Gate Guard

[oslecamo]

Gate Guard

“I'm a normal person who just guards.
And for that reason, I'm in your way. ”-Hong Meiling, chief Gate Guard of the Scarlet Devil Mansion

Gate Guards are beings that dedicate their life to protecting important places and people while looking good. Thus they train hard to be able to fight effectively whitout clunky, bulky weapons or armor.

MAKING A GATE GUARD
Abilities: Charisma is the key ability for Chinese Star and several Gate Guard abilities. Strentgh bolsters your HP, unarmed strikes and Fort saves. Dexterity may come in handy as you're not wearing armor.
Races: Dragons that can turn into humanoid form are the most well known gate keepers, but several humanoid races have picked it up as well.
Alignment: Gate Guards can be of any alignment, but they usually tend more to the lawful and neutral spectrums. Evil Gate Guards feast on the flesh of the defeated. Good Gate Guard seek to protect the weak and helpless.
Starting Gold: 4d4x10 (100gp)
Starting Age: Young


HD:d10

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Feature	Maneuvers Known	Maneuvers Readied	Stances Known
1	+1	+2	+2	+2	Martial Pride, Iajutsu Fist	4	3	1
2	+2	+3	+3	+3	Guard Guile	5	3	1
3	+3	+3	+3	+3	All-Around	6	4	1
4	+4	+4	+4	+4	Just about anyone could see through that disguise!	7	5	1
5	+5	+4	+4	+4	Formation in Front of Water 1/day	8	6	2
6	+6	+5	+5	+5	Guard Guile	9	6	2
7	+7	+5	+5	+5	Gate Keeper	10	7	2
8	+8	+6	+6	+6	Imposing Presence	11	8	2
9	+9	+6	+6	+6	Formation in Front of Water 2/day	12	9	2
10	+10	+7	+7	+7	Guard Guile	13	9	2
11	+11	+7	+7	+7	Great Wall	14	10	3
12	+12	+8	+8	+8	No Weak Point	15	11	3
13	+13	+8	+8	+8	Formation in Front of Water 3/day	16	12	3
14	+14	+9	+9	+9	Guard Guile	17	12	3
15	+15	+9	+9	+9	Great Stand	18	13	4
16	+16	+10	+10	+10	Old Tradition	19	14	4
17	+17	+10	+10	+10	Formation in Front of Water 4/day	20	15	5
18	+18	+11	+11	+11	Guard Guile	21	15	5
19	+19	+11	+11	+11	Ancient Tradition	22	16	5
20	+20	+12	+12	+12	Enlightned Keeper	23	17	5

4 Skill points+int per level, quadruple at 1st level. Class skills: Balance, Bluff, Climb,  Concentration, Craft(any), Iaijutsu Focus, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (any), Listen,  Profession(any), Search, Sense Motive, Spot, Swim, Tumble

Proficiencies: Simple weapons.

Features:

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Many of the Gate Guard features demand her to be perfectly visible to work. This means the Gate Guard makes no attempt to hide and makes sure there's a clear line of sight and effect all around her.

Martial Pride: All of the Gate Guard class features only work while she's unarmored, unencumbered and whitout a shield equipped either. She may also use her Str mod to calculate her HP and Fort save instead of Constitution.

Maneuvers: A Gate Guard gains Shanghai Teahouse as a bonus feat and learns maneuver from the Chinese Star school and one other martial school of her choice. If the second school demands any special prerequisite (like Ancient Temple needing a feat) the Gate Guard must fulfill it as well. Her Initiator level is equal to her Gate Guard level plus half other levels, and she can only learn maneuvers of a level no bigger than half (IL+1).

Whenever the Gate Guard hits an enemy with an unarmed strike whitout using a maneuver neither under the effect of a Boost, she recovers one expended maneuver.

At 4th level, and every even-numbered level afterwards, the Gate Guard can swap replace one of her older maneuvers with a new one she qualifies for from one of her two schools (the new one doesn't need to be of the same level of the older one).

Iaijutsu Fist: A Gate Guard  can use Iajutsu Focus with unarmed strikes against each opponent, but no more than once per ecounter per opponent. She must decide to use this ability at the start of her turn. During rounds in which she doesn't choose to use Iajutsu Focus with her unarmed strikes, she gains an insight bonus to AC equal to her Gate Guard level+3.

