The Codex of War - A Spiritual Successor to The Warrior's Way (NEEDS FEEDBACK!)

[sirpercival]

Reserved for Feats.

There aren't many of these, so I'll do them quick.

Alertness¹
Prerequisites: Listen 4 ranks, Spot 4 ranks
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to Listen and Spot checks. You may draw a weapon as a free action, even if it's not your turn. While you are Flat-footed you do not lose your Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) and may make opportunity attacks and take immediate actions.
Normal: Drawing a weapon is either a move action or must be done during a move action and must be done on your turn. While you are Flat-footed you cannot make opportunity attacks or take immediate actions.
Special: For non-Codex material, the Alertness feat is treated as the Quick Draw feat for the purposes of meeting prerequisites.

If you know maneuvers from more than one style, this feat is absolutely necessary. I'm not sure how I feel about that...

Combat Expertise¹
Prerequisites: Int 13 or Wis 13, Fighter level 1st
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on all attack rolls and opposed checks you make as part of a special attack (Disarm, Feint, Grab, Overrun, Sunder, or Trip), whether you are attempting the attack or defending against it. Furthermore, whenever you succeed at a special attack, the defending creature provokes an opportunity attack from you.
Special: In order to succeed at a Grab special attack you must succeed on an attached Hold, Pull, or Push attempt.

So you got rid of the terrible Combat Expertise base effect and turned it into the Improved Everything feat. Nice. Except that I can't really critique this until I see how you've changed the special attack rules. Does doing those things still provoke AoOs? If so, shouldn't this prevent said AoOs?

Expert's Defense¹
Prerequisites: Int 13 or Wis 13, Fighter level 5th
Benefit: Creatures provoke opportunity attacks from you when they attempt to Disarm, Feint, Grab, Overrun, or Trip you, and when they attempt to Sunder an item you are holding. If your opportunity attack hits, then the provoking creature's action automatically fails.
Normal: A creature doesn't provoke an opportunity attack for attempting any of the above special attacks.

Hm. So doing those things normally doesn't provoke AoOs? I guess it does make them much more feasible as combat tactics...

Combat Reflexes¹
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +6, Dex 15
Benefit: You are entitled to make a number of opportunity attacks each round equal to the number of attacks you are entitled to make in an attack action, to a maximum of 1 per point of your Dexterity bonus (minimum 1).

These opportunity attacks are made at the same attack bonus as attacks you make during an attack action. For example, your first opportunity attack is made at your highest attack bonus, while later opportunity attacks you make in the round suffer a cumulative -5 penalty to their attack rolls.

When a creature provokes an opportunity attack from you, you may take any number of these attacks as you wish
Normal: Characters may make one opportunity attack each round at your highest attack bonus.
Special: The Haste spell grants you an additional opportunity attack each round at your highest attack bonus.

So, a nerf. This makes Jack B. Quick builds unviable at any level. How does this interact with natural weapon builds with tons of attacks? Come to think of it, how do natural weapons work in this system at all? Again I wonder whether you should put the rules changes ahead of the classes & feats.

Deadly Aim¹
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +1, Dex 13
Benefit: Whenever you make a ranged attack, you may suffer a -2 penalty to that attack roll to deal 1d6 extra damage if the attack hits.
Special: For every two points of Base Attack Bonus you possess beyond +1 you may suffer a further -2 penalty in order to deal an additional d6 of damage with this feat. For example, a character with Base Attack Bonus +5 could suffer a penalty up to -6 in order to deal 3d6 extra damage with any melee attack he or she makes.

... the name of this feat makes no sense. If you have deadly aim, you should be MORE accurate, not less. Still, very cool feat, though making it dice instead of a flat bonus means you can't multiply it in any way... what about making this count as Power Attack for prereqs?

Deep Impact¹
Prerequisites: Str 13
Benefit: When you miss with an attack by 5 or less you deal half damage with any weapon, not just [Heavy] weapons. If you wield a [Heavy] weapon and miss with an attack you deal half damage even when you miss by more than 5.

