[3.5] Tomes Balance (Frank and K, not ToB)

[stainboy]

For those unfamiliar with Frank and K's Tomes, there's a link here. (http://turing.bard.edu/~mk561/frank_k_complete_0.4.pdf) The Tomes are a 3.5 rebuild that tries to power up underperforming classes rather than trying to reduce casters' versatility. They have a lot of insightful stuff about world building and a writing style that's fun to read. Anyway...

Basically everybody who's read the Tomes has thought at least some part of it was overpowered. There seems to be a lot of room for improvement in the classes because of lack of playtesting (unavoidable) and just lack of critical eyes (the Gaming Den is a really small community). So for anybody who's read it or played with any of it, what do you think of it?

Personally I like Thief-Acrobat as a rogue alternate. Fighter has some good ideas, but Foil Action is a BBEG-wrecker so powerful that no DM will ever let an important enemy get within range of it (or of your melee attacks). Jester is high-powered, but in a good way; you can build sneak attackers with 2/3 casting progression already, and this just gives it to you without all the splatbook-diving. Assassin looks balanced with Jester once you get past the sheer number of d6's, but it interacts in a silly way with the Surprise Round mechanics. The Tome barbarian seems like it should require more thought or strategy for how powerful it is.

[Aharon]

It's fine at it's balance point. The classes are supposed to be on par with wizards, druids and clerics, and that goal was achieved.

(I have limited experience using it, I adapted the wealth system for my purposes, and some people used the PrCs. So far, I got no problems. The Widow Queen constantly tries to make my BBEGs her slaves, but that's to be expected. I encouraged the use of more stuff, but my players didn't want to bother reading the rules.)

[true_shinken]

They have a lot of insightful stuff about world building and a writing style that's fun to read.

Allow me to strongly disagree.

[Dsurion]

OP, you're not likely to receive much constructive from this thread. Usually, you have the people who say, "I use x to good effect with no problems in my games," but with no relation to other Tome classes, followed by people who rush in and complain about Tome material, and use the phrases "rocket tag", "overpowered", and "broken" one or more times every post or complain that the material is poorly written. You'll also occasionally have the stragglers who don't know what the Tome material is, despite someone posting a link to it, and come in assuming Tome means Tome of Magic, etc., and completely disregard the first post because they only read the posts after it.

I've had a party of Frank's Rogue-balance classes, mainly the Knight and Fire Mage, alongside the Wizard-level Witch and Swashbuckler in my games. They seem to do well together just like everyone claims Tiers Three and Four should.

Personally, I'm not particularly fond of the general level of balance Frank writes for, but the work is admirable, and I enjoyed reading a lot of the theory put into Tome material. Melee also gets nice things.

[Psyborg]

We will probably never know. It's unlikely they'll ever get sufficient playtesting for us to reach anything like a consensus of them. "D&Ders" is a fairly large group, but "D&Ders who post their play experiences online", "D&Ders who play at high-Tier-Two" and "D&Ders who allow virtually-any homebrew" are all fairly small subsets of the greater group, and the overlap between those three small subsets- the only people who'd actually use them and report the results- is so tiny that I've not read any actual-play feedback on them.

[Doc Roc]

Having read, used, and carefully tested most of the tome material, I'm quite fond of it, but it really could have used more testing. I do think that the departure of K was pretty crushing to the entire endeavor, as I preferred his work to Frank's by a pretty wide margin. It is pretty much possible for you to build a feat-driven character who is utterly unfun for everyone else in the group. Regardless of balance, I would consider this a hallmark of poor testing.

I deeply fear that perhaps Legend will fall into the same trap.

[SurlySeraph]

They tend to aim for a quite high power level, and non-optimized characters using standard material (including casters) don't seem to have a chance in a game using Tome material. It's set to a very high default power level, but doesn't seem like you can optimize it to be too much more powerful than that level. As I haven't seen significant playtesting of their work, I'll defer to Doc Roc's opinion.

As for the fluff, I'd say it varies from great (like on orcs and sahuagin) to headdesk-inducing (like trying to come up with an IC justification for XP as being bits of solidified magic or something like that).

