[3.P] Why the dislike for Tome of Battle?

[Endarire]

Intro
Tome of Battle's incomplete errata aside, why the general dislike for this book?

My Experience
I've DMed campaigns where characters are Crusaders and Warblades and Swordsages and the world doesn't suddenly shatter. Surely, Tome of Battle melee has more options, and with this breadth of options comes power, but these options make melee more than, "I smash it with my hammer for some damage!" or "I smash it with my hammer X times as a full attack for some damage!"

Maybe it was because I optimized the foes that encounters seemed relevant. I'd think, "Let's swap that Dodge feat for Improved Initiative, or Weapon Focus for Martial Study. That should make things interesting." Unfortunately, third edition creatures were made with false pretenses, such as the expected 25 point buy and a 4- to 6-man group. If you (dis)agree, please remain civil about it!

Ahem. I've played Wizards since second edition, back when they were called Mages. I liked being "the caster" because it meant I did more than hit things. Direct damage is an option, but being able to summon reinforcements, (pre)buff my allies, debuff my enemies, and rearrange the battlefield is a lot more interesting and mentally challenging than, "On my turn, I whack the creature. Roll for me while I use a bathroom."

Simulationism - The "Unreality" of Maneuvers
The simulationist in me says, "But why can I only use this move once per fight unless I refresh it?" To that I say, "I accept the abstract nature because it's more fun, and I refer you to spell slots which are fire and forget, but on a daily basis. Also, I have done real-life swordfighting with padded weapons. I sometimes need to take short breaks to 'recover' myself before pressing on."

Martial Base Classes - Core versus Tome of Battle
Some people believe ToB's base classes make the core martial classes obsolete. This is not necessarily true. A maxed STR half-orc Barbarian is still a melee threat, but WotC realized the old classes weren't cutting it. Remember all those "Fighter Fix" and "Paladin Fix" and "Monk Fix" threads? WotC did something about the old classes by subtly offering us Tome of Battle that makes melee abilities seem to scale in power as characters level, akin to how casters get more potent spells.

Now melee characters can do more than their one or two tricks. Now, when melee wants to branch out, they can spend a feat on Martial Stance or Martial Study and get a level-appropriate ability. Before, a level 15 melee man who wanted to try his hand at archery had to start over with a level 1 feat, Point Blank Shot. Contrast that to a Wizard who spent some money or gained a level and could pick another spell of his highest available casting level.

Another perk of relying heavily on maneuvers and stances is characters who are less gear-dependent. Instead of needing to fill their slots with +X gear (and face it, the core rules encourage this), martial adepts can do impressive combative stunts even if they're in prison and naked.

Maneuver Power
There are a lot of maneuvers. So many of them are utilitarian, like swapping a save for a Concentration check or moving 50' as a standard/move/swift action. Melee needs to keep up with the swift baddies who often outreach them, so melee characters aren't pounded into space dust trying to get into range with a Colossal creature.

Many dislike maneuvers that give +XdY damage, effectively turning a full attack's worth of damage into an all-or-nothing standard action strike.

My main question is, "Why?"

Why do you dislike melee characters who can move more than 5' per turn and do something especially useful? Complete Champion gave us a Barbarian1 substitution level for Pounce, letting melee characters full attack on a charge. This is more powerful than the Pouncing Strike maneuver (Tome of Battle 88), normally requiring Warblade9 or Swordsage9.

Guess which option is more commonly allowed. It rhymes with "Zion Zotem."

Conclusion
Yes, there's a lot of nonstandard D&D flavor in this book. Yes, the maneuver system feels like we played for a 4E playtest. With all of this, however, there's a lot of cool.

Ultimately, why the dislike for Tome of Battle?

[Greenish]

Ah, it's been a while since the last one.

[dsmiles]

Not gonna go there. No grenades in the punchbowl today...

[drengnikrafe]

How about unfamiliarity from the DM? I mean, if you've been playing for a few years in 3.x and never had the ToB, then suddenly a player buys it and wants to play a warblade... Well, that's a new book you have to read. And unlike other books, where you generally get add-ons or mostly familiar abilities, you get to learn a whole new sub-system from scratch.

[Greenish]

Not gonna go there. No grenades in the punchbowl today...

Your reply to the thread is that you're not going to reply?

Oh, woe is me, my comment has been topped in unhelpfulnity!

