Pungeon Pendragon (3.5e Martial Discipline)

"There was once a battle at a place called Thermopylae, where three hundred brave Greeks held off a Persian army of a million men... a million, you understand this number?

I understand this number."

Summary::Swashbuckling heroes are fond of using rapier wit alongside their rapiers, shooting arrows accompanied by shooting puns and even when things look bleak, they throw in a joke before throwing in the towel. Bards and wise men often recall famous words by famous men, used in the past to great effect in orations and battle speeches: all the more proof that the power of wordplay lies and speaks true in all languages, even the most ancient and intricarious ones. Those who learn the most ancient and most intricatastrophic of all and weave it into their combat routines are the practitioners of the Pungeon Pendragon style: their very actions speak truer than Truespeech.

The key skill for Pungeon Pendragon is TruespeakToM195; using Truespeak as part of a maneuver does not provoke attacks of opportunity unless the maneuver specifies so. When using a maneuver that requires a Truespeak check more than once, the Truespeak DC increases by 2 as normal, but this only happens if it is used more than once per encounter rather than once per day as with utterances; if the attack misses, the DC does not increase for the next time you use that maneuver, as normal with utterances. Discipline weapons include rapier wit, swords of a certain length, ass-whipping, an arm full of strikes and improvisionary weapons.

Additional Truespeak rule: for each language you know, you gain a +1 bonus on all Truespeak checks.

Because the Pungeon Pendragon discipline was never taught at the Temple of the Nine Swords that Reshar founded, or any similar center of training for that matter, most martial adepts do not know any maneuvers from it, or even know it exists. There are two ways to master the discipline. The first is to have been trained in it. If you choose to make a martial adept that has already been trained in the Pungeon Pendragon discipline, you simply replace one discipline that adept could normally learn with maneuvers from with the Pungeon Pendragon discipline. He loses the associated skill of the replaced discipline as a class skill, but gains Truespeak as a class skill.

The other way is to seek out a master of the Pungeon Pendragon discipline–a martial adept capable of using at least 5th-level maneuvers from the discipline–and training under him. You must train for a month under the master, and spend 1,000 xp at the end of your training. You gain the ability to learn maneuvers from the Pungeon Pendragon discipline, and add Truespeak to your martial adept class’s list of class skills. In addition, you may exchange your maneuvers known for maneuvers of the Pungeon Pendragon discipline. You may exchange one maneuver of each level, and the new maneuvers you learn must be of the same level as the exchanged maneuvers.

Maneuvers of the Pungeon Pendragon Discipline

 * To see the full, expanded description of every maneuver, click here.