How do you feel Tome of Battle has let you down?

[littha]

If the monster classes are discovered as not working when played, it'd be wonderful if people could, yanno, explain how it didn't work and offer up how it might better work rather than bashing on stuff that probably hasn't been playtested properly. Lots of things sound great in theory, not as much of those things are as great when taken to practice~

That sets oslecamo to editing your posts and into a screaming baby fit. I wouldn't suggest it. As does any mention of psionics.

[YouLostMe]

That's what happens when you just drop links to stupid things and act as if they're the end all be all to the referenced point; explanations omitted. But then if you were to explain them, it defeats your purpose of dropping the cheesy links

And yeah you did say you're not being smug, but the way it's all flowing makes it damn hard to read your posts as anything but. That's the whole "come off as being" that I said. I didn't straight up call you a smug and arrogant bum now did I? *thumbsup*

I tend to do a lot of things and assume the gist is easy to determine. It has worked relatively well in places outside this thread, so I assume there's just something about the context of this discussion that makes determining that sort of content difficult. I'd really rather not spend 2 paragraphs describing every link I drop, but I will provide a better description of my links (perhaps just the ones that seem to cause inflammation) in the future.

Again, I encourage you not to read my posts as coming off smug, because it really has nothing to do with my intent. I honestly don't have a damn clue what to say other than "stop reading my posts that way". I try to be transparent, I refuse to engage fallacies, I cut passive-aggressiveness because I think it's a waste, I hate seeing legitimate discussion get undermined by shitslinging, and I patently refuse to compromise on those even if it would make me sound like a nicer guy.

A guide to DMing sounds like a stupid thing to make cause figuring out how to DM is just finding what works for you and your group. A written guide for it pretty much just sounds like a half dozen walls of text that on the very last sentence become a TL;DR summary of just that

If the monster classes are discovered as not working when played, it'd be wonderful if people could, yanno, explain how it didn't work and offer up how it might better work rather than bashing on stuff that probably hasn't been playtested properly. Lots of things sound great in theory, not as much of those things are as great when taken to practice~

The guide was about optimizing enemies in order to improve their threat levels while keeping their CR relatively the same. The complaint (and I agree with this) is that you shouldn't try to embrace the CR system and still optimize your enemies. If the guide was a repository of cool tactics monsters could use, I think it would have gone over better. Instead it recommended things like Darkstalker and Ability Focus.

If I recall correctly (this was literally years ago) the impression was "God damn these are all over the place, but I don't [like him / want to deal with him] enough to actually help him." From what I've gathered, a non-trivial number of people are at odds with him over his personality as well as his design choices, but unlike all the banter over the last page I think this is really not the place. I would be willing to continue this conversation by PM.

I appreciate your honest input, ketaro. If you want the peace of mind, I am 100% willing to let you get another last-word post in and I won't bother you about it.

[oslecamo]

On the subject of long-duration maneuvers, I support greater duration debuffs, however buffs should either be stances or need some type of concentration mechanic.

If I recall correctly (this was literally years ago) the impression was "God damn these are all over the place, but I don't [like him / want to deal with him] enough to actually help him." From what I've gathered, a non-trivial number of people are at odds with him over his personality as well as his design choices, but unlike all the banter over the last page I think this is really not the place. I would be willing to continue this conversation by PM.

On the other hand, a large number of people over the years keep coming and asking for their material to be added to my monster classes project. There's online campaigns started by other people based on it. FireIntheSky offered to make a detailed index with a breakdown of the monster classes statistics, which took him a big deal of work, completely out of his own initiative.

Do some people disagree with my homebrew design and personality? Yes. I'm not arrogant enough to claim I can please everybody's whims.

But meanwhile a lot more people have supported and helped me on that project over the years and/or use its material. That after this many years and all the bad propaganda my detractors keep throwing at me, I still keep getting people offering me their time for this homebrew project of mine by their own will, and I keep seeing people using it in different places, that's a sign I've been doing something quite right.

Anyway that you're basing your opinion of the current me on something you heard from some other dude years ago proves beyond everything else that you have zero interest in a legitimate discussion.

[YouLostMe]

I'm sure that some non-zero number of people have said nice things about your homebrew to your face. From personal experience, I find that people who have bad things to say about homebrew tend to stop saying those things to you after you scare them off, and instead say it elsewhere. But my point was not that someone thought your classes were cool and wanted to start a level 15 gestalt game (that appears to host its own set of complaints about power level), and it's not that people have volunteered to make indexes for you in the same way people have volunteered to fix tables on GitP. It's about the perceived quality of your homebrew, and prior to this all my word-of-mouth information (from sources I trust) and personal investigation (you seem to have forgotten this?) has demonstrated you have a lack of understanding regarding concepts centric to D&D. This may not be true, I may be looking at outliers, but without further information/investigation it remains true that your authority on the subject of things homebrew is not "universally recognized" as was previously suggested.

