Blade Magic

The uncanny power of the Sublime Way springs from a blend of physical skill, mental self-discipline, and adherence to distinct martial philosophies. Many of the maneuvers of the various martial disciplines aren’t magic at all—they are simply demonstrations of near-superhuman skill and training. Although many of the maneuvers and methods taught by the Sublime Way are mundane in execution and effect, their results can sometimes rival spells. The warriors who study the nine schools are capable of battlefield feats beyond those that a traditionally schooled and trained warrior can hope to accomplish. The typical fighter might display great skill in a weapon’s basic cuts, thrusts, and parries, but a student of the Sublime Way believes that mastering a weapon requires self-discipline and spiritual austerity in addition to learning the correct physical postures and movements.

Martial Powers

Martial powers fall into two broad categories: stances and maneuvers (which include boosts, counters, and strikes). A martial maneuver is a discrete effect that is temporarily expended after use. A stance is never expended and is always available to you.

You can use a particular stance or maneuver as many times as you like in a single day, but each time you use a maneuver, you temporarily expend it—you lose a little of your mental focus, you exhaust some small portion of your personal ki or energy, or you simply finish the move out of position and can’t immediately launch the same attack again without assuming the proper posture and mental state first. In other words, you can’t use an expended maneuver again until you rest for a brief time or perform a specific action in combat that allows you to recover one or more expended maneuvers. The type of action necessary depends on what type of martial adept you are; see each class description for details on each class’s maneuver recovery mechanism. As a result, you can normally use each of your readied maneuvers once per encounter, but sometimes you can recover one or more maneuvers you used earlier in the encounter and use them again. You never expend or use up your stances, so they are always available.

Readying Maneuvers

You do not need to ready your stances ahead of time. Every stance you know is always available to you. However, maneuvers require preparation in the form of exercise, prayer, meditation, or simple mental rehearsal. Therefore, you must choose a selection of readied maneuvers from all the maneuvers you know. Only your readied maneuvers are available for immediate use.

The number of maneuvers you can ready at one time depends on your class and level. If you do not have any levels in a martial adept class (for example, you learned a maneuver by means of the Martial Study feat), you can ready each maneuver you know. For example, if you have chosen the Martial Study feat two times and know two martial maneuvers, you automatically ready both those maneuvers, and you can use each of those maneuvers once per encounter. You can take the Martial Study feat a maximum of three times. If you are a martial adept and you have the Martial Study feat, you do not gain any bonus to your ability to ready maneuvers—the maneuver you learned with the feat is just one more maneuver known from which you can select your readied maneuvers.

To ready maneuvers, you require a brief period of practice, exercise, meditation, or prayer. The exact nature of the exercise or meditation depends on your martial adept class, but each class requires 5 minutes of preparation time. Since each martial maneuver requires a precise combination of techniques for gathering inner energy, training muscle memory, speaking prayers or catechisms, and even focusing the mind on specific concepts or analogies, most martial adepts can’t keep every maneuver they know at the forefront of their minds. You do not need to be well rested to ready your maneuvers, but you do need to be able to stand and move without restraint. As long as you are not physically disturbed during your exercise and meditation, you can exchange your previously chosen set of readied maneuvers for a new set of readied maneuvers. Unlike a wizard preparing her spells, you cannot choose to leave a readied maneuver slot unfilled.

Initiating Maneuvers and Stances

To initiate a maneuver or a stance, you must be able to move. You do not need to be able to speak. You initiate a maneuver by taking the specified initiation action. A maneuver might require an reaction, bonus, movement, or another action to initiate. The process of initiating a maneuver is similar to that of casting a spell, although there are some key differences (see below). You can only choose to initiate a maneuver that is currently readied and unexpended. In addition, if you are a crusader, the maneuver you choose must be granted to you—you can’t choose to initiate a maneuver that is currently withheld.

You initiate a stance as a bonus action. A stance remains in effect indefinitely and is not expended. You enjoy the benefit your stance confers until you change to another stance you know as a bonus action. You can remain in a stance outside of combat situations, and you can enjoy its benefit while exploring or traveling.

Concentration

Unlike with spells, you need not concentrate to initiate a maneuver or stance. Furthermore, if you are injured or affected by hostile spells, powers, or maneuvers while initiating a maneuver or assuming a stance, you don’t lose the maneuver or stance.

