Has the wave crested? (Bo9S)

[Greg K]

That's the tail wagging the dog. The proper solution here is to FIX the cleric and druid.

That would have been my preference.

As for Bo9S, not my flavor. I prefer Mr. Mearl's Book of Iron Might.

 

[mxyzplk]

That or people are just making illegal copies and selling the originals.

Heh, spare me, work for the RIAA much? When you sell a book to Half Price, you don't even get a quarter price for it. Copying a whole book costs more than that. If by some happenstance they're stealing the copies too - who in their right mind goes to all the work of copying a big hardback to sell it for $5?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

By this logic, my own local Half-Price Books indicates that people are no longer reading Stephen King, Michael Moorcock, Spiderman comics, or the Bible.

Actually, people are stealing the Bible from hotels and selling them for cash.

While I'm not so optimistic to hope that people are abandoning Bo9S in droves, I don't think that logic follows. You only need to read a Stephen King novel once. If you are using a gaming book, you pretty much need to keep it around.

But your logic doesn't follow for the Bible...at least, not so far as I can tell.

 

[Psion]

But your logic doesn't follow for the Bible...at least, not so far as I can tell.

I chose my counter example purposefully.

Bibles are a different case, I would think. It's not under copyright, so anyone can print one, and it's still the bestselling book of all time, so there will be a variety of publishers stamping them out in a variety of forms, and some portion of these will have reclaimed warehouse stocks, etc., so it's inevitable that you'd see some show up at book resellers.

 

[pawsplay]

I'm not dissing those whole like the Bo0S, but to me, personally, the suggestion that this was what exactly what d&D needed to beef up the melee fighter hits me about the same as would powered armor.

Sure, a flying, invisible suit of armor with a heat ray and superstrength would go a long way toward making a fighter the equal of a wizard, but you've now balanced the wrong game.

Whatever the problems, a fighter should fight... he should not have to fly through the air and cut walls in half in order to remain a meaningful contributor after 8th level. And the last thing the combat system needs are extra actions, interruptions, and other oddities not found elsewhere in D&D, not even in spells.

Bottom line: if I wanted to play Exalted, I would. D&D + Bo0S = a second class homage to Exalted, Hero System, Feng Shui, and the like.

If there are no blokes in chainmail hacking things up with longswords in it, it's not D&D and I probably don't want it.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

Playing my lvl 2 Crusader is more complex than any caster class I've leveled up, except my epic Bladesinger/Conjurer gish.
I have a stack of maneuver/stance cards to shuffle and manage in up to 4 piles, and 3 sets of hit points to keep track of. Then there's the tactical aspect and attack roll math.
Fun class to play, the third of the classes from the book I've tried. I must've taken 3 times my total hit points in damage one fight, and the healer's spells didn't get used at all. Sometimes playing the piñata is fun..

 

[IceFractal]

Actually, despite people's initial reactions, I've found the Bo9S, in both theory and practice, doesn't outdamage traditional warrior-types much.

First off, don't use a Fighter as a base for damage-dealing, use a Barbarian. The Fighter has never been the master of damage-dealing - it's master of feat intensive things like tripping. I believe a study was done on the CO board comparing manuevers to standard rage/power attack/full attack tactics, and it was found that manuevers were actually less damaging in many cases.

That isn't to say manuevers are useless - they're more versatile, more movement-friendly, and overall just more fun than "full-attack, rinse, repeat". In fact, ToB single-handedly fixes a whole list of issues I previously had:
1) Warrior-types become increasingly marginalized at high levels.
2) Moving around is combat is discouraged by the full-attack mechanics. Leaping between tables or swinging on chains to attack from above? Forget it, unless you want to suck.
3) The way feats specialize a character, using a variety of attack-types is very suboptimal. For instance, most warriors either never use Trip, or only use Trip.
4) Warriors are dependant on specific magic items to deal with common types of opponents.
5) There's no in-game support for stuff like last-ditch heroic sacrifices, or making that one vital leap to block the BBEG's attack.



And as for saying that the fighting styles are "too magicky", that's almost entirely Desert Wind and Shadow Hand, two out of nine schools. This is somewhat like saying that magic is all about destroying stuff because the Evocation school exists.

You want a "bloke in chainmail hacking things up with a longsword"? Try a Warblade using Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, and White Raven manuevers. Everything you do is training, focus, and leadership - no magic required.

Heck, for that matter, Tiger Claw is pretty much entirely non-magical as well, as is much of Setting Sun and Stone Dragon.

 

[Nepenthe]

Whatever the problems, a fighter should fight... he should not have to fly through the air and cut walls in half in order to remain a meaningful contributor after 8th level.

I don't have the book with me, but I am fairly sure that neither of the warrior-type classes (crusader or warblade) qualifies for any of the "air walking" powers; those are strictly the swordsages domain, who has basically nothing to do with the fighter (and a lot to do with the monk). As for cutting walls in half... I'm not sure that anything in this book really changes that from the way it was before?

And the last thing the combat system needs are extra actions, interruptions, and other oddities not found elsewhere in D&D, not even in spells.

Ah, and now I see your point, "not even in spells". Apart from not really agreeing on adding stuff that spells can't do (didn't somebody earlier in this thread say that they didn't like it because it was just spells for fighters?), I'm not sure what you mean with the rest. I am assume that you mean that all the swift actions interrupt the rhythm of the combat and slow it down? Maybe... but I'd rather be interrupted, than "full attack again!".

If there are no blokes in chainmail hacking things up with longswords in it, it's not D&D and I probably don't want it.

At this point I have to ask, have you read the book or are you just going by what you've read on the forums? I mean, IIRC, the warblade illustration has a guy with a longsword in chainmail about to hack things up...

The reason I'm singling out your post for what might seem like some fairly harsh replies is the reason that I honestly believe your opinions are based on misconceptions. If you own the book, have carefully read it and think the above, then I am ok with you thinking that way. But if you have just read bits and pieces and built the above image from it, then I think you are just plain misinformed.

Cheers,

/N

 

[Doug McCrae]

That's the tail wagging the dog. The proper solution here is to FIX the cleric and druid.

Impossible. Why would any player buy a book that reduces a class's power?

 

[megamania]

sheesh... based on the comments... I ought to check the book out again.