Your opinon on Tome of Battle

[Sith_Happens]

I have yet to properly learn how tome of battle works.

I mean I just learned how Wizards work, and ive been playing this game for almost 4 years now.

Tome of Battle is next on my list.

From what I know if it, its basically giving melee classes spells, but calling them "maneuvers" and the maneuvers give them basically super powers.

And theres a whole bunch of them and iron heart surge is apparently like the wish of maneuvers since it seems to do a whole bunch of stuff.

Yes and no. They're definitely organized and formatted the same way as spells, and the way you learn and use them is kinda sorta the same if you squint hard, but the overall "feel" is definitely different.

[Aquillion]

And theres a whole bunch of them and iron heart surge is apparently like the wish of maneuvers since it seems to do a whole bunch of stuff.

What Iron Heart Surge actually does is "remove a negative effect affecting you with a duration of one or more rounds."

The people who say it can do anything are mostly joking about using a silly idea of what fits that definition. It's not really a broken ability -- most DMs will have no problem figuring out what it's supposed to work on and what it isn't. Things like "I Iron Heart Surge away the effect of gravity!" are mostly in the line of "use a bucket to stop from bleeding to death", ie amusing ways of playing around with the wording, but not something that would ever come up in a remotely serious game.

(The only really unclear part is using it to break area-effect debuffs, which is technically acceptable under the wording but could sometimes yield really weird results. Even then, though, it's not as though "curse covering an entire city" comes up very often.)

[Aquillion]

I don't really see what you're missing here. Improved unarmed strike is an ability fully capable of being part of a progression. Also, if we're going to play the "It would say this" game, then if what you're saying were true, then the entry would say that it grants the monk's unarmed damage progression, instead of the unarmed strike progression.

I think you mean something different from "progression" than what they do.

Obviously, you can call BAB or Monk Unarmed Strike a progression (in that it 'progressively' gets better with every level.)

But I think what they mean by progression is something where each level you take gives you a greater benefit than the one before it, the way wizard spells do. BAB (and, for the most part, Monk unarmed strike damage) are not really good examples there. In fact, Monks are a fairly frontloaded class; their later levels give you less than earlier ones. In most games, Quivering Palm, Timeless Body, Diamond Body, and Tongue of the Sun and Moon are barely more than flavor abilities, say. Abundant Step is a bit better, but for the most part -- the monk's later abilities wouldn't be out of place within the first few levels of most other classes.

Likewise, the Monk's damage progression adds +1 average damage per hit every four levels early on, and +1.5 later on. That doesn't make later levels substantially more valuable than earlier ones. You get more attacks, but so does every other martial class (Flurry of Blows doesn't make up for your decreased BAB when you consider the fact that 3/4th BAB gives you both fewer attacks and lower accuracy.) Movement and AC scale linearly in the same fashion.

This means that there's never really any reason to keep taking Monk levels. It can occasionally be useful as a dip, but the game's better classes get more when going from level 16 -> 17 than they did going from level 2->3; the Monk, honestly, does not, and this is at the core of why it is so weak.

(All core martial classes have similar problems, of course; but Monks have it worse because they lack options that are easily 'exploitable' in a build designed to bring out progressive / exponential growth, the way a rogue's sneak attack or even a fighter's bonus feats can -- eg. fighters may not explode normally, but if you follow the line of feats intended to boost Power Attack, each one is going to be worth more than the one before because of how they stack; likewise, Trip builds are considered worthwhile because their benefits stack in a multiplicative fashion. Monks abilities don't stack usefully like that, and they lack easy access to anything that does.)

[DarkSonic1337]

Just because it's weak does not mean it can't be a progression .

What you're describing is exponential growth, which is one type of progression (and a very good one for game design imo). But growth can be marginal and linear and still be a progression. It can even have highly inconsistent intervals, but if each step represents growth then it is still a progression.

