Path of War [Pathfinder 3rd Party] vs Tome of Battle: thoughts?

[Fiery Diamond]

I just discovered Path of War (a third-party Pathfinder additional ruleset/classes), which is clearly intended to be the Pahfinder 1e version of Tome of Battle, even to the point of talking about "Initiator," "Stances," and "Maneuvers" "readied" and "known." It has more classes (which have more class features) and more disciplines than ToB.

I'm curious if anyone has looked at this or played with it and how people think it compares to Tome of Battle. An improvement? Worse? A step sideways? I'm trying to decide whether using it or just porting ToB is a better option.

[Gnaeus]

I just discovered Path of War (a third-party Pathfinder additional ruleset/classes), which is clearly intended to be the Pahfinder 1e version of Tome of Battle, even to the point of talking about "Initiator," "Stances," and "Maneuvers" "readied" and "known." It has more classes (which have more class features) and more disciplines than ToB.

I'm curious if anyone has looked at this or played with it and how people think it compares to Tome of Battle. An improvement? Worse? A step sideways? I'm trying to decide whether using it or just porting ToB is a better option.

My group loves it and plays with it all the time. It has a lot of fantastic material. Compared with ToB, it is stronger. and there is power creep inside it. Whether it is OP for you depends on your playstyle. There is nothing as broken as core casters using minionmancy, for example. But (for example) if you exclude planar binding, I would happily play a mystic next to a pretty optimized sorcerer. PoW has a fair selection of "I bypass normal defenses damage" and "I can nope your attack", and I would be more concerned about the ability of a core martial to do their job in PF without PoW stuff on their sheet than in 3.5 without ToB stuff on their sheet. My Rajah, for example (a combined Akashic/PoW class, like Incarnum/ToB) can pretty much outheal a cleric. All my allies heal 9hp/hit, and I heal a close target 9hp with every swift action maneuver, and I have what is essentially CMW (with a sanctuary rider) at will at level 8 while blocking enemy attacks and I can maintain that pace for as long as I want to, along with some nice all day buffs, and thats only part of my range. If you are at the opti-fu level where healing is meh, thats no big deal. If your group has in-combat healers, its a power up. The Zealot (PoW/psionic) is pretty similar, with a touch less healing and more damage prevention. Mystic (as I said above) is basically a blaster sorcerer with a high optimization floor. Its not hard to make a fear build that bypasses immunities. Or an AoE blasting build that bypasses immunities. I would not, for example, suggest running a team of PoW initiators through a printed PF Adventure Path without some significant power adjustments. But I wouldn't suggest running a team of optimized T1-2 casters either, so again, its about what you want out of your game.

[Ramza00]

PoW is fabulous, it is a great extension on 3.5 and PF ideas and mechanics.

If it has a flaw it is how Vanican works, and we try to balance Psionics and ToB off the idea of Vanican (I am learning to love Spheres even if Psionics is my first love and Vanican and ToB were fabulous expansions of said love.)

[Rynjin]

Path of War's great, just remember its balance point skews closer to like a 6-caster (hell, some Maneuvers have similar raw power to 9th level spells) than a full martial when you're planning encounters around them.

[Fiery Diamond]

Thanks for the replies! What I'm hearing is that it's a probably a good match for me, better than ToB (and definitely better than the default martials). Once again, thanks for the feedback!

[Ramza00]

Note some of the Path of War stuff from not Dreamscarred Press is overturned (fancy way of saying not balanced but wharf is balanced is contestable)

Arguably Rajah and Radiant Dawn (the healing and weird one) is too strong, but I will laugh at that strength for I like it and I find it fun-ny.

[Thunder999]

Path of War's counters can be a bit of an issue.
There's just a lot more immediate action "Nope, that doesn't happen" than anything 1pp, which really affects how you have to build encounters (and if enemies have them, characters). It's entirely possible to have a character that mostly fights with normal full attacks, but has half a dozen "I negate that"s per fight, potentially useably on allies with the right class.

[quetzalcoatl5]

I love all of the maneuver systems from Path of War. Most of the classes are fine but for me the real standouts are the archetypes and warpaths (which are just archetypes that can apply to more than one class). The Polymath Investigator and the Warpath Warpriest/Inquisitor are both excellent multifaceted foundations for characters and the Myrmidon is my favorite fighter archetype, bar none!

My group pretty much use path for our entire time using Pathfinder 1e and my 3m5 games all rolled Tome of Battle in once it was available, so I have good experience with both.

You definitely can't go wrong by introducing the stuff from the first Path of War book and the only caution I would give about later installments is just making sure it fits your tables level of optimization. Also, just make sure you are monitoring action economy since it leans on a lot of things that Pathfinder 1e just isn't as clear about as it could be, owing to its 3.5 heritage.

