PDA

View Full Version : The Tome of Battle-ization of 4th Ed



Person_Man
2007-11-14, 11:20 AM
Cross posted (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=14330694#post14330694) on the 4th ed rules forum. If you have a gripe that you want WotC to hear, and not just the OotS community, I suggest you take it there.

I've been playing D&D since 1st edition, and I believe that the Tome of Battle is a great 3.5 supplement, for some players and some DMs for certain types of campaigns. In fact, I rank it among the top 10 D&D books of all times. It's a literal toy box of ideas and abilities. Bravo.

But as a DM, I've noticed that new and/or casual players have a hard time with it. They enjoy roleplaying. They enjoying rolling dice to hit imaginary enemies. But they hate bookkeeping. So they play a non-optimized Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, or something else with a few interesting but easy to keep track of abilities - and they have a great time.

In addition, some of the older players like myself (I'm 29) don't want every campaign to have a cinematic/anime feel to it, which the ToB clearly has.

I try to do a good job of keeping up on all the forums - WotC, the staff blogs, EN World, OotS, etc. And it seems to me that all of the 4th ed classes and rules will resemble the Tome of Battle. Each player will have a variety of special abilities - at will, per encounter, per day. The classes that we know about have "killed" other cool classes from the supplements and taken their abilities. And maybe there will be all sorts of Talent trees and feats and choices. This is a great idea for game balance, and I think it will be a good idea for the game in general.

But I'm worried that there will be no "easy" class for newer players. Specifically, I'm worried that literally every player will have to have a stack of Maneuver and Stance and Whatever Cards and/or spell lists in order to keep track of everything their PC can do. Or that I'll have to only DM low level campaigns, in order to keep them to a minimum.

And I'm even more worried that even the most mundane of Fighters will have a wild list of crazy Ang Lee like abilities, limiting my ability as a DM to set the style and theme of my homebrew campaign world, and limiting a player's ability to just play a normal soldier, or thief, or whatever.

So my question for the boards is this: Should every class in core 4th ed resemble a Tome of Battle class? Can't there be some that are really easy to play, and some that are more advanced? Shouldn't some of the classes be "normal" - for lack of a better word. And can this be done in such a way that maintains a rough power balance between the classes?

Again, I'd like to re-iterate that I've been playing D&D since age 8, and I will play 4th ed. These criticisms come from a place of love, because I want 4th ed to be the best game possible. I do not think that WotC is the devil, or that they have somehow brought about the apocalypse by changing my hobby. Thanks.

Behold_the_Void
2007-11-14, 11:23 AM
As I understand 4th Edition in general is streamlining the rules and making things a lot easier to play, so while there may be more ability options for people, I don't think that it'll require too much bookkeeping. I'm betting they'll still try to make core classes accessible. If anything, I expect less bookkeeping from actual caster classes.

Indon
2007-11-14, 11:49 AM
I'm mostly concerned about the diversity factor.

On many relevant threads, I've posited that balance and diversity are closely - and inversely - linked to each other, and it may well be that 4'th edition's emphasis on balance will lead to its' loss in other fields.

But I don't actually care enough to want to see the prospective game changed; I can just play a different system for a different flavor if the problem arises.

Aquaseafoam
2007-11-14, 11:49 AM
From what I've heard so far of 4th edition maneuvers, they're less Anime and more based off of the fighting styles of Fencers and Knightly Orders. I'm a little annoyed that we don't have too much information on the 4th Ed maneuver system though.

Matthew
2007-11-14, 11:53 AM
I think that these will be simplified Tome of Battle Classes. However, it's fairly clear to me that D&D 4e isn't going to go 'rules light' anytime soon. The business plan appears to be 'create a simple baseline, expand upon that baseline with supplements'. I don't think they're going to want to alienate any significant segment of the market, so I doubt that the classes will be overly complex.

Frosty
2007-11-14, 11:58 AM
I can only think of a few "anime" moves off the top of my head. And thoser are all in Desert Wind.

ToB to me provides very much the tough, strong, I smash things fighting style without the suckitude that is Fighter20.

Fixer
2007-11-14, 12:05 PM
I am still waiting for an opportunity to play a ToB character. I have researched one, the warblade, rather extensively and will say that designing such a character was harder than any other character I have ever designed with the retraining and prerequisite rules and such. (I tend to plan my characters to level 20 although not one has ever made it past 12 because of campaign death.)

