Tomes? [3.5? D&D]

[Forever Curious]

And I don't mean the magic items.

Around and about these boards I've heard of these Tomes that include various rules fixes for 3.5 D&D. What i would like to know is:

-what are they exactly?

-what makes them so good?

-where can i find them?

[Coidzor]

Tome Races of War, Dungeonomicon, Tome of Necromancy, and Tome of Fiends, I think.

Frank and K, IIRC, some homebrew rules/fluff fixes/rationales.

http://sites.google.com/site/middendorfproject/frankpdf

[Escheton]

Tome of Battle: Book of 9 swords gives melee options not unlike caster have them. In a defender, an offender and a magical sneak class.
Tome of Magic gives you magical classes that use a whole different system. Such as all day effects which depend on which spirit you invoke, an all you can cast class that increases the dc of a special skillcheck you have to make with each casting. And a shadowthemed class that lets you make the spells you know more innate as you progress.

[Yora]

Tome of Magic is really a mixed blessing:
The Binder is generally seen as a both useful and interesting class and seems to be quite good.
The Shadowcaster is a good idea, but has a rediculously low amount of spells per day. There are however some simple fixes around, I heard.
And Truenamer are widely seen as the worst D&D class ever! Because the power level isn't just stagnating, its actually becoming worse as they go up the levels.

Tome of Battle is often said to fix many problems with melee characters.
However, there is quite a number of people who don't like it. As I see it, it just gives spellcasting to melee characters, which doesn't fix anything.

[Eldan]

Wrong Tomes, people.

[TK-Squared]

Tome Races of War, Dungeonomicon, Tome of Necromancy, and Tome of Fiends, I think.

Frank and K, IIRC, some homebrew rules/fluff fixes/rationales.

http://sites.google.com/site/middendorfproject/frankpdf

Races of War and Dungeonomicon also on that site. There's also the incomplete Book of Gears which is by Frank and K, which tackles magic items.

[Oslecamo]

-what are they exactly?

A series of homebrew works from Frank Trollman and K.

-what makes them so good?

Besides a funny read nothing really. While most "fixes" try to bring down the power level of the stronger stuff, the Tomes basic philosophy is "To infinity and beyond!". Everybody is assumed to be wish-chaining like there's no tomorrow. Some of their classes give you at-will time stop whitout any special cost. If you aren't throwing multiple save or die per turn you're doing it wrong. They make gold worthless and claim to have fixed the D&D economy only to add a soul market system that's as easy if not easier to break. If normal D&D is rocket-tag then the Tomes are death-star-on-steroids-tag.

If you think that basic D&D still wasn't crazy enough then the Tomes are for you. Otherwise they're good for some laughs because of the provocative way they're written and the ocasional sane idea buried in the middle of their sheer crazyness.

-where can i find them?

Several links posted already, but their main source would be the gaming den where they still keep making new stuff now and then.

Anyway the "official" Tomes of Tome of Magic and Tome of Battle are probably better.

[Maerok]

Tome of Necromancy is the only one I'm familiar with to a great extent. Each of the PrCs is pretty (extremely) over the top, but I did a high level game using them one time and it was a good time. The philosophy aspect of it is nice and brings up some good points and it introduces easier access to being undead as a PC but your mileage may vary.

From what I've seen of Tome of Fiends, it's very useful for making NPC characters from scratch - at least that is how I've used it (I don't use fiendish 'races', but make them all unique).

But nothing of K's seems very balanced or playtested. It is fun, interesting stuff though. And at the end of the day the crazy, overpowered stuff isn't too off par with some of the delightful things WotC has put into print - the prestige classes might be better reserved for epic characters in some cases.

[PId6]

They have their good and bad points. I wouldn't use any of the classes as is, but there are some good ideas in there. I especially love the Stranger with the Burning Eyes; such an awesome, epic class.

