Pathfinder: Path of War and Path of War: Expanded

Should I allow Path of War and Path of War: Expanded in my Pathfinder game?

I'm starting up a new game, level 5. Four players, one's a Tiefling Magus Hexcrafter, another is an Angel-Blooded Aasimar Paladin, there's a Kitsune Impossible/Undead Crossblooded Sorcerer, and there's a guy who wants to be a "religious warrior" but not any existing class.

He wants to use third party books called Path of War and Path of War: Expanded. He wants to be an Oni-Spawn Tiefling Warder Ordained Defender Zweihander Sentinel. He's going to use a Butcher Axe and do lots of damage.

Should I allow it or are Path of War and Path of War: Expanded unbalanced?

Sure. They're great if you want to see warriors kill things so fast wizards will never get a spell in edgewise. wizards will only ever be able to do utility because Pow classes are so deadly that you'll never field a monster for more than two attacks if they're both by PoW classes. I said attacks, not rounds.

Isn't there a PF general?

Emphatically yes. They give martials fun and useful things to do and are probably the best things that ever happened to Pathfinder.

We have dozens of 40k and MTG threads, Pathfinder can have more than one.

Oni-Spawn Tiefling Warder Ordained Defender Zweihander Sentinel.

just hearing that that makes me want to ban it.

seriously, i had one of those in a game and it is one of the most bullshit thing ive heard. path of war is absolutly not to be used.

warder zweihander sentinel is: a full martial weapon full heavy armor dude that can cast up to lvl 9 warder spells without the vsmf of normal cast and get shield bonus to AC even with 2 handed weapon.

he is going to trivialize every encounter and vampire the fun of every other player.

if he wants to do a religious warrior, cleric, inquisitor or metal oracle is the best for this group.

I heard the exact same thing about ToB, why should I listen now?

>Wow dude uberchargers are so broken

But they are from a combat perspective.

No, not really.

Tell me that again when you've seen a flying ubercharger with godlike initiative.

Having to build every enemy just to counter that shit is annoying.

Path of War is great fun, I've been using it for about a year in my game and we're having ton of fun. A couple caveats, tough:
1)The build your player wants to use is one, if not THE, most cheesily over optimised build possible in PoW. Zwei Sentinel and OD are fine on their own, but they are almost straight upgrade to the Base Warder, and together they turn it from a defensive oriented class to one that vomits damage. Speaking of that...
2)Ban Broken Blade and Primal Fury, and tell your players to avoid just using damage enhancing boosts+full attack: that was a problem in the first book, and am errata is supposed to come out since, I dunno, 2 years.
3)Introducing PoW kind of changes the power balance of the game: not only martials have more options in battle, but counters weaken the Rocket Tag nature of the game (something that I appreciate). Classes with no spells or 4 level spells lag behind, but most of them were doing that anyway in the Base game: there are initiating archetypes for all of them, and I advise to give some of them like the fighter, the rogue, the monk, paladin and some other full level 9 maneuver progression.
4)With that, you'please have to use PoW as a DM too: it's not something that you can let just someone use. Luckily, I've found that it'should usually good enough to give enemies/basic NPCS just some maneuvers appropriate for their level, 2-3 strikes and a counter, without full converting them to initiator classes.

You'd have to use, bah.
Also, you can switch Broken Blade for Fool's Errand, a discipline that came out in its own book, and there's also the Medic class for those that want to stab enemies and patch up allies: there both really good and fun!

>The build your player wants to use is one, if not THE, most cheesily over optimised build possible in PoW.

That's not a multiclassed aegis or one of the half-caster half-initiators.

Eh, true for the Aegis, bur from my experience the half caster half initiators were fine: they definitely reach the top of tier 3, utility I don't feel they go above that.

To clarify (I really shouldn't post as soon as I wake up), the tier comparison was dumb: the ODWS Warder isn't more tham T3, but it messes up encounters more than a Polymath that "just" has a fuckton of options.

What about doing the [class] 4/[full initiator] X with Practiced Initiator trick?

>M-muh mage doesn't get to insta-win the encounters anymore.
I swear, pathfinder players just want martial to be shit because they're a bunch of low-test bitches that got bullied by jocks as kids and have to escape to a power fantasy where its intellect and not physical prowess that wins fights.

And christ, all of those builds just sound so fucking retarded. Whatever happened to adventuring parties consisting of a dwarf, an elf, a human, and your token exotic?

But most of the super optimized initiators are doing magical crap, like Rising Zenith Strike + Reflected Blade Style. The second of those is (Su).

While in an Elemental Flux Stance too, also (Su).

I've never seen that one in play: do you have any experience with it? At a first gLance it looks like to me that it could be useful depending on what you're mixing and at which level you'll end up: trading one initiator level on a Warlord for, say, Divine Grace from the Pally looks good, but I feel like an Harbinger would be better served picking up his class abilities ASAP

I've seen it in play.
I've USED it in play, twice.

Oh no, not full BAB on a class whose "spells" rely on hitting things with weapons!

That's obviously broken!

>they can kill 1 enemy in two attacks!
>this means the wizard who can kill 20 enemies with 1 spell will never get to do anything!

how jealous can casterfags get

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Zenith Strikes are an autohit for all intents and purposes.

You're really overestimating just how many enemies a wizard can catch in an AoE, and how many of those will fail their saves.

>Four players, one's a Tiefling Magus Hexcrafter, another is an Angel-Blooded Aasimar Paladin, there's a Kitsune Impossible/Undead Crossblooded Sorcerer, and there's a guy who wants to be a "religious warrior" but not any existing class.
Everything I hate about Pathfinder (and 4E) in one sentence. Jesus fucking snowflake, batman.

>I'm starting up a new game, level 5. Four players, one's a Tiefling Magus Hexcrafter, another is an Angel-Blooded Aasimar Paladin, there's a Kitsune Impossible/Undead Crossblooded Sorcerer, and there's a guy who wants to be a "religious warrior" but not any existing class.

And this is why I moved to OSR games

>Jesus fucking snowflake, batman.
Meanwhile a bonus feat is still one of the strongest options.

If the wizard gets 1 enemy to fail his save, he is being just as effective as the initiator then.

Auto-killing 1 guy a turn really isn't a hard bar to set.

Implying the wizard can reliably catch that many enemies.
Implying there are that many enemies in the encounter in the first place.
Implying the big bad enemies of the encounter will fail their saves so easily.
Implying immunities aren't dime a dozen.

Those races have been played for decades. At least no one is playing a Drow.