I am going to expect that the 4th Ed Fighters will have much simpler abilities that those listed in the ToB. Actually, that is not fair. The martial maneuvers in the ToB are really REALLY simple compared to most spells or many monster abilities. The only thing simpler than most ToB maneuvers are feats, and even then that isn't always true.

I do not forsee new players having a harder time with the new fighters. My son, age 8, has played both a warlock and a fighter and he seemed to enjoy both (he actually saved the party twice by sheer dumb luck). If the rules are any less complicated than the grapple rules (which my son seems to love) or warlock invocations (which is my son's other love) then I do not expect there will be much problems.

(Yes, my son actually likes the grapple rules. To him it seems very straightforward compared to hitting things.)

Dausuul
2007-11-14, 12:26 PM
While I love the ToB classes, I do think the ToB suffers to a great extent from 1) being an experiment in new mechanics, and 2) having to be shoehorned into the existing 3.5E system. Some of the mechanics are crude fixes to compensate for the lack of support in the core rules (e.g., initiator level for multi-classers). Other mechanics are simply poorly thought out (e.g., crusader recovery mechanism).

I suspect both problems will be addressed at least to some extent in 4E.

Darrin
2007-11-14, 01:27 PM
By integrating ToB-style abilities into 4E, I see WotC as chasing after a particular target demographic: more hardcore players who enjoy optimization and aren't afraid of complexity.

Part of the design philosophy that went into 3E was the concept of "mastery", that a dedicated player could exhaustingly pore through the rulebooks and finagle out nuggets of synergy that will allow him/her to powergame more effectively. This was built into 3E, although there was also a lot of emphasis on simplifying and streamlining the game for more casual players. The structure of the game supports both styles of play, but you occasionally run into conflict when you have different players favoring one style over another in the same group.

From what I've seen so far, I think 4E is furthering this concept of "mastery", although at this point I'm not sure if they are abandoning or neglecting the "simplify" goal. I think WotC is focusing on the more hardcore gamers because they are the ones who buy multiple $30 hardback supplements, who are more likely to pay monthly fees for online support, and are much more likely to appreciate an increase in "crunchiness" as well as not be bothered by increased complexity.

Casual gamers, by contrast, may only spend $30 to $90 for a few core rulebooks, but for the most part don't buy hardback supplements and wouldn't have much interest in subscription fees. WotC may not even get that much money out of them, if the typical casual gamer just borrows the books or relies on something like the SRD. And given some of the previous attempts to simplify the rules and market specifically to more casual gamers generally leads to mixed results or outright disasters ("Basic" D&D, all the various "Introductory" box sets), WotC may have just decided they're a demographic not worth pursuing.

However, the majority of PHB sales (which due to the Piano Book Problem tends to outsell any other sourcebook by at least 10-to-1) are going to come from casual or impulse buys. I'd have to see some marketing figures to see if chasing the hardcore demographic is worth abandoning the casual players... it may be that the long-term viability of an RPG may depend more on the long tail of the splatbooks more than the thick head of the core rulebooks. As consumers as a whole move away from print towards online media/entertainment distribution, it may be that the days of relying on your print runs of the core rulebooks as a cash cow are over.

I doubt WotC will abandon casual players entirely. We may see something like a "D20 Lite" or a simplified "D20 Core" without any specific genre/setting. Or yet another "Introductory" box set designed specifically for Big Box Store distribution. If we don't see it immediately, then you'll probably see something similar kitbashed and posted online within a few days, or handed off to a smaller publisher like Green Ronin or Mongoose.

Maroon
2007-11-14, 01:50 PM
Of course they shouldn't resemble ToB classes. They should be like Incarnum classes instead!

Somebloke
2007-11-14, 02:32 PM
Of course they shouldn't resemble ToB classes. They should be like Incarnum classes instead!
*slap*....

KIDS
2007-11-14, 02:42 PM
This thread deserves like four, or maybe six LOLcats already. Too complicated... errrr... seriously? While I appreciate the "keep it easy" argument, it doesn't make much sense considering the fact that 4th edition bristles with "we're making it simple" advertisments. However, if you want to give a player an easy class with little or no learning involved, I am quite sure that Warrior will still be in.

