Libram of Battle: Disciplines and Explanations

[ErrantX]

I suppose I should articulate more what I want and what I see from each of the following disciplines. While I am definitely open to suggestion and I do understand that some of these are just plainly going to have to adapt to fit differently, I do have a Big Picture in my head. That being said, this below is what I want to see out of each discipline, and that will hopefully help you in writing these disciplines. Obviously, if something just screams, "Dude, this is stupid" please tell me. You might be right. Until then, Trust Me(tm), I have an idea.

Devil Tiger (Hard hitting strikes, charge strikes, and area strikes) (WL, Knt(N))
The discipline of the Devil Tiger instructs its students that in savage ferocity, one finds clarity in battle. The focus of the Red Road teaches its disciples that the animalistic fury brings a warrior to a level of battle unmatched by others. Aggressive strikes, rushing attacks that rend foes assunder, circular attacks that strike multiple foes at once are the hallmarks of the raging Devil Tiger. Signature attacks include temporary strength boosts, attack-to-grapple maneuvers, pounce charges, whirlwind attacks, wounding attacks, and flurries of two-weapon strikes. Associated skill is Intimidation, and it's weapons are unarmed strikes, spiked gauntlets, kukri, dagger, handaxe, and kama.

Steel Serpent (Stealth and assassination strikes, supernatural poison abilities) (Stk)
The art of the silent kill is the hallmark of the disciple of the Steel Serpent. His movements are lithe and agile, his technique is flawless. This art is passed through cabals of thieves, assassins, and sometimes taught by former members of groups such as those to promising individuals. This discipline focuses on ability damaging strikes, supernatural and mundance poison uses, thrown weapons, and stealth kills. It's associated skill is Move Silently, and its weapons are the dagger, shortsword, shuriken, sai, kusari gama, and unarmed strike.

Unbreakable Colossus (Bull rushes, charges, tramples, DR while doing it) (Knt, WL)
This is Charlie's baby, and really his idea. I want to see exactly what it sounds like: Brutal charges, DR while charging, DR counters, trample rushes, and charge-through-targets-on-a-line like a human lightning bolt.

Crescent Moon (Supernatural art, ki focus, strike incorporeal, force damage, ethereal abilities) (BM, Stk)
The students of the Crescent Moon learn their arts in solitude and meditation, learning to empty their minds and empty their bodies to utilize the unseen arts of the Moon. A potent yet passive discipline, its esoteric abilities are often not understood but they are feared. Maneuvers will include short distance teleports, ethereal abilities to become incorporeal or use incorporeal touch attacks to strike foes easily, force damage strikes, and the ability to cause foes to become incorporeal themselves. The key skill for Crescent Moon is (LORD ONLY KNOWS), and it's weapons are the unarmed strike, quarterstaff, light mace, spear, siagham, and club. Charlie gave me the name for this one.

Black Heron (supernatural, duh) (Knt (E))
This discipline is an oldie but goodie. I will rewrite the fluff, but the discipline focuses on intimidation and fear effects, unrelenting progression in battle, hard hitting reckless attacks, vampiric abilities, and damaging blasts of unholy energy at the cost of life force.

Silver Crane (black heron's evil twin) (Knt (G)
Silver Crane is the opposing school to Black Heron, focusing on destroying evil outsiders, undead, and possessing creatures. It has healing, defense, and strong attacks that can strike beyond flesh to harm only possessing fiends.

Thrashing Dragon (throws, counters, trips, unarmed combat style) (Stk)
The Thrashing Dragon teaches its practitioners to be fast and hard hitting and primarily unarmed or at the very least lightly armed. Its a discipline of movement, a sort of thrashing dance that spins foes away and leaves them breathless on the ground while the Thrashing Dragon moves on to his next victim. Maneuvers associated with this discipline will trip, throw, or otherwise make an opponent be unable to attack the adept easily. Strong counters to throw opponents off balance (Like a deflection that trips an opponent and opens attacks of opportunity), and a ruthless barrage of unarmed attacks. It's associated skill is Tumble, and it's weapons are unarmed strike, gauntlet, nunchaku, quarterstaff, shortspear, and whip. Think capoeira mixed with judo and tai chi.

