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Thurbane
2008-08-13, 02:01 AM
DO you think that ToB was a precursor to the 4th edition the same way that Players Option: Skills and Powers was a precursor to 3E back in the 2E days?

This isn't meant to be a bashing post, I'm genuinely interested in opinions. I'm not knowledgable enough on 4E to make a fair comparison.

Cheers - T

Ecalsneerg
2008-08-13, 02:02 AM
Definitely. The combat system of maneuvers has very obviously influenced 4e's dailies, encounters and at-wills.

Dhavaer
2008-08-13, 02:05 AM
Yes. I've no idea whether WotC were testing the waters with ToB or just noticed it was popular and drew on the same design concepts for 4e, but there's definately a similarity.

Emperor Tippy
2008-08-13, 02:09 AM
If it was WotC went stupid. ToB would have made a great basis for 4e, WotC chose to go a route that was significantly different and worse in nearly every way (compared to 4e).

The New Bruceski
2008-08-13, 02:13 AM
If it was WotC went stupid. ToB would have made a great basis for 4e, WotC chose to go a route that was significantly different and worse in nearly every way (compared to 4e).

I'm not parsing that right. WotC chose to go a route [for 4e] that was worse than 4e?

Frosty
2008-08-13, 02:15 AM
Tippy means he likes ToB mechanics more than 4e mechanics.

4e resembles Swordsage without a Recovery method, which is ok I guess. I need to homebrew a system combining 4e, ToB, and normal 3.5e...

Emperor Tippy
2008-08-13, 02:31 AM
ToB is pretty much how 4e should have been balanced. Per encounter abilities with ways to recover then in the fight. It's abilities were pretty well balanced and allowed a lot of options and choices. A magic system using the same type of system could have been done, and done well.

The route WotC chose to go with 4e butchered the ToB system, failed to apply it to magic well at all, and chose to significantly alter the game in various ways that weren't needed and didn't add anything to the new system.

Kiara LeSabre
2008-08-13, 02:38 AM
The route WotC chose to go with 4e butchered the ToB system, failed to apply it to magic well at all

I've been playtesting a 4e wizard, just to get my feet wet with how the system plays in practice. I have to say, so far, it's the most fun I ever had with any D&D wizard ever.

Emperor Tippy
2008-08-13, 02:56 AM
I've been playtesting a 4e wizard, just to get my feet wet with how the system plays in practice. I have to say, so far, it's the most fun I ever had with any D&D wizard ever.

I never said it wasn't fun. They still botched the system. Take ToB as the baseline and let Wizards pick their spells (maneuvers) from the "Energy School", the "Divination School", the "Buff School" and the "Other School". Lot's of self buffs (flying and invisibility for example) would be made stances. Buff's on other people would last for an encounter. The energy school would have all the blasting while Divination would have all those other things.

Change spells like Detect Magic and Identity into Skill Tricks based off of spellcraft and give wizards a free one every few levels.

You could make a really good magic system off of ToB, 4e isn't that system.

---
For long term buffs and permanent effects use something like the ritual system.

Kiara LeSabre
2008-08-13, 04:13 AM
I never said it wasn't fun. They still botched the system. Take ToB as the baseline and let Wizards pick their spells (maneuvers) from the "Energy School", the "Divination School", the "Buff School" and the "Other School". Lot's of self buffs (flying and invisibility for example) would be made stances. Buff's on other people would last for an encounter. The energy school would have all the blasting while Divination would have all those other things.

Change spells like Detect Magic and Identity into Skill Tricks based off of spellcraft and give wizards a free one every few levels.

You could make a really good magic system off of ToB, 4e isn't that system.

---
For long term buffs and permanent effects use something like the ritual system.

Well, I don't know about all that, but I know what I like, and I'm having more fun with it than I ever had with the older systems. I hated all of the insane bookkeeping, and I didn't really like the fact that if I wanted to play a caster, I'd have to either deliberately gimp myself or else feel like I was cheating just by doing what a caster can really do.

I mean, I know you like to sit down and figure out how someone can build a magically crafted spaceship or create a planetary forcefield by exploiting the weird and complicated quirks in the 3.5e magic system, and that's great ... it really is. There's nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of thing with a group of like-minded people. It's just that I want to be able to just play, enjoy cinematic combat when it comes up, and mostly worry about story and role-playing, and that makes a more streamlined and balanced system much more suited to my needs.

Emperor Tippy
2008-08-13, 04:17 AM
I never said 3.5 had a good magic system, because it really doesn't (at least for most things). My point is that 4e's is pretty close to crap (fun but still crap).

A good magic system could have been done based off of ToB but it wasn't.

Tengu_temp
2008-08-13, 04:22 AM
My point is that 4e's is pretty close to crap (fun but still crap).


Does not compute. The worth of a system is measured entirely in how fun it is. A game can't be both fun and crap at the same time.