[DragoonWraith]

The Tomes are an interesting but immense and incomplete undertaking. As Oslecamo says, rather than the usual attempts to nerf Tier-1 classes, the Tome series went the opposite way and tried to bring everyone up to their level (mostly... they do limit some of the most ridiculous things that Tier-1's can do - Pun-Pun could not happen in the Tomes, IIRC, for example). They expect people to have infinite Wishes by about level 17, if not sooner. And the Tomes are balanced around that.

It's a strange balance point to choose, but not an inherently invalid one, despite Oslecamo's derision. I haven't read them fully enough to see how well they measure up to this goal, but I've more-or-less liked what I've read of it. The Tome of Gears, in particular, I rather like the premise of (though it is the most incomplete).

Ultimately, I tend to doubt I'd enjoy playing under the Tomes. Too high-power for my tastes, and I'd guess that I tend to prefer things a bit higher-power than many here. But if one were interested in that kind of thing, they did put a lot of work and a fair amount of good thought into it.

The writing style is the other thing they're known for. It's highly... sarcastic, I suppose. Derisive, maybe. It can be amusing or grating depending on your own personality, I suppose.

[Maerok]

I kind of like the classes since they're OP enough that you don't have to nit-pick on feats/skills/classes to make a useful character. It frees up some choices since working on building a character and making sure they are effective is too stressful for me .

[GreyMantle]

The philosophy with making the Tomes was basically "there are two options in making 3.x balanced: rewrite pretty much every single spell to bring them down to the rogue/monster level, or rewrite the classes that aren't as strong as the wizard/druid/cleric level. Option 2 is significantly less work than Option 1; therefore, that's what we'll do." And that's what they did, for the most part. There is a bit of a power creep between the Tomes (the Thief-Acrobat from the Tome of Fiends is notably weaker than, say, the Fighter from Races of War), but overall, the completed work succeeded in making the classes they wrote be of comparable power to the big spellcasters.

They're also notable for trying to make a D&D setting actually work the way the rules say it would probably work, rather than how the setting authors say it should function based on their notions of medieval fantasy. That is, they account for how things like Wishes, the Mentor feat, the social dynamics of a game where you spend most of your time walking into people's houses, stabbing them in the face, and taking their things, the necessity of magic items, and other things would affect a fantasy world's economy, kingdoms, behaviors, etc. This annoys a lot of people (because the more you pay attention to what the rules actually say, the less you're able to pretend Forgotten Realms or whatever makes sense).

As Maerok said, all of the Tome material is much more "obvious" in power than most things published by WotC. Rather than force you to look through a bunch of books or turn all the way to the spell descriptions to figure out how to win, the classes' class ability descriptions actually look and are powerful and useful.


I would recommend checking out The Gaming Den (tgdmb.com), which is where Frank and K and others currently lair. It can be kind of hard to get into, because there are like 10 or so posters that tend to dominate much of the discussion and the tone gets very vitriolic at times due to loose moderating, but TGD still has the best discussions on the intricacies of cooperative storytelling game mechanics that I have ever found on Teh Interwebz.

[Malakar]

The philosophy with making the Tomes was basically "there are two options in making 3.x balanced: rewrite pretty much every single spell to bring them down to the rogue/monster level, or rewrite the classes that aren't as strong as the wizard/druid/cleric level. Option 2 is significantly less work than Option 1; therefore, that's what we'll do." And that's what they did, for the most part. There is a bit of a power creep between the Tomes (the Thief-Acrobat from the Tome of Fiends is notably weaker than, say, the Fighter from Races of War), but overall, the completed work succeeded in making the classes they wrote be of comparable power to the big spellcasters.

Slight correction, Thief Acrobat is Dungeonomicon. Also, side note, it was recently suggested to up to full BAB, which is a pretty big power up with the way feats work in Races of War.

My contribution to this thread: A lot of little nerfs get missed in the Tomes, like Teleport/Divination nerfs, Calling nerfs, Wish nerfs.

But while powering up everyone else to caster level is cool, I don't like that they seem to give out minions and Leadership like candy.

Highlights of the Tomes: Book of Gears items/Monk class/General Writing Style/Power level/Recognition of what at will abilities actually are, and why there should be like infinity more of them.

