My Gut Reaction to Book of Nine Swords

[SteveC]

I think you are missing the point.
These are certainly very valid points to consider in the build of a warblade.
However, every single one you listed is a potential perk over and above a fighter.
So, if you ignored every single one, you would not lose a single step on the fighter.

Or, put simply, an INT 10 Warblade blows the doors off a fighter without these perks.
A player can then max/min from there and give the fighter a small advantage on some other ability in exchange for gaining even better advantages.
It isn't a case, for me, of YMMV in the value of these items. It is that these items are major mileage optional adders on an already overly potent base.

Only if you use the assumption that the figher doesn't use his bonus feats. The fighter is the class that is all about feats. It is the poster child for feats, and the designers feel that feats are a tremendously valuable resource as you compare a fighter to classes like rangers, paladins, barbarians, and basically any other +1 BAB class out there. I think that the consensus is starting to become that those feats aren't really enough to make a fighter balanced and competative, but you still have the fighter based almost entirely around them. We've already seen solutions like the PHBII with much more powerful feats, and the Tome of Battle is just another way of looking at the "fighting class problem."

The question is, does the fighter, with his bonus feats compare to the Warblade with his class abilities and maneuvers? I would say yes, based on making a test character up to 10th level and going level by level. The only concern I have, is whether or not the simple method the Warblade has for refreshing maneuvers is too good. That's something I would need to actually see in play to decide on.

A Warblade with a low int, so as to not use his abilities would be losing a fair bit. A Warblade with D8 hit points and medium BAB (as some have suggested) would be worthless. Again, just so you realize (and I think you probably do, Bryon) these are just my thoughts on the matter, and not something I'm trying to sell as some universal truth.

For me, the biggest thing that convinced me on how the Warblade may work out to be a lot better in actual play was to build one, level by level. The much vaunted "+100 HP melee attack" maneuver has a prerequisite of 4 other lower level maneuvers, which means in order to use it you have to spend 5 of your 13 total maneuvers on it. Other disciplines are similar, so you can have at most _2_ 9th level disciplines as a Warblade.

It sounds great to be able to do a one shot +100 HP attack every other round, but if you look at the rest of the abilities you're going to have, they're not going to be that overwhelming. The question becomes: is adding +100 damage to one melee attack every other round really overpowered, and, more importantly, is it really all that interesting if that's about the only thing you can do on that power level?

Some people will obviously say yes it's too much, and I guess the Tome of Battle is not the book for them. I wonder, however, how many of them have really played a campaign at 18th and higher level. The highest level game I have played in or run topped out at about 16th level, and to be honest, +100 HP would not have seemed that far out of place for what the rest of the group could do.

Frankly, I don't have enough experience at near epic levels to tell you whether or not it is overpowered. I expect the WotC folks have played a lot more campaigns to that level as a part of their playtesting jobs, so I'm going to at least give these classes a shot in my next campaign. It's going to be Age of Worms, so I expect it will be plenty deadly despite the presence of a Warblade or two...

--Steve

 

[Thanatos]

This leads some folks to consider it axiomatic that any class feature that's based on an ability score should be considered a dependency. However, looking over the warblade, the class is clearly not dependent on its Intelligence bonus for anything fundamental. Even given a 10 Intelligence score, its attack, damage, and hit points would all still be outstanding. A warblade's armor class could be considered mediocre, but none of its Int abilities improve that anyway. It would have one good saving throw, which is common to many classes.

In short, the Int bonuses are perks, not dependencies. Nice to have, but not essential. Give it a medium BAB and d8 hit dice like the monk, and then we can talk about dependencies.

I'm afraid I disagree with your assessment of whats clearly fundamental with the class.

No, the Int bonuses aren't perks, they are dependancies. Not only do some feats the warblade may want require more then 10 Int, but 4 skill points by themselves will not really hem him into a much more limited choice of disciplines as well and may also very well hurt his ability to use some of those maneuvers that call for those skills if he doesn't have max ranks int hem.

All of the classes in the book have some level of dependancy on their Int scores for skill points, because there are tactical & regular feats which require certain Int scores to use as well as maneuvers which require you to make checks against certains skills. All of these classes suffer from MAD, just not as badly as the poor Monk.

