ToB in Epic play. Can it be useful?

[CIDE]

I want to start off by saying that these games are low OP and pretty rules lenient. While there are some casters no one's much more than partial casters or glass canons. So, the usual adage about casters being king (and epic spellcasting being unbeatable) isn't necessarily true in this case. I do also want to mention that I've seen some of the homebrew stuff for Epic ToB progression and I'd like to avoid that if I can.

All that said the game starts at level 20. Sky's (almost) the limit with races, templates, and usable written material. Can ToB be brought into epic play and remain usable. Even without official support to push it into epic? Would it be worth it to even try without homebrews content? If so can it also be done without the theurge manifester/caster classes?

I want to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter.

[Martimus Prime]

From the rare previous experience I've had with this, it seems that players did best as ToB characters that also invested heavily in a secondary class. Rogue with iaijutsu focus and that one tumble skill trick is a particularly egregious addition to levels in something that gets diamond mind maneuvers. You haven't lived until you've made a full round attack on a flat-footed or flanked opponent with dual daggers and then doubled it, all while drawing and discarding with quick draw - all that remains is a pile of daggers on the ground and a fine, pink mist where brachyrus used to be. Ruby Knight Vindicator is also likely to take you far, since it combines two classes that are already pretty strong into an even stronger whole.

[Fizban]

Are melee characters useable after 20th? If so then ToB is. The best maneuvers just give you extra attacks or bonuses on attacks, the only maneuvers that would get worse are those with fixed effects, which does include most of the 9ths. Just make some feats for powering up this or that maneuver or school, set up the standard bonus feats for 20th+ like every other class, and I'd say continue allowing the even level maneuver upgrading indefinitely such that a high enough level adept will have nothing but the most powerful maneuvers.

[Martimus Prime]

Are melee characters useable after 20th? If so then ToB is. The best maneuvers just give you extra attacks or bonuses on attacks, the only maneuvers that would get worse are those with fixed effects, which does include most of the 9ths. Just make some feats for powering up this or that maneuver or school, set up the standard bonus feats for 20th+ like every other class, and I'd say continue allowing the even level maneuver upgrading indefinitely such that a high enough level adept will have nothing but the most powerful maneuvers.

Even casters can benefit, to the extent that it nearly got ToB banned at my table.

My wizard/warblade/JPM gish and his OA shaman/crusader/sacred fist/RKV friend were infamous for abusing the action economy with belts of battle, white raven tactics, snake's swiftness, moment of alacrity, and contingent spells. Between the two of us, we would literally slay entire armies and subjugate the enemy generals with mind control before anyone else acted - which was frequently, because our dex scores were monstrous/boosted and the party rogue was a dread commando.

[Mordaedil]

My main issue with ToB is how badly written it is, making players and DMs argue about RAW and RAI at the table.

For instance, we are still not sure exactly how the Crusader gets maneuvers during battle.

[Eldariel]

My main issue with ToB is how badly written it is, making players and DMs argue about RAW and RAI at the table.

For instance, we are still not sure exactly how the Crusader gets maneuvers during battle.

Why would there be any arguments? Just have DM give a final decree and talk about it outside the game if someone has any gripes. The table is no place for such arguments. It's just a waste of in-game time and it's the easiest if the DM just makes a ruling and everybody abides by it until the game ends.

As for how Crusader recovery works, it's intended to be cycles. First round you have X-3 maneuvers where X is your number of maneuvers readied (X-2 if you have Extra Granted Maneuver, a must-have for Crusaders since it also speeds up the recovery rate). Each round thereafter you're granted one more. Then, when you should be granted another maneuver but there are none left to grant, all your maneuvers are recovered and you start the cycle again. Thus, a level 1 Crusader with Extra Granted Maneuver has 5 maneuvers readied and he's granted 3 random maneuvers on the first round, 4th on the second, 5th on the third. On the fourth round, he recovers all his maneuvers and starts over again with 3 random maneuvers granted. It's really simple if you use maneuver cards: just have a shuffled deck of the maneuvers and draw the maneuvers you get to use from it each time, and when you should draw a maneuver but there are none to draw, shuffle the deck and start over.

