Did Bo9S's popularity doom 4th Edition D&D?

[Lago PARANOIA]

This isn't an original viewpoint because it's been kicked around by various posters here over the years, but I thought it'd be nice to have an explicit thread for it.

I'm going to go ahead and say yes. Viewed within the context of 3rd Edition it's actually a very good book despite its numerous flaws. The first being is that it gives a way for fighting men to stay relevant without DM pity for a couple more levels. Considering that very few campaigns get past level 8 or 9, this is a big deal. The second being that it was the first real strike D&D made against the VAH paradigm.

But viewed for its effects on D&D as a whole, it's probably the worst thing that happened to the system except for maybe the 1E DMG. Book of Nine Swords introduced or reinforced a lot of paradigms that, while harmless in its intended context, was really really bad when taken outside of it. For example:

[*] Bo9S firmly cemented the superiority of the Mongol Archer. The number of expansion options that let a Bo9S character specifically compete against a Mongol Archer (as opposed to general-purpose across the board buffs) you could count on one hand. This led to a real shrinking of the 4E D&D battlefield.

[*] Bo9S established that the new resource management paradigm for the One Piece Fighting Man would be Five Moves of Doom. Parallels with 4E D&D are obvious.

[*] Despite unshackling (though not completely) the fighting man from the VAH paradigm, Bo9S was overly concerned with avoiding grognardian rage at the weeabooness. It thus has the problem of the American New Deal in that while it was an improvement, it didn't go far enough. The resulting mishmash satisfied no one and led to an Exalted/4E Epic-levels deceitful cognitive dissonance about such characters being able to do high level things.

[*] All of the powers Bo9S characters got were combat-related. Nothing to help out with skills, transportation, information gathering, or any of that unless it could be pressed into a combat mold.

[*] Book of Nine Swords was the game's first real foray into the disastrous No Self Buffs paradigm. The White Raven School is the most overpowered school in the book -- and with Diamond Mind to shore up your defenses and a bit of Tiger Claw/Shadow Hand for offensive a Warblade could bring more damage to the table than even a rogue. Not nipping this shit in the bud tore 4E D&D's dodgy balance an entirely new one.

[Ancient History]

Book of Nine Swords definitely ended up a dry-run for what would be 4e, but I think saying it "doomed" it is taking it out of context. After all, at that point in the death-spiral of D&D3 they'd already tried a fair number of other "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" efforts, we could as easily have ended up with a version of 4e based on Magic of Incarnum.

[OgreBattle]

Naw, all the things you've listed are things that you're personally concerned with, but not things that the majority of D&D customers really are consciously aware of.

[Username17]

I actually think that Bo9S concepts had almost nothing to do with the 4e we actually saw. The fact is: 4e was designed shittily and in a hurry, with everything that didn't have an easy and obvious solution scrapped entirely or simply "deferred" to some future rulebook that hadn't even been concepted. For fuck's sake, 4e went to print without multiclassing. Not without "functional multiclassing", they just straight up did not have rules for being a Fighter/Wizard at all.

They identified a lot of popular buzzwords that they wanted to assure people would be making their way into 4e, but in almost all cases they crapped out without even giving it a decent shot. In the months before release they announced an end to Christmas Tree Items and a Functioning Non-Combat Encounter System, and people like me said that sounded good (although their previews of these things left me fearful that the product was going to suck). They didn't deliver on those things, they barely even tried.

The fact that Bo9S was popular meant that they used the buzzwords of having used it as a launching place for their design. But let's face it: they really really didn't. It was just market-speak where they determined that Bo9S was the most popular of their "throw random crap at the wall" books. You can identify some stuff in 4e that bears superficial resemblance, but I'd bet a dollar on each one that each similarity is basically a coincidence and I'm pretty sure I'd come out ahead.

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

What evidence do you have that Bo9s was popular?
Around here in f2f it's sorta like Ghostwalk --a book between editions that nobody cares. And online anywhere but the Den it seems to be derided as the book of Weeabo Figthan Magix.

[hogarth]

Was the Tome of Battle actually popular? I mean, I don't doubt it was more popular than Magic of Incarnum and the Tome of Magic, but that's a backhanded compliment at best.

I agree with Frank: 4E's crappiness has little to do with encounter/daily powers for fighters.

[virgil]

In the circles I frequent, it's not derided as Weeabo garbage, but as yet-another splatbook that made everything overpowered. Sort of like the BoED and the Vow of Poverty.

[Username17]

What evidence do you have that Bo9s was popular?
Around here in f2f it's sorta like Ghostwalk --a book between editions that nobody cares. And online anywhere but the Den it seems to be derided as the book of Weeabo Figthan Magix.

