To do it, you need to be a high-level Swordsage*, because it involves a level 8 maneuver, a level 7 maneuver, and a level 8 stance. It also requires Adaptive Style, but what Swordsage doesn't have THAT?
*Master of Nine also works.
The maneuvers are One With Shadow (Shadow Hand 8), the counter that turns you incorporeal for a round, and either Quicksilver Motion (Diamond Mind 7), the boost that lets you move as a swift action, or Shadow Jaunt (Shadow Hand 7), which lets you teleport 50' as a swift action. The stance is the Stance of Alacrity (Diamond Mind 8).
With the Stance of Alacrity, you can initiate a boost and a counter in the same round. With Adaptive Style, you can recover your maneuvers as a full-round action (which still leaves you your swift action).
Our Swordsage uses One with Shadow, using up his "free" counter from his stance. He's now Incorporeal for one round. Now he uses Quicksilver Motion or Shadow Blink, moving his movement speed or teleporting 50 feet--while incorporeal--by using up his swift action.
Then he uses Adaptive Style as a full-round action, recovering both of the used maneuvers.
Next round, he can do it again.
Voila: a Swordsage who is incorporeal as long as he wants to be, and can move his speed each round while being so. This isn't any use in combat, really (except for escapin), but it IS very useful for scouting and other utility purposes.
Note that Shadow Blink isn't very good for this if you want to stick in walls/floors/etc, since it requires line of sight and line of effect.
Also, you stop being incorporeal at the start of your next round, which could be problematic.
However, you can also initiate a counter at the start of your next round.
Immediate actions happen *before* anything you use them in response to (that's why you can use Nerveskitter -while- rolling initiative, etc).
So you gain another round of incorporeality an infinitely small period of time before the previous round wears off.
Get an effective Binder level of 8, and take Tenebrous Apostate up to 4th level. Have both Tenebrous and Malphus bound, then use Bird's-Eye-Viewing to target opponents with whatever attack you can that requires line of sight. Its really nice when you can bind three vestiges: add in Haures and then just hide in walls, and PK all the enemies you can (Cabiri has an Arcane Eye that can do this too).
Actually, both your trick and mine could benefit from the same things: mine requires lots of EBL and specific class levels, yours could benefit from some method of maintaining line of sight. A 1 level dip into Binder for Malphus's Bird's-Eye-Viewing might work nicely, unless some Jade Phoenix Mage build is desired (I forget which divination it is that is uber compared to the others). Both could get a lot of benefit from Bloodline levels.
However, you can also initiate a counter at the start of your next round.
Immediate actions happen *before* anything you use them in response to (that's why you can use Nerveskitter -while- rolling initiative, etc).
So you gain another round of incorporeality an infinitely small period of time before the previous round wears off.
I don't think that's the case. Readied actions go before their triggers, but I didn't think the same applied to any old immediate action. In which case, things happen sequentially, and there is a time when you are not incorporeal.
You can also activate One With Shadow *just before* your round.
Good find.
One with Shadow ends at the start of your turn. Triggering another one before your turn will still end at the start of your turn, the back to normal part cannot be avoiding but nor is it anything major when you think about it. Shadow Blink does not allow you to teleport anywhere you cannot see and the space you teleport to cannot have any anyone in it. You do have ever net a prefect move silently check and a 50% miss chance against magical weapons (and traps).
Good find.
One With Shadow ends 1 whole round after you initiate it, not after the start of your turn. You can, at *worst*, initiate One With Shadow again at the *exact same* time the old one ends (the start of your turn, if that's when you initiated it), which means you're never actually corporeal.
Quicksilver Motion does work better than Shadow Blink. It lets you take a move action with your swift action.
Or, uh, you can cast etherealness or ghost form. =)
Shhhh! Those have durations! And aren't an option for a Swordsage, who is a high-Dex character with Hide as a class skill, for scouting.
Quicksilver Motion can be substituted with Sudden Leap.
I don't know that you can Jump while you're incorporeal.
Immediate actions happen *before* anything you use them in response to (that's why you can use Nerveskitter -while- rolling initiative, etc).
sidenote: This just got me thinking... You're still flatfooted before you've acted, how can you cast anything - immediate or not - at all?
I think you'd need something solid to jump from.
sidenote: This just got me thinking... You're still flatfooted before you've acted, how can you cast anything - immediate or not - at all?
Nerveskitter is actually an exception--the spell specifies that you cast it before rolling for initiative.
I don't know that you can Jump while you're incorporeal.
I thought about it. You can't interact with solid objects. So you can't walk either, because you need support for that. You don't fall either. So being incorporeal without magical wingless flight means you can just flail around in place.
How is it that you can at least still stay in place, but not move? Surely the force that holds you stable can be manipulated to let you move about...
In that case, wouldn't you just sink right through the ground and get pulled towards the earth's core while incorporeal, if there is nothing supporting you?
"An incorporal creature must remain adjacent to the object's exterior, and so cannot pass entirely through an object whose space is larger than it's own."
