Book of Nine Swords -- okay?

[Thanatos]

I know, there's alot of feat comparison going on, but really maneuvers are more balanced against spells then feats.

Depending on the nature of how combat is progressing, its entirely possible the use of a boost, counter or stance switch will be more useful or allow some other option if he can't use a full round option to set up TSS. A big gun is not alway the most useful attack to use. Maybe he has to move, change his attack style due to opponents shifting tactics, adjust for new foes entering combat, adjusts to deal with a spell effect, etc. So it doesn't mean he is making a mistake or some other moves are increasing his power at all. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't -- maybe its something more situationally useful in a given round.

I agree, leadership is a great feat for fighters and has a natural synergy with the class.

 

[Marshall]

Of course, after looking at the math, I have to say that things are much closer than I thought they'd be. While the warblade is only using 1 manuever, I can't think of something I'd rather spam than TSS. Perhaps the warblade isn't as egregiously overpowered as I thought. A fighter barb mix with the right PHB2 feats might be able to hold up to a warblade.

Dang, now I don't have as much of a reason not to get ToB.

All of the Warblades extras make it an infinitely more playable class. He actually has the skills to be more than a liability outside of combat. The player can do more than just say "Wake me when the next combat starts."

Does that make it better than the Fighter? Yes.
Is that because its overpowered or because the FTR isnt anything more than a dip class?

 

[RigaMortus2]

My mistake: the feat that lets initiators change out manuevers quickly is not on the warblade bonus list.

Riga, I have 4 basic problems with that argument.

1. Not all feats that a fighter takes add to damage - many of them expand his options in combat without adding to damage, and others are basically controls placed on damage (do less damage to make the opponent do less to you). Many of the feats that do add damage are very situational, such as Cleave, Combat Reflexes, etc.

I could probably come up with a good list of feats that purely effect damage. It would take awhile, but they are out there. Of course, this assumes the DM allows feats from other D&D books like the various FR or Eberron ones. My main point was, if we are mainly building characters for pure damage output, while the Warblade can certainly take many of the same feats the Fighter can, the Fighter will be able to take even more.

2. Warblades have access to the same pure damage increasing feats, and will probably be able to take some of the better situational ones. They can also get some of the weaker damage adding feats on their bonus list, like Combat Reflexes. Even using say PHB2 addons for the fighter, the warblade will be able to grab the best stuff. With a 1 or 2 level dip in fighter, they can even get Weapon Supremacy.

True, but not as many. And if you want to get technical, the Fighter can take feats to give himself maneuvers and stances (and I think they do count as bonus Fighter feats).

3. The magnitude of high level manuevers seems to massively outweigh that of feats. How many feats is the ability to get 3 full attacks every 2 rounds worth? Will a warblade really do 75% of the damage of a fighter on a full attack, considering that they have full base attack and access to the weapon specialization line? That's just a Warblade using Time Stands Still every other round. I'd certainly evaluate that ability as worth more than 1 feat, just as I'd consider Pounce to be outside the bounds of feats as well.

Even when comparing one feat to another, some feats are just better than others. A Druid can take a wild feat to gain Pounce in Complete Divine.

<SNIP>

So these feats helped a lot, adding a bit more than 50% to the fighter's damage. But I only used up 9 feats. Some of those feats the warblade can't get (Weapon Supremacy), and others can be replaced by items (stupid no Imp Crit/Keen stacking). If our warblade focuses on the specialization line (but not Supremacy or Imp Crit), he's back up to about 113 with his reduced STR. For the purposes of comparison, he doesn't have keen stuff either.

Sure, the Warblade can pick up items that help him in areas he'll be lacking. He can get items to mimic feats and what not. But the fighter can do the same thing, so this seems to balance out IMO.

