John Cooper
Explorer
TOME OF BATTLE: THE BOOK OF NINE BLADES
By Richard Baker, Matthew Sernett, and Frank Brunner
Wizards of the Coast product number 953787200
$29.95, 160 pages
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Blades isn't going to be a book for everyone - it's really not for me, to tell the truth. Don't get me wrong: it does well what it sets out to do; I'm just not a big fan of what it sets out to do - namely, add wuxia-style combat maneuvers to the core Dungeons and Dragons game. As the sidebar on page 6 states: "Tome of Battle isn't your parents' D&D — it's bigger, bolder, and even more fantastic than before." Got that? It's hip, it's rad, it's jiggy, it's hot, and if you don't like it then there must be something wrong with you, dog!
I guess there's something wrong with me, then. Call me a purist, but I like my fighters to stick to their martial expertise, not suddenly be able to fly supported by a column of superheated air they generated from their bodies (Rising Phoenix, page 55), or be able to walk along walls and ceilings simply because they assumed a certain stance (Dance of the Spider, page 76), or cause their enemies to shriek in fear at the sight of blood spraying from their blades after they hit an opponent (Fountain of Blood, page 87). Those are just three maneuvers I picked pretty much at random, and while they fit in well with the rest of the material in this book, I'm just not a big fan of this sort of thing in my D&D games. Had Tome of Battle been a book in a different game system, I might have liked it a bit better. I guess I just didn't buy the whole premise: that if a "martial adept" - the book's term for a magical fighter who can do a bunch of these maneuvers - practices hard enough, he can align his body and focus his thoughts in such a way to cause a supernatural effect (that works perfectly fine in an antimagic field or dead magic zone). I guess the authors just didn't "sell" the concept to me successfully.
The cover is another compromise between the "make the book look like a magical tome" and the "let's put an action scene on the cover" schools of thought. Eric Polak's painting of a human martial adept charging through the "window" of the book's front cover while wielding two weapons is nicely done - he does a very nice job on the figure, with excellent detail, good shading, and nice use of texture and shading. At first glance I thought he had a five-o'clock shadow, which was a cool touch, but upon further observation it looks like he just has a very close-cropped beard. In any case, it's a nice, simple, but effective piece.
The interior artwork consists of 62 full-color illustrations by 10 different artists. The art is okay for the most part, but much of it felt more "cartoony" than normal for a D&D book (although I suppose that's only fitting, as Tome of Battle goes to great lengths to not be a "typical" D&D book). Kalman Andrasofszky's work, in particular, seems much more suited to d20 Modern/d20 Future books - which is where I normally see his work - than it does here. It's admittedly a very subjective comment to make, and it's hard for me to really put my finger on, but the artwork for the most part just doesn't particularly "feel" right for D&D. But then, perhaps it's just my overall feelings about the book's material creeping in.
In any case, there is still some pretty good artwork in Tome of Battle. I particularly liked Jeff Nentrup's depiction of a elven warblade (one of the three new "martial adept" classes in the book) sensing two invisible enemies on page 63; Jeff takes the "Invisible Woman" (from the Fantastic Four comic books) approach by making the enemies easy for the reader to see while still conveying the sense that the elven warblade cannot actually see them. I also like his stance, as if he's ready to pounce once he gets his full bearings on their location. While I'm not particularly fond of the martial adept that Michael Phillipi depicts on page 83 (goofy hair!), I really like the look of the mummy that he just walloped, and the architecture in the background is suitably detailed and creepy enough to really make the piece work. Henry Lyon has a really nice piece on page 92, where a pair of dwarven adventurers take on a feral minotaur; I especially like the female dwarf in the foreground, as female dwarves tend to be rather difficult to make look convincing, and Henry does a great job on her. I should also point out that the chapter beginnings don't have the monochromatic drawings that most such Wizards of the Coast books have had in the past, but rather half-page paintings that tell a continuous story about the finder of the "nine swords" mentioned in the book's title. That's certainly a neat concept. I also noticed a lot of material from other books thrown into the illustrations with little fanfare - like the illumian on page 131 and the raptorian 44.
