Embrace the power that dates back to the discovery of the source and join an ancient martial arts order in this new specialization-class mod!

Be a fierce damage dealer, indomitable tank or a master of statuses spreading the misery amongst your enemies, while empowering your team!
Befriend your trusted greatsword and mock your enemies together just for the fun of it!
Try a new (optional) ingame mode - "oath of honor", trading your ability to load game during fights for extra team-wide bonuses!
See as your character develops with a new system of tiered skills that scale up to 20 points in all class-defining abilities!
All of this and much more in this new Blade Master mod!

Mod Features

• New specialization-class
• 39 active, 1 class-enabling and 1 utility skill
• Stance-rotation based combat
• Class-specific attributes and abilities bonuses and restrictions
• New mechanics: skills tiering
• New mechanics: spirit shield
• New mechanics: share weakness
• New sub game mode: oath of honor
• Party banter
• Class-specific visual effects
  

Who are the Blade Masters?
Blade Masters are the members of the nearly extinct ancient martial arts order that focused on combining exceptional melee techniques with an extensive usage of source. While being merely just a bunch of battlemages in the beginning the order later grew into what its final form: an order of source warriors that share their souls with their massive greatswords to achieve feats and destruction never seen before

Becoming a Blade Master
Talk to a new "blade master historian" vendor available at most marketplaces, Lady Vengeance and even somehow in the Hold of the ship that was taking you to the Fort Joy and he will help you becoming a Blade Master.

In simple words, you need to acquire a skill book from that vendor and enable a class by turning on a class-enabling stance "Way of the Blade Master".

Specialization
This mod is not a set of extra skills added to a game but instead a standalone specialization-class, which can be activated and deactivated any moment (out of combat) together with all of its features. All skills that come with a class are available only if it is active and are immediately removed if class is disabled. On a bright side, they are all added back if class is activated again

Although this specialization comes with a number of extra bonuses for attributes and abilities there are also some restrictions that balance out bonuses and help specialization staying unique.
More details about bonuses
More details about restrictions

Skills overview
Class currently features 39 active, 1 class-activating and 1 utility skill. Skills are focused on 3 main areas:

• Damage dealing
• Status manipulation (both positive and negative)
• Protection and tanking
  

Detailed list of skills

Stance-rotation based combat
Although Blade Master knows many skills only a few of them are available at any given moment of time. His combat style is all about a fluid dance of stances that progresses with every skill that he uses
More about stances
More about skills avalability

Key attributes and abilities
Key abilities of the Blade Master are: Leadership, Two-Handed and Perseverance
Key attributes of the Blade Master are: Strength, Wits, Finesses and Constitution

A different combination of these will not only make Blade Master stronger but will also change the playstyle dramatically
More about key attributes&abilities and their bonuses

Playstyles
Playstyles of Blade Master can range from stable-DPS or critical-damage dealer to a tank or even a master of curses and blessings. While every Blade Master knows all of these skills it will be very hard to be exceptionally good in all of these 3 areas.
More about playstyles

Skill tiering
Almost every skill Blade Master has scales as his abilities grow, gaining not only raw damage but also evolving into much stronger versions of the same skill
More about skills tiering

Party banter
Quite often Blade Master, his sword, companions and enemies will comment the skills used by Blade Master. Can be disabled any moment via mod settings available at mod vendor

Spirit shield
Blade Master relies a lot on this extra exotic form of protection, which offers an extra temporary layer of armor (both magical and physical)
More about spirit shield

Share weakness
You force your enemies (or sometimes yourself) to share their negative statuses with other enemies around. Can be devastating if used properly

Oath of honor
Activated optional party buff which boosts the team but punishes save/load scamming in battles. Loading a mid-combat* save will force everyone who has given an oath of honor to die of shame. Literally.

*Start of combat autosaves are safe to load

Technical limitations
Due to how game handles skills granting I cannot control where and how they will appear on hotbar once stance is activated. For the ease of use I strongly suggest to keep first ~10 slots of the first hotbar empty (or filled in by stanceless Blade Master skills) so that you won't have hard time finding stance-granted skills.

Compatibility
May have compatibility issues with mods that add custom (new) talents. Do not use respec function from Blade Master Historian if you have new custom talents on your character or you might loose talent points. 
Minimum required game version: v3.0.169.700

Issues and Mod Suggestions
List of known issues can be checked here
Please post the issues you have found and mod suggestions here 

Disclaimer
Using this mod WILL DISABLE you from being able to earn achievements
Always backup your save file before attempting to use a mod, while nothing bad SHOULD happen it does not mean it can't.

Installing mod
Download the *.pak file and place it into MODS folder: \Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2\Mods\ (C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\Larian Studios\Divinity Original Sin 2\Mods\)
If Mods folder does not exist - create it

Updating mod
After loading a save with old version of mod wait for "Mod Updated" notificattion (approximattely 10 seconds)

Uninstalling/removing the mod
Make sure to disable all Blade Master class for all characters who has it enabled and wait out until mod-specific buffs/statuses are removed before uninstalling/disabling the mod.

Also available at Steam Workshop
Blade Master Steam workshop page

Other links
Blade Master topic on Larian forums
Blade Master topic on Reddit

Credits
LaughingLeader and Номми for invaluable modding and ideas help and support
Icons created by Lorc at http://game-icons.net