Guard Guile: At 2nd level, as a free action whitout need of a touch attack or provoking attacks of opportunity, the Gate Guard can initiate a Bullrush, Disarm, Trip, or Grapple attempt when she hits an opponent with an unarmed strike against that same opponent. In addition pick one of the following options, and  another for every 4 levels thereafter.

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Disarming Fist-The Gate Guard doesn't take the -4 penalty for being unarmed during the disarm, and opponents don't gain any bonus for being bigger than the Gate Guard. She may also attempt to disarm a natural weapon by hurting it, in which case it cannot be used for 1 round.

Grabbing Fist-The Gate Guard can count her opponent as being the same size as her on grapple checks if it would be to her advantage. If she has at least 8 Gate Guard levels, she also ignores Freedom of Movement effects on her opponent, and produces a Dimensional Lock effect on them while holding them.

Pushing Fist-The Gate Guard can count her opponent as being the same size as her on bullrush checks if it would be to her advantage,  and the Gate Guard can push them more than 5 feet whitout moving herself (if her check is good enough to make them move more than 5 feet).

Falling Fist-When the Gate Guard trips attempts to trip an enemy, she can make said enemy count as her own sizeto resist the trip, and they don't get any bonus for having multiple legs.

Fast Fist-You need at least 10 Gate Guard levels to pick this one. Once per round when you use Guard Guile, you may perform two diferent options from trip, disarm, grapple or bullrush.

All-Around: At 3rd level,  with 1 hour of exercising, the Gate Guard may gain any one Fighter bonus feat she qualifies for, except weapon proficiency feats. That feat lasts until she uses this ability again, and cannot be used to qualify for other feats.

Just about anyone could see through that disguise!: At 4th level, the Gate Guard gains a bonus on Spot, Sense Motive and Listen checks equal to her Cha mod, plus Blindsense 5 feet per 2 Gate Guard levels.

Formation in front of water: At 5th level, once per day as a free action the Gate Guard may decide to make a stand. She cannot willingly move from her position, and gains a +8 bonus on all saves and checks to avoid being moved. While Formation in Front of Water lasts, the Gate Guard gains hardness equal to her Cha mod and her unarmed melee reach increases by 20 feet per 5 Gate Guard levels, unnafected by her size. This lasts until she moves from her position or is moved. In either case, in the next round she gains a +4 bonus on all attack rolls, damage rolls and ability DCs.

At 9th, 13th and 17th level the Gate Guard can use Formation in front of water an additional time per day.

Gatekeeper: At 7th  level the Gate Guard may make a number of extra attacks of opportunity per round equal to her Cha mod, and in addition she ignores all cover less than total cover and all concealment with her Aoos.

Imposing Presence: At 8th level, any enemy inside the Gate Guard's unarmed strike reach takes a penalty on all skill checks equal to her Bab. If a creature sucessfully damages the Gate Guard in melee, they no longer take that penalty until the Gate Guard hits them with an unarmed strike.

Great Wall: At 11th level, 1/day  the Gate Guard may erect an invisible barrier of Ki that surrounds an area depending on the time she spends meditating.

Fullround-Up to one 5 feet square per Gate Guard level
Hour-Up to one 10 feet square per Gate Guard level.
Day-Up to one 50 feet square per Gate Guard level.

While you remain outside the Great Wall, alive (or non-destroyed in the case of constructs/undeads),  nobody else can enter those areas from outside, even by teleportation effects and similar.

Those areas must be connected to each other, and the barrier extends both upwards to the heavens and below the earth, meaning creatures cannot go over or under it.

However you must also declare an area at least 20 square feet as the "Great Gate", that creatures can go trough normally. The Great gate must be positioned over a clearly visible physical location that makes it look like a clear opening, like an actual gate, a door, or a pair of large rocks. If that physical location is fully destroyed, the Great Wall automatically ends.

A Gate Guard may only have one Great Wall at a time. Starting a new ends the previous one.

No Weak Point: At 12th level, when using All-Around, the Gate Guard may choose to become immune to either disease, poison, one kind of ill condition like dazed/stunned/nauseated/etc, critical hits, or one elemental damage type, or yet gain SR=11+HD, which may be raised or restarted at any time as a free action. In addition she may use her All-Around ability as a free action even if it isn't her turn once per day.