How it works by RAW, well, there are few different schools there. That's rather irrelevant though, as there are no living campaigns using 3.5e so every table has a DM that can rule it as they will.

[Mordaedil]

Yeah, we didn't argue at the table, we just discussed it while we were making characters and our player who was making a crusader asked how we interpreted the rules. Turns out we all read it and interpreted the writing differently.

[Elkad]

Why would there be any arguments? Just have DM give a final decree and talk about it outside the game if someone has any gripes. The table is no place for such arguments. It's just a waste of in-game time and it's the easiest if the DM just makes a ruling and everybody abides by it until the game ends.

As for how Crusader recovery works, it's intended to be cycles. First round you have X-3 maneuvers where X is your number of maneuvers readied (X-2 if you have Extra Granted Maneuver, a must-have for Crusaders since it also speeds up the recovery rate). Each round thereafter you're granted one more. Then, when you should be granted another maneuver but there are none left to grant, all your maneuvers are recovered and you start the cycle again. Thus, a level 1 Crusader with Extra Granted Maneuver has 5 maneuvers readied and he's granted 3 random maneuvers on the first round, 4th on the second, 5th on the third. On the fourth round, he recovers all his maneuvers and starts over again with 3 random maneuvers granted. It's really simple if you use maneuver cards: just have a shuffled deck of the maneuvers and draw the maneuvers you get to use from it each time, and when you should draw a maneuver but there are none to draw, shuffle the deck and start over.

How it works by RAW, well, there are few different schools there. That's rather irrelevant though, as there are no living campaigns using 3.5e so every table has a DM that can rule it as they will.

And the disagreement I immediately had with my player was "just shuffle the discards and draw, but keep the granted-but-unused ones in-hand" vs "shuffle them ALL and redraw"

[Extra Anchovies]

A one-level Warblade dip any time after 10th level can provide all three of the Diamond Mind maneuvers that replace a single saving throw of a certain type with a Concentration check (Moment of Perfect Mind, Mind Over Body, Action Before Thought for will/fort/ref respectively). Since the max ranks in a skill increases by 1 every level while epic save bonuses increase by 1 every 2 levels, the save-replacing maneuvers (on a character who's maxing Concentration) get more and more powerful as you level.

[Jack_Simth]

A one-level Warblade dip any time after 10th level can provide all three of the Diamond Mind maneuvers that replace a single saving throw of a certain type with a Concentration check (Moment of Perfect Mind, Mind Over Body, Action Before Thought for will/fort/ref respectively). Since the max ranks in a skill increases by 1 every level while epic save bonuses increase by 1 every 2 levels, the save-replacing maneuvers (on a character who's maxing Concentration) get more and more powerful as you level.

Iron Heart Surge is also great if you can get your DM to hand-waive the obvious dysfunction (it's a standard action to use, but most of the things you'd want to use it to end would deny you a standard action), as is Aura of Perfect Order (Stance: 1/round, take 11 on a d20 roll, even if you normally couldn't); Shadow Stride is one of the few move-action teleports available, Diamond Defense gives a pretty big bonuses to saves; quite a few of them are useful, really. A couple of instances of Martial Study or Martial Stance go wonderfully on most builds.

If the game is such that 'standard' martial characters are still useful characters, then Tome of Battle martial characters will also be useful.

[CIDE]

Iron Heart Surge is also great if you can get your DM to hand-waive the obvious dysfunction (it's a standard action to use, but most of the things you'd want to use it to end would deny you a standard action), as is Aura of Perfect Order (Stance: 1/round, take 11 on a d20 roll, even if you normally couldn't); Shadow Stride is one of the few move-action teleports available, Diamond Defense gives a pretty big bonuses to saves; quite a few of them are useful, really. A couple of instances of Martial Study or Martial Stance go wonderfully on most builds.

If the game is such that 'standard' martial characters are still useful characters, then Tome of Battle martial characters will also be useful.