As for Oslecamo... Well aside from the vitrol and the claim about not fixing the economy, which I'll leave for someone else with better understanding then me: The Time Stop at will you get at level 19, and it costs 3/5ths of your main casting mechanic to get it, and the only other thing it gives you is at will abilities to slow down your opponents, like Forcecages and Resilient Spheres, but no way to actually buff or anything to take advantage of said Time Stop.

I don't think 3/5ths of your main class ability counts as "no cost."

[Coidzor]

I personally found them to be quite fascinating reads, and they turned me on to being curious as to what's been homebrewed out there that's worth the time that was put into it.

[GreyMantle]

Slight correction, Thief Acrobat is Dungeonomicon. Also, side note, it was recently suggested to up to full BAB, which is a pretty big power up with the way feats work in Races of War.

My contribution to this thread: A lot of little nerfs get missed in the Tomes, like Teleport/Divination nerfs, Calling nerfs, Wish nerfs.

But while powering up everyone else to caster level is cool, I don't like that they seem to give out minions and Leadership like candy.

Highlights of the Tomes: Book of Gears items/Monk class/General Writing Style/Power level/Recognition of what at will abilities actually are, and why there should be like infinity more of them.

As for Oslecamo... Well aside from the vitrol and the claim about not fixing the economy, which I'll leave for someone else with better understanding then me: The Time Stop at will you get at level 19, and it costs 3/5ths of your main casting mechanic to get it, and the only other thing it gives you is at will abilities to slow down your opponents, like Forcecages and Resilient Spheres, but no way to actually buff or anything to take advantage of said Time Stop.

I don't think 3/5ths of your main class ability counts as "no cost."

Oops. My bad.

But how exactly do the Tomes hand out Leadership like candy? Skimming through the pdf, only the Knight, the Barbarian, and the Marshall automatically get a Leadership feat. And the Barb doesn't get one until level 11, which means that it's not even going to come up in a lot of games. FnK also explicitly say in the Leadership section that Leadership feats are not for every game.

Honestly, I see the Leadership thing as more of a flavor bonus. I mean, having 25 level 3 dudes when you're level 10 is fun, but you're going to have no use for them in a dungeon. They're just going to do things like carry your stuff for you, clean your fortress, etc. Even a cohort is going to be better served by activities like making magic items for you, guarding important things, doing important sidequests, or filling roles in a small party-all things that will make the game run more smoothly. The simple fact that a doubling of party size will make battles and such run even slower than they already do in 3.5 is going to keep most people from trying to have their cohorts help with all of their fighting.

To add to your taking issue with Osclecamo's umbrage with at-will time stop: Time Stop is a level 19 ability. How many games have you played that actually go up until level 19? And when you factor in the fact that Tome battles run more slowly than non-Tome games because non-casters tend to have a lot more to choose from and the fact that you can tell most fantasy stories in a < Level 15 Tome game, the number of games where at-will Time Stop is actually going to come up in shockingly few.

[icefractal]

The Tomes are on the higher end, power-wise, but not actually as overwhelming as they appear at first glance. In a campaign with characters like straight sword-n-board Fighter, or blasting-based Wizard, they'd be over the top. But compared to battlefield-control Wizards and touch attacking Rogues, they're pretty much on target.

The thing that makes them look crazy though, is that they're upfront in what they give you. So while a standard WotC class might give you something like "+2 to AC", and then have that stack with some other things to be +6 and then with the right spell you can double it to +12, the Tome class would just say "+12 to AC, straight up". It should be noted that the Tome classes are designed to be effective without dumpster-diving, so if you start with a Tome class and then add cheese on top of it, that probably will be overpowered.

They also frequently grant large bonuses to things that aren't the class's primary focus, on the basis that even with the large bonus, it's still not quite as good as your main tactics, so all you're really gaining is a small amount of versatility. But when you just look at the class feature in isolation, the numbers can look huge.

That said, some of the Tome-inspired community material on TGD does have a significant amount of power creep from the Tomes themselves.