Great Stand: At 15th level, by spending two uses of Formation in Front of Water, The Gate Guard gains the usual benefits and for the duration she may grant her hardness and immunity from No Weak Point to her visible allies, and they can still move, but lose the bonus if they leave your sight.

Alternatively the Gate Guard  may instead gain the bonus of Formation in Front of Water just for herself and use Summon Nature's Ally of a level equal to half her Gate Guard level when starting this, in which case they gain the bonus as well (but not any other allies nearby) and last until one round after the Formation in Front of Water ends.

Old Tradition: At 16th level, the Gate Guard may choose two options to become immune to with No Weak Point, and change freely an additional time per day.

Ancient Tradition: At 19th level, the Gate Guard may choose three options to  become immune to with No Weak points, and change freely an additional time per day.

Enlightened Keeper: At 20th level, such is the legend of the Gate Guard that her challenges are undeniable. If the Gate Guard is in view or can be heard, enemies must each round suceed on a DC 10+1/2 HD+Cha mod Will save if they want to attack anyone else. If the Gate Guard is attacking them and no other creature, increase the DC by 10. In the case of area attacks, they don't need to save if the area includes the Gate Guard. Creatures with less HD than half the Gate Guard's own HD automatically fail this save.

[oslecamo]

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Iron Wall

With hard training, flesh can become as strong as steel.
Pre-requisite: Martial Pride Class feature.
Benefit: You can emulate the properties of Pure Metal items with your body. To do so you must first pursue an harduous training with the item for 24 hours, after which it is destroyed from the effort, but you've mastered its secrets.

If you destroyed a weapon your unarmed strike count as if it was made from that Pure Metal, except it doesn't deal damage as if it was one size category larger.

If you destroyed a suit of armor you gain its Pure Metal special properties and hardness as if wearing it, but not the AC bonus, unless it's specific to that kind of pure metal. Emulating medium armor slows you down by 10 feet, Emulating heavy armor halves your movement speeds
 
If you destroyed a shield you gain its Pure Metal special properties and hardness as if wearing it as long as you dedicate one arm to serve as the shield (it cannot be used for anything else), but not the AC bonus, unless it's specific to that kind of pure metal. Emulating a Light Shield gives you a -1 penalty on all skills and attack rolls. Emulating an heavy shield gives you a -2 penalty on all skills and attack rolls. Emulating a tower shield gives you a -4 penalty on all skills and attack rolls.


You can only emulate one destroyed weapon, armor and shield simultaneously at a time, but if you destroyed more during training, you can switch which ones you emulate as a Swift or Move action. You still need high enough Bab to gain the benefits of higher grades, and cannot use spells/SLAs/powers/similar while emulating pure metal. Your unarmed strike cannot be enhanced by magic means while emulating pure metal, and you cannot gain Natural armor, Shield or Armor bonus from spells/SLAs/powers/similar while emulating pure metal armor or pure metal shields.


If you're emulating a pure metal weapon and successfully grapple someone, they count as if bound by shackles made of that kind of pure metal.

Special: You may take this feat an extra time for each 6 Gate Guard levels you have. Each extra time you take it, you can simultaneously emulate an extra kind of pure metal in your body, assuming you had destroyed items of the same type, each made of a different kind of pure metal.

[Anomander]

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Can't seem to get anything productive done so I might as well take a few minutes to comment before going back to work.
So I'll just write everything that comes to mind on a first read.

First off, the concept of this martial type is something I do not remember seeing before.
If you are a straight Gate Guard, you are melee-tank with reduced MAD, can wear a shield but not an armor, max bab and all good saves. HD as a good as a fighter's, lower monk-ish skills  and maneuvers on top.
Early game your AC is as good as it could be if you were any other base class. And with Iaijutsu Fist it gets much better without any investment other than fidelity to the class.
Eventually you can get bracers of armor/Monk's Belt to have it all. Saves scale by themselves so you can get in the front to tackle problems head-on. Which should happen often.

With Con becoming more or less redundant, it offers the perfect setup to raise both Str and Dex, with Wisdom a likely third if Chinese Star Cha-based maneuvers are skipped; these are all save increasing stats, which improves the GG's survivability along with making it relatively better at everything it needs to do. Charisma feels like a good idea if you intend to go far into the class or get into a Cha based discipline, but it feels like a stat that can be left at around 14 or so without missing much (unless you begin a game at or close to level 20). Or unless you multiclass into a Cha-based class or monster class. Say, vampire. The Con redundancy does make it a very appealing option for anything without a Con stat. Especially something with Unholy Toughness.