Tome of Battle is laid out as follows:
The proofreading and editing jobs are both remarkably well done in Tome of Battle, with just a few errors getting past Editing Manager Kim Mohan and Editors Chris Thomasson and Penny Williams. These were for the most part little things like simple typos or wrong words ("spent" instead of "spend," "shadows" instead of "shadow," "your" instead of "you," "spill" instead of "spilled"), a couple of commas in the wrong place (one was in the format "word-space-comma-next word" - which isn't something I see often in Wizards of the Coast books), a couple of spell names not being italicized, and one power being referred to by an incorrect name ("burst of flame" instead of "wyrm's flame" - perhaps the power got renamed?). There were also a couple of oddities like only one of the three new classes having its starting package show up in the Table of Contents (despite their being a good three inches of room at the bottom of that page, so it's not like they were deleted to make room), and all of the "Maneuvers Known," "Maneuvers Readied," and "Stances Known" entries in the prestige class tables being either a "0" or a "1," instead of making them cumulative like in Table 3-2: Experience and Level-Dependent Benefits on page 22 of the Player's Handbook, where you can see at a glance that at 13th level your PC should have 5 feats and 3 ability score increases. That was apparently a conscious decision on their part with the prestige class charts, but I don't think it was necessarily the best way to go about doing it. There's also the little matter of the new swordsage class, who, according to the information on page 16, gets (6 + Int modifier) skill points per level, ×6 at 1st level - unless they're purposefully deviating from the number of skill points a 1st-level character gets, I'm willing to bet that's supposed to be "×4" instead of "×6." (Plus, the sample swordsage on page 20 looks like he only got quadruple skill points at 1st level.)
The maneuvers and stances chapter is really organized a bit weird. These are perhaps best comparable to the spells chapter in the Player's Handbook, so why they decided to break the maneuvers and stances up into 9 different sections, one for each of the martial schools, is beyond me. (It would be like splitting up all of the PH spells into separate lists according to spell school - all abjuration spells, then all conjuration spells, then all divination spells, and so on.) Since there isn't anything along the page margins to indicate which martial school you're reading about, it makes it a bit more difficult than it needs to be to find a particular maneuver. Also, since they went ahead and segregated them by martial school, why was it necessary to add a line directly below the maneuver name specifying what school it belongs to? That's a guaranteed 208 wasted lines right there.
There's also the quality of the stats to worry about. Fortunately, there aren't a whole lot of stat blocks in Tome of Battle - 14, by my count - so their accuracy isn't really that much of a factor in the overall quality of the book as a whole. Unfortunately, quite a few of them had errors in them, a much higher quantity than I would have guessed when I saw Mike Mearls' name listed as the lead developer, as he's struck me as knowing what he's doing. In any case, I recommend making the following changes to the stat blocks in Tome of Battle:
I do worry about some of the material in this book, however. Like I said, I'm not a big fan of all of the flashy, special-effects type of maneuvers that are found in this book, as they seem to me to belong too much in the world of combat videogames and Japanese anime/manga, not D&D. However, the three new classes seem to be pretty well balanced - among themselves, at least. The fact that all of the maneuvers and stances that the classes receive can be used once per encounter is a major change to the way class abilities have generally been in the past. Spellcasters - the ones who in the past have gotten the majority of the "flashy" class abilities - can cast so many spells per day, and then that's it. The fact that crusaders, swordsages, and warblades (and the members of the 8 prestige classes in the book) can get "restock" their cool abilities after every encounter, pretty much free of charge, makes a significant difference in a campaign dealing with PCs of these classes and PCs of other classes. When the wizard is all out of spells and of limited use, the swordsage is still raring to go. This whole "per encounter" concept for class abilities may well be the wave of the future (perhaps this is a sneak peek at what 4th Edition will be like?), but in the meantime, it doesn't seem right throwing these new classes into a campaign where they're playing by one set of rules and everyone else is playing by a different set.
One of the classes also struck me as being much more bookkeeping-intensive than might be worth it. The crusader is different from the other two new core classes in that he allows his deity to decide which maneuvers he has access to at any given time. In play, that means that the player of a crusader PC (or his DM) has to devise a way to randomly determine which maneuvers he has access to each encounter, and as he uses them up (and thus gains access to other maneuvers he knows), randomly determine which ones are the next ones "out of the chute." That seems like too much work, especially when I'm not really seeing the reason behind it. Is it meant to be a balancing mechanism? I just don't get it. The other thing that bugs me about the crusader is the "steely resolve" class ability. It's an interesting concept: the crusader has a "delayed damage pool," so every time he takes damage, it isn't applied directly to his current hit point total, but rather annotated on the side, and applied the following round. This is important, because the amount of damage in his "delayed damage pool" affects the amount of retributive damage he inflicts upon his enemies (the class ability is called "furious counterstrike"). So, the more damage he takes (delayed by one round), the more damage he can dish out. Like I said, it's an interesting concept, but I don't think it's really worth all of the extra bookkeeping; it seems like it's liable to cause much more confusion than it's worth.