Indon
2007-11-14, 03:00 PM
Of course they shouldn't resemble ToB classes. They should be like Incarnum classes instead!

Incarnum is awesome, and the entirety of 4'th edition should be exclusively based on it.

KIDS; 3'rd edition came out with the tagline of "It's balanced this time!"

...yeah.

....
2007-11-14, 03:07 PM
I really don't care much about 'balance'.

When I started playing D&D, it was assumed that high level wizards would eat high level fighters for breakfast. I mean, come on, playing a fighter is cool and stuff... but when you boil it down, one guy alters reality with his words and the other swings a sharp peice of metal.

I don't see what all the fuss is about when it comes to 'class balance'. In a computer game, sure, it matters, but when it comes to Pen and Paper RPGs, I'm very much a fan of less-is-more. Like the Storytelling system.

But I've never been a min/maxer, so maybe I just don't get it.

Person_Man
2007-11-14, 03:12 PM
By integrating ToB-style abilities into 4E, I see WotC as chasing after a particular target demographic: more hardcore players who enjoy optimization and aren't afraid of complexity.

I think you may be right, and I think that most of your analysis is spot on.

But if they cut themselves off from new and inexperienced gamers, their audience will shrink in the long term, even if it becomes more intense and gives them more cash in the short term. And its particularly troublesome that this would happen to D&D, which has historically been the front door into roleplaying games for most kids.


However, the majority of PHB sales (which due to the Piano Book Problem tends to outsell any other sourcebook by at least 10-to-1) are going to come from casual or impulse buys.

OK, I understand your point, but not the reference. Are you saying that the piano industry makes all of their money from the initial sale of the piano, and not from any piano instruction manuals or sheet music?


I doubt WotC will abandon casual players entirely. We may see something like a "D20 Lite" or a simplified "D20 Core" without any specific genre/setting. Or yet another "Introductory" box set designed specifically for Big Box Store distribution. If we don't see it immediately, then you'll probably see something similar kitbashed and posted online within a few days, or handed off to a smaller publisher like Green Ronin or Mongoose.

I seriously wouldn't rule out D&D coming full circle and going back to a box set and AD&D. Though it would be hilarious if they did so.

Somebloke
2007-11-14, 03:18 PM
Incarnum is awesome, and the entirety of 4'th edition should be exclusively based on it.

KIDS; 3'rd edition came out with the tagline of "It's balanced this time!"

...yeah.

Compared to 2nd? Absolutely.

I will see about 4th, but personally I believe that TOB/scoundrel (for the rogue) style maneouvers would work- so long as it's handled correctly.

Matthew
2007-11-14, 03:38 PM
Compared to 2nd? Absolutely.

*Head desk*

The one word you shouldn't bandy about willy nilly is 'absolutely'... with the exception of maybe "absolutely, in my opinion".

I can feel Dol what's his name's 2e senses tingling.

Artanis
2007-11-14, 03:54 PM
I'm going to take a "wait and see" approach. While it's a good idea to voice your concerns and insure that WotC is aware of them lest they become reality, I think there's still plenty of room for optimism. Frankly, we don't really know the specifics, and until we do, we can't say for certain that things will be too complex for a beginner (nor, for that matter, can we say for certain that things won't).

Just my 2cp





I really don't care much about 'balance'.

When I started playing D&D, it was assumed that high level wizards would eat high level fighters for breakfast. I mean, come on, playing a fighter is cool and stuff... but when you boil it down, one guy alters reality with his words and the other swings a sharp peice of metal.

I don't see what all the fuss is about when it comes to 'class balance'. In a computer game, sure, it matters, but when it comes to Pen and Paper RPGs, I'm very much a fan of less-is-more. Like the Storytelling system.

But I've never been a min/maxer, so maybe I just don't get it.
Some imbalance is a given, and completely tolerable, especially in a cooperative game like DnD. If Sparky the Wizard is a bit more useful than Smashy the Fighter, they're still having fun because hey, Smashy can still run around hitting stuff, right?

The trouble starts when one class is so much weaker than another that it can become useless, and it becomes a major problem when the stronger class can make the weaker one obsolete virtually by accident. If "not being a godd*** moron" is all it takes for Sparky to make Smashy totally and utterly useless, then you're virtually guaranteed to wind up with Smashy's player not having fun because he can't contribute.

