Turn Core Into Weeaboo Fightan Magic

[God_of_Awesome]

I just had this on my mind for a while:

The classes pressented in Tome of Battle give melee classes made to equal spell casters. The problem with them for me is that they simply aren't iconic enough. This is incredibly shallow, but I don't want a new melee class, I want my old melee classes to equal spell casters

My solution is somewhat controversial but here goes:

Turn them all into spell-casters.

The Fighter should have some sort of system to enchant his own weapons without much fuss, and I mean from level 1. Barbarian should get crazy rage powers, exactly like they did in Pathfinder but more suited to Barbarian's role as someone the rolls over enemies like a friggin bull dozers. Rogue should get crazy ninja powers. The Ranger and Paladin have spells but they should properly retooled to abilities and to melee centric ones, with Smite Evil becoming the Paladin's Magic Missile if you catch my meaning.

Fluff wise; well, adventurers are supposed to be special and powerful people. The fact that they are so because they all posess some measure of powerful magic isn't too far a stretch.

[Utterfail]

You... Just described 4e? I mean, thats all they did really, made all the classes work on the same 'spell' system. And its boring.

If you simply want melee characters that have comparable damage and usability to the casters, check out the Frank and K material, its not perfect, but it's good.

[Doom]

Ditto, turning all the classes into wizards won't add variety into the game.

Enchant own weapon? Isn't that pretty much the same as getting a +1 to hit in a game that doesn't distinguish between 'magic' damage and any other type? Now toss in a bonus to hit based on level (or half level)...maybe a power or two that gives a +2 to hit for a time during combat.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you said is much different than the 4e paradigm.

[Username17]

The promise of Weaboo Fightan Magic is that each class has its own spellcasting mechanic for its weaboo fightan. If you're a crusader you have a card intensive Winds of Fate system that cycles your abilities on a turn by turn basis. If you're a WarBlade you have all your powers on one-shots and you have to spend a feat to be allowed to grab them all back in a round. If you're Swordsage you fucking fail at life and no one cares what you think.

That being said, the Dungeonomicon Monk is basically a Weeaboo Fightan Magic class. It has its own fightan magic system where it has things analogous to stances that grant it the ability to use things analogous to maneuvers whenever it wants. So if you wanted to make the Ranger into a Weaboo Fightan Magic class, you'd just do that. You'd need:

• a paradigm for how the Ranger uses their Fightan Magic Weaboo powerz.
• A list of maneuvers available to the Ranger.
• some criteria for why they get roughly level appropriate effects at levels 1-20.

It's a lot of work, but after doing the Monk I can say that it is possible.

-Username17

[God_of_Awesome]

You... Just described 4e? I mean, thats all they did really, made all the classes work on the same 'spell' system. And its boring.

If you simply want melee characters that have comparable damage and usability to the casters, check out the Frank and K material, its not perfect, but it's good.

Oh god no, not the same system. Fighters wouldn't be casting spell per say, not in the way wizards do. They'd be more like, magic smithees. Barbarian would be kind of like... the Hulk? Something to that affect. And Rogues I was thinking to the affect of getting psionic powers; but then I'm thinking of Naruto so maybe not.

[RobbyPants]

If you're a WarBlade you have all your powers on one-shots and you have to spend a feat to be allowed to grab them all back in a round.

Minor nitpick: don't they get them all back by blowing a swift action and making an attack or flourish on top of that? I don't think they have to spend a feat to recover all maneuvers in a single round; swordsages do that.

[Ice9]

Yeah, Warblades get them back practically for free, Swordsages fail at life unless they take the feat - so all of them do. With the feat they still have to spend a round, but only in long battles and only one round.

If you're not talking about a pseudo-spellcasting system, just putting the martial classes on the same power level, then the Tome classes might be the solution. Note that the Tome Fighter is dependant on whether you use Tome Feats. With normal feats, it's moderately strong. With Tome Feats, it becomes some kind of unstoppable force of doom.

[MGuy]

I agree with the base idea. As long as there is a distinct difference and consistency between the various classes and their ability systems/mechanics I've found that I can accept quite a bit of "fightan magic".

[Maxus]

I don't much like WFM because you have to learn a new system of resource management for each class and then the maneuvers and stances on top of that. That's pumping up the level of system mastery needed to get into the game and having everyone playing someone using "I Can't Believe It's Not Magic" slows down playtime even further.