And again, even if we agree you are a valid authority, the point stands that your appeal to authority is still bad form because I presented empirically verifiable evidence. It would behoove you to read all my posts mentioning your name before jumping, but I know I write a lot and I understand it can be hard to keep up in a multi-page thread, so this is the link to the post where I discuss the evidence I provided.

This is also strange: you think that unless I've independently gone through some enormous portion of your game content prior to this discussion that I must be trolling, which is a thin enough argument that it defeats itself. However, I appreciate that you're dropping the points you can't defend. It makes life easier for both of us.

[bhu]

On the subject of long-duration maneuvers, I support greater duration debuffs, however buffs should either be stances or need some type of concentration mechanic.

I wasn't thinking of using buffs so much as adding Grapples to maneuvers, which could last more than 1 round if you can maintain the check.  Or maybe even replacing grappling with maneuvers.

[bhu]

Rough idea for school making:

Choose whether the school will be melee, ranged, or natural weapons or based on grapples. Or any of the above two categories. If you go this route (say you choose melee and ranged), choose which is the dominant factor in the schools teaching as 2/3rds of the maneuvers will be used with that choice. I.e. if you get 6 level 5 maneuvers, an d melee is the dominant teaching style, then 4 of those maneuvers will be melee and 2 ranged.

Choose a key skill and 5 associated weapons (if you chose natural weapons then any natural weapon you have is an associated weapon, if you chose grapple then grapples and unarmed strikes are).

You then make 6 maneuvers of each level. Sound good as a starting point?

[Nick]

Rough idea for school making:

Choose whether the school will be melee, ranged, or natural weapons or based on grapples. Or any of the above two categories. If you go this route (say you choose melee and ranged), choose which is the dominant factor in the schools teaching as 2/3rds of the maneuvers will be used with that choice. I.e. if you get 6 level 5 maneuvers, an d melee is the dominant teaching style, then 4 of those maneuvers will be melee and 2 ranged.

Choose a key skill and 5 associated weapons (if you chose natural weapons then any natural weapon you have is an associated weapon, if you chose grapple then grapples and unarmed strikes are).

You then make 6 maneuvers of each level. Sound good as a starting point?

Yes, that would, in my opinion.  I think I'll make a continuing point to your excellent starting point: Let's not forget the all-important stances though!  Out of the six maneuvers at each level, one or two of the 1st level ones should be stances, along with one or two 3rd level maneuvers, and 5th level maneuvers.  One maneuver at 8th level is a stance, and only 1 maneuver total at 9th level.


In my opinion, on average, this is the number of how many maneuvers of each type there should be out of the six maneuver types at each level:


1 Boost
1 Counter
4 Strikes, or 2 to 3 strikes if there's a stance
1 or 2 stances if at the appropriate level


If there are times when the homebrewer doesn't want to follow that for a certain reason, then the homebrewer has enough reason (kind of a "once-you-know-all-the-rules-you-can-break-them" kind of deal, like when composing music or writing stories/arguments.

[ketaro]

But why make Stances take away from actual maneuvers being learned? Yanno, all Stances should just be part of natural Class Features. But rather than getting literally all Stances, you should only be able to learn the Stances from a single Discipline chosen the time you get your 1st Stance.

Because the way Stance gainage/progression already works in the book, you pretty much seem to be intended to be able to pick up all the Stances of at least one Discipline at the rate the charts give them. Roughly.
A sort of synergy bonus in that regard could also make it not so bad to not be able to pick up Stances from more than 1 Discpline despite how incredibly useful doing so might be. Although nothing should prevent getting a Stance from a different Discipline you didn't pick as your "Focus" by using a Feat.

[YouLostMe]

I suggest that the fewer restrictions you put on the process the better. Disciplines that focus only on ranged attacks are just as valid design choices as those that can be used with any attacks, or those with no attack rolls at all. I recommend flexible disciplines, because whatever content you write for your overhaul is likely to be the only content that will be used.

6 maneuvers per level is a good number. It's a lot of work, but I know you're a content machine.

[bhu]

I was gonna keep stances separate from maneuvers.  Still thinking about how many each for them.

[ketaro]

1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th?

[Nick]

Keeping maneuvers and stances separate is a good idea.  It helps keep things organized. 


It seems like it should stick at one per level that they have stances, but maybe 2 at first?  I can't think of another level where a discipline had more than one stance there. 

