ToB: What I don't like about Maneuver Progression

[FlaminCows]

Additionally: it isn't even "people who waited", as you can build new characters mid-champaign: characters die, characters retire. Not all PCs are built at the same point in the campaign, and giving advantages to characters based on which point in the campaign they were built at just doesn't make sense.

[Bozwevial]

Re: Power debt, the bank analogy really doesn't cut it here. One of the expectations of the game is that two characters of the same level should be roughly equivalent in terms of power. While you're right that players can and will have vastly different spending habits when it comes to actual money, power derived from character levels should remain internally consistent.

If Bob decides to play a wizard because they're pretty powerful later on, he has no guarantee when he sits down at the table that he will ever reach a point where his wizard can actually start to shine. If Alice joins seven levels later and plays another wizard, she's not cashing in her accumulated reserves of awesome. She's just starting at a higher level than Bob did, and she gets to reap the rewards he does without actually sitting through level after level of "cast Magic Missile, hide behind rock." Hell, in many ways she's actually better off than he is, because Bob had to take steps to ensure he'd survive that long. Alice can blithely build for now, regardless of how viable that build would have been several levels ago. Again, she's not being rewarded for being thrifty or anything like that, she just skipped all the irksome bits. Then again, Bob may never reach that point, and the game will end before his wizard becomes useful. Bob has now just spent weeks playing a finicky character on the off chance that it might become fun later, and he's lost his gamble.

If you're concerned with interparty balance (and you probably should be, given that player enjoyment is very likely to hinge on it), it's a terrible, terrible idea to create classes balanced around sucking now in exchange for making everyone else obsolete later, or vice versa, because there's a very good chance you'll either make payments now for a reward that never comes, or enjoy the reward early and never have your debt come due.

[StreamOfTheSky]

But when making characters beginning at high level, one doesn't need to wait at all.

And if starting at high level, why do you care at that point?

"Deserves"? "You can go suck it when I get more"? Do you have any idea what that sounds like? I want you to read the following sentences. You might have heard them before:

"Wizards should be more powerful than fighters. After all, they made the sacrifice by having it hard in early levels, so they deserve more power later on, they've earned it. Hey, you've got to reward skilled players: that's why we need crappy feats and classes, the game should reward me for my hard work learning the ins and outs of the rules. If you get a worse character by picking what is fun, then suck it up, I'm better than you."

Sound familiar yet? The point is that no, you should not be rewarded for building a more boring character during the early part of the game. That is the stupidest thing on Earth to be rewarded for. Even your analogy is ridiculous if you compare it to the rules, as choosing a level is not "spending it all", it is making an investment. The virtues of saving up money in the bank are nothing compared to the virtues of using it by investing in your business.

Except it's always been a broken promise because wizards DON'T sacrifice anything early on.  They're winning encounters at level 1 with color spray.  If casters actually were weaker at low levels and stronger at higher, it would "work."  It would basically just be a really stretched out spotlight balance.  It may not be the kind of balance you want, but it would still be a form of balance.

As to your little spell diatribe, this is getting a bit off topic, so I'll keep it in the spoilers:

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Are you kidding me?!  A Fighter 20 is better than a Fighter 10 / Wiz 10, or even possibly better?  You cannot be serious!  Even the abosolute best Fighter hotfixes WotC put out, Dungeoncrasher and Zhentarim, cease giving out new boons by levels 6 and 9 (or is it 10?) respectively.  1st and 2nd level spellcasting alone is worth more than the entire last 10 levels of Fighter!  5th level spells aren't worth jack?  Teleport, Polymorph, Greater Invis, Glitterdust, Alter Self, Fly....  Can't compete with an extra 5 BAB, 30 hit points, and 3 bonus feats....
I don't even really need to make a case if this is the counter-argument.

You seem to not understand the meaning of "level appropriate".

Polymorph: You lose 5hd, but it is totally worth it: the best form you can turn into is a young gold dragon, which is fantastic! ...and it only costs 23000 gp in the form of a Ring of Dragonform, which will last six times as long. That's about 3% of your WBL, less than half of the cost of a +5 bonus.

Alter Self: You get to go from a 20hd warrior to a 5hd one-hit-kill. Congrats.

Glitterdust: Yay, you manage to make a grand total of zero creatures blind with your DC 14 spell. Waste of an action.

Fly: Better to use magic items, mounts, or party members who can cast spells worth a damn than a 10-minute, slow speed, easily-dispellable spell at CL10.

