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Deepbluediver
2017-10-30, 04:35 PM
I believe most people on the forum are fans of the ToB- it addresses a number of issues with melee that needed attention, it wasn't overly complicated [edit: debatable], all the classes and most of the disciplines were fairly well balanced, and so forth. Unlike a lot of the stuff in 3.5, it's not crying out for a fix.
Except I'm one of those people who can't leave well enough alone, and I believe there's always room for improvement. If not in the power-balance sense, then in ease-of-use, or versatility, or re-theming, or even just for something as simple as encouraging multiclassing. When it comes to ToB though, I've got a little problem: I've never actually played with it in a game. I've read all about it, sure, and even studied intensely skimmed the Book of Nine Swords, but I've never really had the opportunity to thoroughly test it.

So I'd like to lay out some of the things I'm thinking about, and invite anyone to chime in with their reactions. Feel free to offer criticism, or link your own ToB homebrew, or even just describe your own experiences with it and let me know what you liked/didn't like/hated/considered sacrosanct, etc etc etc. Or if you're like me and have never played with ToB, feel free to mention why not, especially about anything that looks like it might concern you.
If we get a good conversation going, I'll add to this post as people raise issues.



CLASSES
Lets rip the biggest bandaid off first- one thing I've been toying with is removing the restrictions on what disciplines a class can learn from, and differentiating the classes based solely on their chassis and special abilities. The restrictions on certain disciplines feel kind of arbitrary to me, and the Crusader in particular seems very limited. When compared to spellcasting, some of the later casters with specific themes (Warmage, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer) might have been better balanced compared to Core, but IMO that framework goes a step to far for the ToB stuff, especially when magic is still usually more versatile than melee. If you don't want to let every class use every discipline simultaneously, there's a step in between- have each class start with 1 discipline, and then learn others as they level up, capping off at 4/5/6/whatever. That way the CLASS has versatility, but every build can be made with a different focus.
The issue would then be how do you make the classes feel different? Maneuvers are the meat and potatoes and also possibly the cherry-topped cake of the ToB system, and anything else sort of feels ancillary. I don't want to load the classes down with so much extraneous junk that they feel bloated and clunky solely for the sake of distinguishing them from one another.

If the "all classes get all disciplines" thing is to much, maybe there should be one class with access to all disciplines, but capped at 6th or 7th level maneuvers. Essentially you trade power for versatility. But what kind of class should it be? A full-BAB large-HD class, maybe with Fighter Bonus Feats or Rage or something like that, so you're a full-contact combatant, or would it maybe fit better as something a skill-monkey can do? It might also be possible to do something like this via feats, such as reducing the maximum level of maneuvers you can learn but adding an entire discipline to your available list in exchange.

If neither of those are attractive, maybe we can just rejigger the existing arrangement a bit. By RAW, there are 5 disciplines that only a single class can learn, and only 1 discipline that all 3 classes have access to. I'd like to reverse that ratio. Suppose we had 3 disciplines that could only be learned by 1 class, essentially giving each class something exclusive. Then we have 3 disciplines that can be learned by 2 classes each, and 3 disciplines that can be accessed by all 3 classes. That would give each class 6 disciplines to work with.

Now for specific class issues- I don't like the Crusader (edit: though after discussing it a bit, it's growing on me). I know that when designing the book they needed a third class and wanted a replacement for the Pally ready to go right out of the box, but I feel like the core Paladin fits better as a PrC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?292856-Paladin-Fix-PrC-3-X-PEACH) anyway, and the crusader is in the same bucket. Either that or maybe an optional archetype.
The Crusader is a really great tank, no doubt, but tanking itself is kind of limited, and you're not just limited to Good like you were with the pally in core, so I feel like there should be more options for fulfilling the various "murderous bastard" niches. Also, I don't like their refresh mechanic. Some amount of randomness is good, that's why we roll dice, but here I feel like it would just lead you to never picking any situational maneuvers because the lack of control means you risk being useless (or at least significantly less useful).

The refresh mechanic I like best is actually the Swordsage's, even though most people think it's the worst because it's the slowest. It feels the most natural to me, and seems like a good, organic way of restricting most abilities to "once per encounter". I feel that that refresh mechanic should be the default for all maneuver-users, and then have either class features or feats to improve it or offer alternatives. Something simple you could do would be to combine it with a Concentration check, and let a good roll either make it take less time and/or refresh more than a single maneuver.

Speaking of the Swordsage, I know some people consider him the weakest of the 3 classes- it seems like he gets pigeonholed into being a mobile striker because he's not really good at much else. Unlike the Crusader, who can easily equal or even surpass the Warblade at tanking (again, going by what I've read, feel free to correct any misconceptions I have) while still dealing decent damage, the Swordsage struggles to keep up in terms of damage and can't tank at all because he lacks a full BAB and his squishy frame means he needs to be careful in combat. And despite having 6 skill points per level, he doesn't have much incentive to stack Intelligence.
I feel like if you took the Warblade's Int-based class features (in exchange for something else) and gave them to the Swordsage, you'd be 85% of the way to having a class with real skill-monkey potential. The other option, if you wanted to keep the SS as a striker, is to lift features from other classes instead- giving it the Monk's AC bonus for example could go a ways toward improving his survivability, and the Scout's Skirmish could help with damage.


DISCIPLINES
I've heard that Desert Wind, Shadow Hand, Tiger Claw, and Stone Dragon all tend to be a little less desirable for a variety of reasons, and the fixes for them might take different forms, but aside from the stuff always mentioned in various guides (White Raven Tactics is awesome) I'd love to hear what people thought about the individual fighting styles. Are they to cliched? To situational? Strong but boring? To repetitive? Etc etc etc.

For Desert Wind, I know that discipline gets a lot of it's extra damage from fire-based attacks. But fire damage is probably the most common type of elemental energy, and therefore is also one of the most frequently resisted. I also know that despite the most common stereotype, deserts can be cold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_desert) and wind can be chilly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_chill), so maybe the simplest thing to do would be to also add some Ice attacks and give this discipline a little more variety. I'm also debating giving Desert Wind more of a ranged-combat focus.

Some of the disciplines seems to benefit more from one stat than another, for example the disciplines that encourage dual-wielding obviously promote Dexterity stacking, but I was debating trying to make each discipline focus on a particular stat. Two disciplines each for Con, Str, and Dex, and one for Int, Cha, and Wis. I don't know exactly how I'd do this, probably by basing saves off of that stat or tie abilities into your bonus for that stat instead of initiator level or something. I don't want to go overboard and make all the initiator classes super MAD, but I feel like with a little effort it could turn out balanced and interesting.

Another one of the things I was thinking of adding was linking some thematically-appropriate feat to each Discipline, and letting it replace one of the of maneuver prerequisites for any maneuvers in that discipline. For example, lets just say that Toughness (yes I know it sucks, ignore that fact for the moment) was associated with the Stone Dragon school. A higher level Stone Dragon maneuver with a perquisite of knowing 2 other Stone Dragon maneuvers could instead be be met when you know 1 Stone Dragon maneuver and the Toughness feat. I'm open to suggestions for what feats you might associate with which Disciplines, ideally keeping it limited to stuff available in Core or the ToB.

New Ideas: I worked up a chart for rearranging the disciplines somewhat.


DISCIPLINE
Crusader
Swordsage
Warblade
Key Ability


Desert Wind
yes
yes
yes
Dexterity


Devoted Spirit
yes
no
no
Charisma


Diamond Mind
no
yes
no
Intelligence


Iron Heart
yes
no
yes
Constitution


Setting Sun
yes
yes
yes
Strength


Shadow Hand
no
yes
yes
Dexterity


Stone Dragon
yes
yes
yes
Constitution


Tiger Claw
no
no
yes
Strength


White Raven
yes
yes
no
Wisdom


MANEUVERS
I feel like there are to many restrictions on maneuvers: first you're limited to what disciplines you can learn from by your class, then you have a maximum maneuver level based on your initiator level, then individual maneuvers have perquisites for learning them, and after all that you can only prepare a few each day and have to refresh those prepared ones to use them more than once. This is to much, IMO, and something needs to change. Even if their power level warranted it, I think that when you've got that many restrictions on something it's time to go back to the drawing board. When using restrictions for balance you need to be very careful with it; a nuke that works once per week, a bazooka that works once per day, and a pistol with unlimited ammo are NOT equivalent.

I actually like the prerequisite of learning more lower-level maneuvers before accessing more powerful (higher-level) ones, it's just that it seems a tad inconsistently applied. For example, I'm not sure if the prerequisite-less Stone Dragon maneuvers were an oversite or intentional design issue. But depending on how many maneuvers you can learn, the perquisites can vary from a minor concern to a real annoyance. I'm thinking about reducing the range from 0-5 to something more like 0-3.
Also, learning low level maneuvers when you're low level and then higher level maneuvers as you level up is great, but having to start over with low level maneuvers again when you're already high level to open up a new school seems less exciting, so maybe we should try and do something about that, too.

Moving on from that, if I did away with either preparing maneuvers or refreshing maneuvers, which mechanic would you prefer to keep and which one would you want to discard? In the first case, we assume that after 8 hours of rest all the maneuvers you know are good to go, and we only need to refresh them as you feel the need to throughout the day. In the second case, you would still pick a certain selection of your maneuvers to prepare, but once that was done you could spam them over and over again at will. And the third choice is strip out BOTH limitations, and treat maneuvers like Warlock Invocations in that we can use any of them whenever we like, and as often as we like.

Next, do we need 9 levels of maneuvers? Especially when the 9th level only has 1 choice per discipline? I get that it lines up nicely with spells, but the ToB ISN'T spells, and I kind of want it to feel different. What if we reduced the levels of maneuvers a bit, and reshuffled some of them so you have fewer levels but more choices at each level?
Alternative, going in completely the opposite direction, what if we had a bunch of level-0 maneuvers that you could use at will and never needed to prepare or refresh? Sort of like how some rulesets treat cantrips.

Also, what do you think about making some maneuvers multi-disciplinary? There's plenty that just seem to boost damage, of course, but there's also maneuvers that I feel would be attractive to several of the different fighting styles. If I went that route, it might be part of an effort to streamline some of the less popular or duplicated maneuvers.
Edit: Several responders have confirmed that many of the maneuvers are redundant and/or suffer from planned obsolescence; that is something that should definitely be cleaned up.

Finally (for the moment), why are stances known separately from maneuvers? I get that they are a little different mechanically; instead of having to prepare them they are always ready and we can drop in or out of them at will, but why not just combine that list with the maneuvers known and let players pick what they want? If you're afraid that people won't take the stances because they come across as boring, then fix the stances, don't make it a choice between "this or nothing". Then again, I look at something like the Truenamer from ToM, where every different type of utterance has it's own scaling progression and value known, and I guess I should be glad the book doesn't try to micromanage exactly how many strikes, boosts, and counters we get as well.
Alternatively- maybe you should have to prepare stances as well.

New Ideas: What do you think of two new types of Maneuvers? The first is "Rushes", which use a move action and are primarily focused on movement. There could be both new maneuvers for this category, as well as revising some of the old maneuvers to fit here.
The second new type of maneuver would be called "Katas" or something like that, would require full round actions, and include several different effects all in a single maneuver. They are intended to primarily be high-level maneuvers that encapsulate multiple aspects of the Discipline. A sort of culmination of learning, as it were.


MISCELLANEOUS
I don't like the initiator-level mechanic. Frankly I never liked caster-level either; if something is a SYSTEM, meant to be used by multiple classes, I'd rather just base everything on ECL, and work out other ways to let people feel more powerful. If a class' ability is something is powerful enough and available at a low level that you are concerned with people dipping for it, then tie it directly to that class-level.
If I did keep initiator-level, I'd want to alter it somewhat because it feels odd to me that it's equivalent for all other classes everywhere. ToB stuff is specifically referred to as "blade magic", so I guess you could make the argument that multiclassing into Fighter improves the physical aspects and multiclassing into Wizard improves the magical aspects, and it all evens out in the end, but ToB classes aren't presented as gishes and the focus of the book is clearly on melee. I'd probably change it be linked to the BAB of your multiclass build, so that for instance a class with a low BAB (like a Sorcerer) it improved your initiator level at a rate of 1 in 3, for moderate BAB (like Rogue) it would improve at 1 in 2, and for a high BAB (Barbarian) it would improve at a rate of 2 in 3. So your Fighter levels provided more benefit to your Warblade skills than your Wizard levels.

Jasdoif
2017-10-30, 05:32 PM
The refresh mechanic I like best is actually the Swordsage's, even though most people think it's the worst because it's the slowest. It feels the most natural to me, and seems like a good organic way of restricting most abilities to "once per encounter". I feel that that refresh mechanic should be the default for all maneuver-users, and then have either class features or feats to improve it or offer alternatives. Something simple you could do would be to combine it with a Concentration check, and let a good roll either make it take less time and/or refresh more than a single maneuver.The Adaptive Style feat lets martial adepts change-and-recover all of their maneuvers with a full-round action, which is how long it normally takes a Swordsage to recover a single expended maneuver...making it effectively a feat tax for swordsages.