So at worst you'd be 6 feet under. I mean, 5 feet. Silly D&D.
Also, they have no weight, so you really wouldn't fall but you'd just be flailing if you consider walking to be interacting with solid objects. Ha. The rules are silly.
I always thought you could move at your normal speed while incorporeal, but it only says so for ethereal creatures, not for incorporeal ones...
Gravity wouldn't affect you, as you have no mass while incorporeal. (Edit: Ninja'd)
I always thought you could move at your normal speed while incorporeal, but it only says so for ethereal creatures, nor for incorporeal ones...
Yeah. The rules in the MM are silly, since they only really cover naturally incorporeal creatures, which pretty much all have fly speeds.
Please, think of the Dungeon Masters.
FAKEEDIT: How do you apply force to a massless object? My admittedly-imperfect knowledge of physics isn't coming up with any massless particles that are willing to interact like that, since photons and neutrinos are both wacky.
I think you'd need something solid to jump from.
sidenote: This just got me thinking... You're still flatfooted before you've acted, how can you cast anything - immediate or not - at all?
You are NOT flatfooted before you've acted. You're flatfooted only after you've rolled for initiative but before you've gone, and during a surprise round you're not a part of.
Flatfootedness is strictly in-combat.
How do you apply force to a massless object?
Newtonian mechanics: a = F / m, where a is acceleration, F is force, and m is mass. So when m = 0, a = ∞.
Newtonian mechanics: a = F / m, where a is acceleration, F is force, and m is mass. So when m = 0, a = ∞.
Yes, but the question was how to apply a force on something incorporeal. Telekinesis, Greater Mage Hand and Slide come to mind, but they all have fixed speeds/distances.
Just hit the damn thing with a ghost touch weapon, preferably a blunt one.
This reminds me of the Suggestion affect of "blinking" one frame of a 24 frames per second TV / movie reel.
People don't really see it, but their subconscious does, and then they go out and buy ToB, and they don't know why.
Now that TV is digital, when rain interupts the satelite feed, and the screen goes all pixel-y ...
I get an urge to buy an early '80s Apple II with the bad graphics card. And I don't know why. ToB sounds interesting too.
{ ... good find ... }
One With Shadow ends 1 whole round after you initiate it, not after the start of your turn.
It says quite clearly on page 78 of the Tome of Battle
"You remain incorporeal until the begin-
ning of your next turn."
Can you point to some errata that states it lasts 'one whole round' from when you used it?
Likewise, at the beginning of your turn before you do anything (see beginning) it ends. No matter how fast you claim you trigger the next one, there is still a moment in time you're normal.
Again, this don't really matter other than you cannot end your turn in something. The silence & concealment make this trick well worth it.
I just thought up a new ToB trick.
To do it, you need to be a high-level Swordsage*, because it involves a level 8 maneuver, a level 7 maneuver, and a level 8 stance. It also requires Adaptive Style, but what Swordsage doesn't have THAT?
*Master of Nine also works.
The maneuvers are One With Shadow (Shadow Hand 8), the counter that turns you incorporeal for a round, and either Quicksilver Motion (Diamond Mind 7), the boost that lets you move as a swift action, or Shadow Jaunt (Shadow Hand 7), which lets you teleport 50' as a swift action. The stance is the Stance of Alacrity (Diamond Mind 8).
With the Stance of Alacrity, you can initiate a boost and a counter in the same round. With Adaptive Style, you can recover your maneuvers as a full-round action (which still leaves you your swift action).
Our Swordsage uses One with Shadow, using up his "free" counter from his stance. He's now Incorporeal for one round. Now he uses Quicksilver Motion or Shadow Blink, moving his movement speed or teleporting 50 feet--while incorporeal--by using up his swift action.
Then he uses Adaptive Style as a full-round action, recovering both of the used maneuvers.
Next round, he can do it again.
Voila: a Swordsage who is incorporeal as long as he wants to be, and can move his speed each round while being so. This isn't any use in combat, really (except for escapin), but it IS very useful for scouting and other utility purposes.
Note that Shadow Blink isn't very good for this if you want to stick in walls/floors/etc, since it requires line of sight and line of effect.
I think this can be better achieved with the warblade recovery system, considering that since your recovery hits all warblade maneuvers after a swift + misc. standard, or standard attack, and you dont lose your move at all, means you can move at your move speed, and make an attack with a ghost touch weapon every round; it also lets you really get the drop on somebody for a time stands still nova or DNB or Feral Death Blow, effectively taking them out of the combat in the surprise round.
This could be as easy as a fighter 2 dip for 2 martial maneuver feats. Hell, you could even make some sort of hybrid Goliath Dungeoncrasher build with this trick, attacking people from above them to knock them 5ft straight into the ground.
The problem is getting One With Shadow as a Warblade. Your IL for OWS is half your Warblade IL, so even if you went Martial Study, Martial Study, Martial Stance, Martial Study, you'd still need to have a Warblade IL of 30 to finally get it.
