PF1 - why hadn't Paizo adopted most of 3.5's designs?

[Ignimortis]

Basically, title. 3.5 was notable for introducing multiple subsystems and ways to play the game that weren't similar either between themselves or to PHB classes in various regards, such as incarnum, martial adepts, limited casters (warmage/beguiler - know all spells on their list, but have a very limited list), invokers (warlock/dragonfire adept), etc. Even stuff like multiple-use tactical feats were a significant development over 3.5 PHB.

However, when Pathfinder 1e happened, none of those designs made it in - in fact, Paizo seemingly were very adamant about designing things around PHB concepts such as "basic feats, x/day uses, spell slots, or at-will", and made only one subsystem of their own, which wasn't particularly well-received AFAIK (Kineticist). The design gap lasted long enough that 3PP had to fill it instead. Granted, Paizo did perfect the art of a 2/3 caster (a rare thing in 3.5, and not nearly as well done there), but it's still basically a "X/day resource pool, plus spell slots" design at the core.

I've been wondering why that is, but couldn't find any explanation on the internet other than "they didn't feel like it". Maybe someone knows more about that and how that came to be the status quo?

[Aresneo]

Because none of those things were included in the OGL. Which means that there is a chance that WOTC could have taken legal action against Paizo if they used those things, and regardless of how any lawsuit might end the fact is that WOTC has access to far more resources then Paizo and could easily drag things out long enough that Paizo couldn't afford to keep the legal battle going. So Paizo instead did their best to make sure what they produced didn't come close to violating the OGL.

[bekeleven]

There's also the fact that they didn't have the rights to do so.

They can't reproduce material outside of the SRD. WotC owns it.

Now, you can't copyright game mechanics, but wotc has a big legal department, and the very principle of pathfinder could be viewed by Wizards execs as paizo sticking their hands into WotC's pockets - It's an entire full-fledged game system built on WotC material that's being put out to compete with WotC material - so even if Paizo could maybe get away with some palette swapping, they didn't want to risk it.

[Satinavian]

Because Paizo made Pathfinder because of the sudden lack of 3.5 Core Books. All the other 3.5 books were optional to begin with, they were not necessary to carry the game and all the other compatible 3rd party options and adventures. Pathfinder was meant to replace the foundation for other to build on.

And later, when Pathfinder was successful enough to stand on its own and Paizo started with its own supplements ... why would it try to copy 3E here ? Making new stuff instead would be as attractive to new PF only players, but could also be sold to those who already had the 3E splats and were mixing the games. And Paido had been successful with writing optional 3E rules before. Also they obviously did not like many 3E design decisions which can be seen by them pretty much abandoning prestige classes.

Also funny that you mention kineticist, given its obvious inspiration from the popular later 3E warlock. So the one time they actually took something players wanted from later books (and made if different enough to avoid legal trouble), it didn't really work out.


Now you could complain that PF later (irrespectively what 3E did) did not introduce all that many completely different ways for classes to work and that their designs are in ways rather conservative. But Paizo mostly sells adventures (including APs) and has organized play. For both it is better if the game stays more focused and authors have an idea what a character lv X can roughly do.

[Kurald Galain]

Basically, title. 3.5 was notable for introducing multiple subsystems and ways to play the game that weren't similar either between themselves or to PHB classes in various regards, such as incarnum, martial adepts, limited casters (warmage/beguiler - know all spells on their list, but have a very limited list), invokers (warlock/dragonfire adept), etc.

Well, most of the new susbsystems are either heavily controversial (Tome of Battle, Truenamer), largely ignored by the player base (Incarnum, DFA), or easily covered by existing classes (Warmage and Beguiler are essentially sorcerer builds).

And of course, "designers gonna design". Any new design team is going to try something different and new. So Paizo came up with their own subsystems: Witch (hexes), Alchemist (bombs), Oracle (curse), Brawler (flex feats), tactical feats like Step Up and Ki Throw; and these proved rather popular. Even the much-maligned kinny is (to my perennial surprise) rather popular.

If you search for them, PF has a couple of "once per combat" abilities (e.g. rage powers) and "modal" abilities (e.g. styles). I agree that almost everything is either at-will or X/day, but then almost everything in 3.5 is also either at-will (e.g. warlock) or X/day (e.g. beguiler).

Now, you can't copyright game mechanics, but wotc has a big legal department,

ETA: That's also a good point, and bear in mind that in the early days of 4E, WOTC was very much lawsuit-happy about the whole gaming market.