So, despite my personal dislike of the book's concept as a whole, I still have to admit that Tome of Battle does do exactly what it sets out to do: provide a whole slew of material allowing you to add wuxia maneuvers to your D&D game. If that's your cup of tea, don't let my dislike of it stop you from getting this book - it's well done, for the most part, and you should get plenty of use out of it. I'll go with a low "4 (Good)," based on the quality of the writing, proofreading, and editing, and the fact that the system the authors developed seems to work well. (I admit to not having actually tried the system for myself.) It's a bit too "out there" for my own personal tastes, but those who are looking for a change may well enjoy it.
By Richard Baker, Matthew Sernett, and Frank Brunner
Wizards of the Coast product number 953787200
$29.95, 160 pages
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Blades isn't going to be a book for everyone - it's really not for me, to tell the truth. Don't get me wrong: it does well what it sets out to do; I'm just not a big fan of what it sets out to do - namely, add wuxia-style combat maneuvers to the core Dungeons and Dragons game. As the sidebar on page 6 states: "Tome of Battle isn't your parents' D&D — it's bigger, bolder, and even more fantastic than before." Got that? It's hip, it's rad, it's jiggy, it's hot, and if you don't like it then there must be something wrong with you, dog!
I guess there's something wrong with me, then. Call me a purist, but I like my fighters to stick to their martial expertise, not suddenly be able to fly supported by a column of superheated air they generated from their bodies (Rising Phoenix, page 55), or be able to walk along walls and ceilings simply because they assumed a certain stance (Dance of the Spider, page 76), or cause their enemies to shriek in fear at the sight of blood spraying from their blades after they hit an opponent (Fountain of Blood, page 87). Those are just three maneuvers I picked pretty much at random, and while they fit in well with the rest of the material in this book, I'm just not a big fan of this sort of thing in my D&D games. Had Tome of Battle been a book in a different game system, I might have liked it a bit better. I guess I just didn't buy the whole premise: that if a "martial adept" - the book's term for a magical fighter who can do a bunch of these maneuvers - practices hard enough, he can align his body and focus his thoughts in such a way to cause a supernatural effect (that works perfectly fine in an antimagic field or dead magic zone). I guess the authors just didn't "sell" the concept to me successfully.
The cover is another compromise between the "make the book look like a magical tome" and the "let's put an action scene on the cover" schools of thought. Eric Polak's painting of a human martial adept charging through the "window" of the book's front cover while wielding two weapons is nicely done - he does a very nice job on the figure, with excellent detail, good shading, and nice use of texture and shading. At first glance I thought he had a five-o'clock shadow, which was a cool touch, but upon further observation it looks like he just has a very close-cropped beard. In any case, it's a nice, simple, but effective piece.
The interior artwork consists of 62 full-color illustrations by 10 different artists. The art is okay for the most part, but much of it felt more "cartoony" than normal for a D&D book (although I suppose that's only fitting, as Tome of Battle goes to great lengths to not be a "typical" D&D book). Kalman Andrasofszky's work, in particular, seems much more suited to d20 Modern/d20 Future books - which is where I normally see his work - than it does here. It's admittedly a very subjective comment to make, and it's hard for me to really put my finger on, but the artwork for the most part just doesn't particularly "feel" right for D&D. But then, perhaps it's just my overall feelings about the book's material creeping in.
In any case, there is still some pretty good artwork in Tome of Battle. I particularly liked Jeff Nentrup's depiction of a elven warblade (one of the three new "martial adept" classes in the book) sensing two invisible enemies on page 63; Jeff takes the "Invisible Woman" (from the Fantastic Four comic books) approach by making the enemies easy for the reader to see while still conveying the sense that the elven warblade cannot actually see them. I also like his stance, as if he's ready to pounce once he gets his full bearings on their location. While I'm not particularly fond of the martial adept that Michael Phillipi depicts on page 83 (goofy hair!), I really like the look of the mummy that he just walloped, and the architecture in the background is suitably detailed and creepy enough to really make the piece work. Henry Lyon has a really nice piece on page 92, where a pair of dwarven adventurers take on a feral minotaur; I especially like the female dwarf in the foreground, as female dwarves tend to be rather difficult to make look convincing, and Henry does a great job on her. I should also point out that the chapter beginnings don't have the monochromatic drawings that most such Wizards of the Coast books have had in the past, but rather half-page paintings that tell a continuous story about the finder of the "nine swords" mentioned in the book's title. That's certainly a neat concept. I also noticed a lot of material from other books thrown into the illustrations with little fanfare - like the illumian on page 131 and the raptorian 44.
