E-Book Overview
Look Your Enemies in the Eye! Get up close and personal with Melee Tactics Toolbox! The new tips, tricks, and tactics in this volume enable your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game character to perform a huge variety of daring deeds in hand-to-hand combat, whether you’re dashing around a foe to flank it by yourself or inspiring allies to hold the line on a castle wall. Melee Tactics Toolbox is a player-focused manual that makes the most of in-your-face abilities, spells, and weapons, in addition to providing a plethora of new rules options to make you even more formidable in combat. Each Pathfinder Player Companion includes new options and tools for every Pathfinder RPG player. Inside this book, you’ll find: • Tips on how best to fight in melee, including suggestions for rules options that can give you an edge, as well as general tactics available to all characters. • Dozens of new kinds of magic armor and melee weapons, weapon special abilities, and wondrous items to hinder your foes or protect you from close-combat attackers. • Thirty new feats to bolster your staying power in close combat, including combat, style, and teamwork feats. • An illustrated guide comparing more than 20 different styles of swords, including the falchion, katana, and urumi. • Tons of new spells, equipment, weapons, class archetypes, and character options, including a new bardic masterpiece. This Pathfinder Player Companion is intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Pathfinder campaign setting, but can easily be incorporated into any fantasy world. Written by Paris Crenshaw, Ron Lundeen, and David Schwartz. Cover Art by Milivoj Ceran. Each monthly 32-page Pathfinder Player Companion contains several player-focused articles exploring the volume’s theme as well as short articles with innovative new rules for all types of characters, as well as traits to better anchor the player to the campaign.
E-Book Content
® ™ Melee Tactics Toolbox Melee Schools of the Inner Sea Though there are dozens of highly regarded fighting schools and war colleges within the nations of the Inner Sea, those detailed below are among the most famous for their mastery of melee combat. ALDORI ACADEMY Located in the city of Restov in the Rostland region of the nation of Brevoy, the Aldori Academy is the premier war college of northeastern Avistan. It was founded by the first Aldori Swordlords— pupils taught specific techniques for dueling by Baron Sirian Aldori—and it remains the center of learning and mastery of the Aldori dueling style. The academy emphasizes the art of the duel, promoting the ability to defeat foes in honorable one-on-one combat as the pinnacle of martial prowess. Students are expected to master the Aldori dueling sword (Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide 290) and are taught to favor the sword above all other weapons. CRUSADER WAR COLLEGE Based in Castle Overwatch, which protects the Lastwall capital of Vigil, the Crusader War College exists to train those willing to take up arms as crusaders dedicated to the fight against the Hold of Belkzen and any remnant of the forces of the Whispering Tyrant. Because Lastwall’s foes massively outnumber its guardians and crusaders often find themselves cut off from aid, the college trains its students in the tactics of fighting a horde of enemies as a lone defender. It is divided into the Battlemage Academy, Cavalry Academy, Garrison and Siege School, Infantry School, and Scouting School, each of which is run under the auspices of one of Lastwall’s Precentors Martial. THE GRAND COLISEUM Within Katapesh sits the massive Grand Coliseum, capable of seating 10,000 spectators. Its most popular spectacle is the game of ruk, a violent sport played between two teams of 10 athle