Book of 9 swords review

[Username17]

I'm going to have to agree with Lago here. I can read the class write up - you restart your granted maneuvers bullshit every time your deck runs out and then reassign randomly which cards are granted (in your hand) and witheld (in the draw pile). Custserv says all kinds of crazy crap all the time, and if you have to quote obscure and factually erroneous statements by those idiots to make your class even vaguely passable when compared to a single classed paladin you have big big problems.

Martial Spirit is incredibly lame. I am severely flabergasted that anyone would give a crap about this thoroughly worthless power. 2 points of healing per successful melee attack? Ogres do 14 points of damage a swing and are a weak CR 3. When you get to 6th level and might heal 2 whole extra points of damage, you're also fighting Bog Giants who inflict 17 points of damage per hit and attack more often.

Martial Spirit starts out insufficient for your needs and gets progressively inferior as your level goes up.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I can't, for the life of me, figure out why you'd want to use maneuvers like this. It seems to be a slower way to sometimes have something you want but is really playing chess where sometimes you have a pawn and sometimes you hav a rook and never do you really have a queen and how the heck do you plan ahead when you don't know what you might have next turn?

They might be useful in PC vs PC battles, because your opponent doesn't know what you have available, either.

But against NPCs? Who cares? I want to use my queen to hold safe and the pawns to sacrifice, not get them placed randomly on the board.

-Crissa

[Lago_AM3P]

That said, my overall opinion of this book is that it can offer an interesting array of tactical options for sword-based characters.

Of course, not all of this book is gold. In fact, I'd say that around 2/3rds of the manuevers in this book are garbage that should never have seen the light of day. 90% of the feats are utterly useless. Out of the three martial adept classes, only the warblade is any good. And from a warblade, the best option you can get is a white raven / tiger claw adept with a little bit of diamond mind and iron heart thrown in.

Yet even through it all, this is progress. I haven't seen a book for sword-based characters in AGES that can challenge the sheer cheesy effectiveness of single-classed rogues, frenzied berserkers, or mounted chargers. I'm not sure whether they do or not, but certain characters from this book can make a good showing.

And martial manuevers are more fun to use.

[Username17]

I can't, for the life of me, figure out why you'd want to use maneuvers like this.

You might find it useful to manage your currently available maneuvers by using physical objects to represent the maneuvers you have readied. A set of index cards or playing cards labeled with the names of your maneuvers works very well. As you expend your readied maneuvers, simply turn the card face-down or start a "discard pile" of expendable maneuvers. When you recover an expended maneuver, return it to your "hand" of available maneuvers.
...
If you're a crusader, you also need to track your granted maneuvers. Label each card with the name of a readied maneuver. Keep your cards face down. To determine which maneuvers are granted to you, all you have to do is deal yourself a card.

If I was being generous, I would say that if you happen to work at Wizards of the Coast, this whole idea seems extremely natural and easy - after all you have a bunch of blank card stock in piles for playtesting purposes anyway. If I was a cynical man, I would suggest that if Wizards of the Coast could convince people to take up a card-based action mechanic for D&D that they could sell people pre-made cards (that they are in turn well equipped to manufacture).

Regardless, it is an undeniable fact that if this action mechanic had gained traction that WotC would make money by selling cards to D&D players. However, it is also undeniable fact that there was never any real prospect of this gaining any traction because its dumb and people have enough shit to keep track of in an RPG without having to worry about card management on top of that.

-Username17

[SirWayne]

Crissa-- There's probably two possible answers for it. One is what we call the "half-orc logic," where options meant for beginners are intentionally underpowered to make up for their ease of use (and if you want to reach out to the casual gamer, it's hard to think of a more accessible way to handle abilities than with cards; which is probably why 75% of all Greatest Hits games have a card-based version :| ). The other is that the designers over-valued the ability for Crusaders to regain their maneuvers for "free" (instead of the "practically free" Swift action Warblades pay), and probably didn't intend for recycling maneuvers to take all your current ones away (although if not, I have no idea what they meant, because despite Customer Service's reply to the contrary, there's no other way to interpret it). Crusader is the worst class of the three, but I'd still take one over, say, a Paladin or Ranger, mostly for White Raven.

Out of the three martial adept classes, only the warblade is any good.

Swordsage approaches playability in a high-stat game, and if you take the Adaptive Style feat. It lets you take a full round to change your readied maneuvers in 1 round instead of 5 minutes, and the Swordsage "maneuvers" text states that "the maneuvers you choose remain readied...", and then goes into the rules about regaining them. So it seems to me that by "resetting" your maneuvers you also regain the ones you've spent, which makes the feat a must-take to avoid sucking horribly (especially since you can't ready multiple copies of the same maneuver).

And Swordsage gets Shadow Hand, which actually has a playable feat (Gloom Razor, which lets you get Dex to damage with spiked chains) and some decent maneuvers. It's not super-special awesome (whatever that means) or anything, but it's good. I have an NPC my players are gearing up to fight who's basically built that way.

Yet even through it all, this is progress.

My thoughts exactly [again >_>]. Tome of Battle isn't quite there, but it's a good try-- much, much better than to be expected from WOTC-- and it's the first cool-yet-playable material they've thrown down in a long time (Incarnum... :'( ).

[Lago_AM3P]

By the way, I don't mean to take away from the EXCELLENT review of the Bo9S that Dragon Child did. I'm just doing it more hate-filled and in-depth.

[NineInchNall]

1166129900[/unixtime]]
First of all, the buffoons at CustServ have no goddamn idea what they're talking about. From the goddamn book itself:

you can recover all expended manuevers and a new pair of readied manuevers is granted to you. Randomly determine which of your manuevers are granted and which are withheld.

