I ran a game with Tome classes a couple years back, posted a description of a particularly noteworthy fight thereafter.
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51808
Essentially, a level 5 Samurai played by 'Trevor' wound up defeating a Juvenile Green Dragon in single combat; probably the most awesome thing he'll ever do in a game. Granted, I was using a crit deck, which made Samurai even more awesome then they normally are... but still, I didn't mind; everyone had fun, and that's what counts.
So, who has actually used a RoW Fighter, Samurai, Barb, etc.
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8headeddragon
- Apprentice
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I MC'd a game where some of the Tome classes were permitted. One of the players was a Tome Samurai and it did well, but the Samurai ultimately died from being played recklessly. Another was a Tome Monk, he was pretty powerful and the player had a lot of fun with it, I think. Briefly there was a Tome Knight-- moreso than the utter resilience of the Knight abilities was the fact that the mounts the Knight was taking with Command were a little jarring to encounters.
I've played as a Tome Jester before, it was fun and seemed about right-- there wasn't all that much to do offensively in combat, but I had the perfect arsenal for setting up traps and pranks.
I got to play all of one session as an Assassin; and it seems like Death Attack is rather situational. Good if your goal is to murder NPCs before or outside of combat, not so good once in the middle of a shootout.
I played a Tome Samurai too for a little while and I have to admit, I wanted to like the class, but I found my experience in battle rather boring due to my own proclivities. It was nice being able to cut through anything, but I'm used to playing spellcasters in some form and "hit stuff" being my role every turn of every battle got extremely stale.
Oh, and the necromantic feats. I love the necromantic feats and regard Tome of Necromancy as the best resouce, making good on so many things Libris Mortis failed to deliver. Having formulas to create any type of undead in the books is very exciting and each level up finds me browsing the list for anything interesting I might be able to create. But I will admit that each time I played a necromancer using those feats I voluntarily put a lot of limits on how many minions I'd wrangle at any given time. At most I would take one mount and one offensive undead into battle, and usually I just chose one creation to take somewhere. I also discussed undead I wanted to create with my MCs and tried to paint a clear picture of what their capabilities and limits would be. Both times I played Dread Necromancers with those feats and usually had both a lot of space in my HD pool and a lot of empty slots granted by the feats because I didn't care to waste a money making small fry when I had such sweet advanced undead, and even without Tome feats a DN can build up an enormous horde if one has a mind to. The feats are a lot of fun but will unbalance the game if a PC wants to go all out with them.
I've played as a Tome Jester before, it was fun and seemed about right-- there wasn't all that much to do offensively in combat, but I had the perfect arsenal for setting up traps and pranks.
I got to play all of one session as an Assassin; and it seems like Death Attack is rather situational. Good if your goal is to murder NPCs before or outside of combat, not so good once in the middle of a shootout.
I played a Tome Samurai too for a little while and I have to admit, I wanted to like the class, but I found my experience in battle rather boring due to my own proclivities. It was nice being able to cut through anything, but I'm used to playing spellcasters in some form and "hit stuff" being my role every turn of every battle got extremely stale.
Oh, and the necromantic feats. I love the necromantic feats and regard Tome of Necromancy as the best resouce, making good on so many things Libris Mortis failed to deliver. Having formulas to create any type of undead in the books is very exciting and each level up finds me browsing the list for anything interesting I might be able to create. But I will admit that each time I played a necromancer using those feats I voluntarily put a lot of limits on how many minions I'd wrangle at any given time. At most I would take one mount and one offensive undead into battle, and usually I just chose one creation to take somewhere. I also discussed undead I wanted to create with my MCs and tried to paint a clear picture of what their capabilities and limits would be. Both times I played Dread Necromancers with those feats and usually had both a lot of space in my HD pool and a lot of empty slots granted by the feats because I didn't care to waste a money making small fry when I had such sweet advanced undead, and even without Tome feats a DN can build up an enormous horde if one has a mind to. The feats are a lot of fun but will unbalance the game if a PC wants to go all out with them.
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infected slut princess
- Knight-Baron
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I dont like that solution because it is still 'weird' aesthetically (samurai with picks) and it puts the scythe/mercurial sword guy on a tighter adventure schedule.Dominicius wrote:For the samurai I already suggested a quick fix some time ago. Basically, forcing a crit with an x3 weapon should cost you 2 Kiai! charges, an x4 weapon for 3 Kiai! charges and so on. This pretty much solves the issue for most of the class as it refocuses the character depending on what kind of weapon he uses, the scythe guy is there to kill bosses and other high priority targets while the sword guy can easily stab a lot of mooks without running out of steam.