4. The warblade has other significant class features like weapon retraining, more skill points, bigger HD (altough Imp toughness evens that out, mostly) their INT based stuff. They get their INT bonus when confirming crits, which is kind of like Power Critical (not that that counts for much though). The ability to add INT as insight bonus to attack and damage vs flanked or flatfooted combatants seems like it'd help quite a bit damage wise.

While "not a big deal", I will give you this, I would consider the INT bonus to confirm crits as much credability (best word I could think of at this time of night) as Power Critical feat. So feel free to factor that into the equation. Of course, the Warblade would need an Int bonus to take advantage of this.

I don't know about the skill points, I don't seem them as much of an advantage I guess. They are basically pre-assigned to specific skills which are required for specific maneuvers.

 

[Kshnik]

First, I just back into DnD about 2-3 months ago after not playing for 20 years, so please excuse my lack of knowledge. I came back due to lack of online games (Tried EQ, WoW, SB and etc but lost interest due to various reasons) and waiting til Darkfalls comes out. So instead of all my time playing on the computer I have been trying to read up and play.

Warblade > Fighter/Barbarian is the arguement?

In the 3 months ,I have never seen either fighter or Barbarian taken past level 6.

I also have read that Warblade is more powerful at lower levels. I recently bought the book, read through it but chose this character, see below, over warblade/swordsage/crusader for a quick lvl 1 - 2 stint.

Goliath Barbarian 1 - 22 str (18 + 4 racial) - sub level mountain rage and EWP Goliath Greathammer.

I also have a human cleric, combining domains and feats allows me to have:
Extend spell, extra turning, Persistant spell, Divine Metamagic (persistant spell)

This cleric is pretty tough and I cant see any of the three being more powerful.

Has anyone played 6 levels of a typical fighter along side level 6 warblade in a game as a comparison?

I believe the typical fighter at level 6 would be something like:
Fighter 1/Combat expertise, Imp. Trip
Fighter 2/Power Attack
Fighter 3/improved Sunder
Fighter 4/Imp Bull Rush
Fighter 5
Fighter 6/Combat brute, Shock Trooper

It should be easy enough to do a comparison.

How about a changling fighter with a level of warahpering vs a warblade?

What are your views concerning duskblade versus warblade?

How about a fighter with a bunch of levels of Frenzied Berserker versus Warblade?

There are so many prestige classes for a fighter to take, are those of you against the Tome of Battle truly believe that Warblade > fighter 4/PrC 16?

I just cant see it, but again, that maybe due to my lack of knowledge.


Edit: I just registered today and this is my first post here, so please dont be to harsh on me.

 

[Leugren]

To really understand why melee combat specialists suck at high levels, you need to understand two key things:

1) The average damage per level for melee combatants increases at a geologic rate relative to the average hit points of opponents with a CR equivalent to the melee combatant's level. At low levels, melee combatants are often dropping their opponents with a single hit. At high levels, however, it can frequently take a melee combatant many rounds to drop an opponent with a CR equivalent to his or her character level. The frustration can really start to build when you've focused yourself entirely on melee specialization, but you're doing around the same amount of damage per round at 15th level as you did at 10th level. Especially when your smarmy little wizard buddy has just decimated an entire tribe of frost giants in the same amount of time that it took you to drop a single one-armed frost giant grandma. Simply put, damage output for melee combatants scales very poorly relative to the opposition's ability to take the damage. To circumvent this problem and keep pace with other characters, the melee combatant is forced to pursue strategies like AoO specialization, uber-charging, etc. An extra 100 points of damage from a single hit by a 17th level warblade is generally just enough to make a CR 17 monster take notice of you, as opposed to ignoring your puny blows and focusing exclusively on the far more dangerous spellcasters. From this perspective, abilities like Strike of Perfect Clarity do nothing more than correct a gross imbalance in the game.

