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The path of war stretches ever onward.
Hi! Now that Path of War: Expanded is released, the DSP team has been looking forward to what’s next with Path of War, including new classes such as the Medic, more material, and, of course, our work on the errata for the first Path of War book.
Those of you who’ve been watching our playtests will know that there are some definite problems with parts of that book, especially regarding the Broken Blade discipline. One of the well-known problem children of Path of War, Broken Blade’s intent didn’t quite map to its execution. It was originally meant as an “unarmed” discipline, and functions well when used as such, but the end result when it was published lived up a bit more to its name than we meant to.
Broken Blade (among other things) will as such be getting some changes when the errata hits, but as a whole, we don’t want to completely rewrite it, and will be trying to keep Broken Blade’s identity close to that it gained after its release. However, we don’t want to kill off the idea of a dedicated unarmed/monk-like discipline.
Enter the Fool’s Errand discipline. This discipline shares a similar conceptual space with Broken Blade, but was written from the ground up to be distinct from that concept. Fool’s Errand is an (ex)traordinary discipline based around freely and efficiently mixing armed and unarmed combat, with a heavy emphasis on mobility and battlefield control.
In the linked document, you’ll find the a new mechanic—grasp—that allows initiators to take hold of their enemies’ movements, as well as new feats (including style feats) and a new martial tradition, the Fellowship of Fools.
Once it's playtested, the discipline will be released as part of Dreamscarred Press’ Patreon release queue.
I'll post feedback on each level of the discipline as I read it. I'll only hit to level 3 tonight.
Level 1 Character level 1:
Lesson 1 resilience: I need to playtest this as I really don't know how this would work out in practice. I know a level 1 character will have somewhere between 8 and 12 climb depending on how hard they optimize for it and they will refill 1 THP every hit. So low levels less useful, but at a higher levels it can offer a great lifesaver. The stance can be exploited though since if needed someone can just hot swap between this stance and another defensive stance over and over again to keep the THP at max
Lesson 2 Control: This stance is perfect.
One Two Punch: Is this a two weapon fighting action? Similar maneuvers from other disciplines have you take 2WF penalties (-2 atk, half str, half power attack). Without said penalties this is one of the stronger first level strikes and contributes to scenarios like a level two character walking up to a CR4 monster and killing it in one round. Character level 1 is too early to have a standard action strike better than a ful attack from a level 6 character.
Whirlwind Sweep: I hope I'm reading this right, this strike does no damage correct? If so then I think this is the right direction for a lot of 1st level strikes to be moving in the errata.
Level 2 (Character level 3):
Bob and Weave+Death at 10 Paces: Once again great. I like that instead of boosting damage it gives you a tactical advantage.
Lead and Follow: Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that you can make the grasp attempt as part of your attack of opportunity?
Hurricane Kick: o7
Steel Shattering Fists: Is almost ok. First problem is that you can do this with a Great Sword. Second are the same problems as One two Punch. Character level three is too early to have a Standard action strike better than a full attack from a level 6 character.
Level 3 (Character level 5)
Adamantine Grip: This is the level where I think getting CC combed with Damage is appropriate, hence good in my book.
Lesson 3: Level 3 stances are usually a very iconic stance for the discipline and I think this one manages to very adequately display the tenets of the discipline we’ve seen so far without going overboard. I like it!
The Best weapon is theirs: I don’t particularly like this since it’s too easy to ruin a higher level opponent’s chances of harming you while obtaining a valuable piece of loot for use in combat before the fight has ended. On average at level 5 your opponents who this is useful against will have 20-25 CMD while your climb is about 13 with just a trait and ranks as investment. I’d move this up to a higher maneuver level where the average armed enemy may actually have a backup weapon, it could even add damage dice at that point.
Windmill Waltz Fury: I really like the concept of this strike, a lot. Has the same problem as Steel Shattering Fists in that you can use a great sword when you do this and shatter damage expectations for character level 5. I’d like to see damage and power attack capped as if one handed like base Monk’s flurry and the -2 attack penalty attached to the first attack as well. At that point the strike would just be high damage instead of a “And you thought this was going to be a challenging encounter, maybe next time GM” maneuver.
As a side note going into this I would like to remind you of something experienced on the GM side of the screen that often gets lost in the development process.
