My Gut Reaction to Book of Nine Swords

BryonD

Hero
Gargoyle said:
I couldn't agree more, except that I don't think giving them the swordsage's method of recovery is the right way to go. It goes too far. Sitting out a full round is the absolute least fun thing for players to do, and I would actually consider changing the swordsage's recovery to be easier, just so they aren't "losing a turn" before I would nerf the warblade that far.
You may be right.
My thought was that they have so many to choose from that this limitation woudl only apply in special cases. But maybe you are still correct.
I certainly agree that one has to wonder how one book could be so far apart in two classes.

I like your idea about substituion levels.
 

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Felon

First Post
SteveC said:
That's a nice summary of the monk class, and why it needs to have high values in pretty much every stat except charisma. Now if you're trying to tell me that the Warblade, with 5 out of the classes 13 abilities being tied to intelligence doesn't make it dependant on having a bonus in that score, I'm going to tell you you're nuts.

How you could've missed my point when I laid it out so clearly in not one but two posts back-to-back....Must've taken some effort.

Wanting something doesn't make you dependent on it. Benefiting from something doesn't make you dependent on it.

Needing something to function at an acceptable level makes you dependent.

BryonD said:
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.

Well-put.
 

Felon

First Post
Thanatos said:
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.

Now this is a much more compelling arguement. I will actually need to borrow the book again to investigate this element.
 

SteveC

Doing the best imitation of myself
BryonD said:
I'm sorry, but refusing to go over ground that has already been covered does not constitue ignoring an arguement.


So are you saying that the WB is no better than the fighter or that it is ok that the WB is better because the fighter is weak?
This, I think is the crux of the matter, so let me speak to it. This isn't an easy question with a yes or no answer. I think there isn't just one magical point where you can add up the values for a class and use it to balance against another one. Rather, I think there's a range of value from say...bard to cleric/druid. I think this is why most attempts to deconstruct D&D classes down to a point-buy ultimately fail, because there isn't a magic forumula you can use to make all of the classes add up to the same total.

When 3.0 was designed, feats were the new kid in town. The fighter is the king of feats, and I believe that the designers somewhat over-estimated how effective feats would be. Over time, a lot of the newer classes were given bonus feats. Usually, like with the Warblade, these were from a relatively small list that didn't include the very best feats. At some point, classes started getting bonus fighter feats, which to my mind started to seriously devalue the class.

Now when 3.5 was released, there were already complaints about the fighter, but there were nowhere near as many of them as with, say, the haste spell. The designers took the approach of fixing the things they saw as broken, and also listened to the loudest voices at the time. As a result, the fighter got some token new feats (greater focus/specialization) and the intimidate skill. A lot of the other classes got much more attention.

But how useful are feats? Well, the fighter feats are supremely customizable, which I think the designers rated very highly (again, perhaps too highly). At the same time, something that you can custom build can be either too good, too bad or just right. So when you're talking about how powerful a fighter is, you're talking about a moving blob of a target. Is it a power attacking/shock trooper fighter? Or is it a two-weapon lots-of-attacks fighter. Or still yet, is it a general fighter that doesn't stray far from the feats in the PHB? Those three types of fighters are at VERY different power levels.

With the evolution of D&D, we have a class that, when 3.0 was initially released, was near the middle of the power scale, and I think over the last few years it has slipped down a bit. If you had designers like Mike Mearls redesign the fighter now, I think it would be given a few additional features. In many ways, I think the Tome of Battle is a testing ground for a new style of fighter, as a matter of fact.

Those are a lot of words to justify this:

I think the Warblade has a much more precisely defined power level than the fighter. A properly built fighter, with access to all of the feats from WotC products can be more effective than a Warblade. An average built fighter will probably be less effective than a Warblade. A fighter who takes nothing but toughness will be much less effective. And I think that's okay. Just like an uber cleric can be a better fighter than a fighter. A Warblade belongs in a campaign with a fighter in much the same way that a bard belongs in a game with a cleric, rogue or wizard. Almost no one would say the bard is more powerful than those other classes, but it is still within the same range of power that D&D classes occupy.

With your analysis below (which I understand) you're trying to say that the Warblade has everything better than the fighter. There's a problem with that which is that the Warblade has a predefined set of abilities for the most part. The feats they can select are not nearly as useful as the full range of fighter feats, and also won't ever change. They also don't include feats from sources like the complete books or the PHBII.

Similarly, the maneuvers, which are powerful, are also very specific in what they can do. What the designers did was value that choice of a wide range of abilities as something pretty big. As you get more and more classes, customization of a character by feats becomes less valuable, because there's more of a chance that what you want is already there in a custom character class.