Raging Storm (air form, supernatural) (BM)
Consuming Flame (fire form, supernatural) (BM)
Tidal Flux (water form, supernatural) (BM)
Unyielding Stone (earth form, supernatural) (BM)
The elemental disciplines are something that I haven't really thought too deeply into. This is more a Randy brainchild beyond my wanting to incorporate some abilities that are going to be stolen from my work on the Avatar D20 project (not the dumb Cameron movie, the Last Airbender). I do have some ideas for both Air and Earth, and a couple for water, Fire is largely just Burn Bitches. Air is acrobatic, gusts of winds, lightning. Earth is walls of stone, tremorsense, moving earth, kicking boulders up, etc. Water? Tai Chi, counters and redirects, cold damage, splish splash. Fire? Burn bitches, burn! I got nothing.

Jade Throne (Iron Heart analog with Diamond Mind hints) (WL)
Not to diss what Randy wrote, as half of it I liked and would like to use, I see the newly rechristened Jade Throne as something different. Practioners of Jade Throne are nobles on the battlefield, moving with regal grace and deadly majesty. Each step has a purpose, each strike a deadly finality; it is beautiful death with economy in motions. The Jade Throne is a battledancer and warrior supreme; he is the unquestioned Prince of Battle. Maneuvers hallmark to this line are strong Finishing moves, counters to defend itself, supreme concentration to enter battle trances to overcome foes and obstacles (saving throws), and strong strikes with calculated precision. Its associated skill is Concentration, and its associated weapons are rapier, longsword, bastard sword, greatsword, shortsword, and scimitar. Think like how Byakuya Kuchiki fights and such, he is a Jade Throne master. I see a PrC called Jade Prince in the future for this.

Solar Wind (ranged style) (WL, Stk)
The disciples of the Solar Wind learn their arts in the windy plains where they train for precision in any environment with deadly force. Throwing weapons and archery are their tools, and they rarely miss. Hallmark maneuvers include richochet maneuvers, deadly precision strikes, supernaturally forceful maneuvers that may fire through opponents in a deadly line, showers of phantom weapons that inflict true damage, and ranged attack counters by shooting enemy missiles from the sky. Associated Skill is Spot and its weapons are longbow (and comp), shortbow (and comp), boomerang, throwing dagger, sling, and throwing axe. (Sidebar is needed for Mounted Archery combat with Solar Wind, perhaps a Metastyle Feat for Shatterdown Lancer and Solar Wind together)

Iron Tortoise (Shield style, defense oriented with counters and protective abilities) (Knt)
Warriors of the Iron Tortoise learn that heavy armor and heavier shields may be used to protect not only one's self, but your fellows as well. Phalanx fighting and the defense of those weaker are the principles of this discipline. Maneuvers include stances that increase threat range for AoO (with reach on nonreach weapons), mobility reducing strikes, shield counters that deflect not only melee or ranged, but spells as well, and crowd controlling taunting strikes and solid stances to be immovable. Associated skill is Balance, and its weapons are the shield (spiked or otherwise), shortsword, shortspear, handaxe, battleaxe, and dwarven waraxe.

Golden Lion (White Raven analog) (WL, Knt)
Golden Lion commanders believe that the realm of the martial adept requires powerful leaders, and they are the ones to do it. Commanding presence, powerful shouts, and morale improving tactics are what goad his allies to victory. Maneuvers include tactical benefits to other players by granting them bonuses such as moves, attacks, and static bonuses, recovery abilities that refresh maneuvers for allies, potent morale boosting strikes that decimate foes, and shout attacks that inspire courage and fear in allies and enemies respectively. Associated skill is Diplomacy and weapons include the longsword, the longspear, the ranseur, the greataxe, and the trident.

Riven Hourglass (Diamond Mind analog with some of Desert Wind's movement abilities) (WL, BM, Stk)
This was an idea I had that Randy did better than I could have conceived. With a few tweaks, this will be a potent discipline. I have nothing but to say look at Randy's discipline. It's pretty much what I wanted.

Piercing Lance (Mounted combat form) (WL, Knt)
This is a Cole thing, all I want is mounted combat. My view of them: Piercing Lance disciples are known to be a proud lot who believe in the strength of their lance and their mount, and learn to fight with their animal brother as if they were a part of them, two minds together. Mounted charges, tramples, attack as a line charges leaving brutalized swaths of poor impaled bastards, and maneuvers that utilize the mount's natural attacks in tandem with the rider's. Associated skill is Ride, and weapons are lance, longsword, longspear, spear, heavy flail, and morning star. (Shatterdown Lancer = PrC)

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This is what I've got, please let me know what you think.
-X

[Flamewarrior]

So, are only the styles being rewritten, or the ToB bad design practices are going in the trash bin as well? In any case: there is a Crescent Moon style around; the style here would use Move Silently or Autohypnosis; capoeira would have a lot less throws and a lot more feints; IIRC, there's some fluff in Avatar, even, about fire being used for forging; this might have ideas for Jade Prince (dammit, the preview was free; also, an unisex name would be desirable); and "Lancer" sounds to me like it goes on a PrC instead of a style.

