Has the wave crested? (Bo9S)

[Psion]

The problem is, something can't be broken in isolation. It has to be with reference to something.

Precisely my point. You are letting the upper end of the power scale become a new standard. That's creep.

If you think the cleric and druid are broken in relation to the power level you prefer to game at, then increasing the power level of the other classes breaks them, too.

That's reference dependent too. If everyone is powered up, it will then seem ordinary.

With the additional problem that you have unnecessarily created churn, but obligating the audience to change all the other classes.

If you think the cleric and druid are broken in relation to the power level of the other classes, allowing the other classes to catch up doesn't break them, and reduces the "brokenness" of the cleric and druid.

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

 

[Sejs]

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

Six of one, half dozen of the other. If the goal is to bring the two sides into parity, it's kind of hard to lower the CoD half given that it was ahead of the curve right out of the gate.

The two options would then be:

1) Put out material that raises the other half. Redefines the upper end as the norm, like you said.

2) Put out material that nerfs the CoD half. I honestly can't see that taking well. The shapechange druid variant was probably the best example, but that's optional.. you don't have to use it. The cleric's even trickier to rebalance.

 

[Razz]

There's a passing mention of how one can develop your own maneuvers, disciplines, etc much in the same way you can do personal spell research.


That needs to be developed more. Guidelines, etc for what's appropriate at each level.


I want to develop a fighting style that's based on Mimics (the creature), that uses disguise as the key skill. It would be awesome.

I totally agree.

A set of guidelines for figuring out how to pin a maneuver level on new maneuvers would be a great asset. It's a little difficult, but me and my friends managed to come up with new ones. One of my players created a unique 1st-level maneuver for the Tiger Claw discipline called Lion's Pride Takedown for his Shifter Swordsage. Basically, you make an attack with a standard action and if you hit, you can make a free trip attack, can use either Strength or Dexterity to knock foe down, and cannot be tripped in return on a failure. I was thinking of putting in a +2 or +4 bonus, as well, in there but I think I'm saving that for a more powerful version or maybe a new stance.

We've also created maneuvers to cover the lack of energy types. We've made lightning, cold, and sonic type attacks. We also allow Desert Wind maneuvers taken to be substituted with a different energy. He took Burning Blade and renamed it Roaring Staff and we changed the energy type from fire to sonic damage.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I still think it's a really bad example of power inflation.

Probably because it is.

It's just that some people believe that the ol' melee types were kinda shafted previously, I suppose. Or they don't much care, and basically want to hit thing harder. I dunno.

Me, I think reserve feats are rather amusing as well. But that's for another thread. . .

 

[Pants]

Bo9S is pretty cool. Warblades seem pretty capable if using the right maneuver combos, but then my party wasted an enemy warblade after he dealt a buttload damage basically blowing his maneuver wad. The party fighter dealt near that same amount of damage back... using Power Attack.

So I'm not sure if they're as bad as some people claim, granted this is one example, but I found it interesting.

 

[DreadArchon]

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.

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

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

Feh, don't agree. I like D&D specifically because it's got the whole "massively powerful superheoes--in a fantasy setting!" thing going on. The proper solution is to make everything comparable to the Cleric and Druid, IMAO.

 

[hong]

What I especially like about Bo9S is not the per-encounter thing, or the beefing-up-the-warriors thing, but the fact that it shifts the emphasis and detail in combat to the characters, not groups. Well, okay, I ALSO like the per-encounter thing and the beefing-up-the-warriors thing, but the shift in emphasis is still good.

D&D combat for 25 years has primarily been designed around the skirmish level. You have the tank, the medic, the bomb-disposal guy and the artillery. Everyone is part of a team, and your tactics are to do with terrain, fire and movement. It doesn't matter so much how the tank hits the giant, as long the giant gets hit; hence 1 roll to attack, 1 roll for damage. 3E provides more details at the individual level, but ultimately most combats still come down to churning out the damage: it's still the fastest, most reliable way to defeat an opponent.

Contrast this to games like GURPS and HERO, where it's all about tactics at the individual level. GURPS takes combat down to 1-second rounds, where you literally roll for every swing and block. HERO isn't quite so fine-grained, but it's close. Bo9S doesn't provide as much character-level detail in combat as that, but it does provide more than vanilla D&D.

