Stone Dragon Tweaking

[Honest Tiefling]

I like ToB just fine, but I keep hearing that Stone Dragon is useless (except to pick locks). Would it be unbalanced as a house rule to remove that restriction, or was it balanced with that as a weakness?

P.S. Apologies if I got the wrong forum.

[Big Fau]

I like ToB just fine, but I keep hearing that Stone Dragon is useless (except to pick locks). Would it be unbalanced as a house rule to remove that restriction, or was it balanced with that as a weakness?

P.S. Apologies if I got the wrong forum.

Not in the least. It seems like it was a holdover from testplaying, when all of the nine styles were Psionic in nature (a small bit of evidence of this can actually be found in the book, in chapter 3).

[Essence_of_War]

Which restriction are you removing? The "must be in contact with the ground" to initiate nonsense?

[Lateral]

Stone Dragon is weaker than the others, but not to the point of being useless. That said, it could use some boosts- remove the 'can't move more than 5ft' clause from its stances, the 'must be on the ground' clause for everything, and make the maneuvers and stances better; a lot of them are sadly lacking.

Somebody did a fix for it fairly recently, but I can't find it for some reason.

[Eldariel]

Honestly, the school is actually quite reasonable if you remove that restriction (though the stances' "can't move more than 5'"-restriction is a major PiTB too). Its maneuvers aren't bad. While they aren't cream de la crop, if one could initiate them airborne, you'd probably have a reasonable lower OP option for a Stone Dragon specialist. As it stands, better hope the whole game occurs in dungeons with no extradimensional spaces or some such.

[Fax Celestis]

"can't move more than 5'"-restriction is a major PiTB too

It's not that bad. Take your move, use your swift to restance.

[Honest Tiefling]

Hrm. Would it be tempting to take with both rules gone? Or should I just try the contact with earth rule first?

[Lateral]

Honestly, even with those restrictions gone, the stances are still pretty unappealing, and many of the maneuvers are still kind of weak.

[Honest Tiefling]

Noted. I might decide to tweak the individual maneuvers and stances, but first I want the things to be usable. Through if anyone knows of a good fix, I would not mind reading it but I am afraid I'll mess it up somehow on my own.

[Lateral]

I know there was one I saw recently, but I don't remember who wrote it. I'll go see if I can find it.

Edit: Found it. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191693)

[Eldariel]

Honestly, even with those restrictions gone, the stances are still pretty unappealing, and many of the maneuvers are still kind of weak.

Roots of the Mountain and Crushing Weight of the Mountain are both pretty good within their specialty.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Well, I like dipping a couple into Stone Dragon for Shards of Granite so I can flat ignore DR/Hardness of whatever I'm swinging at. That way I don't need to have a Cold Iron/Chaotic/Pixie-Particles/Wierdness weapon for that one critter that might pop up at some point with the obnoxious DR. This goes double for TWFing builds.

For a warblade, one or two of the 'ignore DR' maneuvers is a pretty solid choice, just in the even you run across something with obnoxious DR, but don't want the feat investment for SoG.

The capstone 9th level maneuver that does 2d6 Con damage is pretty solid against anything not immune.

[deuxhero]

I thought Stone Dragon was intentionally weaker, as all initiators got it?

[Greenish]

I thought Stone Dragon was intentionally weaker, as all initiators got it?I don't see why that would be the case.

[deuxhero]

It's hard to see why most WotC balance attempts are the case honestly...

[Honest Tiefling]

@Lateral: Thanks! I'll be taking a look at it later. Thank you for your help

@ShneekeyTheLost: Stone Dragon does have its perks, and I like the flavor of it. It is why I wanted it to be a viable choice, even as a dip.

@Eldariel: I will definitely reccomend these to any players who are interested in a ToB class.

@deuxhero: I would assume that the school everyone can dip into it, it was weaker as not to make every ToB class feel the same. But I am not sure that I like the idea that one of the most practiced schools is lame, as I feel that the more people who have access to it, the more it would be perfected.

[MeeposFire]

Outside of the silly rules of must be on ground and can't move more than 5 feet (which is more annoying than anything) Stone dragon does not need to be tweaked. What it needs are more maneuvers, specifically of the boost and counter variety. Stone dragon has greats strikes and not much else.

[Pechvarry]

Hrm. Would it be tempting to take with both rules gone? Or should I just try the contact with earth rule first?

Definitely remove contact from ground restriction. If you're at all leery about removing both restrictions, perhaps you should consider just changing the "no movement" stances to "half movement", and/or stating all movement in said stances has to be land speed. Would still be limiting but give you an idea of what the school is capable of, which makes mid-game-buffing much easier.

[herrhauptmann]

I know there was one I saw recently, but I don't remember who wrote it. I'll go see if I can find it.

Edit: Found it. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191693)

Yes, I use that one for one of my PBP games. It is extremely awesome. If only the game was actually progressing...