Lowering the bab and hit dice turn him into a skirmish fighter like the monk, which is what the swordsage is in this book (and he does it much better) -- he's meant to be in the front line, akin to the barbarian. Medium armor gives him more movement flexibility for some his maneuvers and the 12HD help offset that a little since he will likely get hit more often with attacks and possibily AoO's.

So far, in playtesting, he still hasn't shown quite the longevity of the fighter and their damage output is still comparable...though he shows some flashier stuff that is more fun then the typical fighter modes. He and the barbarian require alot more attention from the cleric. One other thing I've noticed about all of the Nine Sword classes is that, unlike with the fighter for instance, you don't have to use every feat to optimize themm you can take a few fun/flavor things and not hurt your damage output really.

 

[brehobit]

To me the key question is if the Manouvers, Stances and bonus feats of the Warblade are less in power than the bonus feats of a fighter. My initial reaction is no, they are about equal, perhaps slight favor to the warblade.

But the warblade gets +1 hp/level, +2 skill points per level, and a number of nice (though not huge) bonuses based on int. They lose missile weapon prof. and heavy armor. The first can be killer at lower level (but there is a PrC which give it back) the second is pretty minor.

One interesting factiod. Any dwarf, human or half-elf fighter should take a ToB class at 9th level. It is huge (3rd level abilities!) Swordsage is probably the best choice, though the point of BAB lost hurts. It is _so_ worth it.

Mark

 

[satori01]

The problem with comparing Feats to Maneuvers, or even Feats to Feats is there is so much variability to Feats in general.

Does Lightning Reflexes pale to Divine Might? Is Spring Attack more powerful than Empower Spell? Does Extra Rage compare to Craft Wonderous Item?

Feats are all over the map in terms of 'power'. Feats, especially for Fighters are all about creating a cascade power effect. Maneuvers can duplicate small bits of what a Fighter can do, but they can not duplicate the whole package.

I love the fact that at this point of the game, new concepts, new ideas can be tried out. To say Maneuvers are super feats, and to not like them for categorical reasons seems well dull to me.

By the early 90's the groups I played 2e with, knew the rules that it was paint by numbers...haste...dispel magic....nuke...swing..rinse repeat. The tactics were set, the system was codified, and little did we know the game at that point was for the most part moribund.

TOB is certainly not moribund. It might offend some peoples sense of aesthetics.. which is cool, not everyone now, and certainly when it appeared, liked Impressionism, but it feels vibrant to me. Uses by encounter, rather than uses per day feels very good to me...spells should be so lucky.

The characters you can build with the classes seem intresting. How about a Fire Gensai Desert Wind Swordsage...meditating before a candle.. and using his Flame based Maneuvers to attack foes from a distance....pretty cool addition to an archer.. or as a possible replacement.

A Dwarven Crusader, not as random as a barbarian, ignoring damage and dispensing healing while hurting, emulating the balance and justice evident in the Hammer of Moradin.

A Warblade could make a fine approximation of Lan from Wheel of Time. Hardy, dangerous in combat, and a fine swordsman, though not the best. An able leader of men when he choses to be. A character based around White Raven Maneuvers using massed charges would be a welcome change from the tick, tock nature of combat now.

 

[airwalkrr]

So... can I have your copy then, Airwalkerr?

I'm a collector. So that would ruin my collection.

Rest assured, I will find some use for the book. If nothing else, I can always mine it for ideas. Perhaps I can turn some of the maneuvers into feats or something. But it is unlikely to find a place in my campaign wholesale.

 

[airwalkrr]

Now, I can understand it being an issue of taste (nobody has to like everything). And I can understand it being a matter of style (I wouldn't want Aragorn breaking out wuxia-style, either). But it bugs me when people playing Fantasy Style #1 get bent out of shape because Fantasy Style #2 is "not very realistic".

While I feel you are on the verge of making a compelling point, I do not entirely buy it, and here is why. D&D is about flavor and style as much as it is about fantasy in general. If I wanted to play a game where the characters are imbued with wuxia-style abilities, I would play BESM. But I want swords & sorcery. I want armor and spells. I want barbarians and magi! So I play D&D.

A number of d20 games have tried to make the conversion to oriental style, but IMO they fail to do it well because the system was not designed with that kind of thing in mind. Saving throws, for instance, are inextricably linked to spellcasting. The skill system is limited to fairly rational and reasonable things.