[Essence_of_War]

May I ask a specific question, perhaps specifically at Doc Roc

Has anyone tried using the developed "New Feat System" in playtesting? Some of the feats seem to make peripheral/feat tax choices like Iron Will or Blind-Fight WAY better, and I wanted to know if they were so good they overshadowed other feat lines or that these improvements just brought them up to par.

[Tyndmyr]

They tend to aim for a quite high power level, and non-optimized characters using standard material (including casters) don't seem to have a chance in a game using Tome material. It's set to a very high default power level, but doesn't seem like you can optimize it to be too much more powerful than that level. As I haven't seen significant playtesting of their work, I'll defer to Doc Roc's opinion.

As for the fluff, I'd say it varies from great (like on orcs and sahuagin) to headdesk-inducing (like trying to come up with an IC justification for XP as being bits of solidified magic or something like that).

I played a campaign in which a very high power level was assumed, from levels 1 to 15. For comparison, I ran an Icantatrix/Iot7v, and used persist shenanigans on the entire party.

One individual chose poorly, and picked a samurai. It was sucking pretty badly. So, midway through, he was permitted to upgrade to the Tome samurai. By the end, we all agreed that he was broken as hell, and it was determined that the Tomes would no longer be used.

They might be of some use if you're really, really a fan of rocket tag, but for any type of game in which characters are expected to survive through a successful hit, they are inappropriate.

[Re'ozul]

I really like most classes in there, especially the flame mage, but had to consider the weirdness of its capstone ability. It basically lets you set the world on fire.

[Dsurion]

I really like most classes in there, especially the flame mage, but had to consider the weirdness of its capstone ability. It basically lets you set the world on fire.

Consider that Frank's logic is that "Being level twenty is joining the justice league and shooting lasers out of your eyes," and that he doesn't bother with play beyond twenty, so twenty is your chance to do something awesome, if not practical or remotely balanced. I just think it's strange that Fire Mage does that at level fifteen.

[Tyndmyr]

I consider 1-20 in D&D to be mostly playable, if requiring some attention to balance. Epic gets...wonky. You can have a god-killing adventure or something, but realistically, scaling issues eventually show up. Epic magic is dodgy at best. It's the place for ludicrous power and so forth, and generally is about the point at which you should look at wrapping a campaign up. Everything needs to end.

Moving epic-like abilities down to lower levels is not an approach I prefer. I feel it only decreases the practically playable levels available.

[Aharon]

@Dsurion and Re'ozul
It's just 15 levels long because
a) he didn't really bother
b) he figured you would PrC out anyway, like you do with Dread Necromancer.

a) is because the class was just created as an attempt to show another poster how a class that has the power level required to compete with what strong classes do would look if it tried to do the things one commonly sees mages in fictional works doing.

@Tyndmyr
Curious in case my players start to look into it: What specifically did you have problems with?
Also, I just read a threat over at the gaming den, where someone said the Denners themselves consider the fighter, the barbarian and the samurai to be too powerful, and the knight and the monk about all right (Link (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=193679&highlight=#193679)).

[Tyndmyr]

Well, Ima link what we used for the Samurai. (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Samurai_%283.5e_Class%29)

I've heard it said that said site is not a perfect match of the Tome Samurai, despite it's claims to be. I haven't gone through it in detail, but it appears quite similar at least.

For one thing, there's the essentially "cleave until you miss". Considering that you can use it to inject 5ft steps between each cleave, this essentially means that a full attack with any basic optimization to ensure you hit reliably, and deal solid damge(fairly easy for a melee character) kills everything reasonably close together. This results in very long, boring turns. Well, until the DM stops putting anything close together, which will likely happen quickly. This in itself isn't horrifically broken, but it's certainly substantial. Whirlwind is basically another way of invoking such effects.

The auto-crit ability is basically "instagib on a stick". It further benefits THF characters. It also, IMO, devalues feats based on critting more often, and increases the value of anything that happens on a crit.

There's also a RAW problem with masterwork weapons. Note that all magical weapons are also masterwork. So, there's no actual reason to prevent someone from targetting a +1 flaming, human-bane, defending, mighty cleaving, keen weapon as their ancestral weapon, and reaping the flat bonuses to hit and damage as well(as well as free vorpal and ghost touch), thereby effectively having a +5 flaming, human-bane, defending, mighty cleaving, keen, vorpal ghost touch weapon at no additional cost. This increases the one-shot effect substantially.