Emperor Tippy
2008-08-13, 04:33 AM
Does not compute. The worth of a system is measured entirely in how fun it is. A game can't be both fun and crap at the same time.

Yes it can. A game can be fun to play while still being crap compared to what it could easily have been.

Tengu_temp
2008-08-13, 04:36 AM
Wasted potential != crap.

Cainen
2008-08-13, 04:43 AM
Definitely, though Skills & Powers was far more of an addition to 2E than ToB was to 3E. More unbalanced, sure, but it gave more options.

Justyn
2008-08-13, 04:47 AM
Wasted potential != crap.

I think he means that 4E is a good system, but is a big fat steaming diarrhea buffalo dump in the ear in comparison to 3E.

Anyway, back on topic: yes, and, if I remember correctly, they all but admitted that fact about ToB and 4E.

bosssmiley
2008-08-13, 04:47 AM
Does not compute. The worth of a system is measured entirely in how fun it is. A game can't be both fun and crap at the same time.

Fun != Good (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuiltyPleasures)

The thought that WOTC's design team had in their hands an elegant 'per encounter' system of powers like the one in ToB, and that they simplified away everything that made it worthwhile in the first place as they worked on 4E fills me with nerdrage.

It's like watching someone deliberately downtune a prototype vehicle so that it get a lower level of performance: equal parts exasperating, appalling, and hilarious. :smallamused:

Covered In Bees
2008-08-13, 04:57 AM
ToB is fun, but it'd be poorly suited as the basis for a whole game system.

Kurald Galain
2008-08-13, 04:59 AM
DO you think that ToB was a precursor to the 4th edition the same way that Players Option: Skills and Powers was a precursor to 3E back in the 2E days?

No.

In that TOB is obviously a precursor to 4E, but S&P was not a precursor to 3E.

OneFamiliarFace
2008-08-13, 05:06 AM
Holy crap, Skills and Powers. Was that book ever the bane of my DMing existence or what?

Yeah, I would say that it was similar. A lot of the 3e changes were what would happen if you took Skills and Powers and slimmed it down into something far less complicated.

So the ToB comparison is a little different, in that (other than the crusader, who was impossible) the stuff was relatively simple to understand. What they decided to avoid was: 3 classes, 3 different systems of operations. But it made a major shift which made melee characters more fun: Instead of having 4 attacks, most of which were boring, you had one which was fun and interesting. While it was fun to have the 8 attacks you could eventually get with the Ranger, it took forever to get there, and most of the time most of them were ineffectual.

The way ToB classes worked in play is almost exactly how all 4e characters work in play (move, single attack, minor action). Similarly, Skills and Powers, which focused on builds, led to a system based on...you guessed it: builds.

Dhavaer
2008-08-13, 05:14 AM
I think I agree with Tippy, in that the Tome of Battle is easily WotC's finest D&D creation, with 4e coming in at second place. Third place is arguable, but I think I'd vote for Pact Magic.

Kiara LeSabre
2008-08-13, 05:26 AM
Fun != Good (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuiltyPleasures)

Why would it be a bad thing for a game to be fun? :smallconfused:

Deth Muncher
2008-08-13, 05:47 AM
DO you think that ToB was a precursor to the 4th edition the same way that Players Option: Skills and Powers was a precursor to 3E back in the 2E days?


Yes. Yes it was. In a teaser article somewhere (which I assume someone with better Search-Fu will find) WotC describes how 4e works as being very similar to ToB.

Cainen
2008-08-13, 05:56 AM
No.

In that TOB is obviously a precursor to 4E, but S&P was not a precursor to 3E.

Not intentionally, but a lot of 3E rules came from S&P.

Sebastian
2008-08-13, 05:57 AM
many of the late 3.x books, and not only 3.x, see star wars saga system were all or in part test runs of possible 4e mechanics, I think there is no question about it.

Kurald Galain
2008-08-13, 06:02 AM
Not intentionally, but a lot of 3E rules came from S&P.

Really?

Because the main things that I recall from S&P are splitting each ability score in two (dexterity -> balance + aim) and giving each character 20-30 points for "build options" like armored casting and so forth, neither of which seems to be in 3E.

Then again my DM banned S&P on grounds of perceived cheese so I'm not intimately familiar with it.

Cainen
2008-08-13, 06:10 AM
Really?

Because the main things that I recall from S&P are splitting each ability score in two (dexterity -> balance + aim) and giving each character 20-30 points for "build options" like armored casting and so forth, neither of which seems to be in 3E.

The idea of mostly player-driven creation is in 3E, and rather than S&P I meant the entire Players' Option series.

Which, again, is true. S&P refined NWPs into something similar to 3E's skill system, too, and a few rules from Combat & Tactics found their way into 3E directly.

Oh, and S&M's metamagic.

Frosty
2008-08-13, 10:10 AM
Tippy, would you say that you have more fun playing 4e or playing a 3.5e game with a ToB character?