Some of the disciplines seems to benefit more from one stat than another, for example the disciplines that encourage dual-wielding obviously promote Dexterity stacking, but I was debating trying to make each discipline focus on a particular stat. Two disciplines each for Con, Str, and Dex, and one for Int, Cha, and Wis. I don't know exactly how I'd do this, probably by basing saves off of that stat or tie abilities into your bonus for that stat instead of initiator level or something. I don't want to go overboard and make all the initiator classes super MAD, but I feel like with a little effort it could turn out balanced and interesting.
....
Next, do we need 9 levels of maneuvers? Especially when the 9th level only has 1 choice per discipline? I get that it lines up nicely with spells, but the ToB ISN'T spells, and I kind of want it to feel different. What if we reduced the levels of maneuvers a bit, and reshuffled some of them so you have fewer levels but more choices at each level?
Alternative, going in completely the opposite direction, what if we had a bunch of level-0 maneuvers that you could use at will and never needed to prepare or refresh? Sort of like how some rulesets treat cantrips.It might be important to note that while the rule given for maneuver save DCs is "see the maneuver's description for the save DC"....By and large, those save DCs are "(10+maneuver level)+abilityMod", and maneuvers from the same discipline usually have the same ability modifying their save DCs.

Zale
2017-10-31, 10:45 AM
So, I love the idea of reworking the Tome of Battle stuff.

First I'd like to offer another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?263957-3-5-ToB-Xefas-Rambles-Makes-a-Base-Class-And-Expands-Things&) that also talked about potential flaws. Sadly, I don't have quite enough time to complete a full response, but I'll offer some thoughts:

The classes are kind of stuck into strange seeming places since they're meant to be "Fighter, Monk, Paladin, but better."

How much that can change depends on how much you are willing to deviate from those archetypes. You could try a generic ToB class, but that seems overkill. I like the idea of there being a few different ways to express initiator.

So, maybe, instead of trying to rework the Warblade, Swordsage and Crusader, consider- what three classes would you have made instead? Try to think of what you would have created working in a vacuum, then go back and see what mechanics can be slid from the original three to your classes.

So, Disciplines.

I think Xefas talks about this problem, but I'm going to bring it up anyway: A lot of maneuvers are redundant. They either do the same thing, or are obsoleted by another maneuver in a few levels.

That's an issue. I also dislike loathe how the lack of scaling can make low-level maneuvers completely useless in a few levels.

That's also why initiator level frequently feels pointless- a lot of maneuvers don't even reference it to determine how their effects work, because most of them are not built to scale up ever.

(I agree that the forced 1-9 scale is a bit annoying, since it means coming up with loads of marginally different effects spread across nine levels, which is probably why there are so many repeats. It's easier to create Lesser (effect), (effect) and Greater (effect) than to make three different abilities.)

Anyway, I'll return later today and make a more complete post!

Deepbluediver
2017-10-31, 12:27 PM
The Adaptive Style feat lets martial adepts change-and-recover all of their maneuvers with a full-round action, which is how long it normally takes a Swordsage to recover a single expended maneuver...making it effectively a feat tax for swordsages.
Good point, that definitely seems like a situation where something needs to be changed- exactly what and how though would depend on which direction I decide to head in for maneuvers and classes.


It might be important to note that while the rule given for maneuver save DCs is "see the maneuver's description for the save DC"....By and large, those save DCs are "(10+maneuver level)+abilityMod", and maneuvers from the same discipline usually have the same ability modifying their save DCs.
I swear was going to rant about this even before Zale linked me that other post ...

Anywho, D&D seems to have this planned obsolescence thing going on that I absolutely despise. It's like the only way they could think to get you excited about gaining higher level spells and similar effects (abbr. as SAS) was to penalize you for trying to use lower level SAS in high-level situations. The redundancy and lack of scaling is part of this, but the save DC is another big issue. Why are the cantrips that the Archmage has been using for 17 levels LESS likely to have their intended effect than the spells he literally just picked up yesterday? If anything, they should be MORE effective and easier to use. It's a pity the Shadowcaster (and a good ~80% of the entire ToM in fact) turned out to be so poorly implemented because this is exactly the kind of thing they were trying to do, and I would have liked to see more of it.

The 10+1/2 ECL+AbilityMod* is IMO a great universal fix. It keeps DCs more consistent for a single character, still lets more powerful characters and monsters retain their increased potency and danger, and it's great for non-traditional systems, like Incarnum or Invocations. And if we can scrap all the "replacement" mechanics, that would help cut down on complexity, which is never a bad thing.
*I use the forumula for monsters, too, just swap out ECL with CR



First I'd like to offer another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?263957-3-5-ToB-Xefas-Rambles-Makes-a-Base-Class-And-Expands-Things&) that also talked about potential flaws.
Thank you very much for that link- I've skimmed the first post and I'll go back and give the whole thread a more thorough look once I'm done with my reply. It seems like we're hitting a lot of the same points though, so it makes me feel confident I'm on the right track (or at least not totally off-point).


The classes are kind of stuck into strange seeming places since they're meant to be "Fighter, Monk, Paladin, but better."

How much that can change depends on how much you are willing to deviate from those archetypes. You could try a generic ToB class, but that seems overkill. I like the idea of there being a few different ways to express initiator.

So, maybe, instead of trying to rework the Warblade, Swordsage and Crusader, consider- what three classes would you have made instead? Try to think of what you would have created working in a vacuum, then go back and see what mechanics can be slid from the original three to your classes.
The only class I don't really like the fluff for was the Crudsader, and even getting rid of it entirely isn't a done deal in my book. The idea of a warrior with a cause is appealing, it's the "touch of the divine" aspects that I feel are ancillary. If I had to redo it I'd probably lean more towards something like Knight and less Paladin.

Anyway, I have been giving the class arrangements some thought- one major issue is that when WotC wrote the book, they seemed stuck on the idea that every initiator class would have to prepare and refresh (recover) maneuvers, which I'm not entirely sold on. I talked a bit about this before, but lets picture 4 hypothetical classes, A, B, C, and D.

Class A learns 10 maneuvers, class B learns 15, class C gets 20, and class D can master 25.

Class A doesn't have to prepare or refresh manuevers, meaning he can use whatever he wants, whenever he wants, as much as he wants. Class B doesn't have to prepare maneuvers, but does have to refresh each maneuver after use; this means he can't simply spam the same thing over and over like A can, but he's got a little more flexibility. Class C doesn't have to refresh maneuvers, but has to select only 5 each day that he can use repeatedly; it's another middle-ground, although different from B. And D has to select 5 maneuvers each day to prepare, and then refresh each one after use.
So it's sort of like the dynamic between a Warlock, a Sorcerer, and a Wizard, with some classes that are easier to get into and just roll with, and others that might have more appeal for an experienced player.

Not that we have to do things that way- the more I turn this over in my head, the more I think I like refreshing and the less I like preparing. Preparing feels to much like spells, while recovering is new and different and opens itself up to interesting variants, while at the same time feeling more organic and natural for melee combatants.

Also, none of the classes make for a really good skill monkey, which I feel was a missed opportunity. I talked about some of my specific ideas earlier, but the Swordsage seems like a good class to make for something that's halfway between a Rogue and a Monk. I'm kinda OK with the Crusader (or whatever we rename it) and the Warblade both being primarily melee combatants capable of dishing out and absorbing respectable amounts of damage, but perhaps have the former more oriented towards defense (larger HD, better armor, etc) and the latter leaning slighty to offense.

Maybe add a touch of Barbarian to the Warblade, so he comes across as less structured, and I know I've seen at least one homebrewed discipline for ranged combat, so that's an option, too. We could make the Warblade a kind of Ranger/Barbarian mix, and the Crusader more like Fighter/Knight/Paladin, though I think Favored Enemy is kind of good analogue for Smite without the necessity of divine implications.
Also, I could probably brew some sort of class feature that encouraged dipping a lot of different disciplines vs one that encouraged diving deep into just a few disciplines, so that's a possibility to differentiate them as well.


I think Xefas talks about this problem, but I'm going to bring it up anyway: A lot of maneuvers are redundant. They either do the same thing, or are obsoleted by another maneuver in a few levels.

That's an issue. I also dislike loathe how the lack of scaling can make low-level maneuvers completely useless in a few levels.

That's also why initiator level frequently feels pointless- a lot of maneuvers don't even reference it to determine how their effects work, because most of them are not built to scale up ever.
I am completely on board with you there. By my estimate, there's about 200 hundred different maneuvers, so revamping them all would be a large project, but not an overwhelming one. Especially if that process includes thinning out the herd a bit. I'm still interested in the idea of making some maneuvers cross-discipline. I'd want to avoid making any one discipline have nothing unique and therefor be redundant (aka the Evocation issue) but I think so long as the COMBINATION of effects that every school has is unique, it should work out alright.

Maybe if one Discipline ends up looking a little thin, that would be a good place to start adding entirely new maneuvers for a ranged fighting style.

Westhart
2017-10-31, 01:36 PM
Well, a buff to desert wind is in order then. I would also suggst looking at the homebrew disciplines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255468-Homebrew-Martial-Discipline-Compendium), they may have something of use to you. There are classes floating around the boards, and some feats I like as well, I'll shoot you some links momentarily... if you want 'em?
Some Stuff you might like to read/whatever:
Note: They are not mine.
Some ACF's for the classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?138322-DaTedinator-s-Tome-of-Battle-Extravaganza!-ACFs-Feats)
Metainitiation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?162975-3-5-ToB-Metainitiation-feat-PEACH), like metamagic, but for ToB stuff.
There were some others, have the link at home, I'll post them tomorrow.

Deepbluediver
2017-10-31, 02:21 PM
Well, a buff to desert wind is in order then. I would also suggst looking at the homebrew disciplines (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255468-Homebrew-Martial-Discipline-Compendium), they may have something of use to you. There are classes floating around the boards, and some feats I like as well, I'll shoot you some links momentarily... if you want 'em?
I always welcome links, but I will also say that is a LOT of homebrew disciplines. I've been going back and forth on exactly how open each discipline should be- keeping some disciplines exclusive feels like a good way to implement flavor for a class and give it something special. On the other hand, several of Xefas' complaints in the linked article from Zale talk about how doing that closes off certain archetypes. Also, a quick check through just a few of the Disciplines in that link seems to indicate mostly that the brewers didn't say what classes it should be restricted to, or if they did they wanted it left open to all Martial Adepts.

Originally I kind of liked the idea of just expanding what Disciplines a class could use while still locking some stuff out. Now though I'm wobbling back towards the "everything for everyone" train of thought. It certainly makes homebrewing easier, because you don't have to specify what classes a Discipline is for, which is especially nice for homebrewed martial adept classes; you just throw the Discipline in the pool and let people take it as necessary.
And you can still limit any specific character's build, just by saying that a class starts out able to access only 1 or 2 Disciplines, and add more as they go along.


Edit:
Some Stuff you might like to read/whatever:
Note: They are not mine.
Some ACF's for the classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?138322-DaTedinator-s-Tome-of-Battle-Extravaganza!-ACFs-Feats)
Metainitiation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?162975-3-5-ToB-Metainitiation-feat-PEACH), like metamagic, but for ToB stuff.
There were some others, have the link at home, I'll post them tomorrow.
Cool, thanks. I'll take a look at it when I get the chance. Right now I'm trying to type up all ~200 maneuvers into an Excel doc so I can start messing around with them.

Deepbluediver
2017-10-31, 04:36 PM
Ok, I've finished typing out my list, and assuming I haven't missed anything, I count 208 maneuvers. Over half of them are Strikes, including every single level 9 maneuver, which strikes me (haha) as lazy design. Even with a school like Setting Sun that's supposed to be big on Counters, the penultimate technique is a Strike.

Also, why is nothing water themed? We've got plenty of wind and fire and stone and metal, and yet nothing named after rivers, oceans, lakes, and aquatic fauna. I kinda prefer to save animal names for various brands of kung-fu (http://blackbeltmag.com/daily/traditional-martial-arts-training/kung-fu/the-5-kung-fu-animal-styles-of-the-chinese-martial-arts/) anyhow, so I'm debating re-themeing the Tiger Claw Discipline to be water-oriented. Maybe name it "Crashing Wave" or "Surging Tide", or if you wanted to go with a swampy version, "Treacherous Ripple"; something like that.


Anyway, I was looking through some of the stuff that NothingAbnormal sent me and one of the things that caught my eye was an idea for a 5th manuever type- Rush. The link is broken, unfortunately, but it seems pretty straightforward- movement based manuevers that use a move action. There's some teleport maneuvers in the Shadow Hand school that don't seem to have a type, and a few other movement-oriented maneuvers that seem like they'd be good fits, too.

Morphic tide
2017-10-31, 05:05 PM
Personally, I'd keep the Discipline restriction on the classes. It offloads some of the thematic work to shared mechanics. Warblade and Crusader both deserve tanking, and both use a shared tanking-focused Discipline for a large chunk of those mechanics.

The real issue is that they're classes that are mostly lists of abilities. Ironically, the Fighter based one is the one with the most genuine class identity because of Int to lots of things. Swordsage is literally nothing but Manoeuvres, and not even particularly good at it thanks to the retarded BAB situation. Seriously, give the class with the lower BAB that primary stat to attack rolls. It directly solves a major problem with the mechanics of needing attack rolls. You're just recreating the MAD of Monk by forcing them to pump Strength, in addition to Wisdom and, likely, Dexterity. A compromise is to have +Wisdom to Attack with Discipline Weapons.

---

Crusader, and Paladin, deserves to be a base class because the Clerical Gish is a mistake. Clerics were never intended to be melee beatsticks on a regular basis, that's the role Paladin was made to occupy. Spells/day just turned out too numerous to hold back Clerical Gishes. In Crusader's case, it shifts too much into Devoted Spirit. They made the Paladin's Aura into a Stance. Four different Stances, one of each Alignment. In my mind, Devoted Spirit should be about half bonuses and penalties, Profane, Sacred and Moral, and about half healing, with parts of each Manoeuvre changing with Alignment, instead of having different Manoeuvres for different Alignment versions of the same thing.

