What tier are the Tome of Battle classes without maneuvers & stances?

[Endarire]

Let's say your DM likes the ToB classes, but thinks maneuvers and stances are the ick.  Surely, you lose a lot of power, but how much?  What tier are these lesser base and prestige classes?

[Sinfire Titan]

Swordsage: Tier 6
It still can be a skill monkey, but lacks powerful abilities all together. If the DM removes access to maneuvers entirely, the Swordsage's capstone becomes meaningless (as does the Discipline Focus feature, which makes up several levels entirely). The class becomes an Expert with solid saves and some minor abilities, but a set skill list. In all honesty, I'd rather be playing an Expert over this.

Crusader: Tier 5
The main trick (Steely Resolve) is still there. They lose out on their healing abilities, but they can make up for it by going the standard Charger route.

Warblade: Tier 5
It's class features remain relevant (save for the capstone). Multiclassing becomes much more interesting, but the class can still function off of it's current class features (kinda).

The PrCs get royally fucked though, as each of them have class features that revolve around Maneuvers/Stances (save for RKV and Shadowsun Ninja). Most of them aren't even worth playing without maneuvers (Master of Nine, Jade Phoenix Mage).

In other words, you aren't playing Tome of Battle anymore. You're playing an Expert with set skills and a better save, a Fighter with less bonus feats, and a really hard to kill Fighter. I'd shoot the DM who does this with a hammer. On full-auto.

[zugschef]

Swordsage: Tier 6
It still can be a skill monkey, but lacks powerful abilities all together. If the DM removes access to maneuvers entirely, the Swordsage's capstone becomes meaningless (as does the Discipline Focus feature, which makes up several levels entirely). The class becomes an Expert with solid saves and some minor abilities, but a set skill list. In all honesty, I'd rather be playing an Expert over this.

what have you been smoking? the swordsage still got his maneuvers and the capstone ability is still useable because it uses boost maneuvers. why should this guy be worse than an expert or even worse than a monk? an expert got nothing but his skills, the swordsage's got a buff to initiative, his maneuvers, 2 good saves, weapon and armor proficiencies and wis to ac. and some of the discipline foci still work, like weapon focus and insightful strikes.

i'd put all 3 classes at low t4.

that said, banning stances means banning the system. as simple as that. And it proves that your dm has no idea... there are some maneuvers that are broken, but stances?

[Agita]

Swordsage: Tier 6
It still can be a skill monkey, but lacks powerful abilities all together. If the DM removes access to maneuvers entirely, the Swordsage's capstone becomes meaningless (as does the Discipline Focus feature, which makes up several levels entirely). The class becomes an Expert with solid saves and some minor abilities, but a set skill list. In all honesty, I'd rather be playing an Expert over this.

what have you been smoking? the swordsage still got his maneuvers and the capstone ability is still useable because it uses boost maneuvers. why should this guy be worse than an expert or even worse than a monk? an expert got nothing but his skills, the swordsage's got a buff to initiative, his maneuvers, 2 good saves, weapon and armor proficiencies and wis to ac. and some of the discipline foci still work, like weapon focus and insightful strikes.

The OP said Maneuvers and Stances, not just Stances. Taking that into account, I largely agree with SFT. Especially on the autofire hammers.

[zugschef]

The OP said Maneuvers and Stances, not just Stances. Taking that into account, I largely agree with SFT. Especially on the autofire hammers.

oops... sorry! i didn't read this accurately enough. in this case the classes are really t5 and t6.

[borg286]

So he wants the flavor w/o the 4e feel.  A fighter could be reflavored to most of these classes which I'm sure he's fine with.  I'd ask him if you could take the core class feature aside from maneuvers, which is their core class feature, and apply it to a fighter or a swashbuckler and use the martial adept's flavor instead of the new base class.

I can't help but agree with the others here.  Taking maneuvers and stances away from these guys is like taking spells away from wizards, SA from rogues, invocations away from warlocks.  W/o their 'thing' why play the class at all.  They end up just being an expert w/o the decency of calling them experts.

[SorO_Lost]

So he wants the flavor w/o the 4e feel.

ToB doesn't feel like 4E, largely because 4E doesn't come close to the bar ToB set.