My encounters will often feature 1-2 NPCs that are 1-4 levels higher than the players along with some mooks. If I gave them optimized use of Path of war the level 1 mooks using something like 1-2 punch could walk up and potentially chunk a player for 16ish damage no problem. Imagine a Level 5 dude walking up to a level 3 PC and performing Windmill Waltz fury with a Great Sword on them with about 38 being the average damage if everything gets through AC and counters.
A level 3 PC has only about 26 HP most the time and a mook 2 levels lower can chunk off mover half of that while the boos two levels higher can almost negative con you in one full round action.
There is a reason I've never actually used Path of War on my players.
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Okay, so. After taking a look at the feedback here and in other places, and discussing at length with the rest of the PoW team, we've got some large changes to the math of grasp. Overall, as much as the skill check substitution could have been a good idea in a different system, the math was just not working quite as we'd like it to. Ideally, one would be able to grasp with a reasonable chance of success, but making it so that you had "reasonable chance of success" and "any chance of success against the high-CMD enemies" was problematic.
The math functioned somewhat but not perfectly, so after tinkering with a couple potential fixes, we've ripped it up entirely. Grasp is no longer Climb vs CMD, nor is escaping it. Instead, we're installing a different way of handling it: grasp now prompts a Reflex save to escape being grabbed, or escape a maintained grab. If you want to see some of the expected math on this, here's a link to it.
I'll get to addressing your posts in a bit; there's still quite a bit of discussion going on behind the scenes, and I apologize for that.
Good to see some free fool's errand underway. ;)
I just want to confirm that the Errata that Elricaltovilla posted in the APRIL AUGMENTED thread was just a in-progress version of the errata and was not the final/complete errata for Path of War.
For reference, This is the file he had posted there:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhy87aaeqisnm36/Path%20of%20War%20Errata.pdf?dl=0
It didn't include any changes to any maneuvers and there had been plenty of imploications that the PoW errata would include changes to Primal Fury and Broken Blade discipline maneuvers.
That was an April Fools day joke released April 1st.
I just want to confirm that the Errata that Elricaltovilla posted in the APRIL AUGMENTED thread was just a in-progress version of the errata and was not the final/complete errata for Path of War.
For reference, This is the file he had posted there:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhy87aaeqisnm36/Path%20of%20War%20Errata.pdf?dl=0It didn't include any changes to any maneuvers and there had been plenty of imploications that the PoW errata would include changes to Primal Fury and Broken Blade discipline maneuvers.
As Insain Dragoon noted, that was an April Fool's joke (referencing the errata for Tome of Battle, the 3.5 book that inspired Path of War's subsystem).
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Hey, it's been a while. I just want to let anyone watching know that we've added two new archetypes to the Fool's Errand doc, the Contender brawler and the Night Terror vigilante.
This pair of archetypes represents two different takes on initiators that are partially based in Fool's Errand and grasp, incorporating the mechanics and thematics into their class features, similar to the Bushi and Mithral Current (they can each also be played without Fool's Errand, don't worry). Hope you enjoy.
I was kinda hoping for a throwing mechanic over a grabbing mechanic.
hmm... playing around with this kobold grasping tarrasque scenario, what if another kobold grasped this imagi-tarraque from another space like say beside it and move it? hijinks ensue?
I find this especially troubling with the thought that a kobold could hold down a tarrasque in place, and even be able to drag the beast around like he had the strength of Hercules.
Isn't this sorta stuff why people buy PoW in the first place? Over the top martial power that actually allows martials to do mythical level stuff rather than "level 20 brawler, cannot grapple anything because everything that actually does melee combat now is at least huge sized".
I find this especially troubling with the thought that a kobold could hold down a tarrasque in place, and even be able to drag the beast around like he had the strength of Hercules.Isn't this sorta stuff why people buy PoW in the first place? Over the top martial power that actually allows martials to do mythical level stuff rather than "level 20 brawler, cannot grapple anything because everything that actually does melee combat now is at least huge sized".
No? At least I don't. I go to Path of War for martials that don't suck. NOT martials throwing tarrasques.
No? At least I don't. I go to Path of War for martials that don't suck. NOT martials throwing tarrasques.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm in a campaign where I'm the only PoW character.. I would never think of taking this discipline for fear of getting my character booted. Or at the very least refrain from taking any tarrasque throwing maneuvers
The issue isn't "martials have nice things." It's that the mechanic letting them do those things is stepping all over the toes of a similar mechanic, while abstracting itself in a manner that breaks verisimilitude.
I'm fine with issues like you discuss in your post. I just find it rather strange that people want grappling limited to "guy at the gym" when everything else is mythic in PoW.
