Tomb of Battle ques.

[Midnight_v]

Generally speaking, how does the gaming den members regard the tome of battle? I hear a lot of things on a lot of boards, and you guys are considered the harshest critics of anything rpg'.
Love it? Hate it? Indiffrent? I'm hoping to see something smarter than "too anime". Well thats my burning question, thanks. M_v

[Username17]

Too little, too late. The Tome of Battle has its heart in the right place, but martial disciplines are really weak compared to casters using spells. It breaks down at many levels. There are three classes in the book and only two of them are ever good. The Crusader doesn't have the character progression written in such a way that they actually get abilities when those abilities come online in the martial disciplines, which is retarded.

Tome of Battle is a basically better way of handling Fighters and their ilk than the basic book, but it still isn't ready for prime time. A martial adept can stay relevant for several levels past when a Fighter or Barbarian goes obsolete, which is overall a plus. But while it is a move towards a fix for the fighting man, it is not clear that the fighting man ever could have been fixed all the way in that way.

-Username17

[Midnight_v]

Okay I see, that sums it up I guess. I'm not sure exactly what all went into that analysis but I'll take your word for it.
I mean I'm not certain that the crusader sucks, perse, but I suppose its comparative, all in all I much prefer the tome melee's but I was discussing this in this thread: What would non-casters need to hold their own vs. equal CR creatures? and I figured since I was balor killing with Naked Warblades, I'd see what you guys though about it. I get tired of hearing everyone talk about "tiers", thank you.

[RobbyPants]

The book itself suffers from a lot of what any WotC book suffers from: some good options buried within a bunch of okay or trap options. It's a pain in that it's a new subsystem, which makes a lot of people weary of introducing it in the game.

Aside from that, I like the book. As Frank said, it doesn't fix everything, but it goes some of the way and, IMO, makes martial types more fun to play. I've always preferred casters due to options, so having some more options makes the martial adepts more fun. It does have the advantage of being an official published book, so any given group may be more willing to accept it into their games based on that alone. You may find it hard to get your own non-caster boosting homebrew accepted, even if it's weaker than ToB.

[Fuchs]

The saving roll replacing interrupts are very nice, as are the options to move and do good damage. And being able to deflect or even redirect melee attacks that would hit you is always nice.

[echoVanguard]

Not too long ago, I ran a Tome of Battle game where Martial Adept classes were the only non-NPC classes in the game. Everyone the players encountered was an Expert, or an Adept, or a Warrior, which made the players sort of like Jedi. It went reasonably well.

echo

[Kaelik]

Okay I see, that sums it up I guess. I'm not sure exactly what all went into that analysis but I'll take your word for it.
I mean I'm not certain that the crusader sucks, perse, but I suppose its comparative, all in all I much prefer the tome melee's but I was discussing this in this thread: What would non-casters need to hold their own vs. equal CR creatures? and I figured since I was balor killing with Naked Warblades, I'd see what you guys though about it. I get tired of hearing everyone talk about "tiers", thank you.

Um... Because you are stupid?

Why is a Balor standing within charge range of a Warblade and rolling Init?

Giamoco made a Core Monk that could shoot arrows at a Balor and one round kill it from 1000ft away. Yes, it was Giamoco, and so it had items, and used a lot of limited use items, and was specifically designed to do more damage to a Balor, but if your final roll is "Naked Warblade, as good as a Core Monk with items" then you are wasting our time.

Alternatively, let's pretend the Balor isn't retarded.

What's your darkvision range? Less than 120ft? Great, the Balor finds out about you way the fuck in advance, because it has 120ft True Sight which allows it to see in darkness, speaking of which, it also allows it to see through illusions, so I really hope it didn't use it's Dominate Monster at will to get something with the ability to cast Illusions of any kind, or else you are even more fucked. For simplicity sake, and out of goddam charity to your poor Warblade who is going to be stomped, I'm going to assume it never had a chance ever to even once, use it's ability to have an infinite number of free minions who guard it's lair and cast illusion spells for it, and otherwise make it murder you.