Taking bits and pieces out of context is misleading.
As I said, the WB gets a class feature or feat for nearly every feat and then gets manuevers and stances ON TOP and HP and SP as gravy.

The arguement has been presented several times that the manuevers are roughly equivalent to the feats. For sake of argument I'll accept that. I certainly will not accept that they are less. For sake of arguement I will also accept that the class features you listed are less than the value of five feats. But not less than, say, half the value.
So if they've got on class feature that is equal to all the feats, then they have some feats, then they have some other class features that are worth (conservatively) half as much as feats, then they have better skills to pick from, then they have more hp, then they have more sp, well, the math becomes pretty dang clear.

1 << 1 + 0.5 + 0.3 + 0.1 + 0.1
So while I might quibble with you over the math, you're right: by a straightforward approach the Warblade seems to be ahead of the fighter. The thing is, the designers have told us that the feature of choice is worth something, and they valued it highly.

A fighter will be better than a Warblade in circumstances where the fighter isn't trying to do the same things as the Warblade (such as be an archer) or when the fighter is very smart about feat choices from the whole range of WotC books.

--Steve
 

SteveC

Doing the best imitation of myself
Felon said:
How you could've missed my point when I laid it out so clearly in not one but two posts back-to-back....Must've taken some effort.
Or perhaps I just disagree with your concept of what constitutes being dependant.

--Steve
 

Felon

First Post
SteveC said:
Or perhaps I just disagree with your concept of what constitutes being dependant.

The concept you presented was desirability, not dependency. They are not synonyms, and that is not a subjective matter, but one of objective denotation.
 
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BryonD

Hero
SteveC said:
So while I might quibble with you over the math, you're right: by a straightforward approach the Warblade seems to be ahead of the fighter. The thing is, the designers have told us that the feature of choice is worth something, and they valued it highly.
There is a lot of latitude for you to quibble with the math and still leave the WB way out in front.

But we do agree, the WB is ahead of the fighter.

A massive break in power consistency is a problem regardless of the designers statements.
I was once told by a designer that his class was perfectly well balanced, and then that very designer turned around and said that it wasn't his fault that his class was a battle axe and the sorcerer was a dagger. (in the very same post)

A fighter will be better than a Warblade in circumstances where the fighter isn't trying to do the same things as the Warblade (such as be an archer) or when the fighter is very smart about feat choices from the whole range of WotC books.

--Steve
I don't see relegating the fighter to archer as an acceptable solution.
Plus, A warbladeX/fighter1 will pretty much kick the butt of a fighterX+1 as an archer.
A Warblade can also make good feat selections (he does get several bonus himself) AND he can make good manuever selections AS WELL, and many of the manuevers offer the same or better options that the fighter gains through feats.
 

Justin Bacon

Banned
Banned
airwalkrr said:
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.

Hence the saving throws against poisons, diseases, and mechanical traps.

The skill system is limited to fairly rational and reasonable things.

Hence the DCs for walking on water, creating alchemical substances, and rearing dragons.

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.

Hence the 30 year old core character class based on mystic martial arts.

Besides that, I happen to enjoy the touch of "realism" in D&D which presumes that the heroes are just exceptional mortals.

Hence the characters able to transform themselves into animals, the paladins capable of healing injury with a touch of their hands, and the bards capable of shaping reality by singing a song.

...

Since it bears repeating: Your personal taste is your own affair. I'm not trying to diss you because you like Fantasy Flavor X and don't like Fantasy Flavor Y. But you keep saying "D&D is X and not Y", and that just ain't so.
 

SteveC

Doing the best imitation of myself
Felon said:
The concept you presented was desirability, not dependency. They are not synonyms, and that is not a subjective matter, but one of objective denotation.
Perhaps what you see as objective denotation is not necessarily so. Seriously: taking one definition of a real world term with many connotations and applying it to a subjective analysis of the class abilities is just your opinion. It's not objective facts. I'm sorry if you can't see that, because I agree with you on a lot of issues a lot of the time, but in the end they're just our opinions.

--Steve
 

BryonD said:
Really? I haven't had time to really play with this class yet, but it seemed to have the most promise to me. Oh well, it is much easier to lift up a weak class than to nerf a problem.

My experience is limited ... only making NPCs, in fact, but being light fighters, they're weak. It's hard to make the Wisdom-boost to some strikes useful. No matter how much you try to specialize, you're going to be taking strikes from more than one discipline. And because of MAD, your Wisdom probably won't be so high anyway. Yet your maneuvers aren't more powerful than those of the warblade or crusader, so you end up doing less damage.
 

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