Author Topic: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school  (Read 12806 times)

Offline oslecamo

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Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« on: September 05, 2012, 06:12:06 PM »
Venerable Battlefield

”If a Shrine Loses its Faith, it becomes nothing but a simple shack
Now, you, who only goes to visit such a shack every day
Experience the raging soul of a god!”-Kanako Yasaka, Greater Deity


Even if each has her own unique portfolio, all gods need to battle daily to ensure their faith income. Be it granting blessings to their worshipers, punishing the enemies of their creed or even facing divine rivals, each god has to be ready to rise to the challenges of the world.
Now normally each god has wondrous natural powers, but more often than not they have limitations or just aren't suitable to the situation at hand. But the raw essence of Faith every god gathers can be directly channeled for fast and pratical purposes.
This is the basis of the Venerable Battlefield discipline, that comes naturally to any deity, but remains forever outside the reach of simple mortals that cannot gather Faith.

Venerable Battlefield is unique in that it always manifests diferently from one use to the other, as each God ends up harnessing their own flavors of Faith. This divine discipline focuses on channeling curses and blessings trough physical blows while protecting the god.

Key skill:Gather Information. Knowing how to gather faith is surprisingly similar to gathering rumors, whispers, connections and friendships, just in a much larger scale.

Favored Weapon: The god's favored weapon, plus unarmed strike.


1st level

Divine Sky:Strike–blow removes your enemy's will to fight.
Mortal's Heart: Counter-Enemy striking you becomes lazy and carefree.
Promise of the God:Strike-wave related to your portfolio strikes down unbelievers and cures your followers.
God Sign-Beautiful Holy Spring: Boost–fill the air around you with droplets that make it harder to move.
Abundance Sign-Divine Harvester: Stance–channel raw faith directly into your body.


2nd level
Flawed Sign-Broken Charm of Protection: Strike–Attack destroys other deity's holy symbols, disables magic items.
Evil Spirit-Misfortune's Wheel: Strike–Attack curses your oponent with unluck.
Bad Luck-Scar: Counter–maim enemy that attacks you.
Biorhythm of the Apotropaic God:Boost–overload your body with faith.

3rd level
Wound Sign-Flowing Pain of the Exiled God: Strike–chain of attacks sends your opponents reeling back.
Fate-Old Immortal Fire:Stance-surround yourself with defensive curses.
Crossroads of Heaven:Strike-paths to the divine lead the unbelievers to their own doom.
God's Cross:Boost-fascinate those close to you.


4th level
God Hidden Among Tree Leaves:Strike-Attack while blending into the enviroment.
God Above-Storm Day: Boost–Fly up and rain down punishment on your enemies.
Peerless God-Illusionary Dominance: Strike–attack faster than your opponent can keep up.
God Procession-Divine Advent:Boost-Use your natural divininity instead of your own combat prowess.

5th level

Spiral Sign-God Throughout the World: Strike-shape the power of faith with your will.
Light Sign-Absolute Justice: Counter-Trap, judge and punish those that dare turn on you.
God Art-Most Valuable Vajra:Boost-Craft weapon specially designed to defeat your personal foes.
Jeweled Relic-Greatest Treasure:Strike-channel your power trough holy item.

6th level
Light Sign-Demon of Purification:Counter-cleanse yourself by transfering your illness to your enemies.
Rice Porridge in Tube-God's Rice Porridge:Boost–Let them eat cake.
Divine Festival-Expanded Honored Pillars: Stance–Wield temple columns as mighty weapons.
Complete Clarification:Strike-Purge the unbelievers.

7th level
Light Sign-Aura of Justice:Boost-Opponents that dare attack you get dazed.
Jeweled Pagoda-Radiant Treasure Gun: Strike–Unleash wave of divine wrath.
God's Light-Vajra of Perfect Divinity:Strike-A flawless blow for flawless destruction.


8th level

Forgotten Husk-Unremembered Crop:Boost-Punish enemy for forgeting the old ways.
Weird Festival-Madly Dance on the Sacred Ground: Stance–begin the fireworks!
Sacrifice Sign-God's Hunting Shrine Ritual: Strike-mark target for offering.
Heaven's Stream-Miracle of Flood:Strike-drown your enemies with faith.


9th level
God Sign-Ancient Fate Linked by Cedars:Stance–Stand like an ancient venerable tree.
Heaven's Dragon-Source of Rains:Strike-Unleash storm of vengeance.
Divine Husk-Divining Crop:Boost-channel your godly realm
Mystery-God's Clear Existence:Counter-disapear and then punish unbeliever.


