D&D 3E/3.5 Do you miss the martial adepts from "Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords"?

Tony Vargas · Jun 21, 2019

Gladius Legis said:
Tome of Battle was great. It also addressed a problem that was uniquely 3.5. It illustrated what it took to make viable martial classes in a system that inherently put martials at the most insurmountable disadvantage they've ever faced compared to full casters.

I don't think that's quite fair. I mean, yes, casters were generally Tier 1 & 2, and non-casters 4 & 5. But it was hardly new nor unique to 3e, worse than ever, perhaps, but only a /little/ worse than an ever that had always been pretty darn bad prior to 3e, and isn't exactly a whole lot better, now, with 5e.

At the same time, it's a little over-generous: ToB hardly closed that gap. It took reining in casters dramatically, as well as expanding martial options beyond ToB, to bring D&D to something like parity between the two extremes.

5e, though, rebounded from that effort, and is back to something approximating the familiar 'sweet spot' and LFQW patterns. Something akin to Bo9S certainly wouldn't hurt, except by obviating the existing Fighter &c, of course.

Garthanos · Jun 22, 2019

LuisCarlos17f said:
(I know there is a homebrews version for 5th Ed).

Perhaps refine those?

Gladius Legis · Jun 22, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
I don't think that's quite fair. I mean, yes, casters were generally Tier 1 & 2, and non-casters 4 & 5. But it was hardly new nor unique to 3e, worse than ever, perhaps, but only a /little/ worse than an ever that had always been pretty darn bad prior to 3e, and isn't exactly a whole lot better, now, with 5e.

3e caster/martial imbalance was way more than just a "little" worse than AD&D. Sure, AD&D did it rather clumsily with different XP tables for all classes, but that did mitigate the caster/martial imbalance in a typical party at least a little bit. Also, unlike 3e's iterative attacks (which could only be done if you only moved 5 feet), AD&D's multple attacks actually worked all the time and all hit with the same Thac0. Another big point in favor of AD&D martials.

And I know it's a point you love to repeat ad nauseam as if it's the gospel truth in all these discussions, but I cannot for the life of me justify viewing 5e's caster/martial balance as anything even remotely as bad as 3e's. There's just no evidence I can see to justify that point you keep repeating.

Tony Vargas · Jun 22, 2019

Gladius Legis said:
3e caster/martial imbalance was way more than just a "little" worse than AD&D. Sure, AD&D did it rather clumsily with different XP tables for all classes, but that did mitigate the caster/martial imbalance in a typical party at least a little bit

Its not like 1e casters would lag multiple levels behind, the Fighter, their whole careers. All casters didnt even consistently level slower than all non-casters.

Also, unlike 3e's iterative attacks (which could only be done if you only moved 5 feet), AD&D's multple attacks actually worked all the time and all hit with the same Thac0. Another big point in favor of AD&D martials.

You just described LFQW. Yeah, a fighter hit things steadily more often, doing more damage, on average each round. An MU's magic missile did steadily more damage, too, and he got more of them, and more & more higher level spells with ever greater versatility and power.

The details changed: low level spell scaling capped, but save DCs were off the hook, you got more spells at 1st level, fewer at higher levels. But the basic pattern remained the same.

Really, as radically as DMs varied how they ran 1e back in the day, some players might've seen the Tier 1 godwizard as a step down from their spellpoint-using, magic-item-dripping 1e Archmage.

I cannot for the life of me justify viewing 5e's caster/martial balance as anything even remotely as bad as 3e's. .

5e is just option-poor compared to 3e, so there's less opportunity to really crank up system mastery. In that sense, sure, the gap between the most OP builds is less that that between a chaingun-tripper and a dragonwrought kobold loredrake, say.

Xeviat · Jun 22, 2019

I definitely miss them and I'm actually working at bringing them back into my games in a way.

Garthanos · Jun 23, 2019

One example I found

http://blog.kittenhugs.com/2015/07/martial-adept.html

Garthanos · Jun 23, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
At the same time, it's a little over-generous: ToB hardly closed that gap. It took reining in casters dramatically, as well as expanding martial options beyond ToB, to bring D&D to something like parity between the two extremes.

So what options were leveraged in 4e to expand Martial further
(Martial Practices could be on that list but were not fully developed)

Xeviat · Jun 23, 2019

Garthanos said:
One example I found

http://blog.kittenhugs.com/2015/07/martial-adept.html

Well ... damn ... that was basically was I was writing. I need to be faster.

Garthanos · Jun 23, 2019

Xeviat said:
Well ... damn ... that was basically was I was writing. I need to be faster.

You could play test the blue blazes out of it... and see if that inspires refinements.

LuisCarlos17f · Jun 23, 2019

The crusader had got a random system to recover spent maneuvers, and this was too complicated to be used like nPCs by the DM, but maybe like a solo boss.

My opinion is the first step to reintroduce the martial maneuvers could be new subclasses, and later something like the pathfinder archetypes when some class features are replaced by others..(gladiator class from Dark Sun would be an example of D&D version of Pthf archetypes).

We need to differentiate between maneuvers with ki power source, or magic. Ki should be a power source like arcana, divina, primal magic, or psionic.

Martial adept classes can't be only fighters with martial maneuvers, but they also need their own mark of identity. That is the reason when I try to create a martial adept as character my mind thinks about samurai, monks, ninjas, sohei and other oriental classes.

Sometime I have imagined the reboot of the warden and seeker classes from 4th Ed like martial adepts with primal magic.

* The key is the martial maneuvers are neither at-will nor once-encounter powers, but a middle step between. PCs need a special action to reload maneuvers, like the psion who spends his focus and he want to regain it with a concentration check. The reload of martial maneuvers has to be a fast and easy system to can use martial adepts as nPC enemies (or fights will be slower).