I used a Samurai in a mini-campaign. What we did instead was give the option to activate a KIAI! charge on a successful attack like normal, but instead of giving an auto-crit, it just gave an additional attack. It makes DR worse for the samurai but only until level 6. This mod worked okay in the sense that it didn't encourage OHKO'ing all the bosses with scythes and was basically the same for any weapon.
I've run one Tome game and played one Tome game; the latter ended at level 8, whereas the former went all the way to 13ish. The game I ran took place in a slightly-more-serious-than-Disgaea-but-not-really Netherworld plane, so the PCs counted as Fiends for all intents and purposes and could take Fiend classes. In the game I ran, we had:
True Fiend/Fighter/Monk who later PrC'd into Death Knight. His inital character goal, mechanically, was to have as many attacks as possible, so he took Sting of the Scorpion and TWF; he used a shield in his off-hand but spent more time bashing people with it than using it for its defensive benefits, so slash/bash/sting/monk slam from more or less the outset of the game was pretty much his gig. He burned his swift action nearly every round on a monk style to boost his saves through the roof--I forget what the other benefit was. With Death Knight's sphere access and an undead leadership feat he wound up becoming a full-on lord of the undead, complete with giant black ziggurat in the middle of a desert of black sand and a cabal of vampires.
Knight who did everything he could manage to be unhittable, including run away from his enemies, so he could get extra damage out of knight's challenge whether he drew attacks or not. Picked up Monster Rancher for a dragon mount and eventually PrC'd into Holy Crusader, which basically spelled the end of his ability to party with the Death Knight; he wound up becoming an NPC and being replaced with a Soulborn.
Soulborn who did plenty of damage, but whose biggest contribution was RNG-breaking aura of luck stacked with crushing despair. I don't even remember what else she could do because she was a replacement character and part of the party for all of two sessions or so.
Swordsage who was given full BAB and allowed to take maneuvers off the Tome Soldier's list, which worked out just fine. Initially she was just taking stuff off the standard swordsage list and was underperforming, but giving her access to the Soldier maneuvers brought her up to par. Someone else played a Soldier in the second game and used Elemental-Blooded to get the size-boosting feat for elemental characters; that character was pretty versatile and entertaining to watch (myconid stance was amusing as all hell).
Small-sized samurai who fought with a lucerne hammer for the x4 crit and Giant Slayer to get the edge on everyone forever. Agree wholeheartedly with assertions that the samurai is kind of one-dimensional; she used subtle cut kiai crits to deal buckets of DEX damage or just to murder people. Her ability to ignore hardness did get used as a problem-solving ability on more than one occasion; she cut a tunnel through a wall to bypass a wall of force and removed an adamantine vault door from its hinges (which the party then promptly dragged off to sell, firmly placing them in the wish economy).
Ninja.[/i] The ninja in the Tome PDF is a really stupid class in that they can win some encounters not just on turn one, but literally before combat has actually even started. We had an encounter that started because two people were arguing. One of them decided to turn a verbal fight into a fight with weapons. Before she had an opportunity to throw the first proverbial punch, someone's ninja/samurai multiclassed cohort gained a surprise round and stabbed the dude she was going to attack in the kidney with a pick and dropped him with a subtle cut DEX damage kiai crit. You can argue over whether "ninja out of nowhere" is cool or not all you want, but it created a very strange situation at the table where a player started a fight she did not get to participate in because of some bystander ninja. It was ultimately decided that ninja have insane precognitive powers about inevitable conflicts, but it was still kind of disempowering for the player in question.
I played a sahuagin Totemist in a Tome Red Hand of Doom game (no level adjustment, I just had some racial hit dice, more or less in accordance with Tome rules for playing weird races). That was actually a lot of fun, and I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out which of my powers to slot in because you have a good number more than you can actually use; it was like a wizard-lite in that respect.
I also ran a one-shot game with a Tome Barbarian and a Fire Mage, and pretty much agree with what's been said already. The Barbarian handles the role of melee frontliner just fine and contributes in combat without issue, but doesn't necessarily have much to do elsewhere. The Fire Mage has a limited number of tricks, but they're good enough at what they do that it isn't a huge problem. Some of their abilities are flavorful without really being useful unless you specifically build the character to take advantage of them (like Hand of Fire; and Ignite is cool, but the fire mage can already set things on fire with Fire Bolt, although the fact that it always hits is potentially good).
