Book of 9 swords review

[Dragon_Child]

This is a book of nine swords review. Duh. For those who don't know, this book introducers 'manuvers', that are like spells for warrior-types, except they refresh after every encounter. To explain the terminology, a manuver is like a spell - readying a manuver is like preparing your spells, except you can do it between combats, if you have a few minutes. A discipline is like a school of magic, and the classes can only select manuvers from certain disciplines. A stance is like a manuver, but is always on. It's worth noting that you CANNOT ready manuvers multiple times, unlike spells.

I know I'm not as funny, elegent, smart, witty, or filled with hate and rage as some other posters on here (namely
Frank, K, Lago, and Josh) - but I hope you'll enjoy this review anyway.

Classes

Crusader: The first class presented is a paladin-look-alike. Their main ability is their martial manuvers - they start with 5 known, and eventually gain 14 known. They can ready 5 manuvers at level 1, and 7 at level 20. Crusaders are weird, in that they can't just use their readied manuvers as-is: they are able to use 2 random ones every round, and are given another random one to use at the end of every round. Once all their manuvers are 'granted', they get to start over again. This basically means that you have a bunch of abilitiess, but can't actually choose what abilities you're granted each round, which can be really annoying. The class has a major reliance upon luck during battle.

Their first class ability is called "Steely Resolve", which gives them a delayed damage pool. Basically, they can hold off on taking a certain number of damage until their next round. It starts at 5, which is pretty useful at level 1 - but by level 20, it's a pathetic 30, which really doesn't matter at that level. However, you also get to add a bonus equal to 1/5 of this to attack and damage at each round.At second level, you get chraisma to will saves. No one cares. The class eventually gets a useless Smite (1/day at 6, 2/day at 18), Die Hard, Mettle, and a luck domain reroll once per day. Honestly, it seems like the class is supposed to be the tank, but it does the exact opposite.

There's no particular reason that the enemies would go after them. While getting what can pretty much be +6 damage and attack all the time at higher levels, the other classes are so much better at manuvers I don't see why you would ever take this class.

Swordsage: This class is more like a monk. It has 3/4 BAB, while the others have full. They have the best access to manuvers readied and known, and don't have any stupid rules like the Crusader's randomness to hamper them. Unfortunately, while the other classes can regain manuvers extremely quickly, the swordsage has to spend a full-round action to regain ONE manuver. As such, if a swordsage actually has to do that during combat, he's screwed.

Swordsages have the oddity of a monk-like wisdom to AC, but only when they're wearing light armor. Not "light armor or lighter", but ONLY light armor. Their main ability appears to be Discipline Focus: they eventually get a free weapon focus, wisdom to damage when you use a strike from a specific discipline (of which they have 6), or +2 saves whenever they use a stance of a specific discipline. They also get a small bonus to initiative checks, 50% chance of a successful identify at will on weapons and armor, Evasion and Improved Evasion at way too high levels (9&17), and the ability to use two manuvers at once at level 20... but noone really cares about level 20 abilities.

Overall, the Swordsage is definately better than the crusader. Unfortunately, if he can't take his enemy down fast with whatever combos he has, he's going to be out of luck trying to regain them.

Warblade: The fighter replacement. They get manuvers and all that, and regian their manuvers the best. They need only spend a swift action, and not use any manuvers this round to totally regain all of their manuvers. They don't gain as many manuvers as the Swordsage, but they do get plenty of class abilities; +int to reflex, crit confirmation rolls, damage vs falnked opponents, resistance to most combat attacks (trip, sunder, disarm, etc), attack and damage when making AoOs... in addition, you also get Improved Uncanny Dodge, the ability to take fighter-only feats, and 4 bonus feats. Unfortunately, the bonus feat list completely and totally sucks.


Manuvers

I'm going to skip the feats and stuff, and get to the part everyone wants to see, next. Manuvers. Just so everyone understands, a manuver level is equivalent to a spell level - a level 6 manuver requires level 11 to use. Note that classes are restricted in the disciplines they can learn, unless they spend a feat. Manuvers are either Boosts, which take a swift action and give you a bonus that lasts the entire round (usually to all attacks), Strikes which take a standard action or full-round action, or Counters that are an immediate action and require you to be hit first. That means most of your cool attack manuvers can't be used with charging, spring attack, and what-not. Sucks to be you! I'm going to only mention the manuvers that seem worth commenting on, and leave the lame, non-interesting ones alone. I WILL try to mention the most useful ones. Let's begin.

Desert Wind Manuvers about speed and flames, only usable by swordsages.

Blistering Flourish (1, Strike): What a way to start! A level 1 manuver that takes a standard action, and dazzles enemies. It even has a fort save to negate. I can't imagine why you would ever want to use this.

Burning Blade (1, Boost) This actually decent level 1 manuver is a swift action, and gives you 1d6+level fire
damage to all attacks. Except it lasts 1 round. And then you need to spend a full-round action to do it again. And as a swordsage, you have 3/4 BAB. Ok, maybe it's not decent.

Burning Blade (2, Boost):, +5 reach, and all your attacks deal fire damage for one round. I can't see when this is ever really good - at lower levels, you won't find much DR. At higher levels, when you do find DR, energy resistance is more common. At the very least it's useful against white dragons, or something.

Death Mark (3, Strike): Your enemy explodes in 6d6 fire damage, reflex for half. You're immune to the damage. The bigger the enemy, the bigger the radius - a huge creature has a 30 ft radius, while medium only has 10. If you're chopping through goblins, it's a workable power... except that it will never improve as you level up. One attack with +6d6 damage. Who the fuck cares?

Desert Tempest (6, Strike): Full-round action to take a move action and attack everyone that you pass, hitting them each. And you take attack of oppertunities as normal. What the flying fuck? I mean, this is a level where wizards are NOT shooting out 10d6 lightning bolts, even though they can. Are you seriously telling me your shorter-range, pathetic attacks, are going to be better than that?

Dragon's Flame (5, Strike): Make the hurting stop. You spend a standard action to shoot out a 6d6 fire damage 30' cone, reflex save for half. Noone, let me say, NOONE, gives a flying fuck about 21 points of damage at level 9, especially at such short range!

Fan the Flames (3, Strike): 30' ranged touch, 6d6 fire. Why is it always 6d6 fire? WHY?! WHERE IS THE SCALING?!?!?!?!

Fiery Assualt (6, Stance): +1d6 fire damage on attacks. That's right, at level 11, you can make your weapon deal 3.5 more damage all the time. With you 3/4 BAB. While it does help to stack up with Burning Blade, and other abilities, it's still far too little for the level.

Fire Riposte (2, Counter): 4d6 touch attack against someone that hits you. 14 damage isn't... bad, I guess. I suppose it's better than most other manuvers here, and I would take it.

Flame's Blessing (1, Stance): Whoah. This one is actually useful. You get an amount of fire resistance depending on how high your tumble ranks are. It starts small (5), but eventually grows to fire immunity at 19 ranks.

Flashing Sun (2, Strike): Yes! FINALLY, a manuver that I can see actually being useful in game! This attack lets you essentially make rapid shot with a melee attack. -2 penalty, extra attack, whole deal.

Inferno Blade (7, Boost): 3d6+level fire damage on all attacks. By this level, that's really no longer helpful, and is more 'cute'.

Inferno Blast (9, Strike): A level 9 manuver! What amazing power will it deal? It even costs a full-round action. This has got to be POWERFUL! Well, it has a 60' radius, centered on you... and deals 100 fire damage to everyone who's not you. Save for half. 100 damage, at level 17, is pretty clearly in "I don't give a fuck" territory. Especially when it requires you to get so close.

Leaping Flame (5, Counter): You appear next to an enemy who attacks you, up to 100' away. Honestly, it's not that bad of a power, especially not for level 9. Useful to take out archers, and what not.

Lingering Inferno (5, Strike): You make one strike that deals +2d6 fire damage. And it deals an additional 2d6
fire damage every turn, for 3 turns. Yes, even the tiniest bit of fire resistance makes this useless. Yes, it is a level 9 ability, which means most monsters have fire resistance.

