Talk:Complete Sublime (3.5e Sourcebook)

Work Breakdown

To make it easier to figure out what we've done, I'm gonna write up a work breakdown here. Whenever something's been done, we can strikethrough it, with our name next to it, so we know who to chase up for corrections.

My work breakdown is as follows (although there's likely more than this):

• Create a breadcrumb for Complete Sublime - done by MisterSinister
• Create a category for Complete Sublime - done by MisterSinister
• Apply Complete Sublime breadcrumb to all the pages and/or subpages
• Apply Complete Sublime category to all necessary content
• Finish writing the Introduction chapter - done by MisterSinister
• Link the Introduction chapter subheadings properly - done by MisterSinister
• Create the Sublime Classes page and give it some content - done by MisterSinister
• Finish the Sublime Classes chapter - done by MisterSinister
• Create the Expanded Character Options page and give it some content - done by MisterSinister
• Finish the Expanded Character Options chapter
• Create the Disciplines page and give it some content - done by MisterSinister
• Finish the Disciplines chapter
• Create the Sublime Adventures page and give it some content
• Create an ACF section in Chapter 2 - done by MisterSinister
• Create an item section in Chapter 2 - done by MisterSinister
• Find some suitable art
• Expanded disciplines...basically adding martial maneuvers to ToB disciplines so that they are balanced with each other and the homebrew disciplines
• Write the Ebon Phoenix Master PrC
• Sublime Deities
• District (for cities)
• NPC Class?
• Plane?
• Sublime version of the PHB2 Knight?
• History of how the disciplines were founded, along with NPC writeups of major characters.

Please add more to this breakdown as you discover it. If you make some change to the breakdown, or if you wanna mark a job as done, make the summary 'Work breakdown' to make it easier on everyone.

-MisterSinister 20:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Since OneNode seems to have finally stabilized, time to get back to work. Which brings us to "what's left?" Discuss. -- Eiji-kun 23:23, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

See my breakdown above, basically. - MisterSinister 20:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Names

Complete Sublime sounds better than Tome of Battle II. --Havvy 01:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Havvy. Plus, I would like us to emphasise all the unusual fighting styles Reshar left out. I included the reason for why mine got left out by Reshar, and we should probably have a bunch of expansion options for the existing disciplines and classes too. - MisterSinister 10:45, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

That's two votes, that gives majority to Comp. Sublime as a name. All good.

Gotta work on it, but I wanna do a Tome of Magic and make a series of monsters based on the disciplines. Have a preview of what I was thinking...

• Aerial Ace (Something with like a million wings) DONE
• Amaranth Eclipse (Some kinda berserkery monster)
• Anima River (A ki elemental) DONE
• Army of One (Animated swarm of weapons)
• Black Rain (Bulletcat, made of over 9000 bullets)
• Blind Blade (Blind fighting grimlock things)
• Broken Blade (Something that mimics your maneuvers maybe)
• Chthonic Serpent (Snake with grappling whip tail)
• Coin's Edge (Lucky fey thing)
• Dancing Goddess (Shiva thing) DONE
• Desert Wind (Demon with scorching air breath and desert sandstorm shield)
• Devoted Spirit (Forms your opposite alignment and attacks)
• Diamond Mind (Alien creature able to move erratically/multiple times a round)
• Domestic Tarrasque (A berserker minotaur thing)
• Eloquent Speech (Non-fighting threat ala succubus, sows chaos and makes riots)
• Essential Cut (Some kind of Incarnum monster with maneuvers)
• Eternal Glacier (Ice based juggernaut)
• Golem Heart (Golem Heart, er, Golem....) DONE
• Hero's Edge (Tiny sized martial fey which tear you apart with tiny blades, maybe a swarm)
• Infinite Lotus (Living math formula monster)
• Iron Heart (Hotblood fey)
• Mental Grip (Monsterized Sith Lords)
• Narrow Bridge (Maneuver-based skeleton warrior)
• Pungeon Pendragon (Babbling monsters which mock and incite, seemingly for the hell of it. Trollers.)
• Setting Sun (Choker like monster which throws you hellava far)
• Shadow Hand (Shadowy assassin monster)
• Stone Dragon (Earth elemental dragon)
• Surreptitious Bandit (Sneakthief rogue fey)
• Thunder Bolt (Living Sentry Guns)
• Tiger Claw (Tiger Hecatoncheries, with over 9000 claws)
• White Raven (Bird which boosts ally monsters and keeps alive by seeking strength in other groups, like reverse Gray Renders)

