Learning ToB

[Admiral Squish]

So, I've finally submitted to the idea of ToB. I'd skimmed it a few times until now but I finally got down the meat of it lately. So far, it seems pretty cool.

But then again, when I was new at D&D, monks seemed awesome.

So, seeing as I'm so new at it, I was hoping some of the more experienced players could point out some of the better maneuvers and such. Are there any really top-notch maneuvers or stances that I should ALWAYS be sure to take? Are there some I should avoid like the plague? What are some good ones that take at first level, which ones stay relevant through the whole career? What are some of your favorite ones? That sort of thing. So, playground, your help would sincerely be appreciated.

[Koury]

There is a Rog/Fgt/Swordsage in my current real life game who submitted a complete maneuver progression.

It's a pretty solid list, really.

Key:
- = Maneuver
x = Stance
S = Swapped

Spoiler

Show

5 (Level 2)
-Burning Brand L2 DW Boost
-Clever Positioning L2 SS Strike
-Cloak of Deception L2 SH Boost
-Drain Vitality L2 SH Strike
-Shadow Jaunt L2 SH
-Mountain Hammer L2 SD Strike
x Child of Shadows L1 SH Stance
6
-Distracting Ember L1 DW Boost
7 (L3)
-Insightful Strike L3 DM Strike
x Assassin's Stance L3 SH Stance
8
-Fan the Flames L3 DW Strike
S Mountain Hammer L2 SD Strike --> Bonecrusher L3 SD Strike
9 (L4)
-Obscuring Shadow Veil L4 SH Strike
x Dance of the Spider L3 SH Stance
10
-Hand of Death L4 SH Strike
S Clever Positioning L2 SS Strike --> Mind Strike L4 DM Strike
11 (L5)
-Bloodletting Strike L5 SH Boost
12
-Disrupting Blow L5 DM Strike
S Shadow Jaunt L2 SH --> Shadow Stride L5 SH
13 (L6)
-Stalker in the Night L6 SH Strike
x Step of the Dancing Moth L5 SH Stance
14
-Ring of Fire L6 DW Strike
S Bonecrusher L3 SD Strike --> Irresistible Mountain Strike L6 SD Strike
15 (L7)
- Death In The Dark L7 SH Strike
16
- Shadow Blink L7 SH
S Fan The Flames L3 DW Strike --> Salamander Charge L7 DW Strike
17 (L8)
- Diamond Nightmare Blade L8 DM Strike
18
- Wyrm's Flame L8 DW Strike
x Walk On Air L8 SH Stance
S Irresistible Mointain Strike L6 SD Strike --> Enervating Strike L8 SH Strike
19 (L9)
- Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike L9 SH Strike
20
-Time Stands Still L9 DM Strike
S Salamander Charge L7 DW Strike --> Inferno Blast L9 DW Strike

[Greenish]

The ones that replace saves with Concentration checks are pretty awesome. Better bonus, based on Con bonus instead of Wis or Dex, no auto-fail on 1. Diamond Mind is pretty strong in general.

White Raven Tactics is hugely powerful, even without using it on yourself. White Raven might also be the strongest school if you have other melee guys in your group.

Iron Heart Surge is really poorly written, but the idea behind it is solid. Otherwise, the school offers decent counters and a few area attacks.

Devoted Spirit has Ex healing, very strong strikes and good tanky stuff, such as Thicket of Blades, Iron Guard's Glare and Defensive Rebuke.

Tiger Claw offers mostly boosts and strikes for straight damage. It's good at that, and offers some support for TWF.

Stone Dragon has an annoying limitation: it's maneuvers can only be initiated when standing on firm ground. It's good side is that the maneuvers have very few prerequisites. Mountain Hammer line does decent damage and ignores all DR and hardness, making it possible to escape from an adamantine box using nothing but a tin spoon. Stone Bones gives a nifty survivability peak on low levels.

Desert Wind has lots of blasty powers, unfortunately with fire, so often resisted. Also offers nice boosts though, such as 1-round flanker with swift action (Distracting Ember), reach (Burning Brand) and damage (Burning Blade).

Shadow Hand offers debuffs, non-hp damage, teleports and miss chances, stuff usually reserved for casters.

Setting Sun has counters coming out of it's ears. Also, you get to toss enemies around like rag dolls.