Ring of Fire (6, strike): As a full-round action, you make a double move. Anyone that's fully enclosed by your movement takes 12d6 fire damage, reflex half. You still provoke AoOs as normal. It's actually a decent sort of damage, but the whole running around bit is just lame.

Rising Pheonix (8, Stance): A high level stance, what does it do?! It lets you have a perfect fly speed equal to your land speed, but you need to stay 10 feet above any solid or liquid. So it's more of, I dunno, water walking, rather than flying. Your full attacks also deal 3d6 fire damage to all adjacent enemies. Seriously, why the lameness? why can't we just let high level PCs fly? WHY CAN'T WARRIORS HAVE NICE THINGS?!

Searing Charge (4, Strike): Actual flight! only it lasts for one round, and it's only equal to your base land speed. And you have to charge an opponent. Sure, you get +5d6 fire damage, but it's a freaking charge, imagine what the paladin is doing at this level. And the fly
speed - why? To use it, you'd have to fly into the air.
After which, you'd immediately fall, and take falling damage. How bizzarre.

Wind Stride (1, Boost): This is kind of like longstrider, in that it gives you +10' speed. Unlike longstrider, it only lasts one round, and is completely and totally worthless. Ok, so maybe it's not like longstrider.

Wyrm's Flame (8, Strike): Another 'breath' attack. 10d6
damage. At level 15. Cast it, and watch everyone LAUGH at you.


All this stupid is making me hungry. I'm going to eat, and write more later.

[Fwib]

1158441840[/unixtime]]I know I'm not as funny, elegent, smart, witty, or filled with hate and rage as some other posters on here (namely
Frank, K, Lago, and Josh) - but I hope you'll enjoy this review anyway.

Looks all good to me so far. You seem to have the style down.

[User3]

Adaptive Style is a must-have feat for the Swordsage that helps correct your main problem with them, since it lets them ready all of their maneuvers as a full-round action instead of one of them. You should probably take this into account.

[Dragon_Child]

God, there are a lot of manuvers in this book. I'm still slogging my way through. I should have the rest of the manuvers down tonight...

While I've heard about Adaptive Style, it still requires a full round action. So you're still not pulling off your best abilities rapid-fire, and you're going to have a round of doing nothing but taking up space. With the low damage of the Desert Wind manuvers, that's just not good.

Also, I need more synonyms for "suck".

[Imban]

This thread finally made me feel like registering.

I disagree with a few of your maneuver evaluations.

Desert Tempest - it's much more useful than you make it out to be, if you're going up against hordes of enemies. Remember, one of the Sword Sage's class skills is Tumble, and other maneuvers depend on it as well. You probably want to get Boots of Striding and Springing or something, though.

Plus, it's just cool.

Distracting Ember - Yet another way to drop fvcking huge amounts of sneak attack on someone that they can't do anything about. Tome of Battle is amazingly big on this. (I notice you didn't mention it, oddly enough.)

Fan the Flames - This actually does do more damage than the appropriate single-target spells at level 5, but I'll grant you that it still sucks.

Fiery Assault - Remember, stances don't cost anything except "not using a different stance".

Lingering Inferno - There are uses for this, but not many.

Ring of Fire - This attack is just awesome.

Salamander Charge - How did this not get mentioned? It's a charge and a no-save area of effect attack in one, even if the area damage isn't all that hot.

Searing Charge - You can charge over pits, or off cliffs, or up cliffs with this. Heck, you can even charge at the flying guy, but then you fall to your death afterwards, so it still sucks for that.

Wind Stride - Combines well with Desert Tempest, Salamander Charge, Searing Charge, etc.

EDIT: I'll give you that. Desert Wind isn't too powerful, and most of its stuff is completely shut down by fire resistance. It might surprise you to know that cold resistance is actually more common than fire resistance, but it's not going to surprise anyone to say that fire resistance is still really common.

[Dragon_Child]

Desert Tempest- Point taken about tumble. But is it really as useful as similiar hoard-breakers at that level? But coolness is high.

Distracting Ember- Yes, it is good for rogues sneak attacking... but with things like wands of grease, rings of blinking, etc, that can last multiple rounds, it's probablly not your best option. Still, I'm sure you can find one way to use it.

Fan the Flames- It's the non scaling that gets me, honestly. It's like a sorcerer taking a spell that will never scale, and will become totally useless in 2 or 3 levels. Sure, you can trade it out - but MOST of your abilities quickly become useless. That just sucks.

Fiery Assualt- While I understand that, there are a lot of stances that are more useful out there. I mean, I would even take Flame's Blessing over this. Remember that Fiery Assual is just +1d6 fire damage per attack, and you only have 3/4 BAB. Bad combo.

Ring of Fire- I most certainly like the look, but remember it's going to be a lot harder to tumble around with this. And needing to go all around the perimiter of the area you want to hit is going to leave you with a very, very small area. Without any movement boosters, you're only hitting 9 squares (equivalent of a 10' radius fireball, or 20' cone). Having a 60' speed makes it the equivelent of a 45' cone.

Wind Stride- That's a given, but you could just as easily ask a druid or ranger for a +10' speed bonus. And it won't stack with your boots of S&S if you later choose to get them.

Overall, it seems like the swordsage's biggest weakness is that his abilities don't scale, and he quite simply doesn't get enough ability trade-ins.

[Dragon_Child]

More manuvers!

Devoted Spirit Toughness, endurance, counters, and alignment-specific abilities usable only by Crusaders. There are a LOT of abilities that give you a bonus to AC, saves, or healing.

Aura of Chaos (6, Stance): Whenever you roll maximum damage on a die, you get to reroll it and add the new roll to the original. If you roll max again, you can reroll, and add it up again. So every Crusader with this uses Falchions, Scythes, and what-not. Pretty useful, actually.

Aura of Perfect Order (6, Stance): Once per round, take 11 on a d20 roll. With how high level, and low-power, I'd skip this.

Aura of Triumph (6, Stance): When you or an ally within 10' successfully hit an evil guy, you heal 4 points of HP per hit. Really useful if your party has a lot of two-weapon fighters, actually. It seems a bit weak for a level 11 ability, otherwise.

Aura of Tyranny (6, Stance): At the end of your round, you can deal 2 damage to each ally within 10', and heal 1 point for each ally you hurt. Wow, it sucks to be evil. This ability is TOTAL ASS.

Crusader's Strike (1, Strike): I actually like this ability. Somewhat. You attack an enemy, and if their alignment is different than yours, and you hit, you or one ally heals 1d6+level HP. Only, at higher levels, you don't get multiple attacks with it. Still, healing for 1d6+level HP at low levels can be useful.

Daunting Strike (5, Strike): Strike an opponent, and if you hit, they make a will save (DC = damage dealt) or become shaken. While it's probablly a lot more likely to work, couldn't you just, oh, dip into warlock and gain the ability to do this with EVERY single strike you make, ever?

Divine Surge, Greater (8, Strike): Get +6d8 damage on an attack, with an additional +1 hit and +2d8 damage for each point of con damage you take. While that is a really shitty deal, I'm sure you can figure out a way to quickly heal up your con damage between battles while making giant strikes.

Entangling Blade (4, Strike): Deal +2d6 damage, and reduce your opponent's speed by 20' for one round. You get this at level 7, when you have multiple attacks. Why wouldn't you just throw a tanglefoot bag?

Immortal Fortitude (8, Stance): It's worth noting that due to the reatded way the class is designed, Crusaders can't even GET this ability without a feat. If you're at negative HP, every time you take damage, you need to make a fort DC equal to your negative HP total. If you fail the save, you're dead. If not, you can fight normally. As-is, that looks pretty decent... you can go into the negatives equal to (10 + your fort save). For a level 15 ability, that's not bad. Except for the fact that after you take 3 hits, the ability turns off. Is it really that hard to hit someone for 3 sources of damage once you hit level 15? I'm pretty sure EVERY class has some way to deal it out quickly.

Iron Guard's Glare (1, Stance): The only actual USEFUL tanking ability I've seen so far. Every enemy you threaten takes a -4 attack penalty when attacking you allies (but not you). Niiice.

Martial Spirit (1, Stance): When you hit someone, you can choose yourself or an ally to heal 2 HP. Not bad at level 1, but the lack of scaling kills it. What's with any this tiny healing?