IMO it's still got some way to go, though. There aren't enough counters (or not enough good counters), so that one hit can still take a guy down. All that tactical complexity doesn't do much good if a fight can be decided by who wins init. Most strikes are basically just big damage bonuses, with some window-dressing so they're not all clones of each other. Some of these problems are because the book still has to work with the existing D&D combat system, but other things should be fixable without having to wait for 4E.

So, yeah, Bo9S is the first step in the Soul Caliburization of D&D. This can be contrasted with GURPS, which is more like Tekken, or pre-Bo9S D&D, which is Age of Empires/Warcraft.

 

[daemonslye]

I have it - It's certainly interesting. Flavor-wise and rules-wise, I'm treating it like Tome of Magic. When I decide to create a campaign that uses these rules (with the appropriate campaign/world history), I will allow them in the game.

Just have not gotten around to it yet.

~D

 

[Nepenthe]

Probably because it is.

It's just that some people believe that the ol' melee types were kinda shafted previously, I suppose. Or they don't much care, and basically want to hit thing harder. I dunno.

Well, in the transfer from 2e to 3e, warrior types lost their main defining combat ability (multiple attacks). Making multiple attacks an automatic result of having certain BAB (and tying it to full attacks only, removing mobility) significantly boosted the melee power of the following tier of melee fighters (clerics etc.).

The designers' intention apparently was that the addition of bonus feats/smites/weapon styles would even this change out... which brings us to the core problem, the fighter. The problem with feats is that, like the new multiple attacks, they are basically available to anyone. Wizards has been unwilling to make "fighter only" feats (and I fail to see why, plenty of spells seem to carry "cleric", "wizard" or "paladin" in them without creating any problems). To make feats viable only for fighters, they've added either high BAB requirements or made extremely long feat chains that give you a plus here and there. High BAB feats are good and well, but they are only available to higher level fighters, leaving the mid-level fighter to nab up his ~15 feat weapon mastery feat tree... And I don't think that weapon specialization and its effects are even close to what they were in 2e.

The second problem the fighter has relates to his skills... Not only does he get a meager 2+int in skill points every level, he is doubly punished by having an absurdly poor skill selection. It's been a while since I played 2e, but I am under the impression that the fighter got the same amount of non-weapon proficiencies as everybody else did.

These two combined lead to a situation where the fighter is simply not as much fun to play as other classes. Especially if your campaign features heavy skill-use over straight combat, the fighter is indeed completely shafted. And in combat, his choices are either the infamous "I full attack again!" or using one of the special combat maneuvers... that everybody else can do as well, albeit with a penalty of some kind unless they have spent one of their fewer feats on it (unlikely, since they have dozens of better feats to use that build on their strengths).

What I see in ToB (and what is the reason for that particular book bringing me back last summer 4 years after "quitting" D&D) is that it just adds _fun_ to the melee types. This is not just "anime combat" as some fans and detractors like to point out (There is "anime" in the warblade and crusader only if you choose to put it there), it also adds to warrior-types as characters via the boosted skill points and skill selections.

Power wise... Yes, it does add to the power of the melee classes, mostly by improving their possibilities to deal out damage and move at the same time. Is this bad? In my opinion, it is an overdue fix for a problem that has existed since the birth of 3e. Is this the right way of fixing it? Maybe not, adding warblade skills and skillpoints with the same martial progression to a straight fighter might have fixed both, currently even I, a massive fan of the book, have some trouble swallowing all of the warblade's special abilities (it's the one class I've spent most time looking at, since it seems to be the one at the heart of most controversy).

Is the book perfect? No, and I get the feeling that it has at least some cut material (and the inclusion of the legacy weapons is just... not good, web enhancement material if I ever saw it). It would certainly benefit from a more in-depth guide into creating new disciplines and maneuvers. As for the way the maneuvers and their recovery is handled... well, at least it does differentiate them from spells a bit. I'm not sure if its the correct way of handling it, but at least it doesn't just create another type of caster with recovery identical to the base caster classes.

/N

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I like the book and my next PC will be one of the classes in it.

Cheers


Richard