What are your opinions on ToB?

[The Oakenshield]

My group has been playing 3.5 for a few years now, and they are finally coming to the realization that playing a martial character can be a lot less exiting than playing a caster.

However, in many cases, my players would much rather play a melee, combative character rather than a caster.

So I am wondering whether Tome of Battle would be a good purchase, to add more excitement to melee.

What are your opinion son ToB and my predicament?

[SurlySeraph]

ToB is great, and I highly recommend it. I was very suspicious of it until I actually read it, at which point I realized that pretty much all the maneuvers are things most melee types should have a way to do anyway.

[The Glyphstone]

Sounds like you're exactly the sort of group ToB was written for. There's plenty of dissent against it here, but just as much for it. Me, I love it.

[Grynning]

You're going to be inundated with a ton of YES TOB = PURE WIN on this board. And for the most part, that's correct. It has a few editing mistakes and a little wonkiness like a lot of D&D books, but it's probably the best thing to ever happen to non-casters in 3.5.

It's funny, I really disliked the book when it came out and it took me years to come around, but now it's in my "must-have" category for any serious 3.5 fan. Just so much creativity and flexibility in the martial characters and disciplines, and a pile of cool feats and prestige classes too. Buy it, learn it, love it.

/thread

[Runestar]

It helps make melee fun again by giving them options similar to what casters already enjoy.

Definitely a must have. Or at least, I can't go back to ever playing a fighter again.

[true_shinken]

Gee, ToB thread on the same day as the monk thread? If we have the weekly 'does the paladin fall' thread today as well, we'll be out of subjects for the whole week! /sarcasm

I like ToB. It's a good book, it has a cool shonen manga feel that I throroughly enjoy and I also happen to like most of the illustrations.
Still, I never got to actually yell FIVE SHADOW CREEPING ICE ENERVATION STRIKE in-game and it saddens me.

[Dusk Eclipse]

a big +1 tot he ToB is great crowd, awesome book... and true_shinken I feel your pain that has to be the most awesome maneuver name EVER!!!

[Douglas]

For adding flexibility, options, and variation to melee combat, ToB is extremely good. That is exactly the thing it was primarily built for.

The big thing you have to watch out for is that it's a lot better optimized "out of the box" than core melee classes, so it gives a strong impression of being overpowered to groups not used to high optimization. If your group plays batman Wizards, DMM (Persist) Clerics, Shock Trooper Frenzied Berzerkers, Natural Spell Druids, and so on, ToB classes will fit right in and just provide extra options without really raising the power level. They might even seem weak compared to everything else, depending on how well you build them. If your group plays Weapon Specialization Fighters, unarmed Monks, Soulknives, blaster Wizards, healbot Clerics, etc., even a poorly built ToB character might utterly outclass the party.

[Runestar]

Warblades actually deal less damage on a strike compared to full attacks from normal fighters or barbs (not the dungeoncrashing/shock-trooping kind). They are however, more versatile and able to deal with a variety of scenarios.

[tyckspoon]

Warblades actually deal less damage on a strike compared to full attacks from normal fighters or barbs (not the dungeoncrashing/shock-trooping kind). They are however, more versatile and able to deal with a variety of scenarios.

Mind, if you're talking about the comparison between a Warblade and a not-well-optimized Fighter or Barbarian, I'm pretty sure you can pull more damage on an Emerald Razor + Full Power Attack or a well-rolled (Gem) Nightmare Blade than your traditional Fighter reliably does on a Full Attack, because that Fighter is probably fairly used to whiffing his lowest attack and possibly even his second-highest attack if he's trying to Power Attack too aggressively (and if he's not Power Attacking with some degree of real risk in his to-hits, he's probably not going to beat out the maneuvers for damage even when he does hit.)

[AslanCross]

I had a hard time figuring out what it was about the first time I read it. The more I tried reading it properly, though, the more I warmed up to it. ToB is perhaps the most balanced fix for martial characters, and I daresay the "Magic by any other name" criticism of ToB is based only on a superficial resemblance and usually given by people who really didn't read the book much.