Shield Block (2, Counter): Give an ally a bonus to AC equal to your shild bonus +4 against one attack. But you have to say it before the DM announces what the total of the attack roll is. Sigh...

Shield Counter (7, Counter): You shield bash someone, and if you hit, their next attack automatically misses. You can do it when they declare an attack - if a ray spell counts, I honestly don't know. It's a little like Frank's foil action, only bad.

Strike of Righteous Vitality (9, Strike): Your super-ultimate bone crushingly powerful level 9 ability... casts Heal on you when you strike an enemy. What's that? Clerics with Divine Metamagic quicken? Mass heal? Don't be silly. You're a warrior-type. YOU DON'T GET NICE THINGS!

Thicket of Blades (3, Stance): 5-foot steps and withdraws provoke AoOs from you. Really, really nice.

While a lot of these abilities seem good, remember as a Crusader, you get them all RANDOMLY. Chances are, you won't have the ones you need when you need them.


Diamond Mind: Manuvers that are all about intelligence. Swordsages and Warblades get Diamond Mind abilities.

Action Before Thought (2, Counter): Roll concentration instead of a reflex save. Very good, but from a design standpoint, I HATE anything that lets you roll skills instead of 'real' dice, because skills are so easy to cheese. Why not just make it an auto-success?

Avalanche of Blades (7, Strike): Hit an enemy, deal damage. If you hit, attack against at -4. if you hit, attack again at -8. if you hit, attack again at -12. etc. Actually really, really cool, although I doubt it's too powerful unless you really buff up your bonus to attack to insane levels.

Bounding Assualt (4, Strike): You make a charge, but can move however way you want and don't get -2 to AC. For a level 7 ability, this is just LAME. Who cares about charging around like crazy only once every few rounds at that level?

Diamond Defense (8, Counter): You get +level to a save. Wow. I mean, just wow. The sheer weakness blows me away, considering that you have to recharge it between uses. Who cares if you can pass one save?

Diamond Nightmare Blade (8, Strike): Make a concentration check against the opponent's AC. We'll assume you had to pay some of your precious, precious skill points on an otherwise useless skill, and automatically pass. You then deal x4 damage. Wow! Except, not wow. Spirited Charge lancers have been dealing x3 damage from what, level 4? And they can do it every round. And this is a standard action, which means you can't do it on a charge. Clearly, those fucking fighters are TOO POWERFUL!

Disrupting Blade (5, Strike): Aaah, somewhat useful. Almost. Hit a target, and if they fail a will save, they can't take any actions next round. Sadly, you can't juggle with it, but it's a decent distraction.

Hearing the Air (5, Stance): Blindsense 30'. Yes. I am as underwhelmed as you are. At the very least, it lets you know seconds before someone sneak attacks your ass.

Insightful Strike (3, Strike): Deal damage on one attack equal to concentration check. Can you get that nice and high? Sure. Can you get it high enough to actually be useful? Of course not.

Mind Strke (4, Strike): Deal 1d4 wisdom damage (will negates) with an attack. Yeowza, that's really lame. Just use a spell storing sword of Touch of Idiocy or something!

Moment of Alacrity (6, Boost): Get +20 to initiative. Can be used mid-battle. Get ready for confusion! Really, the best way you can use this is to use it to get two turns in a row, which requires a perfect set-up.

Pearl of Black Doubt (3, Stance): Every time an opponent misses you, you get +2 to AC until your next round. Oddly enough, it could actually be useful to have a bunch blindfolded commoners holding exotic ranged weapons they don't know how to use firing at you everywhere you go. If only the bag of rats trick was still a valid counter! I wish I could say that this is the most bizzarre ability I've ever seen in a D&D book... buuut... it's not. If

Rube Nightmare Blade (4, Strike): Like Diamond Nightmare blade, but weaker. Requires concentration check, deals x2 damage. Yes, it requires level 7. Yes, Spirited Charge is still better.

Stance of Clarity (1, Stance): +2 AC against one enemy, -2 AC against all others. Honestly, with the way one enemy is almost always immediately defeated by a smart party in one round, I consider this useless.

Time Stands Still (9, Strike): Take two full-attacks. Not actions - you specifically need to make ONLY full attacks. This earns a 'meh' from me. Is getting basic attacks, with nothing to help boost them even all that useful?


Iron Heart: These manuvers are all about 'pure weapon skill', and only usable by the warblade.

Adamantine Hurricane (8, Strike): You make two melee attacks at +4 hit against each opponent you threaten. I'm not going to complain about this one - I reccommend it. In fact, combine with great cleave, and it's bag of rats all over again. Great counter against the blind commoner guy above.

Dancing Blade Form (5, Stance): You get +5 reach, but only when you're making attacks (and not for AoOs). So it can't even be used with Adamantine Hurricane. Synergy? For warriors?! CAN'T HAVE THAT! Let's add more sucky-ass abilities, instead!

Disarming Strke (2, Strike): If you hit your foe, you can freely attempt to disarm him while suffering no AoO. This is actually very cool for it's level, although once you get multiple attacks its coolness diminishes.

Exorcism of Steel (3, Strike): Attack an opponent's weapon, dealing no damage, but they must make a will save. They pass, they get -2 hit, they fail, they get -4. Completely and totally weak compared to other ways you can give your enemies penalties, or even just Disarming Strike. Once again, proving that if fighters want to inflict useful penalties, we can't let them.

Iron Heart Endurance (6, Strike): Healing you 2x level HP if you're under half HP. It'll be really useful, once the enemy wizard dominates you and turns you against your friends. Actually, no, I take that back. It likely won't ever be useful.

Iron Heart Surge (3, standard action): You remove one penalty afflicting you. Only unfortunately, it can't actually remove something unless you're concious of it being there, or want it to be gone. While it can remove crazy stuff like curses, it can't heal ability damage, domination, charm, stoning... just, you know, most every effect you'll ever find.

Lightning Strike (8, Strike): Whoaaah. You deal damage to all enemies in a 30 ft line equal to 12d6 + weapon damage, with a reflex save equal to your attack roll for half. It's actually a pretty decent warrior AOE, considering how absolute shit those Desert Wind abilities were.

Scything Blade (7, Boost): If you hit an enemy at least once, you can make another attack against another enemy. And you can only get one bonus attack. So for a level 13 ability, you can make one extra attack against an enemy you're not focusing on. ...am I supposed to care?

Strike of Perfect Clarity (9, Strike): One attack that deals +100 damage. I hear a lot of people yammering about this ability. Quite frankly, I DON'T FUCKING CARE! The x4 damage ability is likely a hell of a lot better, and we already decided we just don't care about this! Such a low damage potential SUCKS!

Supreme Blade Parry (8, Stance): DR 5/-. Negated when you're flat footed. Decent, but again... like most abilities in this book, it makes me wanting more.


Setting Sun: these Swordsage-only manuvers turn an opponent's strength against them.

Clever Positioning (Strike, 2): You hit a guy, and swap positions with him. I'm honestly confused on if this would ever come up enough to make it worth spending one of your precious abilites known on it.

Counter Charge (Counter, 1): When someone charges you, you and the target make opposed strength or dexterity checks, and if you succeed, they don't get to attack you. Useful against enemy charge builds, I guess?

A bunch of different throw abilities (Strike, various): You make some opposed checks, deal a tiny bit of damage that your target won't even notice, and toss your target away and make them land prone. Only they don't provoke AoOs through movement. This is another ability that's neat, but I honestly can't see coming up often enough to learn. If someone sees a neat trick for these, or if I'm just missing something, please let me know. I guess they're OK for taking heat away from your casters.

Fool's Strike (8, Counter): Make an opposed attack roll against an attack about to hit you. If you win, the opponent instead hits himself. Unfortunately, as a 3/4 BAB swordsage, you're only going to be able to easily block their lower BAB strikes which are likely to miss anyway (and just plain don't exist, for monsters.)

Ghostly Defense (8, Stance): If an enemy misses you due to one of your miss chances, he instead hits someone you choose. I actually like this - be sure to get a cloak of displacement, ring of blinking, ring of invisibility, and all sorts of that fun stuff. Unfortunately, enemies are really going to be unlikely to attack you.