2) Performance in combat is everything to a melee combat specialist I've seen posts that try to debunk the validity of cross-class damage comparisons by invoking the specious "different party roles" argument. If you take a look at the Fighter class, you will see that this class sacrifices every other aspect of the game to be effective in combat. Inter-personal skills? Nope. General problem-solving skills? Nope. Utilitarian class abilities? Nope. Simply put, the fighters' job begins when the combat starts, period. It's really frustrating to specialize so severely in one thing, and then contribute so little when the real action starts. Sure, at low levels, the melee classes rock, but who wants to peak at 8th level? All this cr-p about the high HP, the high AC, etc. is so much bunk. High-level spellcasters don't need these things because they have umpteen-million ways to avoid being engaged in combat, to avoid all forms of damage, and to deal death from afar.

I speak as a person who has foolishly attempted to play a melee combat specialist (a fighter)from levels 1 through 20. The frustration as we got to the higher levels eventually became completely unbearable! The other members of the party actually starting referring to me as their "porter" or "palanquin bearer"! For everyone who has ever loved the thought of engaging your enemies up close and personal, but who knew that your character would start to blow after about 12th level, the ToB is an absolute Godsend! Thank you, WOTC!

 

[RigaMortus2]

To really understand why melee combat specialists suck at high levels, you need to understand two key things:

1) The average damage per level for melee combatants increases at a geologic rate relative to the average hit points of opponents with a CR equivalent to the melee combatant's level. At low levels, melee combatants are often dropping their opponents with a single hit. At high levels, however, it can frequently take a melee combatant many rounds to drop an opponent with a CR equivalent to his or her character level. The frustration can really start to build when you've focused yourself entirely on melee specialization, but you're doing around the same amount of damage per round at 15th level as you did at 10th level. Especially when your smarmy little wizard buddy has just decimated an entire tribe of frost giants in the same amount of time that it took you to drop a single one-armed frost giant grandma. Simply put, damage output for melee combatants scales very poorly relative to the opposition's ability to take the damage. To circumvent this problem and keep pace with other characters, the melee combatant is forced to pursue strategies like AoO specialization, uber-charging, etc. An extra 100 points of damage from a single hit by a 17th level warblade is generally just enough to make a CR 17 monster take notice of you, as opposed to ignoring your puny blows and focusing exclusively on the far more dangerous spellcasters. From this perspective, abilities like Strike of Perfect Clarity do nothing more than correct a gross imbalance in the game.

2) Performance in combat is everything to a melee combat specialist I've seen posts that try to debunk the validity of cross-class damage comparisons by invoking the specious "different party roles" argument. If you take a look at the Fighter class, you will see that this class sacrifices every other aspect of the game to be effective in combat. Inter-personal skills? Nope. General problem-solving skills? Nope. Utilitarian class abilities? Nope. Simply put, the fighters' job begins when the combat starts, period. It's really frustrating to specialize so severely in one thing, and then contribute so little when the real action starts. Sure, at low levels, the melee classes rock, but who wants to peak at 8th level? All this cr-p about the high HP, the high AC, etc. is so much bunk. High-level spellcasters don't need these things because they have umpteen-million ways to avoid being engaged in combat, to avoid all forms of damage, and to deal death from afar.

I speak as a person who has foolishly attempted to play a melee combat specialist (a fighter)from levels 1 through 20. The frustration as we got to the higher levels eventually became completely unbearable! The other members of the party actually starting referring to me as their "porter" or "palanquin bearer"! For everyone who has ever loved the thought of engaging your enemies up close and personal, but who knew that your character would start to blow after about 12th level, the ToB is an absolute Godsend! Thank you, WOTC!

So which camp are you in now?

A) ToB classes are over powered
B) ToB classes are just fine
C) ToB classes make the Fighter base class obsolete
D) ToB classes step on the toes of spellcasters, minimizing their roles in a party (namely combat and damage dealing)
E) Any combination of the above

 

[Victim]

My own experience radically differs. Playing 1st through 18th, I've seen our fighter types kill the out of pretty much everything.