[Tetsubo 57]

For me it was that the book just didn't 'feel' like D&D. I realize that is not an overly helpful answer. It was a style of play that fell outside what I consider to be D&D. I still own the book but I will probably never use it for anything.

[Faleldir]

{Scrubbed}

[Greenish]

{Scrubbed}

Who are you talking about?

[Tetsubo 57]

{Scrubbed}

With the PHB II I felt that the martial non-casters were covered rather nicely.

And it was that 'test' that turned me off. Encounter powers just aren't D&D to me. They take me outside of the game. Powers that only work based on how many encounters you have per day are just wrong to me.

[Eldariel]

What dislike?

And it was that 'test' that turned me off. Encounter powers just aren't D&D to me. They take me outside of the game. Powers that only work based on how many encounters you have per day are just wrong to me.

Then just use the suggested "Encounter = 5 minutes" or my preferred "Encounter = 1 minute" and just use that instead. That is, replace every instance of "encounter" in the game with "1 minute" or "10 rounds"; that's about how long longer singular encounters tend to last in my experience so it tends to be rather accurate and removes the metagame concept of "encounter" from the equation. Don't forget to use it for rage of all kinds and such too, tho.

Indeed, this complaint feels a bit strange when the concept is taken to game mechanics already in PHB, and is supereasy to change if it rubs you the wrong way.

[Faleldir]

Who are you talking about?

Is that a rhetorical question? If you mean "that's not true", say it!

[Runestar]

I blame wotc for brainwashing us into thinking that +2 damage per attack is acceptable for a fighter, while wizards can get away with stopping time and gating in solars.

Suddenly, a class gets the ability to deal 8d6 fire damage at lv15 and everyone starts throwing a hissy fit.

[Prime32]

Except that ToB doesn't have encounter powers. Would you say that dragons "aren't D&D" because they can use their breath weapons every 1d4 rounds?

Powers that only work based on how many encounters you have per day are just wrong to me.

I'm pretty sure that 4e's encounter powers can be used at will outside of battle. It's like taking 10.

[Greenish]

And it was that 'test' that turned me off. Encounter powers just aren't D&D to me. They take me outside of the game. Powers that only work based on how many encounters you have per day are just wrong to me.

Well, all the martial classes have their recovery methods, so they aren't really based on number of encounters.

[Edit]:

Is that a rhetorical question? If you mean "that's not true", say it!

I've never seen anyone claim that tiers wouldn't exist or that 3.5 is balanced based on the existence of ToB.

If I meant "that's not true", I would say it. Instead, I'm asking about where you got the idea. (For all I know, "3aboo" might be another RPG forum or something.)

[The Glyphstone]

Here we go again...

[Noneoyabizzness]

ToB is not a bad book. it is not over powered.

why people dislike it is an addition to a new system that wasn't given time to find its audience before a shift in editions. similar to the 2e player option books, it offered somethign interestign to many games willing to try it out. but why try out and work in a new system when you prepare to change all the rules anyway

[Serenity]

Speaking as someone who very, very much likes Tome of Battle, I'm going to attempt to give a fair and balanced account of the other side.

Some people feel that the Tome of Battle is too powerful. Now, this may arise from a misunderstanding of the Tome of Battle rules, but we often forget that it can be perfectly accurate to individual games. If your characters aren't particularly optimized, if party makeup includes blaster wizards and healbot clerics, rather than Batman and CoDZilla, than the ease of optimization of ToB characters can allow them to outshine others without intending to.

For many, it's a sticking point that the ToB classes are stealth replacements for core warriors. They may not completely obsolete Fighter, Monks, and Paladins, but they clearly were designed as 'Mark IIs' so to speak.

The feel of the mechanics can be an issue. Now, flavor is almost infinitely mutable, of course, but it still does count for something, and your first impression of Tome of Battle probably recalls shounen anime such as Ranma 1/2, wuxia movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and other Eastern fantasy--all of which are admitted influences on the Book of Nine Swords.

My personal feelings are that, on the whole, Tome of Battle is one of the best-written, most mechanically sound books in 3.5, and I have no trouble with the flavor, or altering it as necessary. But none of the above are necessarily illegitimate criticisms.

[Caphi]

With the PHB II I felt that the martial non-casters were covered rather nicely.

