Book of Ki (3.5e Variant Rule)/OGL Introduction

This material is published under the OGL 1.0a.

Author: Darien_CR

Introduction to the Book of Ki

The Book of Ki is an ambitious project I had always dreamed about, and hopefully, many of you also had the desire to play a roleplaying game with the fantastic martial arts of the Asian movies. This book is the result of the wish to include what we saw in movies and anime and played in videogames into the roleplaying experience. How many times you wanted your monk to throw energy through its hand or perform amazing feats and martial arts moves. Did you wonder why couldn’t your character fly or jump great distances, and why your samurai couldn’t send a fireball to his opponent? The Book of Ki gives you the opportunity to do all this and much more, now you can scream “hadoken” or “kame hame ha” while playing D&D

Needless to say, most of the influence of this book comes from anime and videogames; however, this is not an approach to Anime roleplaying (though it can be perfectly used for that purpose), or a videogame simulation. This is still a roleplaying game, and the roleplaying is what matters the most. It is merely a way to make the game more fun, and include other things we like to it, and anime and videogames is exactly that for me, and a lot of more people. It is also influenced by Asian movies, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero and by oriental culture and myth in general.

Throughout this book you will discover new races such as the Neko and the Saiyajin; find interesting character classes like the Geisha and the ninja, and revisions to previous prestige classes, as well as new ones to improve your character. More than fifty new feats allow your character do extreme moves, and add the campaign, and a different IaijutIaijutsu skill, which goes according to the IaijutIaijutsure and the ki aloki with an easy and fun Jump skill give your character amazing abilities. You can find a simple way of tracking honor and taint, as well as new weapons and magic items. And last but not least, the very core of the book, which is the explanation of what ki is,kind how it is used by martial artists to perform techniques: supernatural abilities that allow a monk, a samurai, a ninja, or any other ki usekiclass to perform anything from a flying kick to an omnislomnislash

be at this point, you may think that this book’s material is unbalanced, but not only because a character can do an omniomnislashs it mean the game’s balance is at stake. After all, can’t a wizard stop the time or cast a meteor swarm? But don’t worry, balance has been a main issue during the developing of this book, classes which used to have a good base attack bonus now have an average one, and some have had changes in their abilities, in order to ensure that their ability to perform techniques does not spoil the fun for the other players. As always, you can change anything in this book that doesn’t fit in your games, or that you consider not appropriate.

What you need to play

In addition to the Player’s Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, you will find references to Oriental Adventures, Rokugan Setting, and Unearthed Arcana. And even though it is not strictly necessary, it will enhance your experience to have a copy of the Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, and the Complete Arcane books.

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This is a part of the Book of Ki. It is covered by the Open Game License v1.0a, rather than the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3. To distinguish it, these items will have this notice. If you see any page that contains OGL material and does not show this license statement, please contact an admin so that this license statement can be added. It is our intent to work within this license in good faith.