I still think this book was the best way to manage martials. 4e's "daily" powers etc for fighters made them all feel samey (at least on the surface). 5e's battle master has no scaling.I'm sure at this point we can all agree the Tome of Battle got too much flak.
>>97092681it's alright, it just has a lot of shit I remember thinking "but what the fuck does this actually look like?"the one foggy example I can think of is a class feature(?) where the guy can, at the start of his turn, designate one of the squares next to him as a space he counts as flanking frombut then the guy can just move a timezone away and still be """flanking""" that space for his teammates for the rest of the round
>>97092681The flak it got was mostly for not working well with the rest of 3.5 and also breaking verisimilitude, because the classes dont thematically fit with the assumed setting (Greyhawk) or most popular published setting (Forgotten realms).Also for the pure laziness of late 3.5 to give magic to anything they wanted to be better than the original.
>>97092681Eh.In the context of 3.5e it's cool because it's a subsystem. So you can graft more or less of it in your game as you see fit.For example, our DM added a couple of Martial Initiators as some esoteric ass shit, something novel and nearly unknown in the setting but that the party has had contact with.I don't think it would work well as the default baseline since it would basically be another form of too much standardization between different classes a la 4e.Between ToB and the 5e battlemaster and "normal" maneuvers like trip, bullrush, and the like, I think we could come up with a decent system that would work at a basic level (everybody has access to) then each class meant to fight rather than cast would have a couple addons to it.
I never did figure out how the Crusader worked
>>97093018I made a whole discord command to automatically grant the maneuvers.It gets easier to understand if you visualize the maneuvers as cards that are dealt and shuffled.It's pretty fucking dope to get a Divine Surge right at the right moment you need to finish that one motherfucking arch druid that's buffing all of the damn regenerating-mini godzillas with brilliant aura and trying to CC the shit out of your party.
>>97092681It's fine, like i said multiple times the only gripe i have with it is the fact it introduced new classes that are straight out better than base classes within the same niche instead of simply updating those classes with the new mechanics. To this day i still allow ToB stances and maneuvers through feats for base classes OR directly use the new ones as substitution of the base ones.
>>97092681nah, prowlers covers it in a far superior method.
>>97093556>small pp
>seething
>>97092681this just makes them play like casters I think more passive abilities would make sense for martials, similar to warlock's eldritch invocations.stuff like>warriors eye>if you spend 10 minutes observing someone you can gain a general understanding of their level of combat ability(the DM has to tell you their challenge rating)>on the lookoutyou cant be surprised, in addition your keen senses allow you to realize when you are being watched(DM has to tell you if you are being followed, though not by who or from where.)>acrobatyour climb speed is equal to your movement speed.
passive abilities aren't fun.
>>97093609that's cause most of them are just "you get plus 2 to x skill"you can make them more interesting than that.
>>97093619no.
>>97093622well reasoned, I bow to your superior intelligence.
>>97093639good. do not post in this thread again.
>>97093648I wont.
yep, you lose.
>>97092681The Tome of Battle was so bad that everyone jumped to Pathfinder to be rid of it. No one played it except retards on the Giant In The Playground forums, and even they were probably lying about it.It wrecked all the real martials, replaced them with nerdy shitty wizards, and didn't even make martials as strong as casters if you actually allowed all the splatbooks, which was always a mistake anyway.It was an absolute failure of a moment in game design, and the fact that it inspired 4th edition is a big part of why 4th edition failed.
>>97093598that's what feats are supposed to be doing for you but unfortunately they undercooked with feats and in general the math was so bad you had to invest all your gazillion feats into a few certain build paths just to be viable so cool shit to the wayside they go
>>97092800>because the classes dont thematically fit with the assumed setting (Greyhawk) or most popular published setting (Forgotten realms).Nah, that's cope. People bitched because it was a book full of martial characters with magic powers and a decade of being abused by 3.5's retarded design philosophy, feat tax, and build-tism theory crafting gave players retarded opinions about how 3.5 was "supposed" to be play. So they got angry about a book that didn't let them feel special for finding some loophole or unintended combo instead of just using one of the Nine Swords classes right out of the box.
