Lode-Bearer [Gramarie Prestige Class]

[kellus]

The Lode-Bearer

"This is my burden to bear, and no one else's. The fact that it's actually pretty bitchin' doesn't really enter into it."


Image credit SANTI-IKARI of deviantart.com

It's said that in the past, there was an ancient civilization that was much smarter and more advanced than the races today. Whatever that civilization might have been, some accounts refer to the loden, a martial branch of that society which studied the exotic properties of magnets. Thanks to gramarie, today it's possible for those with an interest in magnetism to explore the ancient techniques and lores of that group. These individuals, known as lode-bearers, are the most martial of gramarists, as they study ways to manipulate magnetism to give them an unfair advantage in combat. In order to become a lode-bearer, one must first learn to twist the fabric of space and time, especially in ways that shape magnetic fluxes.

Requirements: To become a lode-bearer you must meet all of the following requirements.
Base Attack Bonus: +3
Gramarie: YGGD 212
Skills: Forgery 10 ranks, Knowledge (geography) 4 ranks, Martial Lore 2 ranks
Special: Eldritch blast class feature
Specialization: Must be specialized in Yggdratecture

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier

Class Skills: A lode-bearer's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Autohypnosis (Wis), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Diplomacy (Cha), Forgery (Int), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (geography) (Int), Intimidate (Cha), Listen (Wis), Martial Lore (Wis), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Lode-Bearer

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Special	Principles	Maneuvers    Known	Maneuvers  Readied	Stances Known
1st	+1	+2	+0	+0	Heir to the loden, loden lore	+0	3	2	–
2nd	+2	+3	+0	+0	Eldritch blast +1d6, mother lode	+1	4	2	–
3rd	+3	+3	+1	+1	Loden lore	+2	4	2	–
4th	+4	+4	+1	+1	Eldritch blast +2d6, mother lode	+3	5	3	+1
5th	+5	+4	+1	+1	Loden lore	+3	6	3	–
6th	+6	+5	+2	+2	Eldritch blast +3d6, mother lode	+4	6	3	–
7th	+7	+5	+2	+2	Loden lore	+5	7	4	–
8th	+8	+6	+2	+2	Eldritch blast +4d6, mother lode	+6	8	4	+1
9th	+9	+6	+3	+3	Loden lore	+6	8	4	–
10th	+10	+7	+3	+3	Eldritch blast +5d6, mother lode	+7	9	5	–

All of the following are class features of the lode-bearer.

Weapon and Armour Proficiency: As a lode-bearer you are loded for bear and ready to rock. You gain proficiency with all martial weapons. You're also proficient with light and medium armour, as well as light and heavy shields. You are not proficient with heavy armour or tower shields.

Heir to the Loden: The soldiers of the loden were powerful warriors who used magnetic talents to cheat in combat. Be part of that proud tradition. With an hour of meditation on the secrets of the ancients and a DC 20 Forgery check to mimic ancient rituals, you can designate a single metal weapon as your lodenblade (or lodenhammer, or lodenaxe, or whatever). Your lodenblade is your connection to the wisdom of the ancients, and is the channel through which you activate your magnetic abilities. You must be wielding it in order to activate any of your martial maneuvers, loden lores, or stances from this class. You can designate a new lodenblade at any time with another skill check.

By drawing an electromagnetic field around your lodenblade, you can energize it with a static charge. As a swift or move action, you can charge your lodenblade with electricity. All successful attacks you make with your lodenblade before your next turn deal additional electricity damage equal to the damage from your eldritch blast.

Loden Lore (Ex): At 1st level and every two levels thereafter, you discover a secret martial technique to apply magnetic principles to combat. Every time you gain this class feature, you learn one of the following techniques. These abilities mimic the strange magnetic combat styles of the ancients, and depend on successfully copying their techniques. They can be used at will as a swift action by making a successful Forgery check (failure indicates the swift action is wasted). Every technique you learn also grants you a permanent +1 bonus on Forgery checks.

