Book of NineSwords

[Nifft]

At lower levels (1-5) I don't understand the claim that warrior types in general (maybe minus the fighter) aren't more powerful than the base casters.

Where is that claim? What I said was that high-level casters leave Fighters in the dust, but the ToB classes can hold their own.

Clerics are nice to have around, and when a druid can get an entangle off it can be significant. But arcane casters just can't keep up at these levels IMO.

At low levels, warrior types are powerful indeed. But Wizards (etc.) still have some serious power. If you only want damage output, the Wizard does indeed stink terribly. But look at a few of the flat-out fight-enders in his arsenal:

Color Spray -- it's the sleep of 3.5e (now that sleep is terribly nerfed). Dangerous to use thanks to its shape, but it mows down mook-mobs which can be otherwise deadly at those levels.

Silent Image -- one of the best fight-avoiders in the game. Also nice for concealment and traps.


Also important:

Grease -- one of the earliest battlefield-control spells, and it remains useful even at high levels, thanks to the rule about flat-footed when balancing. Great for traps and temporary barriers (e.g. on stairs).

Enlarge Person -- for a trip, AoO or grapple warrior, this is a great low-level buff. Decent even for a more standard two-handed greatsword guy.

Burning Hands -- earliest area damage; does your DM like swarms? Warrior types of all persuasions are less than effective against swarms.

- - -

Still, you're going to have to convince me that whatever damage a ToB character deals (at levels 1-5) isn't exceeded by a charging, power-attacking, greatsword-swinging Barbarian. The ToB guys win for fun, flexibility, variety, and how many different character concepts they can model, but not raw power -- not even at low levels.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Caliban]

Get the book. It's a new system that's totally worth learning.

Cheers, -- N

If you say so. My high level melee characters do just fine without using Bo9S. Generally the casters focus on crowd control and utility because they can't keep up with the damage output of my lvl 11 dervish or lvl 18 dwarven defender. And that's without PHBII feats (although I might add shield ward feats to my dwarven defender - it would give him a base 32 touch ac before buffs).

Bo9S would be a waste of money for me - it's not used in any campaigns I currently play in.

 

[Aleolus]

Warblades are like barbarians, crusaders are like fighters, and swordsages are like monks.

Edit: And they're all damn cool. Btw, White Raven Tactics is the only thing in the book that is banned in our games.

What in the world are you talking about?? Crusaders are not like fighters at all! They're more like Paladins or Clerics.

 

[brehobit]

Quite true. Unfortunately, it's a maneuver, not a spell. AT MOST, you can get 15 maneuvers readied in a single class (Master of Nine added to Swordsage levels). Comparatively, a 20th level wizard with a lowly 20 intelligence will have 47 spells prepared (56 if a specialist wizard) - more than 3 times as many. A wizard is also forced to take those low level spells, so there's no reason not to take a very situational low-level spell. A martial adept doesn't really have enough maneuvers readied in most cases to take anything as situational as Counter Charge.

100% agreed. As a 1st level spell this would be too powerful. I'm just trying to show that contrary to statements others have made, a level X maneuver can be more powerful than a level X spell. This is, IMO, an example of such a case.

Except that any CR30 opponent is going to have at least DR 20/epic and 50-60 AC. Those summoned monsters are thus doing next to no damage, if they hit, even with the bonuses from WMC.

And, honestly, why would said druid and mage not instead use, say, Tsunami + Time Stop + Gate + Disjunction + Reality Maelstrom (or other similarly powerful spells). Remember, this is a 17th+ level party, if the martial adept can use War Master's Charge. The spellcasters are capable of infinitely stronger abilities than a maneuver that explicitly requires several allies to put themselves in harm's way in order to get full effect.

You may have a good point. I'd thought there were some decent tiny's that could be summoned. My back-of-the envelope calculations put the combined damage at around 450-600 points after the DR and AC (the AC really isn't an issue) (depends mainly on how many PCs have power attack). That will mess with a CR 30 baddy but might not kill it. If you can find a way to summon a flyer with power attack _that_ will end things quickly.

 

[blargney the second]

What in the world are you talking about?? Crusaders are not like fighters at all! They're more like Paladins or Clerics.

I'm playing a 10th level crusader right now, and I gotta tell you: it's heck of a lot like a fighter. Heavy armour, tower shield, d10 HD, good Fort, not a whole pile of skills.