Enemy interference might make certain maneuvers impossible to complete. For example, if an enemy who readied an action to trip you when you started your turn knocks you prone, you would not be able to use a maneuver that required you to charge. Similarly, if you begin your turn grappled or restrained, you might find that most of the maneuvers available to you simply won’t be of any use until you get free.

If you initiate a maneuver and subsequently can’t use it during your turn, the maneuver is still considered expended. You are considered to have used its initiation action for the purpose of determining what actions remain available to you on your turn.

You do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate a maneuver or stance unless its description explicitly says otherwise. Some maneuvers allow you to move, charge, and take other actions that could provoke attacks of opportunity. Unless the maneuver description specifically says that such actions do not provoke attacks of opportunity, they do. For example, if you use a maneuver to charge a foe, and during that charge you move in a way that provokes attacks of opportunity, you provoke them as normal unless the maneuver description explicitly says otherwise.

Initiator Level

Some maneuvers and stances have variable effects (such as duration) that depend on initiator level. However, maneuvers are not impacted as strongly by a user’s level as spells are. This difference in effect is primarily a balance and game play issue. Since you can use maneuvers repeatedly, they tend to scale poorly. As you attain higher levels, you usually use your low-level maneuvers less often (if you haven’t already traded them out for higher-level stances, as described in the martial adept class descriptions). Many stances, boosts, and counters, however, remain useful across all levels.

If you are a single-class character, your initiator level equals your level in the class that provides access to martial maneuvers (crusader, swordsage, or warblade). If you lack any martial adept levels, your initiator level is equal to 1/2 your character level.

Multiclass Characters

Even when you gain levels in a class that does not grant martial maneuvers, your understanding of the martial disciplines still increases. A highly skilled fighter has the basic combat training and experience needed to master advanced maneuvers. If you are a multiclass martial adept, and you learn a new maneuver by attaining a new level in a martial adept class, determine your initiator level by adding together your level in that class + 1/2 your levels in all other classes. Look up the result on the table below to determine the highest-level maneuvers you can take. You still have to meet a maneuver’s prerequisite to learn it.

For example, a 7th-level crusader/5th-level swordsage has an initiator level of 9th for determining the highest level maneuvers he can take as a crusader. As a result, he can take 5th-level crusader maneuvers. As a swordsage, his initiator level is 8th, allowing him to take 4th-level swordsage maneuvers. This process applies to all of a character’s levels, whether they are in martial adept classes or other classes.

Initiator Level	Maneuver Level
1st – 2nd	1st
3rd – 4th	2nd
5th – 6th	3rd
7th – 8th	4th
9th – 10th	5th
11th – 12th	6th
13th – 14th	7th
15th – 16th	8th
17th+	9th

Resolving a Maneuver or Stance

Once you have chosen a maneuver to initiate, you must resolve its effects.

• Attack Rolls: Many maneuvers include an attack of some kind. All offensive combat actions, even those that don’t damage opponents (such as disarm and bull rush), are considered attacks. All maneuvers that opponents can resist with saving throws, that deal damage, or that otherwise harm or hamper subjects are considered attacks.
• Actions during a Maneuver: The Initiation Action line of a maneuver description provides the action required to use that maneuver. For example, the initiation action of he radiant charge maneuver is 1 action. Thus, as part of your attack action, you bring about the effect in the maneuver description. In this case, the maneuver allows you to make a charge attack with a number of additional benefits.

Recovering Expended Maneuvers

You begin each encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended. When you initiate a maneuver, it is expended—you cannot use it again until you recover it. You can recover expended maneuvers in two ways: through special actions or at the end of an encounter. You never expend a stance.