For proper features on Crusader, a Lay on Hands type pool of healing and condition removal makes the delayed damage pool significantly more useful and patches over some Save or Suck abilities. A baseline Aura giving an alteration to saves is just ripping off Paladin, but giving an Aura that grants damage reduction and/or Energy Resistance, based on Alignment, makes the Crusader cause the party to be significantly harder to put down, thus making them an obvious target. Aggro is a viable mechanic in TTRPGs. It just has to come out of logical combat(shoot the support first), not codified rules.

---

The Warblade's in a really good, if slightly generic, place. I'd swap Intelligence to Attack rolls to something else, as Strength is easy enough to boost and the majority of their damage comes from full BAB Manoeuvres, so they aren't hurting for accuracy any more than a Barbarian. I'd give some bonus feats to deal with the absurd feat taxes of Fighter feats, which Warblade gets access to.

---

The Swordsage is... Terrible. 3/4 BAB is terrible even with most of your damage being full BAB, because you only get one shot with it most of the time. And you get +Wis to damage on Manoeuvres of your chosen Disciplines, not Attack rolls like it should. Having all those Disciplines to pick from is a problem, not an advantage, because it makes the class into an external list of rules elements, not an actual class with independent function. You know, the metaclass problem, that bane which Wizards personify. Desert Wind is far too narrow in damage types, though I'd have it be gaining Sonic and Lightning damage, and Shadow Hand is... Also kinda narrow, but has the stuff to cover itself. Get some more precision damage stuff and add in more ways to trigger the conditions on it.

I'd first make that Wis to damage from focused Discipline become an Attack bonus, because that handily deals with the accuracy issue. Then give something for

---

Having the Tome of Battle classes represent two core Martials doesn't work, because some of those core classes are represented by Disciplines. The Tome of Battle Barbarian is a Tiger Claw focused Warblade. You'd have to overhaul all of them specifically for the sake of making it fit, which has problems because of divergences in priority between classes one might pair up. If I did do that, I'd actually have Swordsage be made into Ranger/Monk, Warblade into Fighter/Rogue and Crusader into Paladin/Barbarian. Because these are fairly minimal changes in concept.

A Swordsage masters one or two styles of fighting near-perfectly, which matches Monk fluff and Ranger crunch. You just need to extend the Discipline Focus feature into a full-on line of relevant feats for each available Discipline, adding three to five feats for Swordsage information to each Discipline. This neatly gives them the freedom to use their feats on more versatility over basic competence, just like Ranger. Really, Ranger fits Swordsage quite well. The Monk connection is mostly thematic.

A Warblade is Intelligence based. They strike with knowledge, not wisdom. They learn to hit where it hurts most and how to ensure the hit lands through flat out knowledge. They're far easier to make into a skillmonkey than a Swordsage, because you just need to improve the skill list. Being Int based with more than 2+Int skill points, they're set for skill points to pass around. Discipline Feats can be added to the bonus feat list over just Fighter bonus feats, making them also use the Discipline feats to further justify the existence of that extension to the subsystem.

A Crusader is a zealot. A fanatic. Their response to opposition is to crush it hard. Their response to being struck is to enter a righteous fury enough to match the skills of a person considerably more competent than them. Their sheer force of personality and conviction lets them fight when another man would be carved in two, right from first level. The lack of any need to believe in a higher power, just like Paladins, means that a Chaotic one really can just be a colossal ego. Add on a larger Rage mechanic, possibly drawing in Discipline Feats, and Tiger Claw and you've got a Barbarian build waiting to be unleashed. Basically, Lawful = Paladin, Chaotic = Barbarian.

---

Rushes do work out as a pretty useful concept, if only because of allowing for type-specific refresh that refers to a proper category for movement, but they face the issue of needing new Manoeuvres made for each Discipline. Of course, Setting Sun could use the Bull Rushes to go with the Grapples. And those Teleportation Shadow Hand Manoeuvres do need a clear category.

While at it, why not throw in Katas as a specific category for full-round-action Maneuvers that use multiple effects, then have each effect be listed in the Manoeuvre separately with it's associated action. Basically multiple underlevel effects on one Known and Readied Manoeuvre that can have any number of the component Maneuvers used with their respective actions, but the whole Manoeuvre is used with any use of it's components.

---

...So, I suppose that giving some desired changes to the fundamental mechanics is in order. One of the immediate ones is having it be more than just a list of abilities, really. Having it be a proper subsystem with its own tricks, like Incarnum's Essentia investment, would solve one of the major complaints. The whole "it's just magic for Fighters" argument gets debunked if Manoeuvres are largely focused on stuff conventional Martials can do, like Feign, Grapple, launch iteratives with different modifiers applied and so on, and combine together into chains of successive uses that get increased effect with each part of the chain. Then you have Feats associated with each Discipline and tying some Manoeuvres to particular Stances, like an actual Martial Art. Maybe have certain Manoeuvres allow for swapping Stances as part of them.

The overall point of expanding Disciplines like this is to make them look and act more like an actual Martial Art, where you have attacks flow into eachother and techniques build upon eachother, while there's basic tendencies throughout the art that come down to priorities and common tricks. You don't use only one attack when given an opening by your opponent, you exploit that opening to make more for later on. If their guard is down, you knock them to the ground and then get them in a lockdown hold or cripple them by taking away a key part of their offence, whether a limb or a weapon. Going for the killing blow immediately isn't actually that effective when trained combatants get involved.

In case you can't tell, Katas would be the main form of 9th level Manoeuvre, demonstrating the core of what the Discipline gives each category of Manoeuvre. Counter and/or Boost(they're kinda mutually exclusive in per-round use), Strike and Rush, with using the full set generating the 9th level Manoeuvre effect out of synergies. With all the components having synergies to the other components, that's enough combinations to cover a lot of ground. To the point of probable decision paralysis.

Deepbluediver
2017-10-31, 05:27 PM
Having the Tome of Battle classes represent two core Martials doesn't work, because some of those core classes are represented by Disciplines. The Tome of Battle Barbarian is a Tiger Claw focused Warblade. You'd have to overhaul all of them specifically for the sake of making it fit, which has problems because of divergences in priority between classes one might pair up. If I did do that, I'd actually have Swordsage be made into Ranger/Monk, Warblade into Fighter/Rogue and Crusader into Paladin/Barbarian. Because these are fairly minimal changes in concept.
I'm still reading through your post- it's very thorough so thank you for that. There's just a lot to digest and it's going to take me a little while to figure out how to respond to it all properly.

I wanted to clarify something here- I was not intending for the Warblade to REPLACE the Ranger and the Barbarian, I was thinking about copying some thematic and mechanical elements from those classes and giving them to the Warblade in exchange for other stuff, with the goal of differentiating him from the Crusader. Ideally if I could fully fix the core classes, I'd be able to have Monks, Fighters, and Paladins stand alongside the martial adepts as both distinct and functional choices.

Morphic tide
2017-10-31, 07:07 PM
I'm still reading through your post- it's very thorough so thank you for that. There's just a lot to digest and it's going to take me a little while to figure out how to respond to it all properly.

I wanted to clarify something here- I was not intending for the Warblade to REPLACE the Ranger and the Barbarian, I was thinking about copying some thematic and mechanical elements from those classes and giving them to the Warblade in exchange for other stuff, with the goal of differentiating him from the Crusader. Ideally if I could fully fix the core classes, I'd be able to have Monks, Fighters, and Paladins stand alongside the martial adepts as both distinct and functional choices.

I'm not saying to replace them, either. I said "represent." That's a rather different thing. The themes map to the classes, and the mixture of the themes from the two classes results in something significantly different. It's like saying that Duskblade "replaced" Psychic Warrior, or that Kensai "replaced" Soulknife. They represent similar ideas done differently for different mechanics. What I'm saying is that a Swordsage would be able to take up the party role and character archetype of a Ranger or Monk, without stretching the fluff a large amount. A Crusader could represent a similar character concept to a Totem Barbarian, or just a violent egotistical ass who's managed to weaponize their selfishness. Or a Paladin without any true Divine stuff, just the absurd Faith that said Divine stuff typically comes from.

Westhart
2017-10-31, 09:50 PM
This is what you want, Krimm, who loves 'em.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=4589069&postcount=50

What about keying it off martial lore instead, since you don't like IL, something like this:
Ice Blade
Desert Wind
You cause your blade to envelop in ragged serrated ice, benefiting you based on your ranks in martial lore:

0: +1d6 cold damage
1-10: +3d6 Cold damage, Threat Range Increase* +1
11-20: +5d6, Critical Multiplier +1
21-30: +7d6, Threat Range Increase* +2
31+: +9d6, Critical Multiplier +2
*The threat range increase stacks with, but is not multiplied by the keen weapon ability, the improved critical feat or other effects.


NOTE: It was a quick throw together :smalltongue:

Deepbluediver
2017-11-01, 12:28 PM
I'm not saying to replace them, either. I said "represent." That's a rather different thing.
Ah, ok- I think I understand better what you meant now- that's a good point. I'm not sure the Crusader fits the Barbarian archetype very easily by RAW, but it certainly could, especially if we expand the Disciplines it has access to a little. The question in my mind though, is "does it have to?" I'm gonna talk more about this in a little bit, but the Fighter is probably the blandest core character, or at least the one with the smallest amount of guidance that was baked in to it's backstory. And a Warblade is supposed to be a "smart fighter", but that by itself doesn't tell me much because of the rather vanilla starting point. I'm not saying we have to shoehorn every ToB class into a specific role (either thematic or mechanical), on the contrary I think I'd prefer more variance. Since we're already homebrewing, I'm exploring where else we might take this.



What about keying it off martial lore instead, since you don't like IL, something like this:
Ice Blade
Desert Wind
You cause your blade to envelop in ragged serrated ice, benefiting you based on your ranks in martial lore:

0: +1d6 cold damage
1-10: +3d6 Cold damage, Threat Range Increase* +1
11-20: +5d6, Critical Multiplier +1
21-30: +7d6, Threat Range Increase* +2
31+: +9d6, Critical Multiplier +2
*The threat range increase stacks with, but is not multiplied by the keen weapon ability, the improved critical feat or other effects.
I wasn't really a fan of the Martial Lore skill, but that was mostly because it didn't seem very useful. It let you identify maneuvers and what Disciplines a target was using, but then there wasn't really anything you could do with that information AFAIK. To paraphrase, its like knowing the exact weight and speed of the rhinoceros that is bearing down on you.

So on the one hand, this would actually make Martial Lore useful. On the other hand, it also kind of turns it into a skill-point tax, and as the Truenamer showed, we need to be wary of balancing things around skill checks. Not that it's impossible, certainly, just that it might be a little trickier than it first appears.
I'm still hoping that I can figure out a good way to get this stuff to just key off ECL instead.


Alright, now I'm going to go work on responding to Morphic's previous post. If I'm not back in a week, send pie :smalltongue:

Westhart
2017-11-01, 12:31 PM
I wasn't really a fan of the Martial Lore skill, but that was mostly because it didn't seem very useful. It let you identify maneuvers and what Disciplines a target had access to, but then there wasn't really anything you could do with that information AFAIK. To paraphrase, it was like knows the exact weight and speed of the locomotive that was bearing down on you.

So on the one hand, this would actually make Martial Lore useful. On the other hand, it kind of turns it into a skill-point tax, and as the Truenamer showed, we need to be wary of balancing things around skill checks. Not that it's impossible, mind you, just that it might be a little trickier than it first appears.

Hmm, maybe a bonus on maneuvers with it... Retreats to think on it.



Alright, now I'm going to go work on responding to Morphic's previous post. If I'm not back in a week, send pie :smalltongue:
What kinda pie :smalltongue:

Deepbluediver
2017-11-01, 02:31 PM
Repsonses to Morphic Tide here.

Personally, I'd keep the Discipline restriction on the classes. It offloads some of the thematic work to shared mechanics. Warblade and Crusader both deserve tanking, and both use a shared tanking-focused Discipline for a large chunk of those mechanics.
I honestly agree with you about the thematic part, I'm just trying to weigh the pros and cons. For example, the "Devoted Spirit" discipline has a lot of self-healing in it. The gut reaction is to say "ooh that's a tanking discipline because you'll be receiving lots of damage" but honestly I can't see ANY melee build who would reject a bit of ability to cure their own wounds. In fact, it might even have MORE appeal to a squishy class (*cough* Swordsage *cough*) so they can hang out in melee range without needing timely intervention from the Cleric. Sure you'd skip anything related to shields and redirecting damage to yourself, but there are elements of the classic tanking build that could appeal to non-tanks as well.

Also, once we get into homebrewing (seriously that list of homebrewed Disciplines is HUGE) a lot of the limitations seem to go away anyhow, and I'm not sure how to generically define what sorts of Disciplines a class should or should not get.


The real issue is that they're classes that are mostly lists of abilities. Ironically, the Fighter based one is the one with the most genuine class identity because of Int to lots of things. Swordsage is literally nothing but Manoeuvres, and not even particularly good at it thanks to the retarded BAB situation. Seriously, give the class with the lower BAB that primary stat to attack rolls. It directly solves a major problem with the mechanics of needing attack rolls. You're just recreating the MAD of Monk by forcing them to pump Strength, in addition to Wisdom and, likely, Dexterity. A compromise is to have +Wisdom to Attack with Discipline Weapons.
I've heard that "list of abilities" phrase before- mainly regarding Wizards and Sorcerers being just a "list of spells". I'm all for coming up with new abilities, (and welcome suggestions) but I'm also considering reshuffling some of the existing stuff. For instance, what do you think about my idea to move the Int-bonuses from the Warblade to the Swordsage, which would help with the problems you point out, and give it some incentive to be more like a skill-monkey?

