Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Martial Arts Guide Book: Part 1




This is a guest post for Rite Publishing by Timothy Wallace (Hawkins the DM) who will be the lead designer on our newest patronage project which will launch on February 14th



I have been an avid roleplayer since I played my first game of Vampire Dark Ages my senior year of college 10 years ago. I still remember how my Ravnos constantly butted heads with my roommate’s Malchavian, to the point where it almost came to blows (between our characters, not us). And as many who grew up in the mid-to-late 80’s and early 90’s,The Karate Kid awakened in me a thirst for martial arts that was only fed by the inception of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Though I did not know it at the time, the Turtles were my first exposure to an adventuring party; and they were ninjas and did martial arts to boot! The Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords was the first roleplaying supplement that did a great job of combining these two passions of mine into a single product. But it is one of the products that does not translate well from 3.5 to Pathfinder; and on top of that it was controversial in its approach of “abilities per day” while also invalidating core rulebook classes (I know that I swore off PHB fighters as soon as the warblade was available to me).

I am excited to be able to design a PFRPG supplement that, while not a direct conversion of the Tome of Battle, I like to think it will be the spiritual successor of it. I am also looking forward to showcasing different martial arts styles for different weapons, races, and regions; whereas so far only unarmed martial arts styles have been focused on before.

Tim Hawkins

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