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Kuma Kode
2011-01-30, 10:26 AM
While I'm familiar with Tome of Battle in general and already love what it's done for martial characters, my gaming group is only now trying it out for the first time. We've been a bit distracted playing d20 Modern/Past/Future.

The game is gestalt and low magic.

The character is a Warblade//Scout who is going to be focusing on charging. In the same game we have Rogue//Fighter (Two-Weapon Fighting), Healer//Warlock, and Hexblade//Swashbuckler (Spiked Chain non-cheese Weapon Finesse). I'm a bit worried as to optimization, as this is a war campaign and combat is heavy, and the other characters seem to be playing rather unoptimized combos. The rogue//fighter has no real concept of optimization and prefers things to be simple as possible. The Hexblade's player suffers from the Stormwind Fallacy, but at least his backstory is great. The Healer//Warlock is perfectly capable of optimizing if he so chooses (he regularly makes cleric tanks), but he wants to be support this time.

Any ideas on what I should do or watch for, from someone who knows ToB better? Any other suggestions on how to structure battles to not let the Warblade overshadow the others (particularly the hexblade)?

Greenish
2011-01-30, 10:44 AM
If it's not just using the weapon itself, what exactly is this "spiked chain cheese" I keep hearing of? :smallannoyed:

ScionoftheVoid
2011-01-30, 10:50 AM
If it's not just using the weapon itself, what exactly is this "spiked chain cheese" I keep hearing of? :smallannoyed:

Size increases in combination with Combat Reflexes and as many ways of getting AoOs as possible to attack more times off-turn than on, on any target within your rather huge reach. And you can add the normal Power Attack boosters if you have feats free. And your allies all have a flanking partner due to aforementioned rediculous reach.

RaggedAngel
2011-01-30, 10:54 AM
As for your issue, the White Raven school should solve the optimization problems. The White Raven strikes and stances all focus on empowering your allies and coordinating the battle. It's perfect for a more experience, powerful player that doesn't want to be a glory-stealer.

Greenish
2011-01-30, 11:01 AM
Size increases in combination with Combat Reflexes and as many ways of getting AoOs as possible to attack more times off-turn than on, on any target within your rather huge reach. And you can add the normal Power Attack boosters if you have feats free. And your allies all have a flanking partner due to aforementioned rediculous reach.But where's the cheese part?

ScionoftheVoid
2011-01-30, 11:13 AM
But where's the cheese part?

"Cheese" is a rather vague term, even on the rare occasions when it shares an approximate definition between two people, so that may well be it. It was only a guess, I'm sure somone else could do better.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-30, 11:38 AM
If you don't mind me asking, what is this "Stormwind Fallacy?"

Greenish
2011-01-30, 11:40 AM
If you don't mind me asking, what is this "Stormwind Fallacy?"The logical fallacy claiming optimization and roleplaying are mutually exclusive, originally coined by Tempest Stormwind (of BG or wizards board, I forget).

Godskook
2011-01-30, 11:43 AM
If you don't mind me asking, what is this "Stormwind Fallacy?"

It is the statement that roleplay and rollplay are *NOT* mutually exclusive goals. That you can optimize mechanics and still have a 'character' and such.

Edit: So the swordsages are green now?

CycloneJoker
2011-01-30, 11:44 AM
The logical fallacy claiming optimization and roleplaying are mutually exclusive, originally coined by Tempest Stormwind (of BG or wizards board, I forget).

That is, quite frankly, one of the stupidest things I have ever heard in D&D, right below "Wizards suck," "Druids are mediocre at best," and "Healbot clerics are good."

Greenish
2011-01-30, 11:48 AM
Edit: So the swordsages are green now?Sort of. :smallwink:

Godskook
2011-01-30, 11:49 AM
That is, quite frankly, one of the stupidest things I have ever heard in D&D, right below "Wizards suck," "Druids are mediocre at best," and "Healbot clerics are good."

To clarify man, the Stormwind claims that:

"Roleplay and Rollplay are mutually exclusive"

is wrong.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-30, 11:55 AM
To clarify man, the Stormwind claims that:

"Roleplay and Rollplay are mutually exclusive"

is wrong.