Cool, though I have no idea what a [Heavy] weapon is.

Graceful Strike¹
Prerequisites: Dex 13
Benefit: You may apply your Dexterity modifier to attack rolls rather than your Strength modifier with any weapon, not just [Finesse] weapons. If you wield a [Finesse] weapon you may also apply your Dexterity modifier to damage rather than your Strength modifier.

Does this count as Finesse for prereqs?

Improved Unarmed Strike
Prerequisites: None
Benefit: A creature that is lower level than you that attacks you with an unarmed strike provokes an opportunity attack from you. Also, you deal more damage with your Unarmed Strike attack based on your character level, as shown in the table below:

{table=head]Character Level|Damage
1st – 4th|1d4
5th – 9th|1d6
10th – 14th|1d8
15th – 19th|1d10
20th and higher|1d12
[/table]

The values shown are for Medium-sized creatures. Adjust up or down depending on your size.
Normal: A creature's Unarmed Strike deals 1d3 damage and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

What about creatures with no class levels? Is it based off of HD? If so, please specify.

Power Attack¹
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +1, Str 13
Benefit: Whenever you make a melee attack, you may suffer a -2 penalty to that attack roll to deal 1d6 extra damage if the attack hits.
Special: For every two points of Base Attack Bonus you possess beyond +1 you may suffer a further -2 penalty in order to deal an additional d6 of damage with this feat. For example, a character with Base Attack Bonus +5 could suffer a penalty up to -6 in order to deal 3d6 extra damage with any melee attack he or she makes.

Interesting. Now I see that the dice thing is on purpose. OK, cool.

Precise Shot¹
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +6, Dex 15
Benefit: Whenever you make a ranged attack you reduce your target's Cover bonuses to AC by up to 4, Concealment miss chance by up to 20%, and resistance to Critical Hits by 25%.

Maybe make this scale with your BAB or Dex or something? Though I guess those are all flat amounts instead of values that scale with level. You should clarify what reducing resistance to crits by 25% actually means. What if they can't resist crits? What if they don't have a percentage, but are just immune?

Stand Still¹
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +3, Str 13, Dex 13
Benefit: Whenever you hit a creature with an attack of opportunity, that creature is Checked for 1 round (a flying creature Checked in this way moves 0 feet).

That's pretty cool.

Style Training¹ [STYLE]
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +1
Benefit: Choose any one Fighting Style. Add that Style's Key Skill to your list of class skills and learn any two maneuvers of that Style that you meet the prerequisites for. You gain a bonus to checks with that Style's Key Skill equal to the number of maneuvers you know from the Fighting Style.
Special: You may take this feat any number of times. Each time you take it beyond the first you may either choose a new Fighting Style or learn two new maneuvers from a Fighting Style you have already chosen.

Aha! Is this the only way to learn maneuvers? That's sad... :( if so, you may find that this is much better than any other feat, given how good maneuvers are.

Toughness
Prerequisites: Con 13
Benefit: Choose one size of Hit Dice you possess. You gain an extra Hit Dice of that size. Also, you gain extra Hit Points equal to the number of Hit Dice you possess (including the extra one you gained through this feat).
Special: You may take this feat any number of times.

Oh, cool! I like this version of toughness. However, be careful because everything which depends on your HD will be affected. For example, gaining another humanoid HD will give you BAB +0.75, more skill points, etc. Maybe just grant extra hit points instead of an actual HD?

[Ziegander]

I think one thing which would be nice, but that you don't explicitly discuss, is the idea of streamlining the combat mechanics somewhat, so that they are far more intuitive for newbs and veterans alike. We'll see whether or not that happens.

It's not exactly explicitly mentioned, but there is a section reserved for it. And any combat system rework is going to be positioned ahead of revised classes and other player options.

Eeeenteresting. I'm not convinced this will work smoothly, and it will probably involve a lot of player bookkeeping. It really depends on how Style access works with the various classes, and how dissimilar the recover mechanisms are.