>>97093865No, anon. It's not a video game. I want my fighter to do cool stuff that aren't magical. It aint that hard to get.I dont want magical fighters in my settings unless i explicitly do.This has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game but with the themes themselves.People who were mechanics first type of guys, who were the powergamers that really loved the weaboo fightan magic.I know because my group was split in two and the divide was pretty clearSO fuck off with the narrative that powergamers and system abusers are the only people that didnt like the weeaboo fightan magic.The thematic feels off, if i want medieval fantasy straight up.This is the reason all the fans of this book got hated out of the game. People that liked incarnum or the tome of magic didnt shill their classes/supplement as the second coming of christ to the game
>>97093914If you want medieval fantasy straight up you don't want D&D 3.5.
>>97093598No, that's retarded and you're retarded for defining spellcasters as using active abilities.
>>97093865The warblade doesn't have access to basically any of the supernatural maneuvers, if I recall correctly. You can absolutely play a completely mundane initiator.>The thematic feels off, if i want medieval fantasy straight up.Okay, but Sir Kay of Arthurian legend was purportedly able to grow in size to the height of the tallest tree and shoot heat beams from his hands. I don't think you actually know anything about medieval stories.
>>97093914What you want is retarded and informed by a decade of retarded game design problems that you mistook for intentional, thoughtful choices.
>>97093914>I dont want magical fighters in my settings unless i explicitly do.yeah it's totally different when you've got high level martials covered head to toe in every magic item they can get, carrying a collection of potions, scrolls, and wands. Real mudcore hard fantasy shit. None of this weeaboo kungfu sword magic shit! When I wield my flaming greatsword, while equipped with enough strength boosting items to allow me to lift literal tons and I fight alongside my friend who is playing a monk who beats to death with his ki-empowered bare fists, I don't want any of that anime bullshit ruining the hard, historic realism and verisimilitude!
>>97092681If I wanted to play a subpar wizard I'd play a sorcerer.
>>97094043>>97093965No retards. Base 3.5 is straight up a late medieval/early renaissance fantasy setting + magic. It is not informed by retardation but by thematic preferences.>>97094058Yeah it kinda is, because those are tools, not inherent abilities. I don't mind the fighter taking potions or using magical rope to climb. I dont want him to use a maneuver to do because it feels inherently magical and not the vibe i like. I agree that high level 3.5 sucks and the game shouldnt really be played well beyond the 10-12th level and yeah, the monk doesnt fit and if i could remove one thing from core this would be it.Besides that the theme is there.
>>97094109No, it's not.
>>97094113i bow before your superior and completely intelligent and eloquent arguements
>>97094109>it's different because it just is!You're retarded and you don't even know what you're talking about. D&D 3.5's base rules, without any campaign setting books, cover a 500 year span of technologies and cultures.
>>97094109>Base 3.5 is straight up a late medieval/early renaissance fantasy setting + magic.Okay, so you DEFINITELY don't know anything about the medieval or Renaissance periods.
>>97094126Yeah, do you think that in the year of our lord 1440 every place on earth had the same technological level? I am not saying that 3.5 is realistic. The whole weapons and armor category are fake af and but this is the type of the era they want to portray and what i want to play in.Some things just dont fit this theme as well.
>>97094109>Base 3.5 is straight up a late medieval/early renaissance fantasy setting + magicMonk exists.
>>97093965Nah, it's fine. The fighter class is right there in the PHB. It's the DMs job to run a game where that class is fun, and it's not impossible.>>97093914The most annoying was the forumites who would destroy every innocent guy who wandered in.>I want to play a monk, I was thinking this or maybe thatAnd immediately everyone ignores monk and points him to some multiclass monstrosity that involves swordsage. >Oh sorry guys my DM doesn't allow thatAnd then immediately everyone shits on the DM and if you're lucky advises a bunch of other multiclassesIt was terrible because it assumed that there was some multiverse of 'allow all shitsplat' and that was never so outside of online discourse.I actually don't think there's anything fundamentally bad about the initiators, but the book was trying to solve three problems at once; it was trying to address caster/martial balance by introducing casters disguised as martials (instead of using base rules to address this), it addressed the full attack problem (where martials were assumed to have solid access to full attacks even though the game didn't really allow this outside of pounce barbarians and shit) by stacking the standard action and supplying other movement tricks, and it made a bunch of assumptions about the amount of powerful magic items martials were getting, such that if you had a non-initiator martial and an initiator martial, you could no longer fix the martial/caster gap at your table with items, because now you had a martial/martial gap, and if your fighter loving guy didn't like this weird anime flavor fuck him haha. It all added up to just being disliked for good reason, even though the classes in the book, and especially the powers, are all well-written and inspired.