Also, a personal note not related to anything mechanically relevant, I found the flavor in BO9S to be pretty insipid. The names of disciplines and maneuvers read very much like something I'd pull out of a random generator.

[mean_liar]

Also, a personal note not related to anything mechanically relevant, I found the flavor in BO9S to be pretty insipid. The names of disciplines and maneuvers read very much like something I'd pull out of a random generator.

...that's precisely why I liked it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22127011/Kung ... -Generator

[Username17]

For the Dngeonomicon Monk, we just gave out the generator rather than rolling up a bunch of bullshit maneuver names.

Naming your Fighting Style: Roll a d10, or choose an adjective, an animal, and a noun:
Adjective Chart:

1. Running
   
2. Hungry
   
3. Angry
   
4. Naked
   
5. Drunken
   
6. Fortunate
   
7. Lazy
   
8. Swift
   
9. Powerful
   
10. Enlightened

Animal Chart:

1. Ox
   
2. Tiger
   
3. Dragon
   
4. Crane
   
5. Monkey
   
6. Turtle
   
7. Manticore
   
8. Serpent
   
9. Hummingbird
   
10. Demon

Noun Chart:

1. Fist
   
2. Stance
   
3. Spinning Kick
   
4. Attack
   
5. Technique
   
6. Style
   
7. Dance
   
8. Movement
   
9. Touch
   
10. Fu

• Note from the authors: Feel free to add any adjectives, animals, or nouns that you want. There's no reason that your character's fighting style has to be called "Naked Tiger Stance" rather than "Astonished Centaur Defense".

[Orca]

There's no great reason that every martial adept has to have a different maneuver recovery mechanic, I think they did it that way because the writers were trying ideas out.

Creating new lists of maneuvers isn't a big problem. There's a lot of stuff out there to steal - search for various stuff like sublime, martial adept, ToB or whatever. Balancing it is the big challenge though.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you're Swordsage you fucking fail at life and no one cares what you think.

Swordsage makes an amazing one-level dip, though; there's this one boost that adds 1d6+initiator level to all of your attacks for one round and a stance that gives you 2d6 sneak attack. That is pretty darn dope, goshdarnit.

[RandomCasualty2]

Swordsage makes an amazing one-level dip, though; there's this one boost that adds 1d6+initiator level to all of your attacks for one round and a stance that gives you 2d6 sneak attack. That is pretty darn dope, goshdarnit.

Yeah, if you're a TWFer especially.

[NineInchNall]

Assassin's Stance takes a two level dip. The first stance you get has to be first level. (At least by RAW.)

[Caedrus]

Also, a personal note not related to anything mechanically relevant, I found the flavor in BO9S to be pretty insipid. The names of disciplines and maneuvers read very much like something I'd pull out of a random generator.

I have had it with all of WotC's classes that mix some variant of "Sword" with some variant of "Battle" or "Magic" to make a new class name. Duskblade, swordmage, warblade, swordsage, hexblade... etc...

Next will be the Warsword Bladelock.

[God_of_Awesome]

Next will be the Warsword Bladelock.

And it will be AWESOME.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I have had it with all of WotC's classes that mix some variant of "Sword" with some variant of "Battle" or "Magic" to make a new class name. Duskblade, swordmage, warblade, swordsage, hexblade... etc...

Next will be the Warsword Bladelock.

Are you familiar with the fantasy novel title game?

[Username17]

As an example of how much work this is, let's focus in on the Ranger for a moment. In order to be a Martial Adept, you need a number of accessible martial paths. And each path needs to have a piles of abilities in it. And so on. So instead of writing 20 levels of Ranger abilities, or even 20 levels of Ranger ability path options, we write a single mechanic that generates their ability to get abilities, and then we need to flesh out their available powers.

Let's say that we minimize the Ranger's complexity and make it so that their Maneuvers Readied and Known are not different numbers. And we give them a simple mechanic for refresh (such as "if you attack and inflict damage you may refresh one"). This means that the class "simply" gets a maneuver at each level that they would be offered a new level. And like 4 stances.

So we give them three Martial Disciplines:

• Bastion of Intolerance - an aggressive style that exploits enemy weaknesses (TWF and Favored Enemies and shit)
• Hunter's Way - an archery style that keeps targets from escaping (big bow damage and movement debuffs mostly)
• Woodland Path - a mystical style where you get weird plant and animal control powers.