And it was that 'test' that turned me off. Encounter powers just aren't D&D to me. They take me outside of the game. Powers that only work based on how many encounters you have per day are just wrong to me.

I'm gonna regret getting into this topic, but the Tome of Battle explicitly defines "the end of an encounter" as one minute without making or receiving an attack and gives Crusader and Warblade a rapid reload mechanic completely separate from encounter bounds and offers Adaptive Style in case mere refresh doesn't cut it for you. The metagame concept of "encounter" need never come up.

[Skorj]

If I meant "that's not true", I would say it. Instead, I'm asking about where you got the idea. (For all I know, "3aboo" might be another RPG forum or something.)

I can only assume that "3aboo" is a disparaging term for those who like 3.x D&D, and an attempt to start an edition war. Best to stay far away from this.

I've been mentally substituting "3 minutes" for "encounter" since I encountered the term, and I really like encounter powers that way. The whole "once per encounter" thing seemed too 4th-wall-breaking, but a power you can use once per 3 minutes seems perfectly straightforward. It makes sense to me IC as well for martial feats - some are so physically stressful that you just need to rest a bit, exactly like resting between sets when lifting weights.

Ultimately, I think "once per round", "Once every 3 minutes (or whatever)", and "once per day" are a great way to set up a game system for the perspective of taming the record keeping beast without any loss of verisimilitude.

[Curmudgeon]

If I want to play with per-encounter maneuvers, I can play 4e. Plus most of the maneuvers aren't very interesting: just different amounts of damage dealt.

[TooManyBadgers]

[I'll preface this by saying that I really don't like D&D. I used to run 3.5 because it was the system my group was familiar with. My group made some assumptions and played in a style which don't seem to be common to D&D players.]


I dislike ToB because it exaggerates the central quarrel I have with D&D of any edition.


The whole system is based on providing characters with explicit options derived from class abilities, rather than player control.

In the same way that Complete Scoundrel's skill tricks make it implicit that a character can't mimic Indiana Jones without the Whip Climber trick, the maneuver system makes it implicit that a warrior cannot eg. use his superhuman concentration to overcome magic disruptions without Moment of Perfect Mind.

This mentality frustrates me. I like to allow players to do things in new or different ways. It makes the game feel more free-flowing and interesting. When I get a group together to play an rpg, it's not to compete, it's to structure a series of "wouldn't this be cool?" moments. I won't hesitate to allow an acrobat to balance atop of a Solid Fog effect; I'll let a Houdini-styled rogue use Escape Artist to get out of a Dominate; I have no problem with an archer blinding a dragon with arrows to the eyes.

When these actions are organic, not drawn mechanically from a stock list of options, they feel like awesome. They're fun. They're things to remember.
When they come from an explicit menu of stances or boosts, they're just the things that a certain class can do. They're what characters are expected to do.

And once a player invests levels and feats to be able to do these tricks, it feels like it would be a slight to them to allow the Barbarian player to do similar things without the similar investments.

The menu-of-abilities design is a good one for a wargame or other competitive setting. But I'm really not interested in playing in such a system when I'm roleplaying. I'm interested in players thinking up cool things for their characters to do while they derail whatever plans I have for a campaign.



Maneuvers also place a particularly high emphasis on the single longest, driest and least interesting part of roleplaying: mechanical character creation. Players are already encouraged to dumpster-dive through libraries, tallying up prerequisites for levels and feats that their characters won't achieve for months or years. The tangle of maneuver prerequisites just adds another layer -- if a player wants to be sure not to ever run out of new maneuver options, they have to plan and diagram the acquisition and loss of 20 levels of separate abilities. Anything which drags out this portion of "gameplay" is a thing I'd prefer to avoid.


And yes, I realize D&D is very much the wrong game for me.


[Before anyone pounces on me for disfavoring ToB's menu options while still tolerating the mechanics of spellcasters, I frankly dislike spellcasters too. Except for the warlock and the UA Incantation system, anyway.]

[Cedrass]

Plus most of the maneuvers aren't very interesting: just different amounts of damage dealt.

You need to look at Tiger Claw and Setting Sun. (And maybe Desert Wind a bit too). Most offer some kind of bonus with the damage they do. Setting Sun as most of it's maneuver moving you or your opponent, making field control an option.

Or well, I doubt you'll change your mind about it. But I felt like I needed to precise that no, all maneuvers aren't only different types of damage.

