Some thoughts on the ToB

[TempusCCK]

Now, I understand the the ToB is widely regarded as the best thing that ever happened to melee characters in 3.5, I.E It brings them up to par with casters.

But, as I read through the ToB I see so many things that are just downright... disturbing. You are a master of the blade, so you can turn invisible and make magic fire happen all the time. Let's face it, some of the things that happen in ToB are downright Anime inspired, some people love this, others think that it would be better without the exploding fiery/shadowy/flying supernatural things that happen.

Now, there are a few things I like about the ToB, one is stances, using superior training, you adapt your fighting style to be suitable for X situation. This is good. But not all the stances are good, especially not the kind that allow you to teleport based solely on the fact that you're standing in a certain way.

So, my thoughts are this. ToB brings melee characters up to par with other characters, but at the expense of the melee classes dignity (as far as I'm concerned). If the intent of the game was to bring Melee classes up to par with caster classes, why not publish a huge errata of caster nerfs that bring them down from the level of massive powergamery? Isn't this just exascerbating the problem?

The easy answer is of course, that Wizards profits from Powergaming, and people can spend money on a book, while the huge errata would not be marketable, which seems to me the most likely case. Supports the ire of all those WotC-haters out there.

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Funny side note, I'm reminded of a person here on the forums once saying that he loved the ToB because he loved Anime, and he could just imagine the characters shouting out the names of the manuevers, just like in his favorite non-western cartoons.

[lord_khaine]

So, my thoughts are this. ToB brings melee characters up to par with other characters, but at the expense of the melee classes dignity (as far as I'm concerned). If the intent of the game was to bring Melee classes up to par with caster classes, why not publish a huge errata of caster nerfs that bring them down from the level of massive powergamery? Isn't this just exascerbating the problem?

as far as i see it, melee chars did not have any dignity to lose, before ToB gave them a bit of it back.
to do it the way you suggest, nerfing casters down instead of buffing the melee chars, would require so much work they might as well scrap the edition and start over.

[KnightDisciple]

Um....wait, what?
Seriously now. This is pretty weak. The warblade, and to a lesser degree the crusader, are the "pure martial skill" types. Their abilities are, well, various ways of hitting people with swords.
The swordsages, whose flavor expressly mentions mystical abilities/training, are the only ones with access to the shooting fire, going invisible, etc. You did notice the 3/4 bab, right? That's a hallmark of a caster/fighter hybrid. This guy's like a monk, or maybe a psywarrior. He blends the line.
And what's to say wizards and fighters (especially those with tactical feats) can't call out their attacks? Or rogues (see Haley. all the time).
And if there's a little "anime" (read, action comics and animation, both western and eastern), so what? Just tone down the flavor.

[Learnedguy]

It's really which schools you use. Both the Crusader and the Swordsage are designed to have an otherwordly edge to them. If you want more mundane you go for warblade.

Iron Heart for instance is probably as mundane as it gets.

[Drascin]

But, as I read through the ToB I see so many things that are just downright... disturbing. You are a master of the blade, so you can turn invisible and make magic fire happen all the time. Let's face it, some of the things that happen in ToB are downright Anime inspired, some people love this, others think that it would be better without the exploding fiery/shadowy/flying supernatural things that happen.

Okay, now try limiting this argument to the other two classes where it isn't explicitly mentioned in their description that the class uses its own energy to power magical effects. Hell, the book mentions that the nickname for Swordsages is "Blade Wizards"! Of course swordsages do some magical stuff - that's the whole point of the class, they're mystical warriors! Crusaders are mostly mundane, with a little helping from their personal guy upstairs at a couple places (so, far less mystical than a paladin, really), and Warblade is as completely nonmagical as it gets.

Now, there are a few things I like about the ToB, one is stances, using superior training, you adapt your fighting style to be suitable for X situation. This is good. But not all the stances are good, especially not the kind that allow you to teleport based solely on the fact that you're standing in a certain way.

Again, Desert Wind/Shadow Hand stances are more mental than physical. It's more attuning yourself to a particular kind of energy than it is standing in a particular way. Plus I don't particularly remember any stance that lets you teleport at will - the most I remember is walking through the air, which seems more a matter of attuning yourself to a particular energy, and then convincing yourself through mental discipline that hey, you are a big boy, you don't really need that pesky ground, do you?

