Crusader

"For The Cause! Foward!"

Devoted knight, divine agent, instrument of vengeance, peerless fighting machine—the crusader is a warrior dedicated to good, evil, law, chaos, or some other cause. She seeks out and destroys the enemies of her chosen faith. Strengthened by prayer or absolute devotion to a principle, armored by unshakable faith, and driven by her convictions, a good crusader is a mighty weapon against injustice and malice. An evil crusader, on the other hand, is a cruel and fearsome warrior of darkness.

Alignment
Any non Neutral.

Hit Die
d10

Class Skills

Balance, Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (int), Martial Lore, Ride.

Skill Points at 1st Level
(4 + Int modifier) ×4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level
4 + Int modifier.

Level	Base attack Bonus	Fort save	Ref save	Will save	Special	Maneuvers known	Maneuvers Per Encounter	Stances Known
1	+1	+2	+0	+0	Furious counterstrike, Steely resolve 5	5	5	1
2	+2	+3	+0	+0	Indomitable soul	5	5	2
3	+3	+3	+1	+1	Zealous surge	6	5	2
4	+4	+4	+1	+1	Steely resolve 10	6	5	2
5	+5	+4	+1	+1	-	7	5	2
6	+6/+1	+5	+2	+2	Smite 1/day	7	5	2
7	+7/+2	+5	+2	+2	-	8	5	2
8	+8/+3	+6	+3	+3	Steely resolve 15	8	5	3
9	+9/+4	+6	+3	+3	-	9	5	3
10	+10/+5	+7	+3	+3	Die hard	9	6	3
11	+11/+6/+1	+7	+3	+3	-	10	6	3
12	+12/+7/+2	+8	+4	+4	Steely resolve 20	10	6	3
13	+13/+8/+3	+8	+4	+4	Mettle	11	6	3
14	+14/+9/+4	+9	+4	+4	-	11	6	4
15	+15/+10/+5	+9	+5	+5	-	12	6	4
16	+16/+11/+6/+1	+10	+5	+5	Steely resolve 25	12	6	4
17	+17/+12/+7/+2	+10	+5	+5	-	13	6	4
18	+18/+13/+8/+3	+11	+6	+6	Smite 2/day	13	6	4
19	+19/+14/+9/+4	+11	+6	+6	-	14	6	4
20	+20/+15/+10/+5	+12	+6	+6	Steely resolve 30	14	7	4

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: As a crusader, you are proficient with simple weapons, martial weapons, light, medium, and heavy armor, and all shields.

Maneuvers: You begin your career with knowledge of five martial maneuvers. The disciplines available to you are Devoted Spirit, Stone Dragon, and White Raven. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it (see Maneuvers Readied, below).
A maneuver usable by crusaders is considered an extraordinary ability unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate one. You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels, as shown on the above table. You must meet a maneuver’s prerequisite to learn it. See details on Blade Magic or the bottom of this page.

Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered crusader level after that (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 your restriction on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the old maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. For example, upon reaching 10th level, you could trade in a single 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- or 4th-level maneuver for a maneuver of 5th level or lower, as long as you meet the prerequisite of the new maneuver. You can swap only a single maneuver at any given level.

Maneuvers Per Encounter: You can ready all five maneuvers you know at 1st level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you must choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready maneuvers by praying for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to pray again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time in order to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in prayer, you can change your readied maneuvers.

You begin an encounter with all your maneuvers unexpended, regardless of how many times you might have already used them. When you initiate a maneuver, you expend it for the current encounter, so each of your maneuvers can be used once per encounter.
You can recover all expended maneuvers with a full-round action, which you must spend in prayer or meditation. You cannot initiate a maneuver or change your stance while you are recovering your expended maneuvers, but you can remain in a stance in which you began your turn.

Stances Known: You begin play with knowledge of one 1st-level stance from the Devoted Spirit, Stone Dragon, or White Raven discipline. At 2nd, 8th, and 14th level, you can choose an additional stance. 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 currently use as a swift action. A stance is an extraordinary ability unless otherwise stated in the stance description. Unlike with maneuvers, you cannot learn a new stance at higher levels in place of one you already know.

Steely Resolve (Ex): Your supreme dedication and intense focus allow you to temporarily set aside the pain and hindering effects of injuries. When an opponent strikes you, the injury does not immediately affect you. You have a delayed damage pool that allows you to forestall the effects of many injuries. This pool begins at 0 with each encounter. When you are attacked, any hit point damage the blow deals is added to your delayed damage pool. At the end of your next turn, you take damage equal to the total stored in your delayed damage pool, which then resets to 0. Any healing you receive can either increase your current hit point total as normal or reduce the total damage in your delayed damage pool. When you receive healing, you choose whether it affects your damage pool, your hit points, or both (you can split the amount of healing as you wish). Most crusaders opt to keep as much damage in their delayed damage pool as possible to maximize the benefit of their furious counterstrike ability (see below). Damage reduction does not apply to the damage that is received from Steely Resolve.
Special effects tied to an attack, such as energy drain, stun, and so forth, still affect you as normal, and their effects are not delayed by this ability. For example, if you are bitten by a venomous spider, you must still attempt a Fortitude save against the poison immediately, even though the bite damage shifts into your delayed damage pool. By the same token, any other special attack that imposes a condition, such as a medusa’s petrifying gaze, takes immediate effect on you.
At 1st level, your delayed damage pool can hold up to 5 points of damage. Any damage beyond that comes off your hit points as normal. The maximum damage your pool holds increases by 5 at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th level.

