ToB

[balistafreak]

At that point it boils down to Personnel management. No books or character concepts will really change anything.

Agreed. It's when people pin ToB as a specific problem that I facepalm.

Rule of thumb: Any time you are deliberately and knowingly increasing your power level, make it clear to your party that you're not trying to one-up them. Whether through ToB, psionics, Incarnum, additional splatbooks, or even just non-core, don't grab it just for the sake of being more powerful and having "more pluses", which is quite bad in any group. Make it clear that while you are becoming more powerful, you're not merely after bigger numbers, but more opportunities and ways to have fun.

Even if it takes you personally recrafting every single one of your group's characters to show them how much more fun they could be having (raises hand) if you can do it in a proper manner, you can enlighten your group and end up having many times more fun than you ever would normally.

My group started with a Fighter/Sorcerer, a Necromancy-focused Wizard, and a skillmonkey Rogue with zero combat effectiveness. They all stumbled around and looked like idiots both on and off the battlefield. When I was done with them, we had a Duskblade, a Warlock with The Dead Walk (which while obviously "weaker" than a Wizard, was much easier to handle and much closer to the character envisioned), and a Factotum. And they could actually do things.

But the original topic suffers!

Yeah, the Tome of Battle's main "problem" is that the optimization "floor" is much, much higher. Even at its most poorly played level, utilizing any of the Strike/Stance mechanics that are the bread-and-butter of the Tob make the three Initiators head-and-shoulders better than the Fighter, because you end up with extra pluses no matter how poorly you pick your Strikes. The Fighter would just be making vanilla attacks - even the worst Strikes in the ToB are almost strictly improvements on basic attacks, and remain so if a Fighter takes the "classic" (and terrible) Weapon Focus/Specialization tree.

In a strict numbers sense, the Fighter is actually better at dealing massive damage through the Ubercharger builds. However, ToB classes can deal good amounts of damage with little more work than picking manuevers that look cool.

Nothing really needs restricting or banning other than what's already been pointed out, and that's mostly due to vague wording or clear rules-jumping. player shouldn't ever be as stupid to attempt an infinite-loop within the space of a single action anyways.

(Note that things like "infinite healing" are not broken because they often take time and actions. You could argue that a Monk could deal infinite damage using the same logic. The "infinite" we're talking about is the type that breaks the action economy in half.)

To repeat:

• White Raven Tactics for infinite turns is a pretty blatant attempt to break the game. Note that it's intended use (the get-another-turn which is specifically outlined as legal) is actually merely powerful, not broken.
• No, you cannot Iron Heart Surge away the sun because it's making you hot. As long as you make it only able to target clearly targetted effects (something that someone has just slapped onto the Warblade) it's quite fine as is.
• Infinite attacks through Lightning Maces can be seen a mile away.
• A Crusader is not allowed to punch someone with a shuriken for infinite damage.