That means that after four rounds, regardless of whether you used your manuevers or not, you suddenly recover everything whether you like it or not and 3 of your manuevers go into the shuffle pile. Because, you know, they become withheld and you can't use them. That's exactly the same fvcking thing I was talking about.

No, all expended maneuvers are recovered. A random pair of these (if there are that many) are granted you. That's all the passage you quoted says. The passage does not say that the character's granted maneuvers become withheld, so it does not happen. All it says is that you recover all expended maneuvers and randomly determine, as per usual, which are granted and which are withheld. For it to do what you suggest, it would have to say, "from all of your readied maneuvers, randomly determine two which compose your granted maneuvers leaving the rest to be withheld." It does not.

If you had expended three Maneuvers and no longer had any withheld, at the end of turn when it attempted to grant you another maneuver it would see that it could not. It would recover the three expended maneuvers, and immediately grant you two of them. Then next turn it would grant you your final maneuver. The turn after that it would attempt to grant you another, see that you were empty and recycle any maneuvers you had spent, randomly grant you two of them.... etc etc.

... If you don't expend maneuvers granted to you, they are NOT recovered and thrown into the readied pool to be re-granted. Only expended maneuvers are recovered in the Crusader Mechanic.

In other words, just like I said, you're reading something into the text that is not there. You're reading an extra two words into the text. Specifically, you're reading it to say, "Randomly determine which of all your readied maneuvers are granted and which are withheld.

In actuality, the text is referring to the maneuvers that were just recovered.

Which is totally not true. Regardless, cure light wounds at its weakest cures 5-6 hps a around. Where is your first-level character consistently getting three attacks from?

I was speaking of using Crusader's Strike every round and benefitting from the healing of Martial Spirit. 1d6+2+Initiator Level. That's one attack, never mind and extra healing from Martial Spirit enhanced AoOs.

Not mass heal, because that would actually be fvcking useful rather than a joke ability.

Wait. You're saying that hurting one's enemy and casting heal in the same action is somehow a joke of an ability? Wow, dude. A bit spoiled by infinite action loops, are we?

Let's get one fvcking thing out of the way. Yes, I have not actually used the Bo9S in play. I have, however, had a lot of D&D playing experience and a lot of min-maxxing experience. I don't need to playtest every pissant thing in existence to tell whether it sucks or not. It's just something I do. You know, like not needing to pull out an x-ray to tell someone their arm is broken.

And I have a lot of experience with same. Obviously, since we are not in agreement, experience with D&D and min-maxing in general is insufficient to guarantee a correct answer. Of course not. Sometimes things are just not as clear on paper as they might be in play.

You keep talking about fast healing with each swing and how much it'll save your ass yadeeda like these attacks of opportunity will somehow pop out of no-fvcking-where. You're a first level character with combat reflexes, goddamnit. Unless your foe does something tactically stupid, you're not GETTING more than one attack per round. Yes, there are ways to have fun with combat reflexes to get yourselves more AoOs. Such as using reach weapons, which I assume you're doing, or using improved trip. But excuse me for doubting that you're landing these attacks enough at level one with your crusader for it to be reliable.

I would have doubted it, too, had I not seen it in action. It just works. *shrug*

Anyway, why would you pick up two stances from the same discipline at around the same? I know the crusader's progression pretty much forces you to do that, but think long-term, man. You don't get to swap your stances and you are going to need every precious manuever prerequisite to qualify for the halfway decent manuevers.

Actually, one wouldn't pick up both stances at an early point. Without the expenditure of a feat or some rather heavy multiclassing, one can't get Thicket of Blades until 8th level. I picked up Martial Spirit at level one. Also, don't forget that stances count as prereqs for maneuvers.

YES IT DOES WORK THAT WAY. It's from the book. If CustServ wants to stealth-boost things, the goatfelchers can print a fvcking errata.

You're. Reading. It. Incorrectly. The way that CustServ has clarified it to work has been the way I've read it since the book came out.

No non-morons play straight paladins. That's a myth propagated by supporters of the status quo who don't crunch numbers nor struggle through the pain of having such an anemic class.

Eww, straight Pally.

Or, you know, he could've picked up another stance that wasn't as dumb as 'gain two hp with every attack!' If you have nine attacks and are fighting in such a way gaining 30 hp every round changes the outcome, I would seriously suggest rethinking your strategy.

Excuse me for not fvcking believing that healing 2 hp of damage for every attack somehow gets BETTER as hp starts inflating faster than the number of attacks you're getting.

And excuse me for seeing the ability to choose to heal oneself or one's allies in addition to attacking the enemy as a useful option.

I also would really like to know what's making you so venomous in your replies. Have I personally offended you in some way?

Which will screw up your pattern of manuevers, as stated above. Also, it's a strike that heals anywhere from 15.5-20.5 hp on average. That's complete bullshit; I could've bought an intelligent item that did something like that that for an extra 7500 gold pieces. That still sucks balls, but at least it fvcking doesn't interfere with my attacks.

Not every campaign has every permutation of items and abilities just waiting to be bought at the corner store.

Do I get to make snotty comments now about whether you actually playtested the schmaltzy bullshit you're talking about? If you don't see why having the ability to trade all of your other attacks as a sword-based character for a 'cure light wounds, mass' is utter garbage, I don't know what to say.

Have my comments been snotty? I thought that I was doing a pretty good job of being polite. In any case, yes, I have playtested this stuff. It came in quite handy many a time. It obviously wasn't always the appropriate tool for the job, but there were times when it was invaluable.

