New Excerpts - Tome of Battle & Dragons of Faerun

[gribble]

And looking at a 6th level barbarian:

Feats
Barbarian (4): Weapon Focus, Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Power Attack

(PS: I think you've missed one feat off the fighter, as it seems you've given the warblade a bonus feat for being human:
Warblade: human bonus + 1st lvl + 3rd lvl + wrb 5th bonus + 6th lvl = 5
Fighter: human bonus + 1st lvl + ftr 1st bonus + ftr 2nd bonus + 3rd lvl + ftr 4th bonus + 6th lvl + ftr 6th bonus = 8)


Skills
Barbarian: 7 skills maxed out.

Barbarian Skill List: Climb, Craft, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Jump, Listen, Ride, Survival, Swim.


Defense
Barbarian
AC 19, Saves: Fort +7, Reflex +4, Will +2
HD: 6d12+12 (56 hp)


Offense
Barbarian
+11/+6 Halberd (1d10+5) [Trip +7]


Specials
The Barbarian receives Fast Movement, Rage, Improved Uncanny Dodge, Trap Sense +2

----------------
The Breakdown
Feats - Poor Barbarian is inferior to both.

Skills - Probably a tie with Warblade

Defense - The Barbarian is strictly inferior to the Warblade due to the lower Ref save.

Offense - The Barbarian is inferior as he doesn't benefit from Weapon Specialisation so his base damage is two points lower.

Specials - The Barbarian probably edges out the Warblade here, although when you consider maneuvers (especially if the pertetual maneuvers thing does work), you'd have to say it's a tie. Fast movement is duplicated by a maneuver a 6th level Warblade would have access to, the Warblade gets bonuses the equal of the Barbarians rage (especially when you consider the Barbarian is fatigued afterwards). Perhaps the only advantage he has is his Improved Uncanny Dodge, and Trap Sense (hardly an earthshaking ability).

----------------
Conclusion
IMO, the Barbarian stacks up even worse against the Warblade than the Fighter. Inferior feats, offence and defence as a trade off for arguably slightly better (though far less flexible) Special Abilities? Poor Barbarian.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't particularly like the comparisons. I know the intent is to compare how the three classes measure up while pursuing a particular goal, but I wouldn't expect the barbarian, for example, to be focusing on feats that are unusable when he rages. Instead, he could go farther down the power attack chain, and perhaps head for Combat Brute. Likewise, the use of a Combat Expertise based build for the fighter ensures that the fighter will have the same stat spread as the Warblade, negating one of the warblade's disadvantages. Were the fighter not required to pursue int 13+, he could instead raise his other stats, perhaps his constitution to a 16, or his strength to an 18.

On top of that, you gave the fighter a 14 dex and plate armor. He could shave that down to a 12 with no cost to his AC. Between dropping dex to 12 and int to 10, the fighter could attain an 18 strength if he so chose.

I don't think the fighter got a fair shake, or the barbarian for that matter. I concede the warblade is powerful, but... this comparison doesn't show much.

 

[gribble]

Agreed. Perhaps a better comparison would be to just buy the most appropriate stats/feats. I can certainly see the fighter/barbarian getting a leg-up in raw stats that way (like I said in an earlier post, the warblade suffers a bit from paladin syndrome - he needs a lot of high or reasonably high stats, whereas the fighter/barbarian can make do just as well with only a high Str and a reasonable Con), which would change around the raw offence/defence numbers.

Still, the warblade does seem very near the top end of the power curve. I mean I love the fluff of the book, and the system itself seems pretty sound (without having read it in detail). But the classes seem like they may have just a little bit too much in the way of goodies...

I mean knock back the HD to d10, and maybe remove a couple of the warblades goodies (it still has it's most powerful feature - maneuvers - after all), and it'd be more in line with the existing classes. Of course, then it might not be balanced against the sword sage/crusader...

 

[RigaMortus2]

Human Fighter 6 vs. Human Warblade 6
<snipped to conserve space>

--Mazlo

Nice analysis... My only nitpick would be that I think the Fighter would forsake the Int 14, and take an Int 10 in favor of a Con 16 for 6 more HPs. He would of course lose out on 2 maxxed skills, but if your focus is skills, don't play a fighter. This would also bump the Con up as well...

 

[Mercule]

Still, the warblade does seem very near the top end of the power curve. I mean I love the fluff of the book, and the system itself seems pretty sound (without having read it in detail). But the classes seem like they may have just a little bit too much in the way of goodies...

Quite. The real question(s) I want answered are, "If I introduce this book into my campaign, is there any reason to play a fighter? Specifically, a fighter who doesn't take any feats/abilities from ToB?"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Does ToB suggest that it's balanced for use with regular D&D? This really sounds like Iron Heroes for D&D, to me, and I would never just merge D&D and IH willy-nilly.

 

[Mercule]

Does ToB suggest that it's balanced for use with regular D&D? This really sounds like Iron Heroes for D&D, to me, and I would never just merge D&D and IH willy-nilly.

It's a D&D product. That suggests that it is meant to be included with a D&D game. Specifically, it should be compatible with the core rulebooks.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Nice analysis... My only nitpick would be that I think the Fighter would forsake the Int 14, and take an Int 10 in favor of a Con 16 for 6 more HPs. He would of course lose out on 2 maxxed skills, but if your focus is skills, don't play a fighter. This would also bump the Con up as well...

and lose combat expertise and improved trip... there is a good reason why some fighters would want a 13 Int at least, and the one in this comparison was set up with both combatants seeking to become halberd trip monkeys.



FWIW I could see a significant number of warblades built with finessed spiked chain and a high dex, to maximise the benefit it gets on AoO; he's already going to have high Int which plays into combat expertise, improved trip and improved disarm.


Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

Quite. The real question(s) I want answered are, "If I introduce this book into my campaign, is there any reason to play a fighter? Specifically, a fighter who doesn't take any feats/abilities from ToB?"

Considering that an 18th level warblade could get x uses per day of "stike of perfect clarity" (do 100 damage on a hit) and an 18th level fighter gets, uh, a feat... the answer here seems clear.


Honestly, reading that thread on wizards.com I got to the end of page 2 and couldn't recognise ANY of the things that they were talking about!

I seem to remember reading one of the designers saying in the early days that they intended to avoid the 'power one-upping' that existed with 2e supplements, but I don't think I see it...

Cheers

 

[Eytan Bernstein]

And not wanting to throw gasoline on a mostly extinguished fire, but:

Given that FCI had wimped down, non-epic, stats for the various demon princes so that they could actually be usable in the majority of games: Whats with the CR 40 dragon in the excerpt from Dragons of Faerun???
:\

Surely they should have made them all CR 24 or less, and included rules for "advancing" them to epic levels?

Very few of the dragons in the book are like that. Tchazzar is basically a demigod. People worship him and get divine spells. He has 12 levels in Dragon Ascendant, a PrC that grants you deific status at the end. That makes him the most powerful evil dragon in the world. The rest of the dragons have normal CRs in relation to the Monster Manual. Some have levels, but few approach the one in this example.