PDA

View Full Version : My Tome of Battle Discipline Overhaul! (Includes Falling Star and 2 more!)



Endarire
2013-01-08, 02:29 AM
Greetings, all!

I like Tome of Battle. It's spiffy, it's neat, and I'm building a system that integrates its concepts at least. I was dismayed that such a good idea (maneuver and stances) produced overly predictable builds. There was simply too little 'good' material (as the Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade Handbooks point out) and it was too hard to switch maneuvers and stances. Also, the good material was just about enough to fill your available maneuvers readied and stances known, meaning each Crusader wound up similar to every other. (Thicket of Blades and Martial Spirit, everyone?)

This material works best with an extra house rule: All initiators can swap their maneuvers and stances known after 8 hours of rest, like a Cleric can change his prepared spells. This allows for more experimentation and helps prevent all of <class name> from being the same.

Due to rearranged maneuver and stance progressions, I included revised charts for the martial adepts (Crusaders, Marshals, Rangers, Swordsages, and Warblades). And yes, I fixed progressions so each class gets a new stance whenever a new level of stance becomes available. (Class levels 1, 2, 5, 9, 11, 15, and 20 for all classes.) See !Maneuver and Stance Progressions for Revised Classes.doc for details.

My complete Tome of Battle maneuver & stance overhaul (http://antioch.snow-fall.com/files/members/Endarire/DnD/Greg%20Campbell%5C%27s%20Revised%20D%26D%203.5%20M artial%20Disciplines%20for%20Public%20Distribution %2012%2014%2012.zip), including the 3 new community-inspired disciplines of Eternal Mount, Falling Star, and Unquiet Twilight! Also includes all 5 revised initiator base classes! (Crusader, Marshal, Ranger, Swordsage, and Warblade)

SirAxealot
2013-01-09, 03:52 AM
This material works best with an extra house rule: All initiators can swap their maneuvers and stances known after 8 hours of rest, like a Cleric can change his prepared spells.

I am heavily in favor of this

Amnoriath
2013-01-09, 10:30 AM
Greetings, all!

I like Tome of Battle. It's spiffy, it's neat, and I'm building a system that integrates its concepts at least. I was dismayed that such a good idea (maneuver and stances) produced overly predictable builds. There was simply too little 'good' material (as the Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade Handbooks point out) and it was too hard to switch maneuvers and stances. Also, the good material was just about enough to fill your available maneuvers readied and stances known, meaning each Crusader wound up similar to every other. (Thicket of Blades and Martial Spirit, everyone?)

This material works best with an extra house rule: All initiators can swap their maneuvers and stances known after 8 hours of rest, like a Cleric can change his prepared spells. This allows for more experimentation and helps prevent all of <class name> from being the same.


Actually it would make them more similar because in the campaign the character would have used all of the maneuvers they could have chosen. Yes, it increases versatility but the reason why people choose those all the time is because they are that good and unique vs. the others. The issues to me is kind of more like what Xefas said in his critique of Tome of Battle. There seems to be flavor of esotericism but the mechanical advancement makes it easy to acquire and doesn't return much for being an actual esoteric of a discipline. In other words there are only a few good maneuvers in each disciplines and can be easily obtained while the classes themselves are mostly defined by the maneuvers they choose not the class or a discipline they choose to focus on or stay with.