Edit: Also, even if you don't have any interest in the mechanics, a lot of the Tome material is worth checking out for the class and setting concepts. The idea behind almost every PrC in the Tome of Necromancy would make a good BBEG, for instance.

[Milskidasith]

The one thing I remember from the Tomes is that, IIRC, every fighter gets a class feature that is a one per round "The opponent can't do anything no save, decent range, can be taken out of turn, uses an immediate or free [can't recall] action" that basically makes them incapable of ever losing a 1v1 fight due to the sheer fact they automatically infinitely lock down all people.

Making everything T1 really doesn't help balance, because the point of T1 is it can win at everything. Even if you can have opponents that fight at that level, which is vastly more work, it's on a knife's edge of balance between instagibbing or being instagibbed (so rocket tag, but with a possible plateau of MAD in a small margin). Balancing towards T3 is better, since you can at least gauge your chances before you're dead/the enemy is dead.

[Kylarra]

It's an amusing read to be sure, but at a higher power level than my tastes.

[Dante & Vergil]

Yes, a lot of there stuff is extremely strong, but there are a few gems that are good ideas for some normal games, like their undead creation feats and rules are good, as are the "monsters as pcs" rules.

[Oslecamo]

My contribution to this thread: A lot of little nerfs get missed in the Tomes, like Teleport/Divination nerfs, Calling nerfs, Wish nerfs.

Calling wasn't nerfed at all last time I checked. Wish nerfs are useless because in any sane D&D game anyone trying to chain wishes would get hit by the DMG, while in Tome game you're assumed to spam wishes all you want, resulting in infinite scrolls and candles of invocation. Even with the best reading of the new item rules (wich are quite poorly worded as it is) that's still easily abuseable.

As for Oslecamo... Well aside from the vitrol and the claim about not fixing the economy, which I'll leave for someone else with better understanding then me: The Time Stop at will you get at level 19, and it costs 3/5ths of your main casting mechanic to get it, and the only other thing it gives you is at will abilities to slow down your opponents, like Forcecages and Resilient Spheres, but no way to actually buff or anything to take advantage of said Time Stop.

You get infinite scrolls/candle of invocation even with all the "nerfs". And even whitout those you still just need a little imagination to abuse at-will time stop. Infinity-1 is still Infinity. Not to mention a few of the Tomes own feats would allow you to easily bypass the above restriction.

I don't think 3/5ths of your main class ability counts as "no cost."

Again, when your power level is infinite to begin with (infinite scrolls and other cheap expendable magic items), losing 3/5 of your class still leaves you able to roll over anything out there. Even whitout those and whitout imagination a little work and you could easily use the remaining 2/5 to abuse it.

Main point is, like already pointed out by icefractal, the tomes classes are extremely strong whitout optimization. When you start puting optimization on top (like a little imagination+at will time stop) then they go broke pretty fast.

Wich isn't how wizards and clerics work. Fireball wizard and healbot cleric don't scare anyone.

[Malakar]

Calling wasn't nerfed at all last time I checked. Wish nerfs are useless because in any sane D&D game anyone trying to chain wishes would get hit by the DMG, while in Tome game you're assumed to spam wishes all you want, resulting in infinite scrolls and candles of invocation. Even with the best reading of the new item rules (wich are quite poorly worded as it is) that's still easily abuseable.

1) Candle's of Invocation don't exist. 2) Calling was nerfed in the big section on calling in the Tome of Fiends. 3) The point of Wish nerfs is that they make it so you a) can't chain wishes and b) when you do use Wish, that's totally fine and in the power level you are supposed to be in.

You get infinite scrolls/candle of invocation even with all the "nerfs". And even whitout those you still just need a little imagination to abuse at-will time stop. Infinity-1 is still Infinity. Not to mention a few of the Tomes own feats would allow you to easily bypass the above restriction.

Again, when your power level is infinite to begin with (infinite scrolls and other cheap expendable magic items), losing 3/5 of your class still leaves you able to roll over anything out there. Even whitout those and whitout imagination a little work and you could easily use the remaining 2/5 to abuse it..