Giant Killing Style (3, Stance): +2 hit, +4 damage against bigger opponents. Bring on the gnome swordsages - this seems like it could really help even the score.

Hydra Slaying Strike (7, Strike): Hit an opponent, and prevent him from making a full attack. Oddly enough, it's absolutely and totally worthless against hydras as written. Is anyone surprised?

Shifting Defense (5, Stance): Everytime someone attacks you, you can make a 5-foot step in exchange for giving up an AoO. Yeowza. This can be extremely useful for dodging out of the way of attackers who have no reach.

Step of the Wind (1, Stance): Ignore all difficult terrain, and better attack people in difficult terrain. This is actually really useful for the level you get it at. I'm surprised!

Strike of the Broken Shield (4, Strike): Deal normal damage +4d6, and make your enemy flat-footed if they fail a save. Like most of the abilities in this discipline, extremely useful with a rogue-heavy party.


My impressions so far: A lot of the Crusader's abilities are stuff you only really need when someone is hurt badly... which you're not garuenteed to have, with the random set-up. The warblade abilities are decent, and actually make the class somewhat playable. The swordsage seems to be getting reamed, hard. The worst bit is that almost none of the abilities scale well, which really sucks when you have sorcerer-style manuvers known. In addition to the scaling, the thing that pisses me off most is that these abilities don't work with the current combat rules - you need SPECIAL manuvers just to charge, or disarm, or to make full attacks, or to use with cleave, or spring attack, or... the list goes on. If these manuvers actually had synergy with the feats you were likely to take, I'd be willing to tolerate it a lot more.

Edit: I want to comment, I was probablly a bit harsh on the warblade damage-dealing manuvers my first time through. However, the fact that they're only a little better than what the fighter can do is the problem. Sure, you ARE better than the fighter... just, not by enough.

[Imban]

Iron Heart Surge - This dispels Antimagic Field.

[Dragon_Child]

Shadow Hand: Swordsage manuvers about stealth, deception, ambush, and what-not. Roguey stuff.

Assassin's Hand (3, Stance): Now we're talking! You get +2d6 sneak attack. I'm sure you can find some way to try and abuse a PrC requirement that's not actually any good, but hey, this stance isn't that bad in battle.

Balance on the Sky (8, Stance): You gain Air Walk. And only if you can keep a hand free. Yes, it does require 4 more levels than the cleric needs to cast the spell, and yes, it does require you to fight with a one-handed weapon and no shield. Yes, it does suck to not be a cleric. We known.

Child of Shadow (1, Stance): You gain concealment... only it's not concealment, because you can't hide. And you need to move at least 10' or it doesn't work. At the very least, you have reason to move, with most of your abilities are standard actions.

Cloak of Deception (2, Boost): You get the effect of Greater Invisibility - until your turn in over. -sighs- I mean, the ninja has enough uses of his invisibility that he's unlikely to run out, and you get this crappy thing that won't even protect you between rounds.

Drain Vitality (2, Strike): Deals damage, and the enemy has to make a fort save or suffer 2 points of con damage. Which is equivalent to +3 damage when you get it. That REALLY doesn't look good when I say it that way, does it?

Enervating Shadow Strike (8, Strike): Enemy takes damage, and makes a fort save, or suffers 1d4 negative levels. Did you know you can have wands of Enervation? Did you know you can apply metamagic feats to enervation? Did you know that 1d4 negative levels alone isn't really all that great, especially when you're unable to usefully stack them?

Five-Shadow Creeping Ice Enervation Strike (9, Strike): Not a joke. Honsetly, this name is not a joke. The longest, most cumbersome, bizzarre attack name so far comes from the school of stealth. If you hit, you deal normal damage, +15d6, and suffers some hefty ability damage and penalties, rolled randomly. There's a fort save to lessen the ability damage and negate the penalties, but this is still really nice, compared to the other level 9 abilities.

Ghost Blade (6, Strike): Your opponent is considered flat-footed for this attack. Yes, yes, we know you can make someone flat-footed against the attacks from the entire party for several rounds with a level 1 spell. But that's a SPELL. You're a fighter. Suck it.

Hand of Death (4, Strike): Could it be? -gasp- COULD IT BE? YES, YES IT IS! IT'S A SAVE OR FUCKING DIE! Make a melee touch attack against a flat-footed opponent, and if he fails, he's paralyzed for 1d3 rounds. Yes, I know this is only moderately good, I know it could be described as "decent" as best, but it still excites me.

Island of Blades (1, Stance): You count as flanking an opponent so long as you're adjacent to the opponent, and an ally is as well. Yes, it lets you ally flank even if you're not really flanking. Yes, it lets you flank even if you don't have a weapon out. Yes - it is a really, really cool stance.

One with Shadow (8, Counter): You become incorporeal until your next round. I honestly don't see the need for the huge level of this, even if you're immune to the attacks of most monsters. Against most attacks, it's still only 50% miss chance.

Shadow Blink (7, swift): Teleport 60' . I'm sure a clever person will be able to find a use for this.

Step of the Dancing Moth (5, Stance): Your movement is set to 20', you can ignore terrain features, and suffer no penalty for sneaking quickly. Isn't it just easier to give a stance/spell/item that gives you a movement boost, and just sneak normally?


Stone Dragon: Crusaders, Warblades, AND Swordsages can all use these manuvers. They emphasize strength, power, and toughness. The flavor mentions shit about a 'single blow', and I wonder how that's any different than all the other disciplines which have a bunch of single blow attacks. Worth noting, these can only be used if you're touching the ground , and so are pretty much absolutely useless in sea adventures, be it on a boat or undersea, mid-air adventures, against closet trolls who you have to fly to kill, when you're mounted, etc, etc...

There are a lot of basic attacks here that automatically pass through DR and deal extra damage. I'm not going to mention them all. If you're looking for that, it would be found here. There are also plenty of abiltiies that give you DR (mostly /adamantine) for just one round, if you can hit your opponent.

Bonesplitting Strike (4, Strike): Normal attack, deals 2 points of con damage. Which is 7 HP when you get it. See, when I say "7 hp", it makes the manuver look really lame. Because it IS really lame.

Boulder Roll (4, Boost): You get +4 on overrun. That's... that's it. +4 only? I mean, at level 7, can't we please give people something a little bit more than +4?

Crushing Vice (6, Strike): Drops your target's speed to 0, if they're on the ground. Once again, these abilities are so much weaker than just using tanglefoot bags and taking AoOs.

Crushing Weight of the Mountain (3, Stance): Your grapples deal 2d6 + 1.5x str damage. Huh. I guess you could use it for some neat grappling builds, but it still seems lame considering that you're up against grapple-wizards polymorphing, hector, or Evard's Black Tentacles soon.

Earthquake Strike (8, Strike): Everyone within 20' must make a reflex save or be knocked prone. Yes... 20'. Yes, just prone. No, no damage. What's that? You'd prefer to cast the actual earthquake spell? Bastard. I asked a few friends what level they thought this manuver would be. Most said 2 or 3.

Giant's Stance (5, Stance): You deal damage as if you were large. If you move or are moved more than 5 feet, the stance immediately ends, meaning you need to spend a swift action (and thus not use a Boost) to renew it. Cool for people who are already freaking big and have massive reach, not so cool for the smallfries.

Irressitable Mountaik Strike (6, Strike): You hit someone, who has to make a fort save or be unable to take a standard action for 1 round. It says nothing about not taking full-round attacks. The wording confuses me, and I'm pretty sure it still allows your enemy to tear into you.

Mountain Tombstone Strike (9, Strike): You hit a guy, and deal normal damage +2d6 con. No save, at least, but isn't this the level where the rogue is easily dealing that much con damage, if not more, using wounding weapons and a full attack? Or heck, just the fighter, or an archer, or anyone that's not you? Sure, you can use this with a wounding weapon, but you only get +1 for it. You're likely to deal more con damage, but they're likely to deal a lot more HP damage.

Stone Bones (1, Strike): I said I wouldn't mention this, but I have to mention this one because of it's level. Hit a guy, get DR 5/adam. At level 1, that's sexy. Really sexy.

Augh, most of these abilities are just awful, totally negated if you try to move, or aren't on the ground, and other stuff. This has to be the worst discipline so far. I'm not even going to name all the shitty abilities it has.