[Ramza00]

Path of War's counters can be a bit of an issue. :smalltongue:
There's just a lot more immediate action "Nope, that doesn't happen" than anything 1pp, which really affects how you have to build encounters (and if enemies have them, characters). It's entirely possible to have a character that mostly fights with normal full attacks, but has half a dozen "I negate that"s per fight, potentially useably on allies with the right class.

Just give monsters the Crusader Shield Akashic Veil (Akashic is MoI by Dreamscarred, warning the non Dreamscarred Akashic can get insane, and Akashic is a greater ranger of floor and ceiling than PoW from the same company Dreamscarred)

Immediate Action I block :smalltongue: (yes this is a game of tag)

[DammitVictor]

I'm curious if anyone has looked at this or played with it and how people think it compares to Tome of Battle. An improvement? Worse? A step sideways? I'm trying to decide whether using it or just porting ToB is a better option.

It appears I have less play experience than other responders, so taking this with some amount of salt might be in order.

It feels more complete and more polished to me. I love that it's tightly integrated with their psionics and veilweaving systems. I love that it includes martial initiation archetypes for the core classes, instead of just replacing them with better classes. I love that there are more martial initiator classes between the two supplements and more disciplines, and the disciplines feel more varied and more thematic and more integrated into everything else that's going on with the core rules and their other supplements.

Now, this is a complaint that I have with the majority of PF1 classes, especially third-party PF1 classes, so again: salt. But I don't love how all of the classes-- just the classes-- feel completely overegged. Too many class abilities on classes that are already basically casters, too many insignificant and highly situational bonuses, too many insanely fiddly mechanics with too many moving parts. The classes are all very cool and flavorful, so I hate advising you to skip them in favor of just giving martial powers to martial classes, but that's exactly what I'm obligated to do.

Despite the fact several people have already beaten me to the punch with Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords, I think porting Path of War to the 5e rules is a better use of my time.

[Zanos]

Path of War is generally better presented and consistently edited than ToB; a benefit of basically being a clone that can still be revised by a publisher that supports it. I personally dislike it because so many of the maneuvers in PoW are just numbers bloat. While there was a little if that in ToB, PoW really kicked it up to 11 with the amount of stacking bonuses you can pile up.

[Rynjin]

Path of War is generally better presented and consistently edited than ToB; a benefit of basically being a clone that can still be revised by a publisher that supports it. I personally dislike it because so many of the maneuvers in PoW are just numbers bloat. While there was a little if that in ToB, PoW really kicked it up to 11 with the amount of stacking bonuses you can pile up.

This is more of an issue with the first wave of PoW support. If the OP wants to tone down numbers bloat while still leaving access to some high interesting and powerful disciplines, I'd suggest banning several of the original Path of War ones, namely Broken Blade (ESPECIALLY), Primal Fury, Solar Wind, and Thrashing Dragon. They are primarily all just boring damage dealing Disciplines.

Later Disciplines still include quite good damage dealing options, but usually tone down the numbers (eg. Broken Blade's "add +8d6 damage to all of your attacks, ignore all Damage Reduction, etc.") in favor of adding a cool rider effect (like a Stun) or requiring some condition to activate (eg. Mithral Current's iaijutsu theme and usually requiring you to debuff your enemy with a weakness to silver before you can get maximumer damage).

[Gnaeus]

Note some of the Path of War stuff from not Dreamscarred Press is overturned (fancy way of saying not balanced but wharf is balanced is contestable)

Arguably Rajah and Radiant Dawn (the healing and weird one) is too strong, but I will laugh at that strength for I like it and I find it fun-ny.

I really think it depends a lot on playstyle and opti-fu. I love my Rajah 8, don't get me wrong. I'm certain I can outheal a cleric over an adventuring day, and my combat healing is more action efficient. But I wouldn't say I'm better than a cleric 8, who could easily have 20+ hd of bruisers and a lesser planar ally while he does his thing. And remember that a lot of people on forum would tell you that combat healing is the height of inefficiency and it's better to put enemies on the floor. The healbot cleric I would compare him to would be generally derided as a poor use of a cleric compared with a more offensive selection of spells and domains.and the higher level we go, the better the T1 compares. In any event, I don't think it is unfair to say that the ways in which raja outperforms cleric are similar to the ways mystic outperforms blaster sorcerer. Better at a suboptimal strategy.

[Zanos]

Most comments about combat healing being underwhelming are in the context of 3.5 clerics, who don't have channel energy and the ludicrous amount of support pathfinder added to buff that feature into the sky.