You are walking through dungeon maze that is relatively short, but features a lot of 125ft hallways, you come around a corner, and the Balor detects you, (which he already did because he has +38 listen, and was holding still, while you were moving) then teleports to his prep room, which is just a room directly 75ft above him with a tiny slit so he can see down when you pass. In that room, he summons another Balor, then they use their standard attack method of waiting until you are right below them, and then you get firestormed, power word stunned, and then grappled twice.

Obviously, if you have less than 151HP after a firestorm, you now lose the game, because one will constantly chain Power Word Stun, and the other will Dominate Monster you until you become it's slave. If for whatever reason you are immune to Dominate Monster, it will take off all your items, and then Greater Dispel (timed with a Readied action Power Word) then seeing if you are still immune. Obviously, if you are, then he just kills you.

If you have more than 150HP, win two grapples and then roll init. If you win, you now know that there is at least on thing of some type attacking you from through a hole that you can't see all the way to the end of. I assume you move out from under the hole, and then they fill the entire hallway in the direction you went with another firestorm and teleport to 240ft earlier in the maze than you, with a goal of arranging to hit you with another Power Word Stun, mostly by one always having that as a readied action, while the other moves around a corner, to bait your charge, and or cast other spells at you from range, such as Insanity, his own Power Word and constant telekinesis grapples and trips and thrusts from outside your sight range.

Now, does your naked Warblade have more than 150+40d6 fire damage ref for half HP? Probably not. Your naked warblade loses to a Balor. Sucks to be you.

Next time, don't explain how you can do more damage to a monster because fuck yeah. That's stupid. Monsters don't sit waiting for you to roll Init and charge.

The reason the Tome Fighter is OP is because he has infinite range darkvision, and danger sense, and a bunch of other detection methods, and he can use that to foil action the Balors when they are 120ft away. But you don't have any way to even know that Balors exist until after they do 20d6 damage and power word stun you.

[RadiantPhoenix]

room directly 75ft above him with a tiny slit so he can see down when you pass. In that room, he summons another Balor, then they use their standard attack method of waiting until you are right below them, and then you get firestormed, power word stunned, and then grappled twice.

How do they grapple from 75ft up?

[CatharzGodfoot]

room directly 75ft above him with a tiny slit so he can see down when you pass. In that room, he summons another Balor, then they use their standard attack method of waiting until you are right below them, and then you get firestormed, power word stunned, and then grappled twice.

How do they grapple from 75ft up?

TK.

[RadiantPhoenix]

How do they grapple from 75ft up?

TK.

I did not think of that.

[Seerow]

Unless I'm missing something TK grapple checks would only be like +28, since size mods and the like wouldn't apply. I can't imagine it being too hard for any full BAB str based character to evade, even assuming he's naked and lacks freedom of movement or the like.

Really it's the at will power word stun that is the killer though, if you drop below 150hp at any point, you lose. Even with his d12, that Warblade has only 135+con mod x20 hp, and if he's trying to do this naked, his con mod is probably low (like +2, +3 tops, unless you want to be really generous and say money spent on wishes/tomes for inherent bonuses to stats don't count, which can make it better), giving him the leeway of needing to be hit once before stunlocked to death/domination.

[Username17]

Level 20 cage matches are stupid. No one plays at 20th level, and no one can beat a 20th level character playing to potential. Pun Pun's creator lost a match against The Wish and the Word because he declared that he was taking refuge from the Blasphemies behind Golem Magic Immunity - which doesn't work because The Word uses the CL FU Blasphemies as a Supernatural Ability.

That is the kind of bullshit that decides 20th level fights. A Balor can curbstomp a Tome Fighter by throwing in a pet nasty enough that the Fighter has to spend Foil and then having both itself and its summoned clone charge in and blasphemy. Once the Fighter is stunlocked by the Blasphemy, the pet can begin the raping and then it's a world of rape. A Tome Fighter can beat a Balor by anticipating the shenanigans and prepping a feat that bypasses those tactics and then foiling the Blasphemies. And so on and so on.

The Warblade has some neat tricks. But fundamentally at 20th level he can probably pull a successful save out of his ass and do a fuck tonne of damage in melee. That is not deep enough to handle 20th level tactics. Warblades don't matter on a 20th level battlefield. But then, nothing matters on a 20th level battlefield except changing up your super combo enough that whatever you happen to be fighting today doesn't have an answer for whatever doom you have in store for them.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, ToB has many problems. We've had some threads analyzing the book on the boards but it pretty much boils down to this:

1.) ToB totally breaks multiclassing in a way no other class in 3.5E does. Rogue 2 / Fighter 4 / Swordsage 4 is just flat out BETTER than Rogue 2 / Swordsage 4 / Fighter 4. The later you delay your martial adept class acquisition the better off you'll be. That's fucked up.