Thoughts? -- Eiji-kun 10:52, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Nac Mac Feegle variant for Hero's Edge if you want that. Are there any disciplines here that aren't on the wiki or ToB yet? I did create this following sketch: User:Havvy/Complete_Sublime. I don't think I'll ever get to it, so feel free to use it, and tweak it. I wanted to limit how much was in it, but I don't think that is needed. We could technically have every new discipline in it that meets quality standards. I wanted to also focus on variants and expansions along with the history of Reshar, and why the limits of ToB are what they are (because they were written by a student of Reshar). That is a good list of monsters. You might also want to make sure they meet a nice range of challenge ratings, and I expect MLET will be followed. In my sketch, I included two new classes, but I can only remember what one of them is supposed to be. Other classes may of course be added. --Havvy 00:03, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

What Havvy said, basically. I'm quite willing to do a bit of history/fluff writing, but due to my level of busy-ness, I don't think I can contribute much mechanically beyond some basic content or clarity editing. - MisterSinister 10:37, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you like the monsters. Is MLET the thing where CR = HD? I try to do that by default, otherwise not sure what it stands for. For backstory, I had a ripped-from-Mortal-Kombat excuse why these seemingly random disciplines would know of each other, insofar that they have a tournment every 100 years or something to have a champion for the realm fight off an extradimensional invader (the menos subtype is related to this), so they battle it out to see what discipline will be the champion this century. I'd be happy to tie this into Reshar as well (and a few disciplines historical blurbs already do this). Any help, even just spellchecking, is totally appreciated.

I'm going slow on it, building up the monsters and all over the next week or two. When thats done, I'm totally cribbing that outline you made for me and opening up the sourcebook, unless someone else would like to open it up sooner. Thanks guys. -- Eiji-kun 23:56, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I made the outline for myself...anyways, MLET is indeed HD=CR. --Havvy 00:02, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Progress

Alright, I added a page for variant rules, and I listed all of the disciplines made by those whom I know won't object to being used. I also added Eiji's monsters, but otherwise haven't touched anything. Feel free to add/remove sections, or write one. --Havvy 04:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

If I may suggest something - instead of having stuff like the Destiny Warrior link to a subpage of the sourcebook, I think it would be better to have it link to its own wiki page, and then just create a link here. Look at Liber Demonica for how Cid and I did this. I'm gonna leave them there for now, since they're not mine, but the suggestion is there.

I also recommend using this section as a way to track active concerns with this piece of work. - MisterSinister 21:06, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

To give our first concern - I'm not sure having rushes and cross-discipline maneuvers as subpages of this work is really sensible. Is there some other place we can put them instead? Additionally, while we're on the subject - I think it would be better to have the monsters section listed more similarly to how Cid and I did it in Liber Demonica - fewer subpages make for easier navigation and also much less breadcrumbing pain. - MisterSinister 21:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

As I said, I completely forgot what I was going for with the Landwalker class. Feel free to change that portion any way you want. Anyways, variant rules never did mesh well with any of the wizard of the coast books to the fact that they threw them in as random sidebars. As far as monsters go, is the only difference that you list them by CR on the front page? As far as subpages go, I don't see a problem with having lots of subpages if there is a way to go to the original article quickly. I've been using ^{^} to mean "Go to this page directly." in tables, so I could do the same for the variant rules. Ideally we would want to have other variant rule options and why they might be useful in your campaign. I'm going to try the ^{^} thing out. Tell me what you think of it. --Havvy 02:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