You get it at CHARACTER LEVEL 17, which is complete and utter bullshit. Both you and your enemies are dishing out with a full attack way more than 150 damage per round. You should be using that time to fvcking shut your enemies down before they insta-kill you or your party members, not engage them in a war of attrition which you're going to lose.

Yes, an optimized character is dishing out craploads of damage, but monsters tend not to be that effective. An example is a frost giant jarl; assuming the target has an AC of 32, the jarl will average but 65.55 damage per full attack. This is when that whole, "The DM doesn't need to whip out his FRP phallus and destroy the party just to show that he can," thing comes in.

The mere fact that I can make a charger that deals thousands of damage every round does not mean that my DM should send us up against that type of enemy, and I'd be a tool to do that to my DM's campaign. I'd be a tool to whip out a DMm-Persistent-Spell and nightstick abusing character, too, or anything else that ladles on the cheese.

Or you could've been a goddamn warblade. That's what I'm comparing crusaders against. Not against casters, but against the other printed class in this book. The only thing crusaders get over warblades is devoted spirits, which only has a few decent manuevers. One of them is godly but is also CHEAP AS FREE to get.

That's why they suck so much. They are almost completely directly inferior to warblades in every area that matters (survivability, dependability, damage dished out, and bonus class features) and in return they get fewer manuevers readied and fewer schools to choose from.

I initially thought the same thing, but I've really come to like the way the Crusader plays. What I've seen from the ToB characters in my games (two Crusaders and three Warblades) is that both classes end up in the same ballpark of effectiveness. The Swordsage, on the other hand, well, I'm yet to be convinced it can hold up at any level, but then, I have yet to see it in action, so I'm reserving final judgment.

[NineInchNall]

1166135650[/unixtime]]And martial manuevers are more fun to use.

Amen, brother.

[Username17]

No, all expended maneuvers are recovered. A random pair of these (if there are that many) are granted you. That's all the passage you quoted says. The passage does not say that the character's granted maneuvers become withheld, so it does not happen.

No, the passage that Lago quoted doesn't say that - it merely implies it. The passage that does say that is the very next sentence that Lago didn't copy into that quote:

At the end of your next turn, a witheld maneuver is granted to you, and the whole process of divine inspiration begins again.

Yes, that really is what it says. It says you start over when you run out of cards in your draw pile. The process of starting over is well defined.

I was speaking of using Crusader's Strike every round and benefitting from the healing of Martial Spirit. 1d6+2+Initiator Level. That's one attack, never mind and extra healing from Martial Spirit enhanced AoOs.

1. There's no reason to believe you'll actually be able to do it every turn, since the whole point of the class is that you can't repeat the same maneuver more often than once in each block of three turns.
   
2. It's a Standard Action, so it doesn't work with AoOs anyway.
   
3. You actually have to hit with a basic melee attack to make that work, so it's amazingly less likely to work than a Cure Light Wounds.
   
4. Even at first level, even if it worked, that's not amazingly impressive.

That's the basic problem with your entire apologia for this book. If we take a ludicrously generous reading of how your abilities work, and we put an immense amount of work intp squeezing blood out of the stne, then we have a character that's still pretty marginal compared to say... a Rogue who collects Acid in bottles.

The book flat says you can't do what you claim that your character does and by your own admission your character isn't doing anything that makes basic characters from the PHB jealous.

I also would really like to know what's making you so venomous in your replies. Have I personally offended you in some way?

You are arguing math with the starting point that:

1. Math doesn't really matter.
   
2. Inputs mean something other than what they say.

There's not a lot of room for a civil discussion there. The book really clearly says that you shuffle the deck when it runs out and start over. You're basic position requires us to ignore the printed text before we can even engage you in conversation. But without the printed text, there's no basis for discussion at all.

Not every campaign has every permutation of items and abilities just waiting to be bought at the corner store.

True. But the "default" campaign assumes exactly that. Which is precisely the problem with this conversation. Your position appears to be:

• Some guy online said you could use your class features in a way that was way more useful than what the book actually says and the DM yu play under is willing to play that way.
  
• Your DM throws enemies at you that make small amounts of damage coupled with small amounts of healing a useful combat action (giant rats maybe? I don't even know).
  
• Your DM won't allow other standard healing sources, making your character's healing ability essential to the party.

Right. But all that together doesn't mean the class is good, which is the conclusion you seem to want to draw. The conclusion is that the DM you play under has a list of house rules that favor the class until it's passable in that limited context. But you also have that list of house rules, and without them the class is not passable.

And that's the point. From the point of your game the class might be workable. But frankly, I don't know where you are and don't really give a shit. From the standpoint of the game the class is ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.

-Username17

[NineInchNall]

1166143741[/unixtime]]

I also would really like to know what's making you so venomous in your replies. Have I personally offended you in some way?

You are arguing math with the starting point that:

1. Math doesn't really matter.
   
2. Inputs mean something other than what they say.

Where have I discounted the value of math? I think what I've said has amounted to the idea that some variables don't become clear until things are put into practical tests. If something else is what came across, then I apologize.

I assume number two refers to the recovery mechanic, um, discussion.

At the end of your next turn, a witheld maneuver is granted to you, and the whole process of divine inspiration begins again.

Yes, that really is what it says. It says you start over when you run out of cards in your draw pile. The process of starting over is well defined.

There's not a lot of room for a civil discussion there. The book really clearly says that you shuffle the deck when it runs out and start over. You're basic position requires us to ignore the printed text before we can even engage you in conversation. But without the printed text, there's no basis for discussion at all.

Apologies for continuing this. You see, here's where I disagree with you. I think what it's saying when it says, "the whole process of divine inspiration begins again", is the process of waiting for a withheld maneuver to be granted at the end of each round until recovery is triggered. Note that the sentence you quote is referring to the next turn. So what you're saying is that something happens at the end of the current turn, and then at the end of the next turn you're returned to 5(2)?