Take a PrC to get access to it - getting into Mo9 without multiclassing from Warblade isn't that difficult if you're using flaws.
Take a PrC to get access to it - getting into Mo9 without multiclassing from Warblade isn't that difficult if you're using flaws.
But if you're taking Master of Nine you want to multiclass a little anyway. Yes, a Warblade/MoN could do this just fine.
Doesn't matter. According to the equation a massless object can only have two accelerations: infinite or undefined. Neither makes sense.
You're forgetting that the force is proportional to the mass of the object. So while both F and m equal 0, if you take the limit of them as they approach 0, they should stay equal to 9.8 m/s^2.
But I don't think there's any evidence you fall through the ground...
I'm not exactly an expert on general relativity by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe that forces can be described as a curvature of space-time, which is why we see photons affected by gravitational forces, which when large enough can significantly alter space-time curvature. (The example being the bending of light around the sun or, in a more extreme case, the consumption of photons by a black hole.)
Of course, this is all irrelevant to the RAW, as there aren't really any specific stipulations against massless creatures or particles exerting force on anything else. In fact, ghost touch weapons are a prime example of this "physical law" being broken.
Aaaanyways, on the topic of the thread:
- @ Progresslevel9: While warblade's recovery mechanic appears to be the best option here, it's actually not. IIRC, it's either the RAW or a cust-serv ruling that says you cannot perform a maneuver in the round you recover a maneuver. As a result, I'm most partial to the Crusader recovery mechanic, which wouldn't require any actions at all to recover the required maneuvers. The downside being that getting One with the Shadow is not guaraneed every round, so you cannot remain incorporeal permanently. However, I have seen trick builds with PrCs such that a Crusader can have a few number of maneuvers readied with proportion to the number of maneuvers dealt initially. The idea would be to blow through your readied maneuvers as fast as possible, so as to force a refresh and hope the odds play in your favor. Assuming you have the One with Shadow maneuver available, you can blow it (essentially for free thanks to Stance of Alacrity), a swift boost of some kind, a standard action maneuver and move-action teleport to get away... that's 4 maneuvers used in a single round. Next round, blow the remaining maneuvers and you should have One with Shadow available the round after. So that means you'd be incorporeal half the time, able to deliver a strike every round and teleport 50 feet every other round (on rounds when your incorporeality is available).
- @ the LogicNinja: I'm not sure I understand how the trick works as you posted. First round: go incorporeal until your next action. Second round: recover your ability to become incorporeal. Repeat. Seems to me, you become coporeal every other round, unless you can get a full round action as an immediate action to precede your "action". Since recovery of the action necessarily precedes its use, I'm not sure I buy the logic that an immediate action would allow your precede the recovery. I know it SOUNDS similar to the case of when an immediate action precedes an external trigger event, but in those cases the immediate action's availability is not CONTINGENT on the existence of the trigger event. The perfect example being a cleric who cures a fighter who already used one AoO in the round of dexterity damage allowing him to make an attack of opportunity (due to combat reflexes) against the cleric. At the time of the casting, the fighter did not have an available AoO to use against the cleric, but after the casting occurred within his threat range (which would provoke an AoO), he gained the ability to make an AoO. However, since the AoO was not available at the time the trigger event occured it could not be made prior to its completion. The same is true for this trick.
and did T_G nerf this or not ?? !!
[*]@ the LogicNinja: I'm not sure I understand how the trick works as you posted. First round: go incorporeal until your next action. Second round: recover your ability to become incorporeal. Repeat. Seems to me, you become coporeal every other round, unless you can get a full round action as an immediate action to precede your "action". Since recovery of the action necessarily precedes its use, I'm not sure I buy the logic that an immediate action would allow your precede the recovery. I know it SOUNDS similar to the case of when an immediate action precedes an external trigger event, but in those cases the immediate action's availability is not CONTINGENT on the existence of the trigger event. The perfect example being a cleric who cures a fighter who already used one AoO in the round of dexterity damage allowing him to make an attack of opportunity (due to combat reflexes) against the cleric. At the time of the casting, the fighter did not have an available AoO to use against the cleric, but after the casting occurred within his threat range (which would provoke an AoO), he gained the ability to make an AoO. However, since the AoO was not available at the time the trigger event occured it could not be made prior to its completion. The same is true for this trick.
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From what I understand, Adaptive Style has no stipulation that you can't take maneuvers while recovering things with it. As far as I know, that only applies to Warblade's recovery. Anyways, how I percieve this working:
Round 1
-Stance of Alacrity Immediate: One with Shadow
-Swift Action: Do whatever
-Full-Round Action: Recover
Round 2
-Stance of Alacrity Immediate: One with Shadow
-Swift Action: Do whatever
-Full-Round Action: Recover
Round 3
-Stance of Alacrity Immediate: One with Shadow
-Swift Action: Do whatever
-Full-Round Action: Recover
etc. - can't use it round 0 without something like Swift Recovery, Ruby Knight Vindicator's ability or whatever.