The issue isn't "martials have nice things." It's that the mechanic letting them do those things is stepping all over the toes of a similar mechanic, while abstracting itself in a manner that breaks verisimilitude.I'm fine with issues like you discuss in your post. I just find it rather strange that people want grappling limited to "guy at the gym" when everything else is mythic in PoW.
Perhaps eventually going a LITTLE bigger, but certainly no more than two sizes larger.
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Patching CMB/CMD has been stated as not an option since PoW 1 I believe. Instead, we get a variety of mechanics that do similar things in a more balanced manner. I'd rather have grasp than be told that combat maneuver characters might as well pack up and go home unless they pull serious jank past 15th level.
The way I see it, there are plenty of ways to be various mythological figures, from Merlin to... Merlin to... other big named spellcaster guy?
Is there something wrong with being able to manhandle a monster larger than you like this? Hercules did it. I want to be him. Nothing in Pathfinder lets me, or anyone else, be this kind of hero. I see nothing wrong with being able to toss big creatures around at the level you'd be fighting a tarrasque.
Patching CMB/CMD has been stated as not an option since PoW 1 I believe. Instead, we get a variety of mechanics that do similar things in a more balanced manner. I'd rather have grasp than be told that combat maneuver characters might as well pack up and go home unless they pull serious jank past 15th level.
The way I see it, there are plenty of ways to be various mythological figures, from Merlin to... Merlin to... other big named spellcaster guy?
Is there something wrong with being able to manhandle a monster larger than you like this? Hercules did it. I want to be him. Nothing in Pathfinder lets me, or anyone else, be this kind of hero. I see nothing wrong with being able to toss big creatures around at the level you'd be fighting a tarrasque.
I could see it being ok at those later levels, and as a DM I'd likely allow it at those levels. However, would other DMs be ok with that? As a player I'd think it would be cool to throw or move a tarrasque around, but would make me concerned about using this style outside of campaigns that are path of war focused.
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The reason why I would allow grasp in a heartbeat is that extraordinary means exactly what it says. An extraordinary ability is nonmagical but shouldn't be mundane. When 10th level casters are saving goodbye to logic and physics every 15 seconds but my 20th level martial is restricted by what a mortal man (who would be 2nd level at most) irl could do, theres a Problem.
I could see it being ok at those later levels, and as a DM I'd likely allow it at those levels. However, would other DMs be ok with that? As a player I'd think it would be cool to throw or move a tarrasque around, but would make me concerned about using this style outside of campaigns that are path of war focused.
Question, are you aware it's already possible to throw the tarrasque around? It's possible for Kineticist to not only lift the tarrasque but use it as a weapon by 8th level.
I could see it being ok at those later levels, and as a DM I'd likely allow it at those levels. However, would other DMs be ok with that? As a player I'd think it would be cool to throw or move a tarrasque around, but would make me concerned about using this style outside of campaigns that are path of war focused.Question, are you aware it's already possible to throw the tarrasque around? It's possible for Kineticist to not only lift the tarrasque but use it as a weapon by 8th level.
I take it back then. I haven't had a look at the kineticist class, so I was unaware.
Don't get me wrong; I love the idea of a warrior using a dragon as a shotput. I just want fluff that matches the mechanics, and preferably not having those mechanics reinvent the wheel. The idea behind Fool's Errand is fairly eclectic, but it clearly draws inspiration from real-world grappling styles like judo and fantasy stories like The Brave Little Tailor and Shadow of the Colossus. The running theme in all of the above is turning a larger opponent's own assets against them, which could easily be expressed by a series of maneuvers and stances that negate or even reverse Strength and size modifiers.
I thought the whole point of PoW was reinventing the wheel of melee combat?
Perhaps eventually going a LITTLE bigger, but certainly no more than two sizes larger.The issue isn't "martials have nice things." It's that the mechanic letting them do those things is stepping all over the toes of a similar mechanic, while abstracting itself in a manner that breaks verisimilitude.I'm fine with issues like you discuss in your post. I just find it rather strange that people want grappling limited to "guy at the gym" when everything else is mythic in PoW.
I dunno. Those higher level characters can just casually do some pretty absurd things.
Like falling from a mile-high airship and walking it off with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises that'll heal in a week's time. (20d6 damage isn't that much, really.) Same fall in reality would end up with a person broken and bleeding on the ground. If not dead.