Tiger Claw: WILD ANIMAL KITTIES WARBLADE AND SWORDSAGE CUTE KAWAII TIGERS LAWL ^_______^

There are a bunch of abilities where you get a bonus to hit and damage, but suffer a penalty to AC, or need to make a jump check and get a bonus to damage. I'm ignoring most of those, as they're just copies one after another.


Blood in the Water (1, Stance): Everytime you crit someone, you get +1 attack and damage. This stacks with itself. If you go a minute without critting someone, the ability ends. A nice stance for your Drizzt clone against massive hordes in long battles.

Dancing Mongoose (5, Boost): You get an extra attack for each weapon you wield, max of 2. Actually, really really useful, although a wee bit high level. And count me shocked that this actually takes two-weapon fighters into consideration.

Feral Death Blow (9 Strike): Oooh mama. You need to be adjacent to your opponent. Make a jump check against their AC, and if successful, they need to make a fort save (DC 19 + your str mod). Failure, they die instantly. Success, you deal normal damage +20d6. A level 9 manuver that actually seems worth using. I want me some of this.

Girallon Windmill Fleshrip (8, Boost): Yes, the Tiger Claw attacks DO have the coolest fucking names in any D&D book, ever. With this ability, you have to be wielding two weapons. The more times you hit each target, the more damage you do: up to +20d6 if you hit an opponent 8 times. Yes, it IS a high level manuver that not only stacks with a full attack, but works well with a full attack. It seems that all the luvin is in Tiger Claw.

Hunter's Sense (1, Stance): You get Scent. Simple, cheap, pretty effective, although I'd still prefer Blood in the Water.

Pouncing Charge (5, Strike): You get pounce. Full-attack at the end of a charge, and all that. I see nothing that would prevent you from using this when mounted, or with leap attack. This sexy shit is better than most of those level 8/9 Iron Heart and Stone Dragon attacks! Combine with Dancing Mongoose and Leap Attack, and you can charge a guy, make a full attack, and then get an extra attack! Or use it with Girallon Windmill Fleshrip. This is some good stuff, right here.

Prey on the Weak (7, Stance): Whenever someone within 10' of you drops, you get an attack of oppertunity against a target of your choice. Stacks with cleave and great cleave. Gogogogogo bag of rats!

Raging Mongoose (8, Boost): Like Dancing Mongoose, but two extra attacks with each weapon. Good lord. Remember to combine with Pouncing Charge, and make six attacks at the end of a spirited charge, each dealing x3 damage! Woo!

Sudden Leap (1, Boost): Jump check as a swift action. Extremely useful for getting into place for a Feral Death Blow, or other attack you may have.

Wolf Fang Strike (1, Strike): Allows you to move and attack with two weapons. You really should be able to do this normally, but at least this makes up for the lack.


White Raven: The last discipline, this one is for all those Crusaders and Warblades who want to lead troops and look all heroic and cool and what-not.

Battle Leader's Charge (2, Strike): Charge an opponent, and deal +10 damage. Useful, if you can get that stacking multiplier up.

Bolstering Voice (1, Stance): Gives all allies +2 will, or +4 saves against fear. Notice how much better this is than Iron Will. Why is it that all the really low-level stances seem to be the ones worth using?

Covering Strike (4, Boost): Anyone you hit this round can't take AoOs for 3 rounds. Excellent to shut down enemy fighter types.

Leading the Charge (1, Stance): All allies get a damage equal to your level on charge attacks. Just... wow. Just wow. Be sure to give that to the crazy 6-attack pouncing spirited charge tiger guy above, to give him an extra few hundred damage.

Swarm Tactics (8, Stance): Your allies get +5 hit against opponents you're adjacent to. A pretty hefty bonus, even at that high of a level.

Tactics of the Wolf (3, Stance): When you flank someone, you and all allies flanking get a bonus to damage equal to +1/2 your level against the flanked target. High enough to actually be useful, in most cases.

War Leader's Charge (6, STrike): Charge, and deal +35 damage. Oooh yeah. Let the good multipliers roll.

War Master's Charge (9, Strike): This ability gives me a hard-on. You and all allies within 30' charge one target. You get +50 damage, all allies get +25 damage. You and all allies get +2 to hit PER ally charging. Your movement doesn't provoke AoOs. If you and at least one ally hit, the opponent is stunned. You don't get in each other's ways, either. Just... yeow. What a capstone ability. While it does only hurt one enemy, which makes it less impressive, I can't see any enemy surviving a good use of this thing. Prepare to blow them into chunks with your lances! I can imagine a party of Warblades, using this ability in rapid succession to instantly devastate all opponents. Be sure to all take leadership, so you can get plenty of cohorts to charge with you!

White Raven Hammer (8, Strike): You deal +6d6 damage, and stun the enemy for one round. No save. No nothing. The enemy is just stunned.

Overall, White Raven is clearly the best, and most cheesy discipline yet. A bunch of white raven -focused warblades can quite literally charge through anything, dealing rediculous amounts of damage, and at high levels keep enemies perma-juggled with teamwork. Just be sure to have great cleave, or grab a warmage who can take out hordes.

[Username17]

Ugh. I couldn't bring myself to read this book after I saw the previews on the Web.

But seriously, random ability choicces every turn? As in, you "draw cards" to determine wat's in your "hand" every turn? I mean, I knew this game was made by WotC now, but that's ricockulous. It's like they don't even understand that speed of resolution is a design goal in a paper and pencil RPG. This isn't a computer game, if you move 2 points from one column to another column, you have to verbally and physically do that. If you have to randomly generate respawning powers, you have to verbally and physically generate some random numbers each and every fvcking time!

It's like this stuff is designed to make fighters look like they contribute evenly by giving them way more screen time. You don't want "more" air time, you want "better" air time. Putting a bunch of shoeless negroes eating watermelons on TV isn't going to make the NAACP happy, they want positive black role models on television.

Fighters want to contribute. Not "take up mental space", but to actually contribute. Holy shit, what the hell were they thinking?

-Username17

[Dragon_Child]

This is the final installment of my review.

Feats

I'm going into earlier on in the book to go over the feats, now.


Adaptive Style: You can ready manuvers and change your currently prepared manuvers as a full-round action. Almost useless for Crusaders and Warblades, an absolute must-have for a Swordsage who doesn't want to suck total ass (he'll just suck ass, instead).

Avenging Strike: A lame wanna-be smite only useful against evil outsiders. I'll pass.

Blade Meditation: Choose a discipline, gain +1 damage with the discipline's weapon (which are often some of the worst weapons possible to choose for that discipline), and +2 to that discipline's skill.

Desert Fire: If you move 10', your Desert Wind strikes deal +1d6 damage. With how absolutely shitty Desert Wind strikes are to begin with, I don't think anyone will ever take this.

Desert Wind Dodge: If you move 10', you get +1 AC, and +1 fire damage. I really can't see someone blowing a feat on this.

Devoted Bulwark: After an enemy strikes you, you get +1 AC until your next round. Useful for all those tank-types, at least.

Divine Spirit: When in a Devoted Spirit stance, you can spend turning attempts to be healed. Only, you get healed 3 + your charisma mod. Woop-de-fucking-do.

Evasive Reflexes: You can take 5-foot steps instead of AoOs. Most of the time, I'll just stick with the AoOs, thanks.

Extra Granted Manuver, Extra Readied Manuver: Gives you more manuvers granted/readied, blah blah.

Falling Sun Attack: You can make Setting Sun strikes that you make unarmed stunning attacks. You also get +1 DC for stunning fist, and +1 DC for setting sun strikes.

Instant Clarity: 3/day, you can use a swift action to become psionically focused after using a manuver. So it requires multiclassing between two caster-like classes. Ha. Good luck with that!

Ironheart Aura: When in an Ironheart Stance, adjacent allies get +2 saves. Would be good, if it actually worked on you as well or had some range. Sadly, most of the time you're going to want to actually flank people, and not stand back-to-back.

Martial Stance: You get a stance. You need to know a manuver already to get it, though. And you need to meet requirements. Doesn't leave you with many options!

Martial Study: You get a manuever of your choice 1/encounter, and a skill of the discipline it's in is always a class skill for you. Not worth it, due to the crappiness of low-level manuvers.