[mangosta71]

I'm going to be unpopular and say that I hate and usually ban Tome of Battle. I get that it puts melee on a better footing but it invalidates all the core melee classes in my mind as well so much so that if I allow it i feel like I have to go and ban core melee classes instead. I think it would have served much better as the basis for 4th edition instead of the disappointing offering we got from Wizards.

Should I assume from this that you ban druid, cleric, and wizard because they invalidate the core melee classes (and a hell of a lot harder than the ToB does, at that)?

I have yet to properly learn how tome of battle works.

I mean I just learned how Wizards work, and ive been playing this game for almost 4 years now.

Tome of Battle is next on my list.

From what I know if it, its basically giving melee classes spells, but calling them "maneuvers" and the maneuvers give them basically super powers.

And theres a whole bunch of them and iron heart surge is apparently like the wish of maneuvers since it seems to do a whole bunch of stuff.

You'll probably find ToB a lot easier to get a handle on than the tier 1 casters. There aren't nearly as many maneuvers as there are spells, maneuvers are generally more balanced so that there isn't one maneuver of any level that's just better than every other maneuver of the same level, you won't find a maneuver that flat out breaks the game... ToB classes are also more like sorcerers/psions in that you'll only ever know a handful of maneuvers, which you can easily write down on your character sheet in a short list rather than having to pore through thousands of pages scattered throughout dozens of splatbooks like a tier 1 caster trying to prepare his daily spells.

[Rubik]

Core melee was invalidated BEFORE The Tome Of Battle came out.

Yeah. By other Core classes, no less.

[Flickerdart]

From what I know if it, its basically giving melee classes spells, but calling them "maneuvers" and the maneuvers give them basically super powers.

They're not really super powers. Well, Desert Wind is explicitly suprnatural, but a lot of them are just things like "attack with both weapons you're holding as a standard action" or "you get +2d6 Sneak Attack" or "enemies attacking someone that isn't you take -2 on their attack roll." Neat little tactical options.

[Rubik]

Oh, and the discussion on unarmed strikes that the mods said to stop having?

Not a good idea to continue having.

[EisenKreutzer]

Tome of Battle really changed D&D for me, in a very positive way. I felt like it added a piece that had been missing since I first started playing D&D, and I really, really love the book, warts and all. I only learned that the book even existed less than a year ago, since I had been away from D&D for years. I've migrated to Pathfinder, and I can't wait to get my hands on Path of War!

The fact that it invalidates the core melee classes is not a problem for me. In fact I'm glad they do, because the core melee classes are terrible IMO. 3.5 Fighter and Monk are very disappointing classes to me, since they fail to live up to the expectations I have when I make character concepts for them. When I roll a Monk, I want to play a mystical martial arts badass, but what I end up with is simply terrible. Same thing with Fighter; he's supposed to be a sword-wielding badass who make his enemies tremble in their boots, but he's just a wet blanket.
ToB was a game changer for me, and it opened up my eyes to how awesome swinging a sword around can be.

[eggynack]

Oh, and the discussion on unarmed strikes that the mods said to stop having?

Not a good idea to continue having.

I'm actually a bit unclear on whether that applied to the mostly irrelevant progression discussion, or only to the completely irrelevant proficiency discussion, especially as Aquillion found that post in this thread, rather than in the new thread made for the off topic stuff. With that in mind...

@Aquillion: That doesn't even make sense. Progressions are more likely to be gradual than not-gradual, if you look at the definition, and they're perfectly capable of being not-gradual in either direction, or even in no direction (sloping up in power level, before sloping down). We're not talking about how we personally think about progressions here, but about what the actual definition is within the context of the game, because it's the game itself talking about unarmed strike progression. The only question is what elements constitute a part of that progression.

[aleucard]

Should I assume from this that you ban druid, cleric, and wizard because they invalidate the core melee classes (and a hell of a lot harder than the ToB does, at that)?