[Serafina]

It's worth noting that basically all the mentioned subsystems have been provided by 3rd-party publishers, and typically have more expansive Pathfinder material than they had in 3.5.
For example, Path of War has 11 classes (to Tome of Battles 3) and 30 Disciplines, while Askasha has hundreds of Veils.

[Ignimortis]

Because none of those things were included in the OGL. Which means that there is a chance that WOTC could have taken legal action against Paizo if they used those things, and regardless of how any lawsuit might end the fact is that WOTC has access to far more resources then Paizo and could easily drag things out long enough that Paizo couldn't afford to keep the legal battle going. So Paizo instead did their best to make sure what they produced didn't come close to violating the OGL.

There's also the fact that they didn't have the rights to do so.

They can't reproduce material outside of the SRD. WotC owns it.

Now, you can't copyright game mechanics, but wotc has a big legal department, and the very principle of pathfinder could be viewed by Wizards execs as paizo sticking their hands into WotC's pockets - It's an entire full-fledged game system built on WotC material that's being put out to compete with WotC material - so even if Paizo could maybe get away with some palette swapping, they didn't want to risk it.

Fair enough on "why they didn't do the same things", but I also was wondering about why they barely ever did anything really new.

Because Paizo made Pathfinder because of the sudden lack of 3.5 Core Books. All the other 3.5 books were optional to begin with, they were not necessary to carry the game and all the other compatible 3rd party options and adventures. Pathfinder was meant to replace the foundation for other to build on.

And later, when Pathfinder was successful enough to stand on its own and Paizo started with its own supplements ... why would it try to copy 3E here ? Making new stuff instead would be as attractive to new PF only players, but could also be sold to those who already had the 3E splats and were mixing the games. And Paido had been successful with writing optional 3E rules before. Also they obviously did not like many 3E design decisions which can be seen by them pretty much abandoning prestige classes.

Also funny that you mention kineticist, given its obvious inspiration from the popular later 3E warlock. So the one time they actually took something players wanted from later books (and made if different enough to avoid legal trouble), it didn't really work out.

Now you could complain that PF later (irrespectively what 3E did) did not introduce all that many completely different ways for classes to work and that their designs are in ways rather conservative. But Paizo mostly sells adventures (including APs) and has organized play. For both it is better if the game stays more focused and authors have an idea what a character lv X can roughly do.

And there it probably is. APs, I mean. When your main product is adventures that you balance around PHB mechanics, you probably won't want an entirely different design to pollute statistics. Weird how I didn't consider that, considering PF2 exists and is the way it is for several particular reasons, one of which certainly would be AP balancing.

Well, most of the new susbsystems are either heavily controversial (Tome of Battle, Truenamer), largely ignored by the player base (Incarnum, DFA), or easily covered by existing classes (Warmage and Beguiler are essentially sorcerer builds).

And of course, "designers gonna design". Any new design team is going to try something different and new. So Paizo came up with their own subsystems: Witch (hexes), Alchemist (bombs), Oracle (curse), Brawler (flex feats), tactical feats like Step Up and Ki Throw; and these proved rather popular. Even the much-maligned kinny is (to my perennial surprise) rather popular.

If you search for them, PF has a couple of "once per combat" abilities (e.g. rage powers) and "modal" abilities (e.g. styles). I agree that almost everything is either at-will or X/day, but then almost everything in 3.5 is also either at-will (e.g. warlock) or X/day (e.g. beguiler).

Not untrue, but these designs are generally more conservative and honestly don't cleave as far from what you could find in the PHB - aside from kineticist, that is, which could be great if it were less complex for what it does. Hexes fill the "utility invocation" niche - but most of them aren't as strong as equivalent warlock invocations, bombs function similarly to EB with shapes/essences being rolled into discoveries, but are noticeably limited per day for some reason utterly obscured to me (other than potentially being "too good" when compared to a poorly built fighter or something), etc.

It's worth noting that basically all the mentioned subsystems have been provided by 3rd-party publishers, and typically have more expansive Pathfinder material than they had in 3.5.
For example, Path of War has 11 classes (to Tome of Battles 3) and 30 Disciplines, while Askasha has hundreds of Veils.

Oh, certainly. But I was mostly curious as to why people set on continuing 3.5's legacy (so to speak) seemingly ignored how 3.5 developed after the first year or two, and stuck to PHB-adjacent design models. But the point Satinavian makes about APs being very important to Paizo seems to explain that well, especially considering PF2's existence and design.