Pledge of Loyalty is fine. Giving melee people access to resistance against mind affecting is not a bad thing.

Terrible Blows is basically like giving the benefits of adamantine, with better DR bypassing. This is not in itself unbalanced...but it allows you to select a different special material for your weapon, and gain the advantages of both. Much like the magical stacking mentioned above, any optimizer considering these things tends to pick up on this fast, and get a rather dizzying array of beneficial things.

Ancestral Guidance. Meh. Not a problem in any way. Basically a way for a player to ask a DM for clues.

Forcing AoOs. Allows you to touch off cleave chains on other peoples turns. Note that this also synergizes with Combat reflexes at level 11.

Parry Magic. Spell effect DCs are notably a lot lower than AC in general. It's fairly easy for a full BaB character who doesn't need to sweat MAD to hit these numbers. Note that this ability is based off the AoO mechanic, and thus, with Combat Reflexes, you can ignore targetted spells unless you roll a natural one. There are also ways to reroll missed attacks, so if an optimizer picks up one of these, he is reduced to a 1/400 chance of being affected by such a spell.

At level 12, you gain the same ability to ongoing spells. Between these two effects, this is pretty much an auto-win against batman wizards and the like. I should mention that they also negate force effects, go through walls of force, ignore AC bonuses from spells and things, cover bonuses, etc. So basically, anything that could reasonably stop you from landing your attack does not.

The daze effect is not actually that big of a deal. It has a save, and more importantly, the target is probably already dead.

We didn't play beyond level 15 or 16, but the ability to autodeny rezzes also seemed...strong.

[stainboy]

One individual chose poorly, and picked a samurai. It was sucking pretty badly. So, midway through, he was permitted to upgrade to the Tome samurai. By the end, we all agreed that he was broken as hell, and it was determined that the Tomes would no longer be used.


What was the deal-breaker? They get twice as many attacks per round as a PHB fighter, they have a better version of SR and an at-will dispel against persistent area effects (both of which use a special mechanic with broken scaling so they always work), and they can burrow through adamantine walls. That's really powerful stuff for a non-Tome game, but did I miss anything?

E: Ninja'd.

[FishAreWet]

@Tyr, half of that stuff is on purpose and is of the intended power level. Saying that the ability to easily dispel ongoing effects and avoid targeted effects is an auto-win against full casters is so laughably untrue and stupid that I'm not sure if you have even read the Player's Handbook.:smallsigh:

Samurai is considered one of the weaker Tome classes. It doesn't do much but hit things with a sword and at mid-high levels dispel things. But it's damn good at these things and that's the point.

[randomhero00]

link? Never heard of frank and K.

[Tyndmyr]

@Tyr, half of that stuff is on purpose and is of the intended power level. Saying that the ability to easily dispel ongoing effects and avoid targeted effects is an auto-win against full casters is so laughably untrue and stupid that I'm not sure if you have even read the Player's Handbook.:smallsigh:

Samurai is considered one of the weaker Tome classes. It doesn't do much but hit things with a sword and at mid-high levels dispel things. But it's damn good at these things and that's the point.

The point is that if the character is reasonably optimized, there is effectively no way to stop him from solving every problem by hitting it with his sword.

Yes, some people might point out that the samurai lacks flight and what not. This is not a serious handicap to auto-killing casters. Ditto lack of ability to see invisibility. These are easily solved by WBL early on.

You've also skipped over some of his more notable abilities. For example, ignoring a wide array of defensive spells entirely, automatically. The samurai is not broken because of additional options...those he gets, like the commune effect, are comparatively weak. No, he's broken because he turns the entire game into "I stab it, and he dies".

[Dsurion]

"I stab it, and he dies".
But this is D&D's core assumption! :smalltongue:

I'm just being facetious. I actually agree with all of your points about the Samurai.

[stainboy]

Ok I missed Kiai. My warrior culture reveres the scythe!

Even in a Tome game that's busted. Wizards get no-save autokills too, but not at level 3.

[Tyndmyr]

Honestly, a lot of the abilities themselves are not extremely problematic, it's the combined effect.