For a good example, the recovery methods for Desert Wind, Devoted Spirit, and Iron Heart are all different, but can all be plausibly performed in the same round. Diamond Mind's recovery is also different from those three, but cannot be performed in the same round as those three. I am planning to make it "recover well" with Setting Sun, Shadow Hand, and/or White Raven. It's something I'm consciously keeping an eye on.

One stance per Style? I hope that care has been taken to keep the stances relevant 1-20. Again, no real comments until I get to how this is implement. No rushes?

Yup, stances scale in a manner similar to how Frank & K's [Tome] feats scale, but by number of level of maneuvers you know, rather than via BAB.

Hm. So you have to wield a weapon to initiate any maneuver? That will limit the kinds of counters you can do at any time. Hopefully there are ways to switch weapons quickly.

There will be decent weapon crossover between styles as well, and, I forgot, Weapon Focus is going to allow you to use your chosen weapon with whatever Fighting Style you want (among other handy benefits).

Oh, cool. BAB instead of Initiator Level, so BAB is now more along the lines of spellcasting progression for fighting crews. Interestingly, there's only one prc which doesn't progress BAB, while there are tons which don't progress spellcasting. Depending on how maneuver-learning works, this makes taking prcs more interesting.

Hooray for unplanned, but positive consequences! Though, I did intend for that rule to make multiclassing much more friendly.

At first glance this seems like a cross between normal barbarian and monk. Interesting. I'm curious what prompted the fusion.

Not necessarily a Barbarian/Monk fusion, but it is supposed to be a primal warrior, so hitting stuff with your fists seemed appropriate.

Rage (Ex):
You should make it clear whether or not these only apply during a rage. Right now it's ambiguous.

Good point. Will clarify.

I assume Grab is Grapple? I can't really tell how this stuff is going to work.

As a formatting thing, you might think about presenting the rules first and the classes after.

Grab is my version of Grapple, yes, or rather the lead-in to more traditional grappling attacks. I apologize for the confusion on how things are going to work. I know the formatting is in heavy flux right now. I'm trying to think forward as I write material to prepare myself (and to remind myself) for the work to come, and I'm designing as the spark hits me. But be assured that the need to know stuff will come ahead of time, as I mentioned earlier.

Also, do your weapons inflate when you enter rage? Or do you just walk around with a Large weapon and hope that you can rage whenever you need to use it?

No, your weapons don't magically inflate when you rage. At first I thought lugging around a Large weapon to use when you rage seemed stupid, but it also seemed incomplete without the ability to use larger weapons. Then I realized, if a Barbarian is fighting, chances are, he's raging. So, there's a very small chance that the Barbarian is unable to use his Large weapon. In those cases... he punches people in the face.

This one seems extremely lackluster compared to Dexterity and Strength. Maybe include Natural Armor bonus as well? Or instead? I dunno... compared to more damage and more attacks, a bonus on Will saves is just not worth it (even with the bonus Fort saves and hit points that go along with a Con increase).

I'm actually not sure it is lackluster at all. 1) Will saves are the most important saves. 2) Constitution increases the Barbarian's Hit Points as well as his second most important save. 3) Constitution increases the number of rounds per day the Barbarian can use his Rage. A Barbarian's Constitution is worth quite a lot.

Alright, cool. Need to include the action type for dropping out of rage.

Good point.

I'd love an explicit definition of what counts as "requiring patience or concentration", especially when it comes to initiating maneuvers. Do they count? If they do, then this becomes much much worse, which makes me think they don't count (and you can use them as normal), but a lot of DMs are likely to rule that they do (since they're not just basic attacking, at least I'm assuming from the rules).

This is much harder to do. Any explicit definition of that is going to elicit groans and headdesks. I may include some guidelines? I dunno, some help here would be appreciated though.

Damage Resistance (Ex):
Nice, and scaling much more cleanly than last time. Maybe a feat or other ability to increase effective level for this?