1st level characters can kill most of their foes in one hit, however, hits are unreliable with only 1 attack and few available bonuses. So we might be looking at ~2 rounds for the low level fighter to kill himself on average. More if he uses a 1 hander and shield. Having looked at several high level fighters, a 2 round self kill is hardly out of line. An uncountered Cloak of Displacement makes a big difference though. If you do the same damage at 15th that you did at 10th, then you screwed up or are playing with extremely limited resources.

In my experience, spellcasting damage - for most applications - is what doesn't keep up. A theoretical gain of 3.5 per level for most damaging spells doesn't keep up with monster HP increases. And that's raw damage, like assuming everything hits for a fighter. The same player in our group who used to bitch about how overpowered casters were was giving me "That's it?" after my wizard bombed some guys with some Empowered high level attack - which ignored energy resistance, after I beat SR, and after they failed the save. so that wasn't the issue. If he'd looked at the actual expected damage, he'd have been ever less impressed.


-------------------------------------------

Kshnik, comparisons involving Shock Trooper are going to be tough. With Power Attack, you can figure out what tradeoff produces the most damage - both things PA affects determine a character's damage. But Shock Trooper trades off defense for offense, the limiting factor is how nasty the counter attack your character faces will be.

And comparisons using Frenzied Beserkers or changling warshapers are pretty pointless, since those things are already broken. Being less broken than them isn't much of a virtue.

 

[smrtgmp]

Hehe. Personally, I find all of the fallacies being tossed around to be pretty outrageous, and that's hard to conceal. I thought party roles were well-understood. Some guys have a defensive role, some an offensive, and some support the two in some fashion. But now I hear that's not the case; anybody who doesn't do as much damage as everybody else is underpowered, period. The side of beef with the d12 hit die and high AC should be on par for damage with the wimp who gets a d4. Anything less is an injustice.

Ummm...melee guys were capapble of dishing out far more damage than wizards long before this book came out. Have you played around with any of the stuff in CW?

A wizard's power is does not lie in his ability to do damage. It lies in his versatility, in his ability to fix almost any problem in the game with a wave of the hand. The introduction of Bo9S does nothing to change that.

When it comes down to it, I think it is foolish to measure power in terms of raw damage output and nothing else. There are far easier ways to dispose of an enemy than wading through their HP.

 

[Solarious]

I find that spellcasters do just fine, even with ToB out. At higher levels, their damage dealing abilities are no longer as important: they certainly help, but they aren't as important. What is important is their ability to either instantly take one or more opponents instantly and to manipulate the battlefield. It doesn't matter if you can deal 100+ damage in a single strike if a Wall of Force is between you and the opponent. Who really cares about a 9th level strike which kills instantly that is available only at high levels? A 9th level Wizard does what is essentially the same with with Baleful Polymorph; and can even return the victim to normal for interrogation or turn them in for a reward if you want to. Time Stands Still silliness? Ha! Righteous Might, Quickened Divine Power, and you're a bigger melee monster than most fighters, depending on how well they're optimized and what buffs you have cast already.

And I challenge everyone to find an effect in the ToB that rivals the versatility and raw power of Gate, which brings in a CR23 monster with full cleric spellcasting, a +5 Dancing Vorpral Greatsword, a +2 Composite Longbow that generates Slaying arrows at will, and an insane number of spell-like abilities.

Did I mention it also has Wish?

With that kind of power, the 1000XP cost is trivial. Wish alone would more than make up for it 5 times over.

Besides domineering combat, spellcasters also excell outside of it. A Warblade can't Teleport his companions hundreds of miles away in the time it takes to mumble a few words a touch his friends. A Swordsage can't make a captive spill their guts by using Charm Monster to make them their new best friends. And a Crusader certainly can't bring down a Permament Prismatic Sphere, let alone know which key spells to cast, so she can get at the Lich's Phylactery stashed away within.

This is all Core, without splatbook nonsense. Worry not, Wizards, Clerics, and Druids, least of all, have little to fear from being overshadowed by anything from the ToB.