At three, the weapons already magical +1 ghost touch via the class, I believe, so yeah...a scythe crit should be an instakill for essentially any vaguely appropriate encounter.

[GreyMantle]

Has anyone tried using the developed "New Feat System" in playtesting? Some of the feats seem to make peripheral/feat tax choices like Iron Will or Blind-Fight WAY better, and I wanted to know if they were so good they overshadowed other feat lines or that these improvements just brought them up to par.

Are you talking about the scaling feats from Races of War? If you are, then yeah, I've been using them in the games I run for a couple years now.

They work very well in doing what they're supposed to do--give martial types options that are more similar in power to what spellcasters have. The vast majority of the RoW are internally balanced, which is honestly what's most important.

You do run into some problems if you're going for some PrC with a previously bad feat as a prereq or a feat that no longer needs to exist with RoW feats. (Ex: Great Fortitude's +6 ability is essentially the Improved Toughness feat.) The best option in those cases is usually change it to the appropriate RoW feat when possible, or to find some suitable substitute when you can't.

Requiring some character to take an intentionally bad feat in order to gain more power down the road is bad design, and it should generally be ignored/fixed when possible.


Ok I missed Kiai. My warrior culture reveres the scythe!

Even in a Tome game that's busted. Wizards get no-save autokills too, but not at level 3.


Shadowspray begs to disagree. As do grease and glitterdust.



The bottom line is that the Tome classes/feats are built with a specific level of power in mind. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play at that level where your party consists of a Beguiler, a Tome Fighter, a Cleric, and a Hurler Rogue, just as there's nothing wrong with wanting a party that consists of a Warblade, a TWF Rogue, a Crusader, and a Bard.

[Jayabalard]

Shadowspray begs to disagree. As do grease and glitterdust.Grease has a reflex save, glitterdust has a will save, shadowspray has a fort save ... so none of those meet the "no-save" part of "no-save autokills" ...

[faceroll]

The Tome stuff is ambitious, but balanced for a level of play I'm not usually interested in playing. When I am interested in extreme T1 play, introducing a can of homebrewed worms seems like it's more likely to muddle everything up.

I do like their work on new special materials, though.

[JaronK]

I looked at it and it was basically what others were saying: the power bar was set so high I didn't care if it was balanced or not, it just didn't look like fun. So, for those who want to slaughter everything instantly, those who complain that normal Sorcerers don't have enough raw power, well I guess it's good for them. But definitely not for me.

JaronK

[Tavar]

Some of the feat stuff wasn't too bad, from what I've seen. And the idea for feats to grow with the character is appealing.

[Doc Roc]

Some of the feat stuff wasn't too bad, from what I've seen. And the idea for feats to grow with the character is appealing.

An idea we've shamelessly stolen for some of Legend.

[Draculmaulkee]

It should be noted that there are significant power differences between classes in the Tomes. In general, Races of War classes (the Barbarian, the Fighter, the Samurai) far outstrip the other classes. In my experience the monk, fire mage, and Thief Acrobat can be dropped into a normal 3.5 game without any trouble.

[faceroll]

An idea we've shamelessly stolen for some of Legend.

How much of Legend is backwards compatible with existing 3.5 ruleset? I have an extensive collection of books and a decent level of familiarity of how they interact, what builds are possible, and how to get what I want out of the system. One thing that makes me very hesitant to use the Tome material is how it will interact with existing rules as well as how unfinished it is. BWL's aka LN's, fighter fix, for instance, is an awesomesauce backwards compatible fighter replacement, and preserves the fighter flavor, imo. But the Tome material... gosh, there's a lot of it, but not enough of it for an entirely new system. Without going through every possible combination of Tome material and existing 3.5 material, it just seems like it's going to cause more T1-side problems, rather than really fix any of the problems inherent in higher level D&D play.

So how does Legend work in this regard?

[stainboy]

It should be noted that there are significant power differences between classes in the Tomes. In general, Races of War classes (the Barbarian, the Fighter, the Samurai) far outstrip the other classes. In my experience the monk, fire mage, and Thief Acrobat can be dropped into a normal 3.5 game without any trouble.