[YouLostMe]

Stances are an awesome mechanic for encouraging round-to-round flexibility, but if you give a player more than 5 options they're probably going to suffer serious decision paralysis. So granting a big chunk (2-5) at level 1 isn't so bad, but you don't want to grow that number very fast unless you plan on having higher-level stances just be objectively better than others.

[bhu]

Looking at stances maybe i should include them with the maneuvers per level, and just increase the number of maneuvers per level.  The schools vary a lot on them.

[bhu]

1st: 6
2nd: 4
3rd: 4
4th: 3
5th: 3
6th: 3
7th: 3
8th; 3
9th: 2

Okat hows this for total maneuvers/stances per school per level?

And a Maneuver example:


Power Attack
Maneuver Type Strike
Level: 1st
Prerequisite: None
Initiation Action: 1 Standard Action
Range: Melee Attack
Target: One creature
Ability Type Ex

As part of this maneuver you make a melee Attack.  If your strike is successful the opponent also suffers one of the following effects chosen at the time of this Maneuvers creation:

Allies gain a +4 Bonus on Attacks against the target

You get a +4 Bonus on the attack roll, but opponents gain a +4 Bonus on their attack rolls against you

Charging Bull Rush deals damage, ignores attacks of opportunity

Target cannot make attacks of opportunity for 1 round

Make a Sunder attempt against an object carried or worn by the target. If you hit, the target must make a Fortitude save or be knocked backwards 10'. (This is in addition to the damage to the object)

an additional 1d6 points of damage.

causes opponent to suffer -4 to hit any target but you.

You get the general idea.  Maneuvers would now be a generic attack or effect of some sort with the option of one of several different effects based around a theme.  You might even have the option of making them EX or SU or adding descriptors, and could take the same maneuver twice in a school, but with a different option.

I was considering the extra maneuvers to reflect the difficulty in truly mastering one school unless yo spent feats or took PrC levels to do so, and to give an option for regional sub-schools.

[YouLostMe]

Is there a reason for having so few maneuvers at high levels compared to low? I don't find any practical need for it, and I think it'll just make your system harder to balance at low levels. I might recommend 3/maneuver level not including stances.

You may actually want more 9th-level maneuvers than the others, considering characters get twice as many.

[SolEiji]

Huh, I should have gotten in this earlier.

So I've made a lot of homebrew disciplines.  A lot.  I do have a guideline pattern, though its a soft mold and only a guideline.

I usually try to put stances at 1, 3, 5, and 8.

I usually start with a list of one of each type of maneuver....
*One Counter
*One Boost
*One Strike
*One Rush (This is something homebrew but very popular wiki-side... basically move action maneuvers, which are usually movement-related).

Then I start changing it.  Some disciplines are strike heavy, other counter heavy.  And sometimes I can't think of a rush or a strike or a boost every level, so I end up with things like Strike, Strike, Counter, Counter at one level or Strike, Boost, Rush, Rush, Stance.

So each level gets between 3-5 maneuvers typically, enough to provide good selection.  This tapers off at the end, half due to the difficulty of balancing 9th level maneuvers and half due to it feeling natural that this is the climax of your power in this field.  I usually try to have 2-3.

Oh, and as a rule I try to avoid making maneuvers which become obsolete.  Not obsolete by higher maneuvers, that's fine, but obsolete overall.  So maneuvers that scale, however slightly (like 1d6 + 1 per initiator level) rather than a fixed 6d6 or 8d6 or whatever, with a few exceptions.  Attack bonuses can be stagnant, and you can use stagnant damage if there are other things in play like status effects and whatnot.

I wonder if any of that helps.

[bhu]

Is there a reason for having so few maneuvers at high levels compared to low? I don't find any practical need for it, and I think it'll just make your system harder to balance at low levels. I might recommend 3/maneuver level not including stances.

You may actually want more 9th-level maneuvers than the others, considering characters get twice as many.

I think design wise it's generally assumed you're taking more than one school.  Warblades and Crusaders only learn two 9th level maneuvers.  Only Swordsages get more, but they're designed to be used with multiple schools.  Also, it was a common wish that being able to rebuild the current schools using this system would be retained, and they all have more than 3 maneuvers per level at lower levels.

[SorO_Lost]

I think design wise it's generally assumed you're taking more than one school.

Same here. The Crusader & Swordsage both can learn every 9th available to them, only the Warblade cuts short but even still he can learn four out of five.

[zugschef]

The only worthwhile 9th level maneuvers (in order from best to worst) are from the white raven, tiger claw and diamond mind disciplines, anyway. But who cares about 17th level anyway. The game stopped working 4 levels ago at the latest.