Greater Invisibility: At CR20, True Seeing is typical.

Teleport: Great, you have a way of fleeing from the fights you keep losing.

In addition, you suffer from increased MAD, arcane spell failure (unless you discard armour, in which case you suffer from a low AC), and not being good at anything you're doing.

Yes, Fighters suck. A lot. However, multiclassing spellcasters also sucks pretty bad. Neither of those facts is a good thing, and we would all rather it not be so, although as stated it isn't what this thread is about.

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Polymorph: What do you mean, "you lose 5 HD"?  You keep your HD (and max hp, and base saves, and BAB...) when you polymorph.  And you can take plenty of good forms with 10 HD or less (more HD options if you get items to boost your CL, like orange iuon stone).

Alter Self: Wrong, again (you still have your 20 HD).  And you mostly just use this spell for long duration flight or natural armor boost.  Possibly natural attacks.

Glitterdust: Since you're casting 5th level spells, I was assuming at least a +5 stat after items, so more like DC 17.  And things with poor will save will actually fail that at 20.  In any case, it remains useful as invis-be-gone.

Fly: Most magic items are the same or lower CL (winged boots are CL 5), so you're fucked by dispel regardless.  In any case, I notice a theme of spending lots of money to make up for the spells the ftr/wiz can just cast.  Do I get to spend that money on my own toys?

Greater Invisibility: Perhaps.  It's still costly and not everything can cast or has a caster friend, I'm sure it would still be useful.

Teleport: Or getting to where you need to be halfway across the world before the bad guy can abscond the Macguffin...  Even in your cynical scenario of retreating when losing, I guess the Fighter 20 just...dies?  Sounds awesome!

MAD wouldn't be too bad, you won't be using many or any offensive save spells nor high level ones, you can get a decent mental score with items and only lose a little strength.  Surely not nearly as much as you gain from polymorphing.  AC you do fine; mage armor is +4 or greater mage armor is +6, you can use a mithral buckler with ease, and you have spells to shore up defenses.

Still not seeing how CL 10 isn't worth -5 BAB, -30 hp, and -3 feats.  Hell, you keep mentioning replacing spells with items; the ftr/wiz could craft some of his own to end up with an even bigger wealth advantage.

[InnaBinder]

But when making characters beginning at high level, one doesn't need to wait at all.

And if starting at high level, why do you care at that point?



Except it's always been a broken promise because wizards DON'T sacrifice anything early on.  They're winning encounters at level 1 with color spray.  If casters actually were weaker at low levels and stronger at higher, it would "work."  It would basically just be a really stretched out spotlight balance.  It may not be the kind of balance you want, but it would still be a form of balance.

People care because some folks may well have been playing their characters from those lower levels, then - for whatever reason - a new character gets introduced who didn't ever go through that waiting period for awesomeness.  People care because the game often appears predicated on the notion that characters are created at 1st level and advance through to 20th (or beyond), and when that notion isn't true, certain fissures in the game's assumptions appear.  Without extremely lenient retraining options in play, a sorcerer who starts the game at 8th level will be built very differently than a sorcerer who started at 1st and is now 8th, simply because the second sorcerer's player had to put thought and effort into her sorcerer making her way to 8th level alive in ways the first one never did.

As for wizards not sacrificing anything early on, that's a matter of perspective and personal experience; by way of anecdotal evidence, I can rarely recall a 1st level caster whose use of Color Spray actually 'won the encounter' in practice.  I can recall several times where Grimlocks, Skeletons, and other appropriate level 1 - 3 encounters would simply ignore this much-ballyhooed "I Win button" and make the caster scramble for either a Plan B, or go into Crossbow Mode.  In other words, the fact may be that, in your experience, wizards are always winning from level 1; your experience isn't the only way to play, and may not mesh with the experiences of others. 

[StreamOfTheSky]

But much of 3E is predicated on the "wait for it" balance method, with varying degrees of actually being the case (low level casters not actually suffering too much, as above).  Not just with casters.  But also with martial prestige classes and feat chains.

If you don't like the concept in general, you've got a lot more to change than just the maneuver system.  The maneuver system is just being true to how the game is fundamentally designed.

[FlaminCows]

Which only means that the game is fundamentally designed the wrong way.