Psychic Renewal: As a swift action, spend power points equal to your manuver's level and your focus to regain a manuver. This is in no way a good deal, at all.

Rapid Assualt: +1d6 damage in the first round of combat. This HAS to be a joke. Noone would really spend a feat on this!

Scribe Martial Script: Create scrolls with manuvers on them. So they're suckier.

Shadow Blade: When in a Shadow Hand stance, you get to add your dexterity bonus to damage. Extremely nice for rogue characters who may have dipped into swordsage (and considering that's a +2d6 sneak attack level 3 stance...).

Shadow Trickster: +2 DCs of illusions in a shadow hand stance, and +2 damage when making a sneak attack, sudden strike, or when flanking. Why this is all one feat puzzles me.

Song of the White Raven: While in a White Raven stance, you can activate bardic music as a swift action, and stack warblade, crusader, and bard levels for inspire courage. This requires multiclassing. I'm sure you can use it in the great white raven warblade charge, but I don't think it's worth the investment.

Snap Kick: You can make some weird unarmed attack rapid shot thing. It's actually useful considering it lets you get an extra attack with a strike, and I'm sure someone can figure out a way to abuse it in the multiple-attack or charge builds.

Stone Power: When attacking, you can take a penalty to hit up to -5 (but not more than your BAB), and gain temp HP equal to twice that, that go away at the beginning of your next round. Were this actual DR, and not temp HP, it would be worth using. Otherwise, NO.

Sudden Recovery: 1/day, you can instantly recover a manuver. 1/day. Once per freaking day. -sighs-

Superior Unarmed Strike: Deal damage as if you were a monk 4 levels higher. If you're not a monk, you get an unarmed damage progression that will never, EVER be useful.

Tiger Blooded: When raging, shifting, or wild shaping, you can attempt to knock enemies back 5'. This is every bit as completely and totally fucking lame as it sounds.

Unnerving Calm: Some shit about duels of wills, using intimidate, and other stuff noone cares about.

Vital Recovery: When you recover martial manuvers, you heal 3 + level HP. Cool! Only it's usable once per encounter. FUcking retarded. Why do all of these feats have to suck?

White Raven Defense: You get +1 AC when standing next to people, and sometimes you give people +1 AC, and noone really cares, because it's really just +1 AC and for fuck's sake CAN WE HAVE SOME FEATS THAT WILL ACTUALLY GIVE A CHARACTER A NOTICABLE DIFFERENCE!

Tactical Feats

Clarion Commander: You can get an enemy as flanked, or flat footed, or - oh fuck, noone cares, these things require actions that are better spent JUST HITTING HIM.

Distant Horizon: Lame abilities, but has one useful one: if an enemy charges you and misses for whatever reason, you can 'charge' him back without moving.

Faith Unswervering: You tank. Only, you don't tank, because these abilities don't really help you with the basics of attacking.

Gloom Razor: A bunch of abilities that are outright worse than just having a good Hide, Move Silently, Bluff, Wand of Grease, and Wand of Invisibility.

Perfect Clarity of Mind and Body: Spending a total defense action to get +30 movement speed actually has some uses, I'm sure. I'm just not sure what they are. You can also give an opponent -2 to hit any round where you hit, disarm, or trip him. THAT is useful!

Reaping Talons: None of these abilities are any good, and they're all made worse that the Tiger Claw favored weapons are things you just do NOT want to use with those manuvers.

Scorching Sirocco: Like all Desert Wind abilities, you should consider killing yourself instead of taking this.

Shards of Granite: Taking -5 hit to get 10 temp HP, as well as ignore hardness and DR is lame, lame, lame. Ignore what anyone tells you: just use power attack instead. Plus, how the hell are you supposed to sunder anything, an OPPOSED ROLL, with -5 hit? Why not just use power attack and get +10 damage? You likely have that feat anyway, and rather than blowing two feats to get this worthless ability. And that's not even counting that you need two Stone Dragon manuvers to get it, and chances are, one lets you ignore hardness and DR!

Stormguard Warrior: +4 hit and damage for each AoO you withhold from? Decent, if you rely on multiple attacks. Otherwise, just making AoOs would likely be better. You can also make melee touch attacks instead of normal attacks - for each touch attack that hits, you get +5 damage next round. I can see these being useful with a tiger claw multi-attack build, but still, they're pretty underwhelming. Even if you have four attacks, if you're NOT getting 20 damage from each attack... well, you should kill yourself.


God, these feats were awful. They make me want to set myself on fire. A shame the Desert Wind manuvers are too damn weak to even be good at self-immolation.



Prestige Classes

Yeah, I've been waiting for this section too. As a note, these PrCs are all in the "new" format, which means they take up about three times the space they actually should.

Bloodclaw Master: A tiger claw PrC that revolves around using tiger claw weapons... unfortunately, tiger claw weapons are the worst possible weapons to use with most of the discipline's abilities. If you know what's good for you, skip this pathetically lame PrC.

Bloodstorm Blade: A 10 level PrC that's all about throwing stuff, and doesn't get manuvers. Unfortunately, it's not particularly GOOD at throwing stuff - it's only of those "5 levels of abilities in a 10 level class" PrC. Not even the level 10 ability of letting you throw a weapon at EVERY ENEMY IN YOUR RANGE can make up for the suck.

Deepstone Sentinel: I love the fact that you need to be level 11 to take your first level in this PrC, and it says you're a "novice". Yeah... right. So you get the ability to use passwall, shape the earth around you, You can make enemies around you flat-footed by forcing balance checks, knock them prone with more balance checks, and create tiny earthquakes. If you're playing an underdark campaign or the like, this could be useful... but by level 11, when you first take this PrC, most of your stone dragon attacks will be useless, due to flight.

Eternal Blade: The elf PrC. You knew this book had one, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU? The PrC first spends 5 paragraphs describing your "Blade Guide", which can be attacked, but is really hard to kill, and immediately comes back! And it goes on and on, when really none of this information is actually needed, and could just be summed up with one paragraph of flavor. This PrC gives a lot of swift-action abilities, which just aren't that good, and end up running into each other ; how are you going to use them all and your boosts? This PrC is just a big waste of space, with lame, weak abilities, that have overly-long flavor.

Jade Pheonix Mage: An arcane/martial manuver multiclass PrC. You get 8/10 caster levels, a smallish amount of manuvers, and full BAB. You can expend spell slots to get a pretty nice bonus to hit and damage, you can gain a bonus to spellcaster level, AC, and DR if you expend a spell slot and give up your stance, if you hit someone with a martial stance one round, your spells next round are empowered (sweet!), and later on you can make up lost caster levels with fire spells. Even later, you can empower AND quicken spells, and the final ability... once per round, you totally explode, dealing a lot of damage, banishing outsiders, and fully healing yourself. Overall, an extremely cool class, but the flavor is extremely setting specific and many DMs won't like it.

Master of Nine: This 5-level swordsage PrC is essentially the manuver master, letting them get strikes and stances from any discipline, and use them better than anyone else. Still, "better than anyone else" isn't all that good. I guess it's decent, it's kind of hard to tell.

Ruby Knight Vindicator: You're going in as a Cleric/Crusader or a Cleric/Warblade, and get +8 caster levels and +10 BAB, as well as a decent amount of manuevers. At level 2, you can use up a turning attempt to immediately recover any expended manuever, and get it usable if you're a Crusader. You also don't get armor check penalty to hide (but still move silently, which is odd), you can spend turn or rebuke attempts to get swift actions (letting you spend two to get a counter you want, and be able to use it during this round), and at level 10, spend a turn/rebuke to get +4 hit and +1d10 damage with one strike this round. Overall, likely worse than cleric, but still playable.

Shadow Sun Ninja: You get monk abilities. Already, everyone can hear that sucking sound. You get a touch attack that has to be negative energy one round, and positive energy the other, but it's based on your unarmed damage and the negative energy it deals is going to SUCK, especially as you have to make it as a standard action. In no way is that going to be good. And then you get cold resistance 10 for one round, and a 2d6 fire bolt the next round, then cold resistance, then fire bolt, etc. Yes, yes, we know this isn't any good either. You can then blind people, and dazzle people, and the only actual good ability at level 10 will kill you and turn you into an NPC vampire if you try to use it. I'm not even making this shit up.