10th level
Mountain of Faith:Stance–encircle yourself with multiple layers of divinity.
Virtue of The Divine God:Strike-Prove your deityhood.
God Sign-Reaching God's Path:Boost-Make your own way.


You need at least Divine Rank 1 to learn Venerable Battlefield maneuvers from levels 1 to 4.
You need at least Divine Rank 6 to learn Venerable Battlefield maneuvers from levels 5 to 7.
You need at least Divine Rank 11 to learn Venerable Battlefield maneuvers from levels 8 to 9.
You need at least Divine Rank 16 to learn Venerable Battlefield maneuvers of level 10.

Yes, Venerable Battlefield goes one step above of the other schools and possesses a whole new level of skill and power, altough only the strongest gods can master it.

The easiest way to get Divine Ranks is to be a god

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« Last Edit: April 07, 2019, 04:08:45 AM by oslecamo »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2012, 06:12:16 PM »
Maneuvers explanations:[levels 1-5]
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« Last Edit: April 07, 2019, 04:11:42 AM by oslecamo »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2012, 06:12:26 PM »
Maneuvers Explanations(levels 6-10)
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« Last Edit: April 07, 2019, 04:26:30 AM by oslecamo »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2012, 06:12:37 PM »
Valuable Vajra reference chart
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« Last Edit: September 05, 2012, 06:25:32 PM by oslecamo »

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2012, 06:13:25 PM »
One more for luck.

Offline DavidWL

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #5 on: October 02, 2012, 12:36:58 PM »
What is the purpose of Venerable Battlefield?  It seems like all the iconic god powers are covered by the Divine Characteristics / Salient Divine Abilities?

This is a nice touch:  "Unless otherwise noted, every Venerable Battlefield maneuver is supernatural maneuver that can affect incorporeal and ethereal oponents, but they still work inside an Antimagic Field."

Most of them are save or lose, or modest damage which is fine. 

1st
Abundance Sign-Divine Harvester - By itself this is fine, but with all the other things (God Skill/Ability + God Perfection + Power of Luck + Magic) ... it gets to be a lot ... this is only really strong in one of your sanctums, so I'm ok with it, just observing.

4th
God Hidden Among Tree Leaves - cool ability.  Strong but ok, and very cool.

5th
Spiral Sign-God Throughout the World - I like it a lot (and the scaling with HD is great), but I'm not sure it is balanced.  Let's discuss. 
Things that make it balanced:
* can't buff stack as you only get 1 non-instaneous effect
* not to abusable in combat (costs extra actions to recover, can't enhance easily)
Things that make it not balanced
* at will out of combat 1-time effects.  Some examples:
* healing out of combat is perfect and free
* create food / water / augury / stone shape / Bless Water ...
In for directly combat related items it is probably balanced, but for utility it is really strong.

8th
Sacrifice Sign-God's Hunting Shrine Ritual - With a high Cha, all attacks for the round by anyone become auto criticals.  Powerful, but I think fine

9th
Divine Husk-Divining Crop - Very powerful, but fine.  Hey, you're 17th level!  Also useful for utility.  I'd probably make this a 10th level ability.  (Perhaps with increased range) - I think it's really cool.

10th
- I'd actually want them to feel more ... amazing.  I'd say these are normal good 8th or 9th level abilities.
- I'd also want them to be more "god" like.  Have something to do with god abilities, or have very large scale.  Examples:

- Portfolio Alive - every embodiment of your portfolio in 1 mile per Divine Rank awakens and is your servant ... giving you an army of 100,000 small elemetals for (1D4 rounds ?).  If too many of them are killed, it weakens your portfolio until it has time to recover.  They can do things for you (dig trenches, build structures, etc. ... You can sense through each of them giving you vast awareness, they can attack, etc.

- Bastion of the faithful (stance) - all your followers in 1 mile per Divine Rank become fanatical, immune to mind effecting, and telepathically tied to you.  They are protected by divine aegis, and cannot be effected by any other deity of equal or lower divine rank unless you choose.  They act as one coordinated whole.  An enhanced version of the mob template can be applied to groups of them.

- Call to portfolio - with no save, as a full-round action and a 1-round duration, you can prevent everyone in Long range from experiencing one of your portfolios.  Love can be killed, movement absolutely prevented, life frozen, etc.

