Epilektoi

As an epilektoi of a chaotic, evil, good, or lawful deity, you have a particularly powerful aura corresponding to your deity’s alignment (see the detect evil spell for details).

As an epilektoi, you do not gain access to the standard martial traditions of other martial artists. Instead, you gain access to two sets of disciplines based on the alignment of your deity, one for each alignment component your deity possesses, as follows:

• Good deities grant Iron Tortoise, Silver Crane, and Sleeping Goddess.
• Evil deities grant Black Seraph, Cursed Razor, and Veiled Moon.
• Deities who are neutral on the good/evil axis grant Eternal Guardian, Piercing Thunder, and Unquiet Grave.
• Lawful deities grant Golden Lion, Scarlet Throne, and Solar Wind.
• Chaotic deities grant Elemental Flux, Primal Fury, and Shattered Mirror.
• Deities who are neutral on the law/chaos axis grant Fool’s Errand, Mithral Current, and Tempest Gale.

Maneuvers

You begin play with knowledge of 6 martial maneuvers chosen from those martial disciplines offered by your deity. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it (see Maneuvers Readied below).

You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels, as indicated on Table: The Epilektoi. You must meet a maneuver’s prerequisites, if any, to learn it.

Upon reaching initiator level 4th, and at every even numbered initiator level thereafter (6th, 8th, 10th, and so on), you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place of one you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe the restriction on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the old maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. You can swap only a single maneuver at any given level.

Your initiator level is equal to your class level, and your initiation modifier for your epilektoi techniques is Wisdom.

Maneuvers Readied

At 1st level, you can ready four of your six maneuvers known by spending ten minutes in prayer. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to meditate again and change them. You need not Rest to ready maneuvers; any time you can pray, you can change your readied maneuvers. You must always ready your maximum number of maneuvers readied.

You begin each encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them since you chose them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your readied maneuvers can be used once per encounter, unless you recover it, as described below.

As you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you are able to ready more but must still choose which maneuvers to ready.

Granted and Withheld Maneuvers

Epilektoi rely on the whims of a divine patron to power their maneuvers and do not have full control over their readied maneuvers. When you ready maneuvers, select two of your readied maneuvers to be immediately granted to you. You may use these two maneuvers at any time (when used outside of combat, they recover automatically the following round). The remainder of your readied maneuvers are withheld. You can initiate any maneuver that is currently granted to you, but you cannot initiate a withheld maneuver.

At the end of each of your combat turns, one withheld maneuver (randomly determined) is granted to you until all withheld maneuvers have been granted to you. Even if you do not initiate a maneuver, a previously withheld maneuver is still granted at the end of each round. If you can act in a surprise round, you are granted a maneuver at the end of that round as if it were a normal round.

At any time, you can spend one minute praying to can change the two readied maneuvers you have chosen to be immediately granted to you.

As you advance in level, the number of maneuvers granted at the beginning of an encounter and when you recover your maneuvers increases. All maneuvers beyond the initial two you have chosen are randomly determined. For example, a 6th-level epilektoi would choose two maneuvers then randomly be granted one more.

Recovering Maneuvers

If you would be granted a maneuver but have no withheld maneuvers remaining, you lose all currently granted maneuvers, recover all expended maneuvers, and gain a new set of granted maneuvers immediately. You select any two of your readied maneuvers and gain the remainder of any granted maneuvers as randomized selections. At the end of your next turn, a withheld maneuver is granted to you, and the process of divine inspiration begins again.

Stances

You begin your career with knowledge of one stance from any discipline offered by your martial traditions. At 2nd, 5th, 9th, 11th, 15th, and 18th levels, you can select an additional stance to learn.

Unlike maneuvers, stances are not expended and you do not have to ready them. All the stances you know are available to you at all times, and you can change the stance you are currently maintaining as a swift action. A stance is an extraordinary ability unless otherwise stated in the stance or discipline description.

Unlike with maneuvers, you cannot learn a new stance at higher levels in place of one you already know.

Your will is as strong as adamantine, allowing you to ignore pain and injury, at least for a time. You gain a delayed damage pool equal to 3 × your epilektoi level. When attacked, you may redirect all or part of the damage to take to your delayed damage pool. Apply damage reduction and resistance before redirecting the damage. You may not redirect damage that would exceed the maximum capacity of the damage pool.

Any additional effects of an attack, such as poison, are still incurred immediately even if the entire damage of the attack is redirected to the delayed damage pool.

Your delayed damage pool empties at the end of your turn each round, inflicting any damage stored in the pool to you, bypassing any damage reduction or resistance you possess and resetting the pool to 0.

Any healing you receive can be applied to increase your current hit points, remove delayed damage, or both. You may divide healing between the two in any way you choose.

When you require more strength or are left with too few options, you may take a moment to pray, bolstering yourself through faith. As a full-round action, you may grant yourself all of your remaining withheld maneuvers then immediately expend them all in a show of divine force. As there are no remaining maneuvers to be granted, a new set of maneuvers is granted to you at the end of your turn, as normal.

In addition, until the start of your next turn, you gain DR/— equal to the amount of damage in your delayed damage pool and a +1 bonus to saving throws for each 5 points in the pool.

At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter (up to 18th level), you advance upon your journey to become an unstoppable force for your deity. You gain an implacability of your choice. Unless otherwise noted, you cannot select an individual implacability more than once. Some implacabilities can only be gained if you have met certain prerequisites first, such as gaining other implacabilities. The DC of any saving throw called for by an implacability is equal to 10 + 1/2 your epilektoi level + your initiation modifier.

List of Epilektoi Implacabilities

At 3rd level, you discover a link between two of your disciplines, combining them into a single flawless style. You may choose two of your available disciplines which are not linked to opposed alignments. From now on, you may treat these two disciplines as one. Their associated weapons are combined, their maneuvers count towards each one’s prerequisites for the other, feats which grant a bonus to one grant it to the other, and so forth. When you make a skill check with the associated skill of one aligned discipline, you may make the check with the bonus of the other aligned discipline’s skill instead.

At 3rd level and every 4 levels thereafter, you gain a bonus combat feat or faith feat. You must meet the prerequisites for these feats as normal.

At 3rd level, you add your initiation modifier (if any) as a bonus on Fortitude and Reflex saves. This does not stack with similar abilities, such as a paladin’s divine grace.

At 5th level, you reache a new level of divine inspiration, learning to return a measure of the pain inflicted by your foes. During your turn, you gain an insight bonus to damage rolls equal to your initiation modifier whenever your delayed damage pool has 1 or more points of damage in it.

Starting at 10th level, for every 5 points in your pool beyond 5 (10, 15, 20, etc) you gain an additional +1 improvement to this bonus damage. Additionally, you add half of your bonus to damage as a bonus to your attack rolls. The maximum attack bonus this ability can provide is capped at half your class level, rounded down.

At 9th level, whenever you ready your maneuvers, you may choose one counter from each of your aligned disciplines. You may expend any granted maneuver of equal or higher level to initiate these counters, even if they are not readied or granted.

At 13th level, you can request aid from your deity and be answered, after a fashion. Once per encounter as a free action, you can expend one of your granted maneuvers and replace it with any one of your known maneuvers from your aligned disciplines. This new maneuver is immediately readied and granted.

At 17th level, you may use your aligned defense counters even against attacks that roll a natural 20.

At 20th level, you come as close to godhood as a mortal can be. You immediately learn two normal implacabilities and also learn a third implacability chosen from the list of deific implacabilities, representing the spark of your deity’s power within you becoming a roaring flame.