Oh, nevermind then. I misunderstood what you guys said.

Greenish
2011-01-30, 11:57 AM
Oh, nevermind then. I misunderstood what you guys said.It is a logical fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy). Stormwind formally identified and named it.

Burnheart
2011-01-30, 12:21 PM
If you decide to go with the White Raven Discipline to boost your party This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136489) Thread has a good PrC in it called White Raven Commander, its the 12th post.

CycloneJoker
2011-01-30, 12:43 PM
It is a logical fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy). Stormwind formally identified and named it.

I know what a fallacy is, I misunderstood that it was specifically identified as a fallacy by him, and assumed that he was serious, and that it was named after stupidity, not identification.

Starbuck_II
2011-01-30, 01:09 PM
I know what a fallacy is, I misunderstood that it was specifically identified as a fallacy by him, and assumed that he was serious, and that it was named after stupidity, not identification.

No, Stormwind was a cool guy. I was glad to have met him back before the wizard of the coast boards were over taken in the civil war by G.

Volthawk
2011-01-30, 01:13 PM
No, Stormwind was a cool guy. I was glad to have met him back before the wizard of the coast boards were over taken in the civil war by G.

...Civil War? :smalleek:

CycloneJoker
2011-01-30, 01:29 PM
Oooh, please tell me Captain America didn't die in this one, too.

Kuma Kode
2011-01-30, 01:38 PM
If you decide to go with the White Raven Discipline to boost your party This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136489) Thread has a good PrC in it called White Raven Commander, its the 12th post. Dunno. The player doing Warblade is not particularly experienced, and the hexblade and healer are both support focused. She's been doing mage and such for a while she just wants to smash things.


That is, quite frankly, one of the stupidest things I have ever heard in D&D, right below "Wizards suck," "Druids are mediocre at best," and "Healbot clerics are good." Yeah, but some people really do think that having an effective character somehow means they are hollow in roleplay. If you've ever had a player that makes a character that is intentionally terrible at what they do, you've probably met a person like this.

Greenish
2011-01-30, 01:42 PM
If you've ever had a player that makes a character that is intentionally terrible at what they do, you've probably met a person like this.Well, if your concept for the character is that they're horribly inept at what they do, it could be seen as optimization (by some definitions) to make them so. :smalltongue:

Dralnu
2011-01-30, 02:10 PM
The warblade is going to outshine the other PCs. It's the most powerful ToB class and will be dominating combat even without optimization, considering the rest of your group. If the warblade knows how to optimize charging it'll be even worse.

It will be quite difficult to structure battles so he's not overshadowing others. You can limit his chances of charging with things like difficult terrain, lots of line of sight obstacles, flying creatures, etc. but that probably hurt the other melee more than the warblade because they don't have neat tricks to overcome such obstacles. You could deliberately pick on his character and spam debuffs (he can only iron heart surge so much) but that'd be mean-spirited.

Heavy emphasis on white raven maneuvers will let him be more of a team player, as others have mentioned. That might be enough to make the other players content. It might not.

Being more powerful than the rest of the party isn't necessarily a problem though. What it really boils down to is whether or not the rest of the party is enjoying themselves. If all the players are having fun then there's no problem. If only the warblade is having fun, that's when you have a problem.

Coidzor
2011-01-30, 02:15 PM
It is the statement that roleplay and rollplay are *NOT* mutually exclusive goals. That you can optimize mechanics and still have a 'character' and such.

You got that a bit mixed up there. The fallacy is the belief that they are mutually exclusive.

So you just said the opposite.

Edit: Mostly a nitpick, I guess, since your next post stated it directly and clearly.

Kyuu Himura
2011-01-30, 03:28 PM
OK; the best way to optimize someone who believes on Stormwind Fallacy is using their backstory, you said this Swash//hexblade had a good one, and I am pretty sure that this backstory involves him being a somewhat proficient "something".

What is this something??

You could just come over the guy once you have his backstory and say something like "hey, remember your gestalt character?? I know a feat that is like totally appropiate for him based on what you told us that happened to him..."