[Aroka]

"On my turn, I whack the creature. Roll for me while I use a bathroom."

This is such a perfect sum-up of what is wrong with (A)D&D combat systems. We did that all the time when playing AD&D. "Yeah, I'll keep whacking the thing, roll for me, I'll be back."

If combat is so tactically bland and repetitive, and so short on options, that that actually works out as well as anything, there's something seriously wrong.

Try doing that in The Riddle of Steel.

FWIW ToB is awesome. No way around it. "Viable melee characters with interesting options" can only be a good thing.

[Starbuck_II]

In the same way that Complete Scoundrel's skill tricks make it implicit that a character can't mimic Indiana Jones without the Whip Climber trick, the maneuver system makes it implicit that a warrior cannot eg. use his superhuman concentration to overcome magic disruptions without Moment of Perfect Mind.

This mentality frustrates me. I like to allow players to do things in new or different ways. It makes the game feel more free-flowing and interesting. When I get a group together to play an rpg, it's not to compete, it's to structure a series of "wouldn't this be cool?" moments. I won't hesitate to allow an acrobat to balance atop of a Solid Fog effect; I'll let a Houdini-styled rogue use Escape Artist to get out of a Dominate; I have no problem with an archer blinding a dragon with arrows to the eyes.

IF and only IF, if you have a DM who didn't mind you going off the rails and do stuff not covered by the rules AND didn't make attempting too difficult/complicated.

Most of us can't be sure we will. Skill tricks show that they can be balanced and not overtly complicated.

Maneuvers also place a particularly high emphasis on the single longest, driest and least interesting part of roleplaying: mechanical character creation. Players are already encouraged to dumpster-dive through libraries, tallying up prerequisites for levels and feats that their characters won't achieve for months or years. The tangle of maneuver prerequisites just adds another layer -- if a player wants to be sure not to ever run out of new maneuver options, they have to plan and diagram the acquisition and loss of 20 levels of separate abilities. Anything which drags out this portion of "gameplay" is a thing I'd prefer to avoid.


And yes, I realize D&D is very much the wrong game for me.

Yeah, it is. Prestige classes and feats should have been your first clue (silly Preqs). D&D decided to use them meaning you have to plan out choices or you will not qualify.

[UndeadCleric]

For me it was that the book just didn't 'feel' like D&D. I realize that is not an overly helpful answer. It was a style of play that fell outside what I consider to be D&D. I still own the book but I will probably never use it for anything.

This is the reason I dont plan on ever using it.

[FMArthur]

I can't use ToB because my group seems to be endlessly satisfied with the core classes. Not that it's banned or anything, but for the most part they're super-low optimization (to the degree that a druid player struggles the most) and I just know ToB would feel grossly overpowered to them.

[Kalrik]

I never used it or owned it. Didn't have the money back then. The idea was great and a wonderful upgrade for melee classes. However, having to learn a new system and combat rules was not something I was going to do when I was a young DM.

[Aroka]

(to the degree that a druid player struggles the most)

How is that even possible? Take a bear animal companion, wildshape into a bear, you're better than the fighter.

[Terazul]

I seriously don't get the "it doesn't feel like D&D" crowd. What in heaven's name does D&D "feel" like? We have at this point at least a hundred different classes with all sorts of wacky abilities with all sorts of sources coming from every plane of existence, but the guy who can swing his sword really well somehow breaks verisimilitude for you? It just boggles me.

But yeah. Alot people just get that kneejerk reaction. "+2d6 on an attack at level 3? OUTRAGEOUS!", and I can see that happening if you aren't familiar with the overall metagame of what's ridiculous and what isn't, and that's fine if you don't want to use it because it's beyond what your group's play level is. Mechanics-wise it's no more complicated than vancian casting already is. Flavor wise... man, It's funny because people probably wouldn't complain half as much if they just called Swordsage "Blade Wizard" (which they do in the description anyway) to begin with and called it's maneuvers a special kind of spell. Which is silly to me.

[Starbuck_II]

I can't use ToB because my group seems to be endlessly satisfied with the core classes. Not that it's banned or anything, but for the most part they're super-low optimization (to the degree that a druid player struggles the most) and I just know ToB would feel grossly overpowered to them.

That only disqualifies the classes. You could take Martial Study for 1/battle maneuver.
Try something small like (jump as swift action: you count as running for DCs).