Matthew
2007-11-14, 04:01 PM
I'm going to take a "wait and see" approach. While it's a good idea to voice your concerns and insure that WotC is aware of them lest they become reality, I think there's still plenty of room for optimism. Frankly, we don't really know the specifics, and until we do, we can't say for certain that things will be too complex for a beginner (nor, for that matter, can we say for certain that things won't).

Yep, very sensible. Still, it kind of shuts down the speculation to say so.

Jasdoif
2007-11-14, 04:01 PM
*Head desk*That sounds painful.


Anyway, what I hope is going to happen is that manuevers/spells/tricks/etc. are actually a unified mechanic, with "prepared" caps determined by character level instead of class level. And only the set you can choose from is really determined by class levels. So, say, a Fighter 10 and a Fighter 5/Wizard 5 have the exact same number of such abilities "prepared" at one time; the Fighter 10 has a wider range of martial abilities, but the Fighter 5 /Wizard 5 can pick some arcane abilities as well.

I think part of the problem is that learning a new set of mechanics between spellcasting, psionics, manuevers, etc. is offputting to some. If every class used the same underlying system for these, it might ease the learning curve.

Matthew
2007-11-14, 04:07 PM
That sounds painful.

It was, but there's plenty of potential for my headache to get worse.


Anyway, what I hope is going to happen is that manuevers/spells/tricks/etc. are actually a unified mechanic, with "prepared" caps determined by character level instead of class level. And only the set you can choose from is really determined by class levels. So, say, a Fighter 10 and a Fighter 5/Wizard 5 have the exact same number of such abilities "prepared" at one time; the Fighter 10 has a wider range of martial abilities, but the Fighter 5 /Wizard 5 can pick some arcane abilities as well.

Sounds good. I have liked a lot of what I have heard about 4e and I have disliked a lot, but character power being more tightly tied to level is high on my list of wants.


I think part of the problem is that learning a new set of mechanics between spellcasting, psionics, manuevers, etc. is offputting to some. If every class used the same underlying system for these, it might ease the learning curve.
No doubt.

Theli
2007-11-14, 04:25 PM
I'm also taking a wait and see stance.

Honestly, there's really nothing special about 3.5. It has surpassed the same exact limit of "broke enough" as all previous DnD games have reached. But yet, you can still play in the system and have a little fun. (Well, at least a good many of us.) There's no point in comparing versions, except for maybe nostalgia.

All these issues of learning curve, class balance, diversity... Yeah, they're valid. Especially if you have a fondness for DnD. But perhaps it might just be time to let the poor beast die if it gets too much to deal with.

But I have a decent level of confidence in WotC to at least get a decent learning curve and, perhaps, some diversity. (If not, then that's what homebrews are for.) And a system swipe can only be good for class balance, I feel.

The only real issue in my mind is the extra push towards grids and figurines. 3.5 had a lot of that, yeah. But it was feasible to deal with. But now you have a great many more positional powers, powers that give you some squares of movement, powers that require squares of movement, etc, etc.

I really think that it might become a problem to the great many groups out there that just don't give a damn about the grid. And I'm not about to get into DnD Miniatures myself any time soon. So if push really does come to shove, I'm just gonna get myself a nice big, and plain, grid map. And a bunch of colored rocks, tokens, or WHATEVER to get by.

Quietus
2007-11-14, 04:30 PM
I do not forsee new players having a harder time with the new fighters. My son, age 8, has played both a warlock and a fighter and he seemed to enjoy both (he actually saved the party twice by sheer dumb luck). If the rules are any less complicated than the grapple rules (which my son seems to love) or warlock invocations (which is my son's other love) then I do not expect there will be much problems.

(Yes, my son actually likes the grapple rules. To him it seems very straightforward compared to hitting things.)

So you're saying that an 8 year old can fully grasp the "overcomplicated, confusing grapple system" that everyone seems to love to bash on? That it ISN'T as hard as the guy with the bad french accent made it sound?

Go figure.

Darrin
2007-11-14, 04:33 PM
OK, I understand your point, but not the reference. Are you saying that the piano industry makes all of their money from the initial sale of the piano, and not from any piano instruction manuals or sheet music?


You've almost got it, except publishers of piano music don't sell pianos.