2.) Frank said only two of the ToB classes were worth using, I highly disagree with him. The only one worth using is the Warblade. The swordsage has an access to a greater number of exclusive schools but a number of them are either only situationally useful. In return you get rogue BAB, get worthless class features unless you're playing in a Majstats game, and no bonus feats. Not that the Warblade bonus feats are very good but at least they can help you qualify for Master of Nine.

3.) The prestige classes that advance martial maneuvers are pretty much turkeys. There's only two of them worth even looking at; Master of Nine and Eternal Blade. The former of which almost requires multiclassing in one form or another (unless you set all of your feats on fire as a swordsage or your DM lets you use those broken martial adept items) and the latter having absolutely no room for deviation. Regardless if you're playing a full-classed Martial Adept, meaning that you're a Warblade, you want Master of Nine since it'll boost your readied maneuvers slots way faster than level acquisition will. And lets you plunder maneuvers from other schools, exacerbating that stupid 'multiclassing at a higher level makes you stronger' problem. At least all of the good Swordsage maneuvers you want to plunder are low level.

4.) The Martial Adept items are either useless or overpowered and shouldn't exist. Except for like a couple of exploits they don't really wreck game balance but they're just poorly thought out. The weapons except for the Tiger Claw Kukris (which are actually extremely good, hooray x4/18-20 weapons) are all bad and poorly thought out and some of them have almost impossible-to-fulfill requirements that derail the flow of the game. Like the aforementioned Tiger Claw Kukri.

5.) The schools are nothing like balanced. Stone Dragon (the one school that EVERYONE gets) is total garbage except for like one low-level maneuver Stone Bones which is kind of helpful. White Dragon is so awesome that even wizards will want to plunder a maneuver or two from it. Diamond Mind is slightly less good in that it has a bunch of stuff in it that prevents you from getting pwned as a martial adept. Tiger Claw lets you move and full attack and get in more attacks from TWF which unless you're a Greatsword + Unarmed Strike + Huge Static Bonus user isn't with it anyway. Shadow Hand has a couple of totally awesome maneuvers (like a stance that gives you +2d6 sneak attack, hooray for Arcane Tricksters) but for the most part is filled with fail. Same with Desert Wind. Flashing sun gives you an extra attack at full BAB and counts as a strike too. There's also a number of damage boosting maneuvers and such, nothing special. Setting Sun and Iron Heart same deal. Some good stuff in there like a maneuver that can as-written deflect spells and another that makes you very hard to take down with melee damage. Stone Dragon as said just sucks.

The final verdict: Compared to fighter types and even itself the book is really really unbalanced. If you min-max to the hilt you can have a character that performs modestly better than a rogue (losing rogue skills is worth giving the motherfucking wizard or cleric or whoever an extra turn every round starting at level 5) even at the levels of play most groups play in. However 80% of the characters in that book will be worse than a modestly min-maxxed non-Martial Adept sword-based character. It's a step in the right direction but given how unbalanced the book is with its own idiom if it wasn't a case of 'too little too late' it'd end up like the Psionics Handbook. Some curious combo that can be more situationally overpowered than even CoDzilla/wizards but for the most part utter shite.

[Swordslinger]

Level 20 cage matches are stupid. No one plays at 20th level, and no one can beat a 20th level character playing to potential. Pun Pun's creator lost a match against The Wish and the Word because he declared that he was taking refuge from the Blasphemies behind Golem Magic Immunity - which doesn't work because The Word uses the CL FU Blasphemies as a Supernatural Ability.

That is the kind of bullshit that decides 20th level fights. A Balor can curbstomp a Tome Fighter by throwing in a pet nasty enough that the Fighter has to spend Foil and then having both itself and its summoned clone charge in and blasphemy. Once the Fighter is stunlocked by the Blasphemy, the pet can begin the raping and then it's a world of rape. A Tome Fighter can beat a Balor by anticipating the shenanigans and prepping a feat that bypasses those tactics and then foiling the Blasphemies. And so on and so on.