My evidence that it was popular comes in two pieces. The first is that when it came out there was an argument about it on the WotC board. Just the fact that a lot of people had opinions about it means that a lot of people bought it. And the second is that WotC announced that Bo9S was something they were going to emulate while they were doing puff marketing and that statement seemed to go over pretty well on EnWorld.

Bo9S certainly lingered in the public perception more than Magic of Incarnum or Tome of Magic did. A google search for "warblade d&d" turns up 88k hits while a similar search for "truenamer d&d" only gets 36k*, and "soulborn d&d" gets only 32k (and the first hit is the Tome Soulborn I wrote - no shit). But I think it's safe to say that Bo9S not only made more of an impact, it made more of a positive impact. At least, in the online community.

-Username17

*: You get ten times as many hits looking for "binder d&d", but almost all of that is fiend binders and beast binders and character sheet binders and shit.

[violence in the media]

Around here it was shunned as one of those books that "did things weird, like Psionics".

[ishy]

Bo9S certainly lingered in the public perception more than Magic of Incarnum or Tome of Magic did. A google search for "warblade d&d" turns up 88k hits while a similar search for "truenamer d&d" only gets 36k*, and "soulborn d&d" gets only 32k (and the first hit is the Tome Soulborn I wrote - no shit). But I think it's safe to say that Bo9S not only made more of an impact, it made more of a positive impact. At least, in the online community.

-Username17

*: You get ten times as many hits looking for "binder d&d", but almost all of that is fiend binders and beast binders and character sheet binders and shit.

That is still unfair though, comparing 2 unplayable classes to one that can be played.


But in circles I play in, Bo9S is treated like turning fighters into spellcasters with shitty spells but easy renewing.

[Voss]

Various circles I played in tended to take bo9s seriously (mostly because Sword Guy is something people actually want to play), unlike Magic of Incarnum, which one guy bought and passed around with a 'hey, look at this stupid shit they wasted money publishing.'

If it had any doom effect at all, I'd say it was people looking at it, then looking at 4e and saying 'Why is the new edition so much worse than the 5 minute splatbook?'

[hogarth]

That is still unfair though, comparing 2 unplayable classes to one that can be played.

That's what I meant by a "backhanded compliment".

If you asked me to name a popular 3.5 splatbook, I'd list Complete Warrior or Complete Arcane, say; Tome of Battle would be way down the list.

[Krusk]

WoTC boards everyone generally acknowledges it as "hard to make a unworkable character but also hard to make an awesome one". Recommended to noobs, or people who say "I want to be a fighter and don't have a specific build in mind". Leaving traditional fighters and such to people who have an idea of their specific build. Generally a positive vibe. Its also generally recomended to people who say "I have the PHB and want some splatbooks" after spell compendium and maybe complete warrior/adventurer.

In the real world most people I have encountered mock it, aren't interested, or have one guy in their group who wants to use it and no one is opposed to him using it.

I'd say thats fairly successful. Psionics is mocked, people aren't interested and one guy in the group wants to use it but people are opposed.

[Zaranthan]

That is still unfair though, comparing 2 unplayable classes to one that can be played.

What he means is most of those hits aren't the Binder from Tome of Magic. They're these guys:

And these things:

[ishy]

That's what I meant by a "backhanded compliment".

If you asked me to name a popular 3.5 splatbook, I'd list Complete Warrior or Complete Arcane, say; Tome of Battle would be way down the list.

I was actually talking about the specific called out classes.
The Truenamer is pretty much unplayable unless you use significant skill optimization and even then it sucks. While the soulborn is a gimped paladin.
Thus you get no google hits, because the classes are probably weaker than playing a commoner with WBL at higher level, because they sucker you into spending money on making your terrible sticks better.

If you'd grab, "incarnate D&D" instead of soulborn for example, you get way more hits than the warblade. Because the Incarnate is a class that actually does something.

- Edit:

That is still unfair though, comparing 2 unplayable classes to one that can be played.

What he means is most of those hits aren't the Binder from Tome of Magic. They're these guys:

And these things:

Yeah that is why I was saying, still unfair, and why I didn't make a reference to the binder, but just said that the Truenamer is an unplayable class.

[Koumei]

In the circles I frequent, it's not derided as Weeabo garbage, but as yet-another splatbook that made everything overpowered. Sort of like the BoED and the Vow of Poverty.

>Vow of Poverty
>overpowered

laughingelfgirls.jpg

(And hilariously, the Fiend Binder, which probably does turn up more hits than the regular Binder, is in Tome of Magic (same book). It's just that it's a Prestige Class for the True Namer, not the Binder.)

[Prak]

I should put the idea of a Bo9S character with Vow of Poverty in the head of a friend of mine who loves both those things, then find someone who knows how to powergame spellcasters, and run a campaign with both of them...

[virgil]

They normally ban the VoP, citing its use on the monk for how OP it gets. I've heard of them recently allowing the combo, on the condition of nerfing the feat so it doesn't give any bonus feats.

