What's the DC for Hatchling's Flame?

Question

Saving Throw: Reflex half

You focus a burning aura of energy at the end of your blade. It forms a seething sphere that, after a moment, bursts into a torrent of energy.

The Desert Wind discipline teaches its students how to unleash their ki as burning energy. This maneuver allows you to create a wave of fire that sweeps over your enemies. When you initiate this maneuver, you blast forth a cone of flame that deals 2d6 points of fire damage. This maneuver is a supernatural ability.

Out of the 3 "X's Flame" maneuvers of Desert Wind, Hatchling's Flame is the only one that does not specify a DC even if it says "Saving Throw: Reflex Half", so, what's the DC?

Answer 1

Spell save DCs are usually (10 + spell level + spellcasting ability modifier), so we should expect something similar to be true for maneuver DCs.

Oddly, the actual rules don't seem to make this explicit -- they just say that the DC will be specified in the maneuver text.

Some related swordsage disciplines have a DC of (10 + level + WIS modifier):

• the Dragon's Flame maneuver, which is a Swordsage 5, has a DC of (15 + WIS modifier).
• the Blistering Flourish maneuver, which is a Swordsage 1, has a DC of (11 + WIS modifier).

Hatchling's Flame is a Swordsage 2, so it should have a DC of (12 + WIS modifier).

Answer 2

The DC should be 12 + your Wisdom modifier

This indeed unspecified by the text of the manoeuvre, but in almost all cases the save DC for a manoeuvre is based on the "10 + level + ability modifier" formula, just the same as when calculating spell save DCs.

Hatchling's Flame is a swordsage 2 manoeuvre so it would have a base DC of 12, and manoeuvres in the Desert Wind family use Wisdom as the relevant ability score, so you'd add your wisdom modifier to get your final DC.

Inferno Blast, on the next page, also doesn't specify an actual save DC - but following the same formula, as a 9th level manoeuvre it would have a DC 19 + Wis mod save.