>>97093708People jumped to Pathfinder because they had Stockholm Syndrome towards 3.5e and 4e was too different for them.
>>97094364The simplest fix for full attacking btw is to just go back to 2e isms and allow classes to full attack if they have moved equal to or less than half their movement speed
>>97094416I might try that when and if I run 3.X. Back at the time I had a special standard action that unlocked at BAB 11 that was like, one attack at full BAB and a second at BAB-7. It seemed to work ok mathwise but the players never learned it right so I felt like an asshole having to constantly pimp out this houserule that was apparently super forgettable. I had much better luck simply providing short range dashes that used a swift action, that was just fine and sounds really similar to what you have.The entire idea of having an attack cycle that really rapes things without good AC could be accomplished differently as well. I will also note that outside of d20 systems, most things don't require said low AC rape mechanisms, and simply use multiple attacks or static pluses to damage- maintaining the core d20 math for martials is possible but it is a bit of effort.
>>97094364>And immediately everyone ignores monkAnd everyone is right, because sparing someone from attempting to play a 3.5 Monk is a morally correct decision. Banning the core rulebook classes is one of the better houserules for 3.5. It's that badly designed.
>>97094364You couldn't fix the gap with items before that anyway. Are you just bad at D&D? Do you not know how to actually play the game?
Is there any real mechanical difference between a spell that uses a pinch of sand to put someone to sleep, or a "spell" that uses wood and a focus of flint and steel to create a small campfire?
>>97094364>instead of using base rules to address thisThere was no way for the base rules to address this because they were fundamentally playing different games. One with percentage based systems to achieve limited predetermined effects universal to the game and the other with a plethora of interchangeable, stronger fiat effects that carried their own rules interactions.
>>97094695yeah, the second aint a spell
>>97093914>I dont want magical fighters in my settings unless i explicitly do.>This has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game but with the themes themselves.Lets actually look at the Disciplines the War Blade had access to.>Diamond MindDueling and counter attack focused discipline that allows concentration to be used to mess up a single target. None of the maneuvers/stances do anything magical.>Iron HeartDefensive discipline mostly about fighting multiple opponents and recovery from effects. Poor wording on Iron Heart Surge lets it remove status effects that it wasn't meant to. Intended to be non-magical.>Stone DragonFocused on dealing big damage while taking less damage and acting like a giant. Not really magical even if closer to supernatural.>Tiger ClawHigh mobility two weapon fighting discipline. Non-magical even if animal themed.>White RavenCommand theme discipline. Non-magicalThe Warblade was intended to be non-magical as it was the Fighter/Barbarian/Ranger replacement. The Crusader was magical with it's exclusive holy themed "Devoted Spirit" discipline as it was the Paladin replacement. The Swordsage was the Monk/Rogue replacement and it got the majority of the "magical" disciplines with the exclusive Fire themed Desert Wind and the Shadow themed Shadow Hand discipline. The final Swordsage exclusive discipline was about non-magically throwing enemies around.The Warblade was themed around being non-magical. The other two classes were meant to be more mystical.
>>97093708>and the fact that it inspired 4th editionWe know from one of those "Wizards Presents" 4E preview books that this isn't the case. At some point in early 3.5E, they had a "powers for fighters" supplement assigned but nothing nailed down about how it would work. Separately, there was a team iterating on early drafts and concepts for how 4E would work. One of those drafts was back-ported to 3.5E to fill in the core of what would become the ToB, while the proto-4E team specifically chose to move away from that and keep iterating.
>>97094109People like this retard is why we got 90 ways of pumping up Power Attack damage and nothing else.