So, my thoughts are this. ToB brings melee characters up to par with other characters, but at the expense of the melee classes dignity (as far as I'm concerned). If the intent of the game was to bring Melee classes up to par with caster classes, why not publish a huge errata of caster nerfs that bring them down from the level of massive powergamery? Isn't this just exascerbating the problem?

The easy answer is of course, that Wizards profits from Powergaming, and people can spend money on a book, while the huge errata would not be marketable, which seems to me the most likely case. Supports the ire of all those WotC-haters out there.

Khaine put it pretty well:

as far as i see it, melee chars did not have any dignity to lose, before ToB gave them a bit of it back.
to do it the way you suggest, nerfing casters down instead of buffing the melee chars, would require so much work they might as well scrap the edition and start over.

Which they did, and lo and behold, many people hate it because casters "can't do anything" . You can't errata over half the stuff in the basic player handbook of a game. It will annoy customers infinitely more than almost any other move you could do, up to and including creating a new edition wholecloth.

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Funny side note, I'm reminded of a person here on the forums once saying that he loved the ToB because he loved Anime, and he could just imagine the characters shouting out the names of the manuevers, just like in his favorite non-western cartoons.

And yet I have probably watched a lot more anime than you, and don't particularly feel the need to shout manuever names or anything. Really, ToB is more pure-fantasy-but-goes-Wuxia-in-very-high-levels than Shonen anime at any level, anyway.

Bottom line is: sorry for the sarcastic remarks, CCK, but this really reeks of the usual "psionics is overpowered! psionics is not well-integrated wit the system!" knee-jerk reaction that I've spent so much time smashing my head against, only with ToB instead of Psi, and it just... tires me a lot.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Delete all references to "anime" and replace them with "wuxia".

Know your roots.

[The_Snark]

While I don't feel like Tome of Battle was bad for melee characters, I'll point out that there is basis to the supernatural/anime (take your pick) features, and not just for the swordsage. Iron Heart, for example, has Lightning Throw, which lets a character hurl their weapon through thirty feet of air, people, and other flimsy obstacles, and then returns it to them at the end of the round. This is not the product of skilled swordsmanship, except in a wushu-esque setting.

Similarly, Stone Dragon features Earthquake Strike, which could again either be the product of magic—or smashing the ground so hard cracks shoot out, people and buildings fall down, etc. Devoted Spirit is largely supernatural (you can flavor all the healing as a morale effect, but it will feel very contrived and silly sometimes to have a mid-battle exhortation make it unnecessary to be healed afterwards). Desert Wind and Shadow Hand are explicitly very supernatural. Diamond Mind doesn't have anything supernatural, but it could nonetheless fit seamlessly into a wushu setting (especially given some of the standard fluff and maneuver names); Setting Sun is likewise, except that its throws can easily seem unrealistic/supernatural if not carefully described. Tiger Claw falls into the same boat, with rather unrealistic leaping ability. White Raven, in fact, is the most mundane school, in terms of doing unrealistic things.

That said, I don't feel like this is a problem. Yes, even the warblade can have supernatural abilities. If you simply want to be a tough warrior, don't pick those, and describe your maneuvers fittingly. Most schools can have a very wushu/anime style, but they can also fit other archetypes; it's all in how you put it.

As for the supernatural abilities, these are, well, supernatural. If you don't like the idea of someone lighting their sword on fire with pure skill (I generally wouldn't), how about a combination swordsman and fire mage, perhaps descended from a genie of some kind? Add a curved fiery sword, maybe a flying carpet, and you suddenly have a completely different feel from your stereotypical anime. There's nothing inherently wrong with characters who both fight and have supernatural talents or magic.