And now you need to provide options for each one. At a minimum this means that each Martial Discipline has 27 maneuvers in it (3 different choices per level) and 8 Stances (2 different choices per level). And now that we've written up 105 separate powers... we're still short on class features because that only gives 12 levels of class features even assuming that we accepted "has one more maneuver" as a valid level worth of new abilities. And frankly, we don't.

And that's the problem right there. It's not that it can't be kind of cool to play one. It's that you throw down one hundred and five new abilities and the class is less than half done. The 4e design system was chosen because it uses up a lot of page count and keeps the "productivity" of the paid writers high. And they selected the Tome of Battle as a template for 4e abilities not because it was the most popular book, but because it had the highest page-count to content ratio of the books that had any traction at all. The Binder had traction too, but it didn't eat up words nearly as fast as a Martial Adept, so it was abandoned.

-Username17

[God_of_Awesome]

As an example of how much work this is, let's focus in on the Ranger for a moment. In order to be a Martial Adept, you need a number of accessible martial paths. And each path needs to have a piles of abilities in it. And so on. So instead of writing 20 levels of Ranger abilities, or even 20 levels of Ranger ability path options, we write a single mechanic that generates their ability to get abilities, and then we need to flesh out their available powers.

...

And now you need to provide options for each one. At a minimum this means that each Martial Discipline has 27 maneuvers in it (3 different choices per level) and 8 Stances (2 different choices per level). And now that we've written up 105 separate powers... we're still short on class features because that only gives 12 levels of class features even assuming that we accepted "has one more maneuver" as a valid level worth of new abilities. And frankly, we don't.

And that's the problem right there. It's not that it can't be kind of cool to play one. It's that you throw down one hundred and five new abilities and the class is less than half done. The 4e design system was chosen because it uses up a lot of page count and keeps the "productivity" of the paid writers high. And they selected the Tome of Battle as a template for 4e abilities not because it was the most popular book, but because it had the highest page-count to content ratio of the books that had any traction at all. The Binder had traction too, but it didn't eat up words nearly as fast as a Martial Adept, so it was abandoned.

-Username17

I discovered this when I made the Champion class, and I was just giving six new abilities per domain.

[Lokathor]

One could, as they did, assign each discipline to more than one class. A class exclusive discipline might have only 2 or 1 powers per level. As long as the total number of powers available at each level doesn't drop too low (like with Crusader 1), it should work out fine.

Though at that point you have to make a huge number of powers all integrated with each other and with several classes, which is quite possibly worse than before.

[MGuy]

How about treating the maneuvers as spells and just have each individual martial class have different mechanics surrounding those maneuvers?

[Meikle641]

Well, the alternate versions for Swordsage in the book did suggest that as an option, along with the retarded in delivery unarmed SS.

The spell-using SS has tempted me some, especially if the spell choices are limited like they were suggested. Or something.

[Username17]

Whenever you're making an ability centered game (as D&D is), making the abilities is very hard. It's a large amount of work. Consider a game like aWoD. It has 155 distinct magic abilities in it. Those abilities are actually fairly general and are intended to be used "creatively" because that's a rules light system. In a more focused, maneuver centric game like Fantastic! - I expect the number of abilities to be roughly 6 times that to start. That might be a low estimate, there are a lot of advantages to writing more like 10 times as many abilities.

Now when you want to put together a "class" that's just a collection of abilities. If you make a new kind of spellcaster you're totally covered. The Spell Compendium alone has over 1000 abilities that all have the "is a spell" tag on them. Now a lot of them are insultingly stupid, but combing through it for the roughly 50 abilities that an individual character gets from levels 1-20 is not a whole lot of work. You can make a new class like Tree Singer or Shadowmancer or whatever the fuck in a few hours because there are already thousands of abilities written up and you just have to whittle them down to something workable.

However, if you want to make someone who is not a spellcaster, things get tough. There really aren't piles of thousands of abilities for warriors. Well, there're feats, but who the fuck are we kidding there? If you don't want to grab abilities with the "spells" tag you're stuck writing abilities yourself.

And consider: that minimal sketch of a Ranger Martial Adept involved writing 105 new abilities before getting to fixed class features. At the point where you're writing 155 abilities you can write an entirely new game system from scratch.

-Username17