It's not so much that they invalidate them that they are a specific, direct, objective upgrade to those classes, which as a function invalidates them and large portions of their design along with them. Most T1's can do similar, quite easily in fact, but they do so in more subtle/indirect ways, and most of the direct and a few of the indirect are neutralized if the players are asked to play to their archetype, whatever the Hell THAT means. To put it in a hypothetical manner, knife enthusiasts primarily get into conflict with sword enthusiasts for both being melee weapons and people claiming swords as better weapons than knives, despite them having a better cause to argue such with gun enthusiasts, but that's ignored because no sanely-designed gun is primarily a melee weapon and thus part of a separate category. This breaks down quickly, but that's mainly because I was using the comparative power as characters as a gauge for which stand-ins I was using, and that's more personal opinion.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Saying Tome of Battle is what finally invalidated core melee classes is like saying that Sword Art Online was good until the Fairy Dance arc. It wasn't, it was just less obvious and people are willing to pretend ToB/Fairy Dance doesn't exist to go back to that blissful ignorance.

[georgie_leech]

It's not so much that they invalidate them that they are a specific, direct, objective upgrade to those classes, which as a function invalidates them and large portions of their design along with them. Most T1's can do similar, quite easily in fact, but they do so in more subtle/indirect ways, and most of the direct and a few of the indirect are neutralized if the players are asked to play to their archetype, whatever the Hell THAT means. To put it in a hypothetical manner, knife enthusiasts primarily get into conflict with sword enthusiasts for both being melee weapons and people claiming swords as better weapons than knives, despite them having a better cause to argue such with gun enthusiasts, but that's ignored because no sanely-designed gun is primarily a melee weapon and thus part of a separate category. This breaks down quickly, but that's mainly because I was using the comparative power as characters as a gauge for which stand-ins I was using, and that's more personal opinion.

See also: Pathfinder's Synthesist Summoner. Taking this archetype makes you objectively weaker (by virtue of only getting a single pool of actions as oppose to getting a super minion that does its own thing while you can also cast spells), but it gets a lot of flak because it feels more like directly outfighting the Fighter.

[atemu1234]

Saying Tome of Battle is what finally invalidated core melee classes is like saying that Sword Art Online was good until the Fairy Dance arc. It wasn't, it was just less obvious and people are willing to pretend ToB/Fairy Dance doesn't exist to go back to that blissful ignorance.

I don't know, I liked the anime throughout, but the Fairy Dance arc really was horrible. /offtrack

[Hiro Protagonest]

I don't know, I liked the anime throughout, but the Fairy Dance arc really was horrible. /offtrack

Well part of the problem is Fairy Dance being bad doesn't mean Aincrad is necessarily bad, although it is. I watched both arcs, enjoyed the whole thing. Then I read criticisms about it on here, checked my memories, and ended up drawing the conclusion that yeah, the whole thing is bad.

Spoiler: Summary of Aincrad, spoilerz

Show

For two episodes, it is good. Then we get random weekly episodes with girls fawning over Kirito, we finally get to a plot and it just ends up establishing that Asuna can't do much by herself except kill a monster way lower level than her and that Kirito is an overpowered special snowflake, and then we get the big villain whose plan was... turn Asuna into a damsel in distress to motivate Kirito to duel him. I'm not talking about Fairy Dance, I'm talking about Aincrad, he literally stated that his plan was to kidnap Asuna after they cleared Floor 95 and wait until they got to Floor 100.

[Madhava]

I'm just not understanding this talk about 'invalidation'.

The Fighter only stands to benefit from ToB. One possible example, feat for martial study: divine surge. Now, your standard dungeoncrasher-chargemonkey build has the option to add 8d8 damage to a standard-action attack. Because there are times when charging is not an option, right? So how would divine surge not be a good thing?

Or, feat for martial stance: thicket of blades, for your standard reach weapon/improved trip or standstill/mage slayer/defensive sweep-inclined Fighter. Now he's even better at what he's supposed to be doing.