Tome of Battle is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: About a page of fiction, a quick primer on some of the terms used in the book, and a sidebar arguing how the material in this book is cool, damnit, and besides, D&D "isn't just about knights and castles and dragons anymore" so you'd better just get used to the idea (disclaimer: that just might be the attitude I'm reading into the material, although the quote is taken verbatim)
- Chapter 1 - Disciples of the Sword: Three new "martial adept" character classes (the Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade), each with a full 20-level progression, all of the wordy descriptions that have usually been associated with prestige classes, and a sample NPC
- Chapter 2 - Skills and Feats: New uses for the Intimidate and Knowledge (local) skills, a new skill (Martial Lore, basically Spellcraft for these new martial maneuvers), 29 new feats, and 9 new tactical feats
- Chapter 3 - Blade Magic: A description of how martial powers work, followed by a rundown of how maneuver and stance descriptions are laid out (kind of odd, since the maneuver and stance descriptions are all in the following chapter)
- Chapter 4 - Maneuvers and Stances: 208 maneuvers and stances broken into 9 different "schools" - Desert Wind has 27, Devoted Spirit has 26, Diamond Mind has 22, Iron Heart has 21, Setting Sun has 20, Shadow Hand has 25, Stone Dragon has 24, Tiger Claw has 23, and White Raven has 20
- Chapter 5 - Prestige Classes: 8 prestige classes - Bloodclaw Master (feral Tiger Claw warrior who takes on bestial characteristics when fighting), Bloodstorm Blade (master of thrown weapons), Deepstone Sentinel (dwarven champion who commands elemental earth), Eternal Blade (elven warrior with a disembodied soul of an ancient elven champion as an advisor), Jade Phoenix Mage (one of 13 constantly-reincarnated souls who keeps an ancient evil imprisoned), Master of Nine (a martial adept who gains access to all nine of the "schools" of martial arts detailed in the book), Ruby Knight Vindicator (sort of an assassin for Wee Jas), and Shadow Sun Ninja (assassin who uses the powers of light and dark)
- Chapter 6 - The Nine Swords: Details on the nine magical swords (with stats done up as in Weapons of Legacy), one for each "school" of martial training detailed in the book
- Chapter 7 - Magic Items: Martial scripts (think of them as scrolls that allow you to use a specific martial maneuver during one encounter), two new weapon special abilities (Aptitude, which allows those with a specific-weapon-focused feat - like Weapon Focus (greatsword) - to use them with this weapon as well, regardless of its actual type; and Martial Discipline Weapon, which grants a +1 to attacks if the wielder knows at least one maneuver from the specified "school" or +3 to attacks if using one of those maneuvers), and 9 wondrous items (all basically the same, although the forms they take are different, one for each of the nine schools)
- Chapter 8 - Nine Swords Monsters: The Naityan Rakshasa (who takes on different forms and gains different maneuvers for each form), Reth Dekala (armored upper torsos with vaporous lower torsos who seek to slay their own living descendants after being cursed by an archdevil), and Valkyrie (Large battle maidens who just really, really like fighting)
The proofreading and editing jobs are both remarkably well done in Tome of Battle, with just a few errors getting past Editing Manager Kim Mohan and Editors Chris Thomasson and Penny Williams. These were for the most part little things like simple typos or wrong words ("spent" instead of "spend," "shadows" instead of "shadow," "your" instead of "you," "spill" instead of "spilled"), a couple of commas in the wrong place (one was in the format "word-space-comma-next word" - which isn't something I see often in Wizards of the Coast books), a couple of spell names not being italicized, and one power being referred to by an incorrect name ("burst of flame" instead of "wyrm's flame" - perhaps the power got renamed?). There were also a couple of oddities like only one of the three new classes having its starting package show up in the Table of Contents (despite their being a good three inches of room at the bottom of that page, so it's not like they were deleted to make room), and all of the "Maneuvers Known," "Maneuvers Readied," and "Stances Known" entries in the prestige class tables being either a "0" or a "1," instead of making them cumulative like in Table 3-2: Experience and Level-Dependent Benefits on page 22 of the Player's Handbook, where you can see at a glance that at 13th level your PC should have 5 feats and 3 ability score increases. That was apparently a conscious decision on their part with the prestige class charts, but I don't think it was necessarily the best way to go about doing it. There's also the little matter of the new swordsage class, who, according to the information on page 16, gets (6 + Int modifier) skill points per level, ×6 at 1st level - unless they're purposefully deviating from the number of skill points a 1st-level character gets, I'm willing to bet that's supposed to be "×4" instead of "×6." (Plus, the sample swordsage on page 20 looks like he only got quadruple skill points at 1st level.)