• Special Action: Most martial adepts can refresh some or all of their expended maneuvers in the course of a battle by taking a special action to do so. The type of special action required depends on a martial adept’s class (or feat) selection, as summarized below.
  • Crusader, Swordsage, Warblade: Refer to class descriptions for ways each recovers their maneuvers.
  • Multiclass Martial Adept: A character with two or more martial adept classes keeps track of his readied maneuvers, expended maneuvers, and recovery of expended maneuvers separately for each class.
  • Character with the Martial Study feat: A character who knows one or more martial maneuvers through the Martial Study feat but does not otherwise have a level in a martial adept class cannot recover expended maneuvers through any sort of special action. He can only recover expended maneuvers at the end of an encounter (see below).
  • End of the Encounter: When an encounter ends, a martial adept automatically recovers all expended maneuvers. Even a few moments out of combat is sufficient to refresh all maneuvers expended in the previous battle. In the case of a long, drawn-out series of fights, or if an adept is out of combat entirely, assume that if a character makes no attacks of any kind, initiates no new maneuvers, and is not targeted by any enemy attacks for 1 full minute, he can recover all expended maneuvers. If a character can’t avoid attacking or being attacked for 1 minute, he can’t automatically recover his maneuvers and must use special actions to do so instead.

Martial Powers and Magic

In general, martial maneuvers and stances that create effects are transparent to magic. However, martial maneuvers rarely interact with spells or powers. Once a maneuver is initiated, the effect lasts only for your turn unless otherwise noted, giving an opponent little opportunity to counter it.

Martial maneuvers and stances are never spells or spell-like abilities. Unless the description of the specific maneuver or stance says otherwise, treat it as an ability. Thus, these abilities work just fine in an antimagic field or a dead magic zone. A maneuver or stance can’t be dispelled or counterspelled, and initiating one does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Magical Maneuvers. If a maneuver is overtly magical or other uses a magical power source, it is noted as a magical. In this case, the maneuver obeys all standard rules for magical effects and can be dispelled or counterspelled (using its maneuver level).

Detecting Martial Maneuvers: Most maneuvers don’t create persistent or long-lasting effects, and the results are obvious to any observer. However, identifying a specific maneuver, stance, or discipline requires the Martial Lore skill (see Skill Tricks).

Multiple Effects: Martial maneuvers and stances usually work as described, no matter how many other powers, spells, or magical effects happen to be operating in the same area or on the same subject. Whenever a maneuver or stance has a specific effect on other maneuvers, powers, or spells, its description explains the effect. Most martial adepts can use only one stance at a time, but some high-level adepts might be able to use two stances at once.

Stacking Effects: Maneuvers or stances that provide bonuses or penalties on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and other attributes do not stack with each other unless specifically noted within their descriptions.

Martial Discipline

Each maneuver belongs to one of nine martial disciplines. The maneuvers in a discipline are loosely linked by common effects, philosophies, or functions. The second line of a maneuver or stance description provides the name of the relevant discipline, along with its type (see below). Just like maneuver names, the names of martial disciplines vary widely from one locale to another. In fact, the term discipline is not universally used. Disciplines might be known as schools, traditions, philosophies, regimens, teachings, paths, or styles. For example, the Desert Wind discipline might be known in some areas as the Green Naga style or the Wakeful Dreamer philosophy.

Each discipline is tied to a skill that might be used in the execution of some of its maneuvers. In addition, various weapons lend themselves to the philosophy or maneuvers of different disciplines.

The nine disciplines include the following.

(Type)

Most martial powers fall into one of four categories: boost, counter, stance, or strike. Some maneuvers don’t fall into any of these categories, but these are exceptions to the rule. The maneuver categories below refer to bonus and reaction actions.

• Boost: This category covers maneuvers that allow a warrior to focus himself, summon his ki energy or other source of power, and unleash it through his melee attacks. A crusader who draws a deep breath, shouts an invocation to his god or cause, and then unleashes a mighty attack is using a boost. A boost is a maneuver that grants a bonus, often on attack rolls or damage rolls, for the duration of your turn.
  
  A boost always requires a bonus action, usually allowing you to initiate it before unleashing an attack action. Some boosts impart additional effects, such as stun or fatigue, to your attacks, and others provide some additional effect on an enemy you have just successfully struck in battle. If a boost affects your attacks, it applies to all of your attacks for the round in which it was initiated, but its effect ends at the end of your turn. A boost’s effect applies for its duration, no matter which weapon you might wield in that round. Even if you switch weapons in the middle of your turn, the effect of the boost applies to your new weapon as readily as the previous weapon. Each maneuver’s description gives you the details of each boost’s effect.
  