Not a bad call.

AC Bonus (Ex):
Strength and not Constitution? OK, cool. However, this makes Strength all the better of an option for rage over Con.

See, I was actually worried that Strength was too weak of an option compared to Constitution, but if more people agree with you, then I'll change this back to Constitution (as that's what it originally started as).

Improved Rage (Ex or Su):
Awesome. I can't wait to see where these go! Lol. Any idea what kinds of abilities will be in here?

Definitely stuff like, when you Rage, increase Str/Dex/Con by +2, Terrifying Rage, transmutation effects, etc. I'm going to take a look at Pathfinder and 4th Edition for inspiration here as both had some really cool concepts (if not execution) for Barbarian powers.

Woodland Stride (Ex)
Hm. OK... not sure this fits, thematically. Were you searching for abilities?

In my opinion, it totally fits. The Barbarian is a wild warrior. It lives in natural, uncivilized lands, so with Fast Movement, moving freely through natural terrain seemed... natural.

Rage Power (Ex or Su)
Also cool. Make sure these are distinct from maneuvers.

lol, I'll try.

Actually... I just had a brainstorm, though I'm not sure if this fits here or in a different barbarian rewrite. What if raging itself is a style/discipline? You rage when you enter the stance, or maybe it's just a separate mechanic tied to the maneuvers. Anyway, feel free to use this, but if you don't like it, I'm totally going to write it, so let me know ;)

And now that you mention it... this might be just the thing I was looking for. A Primal Rage Fighting Style with a "Rage" stance... could be amazing actually... it would allow me to explore lots of new venues for character/class design... and it solves the whole, "why can't anyone get mad" issue.

Mental Toughness (Ex):
Maybe make this only against enemy effects unless raging, or make it raise/lower as a free action but takes concentration (so not while raging)? Also, this is no defense against the many mind-affecting Sus. Maybe it gets better at higher level?

Ah, yes, it should be lowerable. I'll work that in.

This is much later in the game than most poisons lose effectiveness. I would grant this much earlier.

Maybe, though there isn't a lot of room.

Deathless Rage (Su):
Pretty awesome. Maybe give a Fort save when exiting the rage to be set to -1 hp when rage ends?

I'll think about it.

The Fighter

Bonus Feats
Hm? Do you give out feats at even levels? That's PF, isn't it?

Yeah, that's Pathfinder, and I don't plan to change the 3.5 standard of one per three levels.

Also, you might want to allow trading among equivalent feats (for example, switching between Power Attack & Stone Power in regular 3.5).

The rules already do allow for that. Do you mean allowing switching out Power Attack for Stone Power without needing to switch out feat chains? I could work that in somewhere, but probably in a Special heading in the feats themselves.

Warrior's Aptitude (Ex):
Well, cool. Boomerang Daze, here we come! Lol.

Yep, that's the idea, though, the Codex of War will come with a recommendation to not mix versions of feats from outside the Codex with versions of feats from inside the Codex (your mileage may vary, of course).

And don't worry, the Codex will feature a LOT of feats.

Advanced Training (Ex):
Awesome, Favored Enemy for fighters. I will say that these bonuses are extremely minor. Why not make it multiples of +2 instead of +1? My guess is that if you leave as-is, most people will pick special abilities unless they suck.

I wouldn't say minor. With them, a Fighter can keep pace with a Raging Barbarian for damage. That seems meaningful. But yes, I readily assume that most people will pick special abilities (which will be, at least at first, shamelessly ripped off Fighter Archetype abilities from Pathfinder, albeit revised).

Speaking of which, where's the ranger?

Good question. I thought the Scout ate him.

Tactical Awareness (Ex):
Sweet! Actually getting benefits for being a smart fighter. I like this better than the Warblade version, particularly with the increased skills.

Strategic Advantage (Ex):
I would clarify explicitly that you can make a contingent action out of anything you could ready. Just saying "this is like readying" seemed a bit ambiguous...

