Initiate of the Sublime Void Prestige Class
For martial adept/Binders. Requested by PhaedrusXY.
Initiates of the Sublime Void are warriors who learn to channel the power of vestiges to improve their martial prowess, drawing on ancient knowledge of forgotten martial techniques, and harnessing the will of disincorporated spirits to command their own bodies. Such power does not come without a price though, as these warriors often grow to see even their own bodies as just another tool to be exploited, which can lead them to be careless, remorseless, and detached.
BECOMING AN INITIATE OF THE SUBLIME VOID Abilities: Strength, Constitution, and Charisma are the Initiate's most important attributes.
Races: Any, but the willingness to allow a disincorporated spirit to share your own body is not something that comes easily to many races, especially those with strong religious inclinations.
Alignment: Any, though due to the focus on combat and spirit binding, evil initiates are more common than good ones.
Feats: Adaptive Style
Skills: Diplomacy 8 ranks, Knowledge (the planes) 8 ranks, Martial Lore 8 ranks.
Martial Maneuvers: Must know at least two White Raven maneuvers.
Martial Stances: Must know at least one White Raven stance.
Soul Binding: Must be able bind 2nd-level or higher vestiges.
Table: The Initiate of the Sublime Void Hit Die: d10
Base -----Binding---- -------Maneuvers-------
Attack Fort Ref Will Maneuvers Stances
Level Bonus Save Save Save Special Known Readied Known
1 +1 +0 +0 +2 Martial Pact Soul Binding +1 0 0 1
2 +2 +0 +0 +3 Battle Pact Soul Binding +2 1 0 0
3 +3 +1 +1 +3 Exploit Martial Memories (1 maneuver) Soul Binding +3 0 0 0
4 +4 +1 +1 +4 Void Trance Soul Binding +4 0 1 0
5 +5 +1 +1 +4 Battle Pact (correction) Soul Binding +5 1 0 0
6 +6 +2 +2 +5 Exploit Martial Memories (2 maneuvers) Soul Binding +6 0 0 1
7 +7 +2 +2 +5 Battle Pact (protection) Soul Binding +7 0 1 0
8 +8 +2 +2 +6 Vestigial Maneuver Soul Binding +8 1 0 0
9 +9 +3 +3 +6 Exploit Martial Memories (3 maneuvers) Soul Binding +9 0 0 0
10 +10 +3 +3 +7 Sublime Seal Soul Binding +10 0 1 0
Class skills (4 + Int modifier per level): Balance, Bluff, Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (history), Knowledge (the planes), Martial Lore, Search, Sense Motive, Tumble
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: You gain no new proficiency with any weapon or armor.
Maneuvers: At 2nd level, 5th level, and 8th level, you learn a new martial maneuver from the Diamond Mind, Tiger Claw, Stone Dragon, or White Raven disciplines. You must meet a maneuver's prerequisites to select it. You add your full Initiate of the Sublime Void level to your initiator level to determine your total initiator level and your highest-level maneuvers known.
At 4th level, 7th level, and 10th level, you gain an additional maneuver readied per day.
Stances Known: At 1st level and 6th level, you learn a new martial stance from the Diamond Mind, Tiger Claw, Stone Dragon, or White Raven disciplines. You must meet a stance's prerequisites to select it.
Martial Pact (Ex): Haggling with ornery, disembodied spirits is not as different as one might think from negotiating a battlefield with ornery, soon-to-be-disemboweled foes. You may make Martial Lore checks in place of binding checks when binding vestiges.
Battle Pact (Su): Beginning at 2nd level, when you make a good pact with a vestige, you choose to bargain further with the spirit you bind to your soul. By accepting the influences of a bad pact, you gain a floating pool of points that you can spend on various bonuses throughout the day. The pool initially has a number of points within it equal to the vestige's level + 1/2 your Initiate of the Sublime Void level. When your pact with the vestige ends, any remaining points in your Battle Pact pool are removed. If you make a Battle Pact with another vestige, any remaining points in your pool are removed. You can spend any number of points from your Battle Pact pool each round, up to a maximum of the vestige's level.