The maneuvers and stances chapter is really organized a bit weird. These are perhaps best comparable to the spells chapter in the Player's Handbook, so why they decided to break the maneuvers and stances up into 9 different sections, one for each of the martial schools, is beyond me. (It would be like splitting up all of the PH spells into separate lists according to spell school - all abjuration spells, then all conjuration spells, then all divination spells, and so on.) Since there isn't anything along the page margins to indicate which martial school you're reading about, it makes it a bit more difficult than it needs to be to find a particular maneuver. Also, since they went ahead and segregated them by martial school, why was it necessary to add a line directly below the maneuver name specifying what school it belongs to? That's a guaranteed 208 wasted lines right there.
There's also the quality of the stats to worry about. Fortunately, there aren't a whole lot of stat blocks in Tome of Battle - 14, by my count - so their accuracy isn't really that much of a factor in the overall quality of the book as a whole. Unfortunately, quite a few of them had errors in them, a much higher quantity than I would have guessed when I saw Mike Mearls' name listed as the lead developer, as he's struck me as knowing what he's doing. In any case, I recommend making the following changes to the stat blocks in Tome of Battle:
- p. 14, Miros Xavt, Crusader of Erythnul, male human crusader 4: Initiative should be +0, not +4 (+0 Dex, no Improved Initiative feat). As a 4th-level crusader, he should only know 6 maneuvers, not 7. It looks like he spent 24 of 28 skill points, and messed up the armor check penalty to boot - the combined armor check penalty for +1 splint mail (-6) and a heavy steel shield (-2) is -8, not -5. So, if you put 7 skill points into each of the 4 skills he's selected (4 - 1 [Int] + 1 [human] = 4; character level + 3 = 7; so 7 points each into 4 different skills), and apply the correct armor check penalty, you'd get: Balance +7 (-1 in armor), Diplomacy +8, Intimidate +8, Jump +10 (-4 in armor) (because the armor not only causes a -8 armor check penalty, but also a -6 speed penalty when worn). That's my recommendation, in any case; there's never really a "correct" answer when fixing skill point allocation.
- p. 26, Vardalak Axebearer, male dwarf warblade 5: Initiative should be +1, not +4 (+1 Dex). "Speed 20 ft." should be followed by "(4 squares)" for standardization.
- pp. 104-105, Varand Thunderhand, dwarf fighter 2/warblade 5/bloodstorm blade 8: It should specify that he's male. HD should be 15, not 14. "Blood rain" (one of his prestige class abilities) is listed twice under Special Actions.
- p. 108, Kartak the Indomitable, male dwarf fighter 10/deepstone sentinel 3: "Speed 20 ft." should be followed by "(4 squares)" for standardization. +2 keen greataxe damage should be 1d12+11/19-20/×3, not 1d12+11/×3 (the keen property doubles the weapon's threat range). His stat block doesn't indicate which of his maneuvers are readied (most of the other stat blocks use a dagger symbol - "†" - to indicate which maneuvers are readied).
- p. 113, Aedar Windblade, male elf fighter 10/eternal blade 3: His stat block doesn't indicate which of his maneuvers are readied.
- pp. 118-119, Kutar of Ironhame, male human warblade 1/wizard 5/Jade Phoenix mage 4: "Speed 30 ft." should be followed by "(6 squares)" for standardization. Initiator Level (the martial adept's equivalent to Caster Level) should be 7th, not 8th (+1 as WBl1, +2 as Wiz5, +4 as JPM4). He should have 7 feats, not 5 (4 as a 10th-level character, +1 human bonus feat, +2 bonus feats as a Wiz5), and one of the feats he's missing is Scribe Scroll (which he would have gotten with his first level as a wizard). There's no mention as to whether or not he has a familiar; we can assume not since there is no stat block devoted to his familiar, but in such cases it's usually pointed out (and "summon familiar" usually shows up under Special Actions or Special Qualities in the stat block).