I don't understand how it's ambiguous, but seeing as you're at least the second person to view it as such I'll try to clear this up. How do I make, "contingent actions are the same as readied actions, except..." clearer?

Also, maybe make an option at the beginning where the Fighter chooses Int or Wis (maybe even Cha, depending) and call it his Strategy score, and then it applies on all these things. Would clean up ability writeups, I think.

Maybe.

Field Commander (Ex):
Calling it an "immediate extra move action" is a little confusing because an immediate action is a thing. Also, it doesn't need to be a "swift or immediate" action, I think, because an immediate action on your turn is just a swift action.

Actually, as per the Rules Compendium, immediate actions can't be taken on your turn. But yes, I'll change the wording to, "an extra move action that must be taken immediately."

"whole" -> "entire". /nitpick

Sure, sure.

Sounds cool! Should specify whether the action is one that the ally could do, or one that the Fighter could do. Like, can an ally use this to initiate a maneuver that the Fighter knows?

Oh, man... I hadn't even considered that... now I don't know if the ally should be able to do something like that or not! It seems thematically appropriate. Will think about this.

Peerless Insight (Ex):
Can he aid another on skill checks, or just attack rolls? If the former, pretty nice -- great when the Fighter is incarcerated, he can Aid the rogue in Open Locks ;)

Yes, but only for skills that he has ranks in (I'll need to rewrite the Aid Another rules to be more useful and make more sense, but one step at a time, one step at a time...)

Interesting. Immediate nerfing of sneak attack vs fighters, which would encourage the roguish enemies to go after the spellcasters... not great for tanking... by the way, how would that +8 BAB work? You don't get BAB for epic levels, so that one is impossible except for some monsters.

Now that I've worked out new rules for Hit Dice, Creature Level, and Associated Bonuses, I'll be changing the wording on this to reflect the new design paradigm. Basically, now only creatures that are higher level than the Fighter can flank him or benefit from Aid Another against him.

The Paladin
If he's proficient with martial weapons, he's proficient with the bastard sword already... as a 2H weapon. Need to specify that the exotic use is what you get. Also, why the bastard sword?

Meh, it seemed thematically appropriate for a Paladin.

Knight's Code
You need to clarify what this actually means. Can the Paladin act during a surprise round, or if she wins initiative? Does she have to delay? What actions can she take when surrounded by opponents? Can she ready an action to attack when something happens? What if there is more than one opponent, and only some of them are flatfooted? What about an opponent who was forced flatfooted by some effect? Can the paladin not use Sapphire Nightmare Blade? (I'm sure the last one doesn't exist as-is anymore anyway, but you get the idea.)

It means exactly what it says... but I'll give examples.

So no concentration? Does it still take 3 rounds of non-concentration?

I thought I'd clarified this, but I'll be more clear. It doesn't take any number of rounds, and it doesn't require concentration.

Nice. I like this.

Divine Health (Su):
Should point out that extra healing can't put you over your limit. In fact this is a little oddly worded; as is, the pool is set to your level * Cha and doesn't change.

I'll try to clarify. What's odd about that wording? That's precisely what I want the pool set to.

Cool. Does that remove points from the pool?

Nope. Remember, stabilizing, in itself, doesn't restore any hit points, it just stops you from bleeding out.

What about getting healing? Or is it that once it's dry, it's dry for the rest of the day?

Healing can, as normal, be added to the pool, if the Paladin chooses.

Smiting Spells (Ex):
Probably want to include a "may" in there -- you won't always want to trigger a spell when you attack someone. You can hold the charge, smack someone with your weapon, and use the spell later.

GOOOOD point.

Aura of Courage (Su):
Nice. But what about effects which don't allow saves? Do they get one?

No, they don't. I'll clarify.

Divine Bond (Su:) (Equipment)
Need to specify whether this can break the cap at +5 for straight-up enhancement, or +10 for total value; whether the abilities listed below are in place of the enhancement or in addition to; and whether abilities with a flat gp cost are allowable.