[Shpadoinkle]

I get the feeling you only (or mostly) looked at Desert Wind and Devoted Spirit, which are BY FAR the most magical of the disciplines. Read over the othes. Iron Heart in particular, exemplifies pretty much EXACTLY what the fighter should have been able to do, as far as I'm concerned. Diamond Mind is great for making a samurai, as most people think of them, that isn't horrible. White Raven allows you to inspire armies without having to take bard levels, and provides mechanical advantages for having an experienced leader. Sonte Dragon allows you to make the kind of "superhumanly strong" character that was previously impossible to do without actually having a rediculous Strength score.

Seriously, read over all the disciplines before you pass judement on the whole book.

[TempusCCK]

Devoted, Diamond Mind, Shadow Hand, Dessert Wind, and even some of the White Raven stuff is supernatural, and most of it is quite silly, these are things that I have a problem with, I also take issue with the idea of "bringing melee characters up to par." instead of say, bringing Casters down to the level they were supposed to be at. It stinks of exploiting powergamers, instead of fixing what they messed up to begin with, they offered you a "brand new money-sink book that will make the game work!"

That, to me, is like Blizzard releasing Wrath of the Lich King, but noticing that the new talents aren't functioning like they should, and instead of releasing a patch, they release a brand new Wrath of the Lich King expansion for you to buy, with a fix that will make the new talents work!

As for the idea that it would take more work to fix broken casters, that I vehemently disagree with. What makes casters so much better than everyone else? They can kill faster, and more efficiently, and they have a spell for every situation.

If you released an errata for spells in the Players Handbook alone you could fix much of the Wizard cheese, if Teleport had a 10 round cast time, Walls of stone and Walls of Force appeared in 10 foot sections every round spent concentrating, and Solid Fog gave a strength check to move normally, don't you think the game would function better?

I understand that these are small things, but I literally came up with those simple fixes in about 20 seconds of thought. Also, errata that all Metamagic reducers no longer function, type untyped bonuses for commonly abused spells... This would not be difficult, cruise the Wizards forums, see how people are breaking things, and fix it.

I just have a problem with a company selling me a product, admitting that it's broken, and instead of fixing it, offering to let me buy a fix for their broken product, meanwhile, giving it heavy flavor of something that I'm not personally very interested in.

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This wasn't meant to be offensive to anyone who liks anime, and I understand everyone who watches anime doesn't feel the need to shout out the names, I was just sharing an amusing anecdote that I recollected that was relevant to the subject. One person held that opinion, it does not necessarily imply that everyone else does. (I feel kind of dirty for finding it necessary to imply that one person's opinions do not necessarily apply to everyone, I'm sorry, this should be obvious.)

[JaxGaret]

If you released an errata for spells in the Players Handbook alone you could fix much of the Wizard cheese, if Teleport had a 10 round cast time, Walls of stone and Walls of Force appeared in 10 foot sections every round spent concentrating, and Solid Fog gave a strength check to move normally, don't you think the game would function better?

I understand that these are small things, but I literally came up with those simple fixes in about 20 seconds of thought. Also, errata that all Metamagic reducers no longer function, type untyped bonuses for commonly abused spells... This would not be difficult, cruise the Wizards forums, see how people are breaking things, and fix it.

Just to fix the core spell list would be a huge project, let alone taking on every spell released for 3e. Why don't you try it and see for yourself?

[Starscream]

Delete all references to "anime" and replace them with "wuxia".

Know your roots.

I agree. Combine ToB with some of the material from Oriental Adventures and you have the makings of a fine Martial Arts themed campaign. Anime doesn't need to come into it.

[monty]

the most I remember is walking through the air, which seems more a matter of attuning yourself to a particular energy, and then convincing yourself through mental discipline that hey, you are a big boy, you don't really need that pesky ground, do you?

Maybe it's just my inner (and outer) nerd, but I always thought of that stance as throwing yourself at the ground and missing.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Just some things to think about.

Players, as a general rule, enjoy having power. The players know this, the Dungeon Master knows this, and, guess what? WotC knows this as well. Thus, for everyone involved, it is better to increase the power of sub-par classes rather than decrease the power of the top tier classes.

As a player who often plays the tank in a party of casters, it cheered me and the whole party up no end when I could suddenly pull my weight as a Crusader rather than struggle with a one-trick Fighter. Had the DM nerfed the casters, I imagine the general glee would have been noticeably absent...from all of us. I don't like to see my entire party become less competent just to make me competitive with the rest of them.