Also, someone else already pointed out that some of the class features like Steely Resolve feel as if they should be maneuvers anyway. Class features frequently open up new options, and I'm thinking it will take some effort to make ones that are generic enough that they don't shoehorn the class into a specific role or fighting style, while also not stepping on the toes of maneuvers.


Crusader, and Paladin, deserves to be a base class because the Clerical Gish is a mistake. Clerics were never intended to be melee beatsticks on a regular basis, that's the role Paladin was made to occupy. Spells/day just turned out too numerous to hold back Clerical Gishes.
You could reduce the Cleric's HD, BAB, and Armor Proficiency, rename it priest, and effectively turn it into a divine Wizard, but I'm not sure that's really the best solution. You've got lots of differently themed dieties, who probably expect lots of different things from their most devoted adherents. For example, I wouldn't expect a god of battle to be all that fond of nancy-pants casters, and WOULD want his clerics to be mixing it up on the front line. It's ok IMO for the Cleric class to have the potential to be both a beatstick and a caster, they just shouldn't do both at once. That's why when I redid the class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?230136-Clerics-Now-in-Three-Flavors!), I gave them 3 separate formats, a heavy-combat format, a caster format, and a gish format.

Anywho, the Paladin can still be a beatstick but that doesn't mean it has to be accessible as a base class. I'm reluctant to force a thematic concept into a mechanical role just for the sake of having more frontline combatants. The Crusader can still be a base class either way, particularly if the flavor is just "dedicated questor" and less "divine champion".


In Crusader's case, it shifts too much into Devoted Spirit. They made the Paladin's Aura into a Stance. Four different Stances, one of each Alignment. In my mind, Devoted Spirit should be about half bonuses and penalties, Profane, Sacred and Moral, and about half healing, with parts of each Manoeuvre changing with Alignment, instead of having different Manoeuvres for different Alignment versions of the same thing.
This might sound odd, but I'm not that thrilled with the aura-like maneuvers. Something about the ToB classes makes the auras feel to much like plain-old magic to me, and not a specific action taken by the martial adept. Maybe I'll get over it, but anyway, what do you think about class-abilities that change based on alignment, kind of like what they did for the Incarnate and Soulborn in the Magic of Incarnum supplement?


For proper features on Crusader, a Lay on Hands type pool of healing and condition removal makes the delayed damage pool significantly more useful and patches over some Save or Suck abilities. A baseline Aura giving an alteration to saves is just ripping off Paladin, but giving an Aura that grants damage reduction and/or Energy Resistance, based on Alignment, makes the Crusader cause the party to be significantly harder to put down, thus making them an obvious target. Aggro is a viable mechanic in TTRPGs. It just has to come out of logical combat(shoot the support first), not codified rules.
What do you think about "taunts" and similar effects? Something like a manuever that prompts a Will-save from the target, and if they fail they are forced to attack the taunter instead of other targets? I guess it comes across as a faux-enchantment sort of effect, but that seems workable to me, too.


The Warblade's in a really good, if slightly generic, place. I'd swap Intelligence to Attack rolls to something else, as Strength is easy enough to boost and the majority of their damage comes from full BAB Manoeuvres, so they aren't hurting for accuracy any more than a Barbarian. I'd give some bonus feats to deal with the absurd feat taxes of Fighter feats, which Warblade gets access to.
...
A Warblade is Intelligence based. They strike with knowledge, not wisdom. They learn to hit where it hurts most and how to ensure the hit lands through flat out knowledge. They're far easier to make into a skillmonkey than a Swordsage, because you just need to improve the skill list. Being Int based with more than 2+Int skill points, they're set for skill points to pass around. Discipline Feats can be added to the bonus feat list over just Fighter bonus feats, making them also use the Discipline feats to further justify the existence of that extension to the subsystem.

When WotC was designing the ToB classes, they clearly wanted replacements for the Paladin, Fighter, and Monk. Not alternatives- replacements. And then they decided each class should also benefit from one of the "mental" stats, and after the Paladin Crusader claimed Charisma and the Monk Swordsage took Wisdom, Intelligence was all that's left. So I get that the Warblade is supposed to be a "smart fighter", but why does it have to be?

I don't really see the class-features that allow you to boost your combat stats with Int as being all that important. It might let you shift some points out of Str or Con or Dex, but it doesn't really seem like it's making you more powerful overall, and the Int doesn't really feed into anything else.

Personally I'm not much of a fan of the "Ability score X to feature Y instead of ability score Z" school of design, but if I'm going to do it I'd rather do somewhere where it can have a noticeable-but-not-overpowered affect. Like let a class with weak defenses add both Int and Dex to their AC to compensate for low HP or no armor. Sticking it on a full-melee class just seems redundant, and doesn't actually make you more powerful, it just shifts your stats around.


The Swordsage is... Terrible. 3/4 BAB is terrible even with most of your damage being full BAB, because you only get one shot with it most of the time. And you get +Wis to damage on Manoeuvres of your chosen Disciplines, not Attack rolls like it should. Having all those Disciplines to pick from is a problem, not an advantage, because it makes the class into an external list of rules elements, not an actual class with independent function. You know, the metaclass problem, that bane which Wizards personify.
I'd first make that Wis to damage from focused Discipline become an Attack bonus, because that handily deals with the accuracy issue. Then give something for ?
Yeah, sticking to the formula worked out ok for the Warblade, but the Swordsage kinda got screwed. That's one reason why I'm pushing the "skill monkey" alternative. But maybe we can do both. Pathfinder has an archetype thing that I like, so why don't we split the class features into two groups, one that keys off of Int for the people who want a skill-monkey martial adept, and one that keys off of Wisdom for better combat? That way you've got two main groups of Swordsages even before people start picking Disciplines.


Having the Tome of Battle classes represent two core Martials doesn't work, because some of those core classes are represented by Disciplines. The Tome of Battle Barbarian is a Tiger Claw focused Warblade. You'd have to overhaul all of them specifically for the sake of making it fit, which has problems because of divergences in priority between classes one might pair up. If I did do that, I'd actually have Swordsage be made into Ranger/Monk, Warblade into Fighter/Rogue and Crusader into Paladin/Barbarian. Because these are fairly minimal changes in concept.
Overhaul which to make them fit- the Disciplines or the Classes? I'm perfectly alright with either, actually; right now overhauling the classes is part of my goal, and I don't feel particularly beholden to retain the flavor thatwas forced on them from the original ToB. At least a few of the Disciplines need serious revising, and they could all use a little work, so that's a more long-term project, but if one or several of the Disciplines need to be entirely rebuilt, that's a thing I can think about, too.


A Swordsage masters one or two styles of fighting near-perfectly, which matches Monk fluff and Ranger crunch. You just need to extend the Discipline Focus feature into a full-on line of relevant feats for each available Discipline, adding three to five feats for Swordsage information to each Discipline. This neatly gives them the freedom to use their feats on more versatility over basic competence, just like Ranger. Really, Ranger fits Swordsage quite well. The Monk connection is mostly thematic.
I'm a little confused here, how do you get Monk/Ranger from Swordsage? The Monk I understand, obviously, but I'm wondering where the Ranger comes in- the plethora of Maneuvers known doesn't exactly scream "tight focus" to me. One of the class features I've been considering for either the Warblade or the Crusader was something to encourage dipping a lot of different Disciplines, but I'm still struggling to come up with a good way to do the opposite.


A Crusader is a zealot. A fanatic. Their response to opposition is to crush it hard. Their response to being struck is to enter a righteous fury enough to match the skills of a person considerably more competent than them. Their sheer force of personality and conviction lets them fight when another man would be carved in two, right from first level. The lack of any need to believe in a higher power, just like Paladins, means that a Chaotic one really can just be a colossal ego. Add on a larger Rage mechanic, possibly drawing in Discipline Feats, and Tiger Claw and you've got a Barbarian build waiting to be unleashed. Basically, Lawful = Paladin, Chaotic = Barbarian.
So that key personality of a Crusader seems almost like it's enthusiasm- whatever they decide to do, they will dedicated themselves to that task or quest unequivocally, bashing their head (and fists) against the wall until either it breaks, or they do. I like that, and I think it would make a nice contrast for the Warblade who could come across as more free-spirited.

I know I previously said the Warblade might be more like a Barbarian/Ranger, but on second thought the Favored Enemy seems analogous to Smite, in that you are focused on defeating one particular type of enemy. How would you feel if I gave the Crusader the Favored Enemy feature in some way?


Desert Wind is far too narrow in damage types, though I'd have it be gaining Sonic and Lightning damage, and Shadow Hand is... Also kinda narrow, but has the stuff to cover itself. Get some more precision damage stuff and add in more ways to trigger the conditions on it.
I already mentioned my reasoning for including ice themes in Desert Wind, and one of the homebrews in the link AbbyNormal gave me was for a feat that let you swap out the fire damage for any alternative of Electric, Cold, or Acid. If I decided to associate certain damage types with other various schools as well, do you have any thoughts on what fits where or what might be improved by the addition of something?

Also, what do you think about revising Desert Wind to be more range-focused? Possibly even going full-archery with it.


Rushes do work out as a pretty useful concept, if only because of allowing for type-specific refresh that refers to a proper category for movement, but they face the issue of needing new Manoeuvres made for each Discipline.
Before I start brewing new stuff, why not just go through the list and see what sort of things might be revised to be Rushes in the first place? There's already a whole bunch of movement-oriented maneuvers.


...So, I suppose that giving some desired changes to the fundamental mechanics is in order. One of the immediate ones is having it be more than just a list of abilities, really. Having it be a proper subsystem with its own tricks, like Incarnum's Essentia investment, would solve one of the major complaints. The whole "it's just magic for Fighters" argument gets debunked if Manoeuvres are largely focused on stuff conventional Martials can do, like Feign, Grapple, launch iteratives with different modifiers applied and so on, and combine together into chains of successive uses that get increased effect with each part of the chain.
That sounds really cool, I'm just not exactly sure how to make it work. D&D is something of an abstract system that is supposed to represent combat, and I don't know if it could be made to handle combos very well. I could see something like...you gain a +1 stacking bonus to your attack rolls for every sequential maneuver you use from one Discipline, and then it resets if you miss a round or use another Discipline's maneuver. The issue is I feel the bonuses you could get would either be very bland or very complicated, with a hard-to-find middle ground.

Maybe alternatively if we fixed the scaling issue we could say that chaining maneuvers from the same school lets you treat them as using a higher initiator level or something.


Then you have Feats associated with each Discipline and tying some Manoeuvres to particular Stances, like an actual Martial Art. Maybe have certain Manoeuvres allow for swapping Stances as part of them.
This also sounds cool, but again I don't want to be overly restrictive. Maybe something like giving you a +1 bonus to your initiator level if you use a maneuver that matches the stance you're in. I'll have to think about it more.


The overall point of expanding Disciplines like this is to make them look and act more like an actual Martial Art, where you have attacks flow into eachother and techniques build upon eachother, while there's basic tendencies throughout the art that come down to priorities and common tricks. You don't use only one attack when given an opening by your opponent, you exploit that opening to make more for later on. If their guard is down, you knock them to the ground and then get them in a lockdown hold or cripple them by taking away a key part of their offence, whether a limb or a weapon. Going for the killing blow immediately isn't actually that effective when trained combatants get involved.
Ok, but how would you interpret that for a turn-based combat system like D&D's? There's some real-world concepts and tactics that just don't (at least not yet) translate well into the game, many of which I think include anything that takes more than 1 round to resolve.

Look at the various combat tricks in Core: Trip, Disarm, Sunder, Bullrush, etc. They all resolve in a single round, and then you move on to something else. Grapple gets a reputation for being much more complicated but that's because it's an ongoing effect. For all the others you can just describe what happens and then proceed to the next action, but grappling can last multiple rounds, so you also have to describe all the things that can happen while you are involved in a grapple.


In case you can't tell, Katas would be the main form of 9th level Manoeuvre, demonstrating the core of what the Discipline gives each category of Manoeuvre. Counter and/or Boost(they're kinda mutually exclusive in per-round use), Strike and Rush, with using the full set generating the 9th level Manoeuvre effect out of synergies. With all the components having synergies to the other components, that's enough combinations to cover a lot of ground. To the point of probable decision paralysis.
I do like the idea of large, complex sets of maneuvers as capstones for the Disciplines, I'm just mulling over the best way to make it work. And I do like the idea of focusing the penultimate technique on something that is a key element of that school, whether that's counters or movement or battlefield control, and not just another type of Strike.

Maybe rather than describing exactly what's in a Kata, it should be a kind of build-your-own combo that players have round-to-round control over. I'm not exactly sure how that would work either, but it's an idea to consider.


What kinda pie :smalltongue:
Pecan would be great; key-lime is also acceptable. :smallwink:

Zale
2017-11-01, 04:08 PM
So:

For Desert Wind and it's tight thematics, I feel like some kind of "sub-school or sub-discipline" idea could be helpful.

Like, there are many ways to interpret the theme of Desert Wind and different focal points. You could create a relatively slim "core" of manevuers (say 18-20), then create some minor disciplines or something that stem off of Desert Wind.