>>97094416Our DM just has Full Attack be a standard action and it works just fine.It's not like the biggest hole to patch for 3.5e martials is damage output.
>>97094109>I don't mind the fighter taking potions or using magical rope to climb. I dont want him to use a maneuver to do because it feels inherently magical and not the vibe i like.Imagine looking at some guy who just killed a dragon the size of an elephant, watching him climb a cliff without a rope, and then thinking that climbing the cliff is the magical part.
>>97092789>the one foggy example I can think of is a class feature(?) where the guy can, at the start of his turn, designate one of the squares next to him as a space he counts as flanking from>but then the guy can just move a timezone away and still be """flanking""" that space for his teammates for the rest of the roundYou're thinking of the Tactical Soldier PrC from Miniatures Handbook. Closest ToB has is>Clarion Commander: Tactical feat where you can make an Intimidate check followed by an attack to penalise a foe for 1 minute, making them always count as flanked>Island of Blades: Stance which lets you flank by threatening the same foe as your allies, even if you're not on opposite sides
>>97093914>I want my fighter to do cool stuff that aren't magical.So you don't want anything from ToB because that is all magical shit, it just says it isn't, but it's still supernatural, so it's a retarded distinction.
>>97094957>Iron Heart>Defensive discipline mostly about fighting multiple opponents and recovery from effects. Poor wording on Iron Heart Surge lets it remove status effects that it wasn't meant to. Intended to be non-magical.Different anon. This is list of everything an Iron Heart user can potentially do. A single character will not be able to do all of these things, nor is it usual for someone to focus entirely on one discipline.>+10ft speed, and you gain +2 AC if you move>Whirlwind Attack as a standard action>Whirlwind Attack as a standard action but you hit twice>Stunning Fist but at lv9 rather than lv1 and without the limitation to kung fu weapons>Attack and then if you hit you can make a free disarm attempt>Slow self-healing but only up to half your max hit points. Basically an lv1 Dragon Shaman class feature but delayed until lv11, and nerfed from three options that affect your entire party to one option that affects only you.>As an immediate action, reroll a failed saving throw>As an immediate action, reroll a missed attack>As an immediate action, attempt to parry an attack that would strike you by making an opposed attack roll>Break free from a negative status condition and gain a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls for 1 round>You can hold your sword above your head to gain +1d6 damage in exchange for -2 AC. Basically equivalent to Power Attack except it doesn't require a two-handed weapon for full benefit>Cleave but as a swift action rather than a free action>Combat Expertise but backwards (lower AC in exchange for higher accuracy)>Make an attack with a large damage bonus>+5ft reach but only on your turn>Make an attack and your foe takes a -4 penalty on damage rolls>Throw a weapon in a 30ft line and it rebounds to your hand (not available until lv15)
>>97096376The self-healing is probably the most magical thing on the whole list, but it's fluffed as "pushing aside the pain of your injuries" rather than actually fixing damage, and it's no substitute for proper healing magic."The weapon ricochets back to your hand" is #2 (it's similar to the Whirling Blade spell that some gishes get), but that clause is unfortunately necessary to get PCs to actually use it. No one's going to throw away their main weapon otherwise, no matter *how* much Conan does it.It's also kind of overshadowed by the PrC in the same book which specialises in throwing zany pinball boomerang weapons.
>>97095153This means that I was correct when I said it inspired 4ed. The fact that ahhhhctually there was some common base that evolved into first 9swords and second 4ed doesn't change anything. 4ed was based on this book, and that's part of why 4ed was and is unpopular.
