[3.5] making a higher-tier ToB martial class?

[gomipile]

I love Tome of Battle, but it always bothered me that there wasn't a base class which could learn new maneuvers without leveling up.

What if we made a "wizard-like" or "erudite-like" ToB class, whose main shtick is the ability to learn new maneuvers from martial scripts and directly from other martial adepts. Could we push this into at least low tier-2 using only the maneuvers in ToB?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Probably not. Pretty much all of the ToB maneuvers are about killing things in combat. A well-made warblade, say, has enough maneuvers to be incredibly lethal in combat, but I don't know of any combination that approaches the sheer game-breakingness of high level spells.

[Yitzi]

The ability you describe will do nothing to move into tier 2; it would, however, move tier 2 into tier 1.

To get to tier 2, you'd want the ability to warp reality in an open-ended manner...perhaps an extension of the Falling Anvil discipline that someone posted would do the trick.

[Larkas]

I recommend you read Yitzi's thread in its entirety. I read it yesterday and it was very informative!

Citing Yitzi himself:

With the discussion here, I've figured out why it is not: "Martial" is essentially a role description, and the whole idea of tier 1 is that it has no particular role. So "martial tier 1" is as much an oxymoron as "debuffer tier 1" or "combat control tier 1", even if some tier 1s tend to use debuffs or combat control.

Essentially, "martial" says what the class does, while "magical" says how it does it. In order to be tier 1, the class can only be characterized by how it does it (not what it does), and that has to be "black box" enough to cover pretty much anything, which essentially means magic or magic by another name, or an artificer-sort.

That's something I hadn't realized myself until I read it. You can't really move a purely martial class past T3 because, well, it is a martial class, not a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-some/all class.

Indeed, I think all the tiering system is flawed in its use of words. I think T3 should be T1 and T1/T2 should be renamed something, such as Overpowered 1/2. There are two measures there, using the same naming convention just makes things more confusing

THAT SAID, I'd really like to see the bard getting pushed to T2, maybe even T1. It is a jack-of-all-trades, after all, albeit master-of-none. Could a class that is best at nothing, though fairly good at everything, still make T1 material? Hmmmm... That's something I'd like to see

[Grod_The_Giant]

THAT SAID, I'd really like to see the bard getting pushed to T2, maybe even T1. It is a jack-of-all-trades, after all, albeit master-of-none. Could a class that is best at nothing, though fairly good at everything, still make T1 material? Hmmmm... That's something I'd like to see

I don't think so... the definition of a T1 is that it is the best at everything.

[Larkas]

Aw, shucks... But one question, T1 are Wizard, Cleric and Druid, right? How do you compare one against the others?

[Lateral]

Aw, shucks... But one question, T1 are Wizard, Cleric and Druid, right? How do you compare one against the others?

They all have advantages and disadvantages, and it really depends on the optimization level and what resources are available. That's kind of why they're tiers, rather than a class order.

[Larkas]

Ooooh, got it. Indeed, they are somewhat unique classes in regard to each other. The bard would only be infringing in some other classe's turf if it was to get stronger