That said, some aspects of the Tome do have a decidedly Wuxia feel to them...at least out of the box. But that's all mutable flavor. Let's take a look at some of the big offenders (from Diamond Mind, although I'll do any you care to ask about).

Hearing the Air: Having spent over 10 years as a competitive fencer, let me say that you can indeed hear attacks coming if you're attuned to it. Your opponent's footwork and breathing change enough that you can fence, albeit not as well, blindfolded. Maybe it's not out to 30ft, but class abilities are never entirely realistic (do you really think a commander's presence makes me more charismatic? The Marshal is inclined to say it does...).

Mind Over Body: Intense focus does strange things. My favorite story (again fencing related) is the Russian sabre fencer who took a cut across the hand, kept fencing, and won the bout. When he raised his weapon to salute, blood poured out from under his glove, and it has revealed that the blow had almost slashed his hand to the bone...and had gone unnoticed, as it hadn't affected his fencing. Fun times.

Time Stands Still: Maybe you move really fast, but maybe you just have a better chance of hitting. Not all those attacks are going to hit, so re-flavoring it as being more accurate would be great. If fighting a crowd, treat it like a Whirlwind Attack style of action. Done.

See? All possible, if maybe a bit more than any human alive today could do. But that's all cool, since even our best heroes weren't much past level 6 or so. Maybe there are a few exceptions to that rule, but not many. Plus, in a world where a mage can re-write reality with a few words and magic infuses all aspects of life, including natural evolution, what's to say that a sufficiently trained fighter can't move so fast he's a blur, or hit stone hard enough to cause a small earthquake?

But if you really don't like to see that, ToB is a book of mechanics. Re-flavor them to your heart's content, and the problem vanishes.

[hiryuu]

So basically, it boils down to the idea that a man in a bathrobe jumping up and down (he's got to be doing something crazy, leather armor interferes with his movements. Leather armor!) and wiggling his fingers while using items that amount to bad inside jokes (look at some of those spells components!) and blabbering incoherently in a precise method as a result of difficult training and then setting some fool on fire isn't silly but a guy who trained just as hard to cut some sucka just right is? We're already dealing with a world where rainbows shooting out of your fingers is one of your best options out of the starting gate, and there's something silly about leaping through the air to cut someone with fire?

What kind of wacky, upside down world is this? Oh yeah, it's a world were reading books, training hard enough, or even just wishing hard enough lets you mutilate the rules of physics.

We're talking about a milieu where humans can turn into bears that shoot lightning and summon other bears that are covered in bees and where you can tie up some of the weakest members of the local thief guild in a concrete outhouse with a delayed blast fireball strapped to the inside of their shoe and they stand a reasonable chance of being completely unscathed... and you have a problem with ToB?

Please.

[Mr.Bookworm]

*addresses*

Now, I understand the the ToB is widely regarded as the best thing that ever happened to melee characters in 3.5, I.E It brings them up to par with casters.

It doesn't bring them up to par at the "broken" levels. Batman will still flatten a ToB character like an insect at higher levels.

But, as I read through the ToB I see so many things that are just downright... disturbing. You are a master of the blade, so you can turn invisible and make magic fire happen all the time. Let's face it, some of the things that happen in ToB are downright Anime inspired, some people love this, others think that it would be better without the exploding fiery/shadowy/flying supernatural things that happen.

To be fair, they specifically mention that ToB was part inspired by anime.

Also to be fair, as someone mentioned previously, the only really out and out supernatural class is the Swordsage, who are called blade wizards. The other two can pull off some superhuman stuff, but they're more rooted in the "trained REALLY, REALLY hard" category. (Well, Swordsage is too, I suppose.)

Now, there are a few things I like about the ToB, one is stances, using superior training, you adapt your fighting style to be suitable for X situation. This is good. But not all the stances are good, especially not the kind that allow you to teleport based solely on the fact that you're standing in a certain way.

Again, almost all of that stuff is Swordsage, who have a very mystical bent.

