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Discipline

Warrior

Warrior

Crushing Blow, Waterfall Slam, Air Dance, Shield Bash, Wound Balance, Toughens the Body, earth skin, disarm, second weapon, second attack, steely stare, momentum attack
hatred clouds my strikes, can't back down once honor's on the line, bound to avenge betrayal, distrusts smooth talkers
Fight only the enemy in front of me — and let old enemies go.

WARRIOR ROTES

Crushing Blow
Practitioners: Warriors
The Warrior puts their full weight and fury behind a single close-combat strike, hitting with force well beyond what the weapon alone would suggest.
▲a solid, committed stance • a clean opening on the target • a heavy or well-balanced weapon
▼an off-balance or restrained stance • a target with unusual defenses against blunt force • a weapon poorly suited to a heavy strike
SUCCESS
Free action, following a successful close-combat attack. Helps the Damage dealt by that attack.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • The blow is devastating enough to also knock the target down (keep the spotlight)
  • The force carries through to a second, adjacent target
  • The strike breaks something the target was relying on (a weapon, a shield, a wall)
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • The effort leaves your own guard down
  • Committing so much force costs you your footing
  • The weapon takes real wear from the impact
  • Word of the blow spreads, and future opponents come prepared for it
Waterfall Slam
Practitioners: Warriors
The Warrior channels the crushing weight of falling water into a close-combat strike, overwhelming the target's balance along with their body.
▲a solid stance and full commitment to the strike • a target already off-balance • room to follow through
▼a target with unnatural stability • cramped space that limits the follow-through • a glancing rather than solid hit
SUCCESS
Helps a close-combat attack. Give the target knocked-down.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Knock down more than one target caught in the same strike (keep the spotlight)
  • The fall itself causes harm
  • The target struggles to rise for longer than usual
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • Following through on the strike leaves you off-balance too
  • The target grabs hold of you on the way down
  • The ground itself works against you afterward
  • A target that resists this once braces against it for the rest of the fight
Air Dance
Practitioners: Warriors
The Warrior moves with unnatural lightness, gliding and darting through the air in a way no unaided body should manage.
▲open space to move through • a moment that calls for speed over strength • no heavy armor weighing the motion down
▼cramped or obstructed space • heavy armor or a heavy load • a need for raw power rather than speed
SUCCESS
Free action. Helps a rapid, gliding movement, including briefly through open air.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Use the movement to also help an attack made at the end of it (keep the spotlight)
  • Cover far more ground than expected
  • Land somewhere no one anticipated
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • Landing awkwardly costs you your footing
  • The display draws every eye in the room
  • You can't sustain the effort twice in the same exchange
  • Something about the movement leaves you briefly exposed
Shield Bash
Practitioners: Warriors
The Warrior turns their shield into a weapon, driving it into an opponent hard enough to put them on the ground.
▲a shield already in hand and ready • a solid, close target • room to put weight behind the strike
▼no shield available • a target too large or stable to stagger • a glancing rather than solid hit
SUCCESS
Helps a close-combat attack made with a shield. On a strong hit, give the target knocked-down.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Follow the bash immediately with a weapon strike (keep the spotlight)
  • Knock the target into something that hurts them further
  • Stagger a second nearby target with the same motion
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • The impact costs your shield some of its integrity
  • Leading with the shield leaves your weapon hand slow to follow
  • The target grabs the shield rather than falling
  • A target that shrugs this off is unnervingly hard to move
Wound Balance
Practitioners: Warriors
The Warrior plants their feet and refuses to go down, standing firm through impacts that would put most people on the ground.
▲solid footing on your own two feet • bracing before the impact lands • raw physical stability
▼being mounted or carried rather than standing free • already off-balance or restrained • an impact aimed specifically at undermining your stance
SUCCESS
Free action, as a reaction. Helps a reaction to avoid being knocked down, so long as you're standing under your own power.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Stay standing through a hit that should have leveled you (keep the spotlight)
  • Use the stability to help your next attack too
  • Make staying upright look effortless, unnerving the attacker
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • Refusing to fall costs you elsewhere — you're rooted and slow to react to anything else
  • The strain of holding your ground catches up later
  • A mounted or carried position doesn't get this benefit, and you're reminded of it
  • Standing firm once means the next attempt to knock you down comes harder **Toughens the Body** 🍃/💠 *Practitioners: Warriors* *Description:* The Warrior performs a ritual, toughening flesh and bone against harm to come — a simple hardening early in their training, and a far deeper, riskier working once they've grown into the craft. 🍃 *Wood Skin:* The adept's skin takes on the texture and resilience of bark. Requires a Recovery test and a brief ritual. 💠 *Temper Flesh:* The adept draws icy ether from astral space over their body in a longer meditation — but only works if they're completely uninjured beforehand. Helps: time and safety to perform the ritual undisturbed • being rested and uninjured (required for the deeper tier) • a genuine need to prepare for harm ahead Hinders: being interrupted mid-ritual • already carrying injury (locks out the deeper tier entirely) • no time to prepare SUCCESS Prep action, requiring a period of ritual and a Recovery test. Give yourself a lasting toughened status — 🍃 for a few hours, 💠 for a full day — raising your capacity to take harm. EXTRA FEATS - Extend the duration further (keep the spotlight) - The toughening holds even through a fight that would normally end it - Share a portion of the effect with a companion through the same ritual CONSEQUENCES
  • Attempting the deeper tier while already hurt costs you dearly instead of helping
  • The toughened state fades at the worst possible moment
  • Your skin's altered appearance draws stares and questions
  • Relying on the ritual instead of caution becomes its own kind of vulnerability

The Warrior's Place in Barsaive

Every fighting Discipline in Barsaive claims some piece of what a Warrior is, but none of them claim all of it. A Warrior doesn't need a sword's edge or a bow's range or a shield-brother's charge — strip away every weapon in reach and a Warrior is still dangerous, because the actual weapon was never the steel. It was always the training underneath it.

A body that turns anything into a weapon. At the foundation of the Discipline is pure adaptability. A Warrior fights as well with a borrowed chair or a fallen branch as with a forged blade, because the craft was never really about the object in their hands. Warriors who've walked the path long enough will tell you plainly: their wits are their greatest weapon, and everything else is just what happened to be within reach.

A body built to endure. Alongside offense sits a deep, deliberate toughness. A Warrior's skin can take on the resilience of bark early in training, and — once seasoned and unhurt — something far deeper and stranger later on: flesh drawn through with astral cold, hardened against harm for a full day at a time. It's not armor. It's closer to becoming, briefly, something harder to kill.

A body that refuses to fall. Whether standing firm against a blow that should have leveled them, driving a shield into an opponent hard enough to put them on the ground, or moving with an unnatural, gliding lightness that shouldn't be possible in armor, a Warrior treats their own stability as a weapon in its own right — as important to master as any strike.

Underneath all of it sits the oldest teaching of the Discipline: the shield matters more than the sword, because it is better to avoid a killing blow than to land one. A true Warrior fights with clarity, not hatred — hate clouds the strike and serves no one — and holds no grudge past the fight that created it. Yesterday's enemy, once the battle's over, is yesterday's problem; only the fight in front of them today is real. The hardest lesson isn't how to win a battle. It's learning which battles are worth fighting at all, and which are simply pride wearing armor.