FYI I also have feats for all my swag. Dancer of the Dais (3.5e Feat), Eternal Dancer (3.5e Feat), Red Wings of Glory (3.5e Feat), Variable Wing (3.5e Feat), Concentrated Defense (3.5e Feat), Enlightened Fist (3.5e Feat), Golem Heart Bond (3.5e Feat), and Upgrade Construction (3.5e Feat). -- Eiji-kun 07:35, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

When I get around to creating autolists for all this stuff, it'll all get added automatically. - MisterSinister 11:43, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

As an aside - what balance point are we aiming for with all this stuff? - MisterSinister 04:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I strongly encourage rogue level. The reasoning goes as follow; first being that of Tome of Battle being a rather nice example of rogue-level combat in the first place... you got your cool powers, you can beat things up well with big numbers or nice effects, but it's not wizard level. You're not omnipowerful and can't destroy encounters in a single round, though you can usually destroy at least one person in one round.

The next one is a general complaint about wizard-level in general, in that I recognize a fifth level (planar shepard level if you will) while the Wiki does not. Which is why the Sorcerer or Psion ends up in wizard, next to the class who gets Wish at 8th level as an SLA as well as planar shepards and sevenfold cheese builds.

The third is a matter of public opinion. ToB, like psionics, does tend to get a lot more flak from the more grognardish DMs out there. What better ammo for their errorous opinions than having a bunch of ToB homebrew which is even stronger than WotC stuff they are already questioning.

The forth is a issue of game relation. Say you're playing a fighter level game. You can stick a monk level person in there and they will be weak, but won't be drastically outpaced. You could stick a rogue-level in their and they will be strong, but they won't be drastically overpaced. Likewise, rogue-level games should be able to incorperate the next nearest levels (fighter and wizard) with only minor power issues, compared to a wizard in a fighter or a monk level game. So, if we went for wizard level, we'd only be able to weasel in rogue-level people into the same type of game without it being drastically overpowered. I rather we get two groups into the mix instead of just one.

Fifth is personal, all my stuff aims for rogue in the first place. I could give you a rant why rogue is best, but I'll spare you that.

All in all, I am totally ok with sticking to ToB's original rogue level and simply expanding our options rather than expanding our power. -- Eiji-kun 04:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, Eiji. I think I might just paraphrase you in our introduction. Or better, why don't you write it? - MisterSinister 04:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not good at intros, but I'm happy if I gave any fuel to the fire, feel free to quote anything you need. -- Eiji-kun 04:58, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Were we able to get the lists to auto-update themselves? I can't tell, but I have a ton of feats and items I've made, all tagged with Complete Sublime. I see the feats auto-update, though ironically the tactical feats are mixed in with the rest, go figure. -- Eiji-kun 07:14, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The list of feats currently auto-updates, but we can't exclude based on type currently (technical reasons) so tactical feats are going to be in there. It's a supported feature in a newer version of SMW, and I've pinged Surgo about installing it already. - Tarkisflux 18:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I was wrong. It's not in the newer version of SMW... yet. I've put in a bug report / feature request, so maybe we'll see something soonish. In the meantime, if you want tactical feats to ONLY show up below, they can't have any other feat type. It might be better to just list their types in the table and not separate them out for now. - Tarkisflux 22:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Why doesn't [[Type::!Tactical]] work?

It does, unless there are multiple values for the property. Since the properties for these are Tactical and <anything else>, the <anything else> gets a pass on the exclusion and the page gets included in the list. So for Type::!Tactical to work, we'd have to remove the other types from the feat entry. Or wait a few days for my bug report to generate something. - Tarkisflux 03:55, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Since a rather quick look by a guy who can't fix it and referral to the primary SMW author almost a month ago, there have been no updates. As such, I wouldn't expect it resolved anytime soon. Time to start considering a different format for feats :-/ - Tarkisflux 23:37, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Existing Discipline Updates

I'm gonna make more maneuvers for pre-existing disciplines. I have an idea by I'd like everyone's opinions. Ranked from 1 to 10, with 10 as the best, how would you rate each of the basic disciplines? This will help me get the ball starting on which ones need power ups, and how much. -- Eiji-kun 14:50, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll go through them one by one.