So, my thoughts are this. ToB brings melee characters up to par with other characters, but at the expense of the melee classes dignity (as far as I'm concerned). If the intent of the game was to bring Melee classes up to par with caster classes, why not publish a huge errata of caster nerfs that bring them down from the level of massive powergamery? Isn't this just exascerbating the problem?

Not really. ToB isn't really supposed to replace melee characters (it does a lot, but I don't think the writers had that in mind).

Besides, publishing massive amounts of errata would be incredibly complicated and confusing.

The easy answer is of course, that Wizards profits from Powergaming, and people can spend money on a book, while the huge errata would not be marketable, which seems to me the most likely case. Supports the ire of all those WotC-haters out there.

Huh?

Funny side note, I'm reminded of a person here on the forums once saying that he loved the ToB because he loved Anime, and he could just imagine the characters shouting out the names of the manuevers, just like in his favorite non-western cartoons.

Again, it was inspired by anime, though most of the maneuvers are in my opinion, not anime-named. There are a few, though. (I'm looking at you, Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike.)

[Innis Cabal]

*Snip*

So. What your saying. In the end mind you. Is that you don't like the fact that ToB is based off of western comics, Wuxia and anime. Which it says...on the very first page.

There is an option of not buying the book. Which if I personally didn't care for the above. I'd not have done. I myself have not bought alot of books I don't like the flavour.

[Kaiyanwang]

If you released an errata for spells in the Players Handbook alone you could fix much of the Wizard cheese, if Teleport had a 10 round cast time, Walls of stone and Walls of Force appeared in 10 foot sections every round spent concentrating, and Solid Fog gave a strength check to move normally, don't you think the game would function better?

I understand that these are small things, but I literally came up with those simple fixes in about 20 seconds of thought. Also, errata that all Metamagic reducers no longer function, type untyped bonuses for commonly abused spells... This would not be difficult, cruise the Wizards forums, see how people are breaking things, and fix it.

I just have a problem with a company selling me a product, admitting that it's broken, and instead of fixing it, offering to let me buy a fix for their broken product, meanwhile, giving it heavy flavor of something that I'm not personally very interested in.

See, I think I have your same feelings about it. These things you said can be connected to the various threads about losing of "magic is special" in 4th edition, casters overpowered and so on, all hings we have seen several times on these boards.

IMHO, the whole tome of battle could have far more sense if all the maneuvers were supernatural abilities. It's a matter of coherency with EVERY other element of the game. You can explain this if you see ToB as a sorta beta of 4th edition (an a big advertisement fo 4th edition). But coherency and PC rules = NPC rules is a policy abandoned by wizard. Someone likes it, some one not, nothing wrong.

[sonofzeal]

IMHO, the whole tome of battle could have far more sense if all the maneuvers were supernatural abilities. It's a matter of coherency with EVERY other element of the game. You can explain this if you see ToB as a sorta beta of 4th edition (an a big advertisement fo 4th edition). But coherency and PC rules = NPC rules is a policy abandoned by wizard. Someone likes it, some one not, nothing wrong.

To be fair, a lot of them ARE supernatural abilities (decent odds on any given Desert Wind, Devoted Spirit, or Shadow Hand maneuver), and a lot of the others SHOULDN'T be (like most maneuvers in the other categories, with some exceptions). They seemed to have erred on the side of "not supernatural", and I'd understand if you made considerably more of them Su (Iron Heart Surge, Sudden Leap, Iron Bones, and Disrupting Blow are all good canditates). However, reading through most of the Warblade disciplines, it's actively hard to find ones that don't make sense as Ex. The three disciplines mentioned above are the only ones with a significant number of supernatural maneuvers.

[Heliomance]

My DM disallows ToB for very similar reasons. Why is it that after you've used a specific maneuver, you can't use it again straightaway? What's so special about hitting someone that you can't hit them again the same way?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

My DM disallows ToB for very similar reasons. Why is it that after you've used a specific maneuver, you can't use it again straightaway? What's so special about hitting someone that you can't hit them again the same way?