  A boost doesn’t have to modify a melee attack. It could provide a bonus on a skill check, to your speed, and so on, but such maneuvers are relatively rare.
• Counter: A counter is a fast, usually defensive maneuver that you use to foil your opponent’s actions. A swordsage who dodges to just beyond a rampaging minotaur’s reach is using a counter.
  
  The Setting Sun school features many counters, because it focuses on teaching students to turn an opponent’s strength against him. Counters are reactions that you attempt during a foe’s turn. Usually, your opponent must make a specific action, such as an attack against you, for you to use a counter.
• Strike: A strike is a maneuver that allows a special attack. A warblade who delivers a single blow that slays an ogre is using a strike. A strike imparts some advantage or bonus over a standard attack, such as extra damage, an additional effect such as blinding a foe, and so forth.
  
  Strikes almost always require an attack action to complete. Most of them involve a melee attack as part of completing the maneuver. If the attack hits, your opponent typically takes normal melee damage, as well as suffering the effect of the strike. When making a strike, you use your proficiency bonus (if applicable), all attack and damage modifiers, weapon damage, and so forth, as normal. You can make a critical hit with a strike, and in a few cases, a critical hit grants you additional benefits. You do not multiply extra damage from a strike with a successful critical hit. You treat it just as you would extra damage from another special ability, such as sneak attack.
  
  Because strikes allow for a specific form of attack, you cannot benefit from spells or effects that grant you extra attacks when making a strike (such as the haste spell or a speed weapon). You are not taking an attack action when you initiate a strike, even if its initiation action is 1 attack action. In addition, you cannot combine special attacks such as shove or grapple with strikes, even if you have feats that make such special attacks more potent. However, some strikes enable you to make special attacks as part of their initiation; see the specific maneuver descriptions for details.
• Stance: A stance is not a maneuver, but a specific fighting method that you maintain from round to round. So long as you maintain a stance, you gain some benefit from it. A swordsage initiate of the Shadow Hand school who creates a concealing shroud of shadow energy while he moves is using a stance.
  
  You can initiate a stance as a bonus action. When you enter a stance, you immediately gain its benefit. You continue to gain the benefit of a typical stance as long as you remain in it. Some stances give you a benefit only when you meet certain conditions. For example, a stance might grant a bonus when you move, when you remain in the same spot, or if you attack a stunned or surprised opponent.
  
  You can use a single bonus action to end one stance and begin another, or you can choose to simply end your current stance without entering a different one. You continue to gain a stance’s benefits until you switch to a new stance or end your current one. At the start of your turn, you might be in a stance that grants you a bonus on attack rolls. You could make your attacks—gaining the stance’s bonus—then use a bonus action to switch to a stance that gives you a bonus to AC.
  
  Your stance ends if you are rendered incapacitated for any reason. If you later recover, you must use another bonus action to initiate your stance once again.
  
  Stances are considered maneuvers for the purpose of fulfilling prerequisites for learning higher-level maneuvers, or qualifying for feats. For example, if a Stone Dragon maneuver requires you to know one Stone Dragon maneuver, and you know the stonefoot stance (a 1st-level Stone Dragon stance), you qualify to take the higher-level maneuver.

[Descriptor]

Some maneuvers have descriptors that further define them. These descriptors appear on the same line as the discipline of the maneuver.

The descriptors that can apply to maneuvers are cold, electricity, evil, fear, fire, force, good, mind-affecting, teleport, and sonic. Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how a maneuver interacts with other maneuvers, powers, spells, or abilities.

Level

This entry gives the martial adept class or classes that have access to this maneuver: crusader, swordsage, or warblade. The line also gives the maneuver’s level within that class. You can learn any maneuver you like by choosing the Martial Study feat, regardless of class. However, you must still meet the prerequisite of the maneuver.

Prerequisite

In addition to meeting the class and level requirements before you can learn a maneuver, you must meet a certain set of requirements to be able to choose that maneuver as one you know. Stances are considered maneuvers for the purpose of meeting a prerequisite to learn a new maneuver.

You can’t learn a maneuver unless you gain a level in a martial adept class, or you take the Martial Study feat.

• Maneuvers Known: Some of the more powerful maneuvers require you to learn one or more other maneuvers in the same discipline before they can be selected.

