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Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: [ACF] Miscellaneous Tome of Battle Alternative Class Features
« Last post by Garryl on March 12, 2024, 12:11:10 AM »I think Divine Retribution isn't bad as a general idea, it just needs a curated spell list. The Adept might make for a better starting point, as it has a bigger focus on divine damage spells like Scorching Ray and Lightning Bolt. The Warmage spell list and evocation-heavy cleric domains like the Fire Domain could be used to pad out spells above level 5. Or you could hand out a pseudo-Quicken Spell, so that weak low-level evocations stay relevant and work better with the action economy of mid-levels onward.
I concur. I love the idea of the ability and a curated spell list is exactly what it needs. I just don't feel like searching for spells for it at all right now. Well, actually, that's not quite right. I spent a bit of time looking through the SRD, and came up with the following (in the spoiler). Couldn't find anything at 6th level that fit, 2nd and 4th level were a little light, and I don't love how many of the 5th level spells were just save-or-lose.
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The original version in 1001 homebrew ideas actually had the quicken aspect; the spells were cast as a swift action by default.
Iron Body Training is a little weird.
It's a bit of a design-by-committee ability, which is really weird to say given that it was only me working on it. There were a few different thought processes that went into it.
- 1) Make an ACF that is associated with Iron Heart. At one point, I was trying to do this for all nine disciplines, but Devoted Spirit (Divine Retribution), Desert Wanderer (Desert Wind), Battlefield Commander (White Raven), and Iron Body Training (Iron Heart) were the only ones I could come up with anything decent for.
- 2) Trade away something that doesn't overlap with the other warblade ACFs. Warblades don't actually have many class features at low levels, and I'd already written two for each of Uncanny Dodge and Battle Clarity, and I don't want an ACF that exchanges Weapon Aptitude, which doesn't give direct combat effects, for an ability that does. That basically leaves skills and proficiencies.
- 3) How about armor proficiency? And 5E's barbarian has that cool (but impractical) Con-to-AC instead of armor thing. How about something like that? Maybe do a monk's AC bonus-type ability, but based on Int, since it's already a warblade secondary stat? Just switch it to an armor bonus instead of untyped, so it can avoid stacking with armor without needing that pesky no-armor-worn clause explicitly spelled out, fit the barbarian-inspired theme of just blocking hits with your mighty thews rather than dodging them, and match the paradigm I tried out with my pressure strikes monk. And you can still use a shield, as intended, which is why that proficiency wasn't removed.
- 4) It's got to scale, since it's replacing armor, and I still want to tie it a bit more directly to Iron Heart. How about based on your Iron Heart maneuvers? Scaling with the level of maneuvers known keeps the numbers around the right place in napkin math land, although if it's a little high then the fact that it fluctuates up and down a bit based on whether or not you've actually used an Iron Heart maneuver might balance that out.
- 5) Uh, oh. It's a 1st-level class feature that gives an attribute to AC. We don't want Int to AC to be overly easily accessible with a 1-level dip for non-warblades. I know! Cap it by Strength, too, so that those wizards and jade phoenix mages can get something but not too much out of it. It won't affect pure warblades, since what kind of melee warblade won't have a higher Strength and Intelligence already?
So, yeah, a little weird. But I kind of like it, you know? If I get to doing another pass on it, I might tweak the numbers a bit, and the bit about needing to initiate Iron Heart maneuvers to keep the full benefit might get axed, no matter how much I appreciate its quirkiness. Even without that, its physical defensiveness fits Iron Heart better than I thought. Despite the aggressiveness associated with the discipline from Punishing Stance at level 1 and Strike of Perfect Clarity at level 9, more than half of its maneuvers and stances are about crowd control, defense, and damage mitigation (11/21). I'm pretty sure only Devoted Spirit and Setting Sun beat it on that front.