One of the group is buying the Book of Nine Swords. What should I expect?

[FireLance]

As Kishin said (and as evidenced by the posts already made on this thread), you'll probably either love it or hate it. For the record, I love it.

The classes in this book make the player feel good. It ties in very well with the mindset of "I want to do something cool every round". Because you have to actively decide to use a maneuver, it somehow seems more special than a bonus that gets passively added to your attack roll, such as Weapon Focus.

In addition, because many of the maneuvers are self-initiated, the player also feels that he has more control over them. For example, triggering his Cleave feat is not something that is entirely under the control of a fighter, but a warblade could choose to initate his Steel Wind maneuver to attack two opponents at once.

Finally, a well-played martial adept (like a well-played cleric) should have a few maneuvers that benefit other characters as well, such as Leading the Attack. This makes the players of the other characters feel good as well.

Hence, I think the Book of Nine Swords could create a more positive gaming experience overall.

 

[brehobit]

I just want to chime in (again) with the following:

The base classes are more powerful than the warrior classes in the PHB. I think most everyone agrees on that. Comparing to a druid is of course hard, but I'd say the _swordsage_ is more powerful than any non Bo9S class. By a fair bit. IMO, YMMV, etc.

The flavor and ideas of the book are some of the best I've seen out of WoTC.

The mechanics are a bit tricky and slow down the game, esp. for the crusader who has to randomly select abilities often. The main problems are the counters (the otherwise rare immediate actions) which slow things and the changing stances where the player has to recompute things. This can be sped up nicely with index cards (per the book itself).

Also, frankly, it is really hard to build a higher-level character for this game.

My feeling is the classes are most powerful at middle/low-levels (4-8 or so). The price for only taking one attack is small and doesn't balance the abilities.

Finally, the most wonky things about it are the following:

EVERY fighter should take a level of warblade or crusader at 9th level. You can take a third level stance (much better than the 1/2 feat you lose, better than any one feat in fact). Plus the manouvers.

Unlike anyother class, the ORDER you take things in makes a huge difference. Warblade 1 followed by fighter 8 is MUCH weaker than fighter 8 followed by warblade 1. (Due to stance and manouver selection).

Both of the above annoy me.

 

[Alceste]

Based on what Im reading here and elsewhere, Ill be passing on this book as well.

We have really enjoyed the book so far. There are few problems with two of the main classes crusaders and swordsages. You will notice that most issues with the book involve the warblade. We adjusted the warblade to the swordsage recovery method. No actual players of warblade/swordsage yet thou, only encountered them as enemies atm.

In our campaign, the crusader is having a blast being our "tank" while the offensive pally does more damage.

Edit: For crusaders just put the maneuvers on cards and have the DM hand them out as necessary. Pretty easy honestly.

 

[BryonD]

But, some maneuvers are better then some feats and vice versa. But I can agree to a wash overall.

There are always pluses and minuses. I certainly agree there.

You could really argue that the Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger, Monk and Fighter all aren't worth the "cost analysis" when you compare them to any of the martial adept classes once you break them down to skill points, hd, saves, maneuvers, spells, etc. From that perspective I will agree with you.

I certainly think it would come down to that. Though some of the comparision are much more abstract than others.

But that doesn't necessairly make them superior, except maybe in the case of the monk...but even using it as an example...it gets cool abilities at practically every single level, good ones...equal to various levels of spells and probably has a pretty good cost analysis itself, but in actual play it performs terribly and is generally underpowered without alot of help. Heck, there are alot of classes out there that likely have a higher mathmatical value then the core clases but aren't as strong.

I don't agree here. If a weak class comes up with a higher assessment then the valuation has been wrong somewhere.

Now the marital adept classes don't play badly (except, imo, the crusader which just gave me headaches...), but neither do the others. I also think you might be undervaluing the fighters feats in that, unlike with so many other classes, you get to choose the path of those feats and build a tailored character. Most of the other classes don't give you that freedom and that is worth something to some people (thats one reason my fighter player always players a fighter...he likes the choice of all those feats and enjoys makng stuff work together...and I wish I could get him to post here, but he doesn't care for message boards).

I certainly agree that the freedom to customize a fighter build is very valueble to the fun of the class. But I don't agree that this changes the analysis of potency.

So, while you can cost analyze these classes and I'd likely agree with alot of it, I don't think that still necessairly reflects something as being better or more valuable. In our campaign, I saw fighters competing just fine against the martial adept classes so they still seem perfectly viable to me. I think the martial adept classes are definitely more flashy and fun though. But numbers alone do not always tell the whole story.

Numbers don't always tell the whole story, but in this case there is no gap to work with. Everything the fighter has is flat out covered and them some by the warblade.

 

[BryonD]

We adjusted the warblade to the swordsage recovery method.

I gave that some thought, but have not tried it.
It seems it made be a good solution. It would certainly reign in the manuevers.

 

[Sunderstone]

If you are interested in the concept, then I actually recommend the book.
It takes some work, but some really good ideas are there.

If you just dislike the idea of mystical warriors, then yeah, it is not for you.

Some of it sounds interesting, but its the play balance that im concerned with. As of now I only allow core classes from the PH/XPH/PH2.

 

[Alceste]

Some of it sounds interesting, but its the play balance that im concerned with. As of now I only allow core classes from the PH/XPH/PH2.

Two of the base classes, crusader and swordsage are pretty well balanced. Both have distinct advantages/disadvantages. In fact, our Crusader / Paladin (divine might /divine sacrificer) combo in our party make an excellent team.

I would still recommend the book even with the balance issues with the third base class, the warblade.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

To the extent that you do use high tech dragonstar options, I think you'll find that being useless at range is far more devastating in a setting that features 4d10 damage rifles as standard equipment than it is in a normal setting. If your enemy is going to release arrows and spells at you and then close for melee, that's one thing; if nearly every foe's preferred tactic is to use burst fire at two range increments (which is a mighty long way on some of those guns) then being weak against ranged attacks is a much bigger deal.

In that regard, you can pay heed to the dragonstar setting book: it has quite a few melee feats and abilities (nearly every melee weapon is keen for instance and for another, a low-level feat enables characters to follow when an opponent takes a 5' step in a threatened area) which would not be balanced in other settings but don't cause problems in Dragonstar--at least at low levels (I only got 3-4 levels under my belt before the setting folded).

My gut reaction to Bo9S is that it's a lot of fun. To some extent, if it's in the campaign, the fighter class won't be used anyway, for the warblade fills pretty much the same role. (The warblade, as Thanatos notes, is useless at ranged, however).

 

[Nifft]

Numbers don't always tell the whole story, but in this case there is no gap to work with. Everything the fighter has is flat out covered and them some by the warblade.

Almost covered -- many people will take one or two levels of Fighter for the bonus Feats.

Fighter isn't quite as bad as Swashbuckler ("the core class with only three levels"), but it does tend towards diminishing returns as you get higher level.

(IMHO) -- N

 

[Storyteller01]

So as melee goes they rock, but in ranged combat (we're looking at 2000 ft, 4000 ft to 5000 ft for heavy weapons) they'll need help. Seem like he'll do fine then, or at least he won't be unbeatable.