There's plenty of useful, easy-to-qualify-for tricks, which a mundane with 21 feats could take. Emerald razor. Shadow jaunt. Wall of blades (for post-shock trooper charge?). Hidden talent: dimension hop Bound vestige, improved: Paimon? Or everyone's favorite, IHS. Just off the top of my head. Sure, the martial adept classes will have better maneuvers. But they won't have 21 feats at level 20, for whatever it's worth.

And of course, the Fighter will likely be outperformed in melee by, say, a Cleric with persisted divine power, holy warrior, shock trooper, et al. A Warblade would be outperformed by this also, because Cleric also brought his marut/retriever/iron golem buddies along, or maybe he casts quickened spells as he fights. But more than likely, the Cleric did not enjoy any extra goodies from ToB, because the Cleric doesn't have enough feats to play around with martial study.

[A Tad Insane]

The think about the ToB classes that invalidates the core mundanes isn't just that they do what the core classes do, only better (as previously state, a druid gets that as a class feature, clerics do that as a 4th level spell, and wizards... wizards), it's that they do the exact same thing the exact same way and do it better.

Why play a fighter when you can be a wizard? "because I want to be a knight in shining armor and hit things with my sword that's almost as big as my d***, and not be some huge nerd with a funny hat", "because I want to play a weapons master that knows more sword variants than most people know animals", "because I want to be Heracles" the list goes on for quiet a while

Why play a fighter when you can be a warblade? The only two reasons are "I want to be an archer fighter" and "because reasons, I'm not using ToB"

[Thrice Dead Cat]

The think about the ToB classes that invalidates the core mundanes isn't just that they do what the core classes do, only better (as previously state, a druid gets that as a class feature, clerics do that as a 4th level spell, and wizards... wizards), it's that they do the exact same thing the exact same way and do it better.

Why play a fighter when you can be a wizard? "because I want to be a knight in shining armor and hit things with my sword that's almost as big as my d***, and not be some huge nerd with a funny hat", "because I want to play a weapons master that knows more sword variants than most people know animals", "because I want to be Heracles" the list goes on for quiet a while

Why play a fighter when you can be a warblade? The only two reasons are "I want to be an archer fighter" and "because reasons, I'm not using ToB"

Or because "I really need another two feats before I start going Warblade." Or because you like the rage mechanic and want to be a nonmagical bear.

Seriously, ToB classes (with the obvious exception to the Swordsage and Monk) multiclass incredibly well with the core melee classes.

[Alent]

Saying Tome of Battle is what finally invalidated core melee classes is like saying that Sword Art Online was good until the Fairy Dance arc. It wasn't, it was just less obvious and people are willing to pretend ToB/Fairy Dance doesn't exist to go back to that blissful ignorance.

I find this statement absolutely hilarious because if you ignore the story as a story and look at things in universe, The VRMMO for the Fairy Dance arc, ALO, is a pretty good example of 3.5 and ToB played absolutely straight:

In the Novel versions of Fairy Dance, they were pretty explicit that ALO melee fighters are stupid, worthless, but occasionally good at soaking damage while the magicians use magic to dominate the battlefield. (Sound familiar yet?) So when they content patch SAO's Sword Skills system into ALO later on in the series, ALO experiences a total melee revival because ManeuversSword Skills make Melee viable.

The parallels are absolutely amazing.

Spoiler: Off topic SAO gripe

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Also, for what it's worth, Fairy Dance is nowhere near as bad as the Phantom Bullet arc. Something you have to remember about Sword Art Online is it was the author's first serious novel attempt and a submission to a novel contest at that, so it's a total amateur's work that happened to go mainstream. He's gotten more practice at it over the ten to twelve years since he started it, and last year started rewriting the series from Aincrad floor 1 up, one floor at a time, and the character development is much, much better.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Spoiler: Off topic SAO gripe

Show

Also, for what it's worth, Fairy Dance is nowhere near as bad as the Phantom Bullet arc. Something you have to remember about Sword Art Online is it was the author's first serious novel attempt and a submission to a novel contest at that, so it's a total amateur's work that happened to go mainstream. He's gotten more practice at it over the ten to twelve years since he started it, and last year started rewriting the series from Aincrad floor 1 up, one floor at a time, and the character development is much, much better.