Proficiencies might be meant to include the favored weapons of Chinese Star. Then again, maybe not considering all the goodness this class grants so early.

I think it needs Sense Motive as a class skill. Feels like a pretty important gate-keeper skill to have. Not sure about Bluff though (especially considering the lack of any Feint synergy).

Iaijutsu Fist: Mentioning "During all other rounds" makes it feel like it is not supposed to be in effect during a round you use your unarmed strike against an opponent. But it is difficult to be sure that isn't just meant to apply all the time since it doesn't flat out say that you don't get the bonus for the round if you iaijutsu focus something with your fist.
Also, unlike most classes giving bonus to AC from something else than armor (ie: Monk) this one isn't dependent on having your Dex to AC or anything like that. Being an insight bonus makes it relatively easy to stack with other bonus types to AC and you have no fear of losing it because you got flatfooted or anything. Needless to say, when you have a bonus to AC that stays higher than everyone's BAB, you should be able to tank decently across your career. Good thought.

I find peculiar that you get the Chinese Star feat for free but get not Monk-like unarmed strike progression. Though I imagine that the iaijutsu focus bonus damage from Iaijutsu Fist sort of give stronger unarmed strikes damage. Once.
However, since there is a free swappable feat via All-Around, I guess it gives some leeway for one to invest in something like the Superior Unarmed Strike feat.

Disarming Fist: There is no penalty to negate for size differences. What you can negate is the opponent's bonus for size difference.
Grabbing Fist: Similarly, there is no penalty for being smaller than your opponent. Each get a bonus or a penalty for one's own size. To get a result similar to what you seem to have intended, you can have it reduce any size bonus higher than your own to your own size bonus (or penalty if you are smaller than medium).
Pushing Fist: Same as above. The line about not being able to choose to move out of the way feels like you're partially confusing this with the Overrun special action. As for bullrushes, you can already choose not to move with the opponent if you succeed. What you might want to specify is that you can push them farther without having to move along with your target, depending on your check result and your movement limit (thought perhaps you'd want to limit it to the result of the check only), as is usually required.
Falling Fist: Same as above. You don't get a bonus for being bigger than your opponent. The bonus is only determined by your size.

Formation in front of water: Besides wondering if the name is meant to evoke acting as a dam that contains a flood of enemies, it reminds me of the Dwarven Defender's Defensive Stance. It is better, for sure, and has no backlash when you leave it. The only thing I find really weird is the unarmed strike reach increase. It is hard (and a little repulsing) to imagine.
I guess it can mimic Ancient Temple again by having it punch lashes of qi-stuff at enemies but then you'd wonder if this ability is supernatural or extraordinary.

Gatekeeper: Gotta wonder if this is meant to work as Combat Reflex for prerequisite purposes. Because once you have it, you probably don't want to invest in Combat Reflex as well unless your charisma is a dump stat.

Imposing Presence: Strange ability in that it can be as frustrating as it can be useless. Requiring a melee damage to revert is fiendish considering your inevitably high AC. I'd expect an imposing presence to inflict a penalty on something else than skill checks but I suppose it works. It gives me a few combo ideas for maximum debuffs.

Great Wall: And bam! You instantly become the team's tank for sure now. What the barrier is, however, is unclear.
It "surrounds an area" but it affects a 2 dimensional surface calculated in square feet, like a wall without any thickness.
Is it supposed to be a sphere (in which case a radius/diameter is needed instead of a square-feet measure) or some kind of 2D plane that you can shape to form a circle around an area to surround it (since you gave 2D dimensions to surround an area).
Assuming the intent was for a sphere, everyone gets in the barrier and sends nukes from there while you hold the fort (or hide somewhere/try to stay untargetable). A good way to abuse it is to have the GG constantly move across the barrier and get to other side so the enemies are always stuck moving around it to get to you or split between the opposite sides, which limits the number of foes that you fight simultaneously and makes them waste actions to get LoE while your allies blast them down.
How the wall can be brought down while the npc zombie (unless by 'alive' you really mean that the GG must be a living creature, in which case just a breathless GG would do) gate guard is buried 95 feet under the wall without any good hint of what you're looking for and where to find it would be pretty cheap trick.
Unless in this case you define 'perfectly visible' not as not-invisible-like but as: people cannot pass if they can see you (in which case closing your eyes or being blind wouldn't count, only having line of sight would be needed and you must not be hiding).

