My Gut Reaction to Book of Nine Swords

[Plane Sailing]

You should have read about the book before you bought it. If you would have, you may have realized this book was never for you. Letting your mistake sway your judgment over the book is another thing entirely though. The book isn’t bad because of what it is, to you the book is bad because of what it was not. I hope your prejudices of this book to not turn others away.

Hopefully next time you will be more responsible in what you purchase. and perhaps next time you wont let your predetermined feelings effect your opinions of what is good and what is not.

This is a good book, as long as you can accept that fighter stereotypes can have some style, just like their magical brothers.

Moonlancer,

You should read the posting rules before you post. If you would have, you may have realised that being rude to other posters is not allowed.

Hopefully next time you will be more responsible in what you post, and perhaps next time you won't let your predetermined feelings effect (sic) your opinions of what is good and what is not.

In short: Airwalkrr is quite within his rights to post explaining why he doesn't personally like this book. You are quite within your rights to start a thread stating why you do personally like this book.

You may not come into this thread and diss another poster because they disagree with you.

If this isn't clear, please feel free to email me.

 

[kenmarable]

My gut reaction was "Uh, genre blending, sounds like fun!"

Of course, I'm a genre blending bastard, so really no surprise there.

Same here. I won't get into the bickering about whether high-level fighting classes are balanced or not, I just plainly think the Book of Nine Swords is fun! It's purely subjective, and I have no gripe against someone who disagrees.

Personally, I've found melee fighters in our campaigns have tended to fall into "swing-hit, swing-hit, swing-miss" repetitive routines. Maybe throw in a Power Attack here, or a lucky Cleave there. And there are of course options for Bull Rushing, Sundering, etc. But players in my groups and I have based characters around those, and breaking people's weapons and pushing them off of ledges and into walls gets old after a few years, too. We wanted something different to spice things up.

Something like this definitely spices it up. Having named manuevers and many more options is a lot of fun. For our tastes, having someone spinning through the air all wuxia style is no more fantastic than a wizard muttering and waving his hands to cause a ball of fire to suddenly appear. It most certainly is genre blending, but that's fine with us. Our campaigns are so far into their own genre that they stopped looking Tolkein-esque/traditional fantasy a while ago. Again, just a matter or taste.

I have always found the question of whether a mechanic is "fun" far more important than whether it is "balanced". Balance issues have only come up for us when they get in the way of the fun - which has been very rare.

 

[wayne62682]

My initial view of the book was along the lines of "What the <expletive> are they trying to pull with this Kung Fu/anime/videogame style garbage?"

However... I sat down to read the book more and I have to admit it's starting to grow on me... a bit over the top, perhaps, but I realized that I do like the idea of doing weird stances and things in combat.. it gives the game a more "mystic" flavor, IMO.

That said, the book is not for everyone.

 

[HiLiphNY]

Book Of Nine Munchkins.

 

[Mercule]

1) Outside of the use of disciplines and the funky names, there isn't really much oriental stuff in it. The flavor can easily fit a traditional medival european setting, far easier than say the Monk or even some Oriental Monsters every Setting uses.

Now, this statement intrigues me. I want to explicitly avoid bringing too much wuxia/wire-work into my game. I don't mind the fantastic, but I prefer European fantastic with some Arabian fantastic to spice it up. I'm not a particular fan of what I know about Asian mythology and metaphysics. And, yes, I've eliminated the Monk IMC because I don't like the flavor.

Now, my question is this: Could I really integrate ToB into my game and still keep that vaguely European feel? If so, it's a solid sale. If the move version of my campaign would start to involve wire-work, then I'd rather not go there.

6) Personally I always thought the fighter was lacking in just about every aspect. So I'm okey with him getting gimped. Outside of two levels multiclass for feats he was nothing but a NPC class in our games anyway.

See, this is a problem for me. I want the fighter to be the ultimate in raw combat. In fact, if I were to use this book, I'd do it primarily as a way to boost the fighter, rather than importing the new classes. Is that doable?

Or, does the warblade effectively replace the fighter? If so, is it a reasonable replacement?

 

[Henry]

My personal opinion? I don't like it. However, I recognize this opinion, solely on flavor alone. Mechanically, it's not a bad supplement, and the classes and abilities don't seem to be overpowered, because in most cases that maneuver is the ONLY thing you can do that round, as a standard action.

