Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Though i sort of came up with the princess build warlord it's flavor is actually not really my favorite of the bunch. This was written by someone else and I glopped on to it but managed to fail my - record attribution roll properly, I think that is an academic fail on my part for sure.
A Warlords moves do not necessarily involve commands in fact they work better many times as created openings that your fellows perceive and act upon. Instead of telling your teammate to take another swing, you're creating an opening for them (that they see and take advantage of without any more prompting from you than the creation of the opportunity itself). Someone with as much imagination, as much training with a sword and as much insight into the way people (and sentient creatures in general) think as he would not settle for a style of fighting that only led the opponent into exposing itself to his own counter strokes; he'd take pride in managing his enemy so thoroughly that they had to expose themselves on all other sides but his just to keep his blade from their throat.
You're not just using your weapon as a cutting tool to hack apart one target; you're conducting the entire fight with it, hammering a flank here, feinting and falling back there, leading the targets of your strokes in a way that leads the other combatants in response, until the whole of the melee is dancing in time to the thrust of your swordpoint.
You want an ally in that square? You flick a quick stroke at his opponent's knee and cause it to give him the square to avoid your attack. You score a seemingly minor hit, and while the foe congratulates itself on turning your death stroke into a glancing cut, the real killing blow comes in from behind . . . just as you planned. Ten minutes ago.
When you grant a healing surge, you've merely guided the flow of combat so that your winded ally has time to get her breath. You've taken the heat off, so to speak. Perhaps it was something as crude as making a remark that drew her opponent's attention briefly, or maybe your footwork caused your target to shift around to compensate, which cut off the opportunity her opponent was setting up, or maybe there were half a dozen other unwitting participants involved in the maneuver, which you set up well in advance with almost precognitive precision. Or maybe you've done nothing at all - mechanically the surge was granted by your character, but that doesn't mean the story demands your character to act for the other character to get hit points back. Granting a healing surge is a matter of mechanics; taking credit for it by narrating an action on your character's part is optional.
And, of course, your character would show the same level of tact and finesse out of combat. He is trained and naturally gifted in maneuvering other people. He delights in ordering the things around him to his advantage. The cut and thrust of politics is no less deadly than pitched battle; it's just less messy.
A Warlords moves do not necessarily involve commands in fact they work better many times as created openings that your fellows perceive and act upon. Instead of telling your teammate to take another swing, you're creating an opening for them (that they see and take advantage of without any more prompting from you than the creation of the opportunity itself). Someone with as much imagination, as much training with a sword and as much insight into the way people (and sentient creatures in general) think as he would not settle for a style of fighting that only led the opponent into exposing itself to his own counter strokes; he'd take pride in managing his enemy so thoroughly that they had to expose themselves on all other sides but his just to keep his blade from their throat.
You're not just using your weapon as a cutting tool to hack apart one target; you're conducting the entire fight with it, hammering a flank here, feinting and falling back there, leading the targets of your strokes in a way that leads the other combatants in response, until the whole of the melee is dancing in time to the thrust of your swordpoint.
You want an ally in that square? You flick a quick stroke at his opponent's knee and cause it to give him the square to avoid your attack. You score a seemingly minor hit, and while the foe congratulates itself on turning your death stroke into a glancing cut, the real killing blow comes in from behind . . . just as you planned. Ten minutes ago.
When you grant a healing surge, you've merely guided the flow of combat so that your winded ally has time to get her breath. You've taken the heat off, so to speak. Perhaps it was something as crude as making a remark that drew her opponent's attention briefly, or maybe your footwork caused your target to shift around to compensate, which cut off the opportunity her opponent was setting up, or maybe there were half a dozen other unwitting participants involved in the maneuver, which you set up well in advance with almost precognitive precision. Or maybe you've done nothing at all - mechanically the surge was granted by your character, but that doesn't mean the story demands your character to act for the other character to get hit points back. Granting a healing surge is a matter of mechanics; taking credit for it by narrating an action on your character's part is optional.
And, of course, your character would show the same level of tact and finesse out of combat. He is trained and naturally gifted in maneuvering other people. He delights in ordering the things around him to his advantage. The cut and thrust of politics is no less deadly than pitched battle; it's just less messy.
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