Initiation Action

This entry describes the type of action you must expend to activate a martial maneuver. In some cases, you initiate a maneuver, and its effect lasts for the rest of your turn (or beyond). In other cases, maneuvers last only as long as the action required to initiate them (1 bonus action, 1 reaction, 1 movement action, 1 attack action).

Range

A maneuver’s range indicates how far from you it can reach. Many maneuvers are treated as Personal-range effects, because you initiate the maneuver to give yourself a special bonus or capability for the round.

Standard ranges include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Personal: The maneuver affects only you (but might give you an unusual power or ability that affects others for the rest of your turn).
• Touch: You must touch a creature or object to affect it. A touch maneuver that deals damage can score a critical hit just as a weapon can, although you do not multiply the extra damage from a maneuver on a successful critical hit.
• Melee: The maneuver affects any creature you make a successful melee attack against.
• Adjacent: The maneuver affects creatures within 1 square of you. Sometimes you only affect adjacent creatures at the beginning of your turn or at the end of your turn, but other maneuvers might affect any creature you move adjacent to during the course of your turn. See the specific maneuver descriptions for details.
• Range Expressed in Feet: Some maneuvers have no standard range category, just a range expressed in feet.

Targeting a Maneuver

You might have to make some choice about whom your maneuver is to affect or where it will originate. This entry describes the maneuver’s target or targets, its effect, or its area, as appropriate.

• Target or Targets: Most maneuvers affect a specific creature or object (or more than one creature or object) that you designate as your target or targets. You must be able to see or touch the target, and you must specifically choose that target.
  
  Some maneuvers can be initiated only on willing targets. You can declare yourself a willing target at any time (even if you’re surprised or it isn’t your turn). Unconscious characters are always considered willing, but a character who is conscious but immobilized or incapacitated is not automatically willing.
  
  Some maneuvers target you (but they might confer an unusual ability to affect other creatures for the rest of your turn). If the target of a maneuver is “Self,” you do not receive a saving throw—you receive the benefit of the maneuver automatically as long as you meet any other requirements for initiating it successfully.
  
  Other maneuvers affect a creature or creatures that you successfully hit with a melee attack, and some affect a creature you successfully hit with a melee or ranged touch attack.
• Area: Some maneuvers can affect an area. You might be able to choose the point where the maneuver’s effect originates, but otherwise you usually don’t control which creatures or objects an area maneuver affects.
• Burst: A burst affects whatever it catches in its area, including creatures you can’t see. It can’t affect creatures that have total cover from its point of origin. The default shape for a burst is a sphere.
• Emanation: An emanation functions like a burst, except that the effect continues to radiate from the point of origin (often you) for the duration of the maneuver.
• Spread: A spread effect spreads out like a burst, but can turn corners. You select the point of origin, and the effect spreads out a given distance in all directions.
• Effect: Some maneuvers create something rather than affecting things that are already present. You must designate the location where these things are to appear, either by seeing it or defining it. Range determines how far away an effect can appear.
• Line of Effect: Maneuvers that affect a target other than you require line of effect. A line of effect is a straight, unblocked path that indicates what an effect can affect. A solid barrier cancels a line of effect, but line of effect is not blocked by fog, darkness, and other factors that limit normal sight.
  
  You must have a clear line of effect to any target that you initiate a maneuver against, or to any space in which you wish to create an effect at range (if your maneuver allows that). A burst or emanation affects only an area, creature, or objects to which it has a line of effect from its origin. An otherwise solid barrier with a hole of at least 1 square foot through it does not block a maneuver’s line of effect.

Duration

A maneuver’s duration tells you how long its effect lasts.