Yeah, the Races of War stuff was what jumped out at me. If a class has a bunch of cool tricks and a couple of them are overpowered, I can deal with that. I can nerf or ban the overpowered stuff or structure the game so it doesn't work very often, and the class still has good abilities to fall back on. If a class gets two overpowered tricks and not much else, I'm lost. I either keep those tricks from dominating play and the class sucks, or I let the tricks work and then I can't challenge the party.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, the Races of War stuff was what jumped out at me. If a class has a bunch of cool tricks and a couple of them are overpowered, I can deal with that. I can nerf or ban the overpowered stuff or structure the game so it doesn't work very often, and the class still has good abilities to fall back on. If a class gets two overpowered tricks and not much else, I'm lost. I either keep those tricks from dominating play and the class sucks, or I let the tricks work and then I can't challenge the party.

Yeah. That's the thing. The Samurai is broken as is...but if you took away the coupla broken toys, it really has nothing interesting left.

Very few core classes are that way. Sure, you've got a fair amount that aren't terribly usable as written(truenamer is the obvious example), but there's a lot of ones that will work fine in almost any game with a few minor tweaks.

[JessGulbranson]

Tome Samurai... ancestral spiked chain... place between two slices of buttered bread and grill. Tasty win.

[Tyndmyr]

Tome Samurai... ancestral spiked chain... place between two slices of buttered bread and grill. Tasty win.

Yeah. Feel free to rack up size and reach enhancements as well. Then it really sorta stops mattering how far apart the GM puts mobs. Ending every encounter within the first round becomes remarkably standard.

[Draculmaulkee]

Since it appears that the GitP forums don't like the Races of War classes, what about the material from the Tome of Necromancy?

[stainboy]

Tome of Necromancy looks like it's for a game where the whole party is a cabal of necromancers, not for one lone Dread Necro hanging out with regular adventurers. So it hands out awesome stuff that would be completely disruptive in a regular game (making vampires, not Vampire Spawn but actual vampires, at level 5) but is exactly what you need to run a necromancer game.

I've never played with Tome of Necromancy but I have some experience running a game like this. You want spellcasting PCs who can do awesome necromancy stuff from near the beginning of the game, because it's lame to start the Necromancer Game at level 3 and then the wizard can't cast Animate Dead until level 7. But you still want to start at low levels. You want the PCs to start off hanging out in crypts, not building planar stone shape fortresses. The PCs are all casters but ghouls and zombies are basically fighters (and poorly equipped, uncreative, NPC fighters). You want the levels where fighters are still relevant on a field with five caster PCs.

So for this type of game it's completely appropriate to have 5th level characters who can make vampires. If this had been available when I was running my evil dungeon lord game I'd have definitely used it.

[Prime32]

So it hands out awesome stuff that would be completely disruptive in a regular game (making vampires, not Vampire Spawn but actual vampires, at level 5) but is exactly what you need to run a necromancer game.Not MM vampires. Tome of Necromancy also contains a replacement vampire template which is LA +0 and takes away a lot of undead immunities.

[true_shinken]

Not MM vampires. Tome of Necromancy also contains a replacement vampire template which is LA +0 and takes away a lot of undead immunities.
That's so lame.
MM vampire is my favorite template ever for bad guys. In my current campaign, my players have fough a rising half-elf supremacist empire, an usurper aasimar emperor (a gish with 20 contingent spells), githyanki... and the vampire mob. They hated and feared the vampire mob the most, even though they have yet to defeat the aasimar emperor.

[Prime32]

That's so lame.
MM vampire is my favorite template ever for bad guys. In my current campaign, my players have fough a rising half-elf supremacist empire, an usurper aasimar emperor (a gish with 20 contingent spells), githyanki... and the vampire mob. They hated and feared the vampire mob the most, even though they have yet to defeat the aasimar emperor.
There is, however, a racial paragon class which lets you get back those vampire powers. And makes vampire spellcasters pretty scary.

[Beheld]

You guys know there are actually like 4.75 Tomes right, not just the three races of war classes you keep complaining are OPed, that someone linked to that thread also saying are OPed?

I mean, maybe take a look at other stuff? Tome of Fiends and Dungeonomicon fit fine with a 3.5 game no problem.