From the rare previous experience I've had with this, it seems that players did best as ToB characters that also invested heavily in a secondary class. Rogue with iaijutsu focus and that one tumble skill trick is a particularly egregious addition to levels in something that gets diamond mind maneuvers. You haven't lived until you've made a full round attack on a flat-footed or flanked opponent with dual daggers and then doubled it, all while drawing and discarding with quick draw - all that remains is a pile of daggers on the ground and a fine, pink mist where brachyrus used to be. Ruby Knight Vindicator is also likely to take you far, since it combines two classes that are already pretty strong into an even stronger whole.

Sounds pretty effective but limited for the iajutsu focus build. But, I imagine I could get the same (or possibly better) result from a factotum build.


Are melee characters useable after 20th? If so then ToB is. The best maneuvers just give you extra attacks or bonuses on attacks, the only maneuvers that would get worse are those with fixed effects, which does include most of the 9ths. Just make some feats for powering up this or that maneuver or school, set up the standard bonus feats for 20th+ like every other class, and I'd say continue allowing the even level maneuver upgrading indefinitely such that a high enough level adept will have nothing but the most powerful maneuvers.

I honestly can't answer your opnening question. I have only glanced at epic until this game popped up. Never played in it before and I almost never followed epic-specific threads. Epic just sometimes comes up and the consensus I've generally seen is "Magic wins even more". I kind of guessed that the tricks you mentioned would be the best bet; I just didn't know if they'd even matter once epic level gear, feats, and spells come into play.

You do have a point, though. There are other melee characters in play. Sure, they have some crazy template stacking but I could definitely build stronger characters.


Even casters can benefit, to the extent that it nearly got ToB banned at my table.

My wizard/warblade/JPM gish and his OA shaman/crusader/sacred fist/RKV friend were infamous for abusing the action economy with belts of battle, white raven tactics, snake's swiftness, moment of alacrity, and contingent spells. Between the two of us, we would literally slay entire armies and subjugate the enemy generals with mind control before anyone else acted - which was frequently, because our dex scores were monstrous/boosted and the party rogue was a dread commando.

Still feels like a "magic wins" scenario.



A one-level Warblade dip any time after 10th level can provide all three of the Diamond Mind maneuvers that replace a single saving throw of a certain type with a Concentration check (Moment of Perfect Mind, Mind Over Body, Action Before Thought for will/fort/ref respectively). Since the max ranks in a skill increases by 1 every level while epic save bonuses increase by 1 every 2 levels, the save-replacing maneuvers (on a character who's maxing Concentration) get more and more powerful as you level.

I completely forgot about these and it's an amazing idea.




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I appreciate all the responses from everyone. A couple cool things to consider and it reassures me it'll still work. I should point out that the DM and some of the other people involved are the type that think a Monk is a good class, that VoP makes the monk awesome, and that Dread Necromancer can be just as good as the Wizard. The only really troubling thing are the fast-and-loose rules in place for LA. There's basically no penalty for using templates with LA and some people have exploited the hell out of that for things like a free Vampire Lord template on a character that still has 20 character levels.

MOST of them are just big bruisers or focus on high damage output or high stats. So, via magic it's still pretty easy to eventually circumvent a lot of that. I can even come up with RAW builds to beat them in melee if the need arose. Just wasn't sure about reasonable AND RAW ToB builds (sanz magic theurge classes) to compete wtih the nonsense.

[icefractal]

As a dip, absolutely; the more levels you have, the lower the opportunity cost for taking a couple levels of an initiator class is, even for casters. The standard-action strikes might not be useful past their level, but extra attacks are always good and many of the defensive/utility ones are great at any level.

As the primary basis of a character, I'm not sure. Even in the realm of martial types being useful, most of the standard-action maneuvers don't scale well past a certain point. I think it would be possible for some styles, but not every ToB character that was viable pre-Epic would stay viable.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The best damaging maneuvers are the ones that deal a flat +X damage. Not +Xd6 or whatever, but just +X. Why? Because multipliers are awesome, and they multiply the +X just fine. You know that strike that deals +100 damage? Multiply that a half-dozen times, and you'll really be laying on the hurt. No, it doesn't outdo uberchargers, but do it right and it'll mesh well with that kind of thing.