• End of Turn: The maneuver’s effect lasts until the end of your turn, then ceases to function.
• Instantaenous: The effect of the maneuver comes and goes the instant the maneuver is initiated, though the consequences might be long-lasting. For example, the moment of alacrity boost takes only a bonus action to initiate, but it improves your initiative count for the duration of the combat.
• One-Round Durations: Some durations are measured as 1 round. You gain the capability to perform whatever special effect or attack the maneuver permits on your turn. Immediately before your action in the round after you initiated the maneuver, its effect comes to an end.
• Stance: This duration indicates that the ability is a stance, and therefore ends only when you will it to end, when you become helpless, or when you fulfill a specific condition described in the stance’s description.
• Timed Durations: Many maneuvers last some number of rounds or minutes. When the time is up, the energy sustaining the effect fades, and the maneuver’s effect ends.
• No Duration: The effect of a maneuver without a duration lasts only as long as it takes you to initiate the maneuver. Some maneuvers “last” less than a full round. Such is often the case for maneuvers that deal extra damage on top of your normal melee damage. For example, a strike with an initiation action of 1 attack action would effectively have a duration of 1 attack action; the effect of the strike is tied to the action of making the attack. When this is the case, no duration entry is given.

Saving Throw

Sometimes, a maneuver with a special effect or augmentation that targets an enemy allows the creature or object to make a saving throw to avoid some or all of the effect. The saving throw line in a maneuver description defines which type of saving throw a maneuver allows.

• Negates: The maneuver has no additional effect on a subject that makes a successful saving throw.
• Partial: The maneuver causes an effect on its subject, such as death. A successful saving throw means that some lesser effect occurs (such as being dealt damage rather than being killed).
• Half: The maneuver deals damage, and a successful saving throw halves the damage taken (round down).
• None: In a case where no saving throw is allowed, the saving throw line is omitted.
• Saving Throw Difficulty Class: The formula for determining a saving throw DC against a maneuver’s special effect is tied to the initiators maneuver DC detailed in their class description. If they do not have a martial class the DC is equal to 8 + their proficiency bonus + their Intelligence modifier.

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Maneuver and Stance List

Discipline	Crusader	Swordsage	Warblade
Desert Wind	No	Yes	No
Devoted Spirit	Yes	No	No
Diamond Mind	No	Yes	Yes
Iron Heart	No	No	Yes
Setting Sun	No	Yes	No
Shadow Hand	No	Yes	No
Stone Dragon	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tiger Claw	No	Yes	Yes
White Raven	Yes	No	Yes
Blood Moon

Martial Scripts

A martial script is a small strip of paper or cloth marked with delicate lettering that holds the secret of a martial maneuver. Any given script grants the use of the maneuver recorded on it for one encounter. Once it is activated, a script vanishes in a puff of white smoke.

• Physical Description: A typical script is a long, thin slip of paper or cloth about 6 to 12 inches long and 1 to 2 inches wide, typically wound around a small wooden spindle or rod. Small, precise lettering covers most of one surface. A script has AC 13, 1 hit point, and a break DC of 8.
• Identifying Scripts: Martial scripts are magic items. They radiate magic of the Divination school (faint for initiator level 5th or less, moderate for initiator level 6th to 11th, strong for initiator level 12th to 20th, and overpowering for initiator level 21st or higher).
  
  Anyone who can read the language of the script can determine what it does, and it can also be identified by any of the standard methods of magic item identification. Furthermore, characters with the Martial Lore skill trick can identify the function of a script without knowing the language in which it is written (Martial Lore DC 15 + the martial adept level associated with the script). Making this check does not grant that character the ability to use the script—only to identify it.
• Activation: To activate a script, you must read its words aloud. Typically, this requirement means you must be able to read the alphabet used for the script, but you don’t necessarily have to understand the language. An illiterate character cannot activate a script.
  
  If you don’t know the alphabet in which the script is written, you can use Martial Lore to activate it. To do so, you must succeed on a Martial Lore check (DC 20 + the martial adept level associated with the script). Success gives you the option of using the script immediately or readying for later use.
  
  Reading a script is a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity.
• Use: When you read a script, you gain the ability to use the single martial maneuver recorded on it for one encounter. If the maneuver can be used only once per encounter or has other use restrictions, all those limitations apply to your use of it. Using a script does not allow you to break the normal usage rules for maneuvers. For example, if you would normally be limited to using one stance at a time, that restriction still applies. You need not use the maneuver right away; you can hold it ready for use for up to 1 hour. At any point during that hour, you can use the maneuver simply by initiating it. If you’ve read several scripts and initiated their use, you have access to all the maneuvers they grant for their durations, but you can hold only one script-granted maneuver ready at a time. If you read a second script before using the maneuver granted by the first, you lose the first maneuver and now have the second script’s maneuver readied.