• Attractive Blow (DC 15): This technique charges your metal weapon with magnetic power for 1 round. If you attack someone armed with a metal weapon during the round, your weapon automatically gets a disarm attempt with a +4 bonus if you beat the touch AC of your opponent with your normal attack. This disarm attempt does not provoke an attack of opportunity. All attacks you make until your next turn have this ability.
  
• Heavy Metal (DC 25): This technique causes metal to weigh more heavily on your enemy. You make a single ranged touch attack using your lodenblade against a target made of or wearing substantial amounts of metal, within your ground speed of you. On a successful hit, you deal no damage but the weight of all the metal objects that the target is carrying or wearing is doubled. For every 10 points your Forgery check beats the DC, the weight is doubled again (that is, another x2 modifier using normal additive multiplication rules for D&D).
  
• Intercept Projectile (DC 20): You can activate this ability as an immediate action when a projectile is aimed at you. You must decide whether or not to activate this ability after you know that you are being targetted but before you know if the attack succeeds. An unattended metal object weighing no more than 5 lb which is within a 30ft. radius of you leaps into the path of the projectile, protecting you. The attack is resolved normally as if the projectile had been aimed at the metal object instead of at you. For every 10 points your Forgery check beats the DC, you can intercept one additional projectile before the start of your next turn.
  
• Magnetic Freefall (DC 25): You gain a magnet speed of twice your ground speed until the start of your next turn. A magnet speed lets you use magnetic fields to quickly maneuver around metal. As a normal move action, you may fall directly towards any ferrous metal object or structure which weighs at least half as much as you. You move directly towards the metal object, even if something nonmetal is in the way. In such a case, you end your movement adjacent to the barrier, in such a way so that it stands directly between you and the metal target. If you beat the DC of this loden lore by 10 or more, you don't have to spend a swift action to activate it. You may target a metal object from a distance equal to your magnet speed. No matter how far you actually move with your magnet speed, it still consumes your entire move action. A magnet speed will allow you to move against gravity, but at the end of the movement gravity begins to affect you normally (although you don't start to fall until your next turn, giving you the chance to keep freefalling if you activate this technique again). Magnet movement is similarly unaffected by rough terrain and the like. Initiating a magnetic movement takes hardly any time at all, and thus doesn't occupy you very much. As such, movement with a magnet speed does not provoke attacks of opportunity for moving through threatened spaces (the enemy's gate is down). A magnet speed may not be used to move to a metal object that you are already touching, no matter the size.
  
• Molten Mail (DC 15): This technique calls up ambient metals around you, condensing them into a molten layer of armour which fits you like a second skin. You gain a circumstance bonus to your armor bonus to AC of +1, with an additional +1 for every 5 points you beat the Forgery check by. You gain damage reduction of the same amount, penetrated only by adamantine. The armour lasts until the start of your next turn, at which point the metal sloughs off you harmlessly.
  
• Rock and Roll (DC 25): By striking your lodenblade, it produces a resonating tone (or heavy metal music, at your option). This is equivalent to the inspire courage bardic music effect. It lasts until the start of your next turn. The bonus granted by this effect is +1, although for every 10 points you beat the Forgery DC the bonus increases by +1. If you have the inspire courage ability from another source, you can add the bonus to this ability. This effect only lasts until the start of your next turn, although you can use it on consecutive rounds.
  
• Thrash Metal (DC 20): You immediately make a ranged touch attack using your lodenblade against a target made of or wearing substantial amounts of metal, within your ground speed of you. On a successful hit, you deal no damage but can make a free bull rush attempt against them.

Maneuvers Known: At 1st level, you gain knowledge of three martial maneuvers. These maneuvers can be selected from the Iron Heart, Shocking Sky, or White Raven disciplines. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it. Your maneuvers are considered extraordinary abilities unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate them. You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels. Upon reaching level 4, and every even-numbered level afterwards (6th, 8th, and 10th) you can choose a maneuver to replace a maneuver you already know with a maneuver of the same or lesser level which you have access to. This class provides a full initiator level for the purposes of selecting martial maneuvers.