Otherwise, the more abusable maneuvers, as has been stated, will always be useful. Giving other characters turns using your swift actions, subbing Concentration checks for damage and saves, throwing an enemy repeatedly over a few hundred miles and dealing damage based on the distance, taking 11 on your attack rolls, murdering your enemies with the plastic spork you have in your bagged lunch, iron heart surge...

There's some very nice stuff in there.

[Fizban]

I honestly can't answer your opnening question. I have only glanced at epic until this game popped up. Never played in it before and I almost never followed epic-specific threads. Epic just sometimes comes up and the consensus I've generally seen is "Magic wins even more". I kind of guessed that the tricks you mentioned would be the best bet; I just didn't know if they'd even matter once epic level gear, feats, and spells come into play.

You do have a point, though. There are other melee characters in play. Sure, they have some crazy template stacking but I could definitely build stronger characters.
I'm on a bit of a crusade against hardcore optimizers right now, and this continues to apply. Epic spellcasting only annihilates the game as much as formulaic custom magic items does: if your table chooses to do so, it does, if not, it doesn't. I will guarantee you that the people writing the epic level handbook were not abusing the hell out of epic spellcasting: they were using basic spells like the printed examples in the book, and maybe the big metamagic/auto metamagic effects. If melee characters can play alongside spellcasters in your group, they will continue to do so.

[Jack_Simth]

I'm on a bit of a crusade against hardcore optimizers right now, and this continues to apply. Epic spellcasting only annihilates the game as much as formulaic custom magic items does: if your table chooses to do so, it does, if not, it doesn't. I will guarantee you that the people writing the epic level handbook were not abusing the hell out of epic spellcasting: they were using basic spells like the printed examples in the book, and maybe the big metamagic/auto metamagic effects.The biggest problem with Epic spells is that they're very, very ... binary. If you do not permit mitigation, then about 99% of the time they're Epic Fail - you spend a level's worth of XP, a very large amount of GP, and quite a bit of time researching the ability to do something you could probably do just as well with a non-Epic spell and some metamagic. If you do permit mitigation, there's no clear spot to stop, and everyone MUST have Epic magic to keep up after a point. I'm pretty sure this makes it broken in the "does not function as intended" sense.

[Fizban]

That does leave the possibility of finding book/DM designed epic spells for free on those silly "only one can ever learn from this" tablets.

[icefractal]

I think if I was wanting something like Epic Spellcasting, I'd go with:
1) Build your spell in a crunchy point-based system, such as Hero or Gurps.
2) Convert it to D&D, DC/slot based on amount of points.
3) Check whether it's still reasonable in D&D.

Still relies on GM judgment in the final step, but I feel like Hero would give a better starting point than the system in the ELH. Also - personally speaking - I'd rather have Epic spells simply take up higher level slots (so you'd take Improved Spell Capacity more times to get access to better ones), rather than having a largely pointless check and a big "crafting" cost.

[Jack_Simth]

That does leave the possibility of finding book/DM designed epic spells for free on those silly "only one can ever learn from this" tablets.
At which point, for most practical purposes you've chucked the system. Don't get me wrong: That's not actually a bad thing. As I said: I'm pretty sure Epic spellcasting is broken in the 'does not function as intended' sense.

[Fizban]

Fair enough. I do think it's possible for a player or DM to sit down and design an epic spell that works as intended, but it sounds like the main problem is the crafting cost. I haven't studied epic WBL, but it should be possible to think of the epic spell in terms of a permanent un-loseable magic item: you research the spell, you get a 1/day (or more if you're really high level) effect that's way bigger than a non-epic item could pull off. Epic Mage Armor is a nice example: it costs 400k to research, but that's way cheaper in cash and feats than it would be to get the same bonus from epic armor or bracers of armor.

