[Homebrew] Masters of the Nine Swords, a Tome of Battle inspired 5e compendium

[Levistej]

Greetings and long time no see!

I'd like to share a little pet project of mine that I've been toying with the last few months. It's been through a few revisions and I'm finally satisfied with the completed product. I hope you like it!

https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LIRDW2HWPBA20t4plh4

As always, all constructive feedback is more than appreciated.

[Grod_The_Giant]

A very cool idea. I don't have time to go into it too deep right now, but... a lot of the archetypes seem kind of mis-matched.

Diamond Mind is all about mind-over-matter and discipline; why is it Barbarian and not Monk?
Iron Heart is pure excellence with weapons; why isn't it Fighter?
Stone Dragon is brute force and toughness; why is it Monk and not Barbarian?
Tiger Claw is savage instinct and rage; why isn't it Barbarian?


(Also, there are pictures on pages 2, 5, and 8 that are almost entirely off the page)

[Levistej]

To answer your points:

Diamond Mind was chosen to be presented as a Barbarian subclass as it's mechanics fit in nicely and give players an opportunity to delve into the "Zen" barbarian trope which currently isn't possible without heavily refluffing any existing Barbarian archetype chassis. Monks already get a lot of similar abilities, so I decided to go a different route.

The same thing could be said for Iron Heart. It could have easily been a Fighter subclass, but taking into account that every Fighter is a weapon master of sorts I wanted to create a barbarian that combines both raw power and extensive weapon training.

Ditto for Stone Dragon :D. Its a matter of providing different classes access to a play style they, adhering to core mechanics, aren't really capable of. What's the point of making a more durable and heavy hitting Barbarian? I'm a firm believer that good homebrew should not only be balanced but also provide different options to already established class mechanics.

Tiger Claw I envisioned as a hunter, a stalker and savage executor of foes. It could surely function as a Barbarian, but I like the Ranger chassis far more for this concept. And again, why make the already primal Barbarian even more savage when you can let the Ranger play with the "feral hunter" trope and get away with it?

All these subclasses could have easily been tied to any melee class found in 5e. It may be a matter of opinion, but I'd really like to think that giving players the opportunity to play a class differently than it is enabled by core is of more value than tacking on more of the same.


As for the pictures and their positions on the page, I don't know why you're experiencing this problem, everything looks fine from my perspective. Which browser are you using? GMbinder tends to dislike anything other than Chrome.