Tome of Battle Variants

[tedcahill2]

So this is a spin off of another thread where I asked about existing variants for giving core classes access to maneuvers from Tome of Battle. Conclusion from previous thread seemed to be that there wasn't any. So let's make some variants then.

Classes in question here, at least initially, are barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger, and rogue.

Can we tie maneuvers into rage and making barbarian rage shorter and more devastating? Is there a feat, that any class can take, to learn a maneuver or stance, that could be added to the fighter bonus list? Are maneuvers as powerful as spells of equal level, making it easy to adapt the ranger and paladin by replacing spells with maneuvers? Would it be sensible to slow a rogues sneak attack progression and add maneuvers to make up the difference?

Let's discuss.

[Dagroth]

So this is a spin off of another thread where I asked about existing variants for giving core classes access to maneuvers from Tome of Battle. Conclusion from previous thread seemed to be that there wasn't any. So let's make some variants then.

Classes in question here, at least initially, are barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger, and rogue.

Can we tie maneuvers into rage and making barbarian rage shorter and more devastating? Is there a feat, that any class can take, to learn a maneuver or stance, that could be added to the fighter bonus list? Are maneuvers as powerful as spells of equal level, making it easy to adapt the ranger and paladin by replacing spells with maneuvers? Would it be sensible to slow a rogues sneak attack progression and add maneuvers to make up the difference?

Let's discuss.

1) Martial Study (get a maneuver) and Martial Stance (get a stance, needs Martial Study) already exist in Tome of Battle and are already considered Fighter Bonus Feats.

2) There are ACFs for Paladin & Ranger where they give up spellcasting and get bonus feats instead. This is generally considered a terrible idea, even with Martial Study & Martial Stance.

3) There is a Variant Rogue in UA that gives up Sneak Attack for Fighter Bonus Feats (loose all sneak attack, get fighter bonus feat progression as fighter). This is considered "meh", unless you're dipping 2 levels of Martial Rogue and 2 levels of Fighter because you want lots of feats.

Now on to your discussion about rebuild classes...

1) Look in Pathfinder... I forget the supplement name, but there's a Pathfinder equivalent to the Tome of Battle that adds more maneuvers, disciplines and specific options for Martial Ranger, etc. I can't imagine it would be too hard to back-port most of that. If you don't like allowing the new disciplines & maneuvers, simply figure out which existing ones would work for the classes and use those.

2) A multi-class Swordsage/Rogue would have less sneak attack, but better everything else (except some of the advanced abilities... you could always take more Rogue levels than Swordsage levels if Rogue is your favored class if you really want them). Shadow Hand & Tiger Claw maneuvers synergize very well with the typical Rogue fighting style.

3) Fighter really is just a generic class, with the introduction of Tome of Battle. It's ridiculously rare to see more than 6 levels of Fighter on a character... and that's only for very specific builds that require ACFs. Let it go.

4) Full Barbarian Rage + Full Martial Maneuver progression (+ free Pounce, usually) is a bit on the powerful side. Giving access to one, maybe two disciplines (Iron Heart & Stone Dragon seem appropriate) with about half the maneuvers & stances granted to Warblade might work. But it would still require a bit of testing.

5) Check out the Mystic Ranger (Dragon Magazine 336). If you replace spells on that chassis with the maneuver/stance progression of the Warblade (& recharge mechanic of the Swordsage) you'd probably be fine. Disciplines would be Desert Wind, Iron Heart, Tiger Claw and White Raven maybe? Note that theirs no real support for Archery builds in ToB, but there apparently is in the Pathfinder version.

6) Paladin... uh... Crusader. Really. If you're talking about replacing spells with maneuvers, the work is already done. If you put the Paladin class abilities in place of the Crusader class abilities, you'd be a bit more powerful (Divine Grace is much better than Indomitable soul... more Smites, Lay on Hands. Turn Undead can power Divine Feats), but not overly much so. Drop Maneuvers Known to 4 and only get another one every 4 levels instead of every 3 levels (for 10 known at 19th & 20th levels) Maneuvers Readied becomes 4(2), goes to 5(3) at level 10, 6(4) at level 20. Push 2nd stance to 4th level, 3rd stance to 10th level, 4th stance to 16th level. Done.

[Ruethgar]

There is also this lovely resource: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255468-Homebrew-Martial-Discipline-Compendium

If you wanted more direct rage to maneuvers you have the Bloody Hammer which is pretty nice, plus several archery ones for rangers.

If you think Mystic Ranger is a bit much for maneuver progression there is also the Wild Defender for a bit less. If you want a fighter with maneuvers, play a warblade that ignores Int. Paladin, crusader is practically the same fluff. Rogue can also easily be replaced by a Swordsage and fit a good bit of the fluff and doesn't hurt too much from mixing the two together.

The PF equivalent is Pathof War as I recall, never looked into it though.

[digiman619]

The ToB equivalent in Pathfinder is called Path of War, which you can read about here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/). It does have a slew of archetypes (basically groups of ACF's tied together) for Pathfinder's core martials, so you might be able to find inspiration for a ToB equivalent. They are listed here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/classes/archetypes-for-non-martial-classes/)

[Alabenson]

Regarding adding maneuvers to the rogue, I actually built a class that was very close to that as one of my earlier homebrew projects, which can be seen here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?307331-The-Nightblade-(3-5-D-amp-D-Base-Class)-PEACH).

[Dagroth]

Regarding adding maneuvers to the rogue, I actually built a class that was very close to that as one of my earlier homebrew projects, which can be seen here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?307331-The-Nightblade-(3-5-D-amp-D-Base-Class)-PEACH).

There are no "dead levels" in your homebrew, so it can't possibly be balanced for 3.5.