I'll work on it. Remember, all of these classes are very work in progress at the moment.

Ah, cool. Here's Special Mount, but with more fun options. Celestial Triceratops?? Also might want to give splatbook options. No scaling abilities with level, though... hm.

There will be scaling abilities with level in the finished product, similar to a Druid's animal companion, with caveats for the higher level creatures.

Can the unsummoning happen during other peoples' turns? If so, can she do it in response to an attack?

I'm tempted to say, yes. Will think about it.

Knight's Challenge (Ex):
Is this language-dependent?

Some part of it should be, huh? I'll think about it.

How does it interact with fear immunity?

I will be addressing immunities in the Combat revisions. Not sure exactly what I'm going to do with them, but it's something I'm giving at least a fraction of thought to.

DR 5 is lackluster... maybe make it DR Cha/evil?

It also applies to the whole party, and it's something I don't want to overshadow the Barbarian's Damage Resistance.

Nice. Though a devoted spirit stance was doing this (less hp, but still) at 1st level.

Not quite. This heals the Paladin and all of her allies at the same time with each attack. It also heals a substantial amount more than Fighting Spirit.

Next post in the next post! Lol.

Looking forward to it!

[sirpercival]

I'm actually not sure it is lackluster at all. 1) Will saves are the most important saves. 2) Constitution increases the Barbarian's Hit Points as well as his second most important save. 3) Constitution increases the number of rounds per day the Barbarian can use his Rage. A Barbarian's Constitution is worth quite a lot.

Yeah... But if you hit things harder and sooner (with more Dex), you can kill them before you have to save. The differential is much smaller than I was thinking, though.

You need to clarify how the extra rounds per day you would get for Con would actually work. As it's written now, you have to be careful because when you're not raging you can't access the extra rounds. So say your normal Con is 18, so you'd have 8 rounds of range, or 12 rounds when you actually rage. If you use 8 rounds of rage in two combats, you're done for the day because you can't rage to get access to the rest of the rounds.

In my opinion, it totally fits. The Barbarian is a wild warrior. It lives in natural, uncivilized lands, so with Fast Movement, moving freely through natural terrain seemed... natural.

...alright. It wasn't a big deal lol.

And now that you mention it... this might be just the thing I was looking for. A Primal Rage Fighting Style with a "Rage" stance... could be amazing actually... it would allow me to explore lots of new venues for character/class design... and it solves the whole, "why can't anyone get mad" issue.

I think I'm going to do this too for a more standalone sublime barbarian rewrite.

Yeah, that's Pathfinder, and I don't plan to change the 3.5 standard of one per three levels.

The reason I mention it is because you say "the fighter gets a feat at every level" which is only for PF.

The rules already do allow for that. Do you mean allowing switching out Power Attack for Stone Power without needing to switch out feat chains? I could work that in somewhere, but probably in a Special heading in the feats themselves.

Then you need to change the wording slightly. Right now, you can't swap a feat that you're using for prerequisites, even if by swapping you would still satisfy them. Say instead that you cannot swap feats in such a way that your prereqs would no longer be satisfied.

I don't understand how it's ambiguous, but seeing as you're at least the second person to view it as such I'll try to clear this up. How do I make, "contingent actions are the same as readied actions, except..." clearer?

Say "you have the same options for contingent actions that you would for a readied action", or "a contingent action is a readied action that you can ready X amount of time before and doesn't disrupt your initiative count or the other actions you take in the round you use it".

Actually, as per the Rules Compendium, immediate actions can't be taken on your turn. But yes, I'll change the wording to, "an extra move action that must be taken immediately."

Untrue. RC pg 7:

An immediate action consumes a tiny amount of time.
However, unlike a swift action, an immediate action can be
performed at any time during a round, even when it isn’t your
turn. Using an immediate action on your turn counts as your
swift action for that turn. If you use an immediate action
when it isn’t your turn, you can’t use another immediate
action or a swift action until after your next turn. You can’t
use an immediate action when you’re flat-footed.

