Aether (3.5e Maneuver)

''You throw your weapon up into the air, setting it to spin wildly. As your opponent watches in dumbstruck disbelief, you leap up after your weapon, catch it by the hilt, and bring it crashing down directly onto their head, followed up by a quick attack directly into the chinks of his armor.''

As part of this maneuver, make a Jump check against a DC of 40, followed by an unarmed melee attack roll against your weapon's AC (the melee attack roll is unnecessary if you perform this maneuver with unarmed attacks or natural weapons, and no running start is needed for the Jump check). If you succeed on both rolls (or just the Jump check if performing an unarmed attack as described above), you choose an opponent within up to four times your melee reach and move to a location that you could legally make a melee attack against that opponent from (including straight up; for instance, a creature with a reach of 5 feet could use this maneuver to leap up to hit an enemy up to 20 feet above its vertical reach). The movement is part of the standard action used to perform Aether and does not count against any other actions used to move during this round, though it does preclude taking a 5-foot step just like any other form of movement would. As you are in midair when moving via Aether, you are unimpeded by difficult terrain; also, while your movement does provoke attacks of opportunity, creatures on the ground take a &minus;4 penalty if they attempt to make an attack of opportunity against you. You are considered to move in a straight line towards the space you choose, ignoring all obstacles (including creatures) in your path that are not taller than the maximum vertical distance you can leap or connected to the ceiling, and must conclude your movement such that your target is within your melee reach when it ends. You cannot use Aether if your line of effect to your target includes an obstacle that you cannot jump over. You do not need to move as part of this maneuver if your chosen target is already within your melee reach. Wave Strike and similar abilities do not affect the maximum distance you may travel via Aether.

When you reach your target, that opponent must succeed on a Reflex save (DC = 16 + your Strength modifier) or be considered flat-footed against your attacks for 1 round. Regardless of your foe's success or failure on its save, you immediately make two melee attacks against it with a +5 bonus. The first attack replenishes your hp if it hits and does damage, up to the amount of damage that it did to the enemy. (If you do more damage than necessary to reduce the foe's hp past its death/destruction threshold (generally &minus;10 for living creatures, or 0 for undead or constructs), you do not gain hp for the surplus damage.) The second attack is resolved as a touch attack (therefore ignoring enemy armor and natural armor bonuses) and ignores any qualities the opponent may possess that could reduce the damage, including damage reduction (with only a very small number of exceptions, such as indomitability and Skarmory's Armored Skin). Both attacks made via this maneuver must be targeted against the same enemy; if the first attack drops the foe, the second attack is forfeit to no effect unless you have Cleave or Great Cleave, in which case your Cleave attack is treated as the second attack from Aether.

Because this maneuver involves leaping up into the air, you may ignore up to 10 feet per initiator level for the purposes of taking falling damage; thus, you generally won't take falling damage as a consequence of using Aether unless you fall jump off a very steep cliff. You may add 1d6 damage to the first attack of Aether for every 20 feet ignored in this way (the second attack is not aided by gravity and thus does not benefit from this bonus). The amount of distance required for a single bonus die and the amount of distance that can be ignored for the purpose of determining fall damage is influenced by the power of gravity just like falling damage itself is; for example, if gravity were to be halved relative to the Material Plane, it would be necessary to fall 40 feet to inflict 1d4 extra damage, whereas if gravity were to be doubled, it would be necessary to fall 10 feet to inflict 1d8 extra damage. Fall distance that exceeds the protection due to using this maneuver cannot be added to the damage of the attack. Falling damage reduction due to Aether stacks with anything else that would reduce falling damage, including the standard 10 feet ignored and 10 feet converted to nonlethal due to intentionally jumping down from a great height; however, only falling damage ignored due to initiator levels via Aether ' s effect can be added to the damage. Damage added to the first attack by falling is considered part of that attack, and is therefore added to the hp that you gain unless it is in excess of the amount needed to kill/destroy the target. Bonus damage dice from falling are not precision-based and thus cannot be negated by fortification or similar qualities; however, like most other bonus damage dice, they are not multiplied by critical hits.

The life gain and ability to ignore the target's damage-reducing abilities are supernatural effects (and thus do not function in an antimagic field), but all other properties of this maneuver are extraordinary effects and function normally even in areas where magic is suppressed.