Class and Level Geekery VIII (spoilers ahoy!)

[rgrekejin]

To be fair, Tarquin's knowledge of "obscure" combat techniques has been lampshaded in the comic on several occasions. If any major character in OoTS is going to have Martial Adept levels, Tarquin is the most probable candidate.

I think that the quote about "obscure" combat techniques is kind of a weak justification for theories about Tarquin having martial adept levels, given that at the time it was said, it was referring to something (pun-dueling) which is clearly not something levels in a martial adept class are gonna help with. Now, I know that you're not really making the argument that "Tarquin said he knows obscure things, he MUST have martial adept levels, it all makes too much sense not to!", so I'm not going to pretend to have rebutted an argument that was never made, but, to me, the transition from "obscure combat techniques" to "martial adept" is too much of a reach without additional evidence.

Again, to be fair, mechanic-wise all things in D&D were invented for D&D.

Well, mechanics-wise, of course. The real world does not work on DnD mechanics. But the point I was making is that, if a ninja appeared in the comic, even people who don't know anything about the rules for DnD ninjas would have a fairly accurate understanding of what it could do, because hey, it's a ninja. They're fairly self-explanatory. If a samurai or a knight or a healer or some pirate class or something appears, people instantly recognize it and have a rough approximation of what it can do based on their knowledge of it from other media. But if a Blood Magus or a Green Star Adept or an Illithid Slayer, or, you know, a Swordsage, show up, a lot of people would understandably be confused by an obscure class that appears nowhere else in fiction save for the pages of DnD-related materials.

Personally, I would love to see Tarquin have adept levels. But not before the Fighter and other core melee classes have been completely wrought dry for combat capability.

I admit that I myself am not a huge fan of the Tome of Battle, and I really hope that Tarquin's abilities do not draw from it, especially since, as you illustrated, there's a lot of capacity for awesomeness in regular martial classes.