Fighters (and most other melee classes, to a certain extent), on the other hand, have always been traditionally underpowered, with a surplus of feats and nowhere for them to go. ToB (and the PHBII in particular) can do much to even the odds, especially if you make modifications (I like the houserule of Fighter level -2 Initiator level for manuvers/stances) and take all factors into consideration. And all material should undergo this process of evalutation.

Otherwise, you'll end up with Pun-Pun, the Overdeity, who has infinite everything (including time), is all things, and is all possibilities. At once. And you know how that turns out.

 

[Tleilaxu_Ghola]

Okay folks, after reading the first page of this thread, I have to say that a lot of you all seem pretty misguided about Tome of Battle. I haven't read through the whole thread, so my reactions here are pretty much based off the comments on the first page.

Assuming that the comments on the first page were simply initial reactions, it's almost understandable that people think the book is "overpowered" and "broken". Since the release of this book, there have been a slew of clarifications by the Wizards of the Coast Customer Service. Many of these questions and answers are compiled in a thread on the Character Optimization boards here.

Now, I would like to tackle the myth that Tome of Battle is broken or overpowered. This may be painful, but I believe its something that needs to be done.

Myths

1. You can use magic or feats to increase the number of attacks that a strike allows.: This is patently false. I refer you to page 43 paragraph 2.
2. Maneuvers are overpowered: There are very few maneuvers which I would consider overpowering. Some exceptions do exist, namely: Iron Heart Surge & White Raven Tactics. Almost all maneuvers still require that an attack roll must be made and most only affect a single target. Even worse is the fact that almost all maneuvers simply add damage to a single attack. So while you may get some cool effects, it's only one attack. Some people say that stuff like warmaster's charge and time stands still are way overpowered. These people haven't taken the time to compare them to 9th level spells or powers. The ability to deal extremely high amounts of damage at nearly 20th level is ubiquitous. So maneuvers that merely bump up your damage aren't that special. The effects to watch out for are ones which grant additional abilities (like shapechange) or are capable of slaying many targets (like weird). 9th level maneuvers pale compared to the power and versatility of your average 9th level spell.
3. The Tome of Battle base classes are overpowered: On what scale are they overpowered? Are they more powerful than a straight fighter? On some accounts yes, but not in all ways. Do they have anywhere near the versatility of a wizard or cleric or druid? Not a chance. Can their "high 4+int or 6+int" skills compare with that of a rogue or bard? No, because their skill lists are pretty much limited to combat only skills. Suffice it to say that there are far more powerful classes out there and you can find them in your trusty PHB: Cleric, Wizard, & Druid. Heck, with enough splat books, even a Bard can outdo most builds (and can outdo them handily).
4. The IL progression for multi-class characters is broken: Actually, it is quite easy to construct builds which end up with more caster levels (in more classes) than it is to construct a multiclass martial adept. It's a new mechanic to be sure, but I hardly think it's broken or overpowered.
5. Desert Wind maneuvers act as spell replacements: Yeah right. 6d6 fire damage? That's a whopping 21 damage on average, and fire resistance is pretty common among monsters. The area effect maneuvers are all fairly weak when compared to spells of their same level. Besides, if you want elemental damage, look no further than a psion. If psions are "broken" then we may as well all be playing NPC classes.

That's all I have for now. I'm sure if presented with more "complaints" I could provide an endless flow of counter builds and examples.

I would like to leave you all with a few links to some of the threads which I have started on the Character Optimization boards in the Wizards of the Coast Community Forum. I'm afraid that many of you with a more delicate taste for power will find some of the stuff that I (and others) have developed will be overwhelming. Despite all the tricks and builds that have been developed, I feel confident when I say that magic or psionics can do better, in almost every circumstance. (Maybe not every single one, but certainly in many situations).

Tome of Battle: Tricks/Combos/Library
Tome of Battle: Build Compendium
The Art of Making a Multi-Class Martial Adept