mechanics for swapping vs. adding, and for first-level vs. later. XP costs? Skills? Feats? See this thread.

Falling Anvil

It doesn't exactly fit with the rest, but it's kind of awesome. How do we incorporate it without getting in the way of people who don't want to use it?

Falling Star and True Arrow

Are we dropping them completely? Declaring them "ancient and no longer taught"? Leaving them in and looking repetitive? If we drop them, what becomes of Spirit Archer and Thousand Arrow Archer?

Whatever we do, we'll probably do it again for the mounted disciplines, and maybe poison, underwater and cold.

Adding disciplines to new PrCs

We've added a ton of disciplines to new PrCs. Do we just stick them in or do the authors get a say? What if we want to remove things for balance? Likewise, IIRC many pieces never resolved their own discussion threads. Do we canonicalize that?

Is anything here not good enough?

Probably the most painful question. I don't have anything in mind, but I haven't gone looking. Possibly the greatest favor we can do for future users is to act as a filter, so that DMs can say "AoW is allowed" and trust us not to break the game. There are probably things in here that are broken. Do we fix them? Kick them out?

There's something to be said for resolving this as a generic, procedural question without a specific mechanic in mind. Emotions will run much lower.

[pyrefiend]

OK, well, I have my opinions on all of these, but I think the absolute first thing we need to do is decide upon how we're going to make decisions. Some form of voting, probably. But who decides what we're voting upon, and does everyone or a specific group do the voting?

[DracoDei]

or don't have the attention of everyone who is entitled to a say.

Sounds like a job for PMs to me...

Falling Anvil

It doesn't exactly fit with the rest, but it's kind of awesome. How do we incorporate it without getting in the way of people who don't want to use it?

I don't think that is a roadblock to our current work really... it doesn't come up until we go from creating the fluff, to actually writing it up in a single document, and even then we can show around different versions. Basically I am saying that while it is important, and we have started, but not completed dealing with it (apparently), the whole "appendix vs sidebars vs in-line goofy text" doesn't HAVE to be resolved immediately, and, in fact, might be easier to talk about when we have some actual examples of things done up each way.


I liked the fluff that we came up with for what happened to True Arrow and the other archery discipline you mentioned. The only question to me is if the 2 completely died out after that... and we can always throw the maneuvers and stances in with appropriate caveats and leave it up to individual GMs...

[pyrefiend]

Sounds like a job for PMs...

My thoughts exactly. Why don't we go down the list of issues to resolve, vote on a solution, and then PM that solution to the creator of the homebrew in question. If they agree with the majority's plan of action, great; if they don't (or don't respond), we just don't put that particular bit in the book.

[DragoonWraith]

Accessing new disciplines from old base classes

Probably separate mechanics for swapping vs. adding, and for first-level vs. later. XP costs? Skills? Feats? See this thread.

Do we, at any point, want to out-right increase the number of disciplines an Adept gets? I don't mean for a particular homebrew'd class that is lacking, I mean, how do we feel about giving the Crusader access to a fourth discipline, for example?

Falling Anvil

It doesn't exactly fit with the rest, but it's kind of awesome. How do we incorporate it without getting in the way of people who don't want to use it?

I vote for simply making it the last chapter devoted to a discipline, and give it a sidebar. I don't think it's necessary to exile it to an appendix.

Falling Star and True Arrow

Are we dropping them completely? Declaring them "ancient and no longer taught"? Leaving them in and looking repetitive? If we drop them, what becomes of Spirit Archer and Thousand Arrow Archer?

What exactly are the issues with these?

Is anything here not good enough?

Probably the most painful question. I don't have anything in mind, but I haven't gone looking. Possibly the greatest favor we can do for future users is to act as a filter, so that DMs can say "AoW is allowed" and trust us not to break the game. There are probably things in here that are broken. Do we fix them? Kick them out?

Unfortunately, I have in mind at least two disciplines that I don't think are balanced. And I know I've brought this up with at least one of the authors and the response was largely that it was balanced as intended, i.e. more on par with what wizards could do than with what other adepts could do. This may be problematic.

[DracoDei]

My thoughts exactly. Why don't we go down the list of issues to resolve, vote on a solution, and then PM that solution to the creator of the homebrew in question. If they agree with the majority's plan of action, great; if they don't (or don't respond), we just don't put that particular bit in the book.

Sounds like putting the cart before the horse since the authors would be one of the best sources of such solutions. Also, COMING UP with the solutions in the first place is a highly non-trivial task... I don't think we should rush to voting on any given issue before a lot of brainstorming and etc. Also, to make the votes halfway possible to count, there should be a bunch of issues to vote on on each "ballot" and/or each "set of ballots" should be its own thread.

Do we, at any point, want to out-right increase the number of disciplines an Adept gets? I don't mean for a particular homebrew'd class that is lacking, I mean, how do we feel about giving the Crusader access to a fourth discipline, for example?

I don't like that concept. One thing that just occurred to me is that, especially for less experienced players, it might be good to allow characters to start out with access to less than their full compliment of disciplines, and NOT have to pay the 1,000 xps to add disciplines until and unless they exceed the number of discipline's their class would normally know.

EDIT: They should still have to find a teacher...

[pyrefiend]

Personally, I think we should decide on a group of five people or so to vote on these things. At least that way we can have something to work with. Debating freely in this thread, with no structure, isn't getting us anywhere. We've got to make some definite choices before we can really get to work on writing the bulk of this project.

EDIT:

Sounds like putting the cart before the horse since the authors would be one of the best sources of such solutions. Also, COMING UP with the solutions in the first place is a highly non-trivial task... I don't think we should rush to voting on any given issue before a lot of brainstorming and etc. Also, to make the votes halfway possible to count, there should be a bunch of issues to vote on on each "ballot" and/or each "set of ballots" should be its own thread...

Well, there's no reason the author can't suggest ideas to be voted upon too- it's just that they also have the final say as to what is done with their work. And frankly, this project has been around for a long time now, and hasn't gotten much of anywhere at least as far as decision-making is concerned. At this rate, we'll never finish, and brainstorming is all we've done.