My first BO9S adventure

[Stalker0]

So I took the plunge and set up a BO9S adventure for my gaming group. We had 6 players, everyone with martial adept levels only. 2 desert wing swordsages, a shadowhand swordsage, a crusader, a stone dragon warblade, and a diamond mind warblade.

Everyone had a lot of fun, and it was a good time. Some highlights:

1) Getting disarmed, only to use insightful strike to deal massive damage anyway.
2) Using fire snake to rip open groups of opponents.
3) Mountain hammer blowing through DR 15 and crushing an opponent.
4) Combining child of shadow with a ridiculous hide check to almost gain hide in plain sight.
5) Wading into armies of mooks with pearl of black doubt and obtaining a 90 AC!!

So far I'm sticking to my original opinion, I think in a group of casters martial adept fit right in, but I would never play a regular fighter again if these classes are an option, they are simply better flat out.

We also wondered if the Adaptive Style feat allows you actually regain manuevers as you are getting new ones, the wording is a little vague. Also, when do you acquire manuevers, before or after obtaining feats? (the order is important for feat prereqs).


The main things I loved about the game were:
1) Mobility. Everyone was moving around, doing stunts, and still doing lots of damage.
2) No reliance on weapons. People would lose a weapon and just not care, even an unarmed attack does good damage with manuevers.

So overall, I'm a very happy customer

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

1) Getting disarmed, only to use insightful strike to deal massive damage anyway.

Though I didn't get a chance to do the same when I was running a Diamond Mind Swordsage, the moment I realized I could do that was really a spectacular one. It went something like "Hm. I just want to knock them out, and I don't know that I'll have time to draw the weapon... wait a minute. Greater Insightful Strike works, and if he's flat footed, no AoO to mess things up. I can force a massive damage damage save with a punch. Maybe this is broken... No, wait a minute, I'm 12th level and this guy's probably CR 5, tops. Why the hell couldn't I do this before I got Tome of Battle?"

Glad to hear that your experience went well.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

I used to use a maneuver to kick through walls and doors. It was great. Sure, someone could cast Knock, or Dimension Door, but it's just not as fun.
The Setting Sun maneuver that lets you throw an opponent in a line, damaging everyone in the way, some orc barbarian mooks never saw it coming.

 

[Arkhandus]

We also wondered if the Adaptive Style feat allows you actually regain manuevers as you are getting new ones, the wording is a little vague. Also, when do you acquire manuevers, before or after obtaining feats? (the order is important for feat prereqs).

There is no official clarification on Adaptive Style as far as I'm aware. It can be interpreted either way, depending on how the DM looks at it and the rest of the rules related to it. Personally, for my games I go with the interpretation that readying maneuvers actually makes them ready for use, not just changing around the expended maneuvers for unexpended ones, which would be rather useless to most martial adepts.

There is no 'best' interpretation, it's purely up to the DM. It's also up to the DM to decide whether or not it provokes and attack of opportunity to use, since it doesn't say.

My interpretation makes the feat quite useful, but the alternative is to interprete it in such a way that it's a horrible, horrible waste of a feat that sucks worse than Toughness (except in rare cases at upper levels, and I mean very rare, since wasting a full round doing absolutely nothing useful is very bad in the fast-flying-exchange-of-spells-and-strikes-of-dooooooom! arena of high-level D&D combat).

And my actual-play experience is that it sucks to be a Swordsage who uses up his or her maneuvers in the first few rounds of combat, in lower and middle levels, and then spends the rest of the fight as a glorified Expert. And I'm talking about Swordsages I've played, ones I've played alongside, ones I've DMed for, and ones I've run as NPC foes, in different games. I haven't gotten to play or DM with/for any Swordsages at high levels yet.

 

[Arkhandus]

As for level-up procedure, the PHB puts Feat selection before Class Features, but that's really not accurate. There are feats out there that require a Caster Level or similar class feature, that can only be taken at 1st-level, or that the books, examples, and/or designers expect to be taken at 1st-level, IIRC.

Really, you can just choose your Class Features (like maneuvers and stances) at the same time as Feats or before them, if you want.

For example, Scribe Scroll requires a caster level of 1+; but if you don't get class features before choosing feats, you can't actually take Scribe Scroll at your 1st level, unless you're a wizard (since wizards get it as a class feature for free). I don't think even RBDMs have forced players to take their feats before their class features at character creation or level-up.

Anyway, the PHB also puts class features before feats for character creation, in the first two pages past the Table of Contents.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I can force a massive damage damage save with a punch. Maybe this is broken... No, wait a minute, I'm 12th level and this guy's probably CR 5, tops. Why the hell couldn't I do this before I got Tome of Battle?"

You don't do that with a punch. You should use a spoon.

ToB: Killing people with spoons since 2006.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Gold Roger]

I've played a Cleric/Swordsage for the past two sessions and mechanically it's been very fun. I've used Mountain Hammer Headbutts multiple time when we needed to capture foes. Sadly, his personality wasn't working out as well and I'm changing to a more traditional char.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

Actually, there are several examples of classes getting feats they wouldn't otherwise qualify for, for free.

 

[Wik]

I kinda want to run a gestalt ToB game, where one class has to be a ToB class, and the other has to be a generic class from UA. I think that could be a lot of fun.

Haven't had a chance to use the book in play yet, though the group is going up against a Swordsage tomorrow that I think should be able to do a hefty amount of damage (particularly against our warforged, who isn't going to expect Mountain Hammer to knock past her DR so easily!).

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I always figured that you can choose any ability you like (feats, spells, class choices, whatever) but you can't USE it unless you meet the prereqs.

So, for example, you could choose to take Improved Critical (prereq BAB+8) at 6th level, but you wouldn't be able to use it until you have a BAB of +8 or better. So the question of whether you need to choose feats or manuveurs first is actually moot - it doesn't matter.