So basically, if someone had some sort of fix that prevented you from abusing infinite scrolls, like in the Book of Gears or something, that fix would instantly remove all your problems and you would have nothing to complain about?

[Aran Banks]

Tome conversations!!

This (the first 5 links) is the tomes.

They're a bunch of high-power classes and feats (and even races!) created by Frank Trollman and Keith (and people at tgdmb.com) to address the problems of conflicting balance between classes. If you wanted to be a samurai, you had to accept sucking. If you wanted to play a wizard, you had to be OP.

So everything just got bumped up to wizard-level. At really high levels of power, it's actually much easier to make class features, because you have so much freedom.

[Tome] also fixed items with the Book of Gears. Which is awesome, and is probably the most relevant book to any game.

[Zaq]

I only have one real problem with Frank and K's tomes. When you read through them, you come across parts where they're simply explaining the logical natural consequences of the D&D world as written and presented by WotC... and then suddenly, without warning, there's a reinterpretation of the rules, or a new set of houserules, or however you want to put it. In other words, it's hard to tell when they're simply explaining existing material in that interesting way of theirs, and when they're actually introducing new material to replace or supplement the old. I don't think that there's a good solution to it (for them to divide up the Tomes into neatly labeled "THIS IS NEW" and "THIS IS NOT" sections would be inelegant at best), but it is still often kind of jarring. In fact, sometimes this holds true for fluff... some of their fluff is totally new, and some of it is just explaining what's been written. You can tell the difference if you know your stuff and keep on the lookout, but you still have to do so.

Overall, I do really like what they set out to do. A definite jump in power, as the others have said, but nonetheless a very interesting read, one way or another.

[Prime32]

Chapter 2 of Races of War (Playing Unusual Races) and the rules for undead PCs in Tome of Necromancy are probably the most popular sections of the Tomes, and the most likely to be allowed in a normal game. Note that the latter nerfs undead to make them more playable.

I've seen a few games where particularly weak feats were replaced with their Tome versions.

[Oslecamo]

They're a bunch of high-power classes and feats (and even races!) created by Frank Trollman and Keith (and people at tgdmb.com) to address the problems of conflicting balance between classes. If you wanted to be a samurai, you had to accept sucking. If you wanted to play a wizard, you had to be OP.

I have to be honest, I never realized fireball and magic missile were OP.

So everything just got bumped up to wizardpun-pun-level.

Fixed that for you. Because normal wizards aren't casting time stop at will last time I checked.

[Tome] also fixed items with the Book of Gears. Which is awesome, and is probably the most relevant book to any game.

Hmm, no they didn't. Book of Gears never got finished to start with, and as it stands it gives you infinite scrolls, candles of invocation and other consumables to go to town. No it doesn't matter if they put an arbitary limitation on self-buffs when you can stop time for all eternity for your character to do whatever he wants.

[Malakar]

Fixed that for you. Because normal wizards aren't casting time stop at will last time I checked.

Nor is anyone in the Tome rules before level 19, and then only at the cost of not being able to do much in a Time Stop.

Hmm, no they didn't. Book of Gears never got finished to start with, and as it stands it gives you infinite scrolls, candles of invocation and other consumables to go to town. No it doesn't matter if they put an arbitary limitation on self-buffs when you can stop time for all eternity for your character to do whatever he wants.

First of all, Book of Gears doesn't give you infinite scrolls, because Book of Gears doesn't say anything about scrolls. The reason you have infinite scrolls is because the Core rules give you infinite scrolls.

Second, what are you going to do in a perpetual Time Stop other than buff that matters?

Third, And so again, if they have a fix that prevents you from using scrolls to Time Stop over and over, would you then have any problem with the Tomes, or would you ignore this question so that you can continue to pursue your grudge against some homebrew you don't like for reasons that has nothing to do with using scrolls of Time Stop over and over?

[Amphetryon]

1) Candle's of Invocation don't exist.

vs.

infinite scrolls, candles of invocation

Sounds like you're not reading from the same sources.

[Oslecamo]

Nor is anyone in the Tome rules before level 19, and then only at the cost of not being able to do much in a Time Stop.

