Explain Path of War like I am five.


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I'm not particularly good at reading through rules in one sitting (the wonders of ADHD), and these are somewhat confusing. Maybe it's because I never owned or read Tome of Battle during 3.5, or maybe it's because I'm distracted by other concerns, but I need somebody to explain how the initiator system and the styles work.


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The first thing to go over is the four types of maneuvers: boosts, stances, counters, and strikes.

Stances are always-on effects. You spend a swift action at any time to enter a stance, and you remain in that stance until you are rendered helpless or unconscious. Stances can increase damage, AC, saving throws, or speed; boost skills; grant abilities and more.

Boosts are short duration buffs. They cost a swift action to activate, and last for one round. They can add damage, ability damage, let you ignore DR, take a move action, etc. Boosts are noteworthy for being able to affect a full attack.

Counters are defensive maneuvers. They cost an immediate action to perform, meaning you either cannot have used a swift action on your turn, or you lose your swift next turn (for this reason I suggest prioritizing boosts or counters, but not necessarily to the point of exclusivity). Counters let you counterattack, replace AC and saving throws with skill checks, or even temporarily shrug off conditions.

And finally, strikes. Strikes are the most prominent part of an initiator's arsenal, being the replacement for a full attack. Strikes come in standard action and full action varieties. To initiate a strike, you make one or more (usually melee) attacks, as determined by the maneuver's description. For example, in order to initiate the Veiled Moon strike Flicker Strike, I make a single melee attack, which the strike modifies to let me target flat-footed AC.

As for the Disciplines themselves, each one is a group of thematically similar maneuvers, separated into nine levels (it can be helpful to think of them as being similar to schools of magic or psionic disciplines). Each discipline has a discipline skill, which one or more maneuvers from the discipline will make use of; and three associated weapon groups (except for Solar Wind, which has four), which grant a DC bonus when used. Additionally, in order to qualify for a disciplines higher-level maneuvers, an initiator must know multiple maneuvers of that discipline, up to knowing at least 4 for the 9th level maneuvers.

The Path of War disciplines, with their general themes:
Broken Blade, unarmed combat and combat maneuvers
Black Seraph, brutality and [Evil]
Golden Lion, leadership
Iron Tortoise, defensiveness and shield use
Primal Fury, heavy damage and charging
Scarlet Throne, dueling and nobility
Silver Crane, healing and [Good]
Solar Wind, ranged combat
Thrashing Dragon, two-weapon fighting
Veiled Moon, teleportation and etherealness.


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Additionally I must suggest not going into PoW like you're building a Ranger/Paladin/Fighter ect.

If you build a PoW character with the intention of full attacking you will not make a particularly strong character.

Paizo martials have numerous class features to increase their attack and damage rolls per attack and thus full attack effectively. PoW martials don't have these advantages and will generally have difficulty pulling off an accurate full attack.

Instead focus on the abilities your class gives you to succeed.

As a Stalker try having a High Wisdom for your Ki pool and maneuver DCs. As a Warlord have a strong Charisma for your Gambits, Will save, and skill checks. As a Warder try having a high Int for your marks, Initiative, and AoOs.

Focusing on your damage stat will not help you as much as you think. If you're only making one attack a turn at your Full BAB then having 16 STR compared to 20 STR is only a small difference in damage. The feats included in the release are also very much intended to be used by Initiator classes. Additionally Furious Focus (if you have trouble hitting on a power attack) is much stronger when you aren't reliant on Full Attacks.

My Stalker Wielded a weapon finessed rapier in one hand and used his other hand to throw Chakrams. That kind of set up would be terrible in the usual martial, but functioned quite well in PoW.

Think outside the usual box. Wanna make a Captain America type character with a Heavy Shield and an Open Hand/Gauntlet? Run it out of Warder or the Iron Tortoise Archetype Warlord. Want to make a throwing character who surgically destroys an enemies ability to fight back? Try it out of a Stalker or Steelfist commando Warlord.

If you have any more specific questions I know people will be happy to answer.


Yeah, though they have some neat options for full attacking too, like the Solar Flare stance that makes thrown weapon characters worthwhile.

Assuming the wording makes it work the way I think it does (The thrown weapon is the thrown weapon with its magic, but without its material based abilities, rather than only adding magic (so it'd just be a weapon with a flat X damage instead of 1d4+x). It's worded oddly (like a lot of stuff in the book).


Take the Book of 9 Swords. Bring it to "Pathfinder", with all the nice things and warts from Bo9S.


A lot of the bad stuff like "unlimited free healing" and such were removed in PoW.


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Cheapy wrote:
Take the Book of 9 Swords. Bring it to "Pathfinder", with all the nice things and warts from Bo9S.

Not really. It's a very similar basic system, but the classes, feats, and all of the disciplines and maneuvers are new.

GhanjRho gave a very good rundown, but I'll add just a bit to it; you can expect to use standard actions for much more useful things as a Path of War martial than a traditional martial. Standard martials just get a single attack when they have to move, but Path of War martials can expect to do stuff like hitting an enemy and giving an ally free movement right out of the gate.


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Or hitting a dude and injecting a poison made of your Ki that does stat damage...

Or grappling a dude and judo throwing him ten feat knocking him prone...

or teleporting next to someone so they're flat footed and some bonus dice...

There are some really cool stuff in PoW!


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Thanks, guys. That helps me better understand what I am looking at.


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Cheapy wrote:
Take the Book of 9 Swords. Bring it to "Pathfinder", with all the nice things and warts from Bo9S.
Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert wrote:
. . . Maybe it's because I never owned or read Tome of Battle during 3.5. . . .

Uhhmmm... are you suggesting that he buy an older book that is not necessary to make use of a newer book? Because that seems... not useful... somehow.


I personally would still recommend getting your hands on Bo9S if you get the opportunity, but that's mostly because I love the system. I won't deny that PoW refined it, updated it, cleaned some stuff up, and generally made improvements, however.

But yes, having/reading/knowing Bo9S is far from necessary to understand PoW.


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Cheapy wrote:
Take the Book of 9 Swords. Bring it to "Pathfinder", with all the nice things and warts from Bo9S.

You mean like what Paizo did with 3.5 when developing PFRPG. Yah it was pretty ugly... /pointed yet playful sarcasm

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