• Desert Wind - needs a lot of work. It has about 3 maneuvers worth having, and the rest may as well not be there.
• Devoted Spirit - see above.
• Diamond Mind - not a lot of changes needed there.
• Iron Heart - generally a bit lacking, and of course, who can forget Iron Heart Surge and its stupidity...
• Shadow Hand - generally OK, though it kinda suffers from the Desert Wind problem
• Stone Dragon - sucks monkey nuts, as your entire discipline shuts down from flying, being on an airship, being in the Astral Plane, being on the Elemental Plane of Air... I could go on.
• Tiger Claw - doesn't need a lot of work.
• White Raven - see Desert Wind, as it has the same problem

- MisterSinister 19:59, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Here are my proposed changes then.

• Desert Wind - Easy enough. Though fire focused, I can work with that to make fire less weak and generally boost damage up. It will be the blaster's discipline.
• Devoted Spirit - Perhaps some more defensive/abjuration type buffs, or dispelling type things?
• Diamond Mind - Not much done in power, maybe just new maneuvers on the base theme.
• Iron Heart - As above, with maybe a minor power buff.
• Shadow Hand - As above.
• Stone Dragon - Errata saying it works when not touching ground at a -3 penalty to attack/DC, and moves might become supernatural. Fairly large power boost too and more heavy use of the supernatural in general.
• Tiger Claw - Not much done in power, maybe just new maneuvers on the base theme. And maybe a 1st level maneuver without pre-reqs, that would be nice.
• White Raven - I actually see this as pretty solid, but I can give it more abilities which don't always need a group.

Let's see where this goes. -- Eiji-kun 01:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Those all seem sensible enough, but I don't believe they go far enough. Desert Wind being fire-focused is ten kinds of retarded - you don't find fire in deserts - you find water, earth and air, sure, but no fire. I would suggest adding a whole pile of maneuvers to it to make it the elemental discipline. Devoted Spirit needs to have powers which do level-appropriate things full stop - most of it isn't. More dispelling and buffs works, but I would actually ramp the healing available to it too. Iron Heart and Shadow Hand both need to have fewer turkey options - White Raven too, in a BIG way. Stone Dragon errata seems right. Tiger Claw seems right too. - MisterSinister 03:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to ignore this, as it's all kibitzing :-p. Water is important in a desert, but not very strongly tied there since it's so rare. Water powers should probably go elsewhere, boosting stone dragon with them sounds like it could be promising. Similarly, fire is tied to the desert because the desert is hot and as close to fire as you get unless you're in a volcano or start one yourself :-p. That said, adding air powers to it would be a nice change. It's in the name even. Earth powers are a maybe, mostly because that seems like a better fit with Stone Dragon. - Tarkisflux 04:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think that Tarkis makes good points. I think that earth powers should probably end up in Stone Dragon - I mean, it IS in the name and all. But air powers should definitely be in Desert Wind. Water... I see it belonging elsewhere - Setting Sun would be my first thought (and actually something I omitted, due to how awfully awful it is).

Additionally, I would like to make the stand that more non-combat powers are needed. Martial artists in the source material aren't just bruisers, but philosophers and often sages to boot, which I think our work needs to reflect by providing some abilities that can be useful both in and out of combat, and possibly even some that have nothing to do with combat at all. Thoughts? - MisterSinister 04:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Can do. I'll set out to being making 2 new ones per level and 1 new capstone, with some being out of combat useful. -- Eiji-kun 04:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Non-com stuff would be nice MS, but are there even any maneuvers types (aside from stances) that affect you and have a duration other than "this action/round"? Would adding personal duration based maneuvers mess with the recharge schedules in place? Would that sort of thing be restricted to stances only, or better done in feat form maybe? - Tarkisflux 04:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think it would mess with existing recharge schedules. Doing stuff in stance form is, however, much easier. There are maneuvers that last more than 1 round on record already, so I don't see issues with that. As for making it a feat - kill that. Kill it with fucking fire. People get like 7 feats ever, and I'm sure as hell not taxing them those for stuff their class should give them anyway. - MisterSinister 04:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

If you feel like tossing me a couple of duration based effects that would be nifty, preferably non-homebrew. It's fine if you don't though, I'm mostly just curious what they are and how they are constructed.