Don't get me wrong, however, I can see how it can be read the way that you are espousing. It's just that in light of the other evidence (CustServ, that unreliable bunch of poo-flinging monkeys) the other seems more likely to me to be the correct interpretation.

I'm sorry if you feel that there is no room left for civil discussion. I'm just trying to explain my reasoning for interpreting the text in the way that I do, and I've done my best both to maintain civility and to provide reasoning for my points of disagreement I do not think that my interpretation ignores the printed text as you assert, but if we can't continue this civilly, then I suppose we might as well just not continue.

[SirWayne]

The Crusader text has some terrible wording, but Frank and Lago are right (and unfortunately for us, Customer Service's opinions don't really have any more weight than any other gamer who is decently rules-savvy but doesn't have the books on hand, and are just that-- opinions). I think the important parts of the rules are:

If, at the end of your turn, you cannot be granted a manuever because you have no withheld manuevers remaining, you recover all expended maneuvers, and a new pair of readied maneuvers is granted to you. Randomly determine which of your maneuvers are granted and which are witheld. At the end of your next turn, a witheld maneuver is granted to you, and the whole process of divine inspiration begins again.

OK, the first one we all agree on-- if your turn ends when you're out of witheld maneuvers (meaning you have all the "cards" in your "deck"), you draw again.

Now, the thing that you might have missed, Nall, is that Crusaders don't get a pool of readied maneuvers, like the other classes do; their pool is witheld, and you happen to draw some from it. It's a subtle but fundamental distinction, and it's only apparent if you read the previous page ("You do not control access to your readied maneuvers ... two of your readied maneuvers (randomly determined) are granted to you. The rest of your maneuvers are witheld, currently inaccessible). This is what the "process of divine inspiration" is referring to, and the paragraph is prefaced as such.

So what happens when your witheld pool is empty is, in order:

1) You get all your expended slots back. This part is obvious.
2) You get two readied maneuvers (or 3 or 4, depending on your level). Right, moving on.
3) The rest of your readied maneuvers are witheld, as per page 9. This part is not obvious, because it's not in the same section.
4) The following turn, you get another witheld maneuver back, just like normal. Why they mention the "divine process of inspiration" here I don't understand, but it means the same thing.

That's the only logical way to read it. After all, if the "divine process of inspiration" didn't wipe you out, then every Crusader would walk into every battle with all maneuvers ready, since they would get one back every round and not lose them until they get expended. Now, doing so wouldn't exactly imbalance the class or anything, but since that reading is squarely at odds with the "randomly determine witheld/readied maneuvers" rules on page 9, it's probably not right.

I hope that makes things... somewhat clearer. >_>

---

Out of curiosity, how do the less-min/max-oriented players on your guys' groups feel about ToB? Mine is fairly split: one guy thinks it's basically the coolest thing since psionics and has jumped right in with my Swordsage (basically the same, although it gets some CW Kensai powers and a free Weapon of Legacy built-in), while another who's more mechanically inclined thinks it's "broken" and makes casters useless.

Now, at low levels I agree that ToB is pretty good-- at 1st level Barbarians already own the game except for color spray and good maneuvers are substantially better than Rage/Favored Enemy/Smite and the other useless things fighter-types had to use prior to that. You know and I know that that doesn't stay the case for very long, but I do wonder who else feels the same way. (I'd browse WOTC for input but... WOTC. :[ )

[Lago_AM3P]

Stone Dragon

Okay, first of all, you can only use Stone Dragon manuevers when you're on contact with the ground. This means that as your adventures get weirder or you discover how to fly, the use of this school becomes vanishingly small. This is enough to make this the worst school, even worse than Setting Sun. However,

for the sake of argument, we'll assume that you are always able to get your Stone Dragon on. So lets do it to it.

Adamantine Bones- Bam. Right for the fucking balls at the start.

If you don't want to read a bunch of hate-filled swearing, you can read why this and manuevers like this are complete ass at http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewth ... postnum=25. If you're here for the hatred and woe, read on.

As I've harped on before, like the vast majority of standard-action strikes, this is pure retardedness. You get a single attack melee attack with no bonuses. If you win, you gain damage reduction 20/adamantine. Look, assholes, would not be a good deal even if you had damage reduction 35/-, unless you had some ability to direct all attacks onto you. Since this is a level 8 manuever, you probably don't. Why isn't it any good? Even if the damage reduction was good, which it isn't, you're reducing your party's offensive output immensely for no reason. Even if you live, you're not doing anything to ensure anyone ELSE lives. In fact, you're making it worse by not killing the monster as fast. Idiot.

Ancient Mountain Hammer- This strike is actually worse than Adamantime Bones, but it doesn't piss me off as much conceptually. It's bad math rather than a bad tactic. You give up all of your attacks at character level 13 for a bonus of 12d6 damage. Uh, at character level 13, each of my attacks are bigger than that. No, seriously. I have a +2 energyx2/subdual greatsword as a BACKUP (because I have an artifact weapon); I have a strength bonus of +8; since I'm a warblade and I have some tactical sense I have an insight bonus to damage of +3; and I power attack for like -4 all of the time because I'm awesome. That's an average of 42 damage per attack, homes. Even if I'm an idiot and picked up this many swordsage levels, I have at least three attacks. So, yeah. Lose all of my attacks, spend one of my precious manuevers, gain an average of 42 damage? No frickin' way.

