Battle Brother [Path]

Discussion on playing Earthdawn. Experiences, stories, and questions related to being a player.
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ragbasti
Posts:118
Joined:Sat Jan 21, 2017 5:09 pm
Battle Brother [Path]

Post by ragbasti » Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:20 pm

Part 1 on my quest to make Throwing Weapons useful:

This Path aims to make Throwing Weapons more of a Primary choice for attacks while still being useful if you decide to ignore that part.
It's designed specifically around the idea of a Battle Poet/Leader of Men kind of character who does not shy away from getting in close and personal.
So if you want to make your Troubadour more fighty or your Sky Raider even more shouty, this may just be the Path for you :D

08/03/2021: Made some major changes to the Knacks and Talents, also added a Path-specific Thread Item and one that synergises really well with them. Rewritten to relocate the Order to Shosara (previously Landis). Their overall theme fits much better into that part of the World and it also happens to overlap with future plans for my game.

01/02/2022: Final version 2.0 - Changes some talents/Knacks around. Brought a lot of things together (at least I feel that way) and renamed the Path because a friend from Iceland gave me a much better name for it :D

Full PDF with fluff text, talents and all can be found under this link to the File.


Rambling about what I'm trying to do here, reading optional:
Spoiler:
This thing started around a year ago and has gone through a bunch of changes, based on feedback from my own game and a little playtesting.
The general idea was to create a Path that could facilitate Throwing Weapons to be the main form of attack, while not having to cram a bunch of talents in there that are only useful for Throwing Things. Thus, many of the additional Attack talents that the various martial disciplines get have been been given a Knack to turn them into a ranged version.
I also wanted to include Blade Juggle into this, mainly because I just love the talent. Blade Juggle receives multiple Knacks, one to get rid of the need for multiple weapons, one that trades defence for offence and area denial, and the last one pretty much imitates the Devastator Spear, allowing for a very strong muti-attack.
The main takeaway here is that instead of trying to build something from the ground up that uses Throwing Weapons, I instead opted to make the Throwing weapons an extension of what is already there. Due to that, the path can be perfectly viable for any martial discipline without ever dipping into the Throwing Weapons bit.
I also added Deliberate Assault, since not every potential follower can keep up with the Initiative game, and because it seemed like a very good fit overall.

All other Talent Options are pretty self-explanatory and are heavily influenced by the overall theme of the Path:
Comradery, combat, and social interaction - specifically with a community.
PS: Yes, it's quite similar to Panda's Sun Herald, both in theme and mechanics, but I can at least say that I already worked on this way before he posted his. I will admit though that I took some inspiration from it for the later iterations :P
Last edited by ragbasti on Tue Feb 01, 2022 9:30 pm, edited 9 times in total.

tylerdietrich
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Joined:Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:25 pm
Location:Boston
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Re: Battle Brother [Path]

Post by tylerdietrich » Sat Oct 17, 2020 3:28 pm

I hope, you will do everything, you've planned.
Hello, I am Robert, living in the USA. My main hobby is architecture, but if you are a smart and interesting person, we'll definitely find what to talk about. I am working as an editor in the compare and contrast writing division.

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