JupiterPaladin
2008-08-13, 12:10 PM
You know, when 3.0 first came out, my first impression upon finishing the PHB read was that they took the 2e PHB, Combat & Tactics, and Skills & Powers, and some random pieces of the Complete XXX Handbook series and just made all the numbers positive, removed caps, and eliminated some useless or unpopular junk. That was way before I spent all day reading other peoples' opinions on the internet, so it was an original and unbiased comparison. I still feel that way today, and it's been how many years now? :smallbiggrin:

I think that they did make the ToB to see how their audience would react to the new mechanics before releasing the new edition. 4e is a huge risk/investment for WotC. They are basically throwing the whole pile of chips on this bet and letting it all ride. The changes to the license for 3rd party publishers would confirm that IMO. 3rd parties can only publish for 3.x or 4e, but not both, and the 4e agreement is much more restrictive than before. :smallmad:

Emperor Tippy
2008-08-13, 12:21 PM
Tippy, would you say that you have more fun playing 4e or playing a 3.5e game with a ToB character?

3.5. I have fun with 4e as a pickup game with no one in the group taking it seriously and basically just something to do in person when we hang out. I have fun with 3.5 in actual serious campaigns. 4e just doesn't have enough depth for me.

Eldariel
2008-08-13, 12:26 PM
3rd parties can only publish for 3.x or 4e, but not both, and the 4e agreement is much more restrictive than before. :smallmad:

That's the weird part. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the more open license of 3e is going to feel more alluring than the restricted license of 4e, and since they force the choice, they're actually going to drive a lot of potential publishers away from 4e. I just...it seems like a really bad idea. Maybe they got some order from the cigar-level of Hasbro or something, but even then you'd think they'd have the common sense of not sabotaging their products like that.

EDIT: Also, I totally need a Saturn-avatar.

SCPRedMage
2008-08-13, 02:06 PM
This recommendation accompanied a rather difficult stunt accomplished in the middle of the development process: Baker, Donais, and Mearls translated current versions of the Orcus I mechanics into a last-minute revision of Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. It was a natural fit, since Rich Baker had already been treating the Book of Nine Swords as a "powers for fighters" project. The effort required to splice the mechanics into 3rd Edition were a bit extreme, but the experiment was worth it.
If ToB feels similar to 4E, there's a darn good reason for it...

Knaight
2008-08-13, 03:13 PM
Although the mechanics are dramatically different.

SCPRedMage
2008-08-13, 03:51 PM
Although the mechanics are dramatically different.
Right, because they were going off of an EXTREMELY early design document. Orcus I was pretty much the very first design they worked with for 4e. But that doesn't change the fact that some of the game mechanics used in ToB were originally designed for 4e...

Tokiko Mima
2008-08-13, 06:16 PM
Why would it be a bad thing for a game to be fun? :smallconfused:

It's not. By saying Fun != Good, it doesn't mean that Fun = Bad or Unfun = Good, or even that Unfun = Bad. What it means is that just because something entertains you, does not make it good. You may enjoy certain movies, for example, but that does not automatically make those movies good or bad just because you enjoy or dislike them.

4E does the job of entertaining many people and being simple to use and understand. I would argue that most of the fun you experience while using it has to do with it's simplicity and your own group's creativity. What I think is being communicated is that the system itself could be greatly improved, but that does not make it lack fun. Fun is a quality you may add to almost any game.

Deth Muncher
2008-08-13, 10:25 PM
If ToB feels similar to 4E, there's a darn good reason for it...

Thank you, for having better Search-fu than I.

Kiara LeSabre
2008-08-13, 10:28 PM
It's not. By saying Fun != Good, it doesn't mean that Fun = Bad or Unfun = Good, or even that Unfun = Bad. What it means is that just because something entertains you, does not make it good. You may enjoy certain movies, for example, but that does not automatically make those movies good or bad just because you enjoy or dislike them.

What would make any D&D game system especially "good" as compared with any other? Can we really say there are qualities that objectively make a system "good," where "good" is a quality that has nothing to do with how fun it is?

Oslecamo
2008-08-14, 06:10 AM
Yes, ToB infulenced 4e.

As well as the PHB, PHB2 and all the other splatbooks.

WOTC took the most popular elements out of each book, simplified it to the extreme, added cinematic stuff(minions, headshoting zombies, ect).

If you look well, 4e has as much of ToB as the core melee classes. You have several powers, but you can't recharge them, and you don't take them in chains, and they don't care about iniator level, plus some other quircks wich make 4e play quite diferently from ToB.

SCPRedMage
2008-08-14, 12:11 PM
Yes, ToB infulenced 4e.
Again, other way around. Mechanics from the Orcus I design, the very first design document created for 4e, were used in a last minute revision of ToB.

And for those of you talking about how restrictive the GSL is, WotC has been talking about revisions to it, based upon the concerns that companies and gamers have voiced...