Initiators

[Manly Man]

So, of the many things that Dreamscarred Press is doing, one of their best projects (and, by the look of it, most popular and well-balanced) is their take on 3.5's Tome of Battle material. I've loved ToB ever since I first laid eyes upon it, and so I've always tried to work it (and now, thanks to Dreamscarred Press, Path of War) into whatever games I can. I won't say I'm genuinely disappointed, but I would love to see some way to integrate that material into FFd20; back during 3.5's days, I had relied on Tome of Battle to help make Final Fantasy characters like Agrias and Beatrix (the latter I made by switching out some disciplines for the Ruby Knight Vindicator, Shadow Hand for Iron Heart, and White Raven for Diamond Mind, going with Cloistered Cleric 1/Warblade 4/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10/Warblade 5. While I realize that she is canonically nowhere near the power of a 20th-level character, that's just how I planned out the whole build to go), and so it seems fitting that something similar could be done to help make other character concepts come to life.

What I'm proposing is a set of archetypes for a good few classes that grant access to maneuvers and stances. Since there are no actual initiator classes, some of those archetypes should have access to 9th-level maneuvers, if you ask me, so as to let players fully experience the wonder that is Path of War, while still playing a Final Fantasy game. The classes I'm thinking should get a full initiator archetype are Fighter, Knight, Dark Knight, Holy Knight, Beastmaster (possibly partial), Dragoon, Monk, Chocobo Knight (also maybe partial), Black Belt, Fencer, and Sword Saint. Ninja might be deserving of one as well, if you want to have an Eblanese ninja in the group (give them something like Elemental Flux, Shattered Mirror, and Veiled Moon in exchange for sneak attack, and some other stuff).

I've already been working on a Holy Knight archetype that, so far as I can tell, is "done", although I'm certain that it needs a little bit of fat-trimming and rebalancing. Here's what I have so far.

[dairius_chi]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthrea...Compendium

A lot of this is pretty cheesy, some even bad, but something a friend of mine showed me. A few of these were made by the big names on Path of War years before they were brought on by Dreamscarred Press, offering inspiration for some of what was made.

For the most part they are more akin to the 3.5 ToB though, which is to say they are still great but not quite on the level of Path of War in most cases... and then there are others that are stupidly powerful.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tbBI...w564s/edit

This holds some PoW archetypes which add maneuvers to core and base classes, though they only go up to 6th level, could still help outline how you wanted to handle some of them.

FFd20 is also generally a higher power level so giving 9th level maneuvers for the same trades wouldn't be too out of order, in my honest opinion.

[Manly Man]

I've been a blend between alurker and a regular on the Path of War threads at Giant in the Playground, so yeah, I know about that stuff. And while I do appreciate your thoughts on the tradeoffs, I also want to give the archetypes a feel all their own, like how the Sanctified Blade I did has its own set of stances and some other maneuvers available, especially the capstone strike, so I think I'll still have my own stuff done on it.

Unrelatedly, are there stats for a Long Gui? I know there's the Adamantoise already, but I have a character who has one of XIII's Adamantoises in her story, and so I'm wondering if there's anything available as a stand-in.