D&D 3E/3.5 What do you ban? (3.5)

[ProfessorCirno]

I'm not even the first or even remotely most prestigious person to notice that. That was the great insight of Bruce Li and much of the impulse behind his Jeet Kune Do innovations. But as much as the magical thinking about stances, forms, and manuevers pervades eastern hand to hand arts, it's at least as bad and if not worse in descriptions of eastern sword technique. I'm not saying that there isn't something in there, but the formalizations of it are highly misleading and lead to something like... well Wuxia and Tome of Battle.

Show me how.

Western martial arts give entirely different descriptions of what happens within a combat. When you learn to fence or box, for example, you learn a basic fighting stance (or sometimes stances), but you don't learn 'forms' like you do in typical eastern schools. You learn about engagement, beats, timing, and so forth. Stances and manuevers is combat as envisioned by Mighty Morphing Power rangers or such, where you formally enter a stance and from there you can now do some secret technique which is then expended after its use. Combat in the Western mind is a series of ever flowing engagements where each defense is the beginning of the next attack. You may shift through some stances, but that's not what its all about.

First off, that's not even how Tome of Battle works.

Secondly, that's not how eastern fighting styles works.

So thirdly, I have no idea where you're coming from on this.

Though I don't play them, I'm told there are some European swordsmanship RPG's out there that do a good job of capturing the feel of parry riposte etc. I presume that they involve both sides of the fight secretly preparing a type of strike and/or defense, and then comparing the two and the weapons involved to determine advantage and more or less literally modelling the fight blow for blow. But I gaurantee that if they are doing a good job, they won't have a character meditating to prepare before the combat a limited set of manuevers that he is then limited to during the encounter. You know what that is? It's not Western swordsmanship; it's Vancian spellcasting.

Ok, so you dislike the swordsage. But there's two other classes in Tome of Battle that don't meditate before going to fight. The swordsage was built off the monk - he's meant to be the mystic swordfighter. But the other two? You've yet to show how the Warblade is in any way magic - or "eastern."

 

[Dandu]

Show me how.

If you were referring to

But as much as the magical thinking about stances, forms, and manuevers pervades eastern hand to hand arts, it's at least as bad and if not worse in descriptions of eastern sword technique.

I'd like to point out that there's a lot of belief in "qi" and other forms of spiritual power and energy in Asian martial arts that doesn't seem to have an exact counterpart in the West.

However, not everyone who practiced martial arts necessarily bought into that. For example, Qi Jiguang (article here), a general of the Ming dynasty, wrote on military techniques including both armed unarmed combat but eschewed any spiritual components.

 

[Borthos]

I'm giving Europe full credit! I think Eastern Martial arts are far inferior to those in the West because the eastern martial arts are far less scientific and usually, even when they are functional and effective, are far more prone to giving magical and sometimes misleading descriptions to what actually happens in a fight.

Uh, what? How are Eastern MA "less scientific?" If anything they're more scientific because they've had longer to study the human body and learn how to break it than most other forms of Martial Arts. Examples: Muay Thai, Wushu, Tai Chi, Wing Chun, etc. And no they are not "misleading" descriptions about what happens in a fight. My good friend General teaches Tai Chi, has studied (but not mastered or become teacher of) San Shou, various Kung Fu disciplines, and just a little bit of judo, and he researches the history and mysticism behind Eastern MA in general. He could write a thesis on this if he wanted to, and nothing is more misleading than martial arts movies. Eastern MA are all about killing as quickly as possible (with the exception of Judo, afaik), or at least maiming them so bad they will not fight back again. It's the discipline and the spiritual teaching behind them that you say is "misleading" when it really isn't.

Western martial arts give entirely different descriptions of what happens within a combat. When you learn to fence or box, for example, you learn a basic fighting stance (or sometimes stances), but you don't learn 'forms' like you do in typical eastern schools. You learn about engagement, beats, timing, and so forth. Stances and manuevers is combat as envisioned by Mighty Morphing Power rangers or such, where you formally enter a stance and from there you can now do some secret technique which is then expended after its use. Combat in the Western mind is a series of ever flowing engagements where each defense is the beginning of the next attack. You may shift through some stances, but that's not what its all about.