Further balance/feel/playability stuff: Most of the "balance" issues we encountered came from leadership feats becoming too cumbersome to actually play. I wound up letting people keep their followers as flavor but threw cohorts and whatnot out the window as adventuring companions because the party just got too big. A one-level dip into True Fiend to get permanent Freedom of Movement was exceedingly popular; I think 3 out of 4 characters did it. Everyone took Wings of Evil as their 6th level feat on the basis that flight is a major magic item power and there was no guarantee they'd be able to get it otherwise since the party had no true spellcasters. Everyone can and should dual-wield if they intend to fight with weapons because TWF is that good in Tome.
Edit: Weapon of Righteous Destruction has also been a really popular combat feat in games I've played because it's essentially spending a feat to get an extra item attunement slot. It's definitely not overpowered (and might even be a little underpowered), but is extremely well-loved. It has led to some strange discussions about what it means to "wield" something, since none of us can find a game rules definition of that word anywhere in the SRD or other books. (Is a wizard "wielding" a scorching ray he's firing? Does it get WoRD bonuses as a result? Does a Fire Mage's Fire Bolt count? Do other spells that require an attack roll to hit count as weapons and therefore get the bonuses?)
True Fiend/Fighter/Monk who later PrC'd into Death Knight. His inital character goal, mechanically, was to have as many attacks as possible, so he took Sting of the Scorpion and TWF; he used a shield in his off-hand but spent more time bashing people with it than using it for its defensive benefits, so slash/bash/sting/monk slam from more or less the outset of the game was pretty much his gig. He burned his swift action nearly every round on a monk style to boost his saves through the roof--I forget what the other benefit was. With Death Knight's sphere access and an undead leadership feat he wound up becoming a full-on lord of the undead, complete with giant black ziggurat in the middle of a desert of black sand and a cabal of vampires.
Knight who did everything he could manage to be unhittable, including run away from his enemies, so he could get extra damage out of knight's challenge whether he drew attacks or not. Picked up Monster Rancher for a dragon mount and eventually PrC'd into Holy Crusader, which basically spelled the end of his ability to party with the Death Knight; he wound up becoming an NPC and being replaced with a Soulborn.
Soulborn who did plenty of damage, but whose biggest contribution was RNG-breaking aura of luck stacked with crushing despair. I don't even remember what else she could do because she was a replacement character and part of the party for all of two sessions or so.
Swordsage who was given full BAB and allowed to take maneuvers off the Tome Soldier's list, which worked out just fine. Initially she was just taking stuff off the standard swordsage list and was underperforming, but giving her access to the Soldier maneuvers brought her up to par. Someone else played a Soldier in the second game and used Elemental-Blooded to get the size-boosting feat for elemental characters; that character was pretty versatile and entertaining to watch (myconid stance was amusing as all hell).
Small-sized samurai who fought with a lucerne hammer for the x4 crit and Giant Slayer to get the edge on everyone forever. Agree wholeheartedly with assertions that the samurai is kind of one-dimensional; she used subtle cut kiai crits to deal buckets of DEX damage or just to murder people. Her ability to ignore hardness did get used as a problem-solving ability on more than one occasion; she cut a tunnel through a wall to bypass a wall of force and removed an adamantine vault door from its hinges (which the party then promptly dragged off to sell, firmly placing them in the wish economy).
Ninja.[/i] The ninja in the Tome PDF is a really stupid class in that they can win some encounters not just on turn one, but literally before combat has actually even started. We had an encounter that started because two people were arguing. One of them decided to turn a verbal fight into a fight with weapons. Before she had an opportunity to throw the first proverbial punch, someone's ninja/samurai multiclassed cohort gained a surprise round and stabbed the dude she was going to attack in the kidney with a pick and dropped him with a subtle cut DEX damage kiai crit. You can argue over whether "ninja out of nowhere" is cool or not all you want, but it created a very strange situation at the table where a player started a fight she did not get to participate in because of some bystander ninja. It was ultimately decided that ninja have insane precognitive powers about inevitable conflicts, but it was still kind of disempowering for the player in question.
I played a sahuagin Totemist in a Tome Red Hand of Doom game (no level adjustment, I just had some racial hit dice, more or less in accordance with Tome rules for playing weird races). That was actually a lot of fun, and I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out which of my powers to slot in because you have a good number more than you can actually use; it was like a wizard-lite in that respect.
I also ran a one-shot game with a Tome Barbarian and a Fire Mage, and pretty much agree with what's been said already. The Barbarian handles the role of melee frontliner just fine and contributes in combat without issue, but doesn't necessarily have much to do elsewhere. The Fire Mage has a limited number of tricks, but they're good enough at what they do that it isn't a huge problem. Some of their abilities are flavorful without really being useful unless you specifically build the character to take advantage of them (like Hand of Fire; and Ignite is cool, but the fire mage can already set things on fire with Fire Bolt, although the fact that it always hits is potentially good).