That showcases everything that's wrong with 3E. High level combats are just a battle of Cheese.

[Archmage]

FYI, not an edition war thread. Are you TRYING to get Kaelik to piss in your Cheerios?

[Mask_De_H]

Level 20 cage matches are stupid. No one plays at 20th level, and no one can beat a 20th level character playing to potential. Pun Pun's creator lost a match against The Wish and the Word because he declared that he was taking refuge from the Blasphemies behind Golem Magic Immunity - which doesn't work because The Word uses the CL FU Blasphemies as a Supernatural Ability.

That is the kind of bullshit that decides 20th level fights. A Balor can curbstomp a Tome Fighter by throwing in a pet nasty enough that the Fighter has to spend Foil and then having both itself and its summoned clone charge in and blasphemy. Once the Fighter is stunlocked by the Blasphemy, the pet can begin the raping and then it's a world of rape. A Tome Fighter can beat a Balor by anticipating the shenanigans and prepping a feat that bypasses those tactics and then foiling the Blasphemies. And so on and so on.

That showcases everything that's wrong with 3E. High level combats are just a battle of Cheese.

Do you ever have any fucking idea what you're talking about? I mean, the abilities that 20th level monsters (and 20th level characters) are crazy bullshit, but Foil Action isn't cheese, nor is Tekken Juggling. DC FU CL FUBAR Supernatural Guilty Gear Instant Kills are, because there's no real answer to it

[A Man In Black]

Do you ever have any fucking idea what you're talking about?

No, he doesn't. Stop feeding the trolls.

[Ice9]

I find that it works ok. Not great, certainly not "makes the game balanced" great, but ok. If you're playing a game where the casters are sandbagging enough to make rogues and gish types not useless (which is pretty common, IME), then the ToB classes will be good enough. You do still have to optimize though, just as you would with a rogue/gish.

On a few specific points:

ToB totally breaks multiclassing in a way no other class in 3.5E does. Rogue 2 / Fighter 4 / Swordsage 4 is just flat out BETTER than Rogue 2 / Swordsage 4 / Fighter 4. The later you delay your martial adept class acquisition the better off you'll be. That's fucked up.

It is sort of fucked up, but it's better than the way casters multiclass (they don't). You can actually have a multiclassed ToB character that does not fail at life, without needing a PrC for that purpose.

Frank said only two of the ToB classes were worth using, I highly disagree with him. The only one worth using is the Warblade. The swordsage has an access to a greater number of exclusive schools but a number of them are either only situationally useful. In return you get rogue BAB, get worthless class features unless you're playing in a Majstats game, and no bonus feats. Not that the Warblade bonus feats are very good but at least they can help you qualify for Master of Nine.

I've found the swordsage pretty useful actually.
* It's good when you're using another form of attack for primary damage (charging, AoOs, whatever) and using your manuevers for support.
* The Rogue BAB doesn't matter until levels you might not reach anyway.
* A majority of games I've played in use a generous stat-generation method.
* It's great for dipping, due to the ToB multiclassing method.

The schools are nothing like balanced. Stone Dragon (the one school that EVERYONE gets) is total garbage except for like one low-level maneuver Stone Bones which is kind of helpful. White Dragon is so awesome that even wizards will want to plunder a maneuver or two from it.

So, pretty much like the rest of D&D then.

[Psychic Robot]

but there's this one maneuver that lets you do +100 damage with a single attack!

[Ice9]

Actually, while that manuever may suck from a raw power perspective, I like it, because it enables something I feel warrior types should be able to do - be deadly outside of their ideal fighting style.

Sure, melee types can already one-shot many foes in the right conditions, but then they try to do something odd like kill an assassin with a fork while sitting at a table, and they fail horribly. +100 damage says "I don't care if your weapon is crap, you can't charge, and none of your force-multipliers are applicable, you can still at least put the hurt on."

My ideal warrior-type class would have basically a big floating pool of damage they could allocate for the round. Make a charging attack with a giant axe? Make 47 attacks with thrown daggers? Just sit there and then AoO someone with a fork? All effective.

