PDA

View Full Version : [3.5] ToB Problems for ToB Lovers



Pechvarry
2010-09-23, 02:24 PM
Apologies in advance for this... BOOK. Feel free to skim, read in piecemeal, or attack my personality viciously for this affront.

I like Tome of Battle. It's my belief that because it's such a fantastic upgrade from books that came before, we tend to overlook its weaknesses. And I don't mean the broken sort of "I Iron Heart Surge the sun!" problems. I mean actual game design/implementation issues. So here are the problems I see. Tell me what you think of those issues, what fixes you'd use for them, and if you have additional issues. The spoilers are there because I care more about what you guys have to say about the issues than propogating my ideas on fixing them. I can do that in the homebrew forums.

--

Save DCs are MAD. And no, "avoid maneuvers with saves" is not a valid response.

Let's say my Rogue 8 decides to start dipping into Swordsage for Shadow Hand goodness. Tome of Battle is obviously set up for maximum integration with other classes. And yet, here's a character who likely has Wisdom as a drop-stat, and only has access to low-level maneuvers (comparitive to a full initiator). This is pretty horrible. Of course, some optimization fixes these sorts of problems (a hexblade/paladin of tyranny build, or some clever use of ambush feats if your DM is kind in their order of effects. Alternatively, finding cheesy ways to boost stats through the roof). But that's a pretty steep uphill battle. Not every build should need a trick to be viable with these effects.

Likewise, a scholar of battle sort of character, knowledgeable in all the greatest fighting arts, is reminiscent of a 3.0 psionics character. Luckily, the Swordsage-specific schools are all Wisdom-based (Desert Wind, Setting Sun, Shadow Hand) as are his class features. However, you would still need STR for Tiger Claw, Stone Dragon, and at least some Diamond Mind. If you're going for all disciplines, you'll need STR for Iron heart as well, and Cha for Devoted Spirit, though I think it only has a couple effects that allow a save and one of them is damage-based.

I'm not saying such characters are ruined by this MAD-inducer. I'm saying there are hundreds of character concepts one could try to put together and end up grimacing because the option they imagine as being their cool or iconic battlefield trick ends up never working.

What to do?
My first thought is to attach 2 thematic attributes to every school. A user chooses whichever is higher. For example, Shadow Hand could be Wisdom or Dex. Iron Heart could be STR or INT. Stone Dragon could be be STR and CON, perhaps.

Another route is Feat Taxing. If you're a high-INT rogue, perhaps a feat could be made which is simply "choose a discipline and choose a stat to tie to its saves in place of its normal attribute". This is a horrifying and deadly approach to spellcasting, but seems exceedingly hard to break for ToBbery.

Finally, perhaps a simple skill trick such as "once per battle, you may choose to treat a maneuver's level as half your character level". A nice little kick at the cost of a couple ranks (and probably requiring Martial Lore 6 or 7 ranks to grab). Perhaps it could work on the Weapon Focus mechanic. i.e. "Martial Superiority (Castigating Strike)", thus making it once/encounter/maneuver (by purchasing it multiple times).

Delaying makes you better. Tome of Battle irrationally promotes avoiding Tome of Battle for as long as possible. My Rogue 8/swordsage 1 is powerful now. But he'd be better if he waited 'til Rogue 18 to finally grab swordsage 1 (ignore the fact that he'd be better as a swordsage 19/Rogue 1, please). This means playing a bland character for the majority of your career to increase power at the end of it. Unfortunately, this is how a lot of us think (myself included), and we tend to forget the road to power and focus on the endpoint. Obviously, retraining helps with this. But constant retraining gets more than a little awkward with the ability of ToB classes to trade out known maneuvers.

What to do?
I like something as simple as "at the start of every day (or week?), you may choose to forget a single known maneuver or stance and replace it with another you qualify for." In this way, you could slowly change your entire repertoire. Thing is, I feel like under such a system, it'd be disastrous to do the normal maneuver swapping where you no longer have maneuvers you used to qualify for others. I could use some help on the logistics on the few ways these rules could interact, and some insight as to how much it'd upset power balance and confusion.

Onto the lesser problems:

Martial prestige classing is beyond messy. It feels abusive to take 1 level of all three ToB classes and then take 10 levels of a martial prestige class, ending with 11 + half other HD initiator level in all 3.