[Ramza00]

I really think it depends a lot on playstyle and opti-fu. I love my Rajah 8, don't get me wrong. I'm certain I can outheal a cleric over an adventuring day, and my combat healing is more action efficient. But I wouldn't say I'm better than a cleric 8, who could easily have 20+ hd of bruisers and a lesser planar ally while he does his thing. And remember that a lot of people on forum would tell you that combat healing is the height of inefficiency and it's better to put enemies on the floor. The healbot cleric I would compare him to would be generally derided as a poor use of a cleric compared with a more offensive selection of spells and domains.and the higher level we go, the better the T1 compares. In any event, I don't think it is unfair to say that the ways in which raja outperforms cleric are similar to the ways mystic outperforms blaster sorcerer. Better at a suboptimal strategy.

Okay would you allow a Rajah 1/X 4/Battle Templar 10 as a point of comparison
with the Rajah 1 being a full IL due to Practiced Initiator but several veils behind a full Rajah or 2 spell casting levels behind a full Divine X, and also being 2 feats and 1 trait of “taxes” ? In return the Divine X whether Cleric or Oracle gains a fantastic I SMASH button.

I ask this idea trade, since I meant the earlier post comment (post #6) that Radiant Dawn and Rajah is overtuned compared to other Dreamscarred Press PoW and not compared to clerics. You brought up clerics in response (in your Defense I was unclear for I was going for short) and thus a divine PoW gish is my counter response. 🙂

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What I meant but did not explain

The ability to Sunstroke you or your allied next maneuver strike and impact not 1 enemy but many is obscene. This is like that shatter mirror that lets you do 2 strikes a round but on steroids.
Their is another obscenity with Crown of the Moon Queen which allows any of your allies you have veils on to do 1 counter as a free action, starting at HD 09 obviously you are using this with temporal body adjustment

What does Rajah give up for its power? (not going to count all the strong but not obscene things due to length) well 1 hit point per hd compared to a d8 and 3/4 bab user, and also you are 3/4 bab aka +6 vs +4 at HD 8. Not really major trade offs if you think the chassis is already strong. Aka toughness, weapon focus x2 which can be replicated cheaper via magic items than weak feats.

But I am not really complaining that much for I adore Rajah and I adore Zealot (another overtune PoW) just pointing out places of friction the DM may think is too much.

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Carry on I do really like PoW :smallsmile:


But I wouldn't say I'm better than a cleric 8, who could easily have 20+ hd of bruisers and a lesser planar ally while he does his thing.

I do really hate comparisons that use planar ally, binding, simulacrum etc. I am fine with summon monster comparisons though.

[Eurus]

ToB did some interesting things with martial power level. A non initiator martial can crank up damage very high depending on build, but a lot of the methods for doing that don't work together easily with ToB's standard action strikes. If you build a ToB character "normally", your damage will be perfectly fine but generally lower than a well built full attacker. On the other hand, ToB characters are more mobile by default and get some tricks that pure martials would normally have to pay a lot of money for.

PoW cranked up both the damage and non-damage aspects. I would describe it as having a really high power floor. A spellcaster that's built and played to take advantage of the most powerful options available is going to exceed an initiator, but a PoW character out of the box is likely to have little trouble thrashing appropriately leveled encounters and will probably outshine a significant percentage of other classes. An optimized PoW character can pump out enough damage to make a lot of combat downright trivial, unless the DM really pumps the numbers up. And depending on build, they can spam disabling conditions at will, or throw around a lot of healing every turn, or be extremely difficult to even attack while still doing that damage.

If your table is already pretty high powered and the DM is used to ramping up and customizing encounters to actually be a challenge, that may not be a problem. Power level is fundamentally a flexible thing. But it's definitely something to keep in mind, and having a PoW character at the table may start an arms race if you're not careful.

[Aotrs Commander]

Having just gone through an extensive project to upgrade Tome of Battle to PF1 standard using Path of War as the baseline... There was less in it than I thought, in terms of power level, really.

I have only just started using the upgrade in practise (with said crusader), so I have not used Path of War in anger (or are likely to, given I didn't import much of it, but having done the job, AND havign gotten all the cards re-printed - with some player assistance - and determined there is sufficient physical space for more, I intend as Some Point Down the Line (not this pass, i want to genuniely get back to quest writing some time this YEAR) bulk out the ToB schools and maybe add some of the PoW ones, too; so far all I did was drop the old wotC-board Falling Star school for Tempest Gale).

However, having looked at both sets of rules in direct comparison, I feel I can at least offer the following observations.

1) Path of War doesn't have ToB's serious problems with lack of errata. (In particular the pants-on-head stance progression I had to fix myself...)

2) The bottom level stances scale in PoW.

3) The 9th level maneouvres don't need serious upgrading like a fair few of ToB's did. (+100 damage in one attack was kinda laughably bad at 17th level compared to a full attack...) Otherwise, I didn't actually need to do nearly as much as I feared I would, just touch up a few of ToB's weaker maneouvres (I think the biggest change was moving the ToB strike that, Dazes? I think, from level 6 down to about level 2, where the PoW equivalent was, because even internally to ToB, that was laughable, since it was higher level than the one which Stunned in the same school as I recall off the top of my head.