When a publisher puts out a series of books to teach people how to play piano, "Beginning Piano 1" is going to be your best-seller. After that, no matter what you do or how you market it, "Intermediate Piano 2" will sell, at best, 1/10th the number of copies as the Beginning book, simply because most customers stop taking piano lessons or stop buying piano books after the first one. "Expert Piano 3" will likewise sell at best only 1/10th what the second book did. And so on... similar to the law of diminishing returns.

RPG book sales follow a similar pattern. Your core rulebook is going to be your top seller. Every sourcebook after that is going to have lower sales.

D&D has actually been through several different marketing strategies over the years. The 1st edition market model focused almost exclusively on selling everything to DMs, because at the time you had a small group of core diehard fans that could be counted on to buy every book, and market saturation/competition hadn't reached the point where buying everything was no longer economically feasible for hobby enthusiasts. The Achilles heal of this strategy is that no matter how much you dress them up, adventure modules sell extremely poorly. Somewhat later in the 1st edition life cycle, TSR eventually discovered that hardbacks sold better, so you see the newer sourcebook material moved out of the modules and into things like the Wilderness Survival Guide, Deities & Demigods, and Unearthed Arcana.

2nd Edition started out with the hardbacks, but for some reason there was an idea that sourcebook material belonged in box sets... I guess at the time it was an easy way to bundle maps, counters, and other non-book materials together, and the older fans were more than happy to pay more for a box full of cool stuff. Box sets aren't so attractive to casual and impulse buys, however, and TSR was trying to push it's way into more mainstream bookstores like Waldenbooks. Then they stumbled into the idea of the splatbook and selling source material to players rather than just to the DMs, and there was a big shift towards the 96-page softcover sourcebook.

3rd Edition started out with the three core hardbacks and the 96-page softcover model, but once the Psionics Handbook came out in hardback, pretty much everything since then has been "all hardcover, all the time". What was once a 96-page softcover was fluffed out to a $30 hardcover with 128 or 192 pages. And that's been the market model for 3.5 for several years now.

4th Edition appears to be using the same hardcover strategy, but it looks like they want to move to a subscription model. I can see some advantages and disadvantages to this, but for the most part it looks like the RPG industry as a whole is slumphing toward an online distribution model. The push towards online may be that WotC is encountering some frustration from "hardcover saturation"... if casual sales are really driving your long-term business by providing new customers, how many hardbacks can you reasonably expect a new player to buy? Assuming the casual gamer turns into a dedicated gamer, how many hardcovers can he be expected to buy to "remain competitive", particularly at a $30 or $40 price point?

With video games and other mass-market media essentially overlapping the same kind of entertainment experience you want to sell, moving your business online and trying to integrate them with the mass-market entertainment you're trying to compete with is probably the best way to keep the RPG industry healthy.



I seriously wouldn't rule out D&D coming full circle and going back to a box set and AD&D. Though it would be hilarious if they did so.

Box sets traditionally don't sell very well, but they inspire so much nostalgia nowadays that you can usually count on a small print run being well-received by older fans.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-14, 04:34 PM
Tome of Battle is so much simpler than trying to play a good Fighter (You MUST plan ahead and learn your feat trees and consider every possible option) or any Wizard (the most bookkeeping outside of the Artificer)... I don't see why you're complaining so much about Tome of Battle. Spellcasting was clearly far more complex and required far more bookkeeping than your 4 maneuvers that you could choose from spontaneously.

Mojo_Rat
2007-11-14, 05:21 PM
To be honest. If it is simply using the mechanics of tob It wont be that bad. Since The mechanics used for the melee types wil be desigend to work within the core system.

Most of my issues with ToB outside of the flavour stuff came in that it was tryig to shoehorn a new combat system that made fundimental changes to how combat works (Standard action being used o do your big damage suff as oposed to your Full attack in the core system)

Long as the new game is designed With all the melee types working on the same standard it will be Fine. Chances Are Alot of the 'anime' flavour will disappear as well as theres unlikely to be references to Ki and other things in the 4rth edition fighter entry.

Person_Man
2007-11-14, 05:23 PM
Tome of Battle is so much simpler than trying to play a good Fighter (You MUST plan ahead and learn your feat trees and consider every possible option) or any Wizard (the most bookkeeping outside of the Artificer)... I don't see why you're complaining so much about Tome of Battle. Spellcasting was clearly far more complex and required far more bookkeeping than your 4 maneuvers that you could choose from spontaneously.