Martialcucks are unbelievably disingenuous, and you retards NEED to stop feeding their bait. They jump between multiple arguments to avoid admitting that they don't actually WANT to play martials, they want to be powerful in the game, the thematics of it hardly matters to them. They want to be Hercules, but when you point out that Hercules had divine intervention involved in his capabilities, they immediately switch to some anime shit. When you tell them that D&D is not of the anime genre and never has been, they start pointing to Tome of Battle, even though that was written to satisfy weebs and also doesn't allow them to do what they want to do as martials, which tends to be:>throwing boulders at enemies>bullrushing a dragon 10000x their weight>tripping a dragon 10000x their weight>screaming really loud until their enemies die>le epic super intimidating dude makes people die from fear by "aura farming" (or whatever zoomer retards say nowThey see any part of the game that doesn't favor them as "punishment" and seethe about it. Rust monsters? That is "punishing" martials. Critical miss table? That is "punishing" martials. They are just like blacks, where everything must be viewed through the lens of whether or not it is "whitey" oppressing them, but in this context whitey is spellcasters, and the designers of D&D. These people are mentally ill. They do not want to play a martial. They just care about what they can "do" in the game. They only care about what they can "do" in comparison to casters. Spellcaster can teleport? Then martials need to be able to run 900 miles per hour. Spellcaster can conjure an item? Then martials need to be able to craft 100 swords per day, even though that's fucking ridiculous. They want to be able to do everything that people with magical abilities can do, but that's inherently ridiculous, so they basically want to become magical, not understanding the fantasy of playing a martial. They are not genuine people.
>>97096434>when you point out that Hercules had divine intervention involved in his capabilitiesSo did Merlin. So did Gandalf.But sure, let's ignore Hercules. What are your thoughts on Beowulf?
>>97093664What is your issue with P&P? Did the dev dick you up the bum or what?>captcha ASSMD
>>97096434https://youtu.be/5hfYJsQAhl0?si=EIoLzsF2KXvzi44U
>>970964204e removing the refresh mechanic was dumb, even ToB itself didn't play hard enough into the refresh mechanic (maneuvers from the Martial Study feat don't have one for some reason).It sounds like R&D had a bunch of interesting ideas that got thrown out. Like sorcerers gradually transforming into a dragon as they run out of spells, shifting from blaster to bruiser over the course of the day.Also, 5e's Battlemaster Fighter is like a really lethargic warblade. The number of maneuvers is the same at each level, and their effects mostly replicate ToB maneuvers that a warblade can use, but their mechanics became more sorcerer-like in that they no longer have refresh (i.e. a Battlemaster can "run out of maneuver energy") and they lack any restriction on spamming the same maneuver over and over.
>>97096485>What are your thoughts on Beowulf?What did Beowulf do that a D&D 3.5 fighter cannot do?
>>97094957>Poor wording on Iron Heart SurgeA direct and explicit example of why you use bolding and capitalised words, alongside keywords, when describing how something works. The text of Iron Heart Surge and the focus of much butthurt when released:Your fighting spirit, dedication, and training allow you to overcome almost anything to defeat your enemies. When you use this maneuver, select one spell, effect, or other condition currently affecting you and with a duration of 1 or more rounds. That effect ends immediately. You also surge with confidence and vengeance against your enemies, gaining a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls until the end of your next turn.>select one spell, effect, or other conditionThis is why I hate natural language in TTRPGs. All of these should be capitalized to denote these as game terms and not being used as their colloquial equivalents. Condition and effect were the biggest issues but had specific and expected definitions as used by the game. For conditions, you would refer to the conditions list, things like disabled, paralyzed, blinded, exhausted, and other such things. Effect was a little more loose but it was for things like persistent fire damage, bleed effects, and other such things.But that damnable natural language and the desire for trolls to argue in bad faith and for nasty little shits to exploit wording.
>>97097013>A direct and explicit example of why you use bolding and capitalised words, alongside keywords, when describing how something works.Unfortunately they tried that in 4e and people hated it, so now D&D is doomed to unclear language forever. Because god forbid people reading the rulebook for a game remember that they're playing a game.
>>97096791Swimming for seven days and nights in armor.
>>97096540what's P&P?
>>97093708Casters are strongest in core only. Allowing splatbooks benefits martials, not casters.
>>97093914There is no difference at all between a magic power and a trained power.
>>97096434>part of the game>Critical miss tablePick one and only one.
>>97094364Anything the fighter can do, another class can do more easily with no compromises. The DM can't do anything about this without changing the rules, which is an admission that the rules are bad.
>>97096402>The self-healing is probably the most magical thing on the whole listNot helped by D&D interchangably using HP to represent luck, morale, superficial harm, stamina, and abstract alive-ness, but only sometimes explicitly wounds, injuries, and bleeding.