[Kurald Galain]

Not untrue, but these designs are generally more conservative and honestly don't cleave as far from what you could find in the PHB - aside from kineticist, that is, which could be great if it were less complex for what it does.

I don't see how the witch, alchemist, or oracle are any more conservative or "closer to the PHB" than the warmage, beguiler, or warlock (considering how most invocations are a copy/paste of a wizard spell).

Now granted, Tome of Battle is way more innovative than any of that and really should not be lumped together wtih warmage, beguiler, or warlock. You can ask why Paizo didn't use TOB as inspiration for their books, but the obvious answers to that are (a) it's literally the most controversial splat for 3.5, and (b) copyright.
edit: oh, and (c) TOB is often considered a prototype / "testing the waters" for 4E, and for obvious reasons PF wanted to stay far away from anything that looks like 4E.

[Psyren]

This has been a question since near the beginning of PF1 over a decade ago, when people were clamoring for Paizo to convert psionics (which actually WERE in the SRD and thus would have been fair game.)

TL;DR - Paizo largely leaving this to third parties was good for them and good for the hobby as a whole.

Longer explanation:

Spoiler

Show

IIRC, Paizo's response was a combination of the explanations given upthread (wanting to have more of a core 3.5 focus, wanting to avoid late 3.5's subsystem bloat, wanting to avoid reproducing anything that strayed outside the OGL and thus could have opened them up to potential suits given they were already dancing close to the fire as it was etc.)

But in addition to all of those, they had another justification - they saw recreation of those subsystems by third parties as (a) fertile ground for third party publishers to make a name for themselves in the hobby too (rising tide lifts all ships and all that), (b) a way to outsource the risk of those subsystems not being written differently enough to avoid the wrath of WotC's legal team to the third party publishers making the attempt, and (c) allowed Paizo to maintain focus on their real moneymaker, adventure paths. Hell, some of their APs even referenced this third-party material, like Jade Regent containing Dreamscarred Press psionics material, whetting people's appetites until such time as Paizo finished their own Psychic Magic subsystem years later.

So when Dreamscarred Press made Ultimate Psionics and Path of War, it's likely that some 3.5 holdouts wanting to give those updated systems a try went out and bought a CRB to play them with too, and certainly a Paizo AP or three. Everybody wins this way, and Paizo got to reap the rewards with minimal risks.

It was good business.

[Ignimortis]

I don't see how the witch, alchemist, or oracle are any more conservative or "closer to the PHB" than the warmage, beguiler, or warlock (considering how most invocations are a copy/paste of a wizard spell).

I consider "ease of access" and "rate of use" to be important distinctions, even if it's the same effect. Warlocks having an at-will blast that they could change the effects of, and consistent at-will spells that are normally not at-will, sometimes at the same levels a caster would get them is an important departure, IMO, since it dictates a different rate of attrition and a different playstyle compared to anyone who has to ration spell slots. Warmage or beguiler, yeah, they're pretty much a preset sorcerer build with some specialization effects.

Now granted, Tome of Battle is way more innovative than any of that and really should not be lumped together wtih warmage, beguiler, or warlock. You can ask why Paizo didn't use TOB as inspiration for their books, but the obvious answers to that are (a) it's literally the most controversial splat for 3.5, and (b) copyright.
edit: oh, and (c) TOB is often considered a prototype / "testing the waters" for 4E, and for obvious reasons PF wanted to stay far away from anything that looks like 4E.

Fair enough, fair enough. I suppose Combat Stamina could be seen as Paizo's answer to ToB in a way (easily recoverable tricks that technically aren't at-will), although much lower-powered and grounded and bound to feats rather than a discrete set of moves. In hindsight, it does most things that some people suggested as an "improvement" to ToB-style mechanics (a shared resource pool instead of prepared maneuvers, users being fatigued in some way after running out, recovery by resting, etc).

This has been a question since near the beginning of PF1 over a decade ago, when people were clamoring for Paizo to convert psionics (which actually WERE in the SRD and thus would have been fair game.)

TL;DR - Paizo largely leaving this to third parties was good for them and good for the hobby as a whole.