Spoiler: Not a spoiler but whatever

Show

Really? That sounds good. I hope it'll be available in English given the show's popularity.

[Segev]

This is all I'll say about SAO in this thread; we should start another if we really want to discuss it:

I enjoyed the anime series, and while you could argue that there are bad elements to it, the storytelling was engaging enough that I kept wanting to see the next episode (after they stopped having Kirito be all loner). My only gripe is the karma houdini. I won't say who that is; I'm fairly sure those who've seen it know who I'm talking about.

[Vaynor]

I'm actually a bit unclear on whether that applied to the mostly irrelevant progression discussion, or only to the completely irrelevant proficiency discussion, especially as Aquillion found that post in this thread, rather than in the new thread made for the off topic stuff. With that in mind...

The Red Towel: If you expected me to sort through over ten pages of off-topic discussion then you vastly overestimate my patience. It applied to all off-topic discussions concerning unarmed strike or unarmed strike progression. I'm only not closing this thread because the actual topic seems to have been reinvigorated, but seriously, stop talking about unarmed strike in this thread.

[Galen]

I treat the ToB as if it was PHB errata. The Warblade, Swordsage and Crusader are just what the Fighter, Monk and Paladin should have been to begin with.

[Flickerdart]

Speaking of Unarmed Strikes, people always focus on the maneuver system and seem to forget that ToB has other things in it, like Superior Unarmed Strike and Snap Kick, which open up unarmed combat to non-terrible classes.

[Just to Browse]

Speaking of Unarmed Strikes

NO FLICKERDART WHAT ARE YOU-

people always focus on the maneuver system and seem to forget that ToB has other things in it, like Superior Unarmed Strike and Snap Kick, which open up unarmed combat to non-terrible classes.

... Oh, OK.

Snap Kick is a great feat to have all the time. It's one of those feats like Improved Initiative that I'm always willing to throw on a build if I have a feat to spare.

[Rubik]

NO FLICKERDART WHAT ARE YOU-

... Oh, OK.

Pretty much my reaction to a T.

[Studoku]

Why play a fighter when you can be a warblade? The only two reasons are "I want to be an archer fighter" and "because reasons, I'm not using ToB"

Then don't play a fighter. Seems simple enough.

[eggynack]

The Red Towel: If you expected me to sort through over ten pages of off-topic discussion then you vastly overestimate my patience. It applied to all off-topic discussions concerning unarmed strike or unarmed strike progression. I'm only not closing this thread because the actual topic seems to have been reinvigorated, but seriously, stop talking about unarmed strike in this thread.

Sorry 'bout that then. Just wasn't really sure if I was supposed to swap responses over to the other thread in this particular case, which I probably would have done with the proficiency argument more readily.

Then don't play a fighter. Seems simple enough.

Indeed. The real issue people seem to have is that they're not the same, because they're not in a lot of ways, but once you get to things that do the same thing with different mechanics, it feels like you reenter the world of druids and clerics.

[Curmudgeon]

Speaking of Unarmed Strikes, people always focus on the maneuver system and seem to forget that ToB has other things in it, like Superior Unarmed Strike and Snap Kick, which open up unarmed combat to non-terrible classes.

Those two feats are the elements of Tome of Battle I use the most. You can skip the whole Monk/Unarmed Swordsage quagmire and move directly to having a good close range attack to pair with your choice of reach weapon, with no class level investment. D&D has thousands of feats, yet only a few of them provide better benefits simply by adding (unconstrained) character levels. I think ToB adding one such feat to the list makes a significant, welcome, contribution.

[TheCrowing1432]

Unarmed Strikes are crazy powerful.

Natural, Light and Sometimes even martial weapons, with a whole bunch of modifiers and stuff you can add to them.