So you might have "Midnight Desolation Wind" which is a Desert Wind variant that allows you to turn some of your fire maneuvers cold, or inflict lasting cold damage, or morale penalties or what-have you.

Or "Golden Purification Flame" which focuses on fire as a purifying anti-undead element (perhaps Pelor inspired), which focuses on Desert Wind as holy fire and daylight.

Or one that focuses on surviving in the desert, or one that focuses on moving with the freedom of a desert wind-

These "minor" disciplines would have less maneuvers, and link directly with the core maneuvers of their parent discipline. Learning one would, essentially, add these new maneuvers to your core discipline.

This would provide the flexibility without having to worry about people yelling at you because Desert Wind does cold damage now.

@ the comboing

When I imagine a combo sort of system for maneuvers, I mostly picture them behaving a flow-chart sort of manner, in which each one suggests which one would be useful to use next.

Like, let's say you are using Setting Sun:

You have a strike that does no damage, but instead places the struck enemy in a state of imbalance- they take a penalty to attack rolls and AC, which increases (doubles?) against trip attacks. The maneuver lasts long enough for you to make use of it on your next turn, when you use another strike that enhances your attack to function as both a trip attack and a regular attack, hurting your foe as you knock him to the ground.

Then you notice someone in position to charge at one of your other party members, and decide to use a boost that would normally just provide a bonus against AoOs, but because you tripped an enemy this turn it instead provides movement up to your land speed as part of the maneuver. You pirouette gracefully over to where the charging enemy, preparing to disrupt their charge with another maneuver.

Were I to do this, I would also include maneuvers that can conditionally refresh other maneuvers. Say, a Setting Sun maneuver that just functions as a disarm attack but if you are successful, you can also refresh two other maneuvers. This, I feel, would improve flow significantly.

(I also feel like people should be able to ready a significantly higher number of maneuvers than they currently are allotted. It's stupid that wizards get so many option slots while initiators get low teens at best. I would at least increase the number readied by an ability modifier or something.)

Morphic tide
2017-11-01, 06:35 PM
I honestly agree with you about the thematic part, I'm just trying to weigh the pros and cons. For example, the "Devoted Spirit" discipline has a lot of self-healing in it. The gut reaction is to say "ooh that's a tanking discipline because you'll be receiving lots of damage" but honestly I can't see ANY melee build who would reject a bit of ability to cure their own wounds. In fact, it might even have MORE appeal to a squishy class (*cough* Swordsage *cough*) so they can hang out in melee range without needing timely intervention from the Cleric. Sure you'd skip anything related to shields and redirecting damage to yourself, but there are elements of the classic tanking build that could appeal to non-tanks as well.
I'm working on a Discipline with health costs and health drain in similar measure specifically because of this awkwardness.


Also, once we get into homebrewing (seriously that list of homebrewed Disciplines is HUGE) a lot of the limitations seem to go away anyhow, and I'm not sure how to generically define what sorts of Disciplines a class should or should not get.
One of the things that the Manoeuvres have that's useful here is that the Maneuvers have the same class-level entry as spells. This is literally never used like spell levels to have Manoeuvres be different levels for different classes or restrict some of them to specific classes.


I've heard that "list of abilities" phrase before- mainly regarding Wizards and Sorcerers being just a "list of spells". I'm all for coming up with new abilities, (and welcome suggestions) but I'm also considering reshuffling some of the existing stuff. For instance, what do you think about my idea to move the Int-bonuses from the Warblade to the Swordsage, which would help with the problems you point out, and give it some incentive to be more like a skill-monkey?
Eh, Int-based Swordsage works with a Rogue base. Trapfinding is a sad requirement for such things, because of ****ing Niche Protection. Other than that... 6+Int skill ranks and the class skills to use it. Rogue's a skillmonkey just because it has 8+Int points per level for skills, you don't need much more incentive.


Also, someone else already pointed out that some of the class features like Steely Resolve feel as if they should be maneuvers anyway. Class features frequently open up new options, and I'm thinking it will take some effort to make ones that are generic enough that they don't shoehorn the class into a specific role or fighting style, while also not stepping on the toes of maneuvers.
I somewhat agree with Steely Resolve being a Stance, but it's a bit too strong to be easily scaling, like automatic IL scaling. Being a Stance would have the key advantage of being multi-class, but having Manoeuvres copy class features at a limited level is nothing new. One of the Shadow Hand stances gives 2d6 Sneak Attack, so a class that gives Delayed Damage and several Stances with different clauses that do the same are compatible.


You could reduce the Cleric's HD, BAB, and Armor Proficiency, rename it priest, and effectively turn it into a divine Wizard, but I'm not sure that's really the best solution. You've got lots of differently themed dieties, who probably expect lots of different things from their most devoted adherents. For example, I wouldn't expect a god of battle to be all that fond of nancy-pants casters, and WOULD want his clerics to be mixing it up on the front line. It's ok IMO for the Cleric class to have the potential to be both a beatstick and a caster, they just shouldn't do both at once. That's why when I redid the class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?230136-Clerics-Now-in-Three-Flavors!), I gave them 3 separate formats, a heavy-combat format, a caster format, and a gish format.

Anywho, the Paladin can still be a beatstick but that doesn't mean it has to be accessible as a base class. I'm reluctant to force a thematic concept into a mechanical role just for the sake of having more frontline combatants. The Crusader can still be a base class either way, particularly if the flavor is just "dedicated questor" and less "divine champion".
"Dedicated Quester" is just about a perfect description for my ideas of what Crusader's "theme" should be. It also works with both Wisdom for Will and Charisma for the sheer force of personality most such characters have.


This might sound odd, but I'm not that thrilled with the aura-like maneuvers. Something about the ToB classes makes the auras feel to much like plain-old magic to me, and not a specific action taken by the martial adept. Maybe I'll get over it, but anyway, what do you think about class-abilities that change based on alignment, kind of like what they did for the Incarnate and Soulborn in the Magic of Incarnum supplement?
I love the idea. I've considered making a Paladin fix that automatically changes abilities based on alignment, without the annoying loss of power for tiny transgressions.


What do you think about "taunts" and similar effects? Something like a manuever that prompts a Will-save from the target, and if they fail they are forced to attack the taunter instead of other targets? I guess it comes across as a faux-enchantment sort of effect, but that seems workable to me, too.
I dislike hard Taunts that force the enemy to target the user, specifically. Stuff like forcing them to enter a Frenzy of sorts, attacking the nearest creature without fail, on a relatively mobile Discipline able to be the nearest creature almost always, or otherwise providing means of controling what the nearest target is, I find more fitting. Essentially, making targetting desired targets a logical progression of what's going on.


When WotC was designing the ToB classes, they clearly wanted replacements for the Paladin, Fighter, and Monk. Not alternatives- replacements. And then they decided each class should also benefit from one of the "mental" stats, and after the Paladin Crusader claimed Charisma and the Monk Swordsage took Wisdom, Intelligence was all that's left. So I get that the Warblade is supposed to be a "smart fighter", but why does it have to be?
Well, the mental stat use is mainly to solve the issue of martials frequently using all three as dump stats for Moar Strength/Constitution/weapon budget. As for why Warblade needs to be a smart fighter, something has to be. Having Swordsage be an Int based class with a theme of pursuing grand skill is perfectly workable, too, it just matters that there be some class that's an Intelligence based Martial within the hardcore Martial subsystem. Swordsage sorta has to be Wisdom based due to Desert Wind being Ki themed, and thus Monk associated, while Crusader has Charisma because Paladins do. Shifting thematics around solves a lot of the reasons for associations.


I don't really see the class-features that allow you to boost your combat stats with Int as being all that important. It might let you shift some points out of Str or Con or Dex, but it doesn't really seem like it's making you more powerful overall, and the Int doesn't really feed into anything else.

Personally I'm not much of a fan of the "Ability score X to feature Y instead of ability score Z" school of design, but if I'm going to do it I'd rather do somewhere where it can have a noticeable-but-not-overpowered affect. Like let a class with weak defenses add both Int and Dex to their AC to compensate for low HP or no armor. Sticking it on a full-melee class just seems redundant, and doesn't actually make you more powerful, it just shifts your stats around.

It can matter because of bonus stacking rules. You can have a Strength and Intelligence item, but not two Strength items. Also, it's easier to have two scores at 14 than one score at 18, by a lot. It means that if you have two decent rolls on your stats, they can be applied like an amazing roll.

It basically just lets you stack bonuses more, really. Con to AC is good because it shifts points away from Dex to stack all durability into one score. Int to Attack is good because it lets you invest in skills as a Martial and incentives doing so.


Yeah, sticking to the formula worked out ok for the Warblade, but the Swordsage kinda got screwed. That's one reason why I'm pushing the "skill monkey" alternative. But maybe we can do both. Pathfinder has an archetype thing that I like, so why don't we split the class features into two groups, one that keys of of Int for the people who want a skill-monkey martial adept, and one that keys off of Wisdom for better combat? That way you've got two main groups of Swordsages even before people start picking Disciplines.
AFC and/or Variant would certainly help with that sort of thing. Maybe also have a split between Sneak Attack style damage progression and Unarmed Strike style damage progression(applying to weapons as well, obviously).


Overhaul which to make them fit- the Disciplines or the Classes? I'm perfectly alright with either, actually; right now overhauling the classes is part of my goal, and I don't feel particularly beholden to retain the flavor thatwas forced on them from the original ToB. At least a few of the Disciplines need serious revising, and they could all use a little work, so that's a more long-term project, but if one or several of the Disciplines need to be entirely rebuilt, that's a thing I can think about, too.
I'd do both, but with more work on making Disciplines more open in fluff.


I'm a little confused here, how do you get Monk/Ranger from Swordsage? The Monk I understand, obviously, but I'm wondering where the Ranger comes in- the plethora of Maneuvers known doesn't exactly scream "tight focus" to me. One of the class features I've been considering for either the Warblade or the Crusader was something to encourage dipping a lot of different Disciplines, but I'm still struggling to come up with a good way to do the opposite.
I get Monk/Ranger from Swordsage because of Monk's theme being superb mastery of the self as weapon and tool, while the Ranger's mechanics, and to a lesser extent theme, of "really good at one method of fighting."


So that key personality of a Crusader seems almost like it's enthusiasm- whatever they decide to do, they will dedicated themselves to that task or quest unequivocally, bashing their head (and fists) against the wall until either it breaks, or they do. I like that, and I think it would make a nice contrast for the Warblade who could come across as more free-spirited.

I know I previously said the Warblade might be more like a Barbarian/Ranger, but on second thought the Favored Enemy seems analogous to Smite, in that you are focused on defeating one particular type of enemy. How would you feel if I gave the Crusader the Favored Enemy feature in some way?
See above as to my justification for Ranger/Monk theme mixing on Swordsage. Favored Enemy type mechanics on Crusader is perfectly fine by me! Nothing says all of a class's mechanics have to be represented on the same "representative" class. If you go Ranger because you want to not burn feats and stats on multiple weapons, fine by me. If you go to Ranger for the favored enemy fluff, also fine.


I already mentioned my reasoning for including ice themes in Desert Wind, and one of the homebrews in the link AbbyNormal gave me was for a feat that let you swap out the fire damage for any alternative of Electric, Cold, or Acid. If I decided to associate certain damage types with other various schools as well, do you have any thoughts on what fits where or what might be improved by the addition of something?
See here for variant Discipline homebrew. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?240489)


Also, what do you think about revising Desert Wind to be more range-focused? Possibly even going full-archery with it.
Less hard focuses, more ignoring weapon and attack types. Having it explicitly list a Ranged Weapon as a Discipline Weapon, then making the Boosts that add fire damage do nothing to the


Before I start brewing new stuff, why not just go through the list and see what sort of things might be revised to be Rushes in the first place? There's already a whole bunch of movement-oriented maneuvers.
Well, Shadow Hand teleportation stands out instantly... Searing Charge, if toned down in damage or "split" between the movement and damage in it's effect, could be made a Rush as well.

That sounds really cool, I'm just not exactly sure how to make it work. D&D is something of an abstract system that is supposed to represent combat, and I don't if it could be made to handle combos very well. I could see something like...you gain a +1 stacking bonus to your attack rolls for every sequential maneuver you use from one Discipline, and then it resets if you miss a round or use another Discipline's maneuver. The issue is I feel the bonuses you could get would either be very bland or very complicated, with a hard-to-find middle ground.


Maybe alternatively if we fixed the scaling issue we could say that chaining maneuvers from the same school lets you treat them as using a higher initiator level or something.

This also sounds cool, but again I don't want to be overly restrictive. Maybe something like giving you a +1 bonus to your initiator level if you use a maneuver that matches the stance you're in. I'll have to think about it more.
Making this slightly more complicated, you can do stuff like have Holocaust Cloak add half it's retaliation damage to attacks and lose some fraction each round to a minimum of your IL, while also having the retaliation damage increase by half the energy damage dealt by your Manoeuvres. Okay, that's going a bit too far, but the point is that functions to make synergies out of Stance components


Ok, but how would you interpret that for a turn-based combat system like D&D's? There's some real-world concepts and tactics that just don't (at least not yet) translate well into the game, many of which I think include anything that takes more than 1 round to resolve.