- pp. 121-122, Vaunred the Walker, male human swordsage 7/master of nine 3: Senses lists Listen +3, but Skills lists Listen +8 - which is it? (I assume the latter is correct.) Touch AC should be 17, not 16 (+3 Dex, +3 Wis, +1 deflection). He should know 4 stances, not 3 (3 as a SwS7, +1 as a MoN3).
- pp. 125-126, Ereth Nazbek, male human crusader 4/cleric 1/Ruby Knight vindicator 3: Either Atk Options or Special Actions should include "Smite 1/day (+4 to attack, +1 damage)" since Destruction is one of his cleric domains.
- pp. 151-152, Naityan Rakshasa: Bite attacks should be at +11 melee, not +10 (+9 BAB, +3 Str, -2 secondary attack with Multiattack, +1 Weapon Focus).
- p. 154, Reth Dekala: Aura entry should be "vilefire (1d6 acid/fire plus sickened, DC 15) - the type of damage wasn't specified. Are all of its maneuvers readied, and if not, which ones are?
- p. 157, Valkyrie: Slam attacks should be at +18 melee, not +16 (+11 BAB, -1 size, +8 Dex with Weapon Finesse) - since these are not "weapon" attacks, her Two-Weapon Fighting and Improved Two-Weapon Fighting feats shouldn't be players with her slam attacks. "Lighting gaze" (under Special Actions and at the end of her stats) should be "Lightning Gaze" - since the attack consists of shooting bolts of lightning from her eyes. Are all of her maneuvers readied, and if not, which ones are? And, if you'll permit me to go off on a non-stat-block-related tangent for a moment, I really dislike the fact that this book depicts valkyries as having goat legs! What happened to the Nordic battle angels of myth? They kept the ties to Asgard (well, Ysgard), so why the ugly makeover?
I do worry about some of the material in this book, however. Like I said, I'm not a big fan of all of the flashy, special-effects type of maneuvers that are found in this book, as they seem to me to belong too much in the world of combat videogames and Japanese anime/manga, not D&D. However, the three new classes seem to be pretty well balanced - among themselves, at least. The fact that all of the maneuvers and stances that the classes receive can be used once per encounter is a major change to the way class abilities have generally been in the past. Spellcasters - the ones who in the past have gotten the majority of the "flashy" class abilities - can cast so many spells per day, and then that's it. The fact that crusaders, swordsages, and warblades (and the members of the 8 prestige classes in the book) can get "restock" their cool abilities after every encounter, pretty much free of charge, makes a significant difference in a campaign dealing with PCs of these classes and PCs of other classes. When the wizard is all out of spells and of limited use, the swordsage is still raring to go. This whole "per encounter" concept for class abilities may well be the wave of the future (perhaps this is a sneak peek at what 4th Edition will be like?), but in the meantime, it doesn't seem right throwing these new classes into a campaign where they're playing by one set of rules and everyone else is playing by a different set.
One of the classes also struck me as being much more bookkeeping-intensive than might be worth it. The crusader is different from the other two new core classes in that he allows his deity to decide which maneuvers he has access to at any given time. In play, that means that the player of a crusader PC (or his DM) has to devise a way to randomly determine which maneuvers he has access to each encounter, and as he uses them up (and thus gains access to other maneuvers he knows), randomly determine which ones are the next ones "out of the chute." That seems like too much work, especially when I'm not really seeing the reason behind it. Is it meant to be a balancing mechanism? I just don't get it. The other thing that bugs me about the crusader is the "steely resolve" class ability. It's an interesting concept: the crusader has a "delayed damage pool," so every time he takes damage, it isn't applied directly to his current hit point total, but rather annotated on the side, and applied the following round. This is important, because the amount of damage in his "delayed damage pool" affects the amount of retributive damage he inflicts upon his enemies (the class ability is called "furious counterstrike"). So, the more damage he takes (delayed by one round), the more damage he can dish out. Like I said, it's an interesting concept, but I don't think it's really worth all of the extra bookkeeping; it seems like it's liable to cause much more confusion than it's worth.
So, despite my personal dislike of the book's concept as a whole, I still have to admit that Tome of Battle does do exactly what it sets out to do: provide a whole slew of material allowing you to add wuxia maneuvers to your D&D game. If that's your cup of tea, don't let my dislike of it stop you from getting this book - it's well done, for the most part, and you should get plenty of use out of it. I'll go with a low "4 (Good)," based on the quality of the writing, proofreading, and editing, and the fact that the system the authors developed seems to work well. (I admit to not having actually tried the system for myself.) It's a bit too "out there" for my own personal tastes, but those who are looking for a change may well enjoy it.