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Hey all, sorry for not getting around to responding this weekend. It’s been a hectic time at work, and I’m just now getting caught up. Since there’s a lot of ground to cover here, I’m going to respond to things more generally rather than address everyone individually. We greatly value the responses you’ve given, and want to thank you for taking the time to give feedback.
So here we go:
The Fool’s Errand discipline and its core mechanic were written in response to a couple major problems in Path of War and Pathfinder, and particularly in this case, issues with grappling as a mechanic. We have gotten a lot of requests for more interaction with grappling. As a concept, this is great. Grappling is cool, thematic, flavorful. Grabbing hold of something and wrestling it to the ground or dragging it around is a classic method of fighting both in real life and fantasy, and it’s something that has remained almost untouched in Path of War.
This is in part because of time, space, and energy being devoted more to other concepts, and in part because grappling, as a mechanic, is incredibly problematic in many ways. Like other combat maneuvers, it requires significant investment to become viable (or even possible at higher levels), disproportionate to the gain you might have if you invested in some other concept (like hitting with a sword, or archery). In addition, it’s highly binary, and easy to nope—size is a near-insurmountable advantage, freedom of movement effects stop you cold, and it’s trivial to escape if they have the right tools, making your significant investment worthless.
In addition, when it does work, grappling is powerful to an extreme. Once you’ve got a character that can pull it off, I would hazard a guess that there are very few martial mechanics that are quite as efficient at locking down and trivially killing something (potentially in the same turn, in the right situations). It also has a lot of baggage like Grab and Constrict, various rider effects and class abilities, and the perception of the mechanic itself in the tabletop gaming community (it’s memetically complicated, even if it’s a bit better than it was in D&D 3.5). Grappling is a problem in many ways, which is what drove the decision to sidestep it a bit. The discipline still has some things that grapplers will find useful (such as make them humble), but the goal was to deliver on the “wrestle/grab/control” fantasy without invoking the baggage associated with grappling in Pathfinder.
Its effect is definitely strong, but also doesn’t do anything to the enemy but stop them from moving and let you move them. Against many enemies, this will only stop them until their turn, but it serves a tactical use. When compared to grappling, it’s got a very different goal and effect: grasp is not a hard lockdown effect like grapple/pin often is, but a softer control effect that lets you make your mark on the battlefield without immediately shutting down the enemies’ ability to fight back (and giving it more counterplay than just “have freedom of movement or die”).
Grasp as a mechanic was meant to invoke some specific thematics, but remain relatively abstracted. In actuality, “grasp” was a placeholder name during the development of the discipline that we happened to like, so it stuck. However, it’s become apparent both in internal discussions and external playtesting that the name is a bit of a problem. Grasp isn’t grappling, and is in fact closer to a “mark”-type ability. The goal of the mechanic is to be a simple-to-use tanking/soft-crowd control effect, allowing a martial character to control their enemies’ movements without invoking complex “gotcha” defenses (like being big, or fiddly CMB/CMD calculations).
With this in mind, we’ve discussed this internally, and we’re changing the name and fluff ever-so-slightly to match its intent and help shove it a bit more into the “abstract mechanic” zone, next to things like hit points, saving throws, and armor class. Grasp is now Lock, and its sidebar explaining how it works fluffwise has been updated to help clarify what it does, along with presenting a variant for using it against Will saves.
The size problem (inasmuch as it’s a problem) is a bit of a tricky question. Size restrictions on grasp/lock were discussed early on in the project, but we decided not to include them for similar reasons to why they have been requested here. As noted above, one of the existing problems with grappling (honestly, the combat maneuver system) is that size is a nearly-insurmountable advantage.
For every person who, like yourself, feels this size difference restrictions are realistic, there's another inspired by characters like Ant-Man or the Wee Free Men but cannot execute their concept. We're more inclined to favor the latter than the former, in keeping with our desire to open up character concepts rather than restrict them.
With that in mind, it is important to note that there are plenty of ways, in both 1pp material and Path of War, to pull off truly ridiculous feats as martial characters. As Espy Lacopa mentioned, a high-level character can jump out of a plane without a parachute and be mostly fine afterwards. A level 1 barbarian with Fleet can outsprint Usain Bolt for minutes on end, while wearing chainmail, carrying a giant axe, and wearing 50+ pounds of gear. A level 2 rogue or monk can dodge lightning bolts. A level 9 fighter can do the same, but instead of dodging, he reacts so swiftly that he cuts the electrical arc out of the air. The feat he picked up at level 5 lets him block bullets, railgun shots, and lasers in a similar way. There are also ways to knock anything away from you, regardless of their size.