[Merk]

The material in ToB is generally pretty well-balanced. You can pretty much just pick out maneuvers that sound cool and you'll be effective. That said, here are a few stand-outs:

• White Raven Tactics (3rd level white raven maneuver) essentially allows you to pass your turn off to an ally, including yourself.
• Iron Heart Surge (3rd level iron heart maneuver) allows you to "shrug off" any effect on you. It's somewhat infamously poorly written, but if you use it as intended it's a useful defense.
• Thicket of Blades (3rd level devoted spirit stance) allows you to make attacks of opportunity even on 5 foot steps and withdraws.
• Stance of Immortal Fortitude (8th level devoted spirit stance) prevents you from dying from HP damage.
• Assassin's Stance (3rd level shadow hand stance) gives you +2d6 sneak attack, which lets you qualify for stuff like craven and ambush feats if you're not a rogue.

[Godless_Paladin]

The most notable ones are probably Iron Heart Surge (for being poorly written enough that you pretty much have to establish what your group's interpretation of it is if you want to use it) and White Raven Tactics (which, like most action-granting abilities, is amazingly good).

Don't let that worry you on the book; that's a pretty low ratio of material to silliness as far as 3.5e goes.

As for what features to point out for your character? Oi, I don't know, there's just so many different build possibilities out of that book. It has a lot of potential, and there are a lot of worthwhile maneuvers that stay relevant. There aren't a whole lot of "auto-include" choices, and that speaks well of the book.

[Morph Bark]

Besides Iron Heart Surge and White Raven Tactics, luckily few things in ToB are hard to misinterpret by its RAW, and what is there can be taken care off by a simple, more thorough re-reading.

[Godless_Paladin]

Besides Iron Heart Surge and White Raven Tactics, luckily few things in ToB are hard to misinterpret by its RAW, and what is there can be taken care off by a simple, more thorough re-reading.

Oh, there's nothing to misinterpret about White Raven Tactics.

It's just really, really good. Like Celerity good.

[*] Stance of Immortal Fortitude (8th level devoted spirit stance) prevents you from dying from HP damage.

Pffft, there's a 4th level Immediate Action cleric spell that does it better in Spell Compendium. It's nothing too special.

The ones that replace saves with Concentration checks are pretty awesome. Better bonus, based on Con bonus instead of Wis or Dex, no auto-fail on 1.

These are indeed gold.

[Morph Bark]

Oh, there's nothing to misinterpret about White Raven Tactics.

It's just really, really good. Like Celerity good.

Considering I've heard stuff about an infinite-turn loop for yourself involving White Raven Tactics (but having neither seen proof of how it works, nor heard of it being disproved), I'm thinking there is something to misinterpret.

[Godless_Paladin]

Considering I've heard stuff about an infinite-turn loop for yourself involving White Raven Tactics (but having neither seen proof of how it works, nor heard of it being disproved), I'm thinking there is something to misinterpret.

IIRC, wasn't that a result of the silliness with the CustServ interpretation of how the Crusader recovery mechanic worked?

I believe Tleilaxu Ghola even produced a thread that broke down why said CustServ ruling was self-contradictory in formal logic. Unfortunately a quick google search did not produce it, so either I am not using the right search terms or WotC nuked it with their forum revamp.

[Master_Rahl22]

I agree with the posters above. There's not much that's a must-have, it depends on what you want to make and what you like. I really like Shadow Hand, so all of my Swordsages have several maneuvers from it. I also really like Diamond Mind, so my Warblades and Swordsages grab some things from there too. Just pick a concept and go with it. Avoid obviously bad choices, like the Devoted Spirit maneuvers that mention a shield if you don't plan to use one, and you're set.

[Endarire]

Tome of Battle for Dummies

Tome of Battle Build Compendium

Maneuver Cards

Endarire's Revised Stone Dragon Discipline

[Admiral Squish]

Awesome tips so far.

One question that came up, and I can't find anything about it in the text: Martial Study gets you one maneuver from any discipline, no matter if your class gets that discipline or not?

[Koury]

Awesome tips so far.

One question that came up, and I can't find anything about it in the text: Martial Study gets you one maneuver from any discipline, no matter if your class gets that discipline or not?

Thats right. If it only allowed you to pick from schools you currently had access to it wouldn't be all that useful to non-adepts.

[Chrono22]

Correct, but keep in mind that you still have to meet the initiator level requirements of the maneuvers, and any other special requirements as well.
So you can't choose Rallying Strike until you have at least 2 other Devoted Spirit maneuvers and an initiator level of at least 11.
This isn't such a big deal, though, since some of the best maneuvers are level 1.

[Duke of URL]

ToB (with the exceptions of typos and one or two instances of poor wording) may very well be the best-balanced 3.5 out there. It's very, very hard to make a bad martial adept. (At least, by accident. It's always easy to make a bad character if you're trying.) As someone pointed out on another thread, if the normal optimization range is 1-10, virtually any ToB build falls in the 6-8 range.