Though I don't play them, I'm told there are some European swordsmanship RPG's out there that do a good job of capturing the feel of parry riposte etc. I presume that they involve both sides of the fight secretly preparing a type of strike and/or defense, and then comparing the two and the weapons involved to determine advantage and more or less literally modelling the fight blow for blow. But I gaurantee that if they are doing a good job, they won't have a character meditating to prepare before the combat a limited set of manuevers that he is then limited to during the encounter. You know what that is? It's not Western swordsmanship; it's Vancian spellcasting.

If you don't mind, can you list the Euro Swordsmanship RPGs? Not that I don't believe you, I'm just curious in what they might be. Thank you.

I agree with what ProfessorCirno noted in response to JamesonCourage that not all of the ToB was based on Eastern MA. And also agree with him that the example you use to compare the ToB to is completely incorrect and misleading.

And, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't quite a bit of fencing learning specific actions to take in response to an attack and aren't those taught by standing a certain way to anticipate an attack? Maneuvers (counters) and stances work pretty much like that.

 

[Celebrim]

Show me how.

First off, that's not even how Tome of Battle works.

Secondly, that's not how eastern fighting styles works.

So thirdly, I have no idea where you're coming from on this.

No, you don't. And, I'm not going to be responcible for your education. There is too much to teach. But you can start by going into a classical (eastern) martial arts class for a few weeks, and then going into a good Jeet Kune Do class for a weeks and comparing the two. Then, go to a fencing or boxing class for a few weeks to see where the difference between the two comes from.

You've yet to show how the Warblade is in any way magic - or "eastern."

Yes, I have, you just aren't listening. But to begin with, this is bigger topic than in the part you were quoting. All I was trying to do was point to the Vancian parallel between the Warblades manuevers and spells:

"You can ready all three of the maneuvers you know at 1st level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you must choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready your maneuvers by exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to exercise again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in practice, you can change your readied maneuvers."

That's from the Warblade, not the Swordsage. And that, colored how you like it, is magic. Then also, consider yet this other magical parallel:

"Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered warblade level after that (6th, 8th, 10th, and so on), you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place of one you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe your restriction on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the old maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. For example, upon reaching 10th level, you could trade in a single 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- or 4th-level maneuver for a maneuver of 5th level or lower, as long as you meet the prerequisite of the new maneuver. You can swap only a single maneuver at any given level."

Now, you can try to color that as non-magical, but doing so produces wierd unrealisms that you have to pointedly ignore - like master swordsman somehow forgetting how to perform their more basic techniques. Even the whole idea of 'levelling up' your manuevers by replacing more basic techniques with more advanced and more effective ones is magical and well, therefore, eastern. I mean, if you get away from late 19th century or early 20th century Eastern martial arts like akaido, shoot fighting, taikwando, judo, etc. that have been influenced by Western thinking, you find pretty much all of them are magical systems. For example, do some research on the history of the Boxer Rebellion.

The Warblade might as well be called a Swordmage. I don't know why you mentioned "Iron Heart Surge" as contriversial; is it just because its good and addresses a real fighter need? I don't know, but it doesn't seem magical to me. It's not hard though to find examples nearby even under the lower level spells. For example, "Exorcism of Steel" is described as: "You attack, striking not your foe, but his weapon, sending a shockwave up his arm that leaves him unable to strike with full force." Now, you don't have to have had much martial arts experience to recognize that description - that's Chi. And the whole name 'Exorcism of Steel' is a description harking to a magical rite.

Look, I'm not going to go into this in as much depth as I have in the past, because I know you don't want to be educated. So why should I bother?

 

[Celebrim]

IDiamond Mind is painfully obviously Fencing: the School.

I found the style to have just more in common with Iaidō and other Japanese martial arts, in particular its emphasis on concentration as a 'god skill' that substitutes for all other skills and techniques like "Hear the Wind" don't strike me as rooted in Western fencing technique.

It's more Zatoichi style than Cyrano de Bergerac.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

So you're complaint is that Tome of Battle uses an abstraction for narrative, as opposed to the abstraction for narrative that is the full attack.