Bonesplitting Strike- If you have that big of a hardon for causing constitution damage, please pick up a (greater) wounding weapon (check out the 3.5E conversion document for the second monster manual for the greater variant). You'll likely hurt your foes way more than using up one of your manuevers. Bunch of retards, I swear...

Bonecrusher- This strike isn't all that bad, to be sure. Yes, it adds a weaksauce 14 damage on average to one attack. However, you get this manuever at low enough level that it might be a little decent as a combat opener or when you have to move in battle. It's good for only a couple of levels, really.

Boulder Roll- If you have a character built around overrunning (I can't think of any cheesy builds, really), then you don't exactly WANT this boost, it's just going to happen. I'd really like to know how you planned to do this, too, since none of the martial adept classes get abilities that help them complete the overrun chain. Oh, well, since martial adept items are so cheap, a high-level character scrounging for bonuses can get one of these babies unslotted for 30,000 gp. So if you have no martial adept levels whatsoever and spent them all towards fighter enhancements, then let 'er rip! This manuever is better for existing than not existing, but not by much.

Colossus Strike- You read that right, suckas. It's like the Mighty Throw chain, except without the interesting tactical options. And it's written in SQUARES, too. Its sister manuever talks about things in FEET. Jesus, do they even pretend to do some editting anymore? Oh, well, I guess you don't need to edit things NO NON-MORON WILL USE.

Crushing Vise- Hey, this is actually pretty cool! A foe's movement drops to 0 for the rest of the round if you hit them with this. You can enhance this effect with a little sexy reach action, but really, it's an absolutely emergency manuever for stopping big monsters from hitting the rest of the party. Used for any other purpose, it sucks donkey balls. Which means that you probably want to have this on a martial script, if at all. Of course the best tanking abilities are the offensive manuevers.

Crushing Weight of the Mountain- Amusingly, this stance completely seals the deal on fighters being better grapplers than monks could ever hope to be. Grappling is a great option when used properly. This stance is icing on the cake.

Earthquake Strike- Ah, if only the radius was bigger. Still, I could see this manuever coming in real handy when being surrounded by weak monsters who can full attack. Works even better if you can back that ass up with a little White Raven action. They won't even be able to touch your party! If only this came at a lower level...

Elder Mountain Hammer- Unlike the DR-bypassing manuevers of Desert Breeze, you could actually use this. If you're fighting a DR that you can't bypass and that is sucking the life out of your attacks, a couple of these babies should put you back in the saddle. I still wouldn't put this in my normal rotation of attacks but it'll help to remember that it exists.

Giant's Stance- Probably the worst stance I've reviewed so far. You lose the ability to move and return you gain... a bonus damage dice. What the flying

fuck... it's not even a lot. You gain like 7 damage if you're lucky.

Iron Bones- See my comment about Adamantine Bones. Only the DR is so poor that it's worse than using goddamn stoneskin.

Irresistible Mountain Strike- Wow, it's like Crushing Vice right down to the goddamn extra 4d6 points of damage if it hits! Only they lose their ability to take standard actions if they fail to make a fortitude save. You know, it's like stunning fist, only it sucks sweaty balls.

Mountain Avalanche- Why would you use this INTENSELY retarded strike? Read the rules for trample. Notice the text about them getting attacks of opportunities on your punk asses? And you deal a puny 2d6+(1.5xStr Bonus) damage to them in return for getting your shit wrecked. What the fuck... this isn't any good for horde monsters. It's like... the opposite! Next!

Mountain Hammer- Like all low-level strikes, this one has the most uses. Before you gain extra attacks, it's like being able to fight with two weapons, only instead of sucking you rule. Oh, and you penetrate damage reduction, too. Awesome.

Mountain Tombstone Strike- As a 9th level manuever, you get to deal... 7 points of constitution damage on average! What kind of weaksauce bullshit is that? If you're fighting something level appropriate (meaning that it has anywhere from 17 to 40HD) a random monster will lose anywhere from 51-160 extra hitpoints from your attack. At the cost of all of your other attacks. That's some serious fucked up shit right there. What a load of crap. You could dish out this much pain if you had a wounding weapon! They're cheap as free, too, so I just... fuck it. Just fuck it.

Overwelming Mountain Strike- Let's see here. This is a character level 7 manuever, so unless you're a joker who picked up levels in swordsage, you should be getting extra attacks.

Roots of the Mountain- You gain pretty huge resistance bonuses at the cost of losing if you move more than 5 feet or don't meet any of the retarded Stone Dragon restrictions to begin with. That would seen big enough to sink the entire style to begin with. But then it's a low-level stance that requires a swift action. This isn't too bad at all, fellas. Put this on your low-level tripster and watch the good times roll, as you no longer have to worry about retaliatory trip attempts.

Stone Bones- 5/adamantine damage reduction for one round as long as you initiate this strike and hit! I can definitely see a bunch of low level martial adepts completely relying on this style. It'll pretty much shut out TWFers and monks and horde monsters out of the running for a good long while. For god's sake, man, if you have one of these martial adept strike manuevers that are standard actions, pick up power attack and cleave and combat reflexes. Think of the children.

Stone Dragon's Fury- This is probably one of the crummiest of all the martial strikes in this book, and that's saying something. As a level 5 character, give up all of your other attacks for the round to deal an extra 14 hp worth of damage to constructs or objects. Yeah, THAT'S worth it. There are very few constructs at low CR, discounting animated objects. This doesn't even help you bypass damage reduction. The damage isn't even big enough to pay the 750 gold to keep it on a martial script.

Stone Vise- Unlike crushing vise, which you get much later, this one has a pretty hefty (for its level) save. Because there's a save involved, it isn't quite as reliable. Which means that you won't use it. Crushing vise sucks as a manuever, but at least it always works.