Look at the various combat tricks in Core: Trip, Disarm, Sunder, Bullrush, etc. They all resolve in a single round, and then you move on to something else. Grapple gets a reputation for being much more complicated but that's because it's an ongoing effect. For all the others you can just describe what happens and then move on, but for grappling you have to also describe all the things that can happen while you are involved in a grapple.
A round is six seconds. A Standard Action is about 3 seconds, while a Move Action is about 2. Swift Actions take about one second. A Trip should only take a Swift Action, but there's an aversion to giving things to do with Swift Actions. In case you can't tell, I'd very much like to have a


I do like the idea of large, complex sets of maneuvers as capstones for the Disciplines, I'm just mulling over the best way to make it work. And I do like the idea of focusing the penultimate technique on something that is a key element of that school, whether that's counters or movement or battlefield control, and not just another type of Strike.

Maybe rather than describing exactly what's in a Kata, it should be a kind of build-your-own combo that players have round-to-round control over. I'm not exactly sure how that would work either, but it's an idea to consider.
Well, the build-your-own-combo kinda leans on the idea of getting advantages for certain orders of use. One of the examples I came up with over on MinMax was having the use of Burning Brand before Searing Charge add damage to Searing Charge, under the explanation of basically making a lance out of fire to improve the effect.


For Desert Wind and it's tight thematics, I feel like some kind of "sub-school or sub-discipline" idea could be helpful.

Here's a link to almost exactly that. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?240489) Comes with key skill changes as part of it, though. Adjust that and you get to make your tweeks to all the Disciplines from entry point. Make it part of Stances as on-the-fly swaps or Feats as options for preperation, like a prepared caster performing metamagic, and you get some nice choices for what you face. Or make it be on-the-spot changes without cost, if the key desire is versatility.


When I imagine a combo sort of system for maneuvers, I mostly picture them behaving a flow-chart sort of manner, in which each one suggests which one would be useful to use next

Well, my main though is "if X was your last used Manoeuvre" or "if your last used Manoeuvre had X property" having the added effects. Requiring enemies to have a particular condition is another thing that fits, admittedly, and I actually kinda slipped it into a Discipline I'm working on right now. Boost/Strike/Rush self-reference trios would make your entire round into a combo.


Were I to do this, I would also include maneuvers that can conditionally refresh other maneuvers. Say, a Setting Sun maneuver that just functions as a disarm attack but if you are successful, you can also refresh two other maneuvers. This, I feel, would improve flow significantly.
I'm actually doing this to model Visceral Attacks for a Bloodborne based Discipline I'm working on. Specifically for Boosts, with a glimmer of thought for a Boost that recovers Strikes or Counters to loop that stuff.


(I also feel like people should be able to ready a significantly higher number of maneuvers than they currently are allotted. It's stupid that wizards get so many option slots while initiators get low teens at best. I would at least increase the number readied by an ability modifier or something.)
Agreed. Although I'd compare to Spirit Shaman, which has up to three of each spell level available. Which is still much more than an Initiator gets.

ngilop
2017-11-01, 07:11 PM
For me the 2nd biggest offense of the Tome of battle is; abilities do not scale.

instead of having to take maneuver 1 that does 1d6 damage then maneuver 2 4 levels later that does 3d6 damage is dumb, why not just have 1 maneuver that does 1d6 plus 1d6 every so many levels afterwards and free up that slot to take a maneuver that allows one to.. idk... ignore a fear effects for X rounds?

Morphic tide
2017-11-01, 08:47 PM
For me the 2nd biggest offense of the Tome of battle is; abilities do not scale.

instead of having to take maneuver 1 that does 1d6 damage then maneuver 2 4 levels later that does 3d6 damage is dumb, why not just have 1 maneuver that does 1d6 plus 1d6 every so many levels afterwards and free up that slot to take a maneuver that allows one to.. idk... ignore a fear effects for X rounds?

See, this is talking sense. I, myself, am going for every two to four levels on the Bloodborne-themed Discipline I'm working on. There's still going to be higher-lethality versions of Maneuvers at higher levels, but it'll be through other effects and in different damage types.

An example of this is if the various Desert Wind Manoeuvres added Slashing damage, with later ones adding Fire damage and then lingering damage. Well, okay, more like going from Slashing to Fire to Desiccation damage.

Nifft
2017-11-01, 10:13 PM
For me the 2nd biggest offense of the Tome of battle is; abilities do not scale.

instead of having to take maneuver 1 that does 1d6 damage then maneuver 2 4 levels later that does 3d6 damage is dumb, why not just have 1 maneuver that does 1d6 plus 1d6 every so many levels afterwards and free up that slot to take a maneuver that allows one to.. idk... ignore a fear effects for X rounds?

Desert Wind's fire-cone Strikes are a good example of this.

However, it's not just about Initiator Level -- it's also about knowing enough other Desert Wind strikes that you qualify for the extra damage.

With those two parameters, we could collapse Hatchling's Flame / Dragons's Flame / Wyrm's Flame into a single maneuver:


Breath of the Desert Wyrm
You exhale a 30 ft. cone of fire, dealing damage to all enemies who fail their Reflex save.
- The fire damage equals your Initiator level, or 4x the number of Desert Wind maneuvers you know (including this one), which ever is less.
- The save DC 10 + half your Initiator level + your Wisdom bonus. If you know more than 4 Desert Wind maneuvers, increase the save DC by +2.

Deepbluediver
2017-11-02, 01:39 PM
I also feel like people should be able to ready a significantly higher number of maneuvers than they currently are allotted. It's stupid that wizards get so many option slots while initiators get low teens at best. I would at least increase the number readied by an ability modifier or something.

Agreed. Although I'd compare to Spirit Shaman, which has up to three of each spell level available. Which is still much more than an Initiator gets.
I've been thinking about this as well, so lets talk about it first. I'm already leaning towards just scrapping the "readied" mechanic entirely, and letting people operate as if all maneuvers you know are always readied, and just need to be refreshed (recovered) after use. In this sense, I like to compare Martial Adepts to Warlocks.

Warlocks have a few more out-of-combat tricks thanks to the variety of invocations, but M. adepts get more in-combat choices, and combat is certainly a big part of D&D. With a little tweaking on both ends, I think they could all end up in a similar place for power and versatility. One of the main complaints about Warlocks is they don't learn enough invocations; a quick fix I like is to say a Warlock starts with two invocations at level 1, and picks up an additional invocation at every single level after that. So by level 20 you'd know 21 invocations, which is a 75% increase, and a nice way to not have dead levels- there's SOMETHING to look forward to every single time you level up.

In this analogy, the invocations are equivalent to maneuvers. I kind of want to combine the Stances known and the other maneuvers into one number, but overall it would still be a slight buff for Crusaders and Warblades. And if we go the route of making Stances improve maneuvers from the same school, people WILL want to take them. It's a nerf to Swordsages, but this isn't necessarily the only progression we can use, and the SS needs revamping anyhow. So theoretically if we reduced their maneuvers known we'd compensate them in some other way.
Thoughts?


For Desert Wind and it's tight thematics, I feel like some kind of "sub-school or sub-discipline" idea could be helpful.
Like, there are many ways to interpret the theme of Desert Wind and different focal points. You could create a relatively slim "core" of manevuers (say 18-20), then create some minor disciplines or something that stem off of Desert Wind.

So you might have "Midnight Desolation Wind" which is a Desert Wind variant that allows you to turn some of your fire maneuvers cold, or inflict lasting cold damage, or morale penalties or what-have you.

Or "Golden Purification Flame" which focuses on fire as a purifying anti-undead element (perhaps Pelor inspired), which focuses on Desert Wind as holy fire and daylight.

Or one that focuses on surviving in the desert, or one that focuses on moving with the freedom of a desert wind-

These "minor" disciplines would have less maneuvers, and link directly with the core maneuvers of their parent discipline. Learning one would, essentially, add these new maneuvers to your core discipline.

This would provide the flexibility without having to worry about people yelling at you because Desert Wind does cold damage now.
That does sound workable, though I think I'm going to have to push it to the bottom of my priority list for the moment. I've got 3 classes and 9 Disciplines to redo (or at least review and clean up the chaff for) first. I'll make some notes as I go along- for example a sub-discipline for ranged-weapon specific manuevers might be a good idea, but otherwise that's on the back burner for now.


@ the comboing

When I imagine a combo sort of system for maneuvers, I mostly picture them behaving a flow-chart sort of manner, in which each one suggests which one would be useful to use next.
Like, let's say you are using Setting Sun:

You have a strike that does no damage, but instead places the struck enemy in a state of imbalance- they take a penalty to attack rolls and AC, which increases (doubles?) against trip attacks. The maneuver lasts long enough for you to make use of it on your next turn, when you use another strike that enhances your attack to function as both a trip attack and a regular attack, hurting your foe as you knock him to the ground.

Then you notice someone in position to charge at one of your other party members, and decide to use a boost that would normally just provide a bonus against AoOs, but because you tripped an enemy this turn it instead provides movement up to your land speed as part of the maneuver. You pirouette gracefully over to where the charging enemy, preparing to disrupt their charge with another maneuver.
Maybe that could work, though I'll be honest here- my knee-jerk reaction to imagining players pulling out flow charts to track combat every time they get into a fight is to go "Eeeuughhhhh...." :smallyuk:
I like the IDEA, I just have to sit down and devote some serious run-time to figuring out how to make it work without causing the GM to curl up and whimper.


Were I to do this, I would also include maneuvers that can conditionally refresh other maneuvers. Say, a Setting Sun maneuver that just functions as a disarm attack but if you are successful, you can also refresh two other maneuvers. This, I feel, would improve flow significantly.
Now that's an idea I really like. Probably not for every maneuver, but I could certainly see attaching it as a kind of critical success to some maneuvers. Maybe ones with normally less powerful effects; for example if there was a maneuver that let you dazzle enemies (I think there is), that's not a particularly strong effect, but we could say that if you dazzle at least 3 enemies with a single usage, you can refresh another maunever. Or if you score a critical hit when using a Strike maneuver, or maybe for some maneuvers if they are successful they don't go on cooldown. Something like that anyhow.



I'm working on a Discipline with health costs and health drain in similar measure specifically because of this awkwardness.
You know what that makes me think of- the color Black cards and associated effects from Magic the Gathering. If you're not familiar, one of the themes of Black/Swamp cards is sacrificing life points and small creatures for some benefit, usually either direct damage or summoning bigger creatures. I'm not sure it's enough to carry a Discipline (can I just call them "Schools" instead? That's what they are and it's WAY easier to type) on it's own, but maybe it could be a subtheme of an existing school. There's already one maneuver that does this (Greater Divine Surge) but it's in the Devoted Spirit school, so it comes across as more like heroic sacrifice instead of slitting your own wrists and using the blood to fuel a necromantic horde.


One of the things that the Manoeuvres have that's useful here is that the Maneuvers have the same class-level entry as spells. This is literally never used like spell levels to have Manoeuvres be different levels for different classes or restrict some of them to specific classes.
Yeah, but maneuvers don't have the same versatility as spells, nor do I really want to push them to that extreme. I was playing around with some ideas for condensing the scale of different levels for all manuevers anyway and I'm leaning towards something like 5 or 6. A slightly smoother progression than Warlock invocations, but still less than a Bard's spells.

Also, I'd honestly rather keep all spells the same level for all classes, and just have them scale better, but that's a personal gripe and I don't need to force it on other people. I can't help that desire from creeping into my homebrew though, so I wanted you to be aware.


Eh, Int-based Swordsage works with a Rogue base. Trapfinding is a sad requirement for such things, because of ****ing Niche Protection. Other than that... 6+Int skill ranks and the class skills to use it. Rogue's a skillmonkey just because it has 8+Int points per level for skills, you don't need much more incentive.
Personally, Trapfinding can go pound sand for all I care- I think it's a stupid requirement and I don't get the point except to force every party to bring along a Rogue. Why can't anyone who has enough ranks in Search and Disable Device just use them normally?

Also, the double-cost and half-limit for cross-class skills needs to go DIAF, too, but this is a ToB fix thread not a skill-system fix thread. :smallbiggrin:


"Dedicated Quester" is just about a perfect description for my ideas of what Crusader's "theme" should be. It also works with both Wisdom for Will and Charisma for the sheer force of personality most such characters have.
Yeah, if I give the Swordsage a Monk's flat AC bonus (I have a homebrewed Monk with a better progression that I think I'd use) I'd probably give the "+Wis to AC" to the Crusader, without ANY limitations on Armor. That way if you want to go full-tank you can wear heavy armor AND stack Wisdom, if you want to go for the offensive beatstick skip the Wisdom and just rely on your armor for protection, and if you want some kind of mobility-based build, stack Wisdom and skip the armor.

The key of course is the way you present it- I feel like some of the original classes might have been meant for players to choose one set of features or the other based on stats, but instead it just gets looked at as "OMG so much MAD!"


RE: replacing X ability score to something with Y ability score instead

It can matter because of bonus stacking rules. You can have a Strength and Intelligence item, but not two Strength items. Also, it's easier to have two scores at 14 than one score at 18, by a lot. It means that if you have two decent rolls on your stats, they can be applied like an amazing roll.
It basically just lets you stack bonuses more, really. Con to AC is good because it shifts points away from Dex to stack all durability into one score. Int to Attack is good because it lets you invest in skills as a Martial and incentives doing so.
Ok, that makes sense. Still, I'd rather let you add the two together than have one replace the other. So instead of, for example, discarding Dexterity to AC in place of Wisdom, you can just not-dump Dex and focus on stacking Wisdom which hopefully will increase both AC and something else. That feels like a decent middle ground to me.