Its comparable to the level caps for humanoids in 2e. Supposedly, it was for balance: sure, more powerful races get bonuses, but the humans get to shine in the end, right? But no: either the high-level "end" never happens, or you work around the level caps, or a person just makes a new character. Same thing here: either the high level end never happens, or you work around the early disadvantage, or a person just makes a new character. The "wait for it" balance method is no balance method at all, because campaigns where everybody starts at 1 and ends at 20 with no new characters introduced in between are the exception, not the rule. In fact, it is possible (even likely) that such a campaign has never happened.

Taking the "wait for it" out of martial adept multiclassing is thus inherently a good thing, because the "wait for it" balance method doesn't work in any way.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Right, so the whole game is that way.  Why target the maneuver system, then?  You want the entire game to be fundamentally changed it seems.  Maneuvers is just a tiny part of that.

And as I tried to allude to earlier...the thing that makes the maneuver thing even less awful to me is the fact that it ISN'T as lopsided as caster level disparity or even some feats and PrC's.  Mountain Hammer (break down anything given enough time) and Battle Leader's Charge (charge w/o provoking AoO's) are very low level, and never stop being good and useful.  WR Tactics and IH Surge are only 3rd level, and are often considered the strongest maneuvers in the whole damn book.
I just don't see this is a major problem.

[FlaminCows]

Even if it is not a major problem, it is still a problem, and one that was fixed with a single sentence. How many problems are that easy to fix? Not many. We take what we can. Battle Leader's Charge is useful, yes, but letting the player choose which of the manoeuvres available to him lets him be even more useful, and also useful in a different way as he levels up, and also just as useful as he would be if he retired his character and made a new one. There shouldn't be an advantage to making a new character mid-campaign, and letting the multi-class Martial Adept retrain his manoeuvres helps to fix that.

Fixing a small problem does not prevent us from fixing the big ones. A tiny part is still a part.

[dman11235]

Well that's a logical fallacy. 
If things aren't balanced at all levels, then they aren't balanced.
It's a scaling problem. You see internally within classes in video games a lot actually.

Also how early is early?

At a certain point what's the problem with just starting in the martial adept class?

This right here.  It's something I've been saying for years now, ever since I became a prominent critique of brews.

Any time you make a class or a class mechanic (or even more so both at once, like ToB), you have to make sure that there is a smooth transition of power.  You pick a power scale, and follow it the entire way up.  Do note that the Wizard power model (suck now, rock later) is entirely valid, but only if the campaign power scale follows the same progression (so monsters also suck now, rock later, and the rest of the party follows it too).  See, power is relative.  The fighter is a really overpowered class.....when compared to the Samurai.  But as long as the campaign has the power level throughout as the players, it doesn't matter*.

And Boz: I think you nailed it on the head.

As for WR Tactics and IH Surge, broken does not mean powerful.  It means broken.  The way they are intended to be used is where you get power.  But that is not that important to the discussion.

*That's actually the thing I don't like about F&K, they tend to support all classes being the same power: tier 1.  They don't acknowledge that other classes are just as viable, just not in the same places as others.  They don't mention it, they just imply it.

Now my tangent on the maneuver system:

The system I usually point to as an example of great idea and almost great execution is Incarnum.  Everything is relevant at all levels, and you get more powerful at a roughly steady (exponential) rate.  ToB almost does this, but makes the mistake of have levels of maneuvers that overlap older maneuvers.  Things like the Mountain Strike maneuvers that do the same thing, but have to be traded out for more powerful versions (why not have one that scales fully?).  ToB is still in the top tier of good design though.  As an ideal, I shoot for a mid/low tier-3 power, which ToB provides, pretty uniformly throughout their classes.

[Unbeliever]

But much of 3E is predicated on the "wait for it" balance method, with varying degrees of actually being the case (low level casters not actually suffering too much, as above).  Not just with casters.  But also with martial prestige classes and feat chains.

If you don't like the concept in general, you've got a lot more to change than just the maneuver system.  The maneuver system is just being true to how the game is fundamentally designed.

Huh?  A charitable reading is that you are conflating two things.  Which, generally seem to be totally confused in this thread. 

The first is the power debt thing.  The idea of you start off weak but that's justified by being strong later on.  So, suppose the ideal power rating of a character is 1.  Then, the power bank idea is that you are a .5 at low levels and that's ok b/c you're a 1.5 at high levels.  The period you spend at .5 justifies the 1.5 period and so on. 

And, that is, as others have noted, dumb.  B/c it means you're imbalanced in one way or another (too low or too high powered) at all points.

That's different than saying that 4th level characters can't cast Meteor Swarm.  That's a more general "wait for it" balancing method. 