Infinite scrolls of time stop at lv1. You don't even need to be a warlock.

First of all, Book of Gears doesn't give you infinite scrolls, because Book of Gears doesn't say anything about scrolls. The reason you have infinite scrolls is because the Core rules give you infinite scrolls.

Wich most DMs fix by themselves, while tomes un-fixes that by saying infinite item loops are fine and dandy as long as they cost less than 15.000 GP.

Second, what are you going to do in a perpetual Time Stop other than buff that matters?

-You can go anywhere, ignore all traps and retrieve whatever you want.
-If you even bother with combat (because you don't, as you can loot whatever you want and nobody can do anything about it), you can build all kind of fun traps. Now you're there. And now you're inside walls of force filled with lava. Or rocks are falling over you for some millions damage.
-Even whitout the above you can still re-shape the battlefield whatever form you want so you know where everybody is and when you get out of time stop everybody has walls blocking their LoS and effect.

Third, And so again, if they have a fix that prevents you from using scrolls to Time Stop over and over, would you then have any problem with the Tomes, or would you ignore this question so that you can continue to pursue your grudge against some homebrew you don't like for reasons that has nothing to do with using scrolls of Time Stop over and over?

On the contrary, the infinite time stop is just one of the many problems, but in order to enumerate them properly I would be basically writing the tomes series again. If you choose to ignore all the problems with it it's up to you but don't pretend they aren't there.

Basically, for a homebrew that claims to "fix", the tomes are mainly adding new problems that are as easy if not easier to abuse than the basic rules.

[Malakar]

Infinite scrolls of time stop at lv1. You don't even need to be a warlock.

Please explain how a level 1 character can get infinite scrolls at level 1.

-You can go anywhere, ignore all traps and retrieve whatever you want.
-If you even bother with combat (because you don't, as you can loot whatever you want and nobody can do anything about it), you can build all kind of fun traps. Now you're there. And now you're inside walls of force filled with lava. Or rocks are falling over you for some millions damage.
-Even whitout the above you can still re-shape the battlefield whatever form you want so you know where everybody is and when you get out of time stop everybody has walls blocking their LoS and effect.

"You cannot move or harm items held, carried, or worn by a creature stuck in normal time, but you can affect any item that is not in another creature’s possession.

...You cannot enter an area protected by an antimagic field while under the effect of time stop."

So clearly you can't loot anything that anyone has on them, or that is in an AMF, and so that's most items you can't loot, I can imagine you might want to do something at some point. But I see that this objection is based on the infinite scrolls obsession, and not on the Conduit, since the Conduit can't do that, so I guess we are back to: Do you have any problems at all that aren't fixed by fixing infinite scrolls?

On the contrary, the infinite time stop is just one of the many problems, but in order to enumerate them properly I would be basically writing the tomes series again. If you choose to ignore all the problems with it it's up to you but don't pretend they aren't there.

But it's the only one you ever mention. You mention it six or seven times per post, but only ever that one. It's almost like all your other objections are personal issues that aren't actually problems but are just the fact that you don't like them, and you know that talking about them won't give you as much anti-Tome traction.

Basically, for a homebrew that claims to "fix", the tomes are mainly adding new problems that are as easy if not easier to abuse than the basic rules.

Yeah, problems like infinite scrolls that was already there and not added by the Tomes and... Oh right, other nameless problems that are surely a big deal and you just don't mention because you don't have time.

[WinWin]

I personally like the tomes for the fluff. The monk and fighter fixes seem OK but I have never tested them in a game.

As for wish and loops? They have been around since I was playing 2e. They probably existed in Advanced, if it matters. Rather than attempt to do away with power gaming, metagaming and TO, the tomes are up front about it, which puts a lot of people off.

I have not played in a long campaign where some kind of gentlemans agreement was not in effect. I assume the same goes for a tome game, given that the classes themselves have enough power. Resorting to dirty tricks in order to succeed is simply not needed. Unless you inted to break a game for the lulz...In which case I hope you find tolerant or like-minded people to play with.