Further balance/feel/playability stuff: Most of the "balance" issues we encountered came from leadership feats becoming too cumbersome to actually play. I wound up letting people keep their followers as flavor but threw cohorts and whatnot out the window as adventuring companions because the party just got too big. A one-level dip into True Fiend to get permanent Freedom of Movement was exceedingly popular; I think 3 out of 4 characters did it. Everyone took Wings of Evil as their 6th level feat on the basis that flight is a major magic item power and there was no guarantee they'd be able to get it otherwise since the party had no true spellcasters. Everyone can and should dual-wield if they intend to fight with weapons because TWF is that good in Tome.
Edit: Weapon of Righteous Destruction has also been a really popular combat feat in games I've played because it's essentially spending a feat to get an extra item attunement slot. It's definitely not overpowered (and might even be a little underpowered), but is extremely well-loved. It has led to some strange discussions about what it means to "wield" something, since none of us can find a game rules definition of that word anywhere in the SRD or other books. (Is a wizard "wielding" a scorching ray he's firing? Does it get WoRD bonuses as a result? Does a Fire Mage's Fire Bolt count? Do other spells that require an attack roll to hit count as weapons and therefore get the bonuses?)
Last edited by Archmage on Fri Jul 06, 2012 12:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
P.C. Hodgell wrote:That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
shadzar wrote:i think the apostrophe is an outdated idea such as is hyphenation.
It occurs to me I'm also currently in a game playing as a Totemist. Loads of fun. Both high damage attacks (well, d6/level) and poisons for shit like 3d6 Con, and plenty of status effects along the lines of "You don't get to act this round". Along with other bizarre stuff.
It's great fun.
You could have just left it at that. That said, running a game with a Ninja (well, like two levels of Ninja and an item that grants the +1/3 HD bonus to "effective Ninja level for the purpose of having enough levels of Ninja to get the Surprise Round") has led me to believe that even the re-write (that a lot of people like) needs that one ability to be changed. I'd probably make it simply "Whenever there's a surprise round, you get to act in it."
The one advantage to having "You go first even when the enemy starts it" is that the PCs can feel safe listening to enemy monologues, knowing that the enemy can't actually go from speaking to shanking without a surprise stab occurring.
It's great fun.
Archmage wrote: Ninja.[/i] The ninja in the Tome PDF is a really stupid class
You could have just left it at that. That said, running a game with a Ninja (well, like two levels of Ninja and an item that grants the +1/3 HD bonus to "effective Ninja level for the purpose of having enough levels of Ninja to get the Surprise Round") has led me to believe that even the re-write (that a lot of people like) needs that one ability to be changed. I'd probably make it simply "Whenever there's a surprise round, you get to act in it."
The one advantage to having "You go first even when the enemy starts it" is that the PCs can feel safe listening to enemy monologues, knowing that the enemy can't actually go from speaking to shanking without a surprise stab occurring.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
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OgreBattle
- King
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...but what if you're listening to a Ninja's monologue?
I have the tome .07rev139 , is the updated Ninja in there? Where can I find the updated versions of these various classes?
and has anyone used a Fighter with Foil? It seems very powerful, but I'm not experienced in D&D above level 10 really.
I have the tome .07rev139 , is the updated Ninja in there? Where can I find the updated versions of these various classes?
and has anyone used a Fighter with Foil? It seems very powerful, but I'm not experienced in D&D above level 10 really.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
The latest version of Ninja is in the Disgaeagame pdf.
But that's basically this one with some of the abilities having different names (when I first wrote up the Ninja Powers, I tried to assign names by memory. I actually checked the Disgaea 2 Kunnoichi movelist when I put it into Disgaeagame).
But that's basically this one with some of the abilities having different names (when I first wrote up the Ninja Powers, I tried to assign names by memory. I actually checked the Disgaea 2 Kunnoichi movelist when I put it into Disgaeagame).
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
This got me wondering -- is there any of this stuff that people use a lot of, but isn't on the wiki yet? I'd be happy to get it all in once place. (I looked up the feat, neat and not too different from my own version of Mindblade).Archmage wrote:Weapon of Righteous Destruction has also been a really popular combat feat in games I've played because it's essentially spending a feat to get an extra item attunement slot. It's definitely not overpowered (and might even be a little underpowered), but is extremely well-loved.