Longer explanation:

Spoiler

Show

IIRC, Paizo's response was a combination of the explanations given upthread (wanting to have more of a core 3.5 focus, wanting to avoid late 3.5's subsystem bloat, wanting to avoid reproducing anything that strayed outside the OGL and thus could have opened them up to potential suits given they were already dancing close to the fire as it was etc.)

But in addition to all of those, they had another justification - they saw recreation of those subsystems by third parties as (a) fertile ground for third party publishers to make a name for themselves in the hobby too (rising tide lifts all ships and all that), (b) a way to outsource the risk of those subsystems not being written differently enough to avoid the wrath of WotC's legal team to the third party publishers making the attempt, and (c) allowed Paizo to maintain focus on their real moneymaker, adventure paths. Hell, some of their APs even referenced this third-party material, like Jade Regent containing Dreamscarred Press psionics material, whetting people's appetites until such time as Paizo finished their own Psychic Magic subsystem years later.

So when Dreamscarred Press made Ultimate Psionics and Path of War, it's likely that some 3.5 holdouts wanting to give those updated systems a try went out and bought a CRB to play them with too, and certainly a Paizo AP or three. Everybody wins this way, and Paizo got to reap the rewards with minimal risks.

It was good business.

Makes sense, also.

[rel]

The conclusion I drew from dev commentary on forums and in articles back in the day, was that the PF1 devs just didn't like the more esoteric subsystems, so they didn't include them.

On release, PF1 felt a lot like 3.5 with a set of house rules on top, and most of the changes were probably drawn from the house rules the dev team liked to use.

Likewise, the game had a distinct design ethos, and it was probably the way it was largely because that's how the dev's liked it.

In addition to the lack of support for subsystems like ToB and psionics, you also saw less support for multi-classing and more support for playing a single class from 1 to 20, and a reluctance to hand out abilities or bonuses without some sort of limitations or caveats.

[Psyren]

To push back slightly on "lack of support for multiclassing" - keep in mind that PF1 made multiclassing far easier than 3.5 ever did. Favored Class/Racial XP penalties were removed, cross-class skill ranks were eliminated, skills were consolidated to make each class' ranks stretch further, and multiclass-friendly feats that continued base feature advancement were created like Accomplished Sneak Attacker and Boon Companion.

[Ignimortis]

The conclusion I drew from dev commentary on forums and in articles back in the day, was that the PF1 devs just didn't like the more esoteric subsystems, so they didn't include them.

On release, PF1 felt a lot like 3.5 with a set of house rules on top, and most of the changes were probably drawn from the house rules the dev team liked to use.

Likewise, the game had a distinct design ethos, and it was probably the way it was largely because that's how the dev's liked it.

In addition to the lack of support for subsystems like ToB and psionics, you also saw less support for multi-classing and more support for playing a single class from 1 to 20, and a reluctance to hand out abilities or bonuses without some sort of limitations or caveats.

Yes, my observations panned out similarly. The thread has provided several other reasons that I see no reason to dismiss, however.

To push back slightly on "lack of support for multiclassing" - keep in mind that PF1 made multiclassing far easier than 3.5 ever did. Favored Class/Racial XP penalties were removed, cross-class skill ranks were eliminated, skills were consolidated to make each class' ranks stretch further, and multiclass-friendly feats that continued base feature advancement were created like Accomplished Sneak Attacker and Boon Companion.

I figure most of those changes are less about "enabling easier multiclassing" and more about "making the game better for everyone" - favored class bonuses actually encourage you to stay in one class rather than penalize going beyond, consolidated skills improve experience for everyone, and multiclass-friendly feats are present, but also help single-class builds that don't get a full progression on their features (Slayer and Sneak Attack, Ranger and animal companion, etc).

Meanwhile, the new design ethos does make most prestige classes rather useless unless they're explicitly excellent and/or progress class features (Evangelist comes to mind), and multiclassing is limited to dips even more often than 3.5 used to encourage.

[Kurald Galain]

YMeanwhile, the new design ethos does make most prestige classes rather useless unless they're explicitly excellent and/or progress class features (Evangelist comes to mind), and multiclassing is limited to dips even more often than 3.5 used to encourage.

To be fair, most prestige classes in 3.5 are also rather useless. It's just that charop has long since figured out which ones are good, and discussion focuses almost entirely on those. But there's hundreds of other prestige classes out there that nobody much uses or talks about.

But yes, it's a deliberate design decision to focus on archetypes (that you can take at level one) instead of on prestige classes (that you need to plan ahead for several levels). Now personally I enjoy planning my characters several levels ahead, but I realize that most players (outside of charop) don't.