I'm not complaining about Tome of Battle. I love the Tome of Battle. I just hope that all of the 4th ed core classes don't reflect it. I'm also not complaining about spellcasting. New players rarely play casters. And I'm not talking about optimization. Most new players aren't trying to play an optimized PC. They don't visit the forums. They don't plan ahead. They're just trying to play. And for them, its easy to sit down with a DM, spend an hour coming up with a PC, and then sit down, roleplay, and roll some dice once in a while. All they really have to do is learn how to read a character sheet, and maybe learn how to calculate Power Attack. Other then that, they can just ask their DM to explain things as they go.

My hope is that most of the core classes will reflect ToB, but that that a few (maybe the Fighter and the Rogue) will be more strait forward. Instead of having a huge range of different abilities, just have a couple of useful and easily understood abilities scale well with levels, with the option of going into more complex PrC at higher levels. And I think that the two styles of classes can co-exist without there being a huge power differential, if its done properly.

Serenity
2007-11-14, 06:16 PM
What's so complicated about ToB characters? Maybe at higher levels, sure, but by then, the players should be learning how to work the various abilities. At first level, you've got a handful of maneuvers to choose from, any one of which can do nice things for your character. And selecting maneuvers doesn't require the intense forethought an effective fighter build or Wizard spell selection does. Any combination creates a character who is reasonably effective in a number of situations.

horseboy
2007-11-14, 06:39 PM
I'm also taking a wait and see stance.But...but.. where's the fun in that? :smalleek:



The only real issue in my mind is the extra push towards grids and figurines. 3.5 had a lot of that, yeah. But it was feasible to deal with. But now you have a great many more positional powers, powers that give you some squares of movement, powers that require squares of movement, etc, etc.

I really think that it might become a problem to the great many groups out there that just don't give a damn about the grid. And I'm not about to get into DnD Miniatures myself any time soon. So if push really does come to shove, I'm just gonna get myself a nice big, and plain, grid map. And a bunch of colored rocks, tokens, or WHATEVER to get by.
You'd think they learned better after Dragon Kings. You know, where they gave all the high level fighter abilities in their minature's system standard instead of in the in play system's standard.

clericwithnogod
2007-11-14, 07:13 PM
Box sets traditionally don't sell very well, but they inspire so much nostalgia nowadays that you can usually count on a small print run being well-received by older fans.

I've never understood why marketing people would let an introductory version of a game go into a box (edit: or any version of a game intended to appeal to casual gamers). If you are trying to get someone to try something new, I'd think it would be better to have it in an unsealed book with great cover and interior art.



My hope is that most of the core classes will reflect ToB, but that that a few (maybe the Fighter and the Rogue) will be more strait forward. Instead of having a huge range of different abilities, just have a couple of useful and easily understood abilities scale well with levels, with the option of going into more complex PrC at higher levels. And I think that the two styles of classes can co-exist without there being a huge power differential, if its done properly.

This would be flat out awful, particularly if they use the Fighter and Rogue. The biggest selling point of 4th edition for me is that Martial classes are supposed to have an interesting array of options and be balanced with the other classes. Make a book "Classes for Dummies (and the Disinterested)" rather than limiting the options available to core classes.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-14, 07:21 PM
You seem to have entirely missed the point of my response, Person_Man.


I'm not complaining about Tome of Battle. You're complaining that you think they're "too complicated" for newbies, when in fact such mechanics are simpler to pick up than what we've got now in most cases. As I said, and as you demonstrate in the rest of your response claiming that you weren't complaining about that. Heh.
I love the Tome of Battle. I just hope that all of the 4th ed core classes don't reflect it. I'm also not complaining about spellcasting. New players rarely play casters. And I'm not talking about optimization. Most new players aren't trying to play an optimized PC. They don't visit the forums. They don't plan ahead. They're just trying to play. Which is exactly why I just said Fighters are far worse starting classes. They're not trying to optimize, and they don't plan ahead, and thus they will find themselves utterly screwed, will regret their decisions since they can't modify their characters, and will stop having fun until their Fighter dies and they can make a new character. Fighters are bad newbie characters. Wizards are bad newbie characters. Tome of Battle, however, is pretty darned easy to teach, pick up, and play, without too much danger of sucking horribly when you're playing next to someone who has actually played the game at least once before. And screwing up a fighter's feats will make you suck horribly compared to someone who has played the game once before.