Is it a force effect subject to force-piercing stuff like disintegrates?

Great Stand: Are the summons gone if allies happen to become visible after the summoning? IE: Close your eyes, summon, open your eyes.
Also, I'll note that all Great Stand is doing the way it is currently worded is granting ally buffs at the price of 2 daily uses of Formation in Front of Water. Its duration isn't stated since it only leaves the impression that it is also meant to make you use Formation in Front of Water on top of giving ally buffs; it does not say that you are using Formation in Front of Water while in a Great Stand.

Old Tradition & Ancient Tradition: Bad copy-paste. They are both doing the very same thing. I imagine that Old Tradition is supposed to give two immunities instead of three and that Ancient Tradition is supposed to have Old Tradition's sentence structure since it is missing a few words.

Enlightened Keeper: The effect feels like it contradicts the fluff. Maybe her legend makes her challenge requests undeniable. If only the strongest dare challenge her then mooks would rather fight anyone else but the GG.
The GG personally attacking a target is perhaps meant to mean mechanically that the DC increases when the GG uses single-target attacks against a target. Perhaps it means that it takes effect if the target is the only target (which means it works even if it is within an AoE, as long as no other creature is within it). Perhaps the word 'personally' is just making things unclear and it is meant to work if the GG attacks them herself (whether it is the only target or not).

I think the relative etherealness probably makes that captstone stronger than the Shrine Maiden's and the Eternal Royal's.
I agree than an additional effect could be granted to it though.

[oslecamo]

Thanks for the feedback!

-Ups, forgot to add "no shields either" to the limitations, done.
-Added sense motive to the class skills, and gets boosted with Cha later on.
-Clarified Iaijutsu Fist. Also, the real offensive output from a Gate Guard is supposed to be coming from her maneuvers.
-Formation in front of water refers to Meiling's quote when facing Reimu in EoSD (usually just translated as "Dammit, next up is my last stand! "). To which Reimu replies how Meiling intends to do a Formation in front of Water all by herself. The joke is kinda lost when you use the Last Stand translation. It refers to an ancient chinese battle where chinese general Han Xin with a ragtag group of soldiers found himself facing a much bigger, better trained army.  Faced with a desesperate situation, he formed up his army with a river at their back so his soldiers had no way to retreat. They proceeded to fight so fiercly that they routed the enemy army! So the idea is more of a "not a step back!" Anyway yes, it's supposed to be "ki-punches" more than stretching arms. 
-Even if you have Gatekeeper, you probably still want Combat Reflexes because that allows you to make Aoos while flatfooted.
-Great Wall protects an area, as in the third dimension of height is limitless. You can try to circle by the sides of a Great Wall, but you can never go over or under it. And no it's not a Force effect. Anyway overhauled the ability a bit to stop "burrowed guard and blind intruders" issues.
-Reworded Great Stand to prevent blinking guard.
-Fixed Old Tradition.
-Cleared up Enlightned keeper.

Anyway, you saying the Eternal Royal and Shrine Maiden capstones could use a boost?

[Anomander]

It's cool. 

Preventing shield uses is a good idea.

You copied the term grapple into Punching Fist, which is about bullrushes iirc.
Falling Fist is still ignoring penalties on trip checks that do not exist; your size penalties/bonuses to trip checks are independent of the size of your opponent. Same with having multiple legs; they do not inflict a penalty to your opponents' checks but grant a bonus to your own checks to resist trips.

Great Wall: Is the term 'alive' meant to make the ability inaccessible to constructs and undead creatures (and whatever else isn't exactly alive)? Mostly asking because if you do intend to include any kind of Gate Guard there isn't really a good term to use besides "not destroyed/dead", except maybe "while conscious".
I recall there being something before about the wall going down while the GG suffers from some kind of neutralizing effect (say, sleep). Maybe it was removed or I'm mistaking it with something else.
The Gate thing is an interesting resolution but feels counter intuitive and problematic. You can select any 20ft-sq and the walls' vertical dimensions are infinite. So you could set the gate in a very short deep underground tunnel, from which it would be perfectly visible if you were there. Counter intuitive in that a thief would try to open the door (or just pass through in the case of a pair of rocks). If the door seems jammed they'd try to unlock it. Not destroy it. If you can't freely pass between the open space of the two rocks, being blocked by an invisible force field, your first thought clearly isn't "let's wreck a rock, that should work". Problematic in that while the ability had been meant to be used in battle for battlefield control, now you have to control the battlefield to control it further. GG moving around with her two big rocks to dump them somewhere just to use that ability when there is nothing that clearly looks like some kind of entrance.