[Tetsubo 57]

I will apparently be the dissenting opinion on the topic of ToB. I didn't like it. For me, it fell outside what I want in a 3.5 game. I saw the writing on the wall with this book that things were moving in a direction that I didn't like. I think that the PHB II answers all of the martial questions I have ever had. I felt that it meshed far better with the 3.5 system than the ToB. But that's just me.

[Chrono22]

I kind of decided spellcasters dominating my high level combats was something I didn't want in the game, so I've made a bunch of house rules to try to fix it. Nothing works so well, though, as actually bringing them closer to the mages' level of power by giving them something to do besides full attack.
Basically ToB is like... an improved version of normal melee combat, that makes more sense and works more fluidly. It functions similarly to spells, but with less supernatural effects and more extraordinary attacks.

[BobVosh]

This forum falls under the "love it" section for the most part, but this trope describes it very well. I think the...warblade is on the wizard website. They have one of the three base classes on the wizard site, and a smattering of the maneuvers. I recommending looking at it, then deciding if you want to use it.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Another +1 for ToB. It's quick to learn, hard to screw things up, and fun to dip. Other than straight arcanists, who really don't need much love (I know, I love to play them), it's hard to imagine a character who couldn't be enhanced with a few of those nine swords.

[Runestar]

Mind, if you're talking about the comparison between a Warblade and a not-well-optimized Fighter or Barbarian, I'm pretty sure you can pull more damage on an Emerald Razor + Full Power Attack or a well-rolled (Gem) Nightmare Blade than your traditional Fighter reliably does on a Full Attack, because that Fighter is probably fairly used to whiffing his lowest attack and possibly even his second-highest attack if he's trying to Power Attack too aggressively (and if he's not Power Attacking with some degree of real risk in his to-hits, he's probably not going to beat out the maneuvers for damage even when he does hit.)

Any fighter worth his salt should be able to crank his attack bonuses high enough to hit reliably, even on his worst attack (especially at higher lvs, with the ability to take 10 via weapon supremacy).

I also factor in abilities granting extra attacks such as haste, which standard-action strikes cannot benefit from.

Still, the benefit of strikes is that the warblade can move and still hit for respectable damage, while the fighter is reduced to a single attack for pitiful damage if he is denied the full-attack action for whatever reason. So you trade damage for consistency.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I'm a big fan of it, too, as it gives melee classes so many more options to them on a whim.

[Mikka]

Throne of Bhaal is awesome, but i suggest you play Shadows of Amn , and probably Baldurs Gate 1 before starting it : )

[Tytalus]

It's probably the best book to come out of 3.5.

Very few items are unclear/problematic as written (Iron Heart Surge, White Raven Tactics), though. Unfortunately, they royally screwed up the errata.

[lesser_minion]

I'd recommend it.

It probably is the best D&D sourcebook ever written, although I wouldn't call it great -- while it's better than a lot of the material surrounding it, a lot of that material is tripe.

A couple of manoeuvres -- Iron Heart Surge, and White Raven Tactics -- are poorly explained. Iron Heart Surge can be spun out into a doomsday weapon "the sun affects me, so I end it with Iron Heart Surge!", while White Raven Tactics can be spun out into infinite turns.

Bear in mind that it does operate by treating martial arts techniques as if they were a special kind of spell -- they have a similar set of basic rules behind them, for example (although manoeuvres are usable on a per-encounter basis). Mostly, the 'spells' are things that a skilled martial artist should be able to do, and if you have a problem with one, you don't have to take it. However, the system can get a little abstract at times.

[thompur]

UUGGGHHHH! It's a horrid system! On the other hand, the artwork in it is absolutely GORGEOUS!!

Wait...what? This isn't 'opposite day'?

[Zaq]

Add my voice to the chorus of praise. It makes so many different melee archetypes viable. Single perfect cut jedi/samurai/weapon master? Check! Tank who's actually able to reliably and defend his or her allies? Check! Master of the battlefield who can decide where his or her enemies will and will not go? Check! Stalwart commander leading the troops to victory? Check! And these are just going with single schools, not even combining them into whole characters. ToB classes are very easy to play (I've only ever seen one person mess up a warblade, and he's . . . well, dumb), they offer lots to veterans and newbies alike, and they're simply fun. That, and the multiclassing system is what multiclassing should have been from day 1.