[Crake]

Don't forget that pf1 was made to be backward compatible. All the above reasons are why they COULDN'T include these subsystems, but ultimately, they also didn't NEED to include them, because most, if not all of them, were largely completely compatible with pathfinder 1's core system anyway, and so didn't need to be specifically converted to fit.

[Psyren]

I figure most of those changes are less about "enabling easier multiclassing" and more about "making the game better for everyone" - favored class bonuses actually encourage you to stay in one class rather than penalize going beyond, consolidated skills improve experience for everyone, and multiclass-friendly feats are present, but also help single-class builds that don't get a full progression on their features (Slayer and Sneak Attack, Ranger and animal companion, etc).

Meanwhile, the new design ethos does make most prestige classes rather useless unless they're explicitly excellent and/or progress class features (Evangelist comes to mind), and multiclassing is limited to dips even more often than 3.5 used to encourage.

Even if making multiclassing better than 3.5 wasn't their objective - nor even something they remotely considered - the end result is what I care about, not the intent.

As for prestige classes, their intent was to make them functionally compatible, but not to make them more desirable than going 1-20 in a base class.

[atemu1234]

Don't forget that pf1 was made to be backward compatible. All the above reasons are why they COULDN'T include these subsystems, but ultimately, they also didn't NEED to include them, because most, if not all of them, were largely completely compatible with pathfinder 1's core system anyway, and so didn't need to be specifically converted to fit.

Eh... I wouldn't really say that they're compatible, even the most basic stuff needs at least some work to function in Pathfinder.
Likewise, I don't know how to phrase it other than... I don't think the developers wandered into Pathfinder blind. They had intentions in mind when they created the system, and knew that they were trying to make a full, 3rd-party 'edition' of their own.
I think overall they didn't adapt the subsystems because they wanted to keep their core rules simple and easy to understand, and didn't want to bloat their system with subsystems that most players avoid.

[Crake]

Eh... I wouldn't really say that they're compatible, even the most basic stuff needs at least some work to function in Pathfinder.

I dunno, what does a warblade, for example, need to be worked to be compatible with pathfinder? The only core thing would be probably it's list of class skills, but that's easy enough, if it has one of the merged skills on it's list, it has that whole merged skill, pretty much everything else works as is. Maybe you'll come across a handful of maneuvers related to CMB that need to be updated, but that's it, for the most part it just works right out the box

[Kurald Galain]

Eh... I wouldn't really say that they're compatible, even the most basic stuff needs at least some work to function in Pathfinder.

They are fully compatible in the sense that you can run any published 3.5 adventure with a PF party, or vice versa, without having to do any homework or modification beyond basic prep. This allowed both Paizo and 3PP to publish books that work for both 3.5 and PF simultaneously, which is an easy way to get a larger audience. And it worked, too

[icefractal]

In the early PF1 days, being compatible was a big selling point, and few of us wanted to go from the plethora of content back to a single core book (which was part of the reason for not switching to 4E). So yeah, we used 3.5E stuff in Pathfinder quite a bit.

As PF1 got more content, and more players who hadn't arrived via 3.5E came in, using non-PF content became less common. At this point it's definitely the exception.

But then (for the group I'm in at least) a different set of non-PF content became popular - the DSP and Spheres stuff. Because yeah, of course I want that broad array of options! There's plenty of elegant systems stripped down to a tight curated set of content out there ... and that's not what I'm looking for out of Pathfinder in the slightest. Sometimes it's fun to be maximalist.

[Thirdtwin]

I dunno, what does a warblade, for example, need to be worked to be compatible with pathfinder? The only core thing would be probably it's list of class skills, but that's easy enough, if it has one of the merged skills on it's list, it has that whole merged skill, pretty much everything else works as is. Maybe you'll come across a handful of maneuvers related to CMB that need to be updated, but that's it, for the most part it just works right out the box

The Diamond Mind discipline warblades have access to uses Concentration as a skill, and several of its maneuvers explicitly require Concentration skill checks as part of their function. Pathfinder doesn't have Concentration as a skill; rather concentration checks are all caster level checks with the casting modifier added. You could kludge something together with initiator level checks, yes, but that's not working right out of the box.