These two overlap a bit when it comes to feat chains b/c some of the feats are crappy, which makes them a feat tax, and therefore reintroduces the "suck now, be awesome later" mentality, which is dumb. 


The OP's complaint is that an X level of Warblade is different at 1st level than it is at 9th level.  And, no, most other classes aren't like that.  1 level of Wizard does just the same for a 14th level character as it does for a 4th level character.  Those of us that aren't bothered by this recognize it as (i) not a big deal at all, like seriously, (ii) a boon for introducing a little bit of love for martial characters broadly speaking, and (iii) kind of an intriguing game design in general (Incarnum is probably a bit similar in this regard), and maybe something that should be emulated more in the system rather than less. 

[zugschef]

so you're saying it's dumb, but you have no problem with it?

[Unbeliever]

so you're saying it's dumb, but you have no problem with it?

Ummm ... no, not at all.  I'm saying that "suck now, rock later" is dumb. 

ToB's maneuver progression does not, as far as I can tell, have that quality.  In what way is Warblade 1 crappy so that it justifies Warblade 15 being awesome? 

The whole point of my post was to avoid conflating 2 things:  (1) suck now, rock later game-balancing, (2) taking a level at EL 10 differs from taking a level at EL 2. 

[zugschef]

but it's better to take 1 level of warblade at 15 than at level 1, of you only dip it for one level.

[SolEiji]

but it's better to take 1 level of warblade at 15 than at level 1, of you only dip it for one level.

Thats a feature, not a bug.  This would be the second point "(2) taking a level at EL 10 differs from taking a level at EL 2. ", and we're saying this is a good thing.

[zugschef]

but it's better to take 1 level of warblade at 15 than at level 1, of you only dip it for one level.

Thats a feature, not a bug.  This would be the second point "(2) taking a level at EL 10 differs from taking a level at EL 2. ", and we're saying this is a good thing.

THIS IS A FUCKIN BUG
HOW IS THIS NOT A FUCKIN BUG
How is it fair that the guy who joins the group at level 15 has an advantage over the same guy who was with the group from level 1, even if he uses the same build only with a different level progression?

[FlaminCows]

It has already been explained why it is a bug and not a feature: having it work that way gives an advantage to characters built mid-campaign. It is exactly the same as "suck now, rock later" game balancing: if you suck now (by not getting manoeuvres), you will rock later (by getting better manoeuvres than you would get if you took the level earlier). That's why the line of comparison was drawn.

Taking a level at EL 10 should not make you better than if you took the same level at EL 2, and characters built at any point in the campaign should be as equal as possible.

[dman11235]

No, it is a feature.  Because it's allowing you to dip those levels mid-game and not suffer for doing so.  Ideally, anyways.  The bug involved here is that the maneuvers are not designed with this in mind, so sometimes the maneuvers don't scale right (Mountain Hammer).  This is easily fixed, however, by letting players trade out maneuvers as they level without needing to take levels in a martial adept.

To be clear: the problem you're talking about is that taking two characters who are fighter 9/warblade 1, one takes warblade at 1 vs warblade at 10, one is more powerful than the other (the warblade at 10).

[InnaBinder]

It has already been explained why it is a bug and not a feature: having it work that way gives an advantage to characters built mid-campaign. It is exactly the same as "suck now, rock later" game balancing: if you suck now (by not getting manoeuvres), you will rock later (by getting better manoeuvres than you would get if you took the level earlier). That's why the line of comparison was drawn.

Taking a level at EL 10 should not make you better than if you took the same level at EL 2, and characters built at any point in the campaign should be as equal as possible.

I don't believe the portion I bolded is true in practice in D&D, certainly not 3.5 D&D, whether we're talking about ToB or magic or charger or any other role or subsystem, as I think both Bozwevial and I (among others) have already indicated.

[FlaminCows]

This is easily fixed, however, by letting players trade out maneuvers as they level without needing to take levels in a martial adept.

Well, yeah. That's kind of what we're advocating here.

[Unbeliever]

but it's better to take 1 level of warblade at 15 than at level 1, of you only dip it for one level.

Thats a feature, not a bug.  This would be the second point "(2) taking a level at EL 10 differs from taking a level at EL 2. ", and we're saying this is a good thing.

As a side note, I wasn't necessarily advocating that this was a feature rather than a bug.  I just wanted to distinguish the two things I distinguished.  As has been noted in this thread a number of times, there's an obvious and easy fix to any weirdness created by ToB's maneuver progression.