You should probably introduce him to the hex feats from Dragon magazine (can someone remind which issue??), since he is a hexblade, I am betting he is kind of a curse person...

mabriss lethe
2011-01-30, 04:37 PM
Well here are some thoughts on what you might suggest to your players.

1.Warblade//Scout: I'm not going to lie, it's a pretty solid chassis to build from. I'm going to back up the others' suggestions about having him focus on white raven. If you have a number of characters pitching in to boost each other, then everyone feels like they're doing something. (see also suggestions for player#3) The less buff-minded players still get good mileage out of the system and the players tossing the buffs don't obviously overshadow them.

2:Fighter//Rogue: For TWF fun, he really should get on the ToB bandwagon, even if it's investing a feat or two into Martial study/stance to get a taste of some Tiger Claw goodness. Offer the option to trade out one of his classes for an appropriate ToB class.

3:Healer//Warlock: He wants to be a support character? You might see if he's interested in Bard//Warlock instead. Charisma synergy remains good. If you allow things like silverbrow human/dragonfire inspiration, he can really up the level of damage output for the entire party while still being able to be the party healer via wands. Remember that warlock 4 gets deceive item and suggest a healthy investment in UMD, then add a good number of wands and scrolls to party treasure. With that, the warlock (with a little backup from the hexblade could do a reasonable job of mimicking a tier 1 caster.)

4:Hexblade//Swashbuckler: This one really looks like the odd man out, but it isn't so bad. If you're DMing, for starters, insist on using the Hexblade fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88349) It boosts the power level considerably. Point him to the PHBII's Dark Companion ACF instead of the familiar. It's a permanent mobile no-save debuff that takes the form of an illusory black cat. If you get him to work on debuffs before wading into combat, that can really add to the sense of cooperative play and boost overall effectiveness of the party.

think about allowing some paladin/ranger-ish feats to apply to the hexblade as well. Sword of the Arcane Order would be a good way to boost his abilities, as would the paladin-only feat, Battle Blessing, giving him the option of using his spells as swift actions. This will also help mitigate (along with player #3) the lack of a full tier 1 caster in the party.

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 05:02 PM
No, Stormwind was a cool guy. I was glad to have met him back before the wizard of the coast boards were over taken in the civil war by G.

Stormwind still posts at WotC every once in a while though not as much as he used to.

Kuma Kode
2011-01-30, 06:55 PM
1.Warblade//Scout: I'm not going to lie, it's a pretty solid chassis to build from. I'm going to back up the others' suggestions about having him focus on white raven. If you have a number of characters pitching in to boost each other, then everyone feels like they're doing something. The less buff-minded players still get good mileage out of the system and the players tossing the buffs don't obviously overshadow them. Admittedly, this is my fault. The warblade's player is not particularly big on optimizing, but I suggested Tome of Battle and she liked it. She picked up charging on her own, and I helped her by suggesting the typical ubercharger feat chain, not fully aware at that point as to the lack of optimization from the other players. I created a monster.


2:Fighter//Rogue: For TWF fun, he really should get on the ToB bandwagon, even if it's investing a feat or two into Martial study/stance to get a taste of some Tiger Claw goodness. Offer the option to trade out one of his classes for an appropriate ToB class. She seems to be instantly fascinated by Shadow Hand and Tiger Claw, so I think she might swap fighter for swordsage. So that's helpful.


3:Healer//Warlock: He wants to be a support character? You might see if he's interested in Bard//Warlock instead. Charisma synergy remains good. If you allow things like silverbrow human/dragonfire inspiration, he can really up the level of damage output for the entire party while still being able to be the party healer via wands. Remember that warlock 4 gets deceive item and suggest a healthy investment in UMD, then add a good number of wands and scrolls to party treasure. With that, the warlock (with a little backup from the hexblade could do a reasonable job of mimicking a tier 1 caster.) Low magic, so pretty much no wands. He's been wanting to try out that class for a while, so Healer is locked in. He's not the one I'm worried about, since even ineffective healing is great in this game.