[Dragon_Child]

But seriously, random ability choicces every turn? As in, you "draw cards" to determine wat's in your "hand" every turn?

Pretty much, yes, only it's WORSE than that. This is for the defensive specialist class. A defensive class needs reliability - you need to know that this guy can block the attacks that are being tossed at you, and he can put aside everything else to do what needs to be done, mainly save the party's ass. If you're getting random abilities, that's just not going to work, as you never know what you're going to get. God doesn't play dice with the universe, but he sure as hell does with crusaders - and crusaders are going to lose.

[SirWayne]

Tome of Battle's been my favorite WOTC release since Magic of Incarnum, so as far as the power level goes... sure, it's not quite good enough yet, but it's a lot closer than what I'm used to. >_> So WOTC at least deserves some props for putting some new [I think? didn't recognize the names] guys up and making a system that's better than anything else I've seen in awhile.

...even if it takes an entire notebook full of houserules to make playable. But we're all used to that by now. :|

Crusader is by far the worst, I agree (they even get kicked in the pants by their maneuver recovery method, since as soon as you're out of "witheld maneuvers" it recycles, so when you do finally get that last one you have to use it that round)-- their only class feature besides maneuvers is Steely Resolve, which is too small to actually matter. I'm just going to merge them with Paladin, and hopefully putting the two together will make for a good class.

Swordsage should just have Adaptive Style, it's asinine to force classes to take feats just to become playable (see: Psionic Meditation, proof that WOTC still hates you for not wanting to just be a Sorcerer). Other than that, I actually kind of like it-- it's one of the best four-level dips I've seen in awhile (good skills, only 1 BAB point lost, Wis to AC and damage on one discipline's strikes, which is going to be Tiger Claw).

Warblade's probably the best one, since they get a decent skill list (seriously, it's good that they're finally realizing 2 SP with a crummy list is part of the reason people "rollplay" (gah), most builds can't contribute to non-combat roles numbers-wise in Core), good stuff, and they don't lose anything to refresh their maneuvers (you can still attack), and they get White Raven, which as DC mentioned is the discipline that turns D&D into Chrono Cross, where you unleash X-Strike on the boss and then beat it down with chain team attacks.

One thing that should probably also be mentioned is that non-"Initiator" levels count 1/2 toward class levels when you multiclass (p.39), so you typically multiclass into them last. (For example, a "ninja" build I had in mind was Rogue 3/Totemist 3 before Swordsage or something, so he'd come in able to get 2nd level maneuvers.) That takes a lot of the pain out of how they don't scale, but they still ultimately suck compared to spells (but then that is the flavor of 3.5 :|).

I agree with you pretty much entirely on the feats (Stone Power might be better than you give it credit for, since it basically ends up being +10 hp every round, much better than almost any fast healing (and when you get it, around level 5, that's pretty nice); and I think Gloomrazor is neat (since Shadow Blade is good, there's some good maneuvers, and all three abilities should hit often enough that it's not a waste)), very disappointing. And once again, not only do the writers not know what a feat is worth, they don't seem to realize you never get enough of them, what with the Warblade being the only class to get bonus feats (and even then, not many, and not that are much good). Sigh.

You're pretty much spot-on about the maneuvers, which seem to be roughly split between "awesome," "meh," and "useless." You learn that right up-front, with Desert Wind, in which sometimes the maneuvers are basically level + 1 bonus damage (like Ring of Fire, 12d6 at 11th, or Fire Riposte), sometimes a little less (Hatchling's Flame should be 4d6, not 2), and sometimes way less (Lingering Inferno should be 10d6 instantly, not 8d6 in 7-point pieces).

And you see that throughout the book, with Divine Surge (4th) being better than its 8th level "upgrade," maneuvers being unsuited for their role (in Shadow Hand, you'll always want Cloak of Deception (Greater Invis. for 1 turn) instead of Ghost Blade (target is flat-footed), because the former is a boost that lets you full sneak attack, and the latter is one shot), and pretty much always inferior to spells, even those of a lower level. So you basically dig for the "OGM @_@" tricks, and universally useful stances, and take your spot right there in between the good classes (casters) and bad ones (rangers).

And really, that's not so bad. No, Tome of Battle doesn't restore balance [or even really get close], but it's about the closest D&D has come to making melee-types useful again since Spirited Charge (and darn it, I'm bloody tired of every good melee'er being either a goblin Paladin or a Frenzied Berserker), and I'm pretty happy with the $20 (thank Amazon) I paid for it. It just makes you wish that WOTC still did playtesting (heh) and had been QA on their books-- a lot of these problems (like maneuvers not being level-appropriate) could've been fixed with a couple different eyes giving it a once-over, like, er, we just did, and it's obvious that didn't happen.

Edit: Argh spelling.

[Imban]

Instant Clarity: 3/day, you can use a swift action to become psionically focused after using a manuver. So it requires multiclassing between two caster-like classes. Ha. Good luck with that!

There are feats that require and expend psionic focus and there are feats to grant maneuvers. You could easily be using either.

[Dragon_Child]

Are they worth it, though? You need PP and manuevers. If you're primarily a psychic warrior, you're probablly better of just spending your feats on stuff like Improved Disarm, Cleave, Leap Attack, and what-not. If you're primarily a Warblade (or, whatever) you're going to need to take a level in a psionic class or get a naturally psionic race (which pretty much all suck), and THEN blow your feats to be able to get a pretty pathetic effect. While Deep Impact may actually be useful with some of the charge builds, I can't see it being worth the investment, considering that the adept classes are so feat-starved to begin with.

Stone Power might be better than you give it credit for, since it basically ends up being +10 hp every round, much better than almost any fast healing (and when you get it, around level 5, that's pretty nice)

...in exchange for runnign around with a -5 penalty to hit all the time. Honestly, I can't see that being worth it.

[SirWayne]

You know, I had this long reply typed up about how the penalty to hit isn't so bad if you're using your maneuvers to be "battlefield control" anyway (with things like Thicket of Blades and Clarion Call), but you're right, it's not worth it. Not necessarily that the bonus isn't that good (because coupled with DR, which maneuvers also give you; that stuff keeps you alive, which is all good against the zillions of "dumb melee brutes" in the MMs), but that at any given level... well, I'd never actually take it; and neither would you, so that basically settles that. *chuckles*

Also, I don't think you got around to making fun of the Weapons of Legacy. None of them are appreciably better than generic magic weapons of their cost (although a few grant some goodies like Eventide's Edge's Wis to AC at 10th level... when you're unarmored and wielding a short sword :[), and the requirements to activate them range from the silly ("Meditate while reflecting the sunlight onto your face") to the practically impossible (fighting a Cornugon one-on-one as a 15th level Crusader).

Weapons of Legacy are cool, but compared to the stuff you can make with the rules, let alone with a little creativity; the "Nine Swords" were really underwhelming.

[Dragon_Child]

Also, I don't think you got around to making fun of the Weapons of Legacy.

Do I look like some kind of masochist?

I took one look at them, and decided they wern't even the time to make fun of. They're just silly, bad ideas, that were bad when they were first introduced, and are still bad. Really bad.




Badilicious.

[josephbt]

Deepstone Sentinel

Has anyone noticed the +10BAB req, but then the class spits in your face by awarding you with a 3/4BAB?
I'm seriously wondering which tard came up with this crapoliciouss class.

[RandomCasualty]

1158471048[/unixtime]]
But seriously, random ability choicces every turn? As in, you "draw cards" to determine wat's in your "hand" every turn? I mean, I knew this game was made by WotC now, but that's ricockulous. It's like they don't even understand that speed of resolution is a design goal in a paper and pencil RPG. This isn't a computer game, if you move 2 points from one column to another column, you have to verbally and physically do that. If you have to randomly generate respawning powers, you have to verbally and physically generate some random numbers each and every fvcking time!

Well, I can see what they were trying to do with random abilities. Basically the concept was to try to make D&D combat less of a fixed tactic situation and more dynamic and different, so you're not always using the same tactics every combat (which makes a character really boring to play).