The flavor is intentionally to put Wuxia-style abilities into a D&D game, and I commend the writers for coming out and saying it on the introductory page, If you don't like Wuxia-style arts, ideally this would leap out at you browsing in the store (doesn't help those online purchasers a lot, though -- except at Amazon.com. )

 

[Henry]

See, this is a problem for me. I want the fighter to be the ultimate in raw combat. In fact, if I were to use this book, I'd do it primarily as a way to boost the fighter, rather than importing the new classes. Is that doable?

Or, does the warblade effectively replace the fighter? If so, is it a reasonable replacement?

If you want the fighter to be king, I wouldn't introduce the Warblade; too much barbarian & swordsage in one package. The Crusader and Swordsage, however, have enough vulnerability that they wouldn't replace the fighter.

However, there are feats in the book for Warrior-types to take advantage of the maneuvers and stances therein; they would easily fit into an existing game, if you wanted your fighters to gain actual Supernatural abilities through their training. You could say it's a school of fighting that mixes Arcane study with martial prowess, and the feats represent the rigorous training involved for blending the two.

 

[Mechnomancer]

I'm already planning on replacing the fighter, monk, and possibly the paladin in my next campaign with Bo9S classes. I only wish there was a more nature oriented school or class. Hopefully Dragon can fill that void.

I personally hate it when a class has features on how to role play it or a lot of other fluff. I want the ability to mold it into my campain world without the book constantly distracting me from it.

As for the warblade, I'll need to see it in action before i give an opinion on it.

 

[satori01]

Worst "moral of a story" ever.

Umm, who is being a bit rude now? The moral of the story is there are plenty of things in the game that can kill even the most "overpowered" of classes.

I understand why people do not like this book. I understand why people do not like peanut butter in their chocolate, but at some point those who do not like peanut butter in their chocolate, have to chaulk it up to a taste thing.

Felon, you counter arguement again shows to me that you have not spent enough time reading the book, or are just so consumed by your hatred of the Warblade, that you are spinning instead of analyzing.

Warblades as a class can no more can redo Saving Throws than the cleric classs. However like the player of a cleric that selects the Luck domain, and gets the benefit of re rolling a Saving Throw, some of the Martial Adept classes get access to Maneuvers that can let them substite Concentration checks for saving throws of different types....ohh scary. So scary we have seen PrCs with the same abillity..we have seen spells that have greater effecacy in the same vein...ala Ruin Delver's Fortune in Spell Compendium.

So yes a Warblade or Swordsage COULD develop their character to be a willy and hard to kill character, with lots of chances to possibly survive ridiculous saving throws...at the oportunity cost of losing out on much cooler things.....pretty much the same desing philosophy of 3.x...choices not restraints...and a hallmark of good resource management design.

Not to pick on you Felon, (you post commonly in these threads and are well "spoken", and I think you opinions have weight and merit), but I GET IT, that you think the Warblade is overpowered.

Why dont you table that? How is the book, the system, the Manuevers with out the Warblade? At this point your hatred of the Warblade has been shown. Limiting yourself to pointing out how you think one class out of 3 is unbalanced, ignores the bulk of the book, the Maneuvers.

I also know from prior threads on the Warlock, that Felon hates infinite use per day classes, and has very percise sensibilities regarding resource management,(hence I think the bulk of his disgust for the Warblade class and the swift action Maneuver recovery).

Which brings me back to the whole point of those that do not like peanut butter in their chocolate again, or to put it another way, when should someone that hates tomatoes realize that maybe their personal tastes do not lend themselves to be the best jude of a tomato contest.

 

[gribble]

Now, my question is this: Could I really integrate ToB into my game and still keep that vaguely European feel?

IMO - yes. Most of the maneuvers are not supernatural abilities (in fact, I believe only 2 disciplines - desert wind and shadow hand - have any supernatural abilities), and there is little other than descriptions to distinguish most other maneuvers from (in most cases very powerful) feats.

If you've banned monks, you'll probably also want to look at banning swordsages, and that will get rid of access to the two disciplines above anyway.

Certainly the crusader & warblade (although IMO the warblade is mechanically overpowered) would fit just as well in a european-style fantasy game as in a wuxia one. In the case of the crusader, probably better.