Long Blade Fighter II

[Cataphract]

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has been sorely disappointed by the failure that is Long Blade Fighter II. Compared to the useful LBF I and the impressive (don't know yet if effective) LBF III, Long Blade Fighter II seems to not even be worth it, considering the Maneuver rules are actually BETTER, and don't need to eat up a Destiny point.

So, here's my proposal, to make it much more worth the investment:

Long Blade Fighter II
Your control of your weapon has increased manifold, especially your mastery of half-swording. Through proper technique and leverage, you not only maneuver your opponents where you want them but also you can easily find gaps in their armor to take advantage of.
Prerequisites: Fighting 5, Long Blade Fighter I
When armed with a Long Blade, you may sacrifice all of your bonus dice from Long Blades to combine a Maneuver action with your attack, as per the normal Maneuver rules. Your Fighting test is compared both to your opponents Combat Defense, to see if you hit, and his passive Fighting result, to see if your Maneuver succeeded, just like a regular Maneuver action, with the additional benefit that the opponent's Awareness test is now Challenging (9), and you may move him an additional yard per two bonus dice sacrificed, round up.
Also, while armed with a long blade and no other weapon or shield, your long blade gains the Piercing X quality, where X is equal to the number of bonus dice in the Long Blades specialty, rounded up. This also applies even if you have sacrificed your bonus dice.

[Pytorb]

Like you our group thought Long Blade II very underpowered. We've gone with being able to do Maneuver as a free action if the character sacrifices all their bonus dice whilst making a Long Blade attack. Personally I think giving a Piercing rank to the character's bonus dice is overpowered. How about a flat Piercing 1 whther you sacrifice bonus dice or not?

[Zorbeltuss]

Long Blade Fighter III is worth the investment of one crappy benefit to get it though.

[Pytorb]

True Long Blade III is good, but every stage should add something and Long Blade II just doesn't when there is Maneuver out there

[Tao Jones]

Like you our group thought Long Blade II very underpowered. We've gone with being able to do Maneuver as a free action if the character sacrifices all their bonus dice whilst making a Long Blade attack. Personally I think giving a Piercing rank to the character's bonus dice is overpowered. How about a flat Piercing 1 whther you sacrifice bonus dice or not?

I think this is an elegant solution to the problem. I also think it's powerful enough that you don't need to give them any Piercing ranks, since LBFII only requires 2B of bonus dice, so you're getting a lot of bang for your buck. If the benefit worked as you describe, I'd be using it almost every round.

Here's how I'd word it:

Long Blade Fighter II
Requires Fighting 5, Long Blade Fighter I
Whenever you make a Fighting test to attack using a long blade weapon, you may sacrifice bonus dice to maneuver your opponent. By sacrificing your bonus dice, you may make a Maneuver attack as a Free Action, in addition to your regular attack. If you're making a Divided Attack, choose one of your opponents as the target of this Maneuver, and use the same number of dice in the Maneuver action as you use in your attack against that opponent.
You must choose which Long Blade Fighter benefit (if any) applies when you attack with long blades.

[Saturno]

Good work and thanks for helping me with this lame benefit!!

But hey, Pole-Arm Fighter III is very underpowered too, so how about applying damage as a normal attack to make it worth the cost?

[Tao Jones]

Looking at the most recent version, it seems pretty good to me. The special attack does normal damage, and your opponent can't move afterwards. Which probably means, since you're a polearm master, that he can't attack you back during those rounds. And there's nothing in there that says you can be attacking him each round while he's trapped.

[Pytorb]

After a discussion around the gaming table last night we decided to still with Long Blade II as I had written it in our house rules, just making Maneuver a free action rather than that plus Piercing I. There is virtually no Polearms use in our group so Polearms III hasn't really come up yet.