They were incredibly impressed with that monk's power level, since at 13th level, it was able to solo (1-on-1 duel scenario) a 15th level NPC barbarian in their current Pathfinder AP. Well, not a true solo, but a mutual KO of each other (a draw?).

Edit: And the idea of throwing such a character in the same group as a proper caster will not convince people of their weakness, but of the overwhelming OP-ness of casters, or of the player running the caster who is failing in his "responsibility to not be too powerful."

[Username17]

If you'd grab, "incarnate D&D" instead of soulborn for example, you get way more hits than the warblade. Because the Incarnate is a class that actually does something.

The google search "incarnate d&d" gets over a million hits. But that is because "incarnate" is a word that is used in a whole lot of non-incarnum phrases. Gods incarnate, characters die and then reincarnate, incarnate is the name of a psionic power, the word incarnate appears in numerous unrelated class names, it's a template used in power gaming, and so on.

I chose to compare "warblade", "truenamer", and "soulborn" because within a D&D context those only refer to one thing. If you put the word "incarnate" in, you can't get a number that means anything about the magic of incarnum book because it is completely masked by Void Incarnates , Evil Incarnates, and manifesting incarnate with various combos. It's a completely meaningless comparison.

-Username17

[ishy]

I chose to compare "warblade", "truenamer", and "soulborn" because within a D&D context those only refer to one thing. If you put the word "incarnate" in, you can't get a number that means anything about the magic of incarnum book because it is completely masked by Void Incarnates , Evil Incarnates, and manifesting incarnate with various combos. It's a completely meaningless comparison.

-Username17

But you get the exact same thing with warblade.
Like some random sword on the first page of the google results.

And comparing classes that can't be played to one that actually can for many levels is just as meaningless.
Hell in fact, using # of google search results for popularity is completely meaningless in the first place.

And on an unrelated note, you get this very thread on the second page.

[Ted the Flayer]

They normally ban the VoP, citing its use on the monk for how OP it gets.

Have they not seen a VoP druid?

[Username17]

I chose to compare "warblade", "truenamer", and "soulborn" because within a D&D context those only refer to one thing. If you put the word "incarnate" in, you can't get a number that means anything about the magic of incarnum book because it is completely masked by Void Incarnates , Evil Incarnates, and manifesting incarnate with various combos. It's a completely meaningless comparison.

-Username17

But you get the exact same thing with warblade.
Like some random sword on the first page of the google results.

Are you seriously equivocating finding one false positive in the first two pages of the google search of the warblade with finding nine false positives in the first page of the google search for incarnate? That is a bad equivocation. One false positive is not a big deal statistically, nine false positives is.

An actual majority of first page hits for "incarnate d&d" have nothign whatever to do with Magic of Incarnum. The same is not true for the warblade.

-Username17

[ishy]

Are you seriously equivocating finding one false positive in the first two pages of the google search of the warblade with finding nine false positives in the first page of the google search for incarnate? That is a bad equivocation. One false positive is not a big deal statistically, nine false positives is.

An actual majority of first page hits for "incarnate d&d" have nothign whatever to do with Magic of Incarnum. The same is not true for the warblade.

-Username17

Hell yes, I'm saying that finding one false positive when you have ~88k results is statistically equivalent to finding 9 for ~1 million.

But hey lets grab two of the other classes: Swordsage (~62k hits, 2 false postives in the first page), totemist (~51k hits, 1 false positive in the first page).

Or hell lets grab the same classes from the same book, swordsage (~62k hits) vs warblade (~89k hits)
Guess that means Tome of battle is far more popular than tome of battle ey?

[Username17]

Hell yes, I'm saying that finding one false positive when you have ~88k results is statistically equivalent to finding 9 for ~1 million.

That is not how google searches work. Just sampling page 10, I found only one hit that wasn't a false positive. The warblade, otoh had one false positive and all the rest were real hits. Google puts the "best" hits first, and the level of false positives is just going to go up. By page 18, the page on "incarnate d&d" is one hundred percent false positives. It's talking about incarnate gods, and City of Heroes incarnate trials, and fury incarnate, and all kinds of crap, but none of it is talking about Magic of Incarnum. At all. Interestingly, on page 18, every single hit is about the warblade class.

Or hell lets grab the same classes from the same book, swordsage (~62k hits) vs warblade (~89k hits)
Guess that means Tome of battle is far more popular than tome of battle ey?

You notice that this is not a counter example, because both the Swordsage and the Warblade both have significantly more hits than the Truenamer or the Soulborn (who in turn have approximately the same number).

-Username17

[Dean]

From what I've heard, and feel, ToB is well liked and respected. Some people think it's too Weaboo but that's a minority opinion compared to the people who speak well of it. Also I notice that the more a person knows about game design and mechanics and the actual problems of D&D the more likely someone is to like it.