Because, as any practitioner of any martial art will tell you, timing, position, and your opponent's reactions are all crucial to getting off that specific blow. It's not mechanically supported, but that 1 or 2 round delay between both your Strikes of Preternatural Clarity is used to set up the next devastating blow. Maybe your opponent is better guarded against that line of attack, opening themselves up for a crushing Ancient Mountain Hammer that sweeps past all their defenses and sends them sprawling, or a veritable Adamantine Hurricane of blows to penetrate their guard.

Think of the combat as an actual fight and less of a game, and mix up your maneuver uses, and you have no need to complain about the mechanics. In fact, I'd find is LESS realistic if the same move could be used round after round after round.

[Satyr]

The slightly annoying part about TOB is, that it offers lots of flashy special moves, while the standard D&D combattant is still not able to learn basic things like evaluate targets, called shots or hurting his opponent in a way that, you, know hurts. If the D&D rules had more gruesome rules for injuries, or a broader set of plausible, basic combat options, the whole set of flashy special abilities wouldn't be necessary. But since it is imposible to do anything that hinders an opponent without magic, this is obvioulsy not the case. The odd zthing is, there are even rules for the effects, but they are only accessible trough magic, which is just plain stupid.

[Rion]

Then how would you explain that I think ToB is the best book released for 3.5 while I hate anime?

The most unrealistic thing about combat in 3.5 isn't that ToB classes can pull flashy moves (nor the usual reasoning that "wizards exist, magic is real and you complain about that?"), but that some guy hacking wildly trading accuracy for power isn't cut down in under two seconds (not an exaggeration by the way).

Any guy with reasonable training in western renaissance martial arts (Talhoffer and Lichtenauer) would be capable of cutting down your average D&D Barbarian in real life.

EDIT: This is of course assuming unarmoured combat, but it isn't much better in armoured conbat where the only way to defeat an opponent would be in a grapple or with piercing weapons at weak points (poleaxes and real warhammers, what most call "picks").

[Noneoyabizzness]

But, as I read through the ToB I see so many things that are just downright... disturbing. You are a master of the blade, so you can turn invisible and make magic fire happen all the time. .

kinda like being a master of hand to hand combat and being able to resist enchantment and teleport short distances. or master of performance and beign able to learn healing spells.

yes it's wuxia/anime inspired. (some of the designers might have been ninjascroll fans others might be riki-o fans, others still into older samurai or wire-fu stuff. multiple people not attibutign a favoritism w/o knowing the people)
yes it offers something more than non-rogue meleers had, the system needed it.
yes magic is still more powerful. its friggin magic. the answer "a wizard did it" should answer any possible unexplained act of god. 4e seems to miss this but rituals may in time offer it, but for now 3.5 still has magic being really magical.


but its fun and flavorful even when it isnt that awe inspiring firey blast at early levels.

[TempusCCK]

As I've said before, I do not like the anime aspect of it, that is a personal opinion. What I do not like more though, is that Wizards asked me to pay to fix something that was broken because they messed it up.

So far, I have seen no credible argument to disagree with me on why releasing an errata of simple fixes would be difficult, yes, it may be time consuming, but impossibly so? Not a chance, most of the fixes are simply common sense when you look at them.

As for the argument "Go do it yourself." That idea is inherently flawed because I have a life, and I do not get paid to spend 8 hours a day making D&D products, if I were, then I would be able to reasonably fix the entire players handbook in a relatively short amount of time, or at least seriously cut down on many of the abuses. I've actually considered gutting my version of the players handbook myself with a pen and fixing all the spells in the way that would work reasonably, but that would ruin it as a reference for many things, so if I ever get my hands on a spare copy, I may well do it.
As for now, I'm not the one charging people to fix the game that I didn't create right to begin with.

"New! Monopoly WotC Edition! Picking the Cannon grants you the ability to forcefully take property from other players! Want to give the others teh ability to resist? Buy the New Monopoly WotC Edition Game Suppliment!"

It's a crock.

Because, as any practitioner of any martial art will tell you, timing, position, and your opponent's reactions are all crucial to getting off that specific blow.

