The Companions of Tartiël by Jeff Wilcox Read Free Book Online

if five or ten feet, they’re not much of a threat. Oh, you are running with the three-five edition rules, right?” I asked, referring to the current edition of the D&D rules.
    He nodded. “Yeah. So this soulblade you mentioned earlier, how’s it work?”
    “You know how the soulknife class creates its mind blade with mental energy? It’s similar in function, except that the source is the blademaster’s spirit rather than his mind. However, blademasters can’t throw their soulblades like the soulknives can; in fact, the moment it leaves the blademaster’s hand, his soulblade disappears.
    “Can it be broken or disarmed or anything?”
    “Mm, sort of,” I replied. “It can be sundered or disarmed, but because of its nature, the blademaster can just reform it on his next turn, or, if he’s high enough level, even before then. Really powerful blademasters technically can’t be disarmed because they can reform their soulblades as a non-action, even during someone else’s turn.”
    Dingo whistled. “Sounds interesting. So are they heavy hitters, or what?”
    “Not at all. I mean, if you built a blademaster solely around dealing damage, you could do it, but you’d get much better mileage out of a fighter or barbarian. Blademasters are designed to be highly defensive and to be able to defend other members of the party. They gain an insight bonus to AC [13] equal to their Wisdom bonus and AC bonuses like the monk. Then, based on certain ‘blademaster paths’ the individual blademaster chooses, he can gain numerous abilities. You could grab ‘fast movement,’ followed by ‘lightning manifest,’ which allows you to make one extra attack as a free action, a number of times per day equal to the blademaster’s level. Or, you could choose to gain an ability where you extend you Combat Expertise [14] AC bonus to an adjacent ally without giving them the penalty.”
    “Ooh, I’m liking it.”
    “Their damage is limited to a d8 plus whatever bonuses they have from Strength, but by choosing certain abilities like the ones I was talking about, they can increase their damage dice, too.”
    Dingo nodded. “Cool, cool. Um, these soul… blades, can they be enhanced magically?”
    “No. In fact, spells that would normally enhance weapons, like magic weapon and greater magic weapon , don’t work on a soulblade, because it isn’t a manufactured weapon. And the magic fang spells from the druid list don’t work, either, because the soulblade’s not a natural weapon.” Again, Dingo raised his eyebrow. “Okay, well, part of the concept of the blademaster is that he is self-sufficient in that he relies—or tries to—on his own power, on his own spirit. Like the soulknife class, the blademaster’s weapon gains an enhancement bonus to attack and damage over time, and some of the blademaster’s paths hold abilities that can be added to the blade, like an alignment [15] -based damage type, and so on.”
    “Okay. So where’s the monk come into play?”
    I winced. Dingo had previously said he was not a fan of Eastern influence in terms of flavor, but I went ahead anyway. “Well, it’s more samurai-like than monk-like. Blademasters are very quick and very martial focused on their community. But a blademaster is actually beholden to himself before his people. They’re loyal to those they’re sworn to protect, and they never give up, but unlike samurai, they know when to retreat, and their loyalty is not blind. Their training, like both samurai and monk, makes them very focused, so concentration is an important skill for them—it even lets them manifest their soulblades in an area of antimagic.”
    “Whoa, that’s neat.”
    “Yeah, well, I decided it would suck if a martial class got fucked over because he waltzed into an antimagic zone and couldn’t draw his sword. And since the sign of a true blademaster is the lack of any material weapons, I decided to balance that out. In areas of no magic, the soulblade loses