I actually had in mind a scaling feat, but attacking the feat idea with the desert wind discipline until it dies is a fair call too. It is a pretty harsh limit. Is the stance approach going to suffer the same problem as the feat approach also, or do people have enough stances to be able to give up some for this sort of thing? - Tarkisflux 05:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

(Resetting indent)Sure.

Blistering Flourish Desert Wind (Strike) Level: Swordsage 1 Action: 1 standard action Range: 30ft Area: 30ft burst, centred on you Duration: 1 minute Save: Fort negates

The very first one listed in ToB, too!

The main issue with scalies is that I see a lot of rogue-level fans being quite resistant to the idea, so I'm not sure if it's really suitable for Complete Sublime. As for stance availability, I reckon that honestly, it's something that people can afford to give up. Since you can only maintain 1 at a time anyway, they'll usually pick one 'combat stance' and just stand in it all day long anyway. Or at least, that's been my experience. Stances which give interesting things, like Hunter's Sense and Step of the Dancing Moth, are quite rare, and there need to be more of them. - MisterSinister 05:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Black Rain

Is there a reason we can't include this discipline in Complete Sublime? I'd dearly love to, because I think it's cool. - MisterSinister 21:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It's one of the domains Havvy transferred from GitP, and the author is not an active wiki participant. So there's nothing technically stopping you from doing so, but it's not especially cool without going to GitP to get the author's approval. - Tarkisflux 22:04, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I see. I'll ask Havvy to help me track him down. - MisterSinister 22:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, can't help you there. The Demented One is not one of the authors I assisted in getting material over here. --Havvy 01:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

My mistake :-/. Guess you'll have to ask him on GitP then. - Tarkisflux 03:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I'll just fire off a PM to him and ask if he'd allow use of his material. I don't think he would be against us porting and including all of his disciplines in the book. I had read over there that they were attempting a similar endeavor called "The Book of Nine More Swords (and One Gun)" that kinda of fell flat or something. Karuma 16:44, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

His PM inbox was full so I fired off an Email via the forum, hopefully it is attached to a real Inbox. Karuma 16:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I tried the emailing thing. Have yet to hear from him. - MisterSinister 10:33, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The Demented One here. I'm fine with you guys using any of my old stuff from GitP. 71.45.124.252 20:27, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Yay!  :D -- Eiji-kun 21:49, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

(Reverting indent) Success! - MisterSinister 01:26, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Woo, this may actually spark me back into working on the wiki. --Havvy 03:24, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

New Material

Just making a new topic for any new material being added that isn't already planned (like the monsters above).

Where do I put Philomactous (3.5e Vestige)? I just realized there'd be no places for the crossing of non-discipline stuff with discipline themes, such as vestiges, spells dealing directly with maneuvers, and stuff. Actually didn't someone make an anti-maneuver field? Anyways... here ya go. -- Eiji-kun 09:07, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing that up, Eiji. I'll have that section created post-haste. - MisterSinister 09:58, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I've MLET'd a ton of golems. If you wish, add them here. While not MLA packing monsters, golems are the classic arch-enemy of all things caster so it might fit. They currently have the CSublime tag. Also, almost done, CR 25 Neutronium Golem. -- Eiji-kun 18:20, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

While they could go here for now, when Cidolfas starts on his big book of monsters, they would probably fit better there. One of the notions of Complete Sublime is that magic and blade are not counterpoint, but rather, in DnD, an integrated trope. --Havvy 18:51, 2 May 2011 (UTC)