Okay, I know this is a bit of a hijacking, but I can't resist a response.
Mort said:
Yes, it's just a horrible idea to have fun effective warriors that can actualy *gasp* have a chance at keeping up with the spellcasters at high levels.
I know this is the refrain that Tome of Battle partisans like to give, but often the examples they give of abusive spellcasters rely heavily on lots of material from supplements, or rely on highly specific combinations of spells. In those cases, the problem seems to be with the supplemental material or the individual spells, not the spellcasters--and it seems like a simpler solution is just to prohibit the supplements or nerf the offending spells. Why design a whole new set of classes stronger than anything in the SRD, even the cleric? I've asked this a bunch of times, but I've never really seen an answer.
Nifft said:
Hush! You know fighters can't have nice things.
You know, I'm pretty sure that's actually the
biggest problem with the Tome of Battle material. I actually agree with people who say the fighter is too weak--but I think the
wrong solution is designing classes that make the fighter irrelevant. Fighters (and barbarians, and paladins) are iconic enough that they should be generally playable, and giving players a choice between a fighter and a fighter++ just punishes people with less experienced or those who for whatever reason don't want the added complication of a lot of maneuvers. That is, the
fighter should have nice things--not the "warblade."
I should note that, on the whole, I really like the Tome of Battle--I just think the warblade, the crusader, most of the feats and lots of maneuvers (mainly Devoted Spirit and White Raven ones) are over the top. These are enough to make accepting the book
whole hog disastrous, but with some pruning, I think it's a fantastic resource. (IMC I've basically replaced the monk with a slightly modified swordsage, for example, and given fighters and rangers a limited number of maneuvers as they progress. It works great.)