4) There are more maneouvres in each school/disipline.

5) PoW classes have DCs based on a mental key ability score; ToD was a maneouvre specific ability score. I, after consideration, moved to the PoW system, except explictly for Stone Dragon, which I made a spcial ability to sue Str (like all of its maneouvrs already did.)

6) PoW classes seems to have slightly less easy ways to refresh their maneouvres.

7) The increase in the number of maneouvres granted makes the Mystic et al (who have the Crusader semi-random mechanic) basically pointless, because it's stll on the 3-round cycle. The 3-round cycle only worked for base Crusader because it had so few maneouvres readied that 3 was a big number. Not having access to 3/5 to 3/7 (where the choice of starting 2 through 4 is random) made the random a big difference. Not having accress to 3/5 to 3/12 (where the choice of starting 2 through 9 is selected)... Basically stops mattering past level 3, since in general, unless you have very long combats as a matter of course, you're most likely only dealing with one cycle and you will only not be having access to your least poweful maneouvres.

Taken in concert with my Crusader player saying that it was difficult to pick his cards randomly because they are physically different, I choose to straight-up drop the random element entirely, and just have the character pick three maneouvres (one a round) from is not-readied maneouvres and drop the whole "granted verses readied" concept entirely. Anything that reduces unecessary RNG in favour of decision making is a good thing anyway, because I Hate RNGTM.

8) I did not not personally feel any of the PoW classes themselves were worth the effort of porting. As a sort of side agreement to what DammitVictor said, I think that a lot of Dreamscarred's classes seem to be basically way to mechanic-flavour specific (except notably for their psionic classes) and not... Basically, good LEGO blocks. They are designed to do be, like, one thing. The Path of War classes are more complicated, and one the explict points in favour of ToB classes was they WERE simpler than 9-level casters, and, even more than psionics, a good choice for people who wenre't into searching through so many spells.

[Fiery Diamond]

What are your (and others') thoughts on PoW power level and options regarding what's available specifically on d20pfsrd versus everything? There were classes mentioned by others that aren't on there, but what's on there is more than just the first book, so I don't really know what's missing from there and how much that changes things, since all I have access to Pathfinder-wise is d20pfsrd.

[Aotrs Commander]

What are your (and others') thoughts on PoW power level and options regarding what's available specifically on d20pfsrd versus everything? There were classes mentioned by others that aren't on there, but what's on there is more than just the first book, so I don't really know what's missing from there and how much that changes things, since all I have access to Pathfinder-wise is d20pfsrd.

There is more on Library of Metzofitz (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Path_of_War_Classes), which I what ended up looking at myself. If there's Even More Than That, then I can't comment.

[Luckmann]

Having just gone through an extensive project to upgrade Tome of Battle to PF1 standard using Path of War as the baseline...Mind sharing your work? I've been looking for an update and expansion to Tome of Battle to conform with PF1 Path of War standards, because I really liked the theme and feel of several ToB disciplines, but they never got an official DSP/PoW conversion/update, and when I run PF1 I plan to offer some of the maneuver feats and such for free to most martials.

[Aotrs Commander]

There was a thread on the boards a week or few back, but by the time I started getting into actually dong it, nobody was saying anything, so I ending up basically spending ages and ages formatting stuff to chirping crickets, so I gave up and said basically that anybody that was interested should just PM me, and I can send you the files, since it's - for the moment - "done."

(There's basically three; the maneouvres, the maneouvre cards, and the document with the classes, and the bits of my house rules I thought relevant for translation (so people could at least see where I've made slightly different assumptions. The only thing I didn';t put in there was the feats (since I have basically not changed them from the stuff in the relevant thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?656450-The-Great-Tome-of-Battle-to-Pathfinder-1-Standard-Upgrade-Project), and extracting them from my Feats documents would have been non-trivial time investment!)



At some point down the line, I intend to try and bulk out the ToB stuff with more maneouvres, but my first port of call was just getting back to where we were.

(Naturally, having had my mates respective print and laminate all the cards, the first time we used them, the Crusader player says "you know, this would be easier if you had a different colour border for the stances..." At which point I went "bollocks." But that's a revision for another time as well, since at the moment, I just REALLY want to get my kineticist => 3.Aotrs revision done, finish re-pronouning the character class as then get stuff done and printer so I can actually start working on the campaign I intended to at the start of the year...)

[Powerdork]

that can still be revised by a publisher that supports it.

I'd just like to remark that Path of War's publisher hasn't done anything, for as many years as the span between 3e's end and 5e's beginning (2007-2012; 2018-2023). Everyone there moved on.