It's not perfect, of course. There are a few things that are poorly worded (even aside from the obvious IHS and WRT, Adaptive Style has sparked a fair bit of discussion in my group, as has Covering Strike, believe it or not), and the complaint that always comes up is that ToB has a much higher optimization floor than most of the traditional melee classes. I view this as a feature, not a bug, but it's true that a warblade who doesn't know what he or she's doing will outshine a fighter who doesn't know what he or she's doing pretty much without even trying. There are a few limitations that are easy to miss (the most obvious being that only the crusader is proficient with martial ranged weapons, or that Stone Dragon maneuvers can only be used on the ground), but it's still a fantastic book.

[mostlyharmful]

scrub off all fluff and the goodawful naming system and pretty much nobodies got much of a problem with it in the groups I run or play with. it's just melee how it SHOULD have been done, not all that more powerful but varied, creative, modularized and specilizable. If your group likes it there's some nice ranged homebrew on this very site to go along with it.

ToB! The BSF can have nice things too!

[grarrrg]

At the very least the feats "Martial Study" and "Martial Stance" give a single class Fighter SOMETHING to do with his feats.

If nothing else, try before you buy!
Warblade is posted online and so are the Maneuver Cards.

You'll probably have to read between the lines to figure out exactally how they work, as I don't think we are allowed to post that information.

Throne of Bhaal is awesome, but i suggest you play Shadows of Amn , and probably Baldurs Gate 1 before starting it : )

I see what you did there.

[Hawk7915]

If you are used to your Weapon Focus, Sword and Board fighter being the party hero, backed up by his Blaster Wizard friend who's out of spells after a fight, and his heal bot cleric...then Tome of Battle might feel like too much for your tastes. This definitely happened to my group, since no one but me could optimize out of a wet paper bag.

But it doesn't sound like your play group is like that, in which I heartily recommend it. It's a ton of fun, it lets melee hang with spellcasters (sort of), and it lets you as DM design interesting warrior villains that aren't Gishes and CoDzillas.

[Keld Denar]

I'd highly suggest it. One of my RL groups has a bunch of newbies who've never played 3.5 before. It took the DM all of 3 minutes to explain how the maneuvers worked, and off they were having a ton of fun!

Now, if we can get one of the players to stop shouting BONECRUSHER all the time...

[Gensh]

It's definitely something situational. The more your group knows the rules and the more powerful their characters already are, the more likely you'll need ToB for the nonmagical classes to keep up with the fullcasters. On the other hand, if you've got a completely casual group, you may need to kill it with fire. Case in point, I ban ToB from my games because only one player is remotely competent. When we rotated DMs for a few weeks once, and the new DM allowed the one guy who always nagged me about playing swordsage do so, he killed literally everything(except an aristocrat 1 that the ranger crit-failed gagging), leaving the rest of us feel mostly useless.

[Godless_Paladin]

From a design perspective, I think ToB is a fantastic improvement over the core Fighter, Monk, etc. It also has a nice multiclassing system.

It's not all it could be, but it's a damn sight better than the likes of the Fighter.

[faceroll]

If a hill giant picked up a couple levels of crusader, what level maneuvers does he have access to?

I had a hard time figuring out what it was about the first time I read it. The more I tried reading it properly, though, the more I warmed up to it. ToB is perhaps the most balanced fix for martial characters, and I daresay the "Magic by any other name" criticism of ToB is based only on a superficial resemblance and usually given by people who really didn't read the book much.

Uhh, like how you can hit a cat and gain HP back? Or turn into a cloud of shadows and instantaneously transport yourself?

[Ravens_cry]

I've heard it's good, adding a lot of good options for melee without making things too magical. Emphases on what I have heard though, I don't own it and have never had a chance to go through it personally, so all this is hearsay.