Also: "explanations", "nunchaku".

[ErrantX]

So, are only the styles being rewritten, or the ToB bad design practices are going in the trash bin as well? In any case: there is a Crescent Moon style around; the style here would use Move Silently or Autohypnosis; capoeira would have a lot less throws and a lot more feints; IIRC, there's some fluff in Avatar, even, about fire being used for forging; this might have ideas for Jade Prince (dammit, the preview was free; also, an unisex name would be desirable); and "Lancer" sounds to me like it goes on a PrC instead of a style.

Also: "explanations", "nunchaku".

The whole of the Tome of Battle is being rewritten, essentially. Classes, feats, disciplines, prestige classes, organizations, everything. It will be going through panels of people as we go through this project to determine balance, flavor, and really how it just fits together as it goes.

I was unaware of a Crescent Moon style. Meh. Names right now are all up in the air; this is what we're calling them for now. I'm avoiding Autohypnosis, personally, so perhaps Move Silently. I dunno, still unsure.

Thrashing Dragon is going to function like a blend of capoeira, judo, and tai chi.

What does Avatar, fire and forging have to do with anything? I'm confused there. Craft (metalworking) as a skill for Voracious Flame?

And Jade Prince... meh, women can bitch and not use it if they don't like it, if that even keeps the name. Or they can call themselves Jade Princesses.

The Shatterdown Lancer name is a placeholder for whatever we can come up with; the name ideally is going to a prestige class that will feature it heavily.

Spelling nitpicks aren't necessary in the planning stages, they're not helpful until the final edits and revisions. People know what I mean. :P

-X

[Flamewarrior]

Various things on your post are best addressed by saying that doing it right first time saves people's time. E.g. "holy" damage. Besides, let's reformulate the first question for clarity: I didn't mean rewriting a bunch of material, I meant getting a new set of non-retarded design practices - e.g. fixing the lack of scaling rampant through ToB, and anything that might look much like it; is that in the plans?

[ErrantX]

My philosophy with writing has always been and will always be: Don't get it right, get it written. This isn't carpentry, this is design and development of nothing more than electronic motes that form words on a magnet. It can always be fixed, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time.

Do you have an example of such scaling?

-X

[Flamewarrior]

My philosophy with writing has always been and will always be: Don't get it right, get it written. This isn't carpentry, this is design and development of nothing more than electronic motes that form words on a magnet. It can always be fixed, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time.

This has its merits. But some stuff is most efficiently fixed right when it begins to exist, sometimes by a large margin.

Examples of non-scaling: plenty. They'll boil down to: fixed DCs like magic, fixed damages like 3.0 psionics of all things, and series of effects that are essentially the same - perhaps I forget others. All of those lead to (essentially) duplicate maneuvers various times, and the need to "upgrade" (as in, literally swapping stuff for stuff not of the same level, which's a bad ToB thing, and, yay, one 4E gleefully ported) stuff. So, making DCs and damages auto-scale is a no-brainer, and I'll even say similar crescent effects should auto-upgrade whenever the new ones become balanced. All of this sounds trivially obvious, but it actually leads styles to not looking that much like they did in ToB.

P.S.: one place where duplicates (even literal) may have had a non-negative game design value was with random-maneuver-access classes. But ... if any should exist here, the actual solution would simply to place CFs allowing readying the literal same maneuver as many times as it was deemed proper.

[ErrantX]

Well, my goals are this: Standard scaling DC's at all levels of maneuvers, just like spells. This keeps it simple. Secondly, roughly standard damage, depending on discipline. Some will do more, but those that don't will often have something that will make up for it (such as ability damage, status ailments, or additional combat maneuvers such as trips and disarms; or they will have specialized damage that should be greater against a specific type but weak against others). My hope is that all of the disciplines have their place, but none of them scream "I'm Stone Dragon, hate me." Each level will be balanced against each other as we go, and again once they're all done. I've been using the aggressive style of Black Heron and the specialized style of Silver Crane as guides from my own homebrew, as well as my favorite five (White Raven, Tiger Claw, Devoted Spirit, Diamond Mind, and Iron Heart) from the core ToB. I also have an established trend of maneuver chains, such as Silver Crane's displacement strikes, and Black Heron's drive maneuvers.

Is there anything else you can think of to help with the balancing of the Disciplines as well as making sure we don't fall into the same trap that WotC did? Or anyone else for that matter (he says to the lurkers).

-X