Frankly, I DM Tome games, but can never actually get anyone to allow anything without the coveted WotC seal of approval on the internet, so I never get to play it.

[true_shinken]

You guys know there are actually like 4.75 Tomes right, not just the three races of war classes you keep complaining are OPed, that someone linked to that thread also saying are OPed?
It's Frank and K's fault, really. We have a saying here in Brazil that goes, 'the first impression is the one you'll keep'.

[Beheld]

It's Frank and K's fault, really. We have a saying here in Brazil that goes, 'the first impression is the one you'll keep'.

Um... You know the order of writing was:

Necromancy
Fiends
Dungeonomicon
Last: Races of War.

Now, honestly I think Necromancy is good in a lot of ways, but suffers from a serious case of "I have a shadow who does what I say at level 1." But clearly it's not the first impression that has everyone in a tizzy.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, I judge mainly by what I've actually seen in play. And that was pretty bad.

Imagine if the core wizard class was tainted scholar. Its like that

[true_shinken]

Um... You know the order of writing was:

Doesn't make any difference. What matters is the order you are exposed to them.

It's like WotC's 3.5, really. Most of the game is in the tier 3-4 range, but that doesn't stop anyone from claiming it to be grossly imbalanced.

[Beheld]

Well, I judge mainly by what I've actually seen in play. And that was pretty bad.

Imagine if the core wizard class was tainted scholar. Its like that

I am familiar with the Tome Samurai thanks, and while I agree that it is too powerful, it is no where in the range of DC 99999 Finger of death + infinite teleports/divinations.

[Tyndmyr]

Not the point,the point is that people would have said "d&d is broken". The whole would have been judged by the obviously broken, visible part.

[stainboy]

Now, honestly I think Necromancy is good in a lot of ways, but suffers from a serious case of "I have a shadow who does what I say at level 1." But clearly it's not the first impression that has everyone in a tizzy.

Shadows interact almost entirely with mechanics that don't scale. They hit your touch AC for Strength damage. If they're appropriate PC minions at all they can show up at pretty low level. Level 1 might be a stretch, but still. (Who starts games at level 1, anyway?)

By the way, check out Elemental Envoy in Complete Psionic. You can get a psi mephit at level 1 too.

[Shapurnippal]

Doesn't make any difference. What matters is the order you are exposed to them.


So... The order in which you were exposed to them is Frank and K's fault?

[Jayabalard]

Doesn't make any difference. What matters is the order you are exposed to them.That makes 0 sense... the order you are exposed to them isn't something that is under their control. If you're going to say it's their fault, then the publication order is only thing that matters.

[stainboy]

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with constructively stating that homebrew material is unpolished. But let's not lay blame on the writers because their several hundred pages of free public material aren't up to your standards.

[Beheld]

Shadows interact almost entirely with mechanics that don't scale. They hit your touch AC for Strength damage. If they're appropriate PC minions at all they can show up at pretty low level. Level 1 might be a stretch, but still. (Who starts games at level 1, anyway?)

By the way, check out Elemental Envoy in Complete Psionic. You can get a psi mephit at level 1 too.

They are incorporeal undead, and as such, can single handedly defeat mostly everything you will ever face at level 1, while you don't exist. They also spawn more shadows, for killing things. Therefore, your operative action, is to send that shadow in some direction, telling it to kill everything in the dungeon, which it will then do, and then you have an army of shadows, and an empty dungeon. (Except things immune to stat damage, but at level 1, that's basically undead which you can mind control anyway, or constructs.)

[Draculmaulkee]

I actually prefer the Tome vampire. The ability to play a vampire just too cool to pass up.

How is it possible to get shadows at level 1 using Tome rules? I must be missing something...the earliest way I see is level 4 with the Whispers of the Otherworld feat.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I know that this is a bit of necromancy, but this is the first Google result on the subject, and it appears to be a good place to dump it.

In the 2007-2011 timeframe I was a member of the Gaming Den (I still am, but haven't posted in over a year), and provided feedback on parts of the Tomes. I made up a few classes, but they were never accepted into baseline (eh, whatever).

