User:Viatos/Hollow Nymph (3.5e Martial Discipline)

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Author: Viatos (talk) Date Created: 3/11/2010 Status: Under Construction Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Once upon a time, there was a particularly dark wood.

On a particularly dark night in this particularly dark wood, a particularly dark man stalked a young girl - nothing particularly dark about her - deeper and deeper past ever-more-twisted trees until at last the girl's strength wore out and she collapsed on the shore of a very small, very still pond in the darkest part of the woods.

But the particularly dark man had been foolish to hunt her in this place, as he found when the ensuing struggle disturbed the glassy waters of the very small, very still pond. From the pond came an arm, and attached to the arm was a beautiful nightmare that rose up before the young girl and the dark man and spoke wicked poetry as it reached out to tear the man apart. It had waited a very long time for its chance to drink deep of mortal blood, and lit only by the dim reflection of starlight off the pond the satisfaction of its appetite must have been a rare sight indeed - the last the young girl would ever see, for as its hunger flared the beautiful nightmare's wonderful visage burnt her sight to empty blackness forever.

Perhaps that blinding buried some darkling seed of the creature's essence within the girl, shaping her soul through endless nights of haunting dreams and unspeakable urges. Perhaps it was simply the impossible aesthetics of the moment that inspired her. Perhaps it was only a story she told herself, to shift blame for her various lackings and hungers to some awful monster she could pledge to learn from, maybe even one day slay and thus restore herself.

Perhaps she never existed at all, and the Hollow Nymph style arose from the core of nothingness that its practitioners believe defines them - perhaps, just as existence is a shell to separate their souls from nonbeing, the story of the origin of the Hollow Nymph discipline is a framework to preserve the sanity of those who question too deeply the ability of common mortals to access such dark and terrible supernatural power.

The exemplar weapon of the Hollow Nymph discipline is Shameless, a scythe grown from scintillating dark crystals with a strange and terrible history of compelling wielders to live extraordinary lives dominated by secret yearning, bringing them the ecstasy of satisfaction only at the moment of death.

Maneuvers of the Hollow Nymph Discipline

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

The Crunch, Summarized

Key Skill: Bluff Associated Weapons: Unarmed Strike, Punching Dagger, Short Sword, Sickle, Scythe, Gnome Quickrazor. All maneuvers of Hollow Nymph are considered to be supernatural abilities. All saves for the Hollow Nymph discipline are Charisma-based.

1st-Level Maneuvers

• Blind Lust: Counter [Mind-affecting] — Disguise yourself as someone else
• Draw the Dark: Boost [Evil] — Keep company with misery.
• Ill Wind: Strike [Mind-affecting] — Call a chilling breeze and seed it with words that sap your enemies' will to attack.
• Suncursed Hunter: Stance — Gain some of a vampire's ability to stalk and overcome its prey, but also some of its weaknesses.
• Way of the Wicked: Boost [Evil] — Feint with your next attack. If you succeed, punish their gullibility with a scar they won't forget.

2nd-Level Maneuvers

• Empty Hands Curse: Counter — Those who strike or steal become supernaturally sick with guilt.
• Lament: Strike [Mind-Affecting] — Enemies weep for your sins.
• Terror: Strike [Evil Fear] — Fear cuts deeper than swords.

3rd-Level Maneuvers

• Smiling Demon Style: Stance — Gain a bonus to Charisma checks and mind-affecting powers as long as you mean harm.

6th-Level Maneuvers

• Eastern Nightmare Stance: Stance [Evil] — The void inside the practitioner yields up a thread of aberrant evil in the form of vile tentacles.

8th-Level Maneuvers

• Bleak Reflection: Stance — The void inside you becomes an infinite tunnel of corruption, absorbing and reflecting magical attacks.

9th-Level Maneuvers

• Slake: Strike [Evil] — The capstone maneuver of the Hollow Nymph discipline completely destroys an enemy while invigorating the practitioner.

Feats

Hungry Glamour

Hungry Glamour [General] Prerequisites: One Hollow Nymph stance.Benefit: While you are in a Hollow Nymph stance, whenever a Bluff check you initiate succeeds against an opponent's Sense Motive check, that opponent becomes fatigued until they spend a full-round action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity to recover. If multiple opponents fail their Sense Motive checks against a single Bluff check you make, this feat applies against the opponent with the lowest check result. You gain a +3 feat bonus to Charisma checks and Charisma-based checks against fatigued or exhausted opponents. Special: Opponents fatigued by this feat may not be exhausted by it. Opponents fatigued by sources other then this feat (such as natural fatigue) may be exhausted as normal; spending a full-round action to recover ends their exhaustion but not their fatigue.

Ravening Beauty

Ravening Beauty [Tactical] Prerequisites: Hungry Glamour, base attack bonus +6, two Hollow Nymph maneuvers.Benefit: This feat enables the use of three new combat options:

• Ravage: To use this option, you must kill an opponent with a coup de grace. You immediately recover one expended Hollow Nymph maneuver, are no longer fatigued or exhausted as if you had rested for 8 hours, and opponents with line of sight to you must immediately make a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 your initiator level + your Charisma modifier) or become shaken.
• Whispers and Will-o'-the-wisps: To use this option, you must be in a Hollow Nymph stance. You can use dancing lights and ghost sound as at-will supernatural abilities with a caster level of 1.
• Wrack: To use this option, you must cause an opponent to become fatigued or exhausted. On your next round the save DCs of your Hollow Nymph maneuvers increase by 1 against fatigued opponents and by 2 against exhausted opponents until the end of the round.

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