Dunno about Gatekeeper. Personally I'd only take Combat Reflex for the extra AoOs and to qualify for Prcs/feats that are what actually interests me. Being able to use AoOs while flatfooted is very low priority compared to all the other stuff I'd actually want to be able to do while flatfooted. Some people might want both but I'd be inclined to think that the main juice is the extra AoOs. Good as is, either way. Many classes offer class abilities similar to feats without having them fulill any prerequisite.

Ancient Tradition is still missing words (they can be guessed though):" ...may choose three options to become immune to with No Weak points"

I think the Eternal Royal could use a boost (never actually reviewed the class). Shrine Maiden is alright as is, her capstone could be considered weak, I think, only in one particular circumstance that isn't -currently- possible, so that ain't a problem.
What I was saying thought is that counting as ethereal only for its benefits is good. It could be a capstone by itself and the ultimate tank ability is already quite excellent. Plus, it isn't very thematic. The Eternal Royal, Hermit and Shrine Maiden would feel like better candidates for such an ability.

[ketaro]

I only have one question as anything else I could think of has already been brought up or I think is fine...

Whenever the Gate Guard hits an enemy with an unarmed strike whitout using a maneuver neither under the effect of a Boost, she recovers one expended maneuver.

If hitting with multiple unarmed strikes in a single round, do you also recover multiple maneuvers? Just to clarify.
(The word "neither" could probably be replaced with "or/nor" and since you're calling out Boosts you could probably also mention Counters too else just leave it as only mentioning maneuvers in general otherwise it almost looks like you can recover maneuvers off of unarmed strikes used as part of a Counter)

[oslecamo]

I only have one question as anything else I could think of has already been brought up or I think is fine...

Whenever the Gate Guard hits an enemy with an unarmed strike whitout using a maneuver neither under the effect of a Boost, she recovers one expended maneuver.

If hitting with multiple unarmed strikes in a single round, do you also recover multiple maneuvers? Just to clarify.
(The word "neither" could probably be replaced with "or/nor" and since you're calling out Boosts you could probably also mention Counters too else just leave it as only mentioning maneuvers in general otherwise it almost looks like you can recover maneuvers off of unarmed strikes used as part of a Counter)

Yes, hitting with multiple unarmed strikes can recover multiple expended maneuvers if you meet the conditions.

Counters are maneuvers. If you're using a counter to deliver an unarmed strike, then you're still using a maneuver and don't recover anything.

You copied the term grapple into Punching Fist, which is about bullrushes iirc.
Falling Fist is still ignoring penalties on trip checks that do not exist; your size penalties/bonuses to trip checks are independent of the size of your opponent. Same with having multiple legs; they do not inflict a penalty to your opponents' checks but grant a bonus to your own checks to resist trips.

Fixed.

Great Wall: Is the term 'alive' meant to make the ability inaccessible to constructs and undead creatures (and whatever else isn't exactly alive)? Mostly asking because if you do intend to include any kind of Gate Guard there isn't really a good term to use besides "not destroyed/dead", except maybe "while conscious".

You dare suggest that the Great Meiling can't keep up her Great Wall while sleeping? Heresy!

(added clause for undead/constructs).

The Gate thing is an interesting resolution but feels counter intuitive and problematic. You can select any 20ft-sq and the walls' vertical dimensions are infinite. So you could set the gate in a very short deep underground tunnel, from which it would be perfectly visible if you were there. Counter intuitive in that a thief would try to open the door (or just pass through in the case of a pair of rocks). If the door seems jammed they'd try to unlock it. Not destroy it. If you can't freely pass between the open space of the two rocks, being blocked by an invisible force field, your first thought clearly isn't "let's wreck a rock, that should work".

But Marisa the thief can pass trough those rocks just fine, or open a locked door in that position, assuming the Gate Guard herself doesn't stop them. Breaking the rocks destroys the whole Great Wall, but the Great Gate itself isn't covered by it. It must be defended some other way.