[Segev]

Speaking of the save-replacing Diamond Mind maneuvers, the fact that they replace it with Concentration leads to a rather stunning trick a psionic character can pull: One use for expending your psionic focus that is oft overlooked is that you may do so to "take 15" on a Concentration check.

So you can guarantee a 15 on the die roll portion of a save, if you like. Adding your Concentration skill et al to the bonus.

[Flickerdart]

Can ToB be brought into epic play and remain usable.
Imagine a powerful challenge - way over a thousand hit points, enormous numbers for attack bonus, and damage rolls.

Is this an epic creature? No, it's just a kobold with a big stack of humanoid HD. But you can also describe many Epic monsters and Epic PCs this way. Especially PCs - outside of magic, rules for Epic play amount to "emulate a low-level spell once a day, if you're lucky."

ToB isn't a good system because it has numbers. It's a good system because it gives things that are not numbers - often, things that are necessary before you can even start to bring your numbers to bear. Characters who don't otherwise have non-number things need them even more in Epic play than normal.

Speaking of Epic spells, the system is not usable with or without abuse. If you sit down to make a fireball without mitigating, you pay ridiculous millions of cash and XP. If you start mitigating, where is the limit between one ritual participant and 5 million gated Solars? There is no systematic way to decide. You're really better off just sitting down with your DM and saying "I want a spell that can do this, how do I get it."

[Telok]

I always thought that a neat way to do epic spells was to make minor effects as free/swift/move actions with absurdly low (but not zero) DCs. Amusing but not broken.

The other way was the epic broken contingency spell that stored lots of precast spells and had lots of triggers. That one was worth being expensive.

Edit: Thought, ToB is based off the spellcasting system (maneuver level, initator level, etc.) that just keeps a consistent theme of abilities. You could probably pretty easily adapt the epic spellcasting into epic maneuvers.

[Eldariel]

Speaking of the save-replacing Diamond Mind maneuvers, the fact that they replace it with Concentration leads to a rather stunning trick a psionic character can pull: One use for expending your psionic focus that is oft overlooked is that you may do so to "take 15" on a Concentration check.

So you can guarantee a 15 on the die roll portion of a save, if you like. Adding your Concentration skill et al to the bonus.

Those maneuvers suffer of action considerations though. On epic levels, most things should be able to sling around significantly more powerful immediates than "automake a save" and at that point, the immediate action limit is the more restrictive one.

[Velaryon]

To the OP: ToB can work at least in low Epic. I've taken an initiator up to level 24 (from a game starting at 20) and he was one of the most useful characters in the group. I went Warblade 20 to start, and then started taking levels in the other base classes because none of the initiator PrC's fit my character concept. Most of my maneuvers and stances came from Iron Heart, Diamond Mind, and Stone Dragon so I can't speak for the other schools as much.

We did end up with low divine ranks by the time the game was over, but even as the only non-caster in the party, I was holding my own just fine even before that happened. In a high-op game this may not be true, but for your purposes I think it won't be a problem. Do expect that you'll need to be resurrected every now and then, though.

Depending on the game, you might need to optimize a little more than your caster teammates, or you might not (you DID say they were the type who thinks VoP Monk is a good idea, so I'm leaning toward not). If anything, it sounds like you have a greater risk of running into the "ToB is overpowered so I'm banning it" problem than finding yourself useless.



And the disagreement I immediately had with my player was "just shuffle the discards and draw, but keep the granted-but-unused ones in-hand" vs "shuffle them ALL and redraw"

Away from books at the moment, but I'm about 98% sure it's shuffle them all and redraw. Otherwise you would quickly run out of moves to shuffle.

[MeeposFire]

The trick with many of the standard action strikes is that you pick the ones that are better than what you could otherwise do with a standard action and that is when you use them. You don't use strike of perfect clarity when you could full attack since at epic you should be able to out pace that one strike but if you are forced to move 10 feet or are otherwise prevented from full attacking then that strike looks a LOT better.

And just like pre epic things that give you movement for a swift action or abilities that otherwise gives you more of what you need are always good.