Stonefoot Stance- It says, 'While you are in this stance, you gain a +2 bonus on Strength checks and a +2 bonus to AC against creatures of a size category larger than yours.' So either this stance is free money to first level warblade Improved Trippers or, because only small-sized creatures will really enjoy the strength bonus, it completely sucks. Because small characters suck at tripping.

Strength of Stone- Gosh, a character level 15 stance that makes you immune to critical hits! If you wanted to be immune to critical hits, you would've done it a long time ago. Increasing its suck factor over LEVEL 1 AND 3 STANCES is that by now, if you've been using this book, you'll have plenty of swift actions in your corner pocket and that 'lose benefits of this stance if you move 5 feet or fly' is very meaningful now. Once again, high level variants of low-level manuevers objectly suck more. Despite all of the good things I've said about Bo9S, I have NEVER seen this phenomenom more in any other book published by WotC. This is just sad.

[bitnine]

I figure this is part of their incremental plan to acclimate people to melee fixes. With the new martial classes, they've put out a couple of good tricks and some more flashy abilities. Maybe not enough to... Well, you know, necessarily provide the foundation for a proper set of worthwhile characters, but they're starting small and riding out the ZOMGWTFBBQ feedback. At this rate, look forward to combatants having nice things as soon as 6th edition.

Until then, be careful what you ask for. Powerful and useful things like abrupt jaunt are for wizards and gishes, and asking for a martial ability to be that useful at such a level will - if I'm reading the current state of things correctly - probably get you kicked in the balls repeatedly, or possibly have your family murdered.

That being said, I'd certainly play a Warblade.

[Username17]

I figure this is part of their incremental plan to acclimate people to melee fixes.

Pretty much. Like Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Magic, Book of Nine Swords was never intended to be a balanced and playable book. It's just a concept sketch of a different way of doing things born out of the fact that they don't have playtesters any more.

In short, the book is just "Here's some radical ideas, what do y'all think?" And then people pay money for it, take it home, playtest it their own self, and reports get back to the secret masters who will then either fold it into 4th edition or not.

So based on peer review, I would say that Incarnum will probably never be heard from again, Shadow Magic will be used in some radically different (and simpler) form, and Warblade Maneuvers will be the Fighter standard in 4th edition.

---

What I don't get is why they would need to do these concept books at all. We've all played a lot of D&D. We know a priori that a system like Incarnum is too complicated and difficult to use. We know before we even start that the thing that's wrong with Fighters isn't that they do indsufficient damage at first level.

And that's the part that's really weird. I didn't have to see a Truenamer to know that a skill check based spellcasting system was broken on first principles - we've been down that thorny path before with Epic Spells. We've seen a lot of Fighters in play, we know that you can do fine at first level with Martial Weapon proficiency alone. It's later on that things go south.

So what the fvck? Why was the proposed solution to Fighters for them to make Touch Attacks with their warhammers at level 3 and get totally shafted at level 6? Why was the basic mechanic put down "Fighters should get moderate bonuses for no reason and get no bonus attacks" - that's exactly the opposite of what you'd want to do!

The problem with Fighters isn't that they aren't good enough at levels 1-3, they do fine. The problem is that at levels 6+ they arten't good. So if you have them trade "all their extra attacks" for moderate bonuses that equates to overpowering them before they have extra attacks (say, levels 1-5) and then repeatedly kicking them in the nuts as hard as you can when they do (say, level 6+).

The Strike of Righteous Vitality is a god damned joke. You're 17th level and you get one basic attack and one casting of heal. That's fine and all, but if either one fails they both do. That means that you're basically gambling a failure of your entire action in excahnge for a bonus single melee attack if it works. That's OK I guess, except that for some reason you get it six levels later.

Frankly, if I want to use a Heal I really want to use a heal, and gambling that it might fail completely and not give any hit points back to my allies is totally unacceptable to me. Maybe there's someone out there who is willing to take that risk in exchange for a chance at dealing some extra damage at the same time. But it's hard for me to imagine someone being willing to take that risk so much that they'd wait six actual character levels for the priviledge.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

The problem with Fighters isn't that they aren't good enough at levels 1-3, they do fine. The problem is that at levels 6+ they arten't good. So if you have them trade "all their extra attacks" for moderate bonuses that equates to overpowering them before they have extra attacks (say, levels 1-5) and then repeatedly kicking them in the nuts as hard as you can when they do (say, level 6+)

This is precisely the reason why so few styles are playable. Specifically, only Tiger Claw and White Raven actually have most of their manuevers be something you could use. Iron Heart and Diamond Mind also have strikes that I can actually see people using.

Here are all of the strikes you get after you can expect a bonus attack, and here are the ones I can actually see people using. I am going to cut the people who wrote this some major slack and highlight any manuever that's not objectively inferior to use taking more attacks and using options in the PHB. For example, even though in my previous review of the schools in other posts I didn't rip TOO BAD into strikes which did retarded things like 'reduce a foe's move to 0 if they fail to make a fortitude save', really, it's nothing more spectacular than what you could've done with a spell-storing weapon/poison. So here we go.

Desert Tempest- This is like having a inferior version of 3.0E whirlwind, as it only comes up when you exit a foe's space (hope you have a way of preventing AoOs, sucka) as opposed to just being able to reach them. However, 3.5E whirlwind REALLY sucks now. You can at least use great cleave with this. Hooray for bag of rats!

Strike of Righteous Vitality- This strike sucks a lot, but it can provide you free out-of-combat healing for literally nothing as long as you have a Summon Monster I spell in your corner pocket. So if your DM still insists you have to trudge through the (broken at this point) 3 encounters per day paradigm in hopes of depleting your reserves, you can tell him to suck it.