Um.

Also, your example is someone hitting the other guy's weapon to weaken his arm. There's nothing mystical about that.

You keep ranting about how I don't want to be educated, but you've yet to say anything educational. Dude, I made a full post about western martial art styles. All you've done so far is complain that ToB uses an abstract (like everything else in D&D is)

 

[Dandu]

Eastern MA are all about killing as quickly as possible (with the exception of Judo, afaik), or at least maiming them so bad they will not fight back again.

... Tai Chi, and many others do not have that as the objective.

 

[Borthos]

No, you don't. And, I'm not going to be responcible for your education. There is too much to teach. But you can start by going into a classical (eastern) martial arts class for a few weeks, and then going into a good Jeet Kune Do class for a weeks and comparing the two. Then, go to a fencing or boxing class for a few weeks to see where the difference between the two comes from.



"You can ready all three of the maneuvers you know at 1st level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you must choose which maneuvers to ready. You ready your maneuvers by exercising for 5 minutes. The maneuvers you choose remain readied until you decide to exercise again and change them. You need not sleep or rest for any long period of time to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes in practice, you can change your readied maneuvers."

That's from the Warblade, not the Swordsage. And that, colored how you like it, is magic. Then also, consider yet this other magical parallel:

"Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered warblade level after that (6th, 8th, 10th, and so on), you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place of one you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe your restriction on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the old maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. For example, upon reaching 10th level, you could trade in a single 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- or 4th-level maneuver for a maneuver of 5th level or lower, as long as you meet the prerequisite of the new maneuver. You can swap only a single maneuver at any given level."

Now, you can try to color that as non-magical, but doing so produces wierd unrealisms that you have to pointedly ignore - like master swordsman somehow forgetting how to perform their more basic techniques. Even the whole idea of 'levelling up' your manuevers by replacing more basic techniques with more advanced and more effective ones is magical and well, therefore, eastern. I mean, if you get away from late 19th century or early 20th century Eastern martial arts like akaido, shoot fighting, taikwando, judo, etc. that have been influenced by Western thinking, you find pretty much all of them are magical systems. For example, do some research on the history of the Boxer Rebellion.

The Warblade might as well be called a Swordmage. I don't know why you mentioned "Iron Heart Surge" as contriversial; is it just because its good and addresses a real fighter need? I don't know, but it doesn't seem magical to me. It's not hard though to find examples nearby even under the lower level spells. For example, "Exorcism of Steel" is described as: "You attack, striking not your foe, but his weapon, sending a shockwave up his arm that leaves him unable to strike with full force." Now, you don't have to have had much martial arts experience to recognize that description - that's Chi. And the whole name 'Exorcism of Steel' is a description harking to a magical rite.

It's Aikido, btw.

Dude the Boxers were crazy. They thought guns couldn't hurt them. If that's not crazy, I don't know what is. Those people were extremists when it comes to the philosophies behind their martial arts.

I still don't understand where your line of "pretty much all of them were magical systems" comes from. Chi is not magic, chi is the energy flowing within all creatures. That's the philosophy in it's most basic form. It's more nature thing than magic.

And Dandu, in the beginning of Tai Chi, there were two facets: the warring martial arts and the meditative part. a chinese general asked the foremost Tai Chi master of the time long ago to teach his army Tai Chi because he knew it was a powerful art. The Tai Chi master told him he would, but he did not tell the general he was going to teach the meditative art. The warring art of Tai Chi is mostly lost.

 

[Dandu]

That's from the Warblade, not the Swordsage. And that, colored how you like it, is magic. Then also, consider yet this other magical parallel:

"Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered warblade level after that (6th, 8th, 10th, and so on), you can choose to learn a new maneuver in place of one you already know. In effect, you lose the old maneuver in exchange for the new one. You can choose a new maneuver of any level you like, as long as you observe your restriction on the highest-level maneuvers you know; you need not replace the old maneuver with a maneuver of the same level. For example, upon reaching 10th level, you could trade in a single 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- or 4th-level maneuver for a maneuver of 5th level or lower, as long as you meet the prerequisite of the new maneuver. You can swap only a single maneuver at any given level."