(emphasis mine)

I'll try to clarify. What's odd about that wording? That's precisely what I want the pool set to.

You're not setting the max, you're setting the count. As written, it seems like you can take points out and you still have points = Cha x level. Just add in that that's the max number of points and you're fine.

Healing can, as normal, be added to the pool, if the Paladin chooses.

Can you add in a little bit to clarify that? Just for me?

[Ziegander]

Just stopping by to let you all know that I'm still thinking a lot about this, but work just takes so much of my time and energy that I can really only devote about one day per week to this project. But thanks so much for your feedback and support! There's lots of good critique going on here.

[Ziegander]

Yeah... But if you hit things harder and sooner (with more Dex), you can kill them before you have to save. The differential is much smaller than I was thinking, though.

Yeah. I think I will go back to keying the natural armor off of Constitution though. It just makes more sense.

You need to clarify how the extra rounds per day you would get for Con would actually work. As it's written now, you have to be careful because when you're not raging you can't access the extra rounds. So say your normal Con is 18, so you'd have 8 rounds of range, or 12 rounds when you actually rage. If you use 8 rounds of rage in two combats, you're done for the day because you can't rage to get access to the rest of the rounds.

Good point. I need to make all of the alterations your critiques left me with last time as well.

I think I'm going to do this too for a more standalone sublime barbarian rewrite.

Sure, sure. Let me know when/if you start working on it, because it is a very intriguing idea, and I might like to appropriate it for my own work.

Then you need to change the wording slightly. Right now, you can't swap a feat that you're using for prerequisites, even if by swapping you would still satisfy them. Say instead that you cannot swap feats in such a way that your prereqs would no longer be satisfied.

Yep. Good advice. I'll get to it.

Say "you have the same options for contingent actions that you would for a readied action", or "a contingent action is a readied action that you can ready X amount of time before and doesn't disrupt your initiative count or the other actions you take in the round you use it".

I'll try to clarify.

Untrue. RC pg 7:[...]

Huh. Maybe I'm remembering the pre-Rules Compendium ruling, then. Or perhaps just making rules up. It happens sometimes.

You're not setting the max, you're setting the count. As written, it seems like you can take points out and you still have points = Cha x level. Just add in that that's the max number of points and you're fine.

Yeah, good call. I'll try to clarify the issues with Divine Health.

Thanks a LOT for all of your critiques so far. I'd love to hear what you think about the mechanics and the design of the Fighting Styles I've completed thus far.

[sirpercival]

No problem! I'll get to them when I can -- probably on Saturday.

In the mean time, I've started on my martial barbarian here, though I'm taking a break to try and figure out what else I want to do with the thing.

[Ziegander]

Okay, edits made. I'm planning on writing the Iron Heart discipline either later tonight or early tomorrow. Gonna be pretty awesome. :)

EDIT: Added Iron Heart stance and first draft of the maneuvers list (but no full descriptions of Iron Heart maneuvers yet).

[Ziegander]

New Sunder rules up, some minor rules clean-ups, and a major overhaul to the Inferno Blast strike (Desert Wind 9th). A major overhaul to Diamond Mind's 9th level strike is likely coming soon (but after I finish with Iron Heart). EDIT: Might actually work on completing the Barbarian (and maybe even the Paladin and Fighter) before I get back to Fighting Styles.

After that stuff, I plan to move on to Shadow Hand (even though it is not next in line).

[Ziegander]

LOTS of new mechanics for Barbarians and Fighters (in the form of Improved Rage, Rage Powers, and Advanced Training options) if anyone is interested in taking a look and seeing what I've been working on. Some new feats as well. More Barbarian/Fighter stuff to come as the week moves forward.

[Ziegander]

Okay, no new Barbarian/Fighter stuff, but I have finished the full write-ups of the Iron Heart discipline. No, there's no Iron Heart Surge. Looking forward to the flame war!