Maneuvers labelled 'supernatural' in the Shocking Sky discipline are extraordinary when you use them, because you activate them by the natural manipulation of electromagnetic fields with your magnetic talent.

Maneuvers Readied: You can ready two maneuvers you know at 2nd level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you can ready additional maneuvers at the same time. You ready maneuvers by stretching and practicing swordplay for 5 minutes. You need not sleep or rest to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes attuning yourself with your weapons, you can change your readied maneuvers. You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended.

To recover your maneuvers in battle, you must call lightning from the sky to strike your weapon. This is a swift, move, or standard action which deals electrical damage to everything and everyone within 10ft. of you equal to your eldritch blast damage (Reflex save for half-damage, DC 10 + 1/2 your Hit Dice + your Int modifier), and renews all of your readied maneuvers. This can only be done outside under the sky; otherwise it takes a full-round action to renew a single maneuver. This refreshing technique is an extraordinary ability, special effects to the contrary.

Eldritch Blast: At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, your eldritch blast deals an additional +1d6 damage. Levels in this class stack to determine the caster level and effective spell level of your eldritch blast.

Mother Lode (Ex): At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, you learn a secret art that the loden used to reshape the fabric of the world. You can choose one of the following discoveries. If a discovery relates to an yggdratectural space, semi-space, flux, or demi-plane that you create, you can retroactively apply a discovery to a field you have established in the past with an hour's work and a matching key skill check to its current value.

• Flux Capacitor: A polarcane flux can have any number of flux traits, although only one of any given kind (for example, you can't have gravity pulling in two different directions). If you have the ability to apply flux traits to other spaces, you can place multiple such traits in them as well.
  
• Going Nowhere: To learn this discovery, you need to be able to join semi-spaces together with portals. You can now join a portal to a place that you haven't seen before; this works like a teleport effect, with the same chance of making a mistake in the coordinates of the point you're joining. The portal you create in the unknown space is immovable, and fixed in space once established.
  
• Intense Causality: To learn this discovery you must know YGGD 371. Whenever you prepare an YGGD principle, you can twist the fabric of space-time in order to cause one of the following effects:
  
  • Reduce the time to prepare the principle by half.
  • Roll the skill check twice and select the result you prefer.
• Keeper of the Keys: You can close spaces without them being destroyed permanently. You can also lock portals to semi-spaces and demiplanes, by touching it and making a Forgery check which meets or exceeds the original. In order to open the portal, a matching Forgery check needs to be made.
  
• Plane Sense: By touching a portal, you can tell the size of the space that it connects to and any flux traits or planar traits in effect on the other side.
  
• Reverse Geometry: When you set up a flux, you can choose to reverse its dimensionality. Instead of a semi-space which is bigger on the inside than the outside, this is a flux which is bigger on the outside than the inside. This counts as the flux trait; the area is actually two size categories smaller than the space it takes up in the outside world. Anything which enters into the flux is squeezed into that space as if they were in a small constrained area.
  
• Usurp Space: By making a Forgery check that matches or exceeds the check of a space you are inside, you become the creator of the flux for all intents and purposes, including joining that space with other spaces.
  
• Weird Time: To learn this discovery, you must know YGGD 371. To use it, you must be inside of a demiplane that you created with the Erratic Time trait. By spending an hour and making a Forgery check of equal or greater value to the check of the demiplane, you can reroll the Erratic Time Trait's time flow roll.

Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Stances Known: At 4th level, you gain knowledge of one stance from the Iron Heart, Shocking Sky, or White Raven disciplines. At 8th level you gain knowledge of a new stance from one of these disciplines. Stances labelled supernatural from the Shocking Sky discipline are considered extraordinary when you use them.