So I like the intent behind the crusader, but the implementation is poor.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

But, it's not fun to have a character that doesn't do what you want, when you need it to. If you want to create more tactical diversity, first you've got to put more tactical options in the hands of the the party and then create situations where you can't use some of them but not all of them. Maybe option A only works efficently when you're faced with lots of enemies, while B works great on single enemies but draws attacks of oppertunity, making it something you don't want to do in a mob. The point is, make the party use different tactics by actually making them use other tactics, not by playing Wheel of Options.

-Desdan

[RandomCasualty]

1158612485[/unixtime]]But, it's not fun to have a character that doesn't do what you want, when you need it to. If you want to create more tactical diversity, first you've got to put more tactical options in the hands of the the party and then create situations where you can't use some of them but not all of them. Maybe option A only works efficently when you're faced with lots of enemies, while B works great on single enemies but draws attacks of oppertunity, making it something you don't want to do in a mob. The point is, make the party use different tactics by actually making them use other tactics, not by playing Wheel of Options.

Well, sometimes situational stuff is cool. There are some inherently situational abilities, like disarms, that happen to only work well in specific situations. And it's generally okay to have those abilities all the time.

Other attacks, like an uber damaging charge, tends to be so universal that you're going to use them every battle if you specialize in them, and that actually sort of sucks, because every battle opens with an uber charge. Now, I absolutely hate the flavor of the crusader, where he actually can't execute certain manuevers without some weird divine inspiration, I'd prefer it be explained as a mechanic to describe changing battlefield conditions, and what openings are available based on the setup of the battlefield and what your opponents happen to be doing.

In fact, it'd be a cool system to have certain abilities that only appear in round 2 or 3 and are defined that way because they require certain set ups. Sort of like tactical feats, but less limiting.

The problem with letting people choose any manuever is that you experience a diminishing power effect, which isn't very dramatic at all, given that people tend to throw battle ending manuevers in the first round then throw subsequently weaker manuevers later. People should be using super moves later in the fight, not as an opening attack, it makes things more interesting that way.

[SirWayne]

If the maneuvers scaled by level, and were level-appropriate, I could see the Crusader being the "wrath of God" guy who gets extra high-level maneuvers, but can only use them as the battle progresses (like each round adds another level to what he can use, and the "baseline" increases as he levels up)... or something. Unfortunately, neither one is the case. :/

Really, though, I don't think "saving the super moves for last" is as logical as you might think. Unless there's a rule that mandates it (like in SvC: Chaos, a rather poor game that doesn't let you use your "exceed" super until you're down to 50% or less health), characters in fiction that aren't "playing around" tend to end the fight as soon as they can. From DBZ to Sailor Moon to Batman, they go for the throat as soon as they're sure they'll win. When Hiro waits until four rounds into the dogfight to use the Wing Zero cannon, it's not for cinematic effect-- it's to see what the enemy can do and make sure he's going to hit, so there's less risk to him. The entire purpose of martial arts in Dragonball is to keep the enemy from being able to soak your Kamehameha like he could if you did it at the beginning. Etc. That's exactly the same way things are in D&D when you take into account that you can't weaken an enemy by wounding him-- only by killing him or taking him out of the fight with a save-or-lose.

And besides, I don't know about you, but in most video game RPGs (what we're comparing this too), you never save the ultimate attacks for last, either. The last game I played was Dragon Quest 8, and boss fights there actually force you to unload your best Tensioned, buffed attacks ASAP because most bosses had a chance of taking you out with statuses or bigger damage than your defenses could help against. And pretty much from Lunar up, you dropped your mega-damage spells first and then went into attrition mode with healing and MP-restoring items while you and the boss trade hits until you get another opening. And so on.

Wow, that was long. But yeah, I don't actually see much credence toward "saving" the best attack for last, unless you absolutely have to. But maybe watching Kenshin and samurai movies is skewing my opinion, heh.

The point is, make the party use different tactics by actually making them use other tactics,

This is actually one of the big reasons I like Tome of Battle-- for NPCs. When word gets around that one PC is a boring Spirited Charge paladin, people get prepared for it, and that means reach weapons, tripping, and maneuvers in the book (like Counter Charge and Stalking Shadow) to completely shut it down.

Somebody here made the comment that there's not really any "tactics" in a game like Final Fantasy, where all the flavors of magic are basically the same except for what the enemy is weak or strong against, and you never really have to think (or if you do, only about resource management). The more options and counters to those options there are-- and the easier they are to have, which means I'll probably boost the number of readied maneuvers everyone gets-- the more strategic combat becomes. And if we can move melee combat beyond "I play the Charging Rhinoceras, in attack mode!" and add "Not so fast, Kaiba! You forgot about my trap card!", that's a real advance. Even if players still use their best attacks first.

[User3]

I do like the idea of needing to 'soften up' opponents before an SoD works. Like having the TWF rogue smack the giant with his Greater Wounding shortswords before you try to use your Disintegrate.

But in real D&D the 'tactic' is a broken JKP (FRW), because any character worth his salt has all three, making initiative and knowledge (of the enemy's weakness) the only determinant. Unless you come up against the rare creature with no save weaknesses.

[RandomCasualty]

1158629108[/unixtime]]
This is actually one of the big reasons I like Tome of Battle-- for NPCs. When word gets around that one PC is a boring Spirited Charge paladin, people get prepared for it, and that means reach weapons, tripping, and maneuvers in the book (like Counter Charge and Stalking Shadow) to completely shut it down.

Well, couple of problems here. First monsters really don't get this stuff, so as far as forcing a one trick pony build to do other things, that won't work, because your average ogre, red dragon, giant, etc. Never sees any of these cool counters. What's even worse is that there isn't much great stuff to actually improve monster fights or battles against wizards. Most of it is designed to take on melee brutes. Well, melee brutes get hosed enough in this game, we don't need more ways to kill them. We might as well just take down every melee brute like the dire bear and the giants and reduce their CR by 1 or 2. And fighters are still screwed against casters.

How about a manuever to chop through a wall of force, or get you out of a maze. What about deflecting ray spells? That might be something actually... ya know... useful. Diamond mind is about the only school that comes close.

Even ToB vs ToB, it seems like the spiked chain fighter gains a huge advantage. Just utilizing thicket of blades alone is insanely powerful. I just can't see anyone not using a spiked chain when you introduce ToB, since there is absolutely nothing in there that effectively counters reach weapons.

[SirWayne]

RC--

First monsters really don't get this stuff,

Well, says who? Almost any intelligent monster can reasonably take "martial adept" class levels (and their hit dice count 1/2 toward initiator level, meaning high-HD creatures don't need very many levels to get good maneuvers), and that's just if you play explicitly by the rules. As a DM I don't see anything wrong with just giving certain monsters maneuvers and stances as part of their "package," sort of like how Angels pack a dozen spell-like abilities and dragons are built-in sorcerers.

What's even worse is that there isn't much great stuff to actually improve monster fights or battles against wizards.

Sadly true, although ToB is still better than nothing, which is what most melee-types had beforehand, heh. And there's a couple things that help against the worst offenders-- Mirrored Pursuit and its ilk cut off 5' step leapfrogging, Iron Heart Surge breaks Forcecages and Antimagic Fields, Mind over Body is a get-out-of-Death free card, and so on. About the only "legit" tricks you can't do anything about with maneuvers are aerial bombardment (it sucks that warriors have to have items to fly and Wizards don't, I agree), anything trans-planar (would Iron Heart Surge warp you back out of a Planeshift? hmm), and buffed up clerics and the like.

Maneuvers don't have any way to deal with utterly broken parts of the game, like Efreet binding, Gate death and infinite loops, but I'm actually glad for that, because that means fewer things you have to ban. (I know, I know, but this isn't about "rule 0 making things go away," this is about the fact we know those things break the game, so let's just ban them instead of giving fighters the ability to cheat too.)

The drawback is obviously that Wizards and Clerics can, over their hojillion spell slots, do everything, and Warblades take five minutes between battle to "cycle out" their power list. So while a pair of Warblades can combine reach, Mage Slayer feats, and maneuvers like White Raven X-Strike to kill an ubercleric, they can't do it until high levels (and at that point, can't do anything else). But again, this is progress, and that's a lot more than I was expecting out of WOTC.