Problematic in that while the ability had been meant to be used in battle for battlefield control, now you have to control the battlefield to control it further. GG moving around with her two big rocks to dump them somewhere just to use that ability when there is nothing that clearly looks like some kind of entrance.

Well, if she can't make it look like some kind of entrance, the ability simply doesn't work.

Ancient Tradition is still missing words (they can be guessed though):" ...may choose three options to become immune to with No Weak points"

Fixed.

I think the Eternal Royal could use a boost (never actually reviewed the class). Shrine Maiden is alright as is, her capstone could be considered weak, I think, only in one particular circumstance that isn't -currently- possible, so that ain't a problem.
What I was saying thought is that counting as ethereal only for its benefits is good. It could be a capstone by itself and the ultimate tank ability is already quite excellent. Plus, it isn't very thematic. The Eternal Royal, Hermit and Shrine Maiden would feel like better candidates for such an ability.

Moved the ethereal part to Eternal Royal then.

[Anomander]

But Marisa the thief can pass trough those rocks just fine, or open a locked door in that position, assuming the Gate Guard herself doesn't stop them. Breaking the rocks destroys the whole Great Wall, but the Great Gate itself isn't covered by it. It must be defended some other way.

I know it can. I'm not saying it can't. I'm saying its counter intuitive.
The entrance isn't the actual entrance. The whole 20-ft-sq area around the supposed entrance is.
I could carry a diminutive locked door, dump it somewhere in battle and call the area around it 'the gate'. Only diminutive and fine creatures are able to pass through the door, but it's a valid entrance none the less. They don't have to unlock it they can just move around it. A PC/monster won't look at the diminutive door and intuitively think: "Hey, there is cute little plank of wood there that looks like a door. I can probably pass through those forcefields if I move through the general area around it."
If I felt nice and dumped an actual medium/large-sized locked door in the field, the thief (after bumping into invisible walls for a while and then spotting the big door) would think it needs to unlock it when it can just move around it. In the case of enemies blocking the whole area of the two rocks, you don't intuitively think: "If I break a rock, the forcefield is gone and I don't have to actually fight those guys." And this is more annoying when you choose two rocks somewhere that already has a lot of big rocks lying around (perhaps brought there just to make things harder).
When a system like this gate thing is used in your typical game, the develop it to make the counter-measures make sense. The object that can be destroyed as some kind of shinning effect to it that alerts you that it the effects depends on it. The area you can move through is outlined by light or some-such.

Well, if she can't make it look like some kind of entrance, the ability simply doesn't work.

Yeah. That's why I said it was problematic. Like the example of the underground tunnel with the gate there that you can clearly see if you are in that tunnel (even though it doesn't connect to anything, like the surface).
Carrying around entrances to make the ability work gives a total new meaning to the term "Gate Guard".
It can certainly work, but when you can settle to just dumping diminutive entrances or otherwise portable ones, it might as well be designed to be just as easy to do without resorting to such tricks.

Again, it totally works. Its just my perception of the thing.

[ketaro]

2nd level's base Reflex is probably suppose to be a +3 instead of a +2 if all saves are Good, right?

[oslecamo]

Yes, sorry for not replying to that for so long.

Also added Iron Wall feat to allow to get Pure Metal goodness.

[ketaro]

For a Strength based class, it appears to be lacking one third of the only Strength based skills as a class skill.

Gate Guards can't Swim? 
Isn't the mansion overlooking a massive lake?

Edit: I mean, technically Formation in Front of Water could be used to....not sink, but then you're stuck like a buoy in the water as Swimming entails voluntarily moving thus breaking the effect 

[oslecamo]

Added Swim as a class skill. As well as for the Marilith.

[skydragonknight]

"Iaijutsu Fist: A Gate Guard  can use Iajutsu Focus with unarmed strikes against each opponent, but no more than once per ecounter per opponent. She must decide to use this ability at the start of her turn. During rounds in which she doesn't choose to use Iajutsu Focus with her unarmed strikes, she gains an insight bonus to AC equal to her Gate Guard level+3."

Does the opponent still need to be flat-footed like normal for Iajutsu Focus?

[oslecamo]

Yes, follows normal Iajutsu Focus rules unless noted otherwise.