I get Monk/Ranger from Swordsage because of Monk's theme being superb mastery of the self as weapon and tool, while the Ranger's mechanics, and to a lesser extent theme, of "really good at one method of fighting."
OK, I think I get it. One thing I like to do is give ALL the melee classes a certain number of combat-style bonus feats, in the vein of the Rangers free ranged-or-duel-wielding feats, so getting better with your weapons doesn't feel like a feat tax. I would certainly do the same thing with the Martial Adept classes; the progressions I use are usually 4, 7, or 10, with the 4 and 7-feat progressions slightly frontloaded.


RE: comboing
Making this slightly more complicated, you can do stuff like have Holocaust Cloak add half it's retaliation damage to attacks and lose some fraction each round to a minimum of your IL, while also having the retaliation damage increase by half the energy damage dealt by your Manoeuvres. Okay, that's going a bit too far, but the point is that functions to make synergies out of Stance components.
That sounds fun, to, but I think if we can fix the scaling on feets, letting chain-combos increase you effective level may be a simpler way to do it without being overly restrictive or having to homebrew new rules for every single maneuver-combination.


A round is six seconds. A Standard Action is about 3 seconds, while a Move Action is about 2. Swift Actions take about one second. A Trip should only take a Swift Action, but there's an aversion to giving things to do with Swift Actions. In case you can't tell, I'd very much like to have a
Like to have a what? But yes, I definitely support giving more things a swift-action time. I think it might have been left off the table a lot because it was new to 3.5 (was it even in the core rules? or am I thinking of immediate actions?) and the designers were reluctant to overuse it.



For me the 2nd biggest offense of the Tome of battle is; abilities do not scale.
What was the first? :smallconfused:



Desert Wind's fire-cone Strikes are a good example of this.

However, it's not just about Initiator Level -- it's also about knowing enough other Desert Wind strikes that you qualify for the extra damage.
With those two parameters, we could collapse Hatchling's Flame / Dragons's Flame / Wyrm's Flame into a single maneuver:

Breath of the Desert Wyrm
You exhale a 30 ft. cone of fire, dealing damage to all enemies who fail their Reflex save.
- The fire damage equals your Initiator level, or 4x the number of Desert Wind maneuvers you know (including this one), which ever is less.
- The save DC 10 + half your Initiator level + your Wisdom bonus. If you know more than 4 Desert Wind maneuvers, increase the save DC by +2.
That still seems that if you picked up the maneuver late in your career, without alot of other Desert Wind maneuvers to go with it, the damage would be pretty piddling.

I like the format that uses ECL because that way even if you dip into something later on, it's still useful right away. Lets look at spells as an example- lets say both a 20th level Wizard and a Fighter 19/Wizard 1 both cast Ray of Frost (imagine a homebrewed version that scaled with ECL and no cap). Everything else being equal, I'd like the base calculations to be the same. Obviously in practice the Wizard would have stats and class features and feats that make his spell better, but barring all that the spell would still do respectable damage for the multiclass Fighter.

I think if we get the balancing right, we can have lots of stuff that improves you effective level for calculating the effects of maneuvers, so the incentive to playing well and combo stuff is it makes your 6th level Martial Adept use maneuvers as if he were 10th or 12th level.

Just as an example, lets say we have a maneuver that adds 1d6 fire damage to your attacks, plus 1d6 extra fire damage for every third level. So it becomes 2d6 at level 3, 3d6 at level 6, 4d6 at level 9, etc.
Our hypothetical Adept is 6th level, so if he just uses the maneuver on it's own, it will add +3d6 fire damage. Except, if he's in a Stance of the same school, that makes it effectively 1 level higher. Plus it's the third maneuver in a sequence he's used from that school, so lets add 2 more effective levels. And if you know at least 3 maneuvers from one school, you can treat yourself to another effective level. And lets say there's some school-related feats that boost your maneuvers for ANOTHER two levels.
Add it all together and you calculate the bonus as if you were an 12th level Adept, meaning that using this maneuver here and now actually adds +5d6 fire damage instead. That's the kind of thing I'm imagining. I feel it rewards smart play tactics and system mastery, while not requiring total optimization to still have fun.

Nifft
2017-11-02, 02:13 PM
That still seems that if you picked up the maneuver late in your career, without alot of other Desert Wind maneuvers to go with it, the damage would be pretty piddling.

Yes, it's a poor idea to cherry-pick this specific Maneuver at high level.

It's similar to a two-handed melee uber-charger Barbarian picking Point Blank Shot as a feat at 18th level.

Do you give that Barbarian a bonus to melee damage & melee attacks, just because the player made a choice that would otherwise be poor?

Alternately, maybe that player is actually being clever, and there's some reason why having a 30 ft. cone of 4d6 fire damage as a kinda-sorta breath weapon is a good idea.

Meh.

The point is, some Maneuvers with heavy prereqs are supposed to be relatively exclusive. That's cool. You know that if someone busts out Wyrm's Flames, that character has mastered a bunch of Desert Wind maneuvers. It's a specialist's trick.

Deepbluediver
2017-11-02, 06:17 PM
Yes, it's a poor idea to cherry-pick this specific Maneuver at high level.

It's similar to a two-handed melee uber-charger Barbarian picking Point Blank Shot as a feat at 18th level.

Do you give that Barbarian a bonus to melee damage & melee attacks, just because the player made a choice that would otherwise be poor?

Alternately, maybe that player is actually being clever, and there's some reason why having a 30 ft. cone of 4d6 fire damage as a kinda-sorta breath weapon is a good idea.

Meh.

The point is, some Maneuvers with heavy prereqs are supposed to be relatively exclusive. That's cool. You know that if someone busts out Wyrm's Flames, that character has mastered a bunch of Desert Wind maneuvers. It's a specialist's trick.
Fair point- if someone was really good at design, they could probably come up with some maneuvers that were geared toward the dedicated practitioner and other maneuvers that were more appealing to someone just wanting a little dip. I'm not sure I'm that good, but it's a certainly a design philosophy to keep in mind.



I dislike hard Taunts that force the enemy to target the user, specifically. Stuff like forcing them to enter a Frenzy of sorts, attacking the nearest creature without fail, on a relatively mobile Discipline able to be the nearest creature almost always, or otherwise providing means of controling what the nearest target is, I find more fitting. Essentially, making targetting desired targets a logical progression of what's going on.
I left this out of my last reply because I was still turning it over in my head, but now I think I have a suitable response. So lets talk about tanking.

What you're saying makes sense, but I think from a balance perspective that's a very precise goal that you're trying to hit. In order to get a creature to WANT to focus on the tank, then that tank has to be doing something that is more of a threat than all the damage and SOD abilities that the strikers and casters are unloading. But that's not the only thing- they also have to be someone who at least APPEARS squishy enough that the enemy thinks they can bring down relatively easily. After all, when I look at a party I don't usually think that Sir Lancelot and Conan the Barbarian will be the EASIEST characters to kill.

So if you are looking for someone who is buffing up everyone else, and yet is themselves not that durable, the two classes that I can think of that best fit that description are the Bard and Healer, and then any other support-types. Whenever I play videogames, the usual method to dealing with tanks is to ignore them. You can (ironically) just tank the tank's damage while you work on his friends, since most tanks trade the ability to deal out hurt for the ability to absorb it. Then once you've cleared the board of all the offensively dangerous characters you're free to whittle away at the tank's health at your leisure.

If you're up against a mindless (or animal-like anyway) enemy, I'd expect them to simply focus on whoever was dealing the most damage, or whoever was the closest. The first situation probably isn't the tank- after all why would anyone want to play a striker if the tank deals just as much damage and is twice as durable? And for the second the tank might be only one of several possible targets. There needs to be a way for the tank to regain the enemy's attention. That's the element that's missing from core, and a big part of the reason why Sword-n-Board was a sub-par style.

And when you look at it that way, the whole concept of aggro basically becomes a subset of CC. Logically there IS NO REASON for most enemies to want to attack the tank first, so you need to stop them from doing what they want by forcing them to do what you want.

Morphic tide
2017-11-03, 12:39 AM
I've been thinking about this as well, so lets talk about it first. I'm already leaning towards just scrapping the "readied" mechanic entirely, and letting people operate as if all maneuvers you know are always readied, and just need to be refreshed (recovered) after use. In this sense, I like to compare Martial Adepts to Warlocks.
Hmm... Having Manoeuvres be not!Invocations instead of not!spells would solve some of the whining. Making them less like spells by being more varied in use, a little like the Bladecraft homebrew system that was made with making the core rulebook as-printed Fighter into it's exemplar class, would deal with some more of that, which is why I'd like synergies on the Stances. The example I gave for Holocaust Cloak is synergistic with every energy damage Manoeuvre, meaning that other energy damage heavy Disciplines might well dip into Desert Wind just for Holocaust Cloak.


You know what that makes me think of- the color Black cards and associated effects from Magic the Gathering. If you're not familiar, one of the themes of Black/Swamp cards is sacrificing life points and small creatures for some benefit, usually either direct damage or summoning bigger creatures. I'm not sure it's enough to carry a Discipline (can I just call them "Schools" instead? That's what they are and it's way easier to type) on it's own, but maybe it could be a subtheme of an existing school. There's already one maneuver that does this (Greater Divine Surge) but it's in the Devoted Spirit school, so it comes across as more like heroic sacrifice instead of slitting your own wrists and using the blood to fuel a necromantic horde.
The actual theme of it is taking the Bloodtinge stuff from Bloodborne, blood-based gun ammo and blade extension, and turning it into a Discipline. I've actually planned to have the iterative versions of things change damage types and scaling instead of flat changes. For example, the 2nd level Strike deals 1d6 Piercing damage per four Initiator Levels, while it's 4th level "upgrade" deals 1d8 Fire damage per three Initiator levels, costs potentially four times as much health(up to 12 HP, though half that maximum is Fire to casually resist) and has a prerequisite. More damage of a slightly less resisted type, but a more common immunity. The real use is in the save-or-be-Flatfooted, which scales off Dexterity and manoeuvre level. So the 2nd level is 12 + Dex, while the 4th level is 14 + Dex. It's clearly a progression, but not a big or fast one and the increasing cost keeps the lower-level useful.


Yeah, but maneuvers don't have the same versatility as spells, nor do I really want to push them to that extreme. I was playing around with some ideas for condensing the scale of different levels for all manuevers anyway and I'm leaning towards something like 5 or 6. A slightly smoother progression than Warlock invocations, but still less than a Bard's spells.

Also, I'd honestly rather keep all spells the same level for all classes, and just have them scale better, but that's a personal gripe and I don't need to force it on other people. I can't help that desire from creeping into my homebrew though, so I wanted you to be aware.
Actually, on a case-by-case basis, Manoeuvres are just as versatile as Spells, with only a few stand-outs. Like the entire Polymorph subschool... Spells, in aggregate, are more versatile. There's more varied spells than manoeuvres, but nothing stops us from making Manoeuvres that offer the versatility of spells. Notably, the intent of Tome of Battle's given Disciplines is to promote taking Manoeuvres from several Disciplines to get the versatility you want. A one-place stop for all your needed effects is actually against the point. You're supposed to need Stone Dragon and Iron Heart for defensive options and Fire immunity workarounds when you rely on Desert Wind for damage. I take this as a ****ty state of affairs, though, because higher-end specializing is required to get high-level Manoeuvres, which are required for high-level damage that stays ahead of a well-geared Ranger or Monk.


Personally, Trapfinding can go pound sand for all I care- I think it's a stupid requirement and I don't get the point except to force every party to bring along a Rogue. Why can't anyone who has enough ranks in Search and Disable Device just use them normally?

Also, the double-cost and half-limit for cross-class skills needs to go DIAF, too, but this is a ToB fix thread not a skill-system fix thread. :smallbiggrin:
Well, Trapfinging and similar niche protection can, indeed, die in a fire. I do accept that double cost or half limit is needed to make sure that cross-class means something at higher levels to keep thematics. Personally, I'd go with double cost so that sufficient focus can work past the cross-class limiter.


Yeah, if I give the Swordsage a Monk's flat AC bonus (I have a homebrewed Monk with a better progression that I think I'd use) I'd probably give the "+Wis to AC" to the Crusader, without ANY limitations on Armor. That way if you want to go full-tank you can wear heavy armor AND stack Wisdom, if you want to go for the offensive beatstick skip the Wisdom and just rely on your armor for protection, and if you want some kind of mobility-based build, stack Wisdom and skip the armor.
So, shift some of the tanking Manoeuvre DCs to Wisdom to focus on that? Then have Charisma scaling for the bigger offensive DCs?


The key of course is the way you present it- I feel like some of the original classes might have been meant for players to choose one set of features or the other based on stats, but instead it just gets looked at as "OMG so much MAD!"
I have faced this ridicule with bringing up the idea of a class that can use every ability score for something, because people didn't understand the "can" part meaning using more than two scores was optional. And the idea was specifically having each score apply to a different statistic so that the pairs actually only supported one playstyle each. Costs of optimization-minded communities...


Ok, that makes sense. Still, I'd rather let you add the two together than have one replace the other. So instead of, for example, discarding Dexterity to AC in place of Wisdom, you can just not-dump Dex and focus on stacking Wisdom which hopefully will increase both AC and something else. That feels like a decent middle ground to me.
...That's actually the standard. But that standard gets a bit problematic due to being able to split the costs between different things, which causes power inflation due to a lot of costs for improvement being exponential.


OK, I think I get it. One thing I like to do is give ALL the melee classes a certain number of combat-style bonus feats, in the vein of the Rangers free ranged-or-duel-wielding feats, so getting better with your weapons doesn't feel like a feat tax. I would certainly do the same thing with the Martial Adept classes; the progressions I use are usually 4, 7, or 10, with the 4 and 7-feat progressions slightly frontloaded.
Just make sure to follow 5e a little and use thematically-appropriate options. Don't give the Barbarian access to a one-hander and shield or archery set, for example.


