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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5444104" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok.  I don't think that a barren naked appeal to authority like that is even remotely a logical point, but oh well.  You can believe whatever you like; nonetheless, my rules - valid or invalid - and the reasoning behind them aren't going to change on account of that ... argument... such as it is.  No one is asking you to play at my table.But really, this a silly argument.  The chapter of 'Book of Nine Swords' that introduces the mechanics we are talking about is called 'Blade Magic'.  While not every 'Blade Magic' is explicitly supernatural, there is no attempt in the book to divorse and separate the merely superheroic from the supernatural.  It's not even a big concern of the writers, and the chapter explicitly says, "The process of initiating a manuever is similar to casting a spell or preparing a psionic discipline" as well as comparing manuevers to spells in many other ways.  I'm not the one forcing an interpretation on the text.  Mine is the most natural interpretation not only of the fluff surrounding the manuevers, but in many cases of the actual mechanics themselves.  With some straining, heaving, and deliberate looking away or winking, you can pretend that for a few schools this is a system of mundane combat, but that is the forced interpretation of the text.Afterall, even someone learning the Iron Heart school is still called an adept.Much as its 4e successor, ToB:Bo9S makes little attempt to even bother explaining the system as something existing in game world.  Whenever some question about why the rules work as they do arises, the writer simply explains it openly in terms of game balance and interest.  Simulationist concerns like, "How does real fencing work?" are pretty far from the minds of the writers.  This is not an attempt at realism.  This is an attempt to put fighters on the same level as spellcasters by making fighters effectively spellcasters, not in the sense of actually casting spells in game because again in game isn't a huge consideration of the writers but in the sense of having the same sorts of mechanical gamist resources and constraints, and is only one step short (and a pretty small one) from the 4e step of simply giving all classes a common mechanic.And what's really silly about this is that at some level, I don't care about most of the things you are arguing about and many of the reasons why you seem to be arguing against me I actually agree with you on.  Attacks like, "You just don't want fighters to get good stuff" are so incredibly misplaced.  I'm honestly not sure that my fighter isn't as or more powerful than a Warblade.  In some ways I find the manuevers too restrained.  I assume that in my universe, magic is physics, so really nothing in game isn't magic and I have a feat designed for martial characters (since it scales with BAB) that for example lets a character channel power into any weapon he holds (or even his unarmed attack) and turn it magical weapon.  I just don't like the manuever system's in game flavor, which is eastern, gamist, and unnecessarily blurs the divide between spellcasters and non-spellcasters.  When I look to balance a feat, it typically isn't with availability per unit of time and with a few exceptions I tend to reject any feat that begins, "Once per day..." and pretty much all that say, "Once per encounter...".  I also tend to see manuevers as something available to anyone, and the purpose of the feat is to make you better in them.  For example, I loath feats that imply that there is something so obvious a 5 year old can do to another five year old, that you can't do with out the feat (like say, throw an enemy that you are grappled with).  So, if the thing is mundane, I tend to assume that it must scale in kind and not depart from type - and if it does it probably isnt' mundane.  Sometimes that rule is obvious (you create fire) sometimes its not so obvious (you deal constitution damage rather than hit point damage).  That's why 'Ambush Feats' (being quite far from Bo9S) get rewritten - I don't like the realism of doing less abstract damage to do more concrete damage.   Surely damage that does more concrete damage also must do more abstract damage if abstract damage has any in game meaning at all?It isn't like I'm just picking on ToB:Bo9S for completely arbitrary reasons.  The reasons I dislike it extend to a wide range of things, from retraining feats to well, I've just listed a bunch.  So, yeah, I think I have coherent, thoughtful, valid reasons.  You don't like them, then tough.</blockquote>

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