Last edited by Surgo on Wed Jul 11, 2012 1:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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RobbyPants
- King
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I haven't played any Tome stuff, but I may get a chance in a while. The last game I ran (and am still sort of running) has a lot of Tome material in it. The one player is running a ranger class written for Tome, and he's a pretty good TWF blender with some extra features on top. Against stuff straight from the MM, he performs pretty well.
I've noticed when making Fighter or Barbarian NPCs, I have to sandbag with them, even if they're lower level just because they can one-shot him too quickly. I did once have him fight a lower level multi-weapon-fighting troglodyte barbarian. The point of the fight was that he would quickly realize that toe-to-toe melee was probably a bad idea and that he should lure him and his buddies outside to Entangle and subsequently perforate them from a safe distance.
I've noticed when making Fighter or Barbarian NPCs, I have to sandbag with them, even if they're lower level just because they can one-shot him too quickly. I did once have him fight a lower level multi-weapon-fighting troglodyte barbarian. The point of the fight was that he would quickly realize that toe-to-toe melee was probably a bad idea and that he should lure him and his buddies outside to Entangle and subsequently perforate them from a safe distance.
Minor nitpick: that wouldn't get you into the wish economy. It just gives you a nice leg up on the gold economy.Archmage wrote:removed an adamantine vault door from its hinges (which the party then promptly dragged off to sell, firmly placing them in the wish economy).
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Midnight_v
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RobbyPants wrote:I haven't played any Tome stuff, but I may get a chance in a while. The last game I ran (and am still sort of running) has a lot of Tome material in it. The one player is running a ranger class written for Tome, and he's a pretty good TWF blender with some extra features on top. Against stuff straight from the MM, he performs pretty well.
I've noticed when making Fighter or Barbarian NPCs, I have to sandbag with them, even if they're lower level just because they can one-shot him too quickly. I did once have him fight a lower level multi-weapon-fighting troglodyte barbarian. The point of the fight was that he would quickly realize that toe-to-toe melee was probably a bad idea and that he should lure him and his buddies outside to Entangle and subsequently perforate them from a safe distance.
Where's this ranger located?
Minor nitpick: that wouldn't get you into the wish economy. It just gives you a nice leg up on the gold economy.Archmage wrote:removed an adamantine vault door from its hinges (which the party then promptly dragged off to sell, firmly placing them in the wish economy).
Don't hate the world you see, create the world you want....
...If only you'd have stopped forever...Dear Midnight, you have actually made me sad. I took a day off of posting yesterday because of actual sadness you made me feel in my heart for you.
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RobbyPants
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Wow. That took me a bit to find in there, buried in my quote tag.Midnight_v wrote: Where's this ranger located?
It was a combination of two I'd found. Thunder God Cid has one posted at D&D-wiki, which seem really over the top. Someone else posted one where you got terrain masteries levels 1-10 and planar masteries levels 11-20, so I meshed them together into a single class. It's likely still too powerful, but it was for a solo game, so I wasn't really worried about party balance.
If you're interested, PM me and I can send you a copy.
Edit:
You can find links to both of those if you read through this thread. It started as a discussion on TGC's overpowered version.
Last edited by RobbyPants on Thu Jul 12, 2012 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
I'd just like to note -- TGC's has gone through several revisions. I think it's in a good place now. Link: http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Ranger,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29
Last edited by Surgo on Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Midnight_v
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HA! I posted in that thread. I realized something. I really get fucking annoyed with all the people bitching about how the "big 3" are "overpowerd" but... thats a really subjective thing, frankly. Further, the thing that annoys me is how they bitch about them being overpowered for the wrong reasons. Well at least everywhere else.
I really like the kantian paladin but that smite system is really shat upon by everyone I've ever discussed it with.
As for that ranger I like the way he did his favored enemy bonuses. I think its a bit crowed in other ways.
Tome Combat Feats (as a style)
6/9 Spell casting
New style favored enemy bonus maybe 4 over the course of 20?
Animal Companion.
Should be more than enough.
I really like the kantian paladin but that smite system is really shat upon by everyone I've ever discussed it with.
As for that ranger I like the way he did his favored enemy bonuses. I think its a bit crowed in other ways.
Tome Combat Feats (as a style)
6/9 Spell casting
New style favored enemy bonus maybe 4 over the course of 20?
Animal Companion.
Should be more than enough.
Don't hate the world you see, create the world you want....
...If only you'd have stopped forever...Dear Midnight, you have actually made me sad. I took a day off of posting yesterday because of actual sadness you made me feel in my heart for you.