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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5895024" data-attributes="member: 52073">No, it's not "just because the mechanics say so," it's because some people want martial exploits to be metagame mechanics.  You don't have to have magic with names and martial stuff without; take a look at Wheel of Time, where the master swordsmen have evocative names for all their maneuvers (Heron Wading Through the Rushes, Parting the Silk, and such) while the channelers weave elements together to achieve what they want and only a few very powerful effects have specific names.As long as you treat mechanics as having some actual manifestation in-game, it doesn't matter whether you call something magic "the fireball spell" or "a spell to make a large explosion of flame" or whether you call a maneuver "the Whirlwind Attack maneuver" or "that thing you do where you swing your sword around and hit everyone around you."  They can be equally arbitrary or equally non-arbitrary.  That doesn't happen, however, if you treat one or the other as purely a metagame construct.The crusader was better at that, but the warblade does it fairly well too.  And in a system where the rogue can flank someone with no facing and hit some undefined "weak spot" for massive damage, that does a pretty good job of mimicking the ebb and flow of combat without getting into annoying fiddly bits.It comes down to level of abstraction and edge cases, really.  Evasion is a good example: the flavor matches the mechanic well, and it works most of the time, but you have the edge cases of "rogue vs. fireball in 20-foot wide room" and "rogue can't actually move out of area but is fine."  The fact that when pressed the mechanic doesn't make as much sense doesn't mean it doesn't work in most cases.  On the other hand, you have a mechanic like 3e Diplomacy that doesn't work well: at a certain point, you can just talk to someone for 6 seconds and they become your devoted follower.  Even without any edge cases, the flavor (excellent negotiator) isn't really close to the mechanic (automatic mind control).The ToB maneuvers are similar.  They work well most of the time, with the occasional edge case that pulls you out of things just like Evasion can.  I want to stress again that ToB is not my ideal implementation of martial maneuvers either; it just happens to be a common reference point that lends itself well to better WSoD, strikes a good balance between immersion and playability, and is a good starting point to be improved upon.Funny thing is, that actually argues for the 3e (or 4e Essentials) way of doing things. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> An AoO-spec fighter in 3e, and presumably a Slayer in 4e, can use everything he has on any attack, whether a normal attack or an AoO, and sometimes even has extra benefits on an AoO.  So getting 2 AoOs is essentially the same as having 2 more attacks on your turn (with the exception that they're triggered, of course; "I can definitely kill all 4" and "I can definitely kill 2, then I can kill the others if I'm positioned right" have different tactical implications).In contrast, a 4e fighter's AoOs are likely not good as his exploits damage-wise, even with Combat Superiority and Heavy Blade Opportunity.  The extra [W]s and riders can make a big difference, so "daily exploit that hits 2 people" and "make an AoO against 2 people" aren't the same thing.</blockquote>

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