That sounds fun, to, but I think if we can fix the scaling on feets, letting chain-combos increase you effective level may be a simpler way to do it without being overly restrictive or having to homebrew new rules for every single maneuver-combination.
...My Holocaust Cloak example synergizes with every energy damage dealing Manoeuvre in existence automatically, without making any specificities. It's just changing Stances to be affected by Manoeuvres and/or affect Manoeuvres, based on what the stance does.


Like to have a what? But yes, I definitely support giving more things a swift-action time. I think it might have been left off the table a lot because it was new to 3.5 (was it even in the core rules? or am I thinking of immediate actions?) and the designers were reluctant to overuse it.
I... forgot to finish the sentence... I was going to type "like a downsizing of what action something takes with higher level." Like having the single attack you make without Full Attacking shifting to a Swift Action at BAB +6, letting Standard Actions be used for more important things, like the various standard action tricks that shift to swift actions later or never.


I like the format that uses ECL because that way even if you dip into something later on, it's still useful right away. Lets look at spells as an example- lets say both a 20th level Wizard and a Fighter 19/Wizard 1 both cast Ray of Frost (imagine a homebrewed version that scaled with ECL and no cap). Everything else being equal, I'd like the base calculations to be the same. Obviously in practice the Wizard would have stats and class features and feats that make his spell better, but barring all that the spell would still do respectable damage for the multiclass Fighter.
There's a bit of a problem with this, though. It removes the primary penalty of multiclassing that is reducing your progression of the power source. Tome of Battle already has a compromise by having non-Initiator classes contribute half-levels to Initiator Level. Applying something similar to other subsystems gets you the preferred situation without needing to give every subsystem class significant bonuses to their subsystem. It makes things annoyingly similar to have all of them have to have bonuses attached to class features to be better at it than a dipper at low levels.


The point is, some Maneuvers with heavy prereqs are supposed to be relatively exclusive. That's cool. You know that if someone busts out Wyrm's Flames, that character has mastered a bunch of Desert Wind maneuvers. It's a specialist's trick.
Ooh, specialist trick! I love them. Having stuff that scales with known Manoeuvres is kinda silly to me, but it does work out fairly well for Manoeuvres with bundles of prerequisites. 4 or 5 prerequisite manoeuvres and being above 5th level generally means it's specialist, because you need more than two levels of Swordsage to get it before Epic.


Fair point- if someone was really good at design, they could probably come up with some maneuvers that were geared toward the dedicated practitioner and other maneuvers that were more appealing to someone just wanting a little dip. I'm not sure I'm that good, but it's a certainly a design philosophy to keep in mind.
...Now I'm going to have to figure out how to make actively sticking with Silverblood Night to rack up bundles of different Manoeuvres for it actually worth doing. Maybe scale the acid/poison damage ones by how many Manoeuvres you have in it... Having the 9th level be a Stance that makes you bull**** in proportion to how many of the Manoeuvres you use makes the Crusader use of it hard to arrange(well, you can always burn your 18th level feat on it to avoid needing IL manipulation) and spectacular if accomplished(Delayed Damage pool potentially in the triple digits and life steal to heal right through it).


I left this out of my last reply because I was still turning it over in my head, but now I think I have a suitable response. So lets talk about tanking.

What you're saying makes sense, but I think from a balance perspective that's a very small target you're trying to hit. In order to get a creature to WANT to focus on the tank, then that tank has to be doing something that is more of a threat than all the damage and SOD abilities that the strikers and casters are unloading. But that's not the only thing- they also have to be someone who is squishy enough that the enemy thinks they can bring down relatively easily. After all, when I look at a party I don't usually think that Sir Lancelot and Conan the Barbarian will be the EASIEST characters to kill.
It's not so much being the easiest to kill or too valuable to keep alive as looking easy to kill or too valuable to keep alive. Going after what does the most damage isn't always the best bet, and having the tank deal the most direct damage isn't a problem if the "damage dealers" are mostly piling debuffs and over time damage. Poison is nice for dealing with this issue. Ongoing damage in general works well as low-aggro damage because it can be hard to keep track of which person is responsible for what portion of blood loss you've suffered, while the guy beating you around the battlefield like you're a DBZ character getting Worfed seems to be the most immediate and important threat.

Like, Fast Healing 2, narratively, can make whoever is providing it a massive target because they're making wounds close up in front of their eyes. Nevermind that it's only fixing the visible damage, while the healer is doing multiple d8 per round to the whole party to fix the actual problems, it looks important. This is a lot easier to apply in computer games, honestly. Although Protection Paladin having a high-aggro minor heal would be awfully nice to see in WoW... Better yet, Guardian Druid getting a talent set to get super high threat versions of minor effects from other specs usable in Bear form would make it look more reasonable.

Deepbluediver
2017-11-05, 01:44 PM
I've been messing around with some alternative layouts, and one thing I came up with was a different distribution for what classes could use what disciplines. I'm still toying with the idea of letting every class access every school, just not all in one build, but the problem I keep running into there is balancing the trifecta of (1) decent variety across 20 levels, (2) limitations that actually feel like limits and keep classes feeling distinct, and (3) not frontloading the disciplines you learn to a ridiculous degree.

Anyway, in the meantime I've got this table for what classes can learn which disciplines, as well as what Ability score would be the most important for each discipline.



DISCIPLINE
Crusader
Swordsage
Warblade
Key Ability


Desert Wind
yes
yes
yes
Dexterity


Devoted Spirit
yes
no
no
Charisma


Diamond Mind
no
yes
no
Intelligence


Iron Heart
yes
no
yes
Constitution


Setting Sun
yes
yes
yes
Strength


Shadow Hand
no
yes
yes
Dexterity


Stone Dragon
yes
yes
yes
Constitution


Tiger Claw
no
no
yes
Strength


White Raven
yes
yes
no
Wisdom


Every class now has access to 6 Disciplines, although they don't necessarily include all the same ones as in RAW. The Swordsage trades Tiger Claw for White Raven. The Warblade loses Diamond Mind and White Raven but picks up Desert Wind, Setting Sun, and Shadow Hand. The Crusader keeps all 3 of this initial Disciplines, and adds Desert Wind, Iron Heart, and Setting Sun.



Hmm... Having Manoeuvres be not!Invocations instead of not!spells would solve some of the whining. Making them less like spells by being more varied in use, a little like the Bladecraft homebrew system that was made with making the core rulebook as-printed Fighter into it's exemplar class, would deal with some more of that, which is why I'd like synergies on the Stances. The example I gave for Holocaust Cloak is synergistic with every energy damage Manoeuvre, meaning that other energy damage heavy Disciplines might well dip into Desert Wind just for Holocaust Cloak.
I still like the Refresh mechanic- being able to use a maneuver twice in a row occasionally sounds like a nice bonus, but being able to use particular maneuvers round after round after round in combat would probably be gamebreaking. Especially some of the CC-related ones.

And I like the synergy idea, it's just that the more you do of it the harder it gets to keep homebrewing, because each change has greater and greater cascading effects.


Actually, on a case-by-case basis, Manoeuvres are just as versatile as Spells, with only a few stand-outs. Like the entire Polymorph subschool... Spells, in aggregate, are more versatile. There's more varied spells than manoeuvres, but nothing stops us from making Manoeuvres that offer the versatility of spells.
You're right- that's a more accurate way to look at it. If we fixed the scaling it should deal with the other issue, as well as open up more space for new maneuvers that have more varied effects.


Well, Trapfinging and similar niche protection can, indeed, die in a fire. I do accept that double cost or half limit is needed to make sure that cross-class means something at higher levels to keep thematics. Personally, I'd go with double cost so that sufficient focus can work past the cross-class limiter.
I think I could live with the double-cost for cross class skills if the classes got more points, so it felt like less of an imposition. For my own Skills-fix I preferred to rely more on carrots than sticks, but that's kinda getting off topic, though.


So, shift some of the tanking Manoeuvre DCs to Wisdom to focus on that? Then have Charisma scaling for the bigger offensive DCs?
Something like that. I haven't worked it all out yet, but I might give the Crusader class a choice between Smite, which is bumped by Charisma, or Favored Enemy (homebrewed version), which keys off of Wisdom, for example.


...That's actually the standard. But that standard gets a bit problematic due to being able to split the costs between different things, which causes power inflation due to a lot of costs for improvement being exponential.
Well...that's good then. Like I said, normally I'd only try to do this for a class where the element I'm letting them double-up on wouldn't be OP in the first place. For example, I think allowing a double-boost to AC might fit a class with a squishy frame, but I wouldn't give a double-boost to Attack rolls to a class that already had a full BAB. I'm willing to make an exceptions though, especially since tanking is normally considered a sub-optimal playstyle anyway.


Just make sure to follow 5e a little and use thematically-appropriate options. Don't give the Barbarian access to a one-hander and shield or archery set, for example.
Yes, I agree that thematically appropriate selections are good, but that might vary based on people's opinion. For example, I kinda want the Barbarian to have archetypes other than a "raging berserker with a giant axe". Also, the classic European barbarian- the vikings, definitely knew what shields were (https://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2017/02/Vikings-Season-4-Finale-Colorful-Shields.jpg), and the Asian Barbarians, the mongols, were famed for their horseback mounted archers (https://weaponsandwarfare.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/mongolhorde.jpg?w=584).


...My Holocaust Cloak example synergizes with every energy damage dealing Manoeuvre in existence automatically, without making any specificities. It's just changing Stances to be affected by Manoeuvres and/or affect Manoeuvres, based on what the stance does.
Maybe the stances would be a good place to start for thinking about maneuvers that could be multi-discipline.


I... forgot to finish the sentence... I was going to type "like a downsizing of what action something takes with higher level." Like having the single attack you make without Full Attacking shifting to a Swift Action at BAB +6, letting Standard Actions be used for more important things, like the various standard action tricks that shift to swift actions later or never.
D&D's timing system is kind of stuck in a rut, and IMO all the new editions keep missing opportunities to fix it. I get that they don't want to change things to much, lest this turn into not!D&D, but having specific actions sort of limits your flexibility. I feel that something like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521471-A-New-Way-to-Handle-Actions-and-Timing), with your turn divided into tics and different actions taking some amount of that resource, would be much better for abilities that manipulate pacing and the action economy.


There's a bit of a problem with this, though. It removes the primary penalty of multiclassing that is reducing your progression of the power source. Tome of Battle already has a compromise by having non-Initiator classes contribute half-levels to Initiator Level. Applying something similar to other subsystems gets you the preferred situation without needing to give every subsystem class significant bonuses to their subsystem. It makes things annoyingly similar to have all of them have to have bonuses attached to class features to be better at it than a dipper at low levels.
But I LIKE multiclassing- in fact I recently homebrewed a feat to enable multiclass caster (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?539276-A-Feat-to-Let-you-Build-Multiclass-Spellcasters) builds.

If I scrapped the "initiator level" mechanic, and just had maneuvers known and what maneuver level you could access be dependent on class-level, then multiclassing into other things would limit you in that way. Even multiclassing different initiators would be a trade off of losing access to the highest level maneuvers, which I think if we addressed the scaling issues could be a valid alternative.

Right now I'm looking at a version of things that starts you off at 1st level with only 1st-tier maneuvers, and gets you access to another tier every 3 levels: 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, and capping for 6th tier maneuvers at level 16.


Ooh, specialist trick! I love them. Having stuff that scales with known Manoeuvres is kinda silly to me, but it does work out fairly well for Manoeuvres with bundles of prerequisites. 4 or 5 prerequisite manoeuvres and being above 5th level generally means it's specialist, because you need more than two levels of Swordsage to get it before Epic.
My explanation of it was that maneuvers from the same discipline share common elements, so learning several of them meant you were practicing the things what they all incorporated, making every maneuver better. I realize different people buy into the fluff at different rates, though.


It's not so much being the easiest to kill or too valuable to keep alive as looking easy to kill or too valuable to keep alive. Going after what does the most damage isn't always the best bet, and having the tank deal the most direct damage isn't a problem if the "damage dealers" are mostly piling debuffs and over time damage. Poison is nice for dealing with this issue. Ongoing damage in general works well as low-aggro damage because it can be hard to keep track of which person is responsible for what portion of blood loss you've suffered, while the guy beating you around the battlefield like you're a DBZ character getting Worfed seems to be the most immediate and important threat.

Like, Fast Healing 2, narratively, can make whoever is providing it a massive target because they're making wounds close up in front of their eyes. Nevermind that it's only fixing the visible damage, while the healer is doing multiple d8 per round to the whole party to fix the actual problems, it looks important. This is a lot easier to apply in computer games, honestly. Although Protection Paladin having a high-aggro minor heal would be awfully nice to see in WoW... Better yet, Guardian Druid getting a talent set to get super high threat versions of minor effects from other specs usable in Bear form would make it look more reasonable.
I guess, but to me this all feels very much like the GM is just arbitrarily deciding if your tank can actually tank for every encounter. I'd rather not have to rely on the GM agreeing with the idea that every single enemy thinks my self-healing knight is more of an immediate threat than fancy robe-man who's chucking fireballs and summoning shogoths.

Think of it this way- there are spells that turn an enemy into your best friend (Charm, etc). A taunt is really just the reverse of that- instilling your target with such hatred that they ignore everything else to get at you. What about this mechanic don't you like?