Furious Counterstrike (Ex): You can channel the pain of your injuries into a boiling rage that lets you lash out at your enemies with renewed vigor and power. Each attack that strikes you only pushes you onward to greater glory. During your turn, you gain a bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls equal to the current value of your delayed damage pool (see steely resolve, above) divided by 5, and rounding down (minimum +1). You can only gain a maximum bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls of +6 from furious counterstrike. Use the table below to quickly determine the attack bonus and damage bonus from furious counterstrike, based on the amount of damage in your delayed damage pool. This ability’s benefits last until the end of your turn.
Delayed Damage Furious Counterstrike Pool Points Bonus
1–9 +1
10–14 +2
15–19 +3
20–24 +4
25–29 +5
30+ +6

Indomitable Soul (Ex): Beginning at 2nd level, you draw upon the power of your unwavering faith to steel yourself against the enemies you face. Your personality, energy, and dedication to your faith make it possible for you to shrug off attacks that target your willpower.
You add your Charisma bonus (if any) as a bonus on Will saves. This bonus does not stack with that from a paladin’s divine grace ability.

Zealous Surge (Ex): Your boundless energy and dedication to your cause allow you to throw off the effect of a special attack, spell, or other attack that would otherwise hinder or harm you. Once per day, from 3rd level on, you can opt to reroll a single saving throw. You must abide by the result of the new, second saving throw, even if it is lower than the first. This ability does not require an action. You simply decide to use it after seeing the result of your saving throw roll but before the DM tells you if it fails or succeeds.

Smite (Ex): Driven by the courage of your convictions and the ironclad strength of your beliefs, you can strike back at those who dare stand against your cause. Starting at 6th level, once per day, you can concentrate all your anger, hatred, and determination into a single attack. On the next melee attack you make, you gain a bonus on your attack roll equal to your Charisma bonus (if any) and a bonus on damage equal to your crusader level. At 18th level, you gain an additional use of smite per day.

Die Hard (Ex): At 10th level, you gain Die Hard as a bonus feat.

Mettle (Ex): You can resist magical attacks with greater effectiveness than other warriors. Beginning at 13th level, by drawing on your boundless energy and dedication to your cause, you can shrug off effects that would hinder even the toughest warrior. If you succeed on a Fortitude or Will save against an attack that would normally produce a lesser effect on a successful save (such as a spell with a saving throw entry of Will half or Fortitude partial), you instead negate the effect. You do not gain the benefit of mettle when you are unconscious or sleeping.

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Notes on Initiator Level for Blade Magic, and Selecting Maneuvers:

Initiator Level:
Some maneuvers and stances have variable effects (such as duration) that depend on initiator level. However, maneuvers are not impacted as strongly by a user’s level as spells are. This difference in effect is primarily a balance and game play issue. Since you can use maneuvers repeatedly, they tend to scale poorly. As you attain higher levels, you usually use your low-level maneuvers less often (if you haven’t already traded them out for higher-level stances however many stances, boosts, and counters remain useful across all levels.

If you are a single-class character, your initiator level equals your level in the class that provides access to martial maneuvers (crusader, swordsage, or warblade). If you lack any martial adept levels, your initiator level is equal to 1/2 your character level.

Multiclass Characters:
Even when you gain levels in a class that does not grant martial maneuvers, your understanding of the martial disciplines still increases. A highly skilled fighter has the basic combat training and experience needed to master advanced maneuvers. If you are a multiclass martial adept, and you learn a new maneuver by attaining a new level in a martial adept class, determine your initiator level by adding together your level in that class + 1/2 your levels in all other classes. Look up the result on the table below to determine the highest-level maneuvers you can take. You still have to meet a maneuver’s prerequisite to learn it.

For example, a 7th-level Crusader/5th-level swordsage has an initiator level of 9th for determining the highest level maneuvers he can take as a crusader. As a result, he can take 5th-level crusader maneuvers. As a swordsage, his initiator level is 8th, allowing him to take 4th-level swordsage maneuvers.

This process applies to all of a character’s levels, whether they are in martial adept classes or other classes.

Selecting Martial Maneuvers:
Much like spells, martial maneuvers are organized by level. Higher-level maneuvers are more powerful than lower level ones. As you gain levels, you have the option to select higher-level maneuvers. Your level in a martial adept class determines the highest-level maneuvers you can select. For example, a 5th-level warblade can select maneuvers of 3rd level or lower.

Highest-Level Maneuvers Known

Initiator Level	Maneuver Level
1st–2nd	1st
3rd–4th	2nd
5th–6th	3rd
7th–8th	4th
9th–10th	5th
11th–12th	6th
13th–14th	7th
15th–16th	8th
17th+	9th