Note that I'm most heavily invested in White Raven. With the special abilities maybe it's more like 8/10ths fighter, 1/10th paladin, 1/10th marshal. If I had significantly more Devoted Spirit, that'd probably be more like 50/50 fighter/paladin.

 

[Zurai]

You may have a good point. I'd thought there were some decent tiny's that could be summoned. My back-of-the envelope calculations put the combined damage at around 450-600 points after the DR and AC (the AC really isn't an issue) (depends mainly on how many PCs have power attack). That will mess with a CR 30 baddy but might not kill it. If you can find a way to summon a flyer with power attack _that_ will end things quickly.

Can you provide some examples of such creatures?

The only default Summon Nature's Ally tinies are Owls and Monkeys, which are way back at SNA1 and will likely miss even with the large to hit bonus from War Master's Charge. Even if they hit, they'll do 1d4-3+5 damage (DR taking care of 20 of the 25 bonus points).

Summon Monster is similarly restricted to Celestial/Fiendish tiny animals at SM1, which will have similar problems hitting and dealing damage.


Here's some quick math...
Assumptions: 1 druid and 1 mage casting an Empowered Summon 3 spell and a Quickened Summon 3 spell, both for Summon 1 monsters (resulting in 2d4*150% + 2d4 + 4 animals) and getting the average result (11 animals).
The animals summoned are owls, which have an attack of "Talons +5 melee (1d4-3)".
Their target is a CR30 Elder Titan, which has 1,015 hit points, AC 58, and DR 45/+7 (translated to DR 20/epic).
All of the animals are summoned within 30' of the War Master's Charge initiator and they are all able to charge the nearest square of the Titan unobstructed.

The bonus to hit from WMC is thus +24 (11 animals + 1 initiator), giving them a total of +31 to hit (+5 on their attack, +2 for charging, +24 for WMC). They thus need a roll of 27 to hit. I'll be generous and say that one of them rolls a natural 20.

We thus have the titan taking 6 damage from the single owl that hits, 30+weapon damage from the initiator, and being stunned for 1 round.




Hardly 450-600 damage. Even if ALL of the owls had hit, they would still only have done 6 damage each, for a total of 66 damage. Even if the maximum number of owls had been summoned (24) AND all of them had hit, they would have only done 144 damage.

 

[Slaved]

It probably does not matter much to your example Zurai but it is hard to quicken the Summon spells. Quicken lowers a casting time from 1 full round action or less to a swift action and I believe that 1 round casting times are outside of that.

 

[Zurai]

It probably does not matter much to your example Zurai but it is hard to quicken the Summon spells. Quicken lowers a casting time from 1 full round action or less to a swift action and I believe that 1 round casting times are outside of that.

Heh, absolutely true. I was just working off the example I was given previously, I didn't bother to check whether the example was actually legal

So yeah, that lowers us to 2d4*1.5 + 2 owls, or an average of 6. With that few, I'm not even going to give one a natural 20 - so all WMC did was 30+weapon damage from the initiator. He doesn't even get the no-save stun.

Now, admittedly, that was an extreme example, a CR30 Elder Titan... but then, the original claim was that WMC allowed one to easily kill a CR30 creature, so I felt obliged to actually look up the stats of such.

 

[Nifft]

If you say so. My high level melee characters do just fine without using Bo9S. [...] Bo9S would be a waste of money for me - it's not used in any campaigns I currently play in.

I don't mean to pick on you, but if you don't even have the book, why do you feel the need to pick on the system? And how do you feel qualified to critique the system? (or if you're not critiquing the system, uh, hi? how's it going? )

Cheers, -- N

 

[Caliban]

I don't mean to pick on you, but if you don't even have the book, why do you feel the need to pick on the system? And how do you feel qualified to critique the system? (or if you're not critiquing the system, uh, hi? how's it going? )

Cheers, -- N

A) This is a public forum, and I can state my opinon on things I see posted in this forum. As you can (and often do).

B) What have I said that can be construed as "picking on" the system? Did I hurt it's feelings? Is the system that sensitive?

C) I feel "qualified" to comment on whatever I feel like commenting on. It's the nature of the internet. Besides, what makes you feel that you are "qualified" to question who is or is not qualified to comment on something?

D) It's going fine, how about you?