Class Framework - Book of Nine Swords

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I've been considering a way to incorporate Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords into my Class Framework rules. This would require that access to martial maneuvers and stances be handled in one of three ways.

  1. access is granted through the use of feats and skills.
  2. access is granted through a separate axis ('Martial', 'Caster', and 'Skill' are the main ones, but I may have secondary axes for 'Psychic' and 'Divine').
  3. access is granted through use of prestige classes.

I suspect the first option will be the easiest, and provide the basis to fit with the rest of the framework, so I'll examine this first.

Contents

Martial Abilities Through Feats and Skills

Access to martial abilities (stances and maneuvers) should not be any better than that available to Swordsages. I'm ignoring Warblade and Crusader for the moment.

Implicit Prerequisites

  • All stances and maneuvers will have an implicit requirement of 'a number of maneuvers of the same discipline equal to one-half the level of the stance or maneuver'. So first-level maneuvers and stances have no such prerequisite, second-level maneuvers and stances require at least one maneuver or stance from the same discipline, etc.
  • All stances and maneuvers will have an implicit requirement of 'a number of ranks in the discipline-related skill equal to twice the maneuver or stance's level'. So, Shadow Jaunt (Shadow Hand 2 maneuver) requires four ranks of Hide.

Stance Access

This one's dead easy. Take a feat to gain a stance. Must meet the prerequisites described above, but no limit on the number of (qualifying) stances you can learn.

Maneuver Access

  • 'Martial Discipline' feat grants you access to the maneuvers and stances of a chosen discipline. You may take this feat more than once, chosing a new discipline each time.
  • You may learn a total number of maneuvers equal to your ranks in the Martial Lore skill plus your Intelligence modifier (not bonus; if you're dumb you don't learn as many).
  • You may ready a number of maneuvers equal to your base Will save (plus two? though I like that 'non-disciplined' -- poor Will -- classes won't get access to the abilities until later, and that this beefs up the benefit of having good Will for martial characters, so probably not).
  • Initiator level is equal to your character level.

Martial Abilities as Axis

After thinking about it a bit more, I am coming to like this idea, and it may make it easier to model Crusaders and Warblades.

Posit an axis that can replace the Caster axis. A poor rating on this axis means no access to martial disciplines, a medium rating gives access 'similar' to that of a Crusader or Warblade, a good rating gives access 'similar' to that of a Swordsage. Tables can be generated for maneuver and stance knowledge, and maneuvers readied. Probably still use feats and skills to gain access to the specific maneuvers and stances (axis provides feats for this purpose, and even poor Skill axis should provide access to enough skills, especially with a 'swordsage skill group').

Martial Abilities through Prestige Class

This one depends how the rest comes together. If using my Class Framework then a prestige class likely focuses on the use of a subset of disciplines, and assumes you already have access to them. It's possible to have prestige classes for the sole purpose of granting access to martial maneuvers, but designing them is beyond the scope of what I'm writing here.

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