[Crake]

The Diamond Mind discipline warblades have access to uses Concentration as a skill, and several of its maneuvers explicitly require Concentration skill checks as part of their function. Pathfinder doesn't have Concentration as a skill; rather concentration checks are all caster level checks with the casting modifier added. You could kludge something together with initiator level checks, yes, but that's not working right out of the box.

Or you could roll it into autohypnosis and call it a day.

As I said though, individual maneuvers may need tweaking, but I don't count them as "even the most basic stuff".

[Thirdtwin]

Autohypnosis? The skill introduced in the Expanded Psionics Handbook? The book whose subsystem wasn't ported to Pathfinder by Paizo, i.e. what this topic is all about? Now yeah if you're at the point where you're porting whole classes from 3.5e then it's probably no big stretch to bring in psionics too, but just getting to that point to begin with is non-trivial* because Paizo made it a point not to port either of those things to Pathfinder.

*non-trivial insomuch as getting third party or old content past a PF DM can be. I get the sense a lot of 3ePF players here on the Playground are lucky enough to have highly-permissive DMs but there's no guarantee that applies to the broader rpg-o-sphere.

[rel]

Compatibility was definitely possible, my gaming groups never had much trouble bringing 3.5 content to pathfinder or even porting PF1 content back to 3.5.
But from my recollections of forum conversations and dev commentary back in the day, the Pathfinder dev's were never really on board with the idea.

I don't think they ever flat out said you were 'doing it wrong' if you tried to use 3.5 material, but I always felt like they were thinking it quite hard.

[Crake]

Autohypnosis? The skill introduced in the Expanded Psionics Handbook? The book whose subsystem wasn't ported to Pathfinder by Paizo, i.e. what this topic is all about? Now yeah if you're at the point where you're porting whole classes from 3.5e then it's probably no big stretch to bring in psionics too, but just getting to that point to begin with is non-trivial* because Paizo made it a point not to port either of those things to Pathfinder.

*non-trivial insomuch as getting third party or old content past a PF DM can be. I get the sense a lot of 3ePF players here on the Playground are lucky enough to have highly-permissive DMs but there's no guarantee that applies to the broader rpg-o-sphere.

You don't need to port over the entirety of psionics to port over the autohypnosis skill. Despite it being in the expanded psionics handbook, it literally has nothing to do with psionics whatsoever, all of it's uses are just general use applications, and fits perfectly well into the application of the concentration skill in the Tome of Battle maneuvers. It's really not that complicated.

[Kurald Galain]

Pathfinder doesn't have Concentration as a skill; rather concentration checks are all caster level checks with the casting modifier added.

Yes, so you either give the warblade Concentration skill anyway, or you let him roll warblade level + constitution mod. That takes less than a minute; how is that hard again?

[glass]

Or you could roll it into autohypnosis and call it a day.

It is what we do!

The fact that you have to do those kinds of conversions mean that 3.5 content is not strictly compatible with PF1, but the conversions are pretty trivial so not a great problem in practice. EDIT: I am playing in a 3.5 adventure path right now and running the 3.0 one, with all the necessary conversion being done on the fly.

[Darg]

It is what we do!

The fact that you have to do those kinds of conversions mean that 3.5 content is not strictly compatible with PF1, but the conversions are pretty trivial so not a great problem in practice. EDIT: I am playing in a 3.5 adventure path right now and running the 3.0 one, with all the necessary conversion being done on the fly.

3.0 is considered compatible with 3.5 even though you can't just slide everything over without some tweaking. 3.5 -> PF1 is the same thing. Compatibility means that it'll work, not that it'll work perfectly.There's no conflict and minimal adapting required.

[glass]

3.0 is considered compatible with 3.5 even though you can't just slide everything over without some tweaking. 3.5 -> PF1 is the same thing.

It's almost like I drew a distinction between being strictly compatible (where adaptation is unnecessary by definition) and non-strict but practical/close enough compatibility which 3.0, 3.5, and PF1 all have with each other. Oh wait, no, it is exactly like that.

[Thirdtwin]

Yes, so you either give the warblade Concentration skill anyway, or you let him roll warblade level + constitution mod. That takes less than a minute; how is that hard again?

I never said it was hard. I said it "wasn't working outside of the box," which it isn't, and in my following post that it was "non-trivial." The hard part is getting your DM to sign off on things like this. The actual doing of it isn't as easy as just saying "take the rules from the ToB and use them entirely unchanged." Neither does that make it hard in an absolute sense, but things are permitted to have different relative difficulties. Nuance exists.