>>97094716So there's no difference, then.
>>97096434I ain't reading your retarded b8, m8
>>97097273D&D is weird in that wizard spells are just a thing anyone can learn through training.Like, if you're training to be good at combat, and there are some simple spells which drastically increase your combat effectiveness. It's not just "the fighter is helpless against the monster with DR/magic because he can't cast Magic Weapon", it's "the fighter charged into battle against the monster with DR/magic without bothering to learn basic countermeasures".Easiest way to address this is that Fighter is an urban class in contrast to Ranger as a wilderness one. Fighters mostly fight other humanoids who lack weird defences, and they have easier access to magic marts to handle the edge cases. Their insistence on not learning readily-available magic could be considered prideful, but they can get away with it.Rangers don't have that luxury, they're forced to be pragmatic and learn how to deal with these things by themselves. They were never originally envisioned as "martial druids", but as dabblers in both arcane and divine magic, picking up anything that seems both useful and simple to learn. This is a different philosophy from dedicated casters, as well as duskblades/etc. who blend sword and spell as an intentional fighting style.
Or just stop playing shitty games that pigeonhole characters into arbitrary niches for no reason.
>>97097129>Make a Swim check once per round while you are in the water.You can take 10.With a -12 to Swim checks from full plate, you need to be like a 10th level fighter (13 ranks) with a 20 Strength (+5) to be able to get 28, or adjusted to 16, on Swim checks just taking 10.>Each hour that you swim, you must make a DC 20 Swim check or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage from fatigue.Easy. You have +18 you can only fail on a natural 1. So after 20 hours you lose 3 hp. So over 7 days you would lose ~24 hit points? Nothing for a high level fighter.
>>97097426Likewise some people hate D&D assassins having the ability to cast spells, but why would a career assassin *not* learn how to turn invisible if there are tons of people around who can teach them?
>>97097257Prowlers & Paragon. This dude's been running a hate campaign against it by pretending its playerbase is insufferable
Why should an assassin need a spell to turn invisible when he can just buy the invisibility power with the Trained, Tech, or Innate source?
>>97097426>>97097483Usually the answer to this stuff is "magic has costs", but most forms of D&D magic are extremely safe and don't have any particular drawbacks unless you're going out of the way to unlock forbidden branches of them (which even then aren't often that serious). Even a cleric who blasphemes against their god will in most cases just lose their powers at worst, and they can return to full strength by worshipping something else.DC Comics has had various explanations of why Batman doesn't use magic, like "it would corrupt someone like him", "he lacks a magical bloodline and isn't interested in Faustian pacts" or "it takes a state of mind that would require him to let go of the pain that makes him Batman". But it's generally shown that he's still extremely knowledgeable about magic: he knows what to line the walls of the Batcave with to block scrying, he can recognise and defend himself against mental intrusion, if he sees that villains have drawn a giant magic circle in Gotham he can tell at least vaguely what it does, and on occasion he'll outright cast a banishing spell or something but then say he didn't like doing it and put his staff away.
>>97097426That isn't weird at all.
>>970926814e was literally just taking TOM:Bo9S to its logical conclusion.Most of its systems are IN tome of battle, just not so prolifically.>>97096588>Like sorcerers gradually transforming into a dragon as they run out of spells, shifting from blaster to bruiser over the course of the day.that was 5e playtest iirc.>>97097426that's on players for never dipping wizard 1 on their fighters. No D&D character should ever be a total non-caster, only not primarily a caster.
>>97097510i mean, i keep seeing people post P&P stat sheets to unrelated questions, so maybe he's onto something?When did the game even come out, i'd literally never heard of it until like two months ago.Even their book covers just look like knockoff Mutants and Masterminds.Is it actually worth playing and has players, or is this just all a weird astroturf marketing campaign?
>>97097699what questions?
>>97093251Nah I got that, it was their damage tanking mechanic where they put all the incoming damage in a pool. Except iirc the pool ended up being way more deadly than just taking the damage because you could get double-tapped by damage from the current turn and damage from your pool. And then iirc they also got a boost to their damage output based on how much damage they had taken in the pool, so you're perversely encouraged to make that double-tap as deadly as possible.