As for selecting maneuvers and stances, it's best to figure out what disciplines you want to specialize in, and then select maneuvers that will help you meet those prerequisites down the road, filling in any remaining maneuvers known to cover other bases. (Remember that for prerequisites, stances count as maneuvers and when swapping one maneuver for another at even levels, a maneuver can satisfy a prerequisite even as it's being swapped out!)

For swordsages, I'd say pick two disciplines; warblades and crusaders should probably focus on one.

[Godless_Paladin]

ToB (with the exceptions of typos and one or two instances of poor wording) may very well be the best-balanced 3.5 out there. It's very, very hard to make a bad martial adept. (At least, by accident. It's always easy to make a bad character if you're trying.) As someone pointed out on another thread, if the normal optimization range is 1-10, virtually any ToB build falls in the 6-8 range.

Not only that, but we're talking other sweet bonuses too, like having one of the smoothest models for multiclassing in 3.5e

[Duke of URL]

Not only that, but we're talking other sweet bonuses too, like having one of the smoothest models for multiclassing in 3.5e

Indeed. In fact, it was ToB's multiclassing model that inspired the idea that led to Boundless Horizon's multiclassing system.

[DeltaEmil]

It's still a little bit needlessly complicated, what with two martial classes not giving their respective full levels and you having to theoretically keep track which martial adept has which maneuver and so, but yeah, it's a little bit better than normal multi-classing for spell-casters.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Concerning pre-requisites, though it may make sense that you need to know how to use lower-level maneuvers to learn the most powerful ones, I think that is kind of punishing the martial adepts (for example, wizards can just select the higher version of a spell without even knowing the lesser version (a wiz can select force missiles even if he doesn't know how to cast magic missile.)

So I have considered to ditch the maneuver pre-reqs for most maneuvers (except for the level 9, I think they deserve them as essentially that is the pinnacle of the style).

[Yuki Akuma]

There is a ninth-level maneuver without prerequisites, you know.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Actually no, I didn't know, but I guess it is the Stone Dragon maneuver.

[Zaydos]

Actually no, I didn't know, but I guess it is the Stone Dragon maneuver.

Yep, it's Stone Dragon. Also note that maneuvers with high prerequisites tend (not always) to be either Swordsage only, or better than ones with low prerequisites of the same level. Although now I wonder how giving spells prerequisites to be learned would work. But that's too much effort.

[Greenish]

There is a ninth-level maneuver without prerequisites, you know.

Meh, many of the 9th level maneuvers are somewhat underwhelming. +100 damage or +2d6 con damage for a standard action attack? You're level 17+, get a hold of yourself! Heal or Finger of Death if you hit the enemy? Bleh.

[Morph Bark]

Meh, many of the 9th level maneuvers are somewhat underwhelming. +100 damage or +2d6 con damage for a standard action attack? You're level 17+, get a hold of yourself! Heal or Finger of Death if you hit the enemy? Bleh.

Duskblade 3/(something with 9th level spells) indeed can do better.

[Keld Denar]

The best way to do it is to just build a couple sample characters yourself. Or just a couple of sample manevuer progressions. Start with the simple...make a Warblade6 or a Swordsage 6. Then make something a bit more complicated, like a Warblade4/Swordsage2/Warblade+2. Then try something really goofy like a Warblade3/Fighter2/Warblade+1/Crusader+2/Warblade+2/BloodclawMaster4 or something.

Also, don't forget that at CLASS level 4, 6, 8, etc for each class, you can swap out any one manevuer for any other manevuer you qualify for. Its only based on CLASS level, though, so a Warblade1/Fighter2/Warblade+1 couldn't swap out a manevuer, but a Warblade4 could. Also, because of the wording (which was further clarified in the FAQ), the manevuer you are swapping out still counts when adding up prereqs for the one you are swapping in, IE if you know Leading the Attack as your only WR manevuer, you can swap it out for White Raven Tactics (prereq 1 WR manevuer) because it counts itself when you swap it. Also, you don't need to maintain prereqs for manevuers. If you learn a manevuer that requires 3 prereqs, then at the next couple levels you swap out 2 of those 3 prereq manevuers, you won't lose the high prereq one and it'll still be prefectly usable.

For multiclass Intiators, try making a table like this:
{table=header]Class|IL|Gain|Lose|Stance
Warblade1|1|Wolf Fang Strike, Steel Wind, Saphire Nightmare Blade||Punishing Stance
Warblade2|2|Sudden Leap||
Fighter1|2|||
Fighter2|3|||
Warblade3|4|Emerald Razor||
Warblade4|5|Iron Heart Surge|Wolf Fang Strike|Pearl of Black Doubt[/table]

etc Keep in mind that you might have to track muliple ILs at the same time if you splash back and forth between Warblade/Swordsage/Crusader.