Now, you can try to color that as non-magical, but doing so produces wierd unrealisms that you have to pointedly ignore - like master swordsman somehow forgetting how to perform their more basic techniques. Even the whole idea of 'levelling up' your manuevers by replacing more basic techniques with more advanced and more effective ones is magical and well, therefore, eastern.

You know there are retraining rules in the PHB2, right?

And Dandu, in the beginning of Tai Chi, there were two facets: the warring martial arts and the meditative part. a chinese general asked the foremost Tai Chi master of the time long ago to teach his army Tai Chi because he knew it was a powerful art. The Tai Chi master told him he would, but he did not tell the general he was going to teach the meditative art. The warring art of Tai Chi is mostly lost.

This is no on Wikipedia so I do not believe it.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'm a fencer. I've trained with the Penn State team. I've studied under fencers that won Olympic medals. I'm also familiar with SCA martial arts, though granted not to the same extent with a longsword as I am with a foil.

I'm giving Europe full credit! I think Eastern Martial arts are far inferior to those in the West because the eastern martial arts are far less scientific and usually, even when they are functional and effective, are far more prone to giving magical and sometimes misleading descriptions to what actually happens in a fight.

Wow, you're seriously criticizing the practicality of eastern MA while talking about your familiarity with fencing? I did fencing for a year in college, nothing much, but learned the basics. I remember my first time practicing a match with someone. He lunged forward with his foil, I did a slight step back and evade and simultaneously thrust my foil forward to take advantage of him overextending himself. Except I didn't get a point, because he had "right of way" and i was on defense, so it didn't count. Cause in an actual swordfight, getting stabbed in the chest totally doesn't hurt if you were ramming your body straight into it at the time, right? I knew practically nothing about fencing at that point, but you don't need much expertise to spot bs. Epee is much better at being practical, but you happened to mention foil.

I'm not even the first or even remotely most prestigious person to notice that. That was the great insight of Bruce Lee and much of the impulse behind his Jeet Kune Do innovations. But as much as the magical thinking about stances, forms, and manuevers pervades eastern hand to hand arts, it's at least as bad and if not worse in descriptions of eastern sword technique. I'm not saying that there isn't something in there, but the formalizations of it are highly misleading and lead to something like... well Wuxia and Tome of Battle.

Reference? If he did say something like that, he could have still meant it differently or far less broadly than you're trying to claim.

Western martial arts give entirely different descriptions of what happens within a combat. When you learn to fence or box, for example, you learn a basic fighting stance (or sometimes stances), but you don't learn 'forms' like you do in typical eastern schools. You learn about engagement, beats, timing, and so forth. Stances and manuevers is combat as envisioned by Mighty Morphing Power rangers or such, where you formally enter a stance and from there you can now do some secret technique which is then expended after its use. Combat in the Western mind is a series of ever flowing engagements where each defense is the beginning of the next attack. You may shift through some stances, but that's not what its all about.

You need to take your Hong Kong action flicks less seriously. That's a really gross generalization of Eastern MA that's either grand exaggeration or wholly incorrect, depending on the particular MA you're talking about. My friend took Kempo and showed me some of the kata he was learning, I thought it was kind of silly at first. Then he had me attack him different ways and showed me how they were used to defend and counter common attacks and ultimately were used to teach muscle memory and they made a lot more sense to me.

Though I don't play them, I'm told there are some European swordsmanship RPG's out there that do a good job of capturing the feel of parry riposte etc. I presume that they involve both sides of the fight secretly preparing a type of strike and/or defense, and then comparing the two and the weapons involved to determine advantage and more or less literally modelling the fight blow for blow. But I gaurantee that if they are doing a good job, they won't have a character meditating to prepare before the combat a limited set of manuevers that he is then limited to during the encounter. You know what that is? It's not Western swordsmanship; it's Vancian spellcasting.

It's no more Eastern MA than Western. And there's nothing abnormal about meditating before going into combat. The whole maneuvers system, again, is the fantasy aspect. Call it Vancian spellcasting if you want, it's a logical extension of real life for a fantasy game, to meditate to gain special combat techinques, just like a bard using music to produce supernatural effects.