That’s just with 1pp though. Path of War as a whole tends to make feats such as this more accessible to characters, and controlling the flow of your foes (be it through strength, positioning, a combination, or even just “it says on the page that I can do it, so I do it”) is no exception.
As much as I’d like to defend it, I will concede this point: there are times where grasp/lock makes little sense. However, even in those times, I believe that it’s better for the mechanic to function as intended and to allow a player to use their chargen resources to build the concept I set out to support. The fluff changing somewhat with the name change should hopefully help a bit; the mechanic is moving closer to an abstract game concept like class, level, or attack rolls, rather than one of the mechanics that attempt to simulate a blow-by-blow combat, like some combat maneuvers and grapple. I think this is a good thing, and I’m not really sure what else to tell you. The goal of the mechanic is to support the concept while allowing a fluff explanation that functions in most cases, even if it falls apart a bit in some cases. Like all refluffing, discussions with the group about what changes, and how, need to be made to assumptions for the refluff to function properly are important to the lock mechanic.
To conclude, I’d like to state that while Path of War isn’t about reinventing martial combat completely, there are definitely places where, by necessity, it does. Grasp/lock is one of those cases. There were too many problems with grappling and wrestling mechanics, with the reposition, bull rush, and drag mechanics, and with the CMB/CMD mechanics as a whole to support the concept we set out to support: a much more simplified soft-control and repositioning, reminiscent of the grappling rules of some other games, with the goal of letting someone play out the fantasy of an awesome wrestler without having to break out the flow charts. While it does add a new mechanic and condition, and with it slightly more complexity, we believe that the overall change is a less messy game, because having lock around lets a character who wants to focus on its concept do so in a significantly simpler manner (one die roll, one debuff, simple rules and some extra moves they can ready to work off of it).
So far in playtesting myself and in much of the playtest feedback I’ve gotten, it’s felt quite intuitive in-game. Lock them; if they fail the save they can’t move and you drag them. It’s a very simple mechanic, especially compared to grappling.
In other news
Thanks to some useful feedback about the Night Terror vigilante, it’s come to my attention that even though they can use improvised weapons, the fact that magic weapons are necessary to function at later levels means they’re still an awful choice. Their Improvisational Expert ability has been tweaked slightly to allow them to treat improvised weapons as unarmed strikes for amulet of mighty fists and similar items (and only for such items), synergizing well with their unarmed strikes from Fool’s Errand.
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Finally can kill someone with a +2 flaming beer.
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In the right circumstances, you might be able to kill someone with a +2 flaming bear as well.
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Fool's Errand was Climb-based mostly because the original concept had it using Climb vs CMD to make Lock attempts work. Climbing things Shadow of the Colossus-style is a pretty cool concept that is sadly underutilized in Pathfinder.
However, there is actually a rogue archetype that pulls it off somewhat; the Vexing Dodger, which actually synergizes quite well with Fool's Errand on account of being compatible with the Hidden Blade initiator archetype.
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Hey, sorry for the long silence. I have two important announcements to make today regarding the Fool's Errand project.
The first one is that as of today, this playtest will be officially closing. We've had a really good run, and as always, I am super, super thankful for all of your testing, feedback, commentary, and really just the time and energy invested in helping us at Dreamscarred Press make this product great. Thank you.
We're going to be moving this discipline and its associated options into layout and eventual release (incorporating changes from the feedback we have received over time), and will not be actively playtesting this project any more. Work is still pressing onwards in the Path of War 1 errata project, and we hope to have that out sooner rather than later as well.
The playtests doc for this project will remain open up until the release of each product. Don't worry; if you're using the discipline in your games, it's not going anyway.
... Now, the second announcement, and a much more sorrowful one: I am going to be taking an extended leave of absence as Creative Director at DSP for personal reasons, and as such, I'm not going to be actively handling playtests or writing content. We've known this was coming for a bit, and have been working to get things cleaned up, handled, and ready to press onwards once I'm gone (hence this playtest closing at the same time as Psionics Augmented: Occult's—today's my last day actively doing stuff, so we were holding off until now).
It's been a ton of fun, and I hope to return as soon as I can. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the plethora of new products, playtests, and releases coming from Dreamscarred Press.
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it's not going anyway
Sorry, meant to say "it's not going away." It is totally going, anyway.