Initially, you can spend any number of points from your Battle Pact pool to gain an equal insight bonus on any d20 roll you make. You must make this choice before making the roll.
Starting at 5th level, you can spend 3 points from your Battle Pact pool to reroll a failed miss chance roll caused by concealment or incorporeality, or to change your stance as a free action, even if it is not your turn.
Starting at 7th level, you can spend 5 points from your Battle Pact pool to force an attacker who hit you with an attack to reroll the attack roll, taking the worse result. You must make this choice after determining whether or not the attack hit, but before resolving the effects of the attack.
Exploit Martial Memories (Ex): When you bind a vestige, you can alter the pact you make, trading some of the raw power the vestige normally offers for a taste of its memories and knowledge to enhance your training. Whenever you bind a vestige, you may choose one of the abilities it grants. You do not gain that ability for the duration of the pact. Instead, you gain the knowledge of a single martial maneuver you do not know with a level less than or equal to the vestige's level. If you made a good pact, this can be any maneuver whose prerequisites you meet. If you made a bad pact, this can only be a maneuver with no prerequisites. Regardless, you may only select maneuvers from disciplines from the Diamond Mind, Tiger Claw, Stone Dragon, or White Raven disciplines, and must still qualify for it. You can only exchange a single ability of a given vestige in this way each time you bind that vestige, although you may exchange a different ability or gain different a maneuver (or make the normal pact) each time you bind it.
You can make this trade with a single vestige at a time starting at 3rd level. This increases to two vestiges at once at 6th level, and three vestiges at once at 9th level. Each time, you must select a maneuver from another discipline.
Despite the name of this ability, the vestige you bind need not have any martial experience at all, nor even reliable memories or knowledge. Simply drawing on what experiences you do learn about and what energy you can siphon from the pact, combined with your own training and experiences, is sufficient to extrapolate and mimic the chosen maneuver.
Because your knowledge is only fleeting, you cannot use maneuvers learned this way to qualify for other maneuvers, stances, or other options.
Void Trance (Su): Beginning at 4th level, you can let the vestiges that you have bound to you take control of the lesser functions of your body in order to better focus on battle. While you have at least one vestige bound to you and are in a martial stance, you can forgo the stance's normal benefit as a swift action to gain the benefits of Void Trance. This ability lasts as long as you would maintain the stance, or as described below. If you fall unconscious or if you are no longer bound to any vestiges, the Void Trance immediately ends and you resume gaining the normal benefit of the stance. You can also stop using Void Trance and resume gaining the normal benefit of the stance as a swift action. You are still considered to be in a martial stance of the same discipline, and you are still considered to be in that stance for the purpose of Sublime Seal.
While this ability is active, you are immune to the dazed, fatigued, nauseated, sickened, and staggered conditions, and you only suffer the effects of being fatigued if you would be exhausted (you are still considered to be exhausted). You gain a +2 insight bonus to your Armor Class and on all attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks. You also gain an insight bonus equal to the highest level vestige you have bound on all damage rolls made as part of your maneuvers. You automatically succeed on all Constitution checks made to continue running, to avoid nonlethal damage from a forced march, and to hold your breath, and all Fortitude saves to resist damage from suffocation. However, your body is not meant to be controlled by spirits only bound tentatively to it, causing it to subtly tear itself apart. Each round at the beginning of your turn while you remain in a Void Trance, you suffer 1d4 points of damage, plus an additional 1d4 damage for each round you have maintained the Void Trance beyond the first.