Best
David

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #6 on: October 02, 2012, 05:59:10 PM »
What is the purpose of Venerable Battlefield?  It seems like all the iconic god powers are covered by the Divine Characteristics / Salient Divine Abilities?
Reliable combat ability since most Divine Characteristics/Salient Divine abilities are either passive, limited per day and/or not suited for combat at all.

This is a nice touch:  "Unless otherwise noted, every Venerable Battlefield maneuver is supernatural maneuver that can affect incorporeal and ethereal oponents, but they still work inside an Antimagic Field."

Most of them are save or lose, or modest damage which is fine. 
Yeah, I was kinda going for a "god punishes you" feel.

1st
Abundance Sign-Divine Harvester - By itself this is fine, but with all the other things (God Skill/Ability + God Perfection + Power of Luck + Magic) ... it gets to be a lot ... this is only really strong in one of your sanctums, so I'm ok with it, just observing.

4th
God Hidden Among Tree Leaves - cool ability.  Strong but ok, and very cool.
Nice.

5th
Spiral Sign-God Throughout the World - I like it a lot (and the scaling with HD is great), but I'm not sure it is balanced.  Let's discuss. 
Things that make it balanced:
* can't buff stack as you only get 1 non-instaneous effect
* not to abusable in combat (costs extra actions to recover, can't enhance easily)
Things that make it not balanced
* at will out of combat 1-time effects.  Some examples:
* healing out of combat is perfect and free
* create food / water / augury / stone shape / Bless Water ...
In for directly combat related items it is probably balanced, but for utility it is really strong.
Ah, I was waiting for this one.

Healing out of combat was already doable back at 1st level by White Raven (that tree is my mortal enemy! Hiting it heals my wounds!).
Augury and bless water both demand expensive components to spam.
I guess you could spam create food and water or just create water, but a decanter of endless water is what, 9000 GP?
The worst I see here is spamming food, but create food and water specifically only lasts 24 hours, and even then it takes a 10 min casting, so you can't exactly feed the whole country by yourself.

8th
Sacrifice Sign-God's Hunting Shrine Ritual - With a high Cha, all attacks for the round by anyone become auto criticals.  Powerful, but I think fine

9th
Divine Husk-Divining Crop - Very powerful, but fine.  Hey, you're 17th level!  Also useful for utility.  I'd probably make this a 10th level ability.  (Perhaps with increased range) - I think it's really cool.
Thanks!

10th
- I'd actually want them to feel more ... amazing.  I'd say these are normal good 8th or 9th level abilities.
- I'd also want them to be more "god" like.  Have something to do with god abilities, or have very large scale.  Examples:

- Portfolio Alive - every embodiment of your portfolio in 1 mile per Divine Rank awakens and is your servant ... giving you an army of 100,000 small elemetals for (1D4 rounds ?).  If too many of them are killed, it weakens your portfolio until it has time to recover.  They can do things for you (dig trenches, build structures, etc. ... You can sense through each of them giving you vast awareness, they can attack, etc.

- Bastion of the faithful (stance) - all your followers in 1 mile per Divine Rank become fanatical, immune to mind effecting, and telepathically tied to you.  They are protected by divine aegis, and cannot be effected by any other deity of equal or lower divine rank unless you choose.  They act as one coordinated whole.  An enhanced version of the mob template can be applied to groups of them.

- Call to portfolio - with no save, as a full-round action and a 1-round duration, you can prevent everyone in Long range from experiencing one of your portfolios.  Love can be killed, movement absolutely prevented, life frozen, etc.

Best
David
Yeah, in retrospective the 10th level maneuvers ended somewhat lacking, but you gave me some pretty good ideas there. Pimped up the 10th level maneuvers, let me know what you think of them now!

Offline DavidWL

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #7 on: October 02, 2012, 07:32:36 PM »
Quote
5th
Spiral Sign-God Throughout the World - I like it a lot (and the scaling with HD is great), but I'm not sure it is balanced.  Let's discuss. 
Ah, I was waiting for this one.

There's also things like Divine Insight / Guidance of the Avatar / Lore of Gods / Weildskill.  However, the ability to abuse skills isn't too terrible.

However, the utility is still unmatchable.  In everyday  adventuring, you can cast as needed:

Speak with dead, Comprehend Language, Summon Monster III (scouting and trapfinding), Make Whole, Locate Object, and Stone shape. 

At will. 
And that's only core.

And then I think ... there are all those spells I didn't bother looking at ...

Quote
Yeah, in retrospective the 10th level maneuvers ended somewhat lacking, but you gave me some pretty good ideas there. Pimped up the 10th level maneuvers, let me know what you think of them now!