And for them, its easy to sit down with a DM, spend an hour coming up with a PC It doesn't take more than an hour for me to get someone to make a ToB character!
and then sit down, roleplay, and roll some dice once in a while. All they really have to do is learn how to read a character sheet, and maybe learn how to calculate Power Attack. Other then that, they can just ask their DM to explain things as they go. The Rogue works better for that. They just have to learn how to flank (takes 15 seconds to explain) or go first (similar amount of time) before they can leap right in. Then, they are incrementally introduced to the entire system, including skills and even the magic system through UMD, all at a comfortable pace. And of course, a Rogue will pretty much always be useful to a group, no matter what the hell you do to their feats. Because Skills are useful with no effort like that.

TimeWizard
2007-11-14, 07:36 PM
From what I remember, Warrior types will have manuevers akin to "back slash" and "quick thrust", which are something like the offspring of ToB manuvers and Fighter feats. Do I think it will be more complicated? yes and no. D&D is already very, very complicated- we're just used to it. I'm sure many of you we're lost trying to understand the advanced tactic of power attack and flanking, I know I was at first. Will it be a smidge harder to learn that knives give two attacks and spears ignore shield bonuses (or whatever)? possibly... but I beleive the experienced players will help out the rookies as they have done for the past 30 years.

See you in 4th ed!

Edit, @ Angel: I don't think Person_Man missed the point in his own thread.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-14, 07:55 PM
Edit, @ Angel: I don't think Person_Man missed the point in his own thread.

You misread me. Missed the point of my response, not his own thread.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-14, 08:02 PM
I'd have to agree with 4angel. A fighter SEEMS like easy to play...until the levee breaks and an alip destroys you utterly. Now, a rogue IS easy to play, and pretty balanced for the most part if you allow the ever useful Precision Strike from Dungeonscape. It's the kind of thing you can do as an intro class (like making a new fighter that lets you choose from 1 out of 4 picks for maneuevers every level), and you can also create a more advanced class, maybe even placing a label for the normal fighter to state it's meant to be a newbie class, and that, once you have some RL XP under your belt, it would be wise to switch to something else (for example, a class named weapon master that works like a warblade).

Igfig
2007-11-14, 08:19 PM
I think the main reason that ToB classes are considered complicated by some is the great number of choices that have to be made. First you have to choose your maneuvers, which can take a very long time if you want perfection (I have one swordsage character that I've spent a good twelve hours building). Then you have to choose which set of maneuvers to ready in each situation. Then you have to choose which maneuver to initiate each round. While they may not be as complicated as a wizard, the ToB classes are still a good deal more complex than fighters or barbarians, whose main choice is how hard to power attack each round.

The thing is, 4e classes won't have this massive and potentially paralyzing range of choices. Sure, you'll still have some choices, but there will be far fewer. My guess is that they'll be something like:

- Ultimate attack, 1/day
- Special attack A, 1/encounter
- Special attack B, 1/encounter
- Attack
- Attack with option (e.g. Combat Expertise)

See? That wasn't so bad. Choices, but not overwhelming ones. In addition, you'll probably buy each one individually, at a different level, which gives you plenty of time to get used to each one. You'll have the variety and power without the complexity.

And how do I know this, exactly? Well, first of all, I don't. That said, it's been said by WoTC that Star Wars RPG: Saga Edition can be considered a preview to 4e. This seems to be the design philosophy there: a smaller number of more useful abilities that are easier to use. Skills, Force powers, feats, saves, they're all cleaner, simpler, and easier to use. It's a lot of fun. If 4e is anything like SWRPG (and I am very sure that it will be), it should be great.

Orzel
2007-11-14, 10:16 PM
I don't think the Tobzation of E&D will make the game that much more difficult for new players than it is now. The hard classes like spell casters and shape shifters will be hard. But I don't see the /day,encounter powers being that much complex for the weapon and skill classes. I see see abilities similar to our existing feats and powers like bonuses to trip and such as the norms.

A fighter with a power that grants +4 to disarm anytime wants for a move action, 5 free trip attacks an encounter, and 1 MEGAHYPERDEATHPUNCH! a day doesn't sound too complex.

I think the part of ToB that they are borrowing is the "giving non casters an addtional resource" rather than "giving noncasters super powers."