My Gut Reaction to Book of Nine Swords

[Rystil Arden]

How do you define 'encounter' then? What about a practise duel? And if that doesn't count, would a duel with practise blades against an NPC to decide the fate of the kingdom count? What about attacking the town dog (who attacks back of course)? What about a trap encounter? What about a puzzle or riddle? What if said riddle releases a gargoyle to attack you every time you answer it wrong? Is each gargoyle an encounter? What if you conjure in a demon that attacks you? What if you capture 30 kobolds and release them one by one to be gutted by you?

Allowing healing on a "per encounter" basis is a design mistake, in my opinion. It requires a lot of fiat with little explanation.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Why not read the rest of the feat description?

It can be used only once per encounter.

Geoff.

Being rude isn't nice. Being rude to a moderator is pretty much inexcusably stupid.

The WotC site doesn't give the whole description, it only gives the bit I quoted (duh) and I asked what the book stated in detail about it.

 

[Gargoyle]

Well, it is no worse than the psionic classes having to use a full round to regain their psionic focus and get back their special abilities, is it? They don't feel that they are 'loosing a turn', rather they feel like they are 'recharging for the next strike'.

Cheers

I won't presume to know what they feel, as I haven't used psionics in my game for a while, and it was never a big part of my campaigns. But I would think it would still be less fun for a player to spend a round recharging an ability than actually doing some sort of action.

So, I guess I agree it's no worse, but why not make it more fun than less fun?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I won't presume to know what they feel, as I haven't used psionics in my game for a while, and it was never a big part of my campaigns. But I would think it would still be less fun for a player to spend a round recharging an ability than actually doing some sort of action.

So, I guess I agree it's no worse, but why not make it more fun than less fun?

We've used it extensively since it came out, and nobody has considered it to be 'less fun' that way. I think in each case it is weighed up as "do I spend a round *now* to major whoop-ass next round, or shall I do two minor attacks?". i.e. it becomes a choice/option that the player happily decides on. One psionic PC in all that time decided that he wanted to do it more often and so took the feat which lets him do it as a move action instead of a full round action.

I'd also note that amongst all the psionics threads that I've seen, I've not seen anyone complaining about this means of balancing the more powerful options that psionics had (and plenty of people praising it).

So if I might turn your question back on itself, if there is an existing method of recovering extra-powerful abilities which is time tested, why introduce something that is markedly better?

Nobody here knows the answer to that question, obviously; I guess that someone just wanted to differentiate themselves from the psionic focus mechanism (although it might make an interesting mechanism wrt stances (maintaining focus) and manouvres (expending focus).

Cheers

 

[brehobit]

Regarding the Warblade, I just refreshed my memory of the class from the WotC website article, and funnily enough, if it had a d10 hp I would say that it was a fine 'intelligent fighter' class - even with no manouvers at all! - .

The full BAB, decent skill points (with a list that includes tumble!) bonus feats and INT-based class features would make for a nice package just on their own - I'd happily play a PC that was like that.

(which in turn, makes me wonder how much extra oomph those manouvres and stances give...)

I wonder what it would be like if you ONLY had stances, and not the other stuff?

I'd say without the manouvers and stances it would be on the weak side, in part because some of the abilities (including many of the useful bonus feats) require the use of the manouvers/stances. With the d12 I'd still call it a bit weak.

The manovers and stances of a warblade are mostly not too overpowering until higher levels. SOME of them are though, and of course those are what people will generally take.

Yeah, I go back to the 2 skill points/level, d8 HD, and recover like a swordsage and I think you have a powerful but good class. I _really_ like the flavor.

 

[CrusaderX]

My first reaction to the Book of Nine Swords was "Could the Crusader's main art entry be any uglier?"

Apologies to the artist, but that pic is just horrid, IMO. We Crusaders deserve better.

 

[Gargoyle]

My first reaction to the Book of Nine Swords was "Could the Crusader's main art entry be any uglier?"

Apologies to the artist, but that pic is just horrid, IMO. We Crusaders deserve better.

Yeah, I didn't liike that one either. The rest of the book looks quite nice.

 

[Gargoyle]

We've used it extensively since it came out, and nobody has considered it to be 'less fun' that way. I think in each case it is weighed up as "do I spend a round *now* to major whoop-ass next round, or shall I do two minor attacks?". i.e. it becomes a choice/option that the player happily decides on. One psionic PC in all that time decided that he wanted to do it more often and so took the feat which lets him do it as a move action instead of a full round action.

I'd also note that amongst all the psionics threads that I've seen, I've not seen anyone complaining about this means of balancing the more powerful options that psionics had (and plenty of people praising it).

So if I might turn your question back on itself, if there is an existing method of recovering extra-powerful abilities which is time tested, why introduce something that is markedly better?

Nobody here knows the answer to that question, obviously; I guess that someone just wanted to differentiate themselves from the psionic focus mechanism (although it might make an interesting mechanism wrt stances (maintaining focus) and manouvres (expending focus).

Cheers

I think they may indeed have consciously adapted the psionic focus method for the swordsage, then at some point decided they wanted all three martial adept classes to have different ways to recover maneuvers, to add some diversity.

Since the warblade has fewer maneuvers, they probably felt that making them easier to recover was a good idea. I think they went overboard on that and a lot of things regarding the warblade class. It seems like a lot of ideas went into it, and perhaps they had difficulty cutting things out. I'm just speculating of course, I don't know what they were thinking or even if they did the right thing with the warblade or not, but it's fun for me to think about how they designed this thing.

 

[Wardo]

I'm going to eliminate the warblade entirely and allow substitution levels for fighters and barbarians to gain maneuvers: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=174415

I've seen a few statements along this line. I don't own the book, so I'm curious, are the existing feats in the Bo9S excerpt feat listing that allow a non-martial-adept to learn maneouvers and stances any good? Can someone give me a notion of what a fighter can accomplish with these feats?

 

[amethal]

I've seen a few statements along this line. I don't own the book, so I'm curious, are the existing feats in the Bo9S excerpt feat listing that allow a non-martial-adept to learn maneouvers and stances any good? Can someone give me a notion of what a fighter can accomplish with these feats?

Martial study allows you to gain a manoeuvre. Martial stance allows you to gain a stance (but you must have martial study first).

Non-adepts are treated as having adept "levels" equal to half their character level so are limited in the manoevres they can take (so won't be getting that +100 to damage until well into epic levels), and as many - but by no means all - high level manoeuvres require you to have a certain number of low ones first it effectively keeps them out of the hands of most non-adepts.

I think you can only use each manoeuvre once per encounter, but I may be mistaken.

However, as a nice bonus the related skill becomes a class skill (for all your current and future classes). My binder's going to take Martial Study (desert wind) at least partially in order to get tumble as a class skill.