The Tomes are still alive, but inactive, here: https://code.google.com/p/awesometome/downloads/detail?name=Tome0.7rev139.pdf

I have run, as a DM, many campaigns with the Tomes (10? 8?). I have experience with Assassin, Barbarian, Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Beguiler, Fighter, Fire Mage, Knight, Monk, Rogue, Ninja, Jester, Summoner, Thief Acrobat, Fiendish Brute, True Fiend, Adept, Warrior, Half-Dragon, and Samurai from levels 1-11 (mean=5, sd=1). I was a player of the Samurai in the game that made it to 11. I only have experience with the Soul Merchant PrC. I have experience with the majority of martial feats (80+%), and a good number of the skill feats (50%).

At the levels which we have played, we have found the classes to be powerful, but balanced. In the goal to make Wizard/Cleric/Druid the power level, I believe that they have succeeded. People still play Clerics, Druids, and Wizards in the campaigns, albeit less (compare Druid to Summoner, one of them is more fun).

Generally, the Tomes fix the broken parts of D&D 3.5. The most relevant ones are Grappling (which is actually fun in F&K), Magic Items (you get 6, they scale), and forcing people to make feat choices (read: plan builds). Taking a F&K feat is never a mistake, which cannot be said in 3.5 (Improved Two Weapon Defense).

The only 'broken' part that we ran into was the Samurai Iaijutsu Focus ability. We have a generally powergaming group, but not game-breaking. As an example, we ruled that a Katana was a 20/x3 weapon, and that fighting with a Scythe was dumb (although optimal).

Some notes to players:
- Two Weapon Fighting is very good. Be aware that it is going to mess with "Fighting Style", "Designate Opponent", or "Death Attack" type abilities.
- Blasting sucks and always has. If you want to blast, be a Fire Mage with Two Weapon Fighting. Your character will not be interesting unless you RP it.
- Healing sucks and always has. Don't be a healer. Wands of Lesser Vigor are for sale and readily available. If your DM disagrees, make them yourself. Healing was never an interesting ability anyways.
- Be aware of interactions with ranged attacks. The Samurai Kiai! ability, and the Assassin Death Attack ability work at unlimited range. Use them.
- Don't be a ****. The Samurai can have an ability at level 11 that says "hit the BBEG 16 times in a round, 5 of them are crits". This is game-breaking, and you shouldn't use it. There is probably another hack in there somewhere, if you encounter it then just have a talk with your DM.

Some notes to DMs:
- F&K classes are powerful and are going to be a bit higher powered than you are accustomed to. If you are running 3 encounters/day at CR, you will be fine. Most DMs I've played with don't do this, and instead use one monster at CR. You need to use a CR+2 creature for an equal challenge.
- You are going to PLAY MORE D&D. There is less time spent in feat selection, skill selection, grappling, and leveling up in general (except wizards). Plan for this.
- Grappling works now. Use it. Please have monsters use the "Lift" option of grappling and carry characters away. It is thematic, interesting, fun, and tactically viable. The dwarves in the Hobbit are carried away by spiders. When was the last time anyone dragged anyone anywhere in your campaign.
- As a DM, it is your job to provide challenges, not solutions. This is advice to DMs everywhere. F&K characters generally have more and more interesting options available to them, and are going to solve your puzzles more creatively. This is okay, and fun.
- Experience is dumb. Players level when you say they do. Keep a close eye on this, and don't level people up until they have gotten a chance to use their powers.
- There is a tendency for a DM to negate a player ability (Knight in a dungeon which can't have a horse). Try not to. If you do, talk to your players and give them something equivalent.
- The Wish economy is real, and interesting (see: 6 items). Don't restrain from having powerful characters have a +5 to all stats, 6 cool items, and a Djinni in the basement. Your 10+ level D&D players should not care about a mountain of gold, except as a combat obstacle or plot device.
- Character Backgrounds. OMG USE THEM! Players are lazy and usually don't write a good backstory. This is true in fantasy literature too, so you can't really blame them (anyone remember what Bilbo did before Gandalf showed up? Legolas? Drizzt?). Those non-numeric bonus mean something: they mean you have a background.

Lastly: Play it. Seriously, this is the most fun system I've played. Don't worry about the power level. I've played boxed modules with it (RHoD) with no particular issue.