Avalanche of Blades- This manuever could come in handy if you're fighting genius loci or something else with a pathetic AC and have a way of rerolling d20s. Luck blades attached to your back, for example. Otherwise, I find this stance highly suspect when fighting anything of your CR when you get it. Expect people who use this to scrounge and scrape for every bonus they find, including the +1 for being on higher ground. I personally think that having this strike is better than not having it.

Diamond Nightmare Blade- This is a mediocre consolation prize for not being a mounted charger or having pounce (available RIGHT IN THIS BOOK). I know a lot of people who want to play high-level fighters who plan on having neither. Because you have neither, you will pretty much NEED this strike at high level. Also, in any case, if you have a way of accumulating extra actions this will come in very handy.

Time Stands Still- Finally, FINALLY a high-level strike that I can see people flat-out USING without there being some sort of rare extenuating factor/cheese combo. It's just pure gold for no reason. Awesome.

Adamantine Hurricane- It's like 3.0E Whirlwind, except that you don't get the bonus attack from two-weapon fighting or haste or whatever. However, it instead compensates you by giving you TWO attacks at a +4 bonus against every opponent you threaten. I can also see people using this manuever 'honestly', too.

Lightning Throw- This is potentially more damage when fighting hordes of tiny opponents in a cute little line. But the line has to be at LEAST 20ft. in length, otherwise it'll almost always friggin' lose to Adamantine Hurricane, which is a strike of the same level in the same school! Jesus!

Hydra Slaying Strike- It prevents your foes from making a full-attack. This means that it won't exactly pull your ass out of the fire when fighting monsters with a powerful alternate attack mode, you know, like dragons and demons. It'll help you against kraken and the terrasque, as far as that goes. Goddamnit, I was hoping not to put ANY Setting Sun manuevers in here, but I guess I have to. Sigh.

Death From Above- It's like Spring Attack without the shitty prequisites and you catch your foe flatfooted and even deal an extra 4d6 worth of damage. Eh.

Feral Death Blow- Since you can easily cheese your strength bonus to reach ridiculous levels without even trying too hard (like +20 before getting into real cheese), this becomes a single-target save-or-die that will seriously threaten even those that are good at making fortitude saves! Like, friggin' Great Wyrm Dragons! Awesome Possum.

Pouncing Charge- You get pounce. Only you didn't have to go through a lot of the bullshit or caster grovelling normally associated with trying to get yourself some pounce. That's pretty sweet.

Swooping Dragon Strike- Blah blah blah extremely long description no one cares about--HOLY SHIT the monster has to make a save against the DC of your jump check result or be stunned for one round? Not even the goddamn tarrasque has a chance against this.

Flanking Manuever- You give up all of your attacks for the round in exchange for all of your friends getting a bonus melee attack. Unless your party has a cubic-asston of frontline combatants, probably not a good trade. But it's possible so it goes into the list. Shut up, Hydra Slaying Strike had uses.

Swarming Assault- I was going to make a snarky comment about how little improvement Swarming Assault has over Flanking Manuever for the difference in level--the condition for a bonus attack becomes threatened instead of flanking. However, there's no penalty for martial adepts using high-level manuevers over low-level ones and low-level manuevers are easy to replace. So it goes on the list, too.

War Leader's Charge- If you have pounce and leading the charge, you suddenly dish out an OMG amount of extra damage. Friggin' sweet.

War Master's Charge- It's really hard to tell you how friggin' amusing this strike is. Everyone gets bonuses depending on how many people are charging the foe and everyone deals out 25 extra points of damage if they hit (which means you probably want to back that ass up with a little Leading the Charge action). Their charges also don't interfere with each other. What does this mean? It means that you want to get everyone that can applying some whupass to the poor bastard you're fighting. This includes familiars and summons and animal companions with their cute damage.

Is this shit a scene out of Disney or what?

If that wasn't enough, the foe is also stunned for a round! If only there was some way to f'nagle an extra move action out of everyone so they could repeat this combo. Oh wait, there is.

white Raven Hammer- It's like Hydra Slaying Strike without the inferiority complex. You stun that bastard rather than prevent them from doing a full-attack. It's a bit too high level for my taste, but this is manuever is just what fighter-types need to put them back into the game.

Anyway, notice the pattern here? Desert Wind, Devoted Spirit, Shadow Hand, Setting Sun, and Stone Dragon are almost berefit of good strikes once you get a second attack. In fact, the most good strikes any of these schools have is a grand total of one per school at the MOST. Incidentally, these are the schools that warblades miss out on. Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, Tiger Claw, and White Raven all have at least three.

Warblades rule and everything else drools. Take that shit to the bank.

[bitnine]

FINALLY a high-level strike that I can see people flat-out USING without there being some sort of rare extenuating factor/cheese combo.

You know, that in particular is something that stuck me when looking at a lot of this material. There are probably a number of builds you can make with this material that can do interesting and relatively powerful tricks. But it's almost like instead of handing out things that were honestly useful, they slid out combo pieces with a wink and a nod.

"Sh! Don't tell anyone about this, but we snuck in these things piece by piece so that you could put together a gun 'on the inside'. Just treat them like magic cards and figure out a combo to make them work - but for God's sake don't expect most of them to stand up on their own."

To be perfectly honest, there's a little bit of a gamist in me that likes taking pieces like that and figuring out neat combos. But that seems like something better suited to magic, not increasing the gulf between optmized and unoptimized characters in D&D further. Mayhap that's part of the appeal sparking the love seen on the charop boards.

And I said this somewhere else, but it bears repeating:

Aura of Chaos = Dice average (1+d)/2 * Σ(1/d^k), k from 0 to ∞, d is the die size.