I like the changes. 

Regarding the "life without love, etc." ... I think my original idea was that they could act, but that they'd lose abilities or behave differently. 
Examples:
* Choose magic - those caught in the area are treated as in a dead magic zone
* Choose love - bonds are tied and they act based on their alignment, but are just as likely to attack their allies as you.  Or to flee, knowing that they can't depend on their allies anymore
* Choose movement - all movement forms, movement = 0 ft.  (Can still teleport, etc.)
* It's a little bit unstructured, but I think more flavorful than "can't act"

Mountain of Faith: = CR but max of 1 creature is CR = -4 is great.

Best,
David

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #8 on: October 03, 2012, 05:30:43 PM »
Quote
5th
Spiral Sign-God Throughout the World - I like it a lot (and the scaling with HD is great), but I'm not sure it is balanced.  Let's discuss. 
Ah, I was waiting for this one.

There's also things like Divine Insight / Guidance of the Avatar / Lore of Gods / Weildskill.  However, the ability to abuse skills isn't too terrible.

However, the utility is still unmatchable.  In everyday  adventuring, you can cast as needed:

Speak with dead, Comprehend Language, Summon Monster III (scouting and trapfinding), Make Whole, Locate Object, and Stone shape. 

At will. 
And that's only core.

And then I think ... there are all those spells I didn't bother looking at ...
Hmm, put a daily limitation on the number of spells whitout save or that are (harmless) that you can replicate per day based on your divine rank, but then also sped up the unlocking of higher level spells once you hit 20s and above. How is it now?


Quote
I like the changes. 

Regarding the "life without love, etc." ... I think my original idea was that they could act, but that they'd lose abilities or behave differently. 
Examples:
* Choose magic - those caught in the area are treated as in a dead magic zone
* Choose love - bonds are tied and they act based on their alignment, but are just as likely to attack their allies as you.  Or to flee, knowing that they can't depend on their allies anymore
* Choose movement - all movement forms, movement = 0 ft.  (Can still teleport, etc.)
* It's a little bit unstructured, but I think more flavorful than "can't act"
Ok, new fluffy version done, thanks for the tips again!

Offline DavidWL

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #9 on: October 03, 2012, 05:35:04 PM »
Lookin' good   :D

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #10 on: June 13, 2013, 02:49:15 PM »
Added discipline feats at the end of the first post.

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #11 on: November 12, 2013, 06:01:19 PM »
Couple of updates to the feats, The Dark Side of Fate now allows you to increase DC in return for friendly fire, Who is it that calls for me? is now just a swift action to activate and doesn't demand a shrine if it's a believer of yours doing the call.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2013, 06:04:24 PM by oslecamo »

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2013, 10:07:19 AM »
While reading through the maneuvers, I'm looking for some clarification on Wound Sign. The text reads:
Quote
As part of this attack make a full attack. Each one deals damage as normal, and opponents hit must suceed on a Fort save or be pushed away from you in a direction of your choice for each point they failed the save. This movement doesn't provoke Aoos or deals extra damage if the enemy is pushed into a solid object.

How far are they pushed back for every point they fail? Is it a one-to-one ratio, being pushed back 1-foot for every 1-point they fail by? Or was it meant to be 5-feet for every failed point? Very few effects in the game are measured in single feet, though I suppose it depends on how much you expect the enemy to fail by on average.

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #13 on: December 28, 2013, 02:48:29 PM »
Fixed.

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #14 on: July 15, 2014, 11:15:07 PM »
The text for Complete Clarification (level 6 maneuver) is a bit contradictory, and could, ironically, use some clarification.

As written:
Quote
The targets of this maneuver take damage equal to two Gather Information checks from you and are tripped, fatigued for 1 round and blinded for 1 round and then fatigued and dazed for 1 round.
A successful Fort save reduces the Exhaustion to just Fatigue for 1 round.
A successful Reflex save halves the damage taken and doesn't get tripped.
A successful Will save reduces the Blindness to just Dazzled for 1 round

So, does the default effect trip and fatigue for 1 round on failed saves, or trip and exhaust? Similarly, does the second round involve the target being fatigued and dazed, or fatigued and dazzled? Obviously, there's a pretty big gap between those two conditions. :)

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Venerable Battlefield-god's own martial school
« Reply #15 on: July 16, 2014, 02:04:44 PM »
Should be clarified now (cheap pun is cheap). Exhaustion on failed save, no daze, just dazzled.