What to do?
A few ways to go about this. My first instinct was working like spellcasting. Classes could be changed to "+1 initiator level" and, after looking at their written growth, determine how frequently they get this feature -- just like with spellcasting, some probably deserve a drop level every third or even every other level. This approach is odd, since the martial PrCs have their own schools to select maneuvers from. Easy enough to work around with proper wording -- either maneuvers/stances granted during their time in the prestige class must be chosen from the class' school selection, or those schools are added to the base class' schools for those levels.

Perhaps an easier way to handle this is to leave the PrCs as-is, but make a systemic change of "initiator PrCs add half HD to initiator level, as normal, but at every level in said PrC, you can choose an initiating class to add an extra .5 HD to". That could probably be worded a lot better, but I hope that conveys what I'm getting at.

low level effects get replaced despite their flavor. Finally, the problem with low-level unique effects. A spellcaster could continue to prepare Shock and Awe in all their 1st level spell slots because it's useful and there's no higher-level version of it (incidentally, tell me if I'm wrong -- I'd actually like to find one).

But an initiator is eventually going to replace Wolf Fang Strike with a more potent Tiger claw maneuver, despite it being the only TWF-granting maneuver in the entire school. This is especially true of stances. Most builds end up revolving around 1 stance, with other stances set aside for special scenarios. Once a tanking Crusader gets Thicket of Blades, the very-neat Iron Guard's Glare is suddenly a wasted stance.

What to do?
I don't know. Getting rid of the "trade out maneuvers you used to qualify for others" deal would force initiators to retain more low-level maneuvers, but that doesn't sound like a good thing.

As far as stances go, perhaps it'd be neat to change the basic way stances work: "You can be in 1 stance you know at a time, regardless of its level. Instead, you may choose to fall into multiple stances at once, as long as their combined level does not exceed half of your initiator level." Something like this simply says "I can choose to be in multiple low-level stances at the same time." Probably not a very elegant solution, but I'd find it fun. Warblade and Master of Nine class features would have to be adjusted.

Alternatively, changing number of stances known to number of levels worth of stances known could be an interesting way of doing it. This would create characters who have more stances if they'd like to play with more low level stances. This could potentially upset the balance of maneuver qualification.

--

Ahhh. And that is all of my wind.

lsfreak
2010-09-23, 07:06 PM
Some quick ideas that I've bounced around in my skull for an E6 setting (and thus would need tinkering in a regular game). Many of them are realism-inspired, but seem to possibly fit in with your problems of delaying and/or keeping low-level maneuvers.

- (Since I'm assuming a number of homebrewed disciplines are used as well, I'm changing ToB classes to knowing "X disciplines" rather than "these X disciplines." You can also gain access to new disciplines with a month of training, and the money it costs, from a master.)

- Can learn extra maneuvers beyond the norm equal to twice your IL. 'Universal discipline' maneuvers (Diamond Mind, Iron heart, Stone Dragon, Tiger Claw) can be self-taught with 3 days of time, provided you have discipline access. 'Unrestricted' maneuvers (Devoted Spirit, Setting Sun, While Raven) can be taught with a week of training under someone who knows the maneuver (again, monies spent). 'Restricted' are the magical one and could easily be thrown in with unrestricted in most campaigns. (Since I'm using homebrew, there's a lot more than 3 in 'Unrestricted')
- These extra maneuvers gained through outside training should be limited by level; i.e. no max-level available, 1 penultimate-level available, and 2 antipenultimate level available. I.e. a 9th-level swordsage could use extra training to learn 1 4th level maneuver and 2 3rd level maneuvers, but no more than that of 3rd level or higher.

- 'Maneuvers known' now includes all maneuvers. 'Maneuver available' is the number listed under the class tables in ToB. Maneuvers Readied can be traded out with 5 minutes of rest or with Adaptive Style, but only from the list of Maneuvers Available. Maneuvers Available can be traded out among the list of all Maneuvers Known with one-half day of practice, or with 3 days of practice for trading out all Maneuvers Available. Basically, this larger group is techniques someone knows but that are out of practice, and keeps someone from have a ridiculous number of maneuvers available after a mere 5 minute rest.

- At every even Initiator Level from 4th and beyond, you can trade out one of your maneuvers for another of up to the maximum maneuver you can know.
- If you spend a week training a new maneuver, you can instead replace one of your maneuvers known, provided the maneuver you're learning doesn't make you go over the limit set above with high-level maneuvers and outside training.

I am, however, not sure how to deal with non-martial adepts, as I'm just using the same rules as above (training to get access to schools, training to learn maneuvers) since I don't see it as a problem when you cap out at 6th level.