[Josh_Kablack]

1.) ToB totally breaks multiclassing in a way no other class in 3.5E does. Rogue 2 / Fighter 4 / Swordsage 4 is just flat out BETTER than Rogue 2 / Swordsage 4 / Fighter 4. The later you delay your martial adept class acquisition the better off you'll be. That's fucked up.

Technically, that happens with the core fighter and bonus feats which have BAB prereqs.

In core, a human BBN 1/ Rgr 1 / Ftr 2 not only has 2 more average HP and 6 more skill points when compared to a Ftr2/Rgr1/BBN1, but can also select Whirlwind or Great Cleave as their 2nd fighter bonus feat which the guy who took his fighter levels first can't get those for at least another level.

It's just that nobody cares enough about core fighters to whine about that.

[Swordslinger]

Do you ever have any fucking idea what you're talking about? I mean, the abilities that 20th level monsters (and 20th level characters) are crazy bullshit, but Foil Action isn't cheese, nor is Tekken Juggling. DC FU CL FUBAR Supernatural Guilty Gear Instant Kills are, because there's no real answer to it

Cheese is requiring a very specific counter to beat something. Like at-will blasphemy. You don't have great SR or a silence spell up? You lose. You don't have some counter to Gate? you lose. Can't track an astrally projecting spellcaster? You lose. Can't cast spells in an anti-magic field like a cheater of Mystra? You lose.

The winner goes to the biggest munchkin cheeser.

[Orion]

Actually, the Rogue BAB *is* a pretty substantial drawback for Swordsages because Feat prerequisites in that book and for melee characters in general do succeed in making you care about your BAB. There's a huge difference between getting Weapon Finesse at level 1 or not, for instance.

[Username17]

Frank said only two of the ToB classes were worth using, I highly disagree with him. The only one worth using is the Warblade. The swordsage has an access to a greater number of exclusive schools but a number of them are either only situationally useful. In return you get rogue BAB, get worthless class features unless you're playing in a Majstats game, and no bonus feats. Not that the Warblade bonus feats are very good but at least they can help you qualify for Master of Nine.

Yeah, the Swordsage is 10 flavors of bullshit. But I've seen some people pull off stuff with a Crusader that makes me think that with careful planning they can sub in for an extra Rogue.

-Username17

[K]

Do you ever have any fucking idea what you're talking about? I mean, the abilities that 20th level monsters (and 20th level characters) are crazy bullshit, but Foil Action isn't cheese, nor is Tekken Juggling. DC FU CL FUBAR Supernatural Guilty Gear Instant Kills are, because there's no real answer to it

Cheese is requiring a very specific counter to beat something. Like at-will blasphemy. You don't have great SR or a silence spell up? You lose. You don't have some counter to Gate? you lose. Can't track an astrally projecting spellcaster? You lose. Can't cast spells in an anti-magic field like a cheater of Mystra? You lose.

The winner goes to the biggest munchkin cheeser.

Since you don't know anything about 3e, here are the appropriate counters:

-Blasphemy: stopping people from casting spells is very easy, so you just do that. Maybe some of you will die, but you live in a world with raise dead so shut the hell up, ok?

That being said, it's not that impressive of a spell when Pit Fiends use it. It really only comes into it's own at extremely high levels and when combined with caster level boosting, so basically only when players do it and when characters the DM designs specifically to bone you do it (but in a game where "rock fall and you all die" is a valid option, this one spell is not a game-breaker).

-Astral projection: You knock out your enemy. Done. Killing him snaps him back to his body, but punching him in the face and then keeping him unconscious is just as good as going to his house on some other plane of existence and stabbing him there.

Of course, you can also charm, dominate, put him into suspended animation underground forever, petrify, drop Int or Wis or Cha to 0, drug him, move his soul into a prison, or use any number of other effects to keep him unconscious or not under his own will.

-anti-magic field: Take a move action. AMFs are actually really small, so you can just step out of them and then cast spells.

Heck, if you are a fighting guy, life is probably better for you in an AMF.


Now, none of these counters work if you've been making bad choices for several rounds in a row, but when DnD gets the most swingy and lethal is also the time when death is a simple inconvenience.

I mean, it's not even a coincidence that Gate cheese happens at the same time as True Resurrection, an effect that can bring you back from the dead without needing even a body.