What it boils down to is that D&D does not port well to oriental style games. I do not think medieval European fantasy is superior to medieval Far East fantasy, but D&D is designed to work with the former, not the latter. This kind of forcing a square peg into a round hole does not sit well with me. Besides that, I happen to enjoy the touch of "realism" in D&D which presumes that the heroes are just exceptional mortals. I could be "realistic" in another way and say magic does not exist while heroes capable of superhuman feats do instead. It is a personal preference, nothing more. Several people have pointed out that my review, though not particularly favorable, has encouraged them to buy the book. If that is the case, then the review served its purpose, which was first and foremost to describe what the book brings to the game, and second to give my personal opinion on it.

 

[Thanatos]

I'm not at all into wuxia, but this doesn't really seem to have that flavor to me. I play D&D as well and this seems it would have fit in pretty much any campaign I have ever played in or DM'ed, past and present. Are there some fantastical abilities these people can get? Surely so, but the same goes for many of the base calsses as well. It's another form of casting a spell. It's all about interpretation.

I disagree that D&D doesn't give over to a good oriental style campaign either -- I've played in more then a few that were just fine and they played out like any other D&D game I've been in, save with a few different classes. It requires a slightly different take on a few things, but its essentially the same, with just a different flavor and setting. Far East mysticism blends perfectly well into the spellcasting system.

Despite D&D having been designed for use with a generic fantasy style realm, it is by no means only limited to working well in that. That's like saying because D&D was designed for a high magic game, trying to make it work for a medium or low magic game is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. People do it all the time and it works just fine. It's a perfectly fine system to tweak out for different flavors and settings.

 

[Alceste]

While I feel you are on the verge of making a compelling point, I do not entirely buy it, and here is why. D&D is about flavor and style as much as it is about fantasy in general. If I wanted to play a game where the characters are imbued with wuxia-style abilities, I would play BESM. But I want swords & sorcery. I want armor and spells. I want barbarians and magi! So I play D&D.

A number of d20 games have tried to make the conversion to oriental style, but IMO they fail to do it well because the system was not designed with that kind of thing in mind. Saving throws, for instance, are inextricably linked to spellcasting. The skill system is limited to fairly rational and reasonable things.

What it boils down to is that D&D does not port well to oriental style games. I do not think medieval European fantasy is superior to medieval Far East fantasy, but D&D is designed to work with the former, not the latter. This kind of forcing a square peg into a round hole does not sit well with me. Besides that, I happen to enjoy the touch of "realism" in D&D which presumes that the heroes are just exceptional mortals. I could be "realistic" in another way and say magic does not exist while heroes capable of superhuman feats do instead. It is a personal preference, nothing more. Several people have pointed out that my review, though not particularly favorable, has encouraged them to buy the book. If that is the case, then the review served its purpose, which was first and foremost to describe what the book brings to the game, and second to give my personal opinion on it.

Everybody has their opinion. I happen to think martial art monks have no place in European centric adventures. I also find the trappings of feudalism extremely boring at times. I have also saved way too many damsels in distress in my early playing days.

On the other hand, I have enjoyed many knights errant style campaigns. Where the question of morality and ethics played a great role. I have also really enjoyed two great long term campaigns based on Oriental adventures in 2.0 and 3.0. Your personal dislike for a style of gaming does not mean that it does not work well for other people.The sales of both OA books coupled with the fact that Wotc included some OA classes in every complete book should say something about the popularity of that style of gaming.

 

[Gold Roger]

Just to let everybody know, I was thinking of working out a system to introduce martial maneuvers that uses only the Core Book classes, makes the fighter king of trained martiality again and gives the whole thing a flavor closer to "classical fantasy".

Now, I wouldn't be doing this for myself, but more to show some of the critics how the system might still be used for their purpose, so this is entirely dependent on the interest of these. I'd also be doing this under the condition that the fighter will get a bit of a powerup.

If there is interest I'd work something out in the next few days and post it over in house rules.

 

[BryonD]

Only if you use the assumption that the figher doesn't use his bonus feats.

<snip>

You are going back to the beginning and discarding arguements that have already been covered. I don't see your position here as close to holding water.