Do you think that someone in development took the same basic math courses I have and knew they were releasing an ability to sucker players with dreams of rolling forever into sucking? My d6s average 4.2! At the area of maximal benefit, those lucky d2s now get me in the neighborhood of 3! Ooooh!

It's almost like toughness, but trying to hide the fact its castrating you. It's the ability I would release if I hated the people who play D&D. Seriously.

[Lago_AM3P]

NineInchNails, I'd like to emphasize the fact that I am not trying to insult you, I just get really, really passionate about D&D rules.

Since I lack the raw persuasive quality or wit of posters like Dragon Child and Josh and Frank over there, all I've gots is swearing and weird insults. So I'll direct my rage and fanaticism towards people's arguments or positions or beliefs, not to the person themself.

And that, NineInchNails, is why Crusaders suck and you don't.

[Dragon_Child]

Since I lack the raw persuasive quality or wit of posters like Dragon Child and Josh and Frank over there, all I've gots is swearing and weird insults.

For what it's worth, your weird ball jokes wins over my "wit" any day.

[Fwib]

FWIW, it should be noted that you can't stack stuff from maneuvers/stances

Absolutely none of this stuff stacks, even if they're different bonus types, so nerrr...

So you can't add bonus damage from your damage-to-charge stance with your bonus-damage-charge maneuver, for example

[Lago_AM3P]

Ah, that sucks, but it isn't THAT bad. The only school which really provides OMG huge damage bonuses is White Raven.

I didn't notice that. That's weird--why'd they make a lot of the bonuses typed, then?

[Username17]

It's the 3.5 standard: Balance through obfiscation.

The statement is that maneuvers and stances that provide bonuses and penalties to stuff don't stack unless they say that they do. Does that mean that a morale bonus stacks with a luck bonus? Noone knows!

And that's the point. The point is that the DM has to decide whether a differently named bonus qualifies as being noted as stacking with its mate. And that means that the DM gets to decide whether those bonuses stack. It even lets him change his mind later on in the campaign if a charactr is over or under performing.

But they can't just say "We haven't playtested this, let alone subject it to rigorous statistical analysis, and we have no idea whether this stuff is balanced if you use it all together. So uh... you might have to spot nerf it or something to keep your game from driving to crazy town. Or maybe not, as I said we aint got clue one as to whether there are any game balance land mines hidden in this - we don't even know whether the land mines - if they exist - would err on the side of underperformance or overperformance. You might have to do all kinds of crap to keep these characters from breaking the game and/or sucking." - that would make it sound like they were just charging people money to playtest odeas for 4th edition for them.

Book of 9 Swords, Magic of Incarnum, and Tome of Magic are Alpha Testing. Seriously, that's just the point of the design process where they pitch an idea to focus groups - it's not playable game material. And the game they are focus group testing for is 4th edition D&D.

WotC just happens to have developed a business model where people pay upwards of thirty dollars to be part of the focus group instead of getting a free T-shirt.

-Username17

[Iaimeki]

1166369936[/unixtime]]FWIW, it should be noted that you can't stack stuff from maneuvers/stances

Absolutely none of this stuff stacks, even if they're different bonus types, so nerrr...

What?! That's some of the most idiotic rules writing I've seen in awhile, even from WotC! The point of the bonus type system is to provide an easy way to tell if bonuses stack! Having bonuses of different types that don't stack completely undermines it, adding complexity for no reason at all. Who's responsible for this travesty?!

[Fwib]

As frank points out, my paraphrase is not 100% accurate: what it actually says is that maneuvers/stances do not stack, but leaves it unsaid/up to the GM to guess if that over-rides the basic rules or not...

the wording "unless it explicitly says that they do" could be read to mean it has to say in the maneuver, or it could be gibberish which does not over-ride the normal stacking rules at all....

[more edit] I wish I had the command of language that other writers here do - anyone know any good 'teach yourself to be erudite' web-guides?

[RandomCasualty]

1166377757[/unixtime]]
But they can't just say "We haven't playtested this, let alone subject it to rigorous statistical analysis, and we have no idea whether this stuff is balanced if you use it all together. So uh... you might have to spot nerf it or something to keep your game from driving to crazy town. Or maybe not, as I said we aint got clue one as to whether there are any game balance land mines hidden in this - we don't even know whether the land mines - if they exist - would err on the side of underperformance or overperformance. You might have to do all kinds of crap to keep these characters from breaking the game and/or sucking." - that would make it sound like they were just charging people money to playtest odeas for 4th edition for them.

Honestly they should just say that. I mean, with the speed they produce material, nobody can really expect it all to work perfectly together. Really, I'm happy if the material works standalone wtih core. You can't expect all the extra splatbooks to not go to crazytown when combined, simply because the authors don't work together. It's not even possible to avoid balance loopholes from combining different splatbooks, so they might as well put out an official warning label saying that stuff hasn't been playtested entirely.

[shau]

Honestly they should just say that. I mean, with the speed they produce material, nobody can really expect it all to work perfectly together. Really, I'm happy if the material works standalone wtih core. You can't expect all the extra splatbooks to not go to crazytown when combined, simply because the authors don't work together. It's not even possible to avoid balance loopholes from combining different splatbooks, so they might as well put out an official warning label saying that stuff hasn't been playtested entirely.

I am not sure I agree with the idea that we should just expect and tolerate WotC printing abilities that totally break the game when used with other splatbooks. However, that is not what we are talking about here. This is not WotC saying we have not playtested enough to know whether this material works when combined with three different splat books. This is WotC saying we have not playtested enough to know whether this ability works with the other abilities presented in the same book.