Vestigial Maneuver (Su): Starting at 8th level, while you bind any vestiges, you can adjust your daily practice to meld your martial maneuvers with the powers granted by your pacts. Whenever you spend at 5 minutes of practice, meditation, prayer, or other similar activity to refresh and reselect your maneuvers, you may choose a single readied maneuver and a single vestige-granted ability. This ability must be one with a recharge time expressed in rounds (or a similar minimum delay between uses expressed in rounds). Whenever you recover the chosen maneuver while it was expended, the chosen ability immediately recharges. Whenever the chosen ability recharges after being used, you recover the chosen maneuver and are granted it, if applicable. You can only have a single pairing of maneuver and ability linked this way at any time.
Sublime Seal (Su): Starting at 10th level, you learn the ultimate technique of melding the sublime way with pact-making. Whenever you make a good pact with a vestige, you can instead defer the pact, incorporating it into your martial stances. If you do, choose one martial stance you know that you are not already using as a Sublime Seal. That stance must have a level at least as high as the vestige you wish to incorporate into it. For the duration of the pact, you are not considered bound to the vestige except while you are in that stance. However, while you are in that stance, your very form and footwork must emulate the vestige's seal for a short time to remake the pact's connection, preventing you from gaining the stance's normal benefits for 1 round after you enter it. This allows you to switch between several pacts as needed throughout the day.
All vestiges bound through Sublime Seal count as a single vestige when determining how many vestiges you can bind at once, regardless of whether or not you are in one of their stances.
Adaptation: XenotheurgyIf you use in Xenotheurgy your game, you can adapt the Initiate of the Sublime Void for use with it instead of Binding.
- Replace the requirement of binding 2nd-level vestiges with the ability to use 2nd-level breaches.
- Instead of improving the character's Effective Binder level, the Initiate of the Sublime Void gains an additional Murmur and Disturbance at levels 1, 4, 7, and 10.
- Remove the Martial Pact ability entirely.
- Instead of accepting a bad pact in place of a good one, Battle Trance requires you to treat one of your murmurs as one level higher for the purposes the abilities and drawbacks of the murmur (but not for other purposes, such as what breaches you can use and the effects of the Battle Pact) for 24 hours. This process takes 1 minute of concentration, and you can use it multiple times on the same murmur (the change to the murmur's effective level stacks from multiple Battle Pacts). The pool initially has a number of points within it equal to the murmur's level + 1/2 your Initiate of the Sublime Void level (you can gain or lose points during the day as the murmur's level changes, as long as the Battle Pact remains with that murmur). The maximum number of points you can spend each round is equal to the highest level breach you can use from that murmur. Unspent points from your Battle Pact pool disappear after 24 hours.
- Exploit Martial Memories requires the character to give up access to a murmur's specific, chosen level of breaches from a single one of his or her active murmurs in place of an ability from a bound vestige. The maneuver gained is as though the character made a good pact with a vestige of the chosen level if the murmur is at least that level, or as a bad pact if the murmur is of lower level. The character cannot give up access to breaches of a higher level than she can normally use from that murmur.
- Void Trance requires the character to have an active murmur instead of a bound vestige, and uses the highest level murmur you have active instead of the highest level vestige you have bound.
- At 8th level, rather than gaining Vestigial Maneuver, the character gains the ability to emit a single incursion of an active murmur while in a Void Trance. The incursion lasts only as long as the Void Trance and is always centered on the character, but only provides the effects of the periphery and never has a radius greater than 500 feet. The character is not considered to be emitting an incursion in this way, and so does not suffer the normal penalties for emitting an incursion. Changing which incursion is emitted requires leaving and re-entering the Void Trance.
- t 10th level, the character gains the ability to associate her inactive murmurs with her stances instead of bound vestiges. Whenever the character can change his or her active murmurs, she may link one of her active murmurs and any number of inactive murmurs to her martial stances. This functions just like linking a pact with a vestige to a stance, except that any murmur can be linked with any stance, regardless of level. Instead, the character cannot use breaches of a higher level than the associated stance from a murmur active in this way, regardless of the murmur's level.
11/02/2013: Reduced prerequisites to allow entry after 5 class levels instead of 6. Added the Battle Pact ability.
21/08/2011: Added a Xenotheurgy adaptation.