4:Hexblade//Swashbuckler: This one really looks like the odd man out, but it isn't so bad. If you're DMing, for starters, insist on using the Hexblade fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88349) It boosts the power level considerably. Point him to the PHBII's Dark Companion ACF instead of the familiar. It's a permanent mobile no-save debuff that takes the form of an illusory black cat. If you get him to work on debuffs before wading into combat, that can really add to the sense of cooperative play and boost overall effectiveness of the party He does has that ACF, I read about it on this board earlier. That fix seems interesting, I'll compare it and check it out.

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 07:03 PM
Admittedly, this is my fault. The warblade's player is not particularly big on optimizing, but I suggested Tome of Battle and she liked it. She picked up charging on her own, and I helped her by suggesting the typical ubercharger feat chain, not fully aware at that point as to the lack of optimization from the other players. I created a monster.

She seems to be instantly fascinated by Shadow Hand and Tiger Claw, so I think she might swap fighter for swordsage. So that's helpful.

Low magic, so pretty much no wands. He's been wanting to try out that class for a while, so Healer is locked in. He's not the one I'm worried about, since even ineffective healing is great in this game.

He does has that ACF, I read about it on this board earlier. That fix seems interesting, I'll compare it and check it out.

I did a similar thing with a bard player. She was was worried since people told her that bards suck and I told her it would not be a problem. After helping her out by showing her all the awesome music stuff out there she proceeded to completely make my encounters dead. Giving every party member huge buffs to attack, damage, elemental damage, and haste got was too much. I had to tell her to tone it down by not using all the stuff I showed her. Never show words of creation to a bard player in a causal game. Too much (even without it she was probably too much for a casual game though I could handle it).

mabriss lethe
2011-01-30, 07:32 PM
Low magic, so pretty much no wands. He's been wanting to try out that class for a while, so Healer is locked in. He's not the one I'm worried about, since even ineffective healing is great in this game.

He does has that ACF, I read about it on this board earlier. That fix seems interesting, I'll compare it and check it out.


Hmm. Low magic, didn't realize that. But that isn't going to be a worry for a canny warlock once it hits level 12, since (unless you ban/restrict creation feats) a warlock can create pretty much any magic item he needs. My thought here, is not to ban item creation, but restrict it, make acquiring each feat a bit of a quest in its own regard. *Low magic is a dicey endeavor in D&D. It's just not built to handle that situation well. Handle with care, etc.*


The hexblade fix is solid, originally put together by one of the writers who created the class in the first place. As it says, in early 3.5 history, they really overestimated the usefulness of things like armored casting, so nerfed the class heavily. Compare the fix presented with something like a Duskblade (a late 3.5 entry)and you see how under endowed the original hexblade is.

Waker
2011-01-30, 07:56 PM
Point him to the PHBII's Dark Companion ACF instead of the familiar. It's a permanent mobile no-save debuff that takes the form of an illusory black cat. If you get him to work on debuffs before wading into combat, that can really add to the sense of cooperative play and boost overall effectiveness of the party
Just one note about the Hexblade. While I do like the Dark Companion feature, Hexblades are one of the few classes that can have a powerful familiar. Since the familiar has half the HP of the master and uses the master's BAB and saves, with Improved Familiar you could have a potent back-up to further allow for flanking bonuses even before using spells like Augment Familiar. And since Swashbucklers get Improved Flanking you could use power attack to greater advantage. Granted, you could technically get the Dark Companion feature and then later grab Obtain Familiar.

MeeposFire
2011-01-30, 07:59 PM
Just one note about the Hexblade. While I do like the Dark Companion feature, Hexblades are one of the few classes that can have a powerful familiar. Since the familiar has half the HP of the master and uses the master's BAB and saves, with Improved Familiar you could have a potent back-up to further allow for flanking bonuses even before using spells like Augment Familiar. And since Swashbucklers get Improved Flanking you could use power attack to greater advantage. Granted, you could technically get the Dark Companion feature and then later grab Obtain Familiar.

That is the best answer right there! Love having both.

mabriss lethe
2011-01-30, 08:39 PM
second that! I often forget about improved familiar, and hexblades do have some nice spells to make familiars even nastier.