I also find a reason to disagree with this argument based on the idea that if you want to bring timing, positioning and opponents reactions into the reason why you can't repeat a manuever, then what the hell was he doing differently the first time you used it? The system simply doesn't model that excuse. The ONLY reason you can't use manuevers over and over is game balance, pure and simple. I sympathize with this idea to an extent, but don't go grasping straws where there are none. I can understand being especially wary of a tactic already used against you, but if you encounter the same opponent in a different combat, can't you use the same manuever, regardless of his wariness?

[Nerd-o-rama]

EDIT: Thought of a better argument. Like everything else in D&D mechanics, the maneuver recovery system is an abstraction. No, the system doesn't model positioning and focus and whatnot; that's why there's this cheesy unrealistic ad hoc method for doing it. Just like HP. Those don't make any damn sense either.

As for WotC ripping you off...uh, yeah. It's what they do. Their whole business model is "put it in a supplement". Personally, if I didn't already have all these D&D books from when I was younger and more foolish, I probably wouldn't even play the game because of the bloated and expensive product line.

[Aquillion]

As I've said before, I do not like the anime aspect of it, that is a personal opinion. What I do not like more though, is that Wizards asked me to pay to fix something that was broken because they messed it up.

So far, I have seen no credible argument to disagree with me on why releasing an errata of simple fixes would be difficult, yes, it may be time consuming, but impossibly so? Not a chance, most of the fixes are simply common sense when you look at them.

WotC likes the moneys. There is nothing terribly complicated to explain here. (However, it might be worth pointing out that balancing things while keeping them fun is actually a lot of work involving employees and testers who have to be paid; it's not that unreasonable that they'd charge for major changes of the sort you're requesting.)

WotC has people paid to spend 8 hours a day making D&D products because you pay for the results of that work. If you don't want them to charge for the results of that work, how exactly are they supposed to continue to pay those employees?

They're not under any obligation to keep fixing their old books for free (and it would be a fairly insane business model, if they had to seriously invest rebalancing their old books with no further returns -- metagame balance can take ages to evolve. This is part of the reason they're so eager for a subscription-style setup.) If that annoys you, stop buying stuff from them; you're not exactly the first person to get that annoyed at them.

And they did, in fact, release a book that contained nerfed caster-classes. That's pretty much the Tome of Magic in a nutshell. It contains a bunch of low-power-level casters, so players can choose to either use the ToB to buff fighter-types, or the ToM to nerf casters.

The ToB was more successful, primarily because most people enjoy having a wide variety of abilities and options to choose each round and a wide variety of ways to customize and represent their chosen character over declaring "I charge and full-power-attack the nearest goblin" over and over again every turn. But YMMV, and if you'd rather take the other route, the ToM is always an option.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I support your points fully, Aquillion, but I do think that WotC could put a bit more effort into playtesting their releases beforehand, especially core books. I wouldn't object to D&D's massive library if they didn't have a habit of spreading out important game-balancing things over a myriad of unrelated products.

This is the part where I fanboy over M&M and its communist point-buy system, as well as their honesty in telling you "we just put <insert power or option> in here for completeness's sake. Consider it unavailable by default, unless you want to play with the game balance in weird ways, or give an NPC a leg up."

[kalt]

As someone that has avidly used tome of battle I can tell you that it tends to make a fighteresque character much more enjoyable to play if you enjoy adding another layer of complexity. Yes it does make melee characters more powerful and does bring them more in line with the magic users in terms of power.

[Clementx]

Just to fix the core spell list would be a huge project, let alone taking on every spell released for 3e. Why don't you try it and see for yourself?

Already did it. The majority of it is just throwing out crap spells that were not well-written! Core was all about removing the most abusive Batman spells, or tweaking them to limit the abuse. It took about 5 hours to go through the Spell Compendium- 1000 spells, with about 30 seconds each spell. "Is the effect stupid or cross existing boundaries? Is this broken compared to other spells of the level or a well-scaled version of a lower-level one?" I ended up keeping about 300 of them. If the writer didn't take any effort making the spell, why should you sweat fixing a hopeless case?

I found trying to incorporate ToB to be more work. After all, it is really learning new Fighter spells, instead of fixing what you already have.

[Talya]

I generally despise anime.

I'm not even a big fan of Wuxia, in general (although I've appreciated a few of them.)

I love the Tome of Battle.