4E is:
Pick 'attack', oh sure you got two~three and can use a fourth twice or so per session but you are picking 'attack' since no matter the level or name everything is the same.
A roll 1d20+1/2lvl+required items to make up the difference vs DC 10+fulllvl aka 50% failure.
Do XdY+Z damage, which is always the same amount, it may look like it deals more since it has more dice but since the monsters have teh same HP the % loss comes out about the same.
Preform the second affect, likely move them, then move your self, designed for miniature dependency for money.
Repeat over the course of 30 levels.


3.5 gives all kinds of new stuff either at every level, or every time to pick through yet another book which already makes a difference. The ToB maneuvers are of course different too, they are limited to 9 completely different themes with very little reputation between them (no magic blast moves guy to K13 just like sword swing does). The limitation to 9 sets which are also split into four different types; strike, stance, counter, boost (4e has less) kept them from printing another ten books which helped keep the unique feel to things. Of course at the heart of things, even the srtikes don't come across as XdY+Z, probably because theres is only like twenty of them in all that add dice to your strike. That's less of a XdY+Z set up found in a single 4E class.

[PhaedrusXY]

Let's say your DM likes the ToB classes, but thinks maneuvers and stances are the ick.  Surely, you lose a lot of power, but how much?  What tier are these lesser base and prestige classes?

WTF... Just say NO.

[Beltendu]

Let's say your DM likes the ToB classes, but thinks maneuvers and stances are the ick.  Surely, you lose a lot of power, but how much?  What tier are these lesser base and prestige classes?

WTF... Just say NO.

Yeah, this is totally begging for someone to come along and do a FTFY on Endarire with something along the lines of "Let's say your DM is a total fool ...."

My kneejerk reaction was something along the lines of "Tier 42", but 5 or 6 is probably closer to the mark ...   If he doesn't like the mechanic, then he should probably consider getting rid of Invocations at least, if not spell casting in general ...   If it's a fluff thing, they can always be reflavored.

[BowenSilverclaw]

Play a Paladin, Monk or Fighter

[borg286]

Must....resist...urge....to...defend...4e...
ah, there we go.
I simply meant the DM may have been against the encounter based powers instead of the common daily based "i win" spells.  Tob was the first major push towards encounter based refreshing resources.  Take a look at all the spells.  They either happen instantaneously, over a number of rounds, minutes, or hours.  Typically you just know that your spell that lasts 2 minutes lasts the entire encounter and will wear off by the time the next encounter comes up(encounter duration by implication), but you could be stingy about it and say that it only takes you 2 rounds to get to the next room full of zombies so that your buffs are still on, tediously measuring each second to calculate the exact time of duration.  Encounter based powers got rid of that bookkeeping, but introduced a new mechanic, encounter based powers that are refreshed for every encounter.  Wizards don't get their resources back, why should the tank?
He also may have been opposed to the "I tap my Mountain Hammer and deal 16 damage to your 6/6 troll" type cards instead of needing a physical tome for your wizard's spells.

As a side note: both 4e and 3.5 can be reduced down to someone rolls a d20 + X vs target DC, Success: do A, Fail: do B.  The difference from my point of view, from what you're saying, is that they put a line between the flavor text and then formated the attack.  If you focus on the formated "d20 + X vs target DC, Success: do A, Fail: do B" then the game does become bland and I too would be come pessimistic and highlight the 50% failure instead of the "Flame wreathes my shocking sword as I bear down on my foe.  <roll> I hope I hit."

[The_Mad_Linguist]

But they aren't encounter based.  They just take a very short time to refresh, and the default assumption is that there's some time taking place between encounters (otherwise they'd be the same encounter, not different ones).  If you really wanted to complain about pure encounter-based design, the factotum is it.

[zugschef]

actually i do understand if someone says that he/she doesn't want to use tob in his/her campaign. blade magic relies on an entirely different mechanic than everything else...

[PhaedrusXY]

actually i do understand if someone says that he/she doesn't want to use tob in his/her campaign. blade magic relies on an entirely different mechanic than everything else...

Yeah, but allowing the classes without the manuevers is like allowing the psychic warrior without psychic powers....

[BowenSilverclaw]

actually i do understand if someone says that he/she doesn't want to use tob in his/her campaign. blade magic relies on an entirely different mechanic than everything else...

Yeah, but allowing the classes without the manuevers is like allowing the psychic warrior without psychic powers....

Hence my comment of Paladin/Monk/Fighter

[Beltendu]

Perhaps.  It is the DM's game, after all.  But compared to spell casting, particularly high level, prepared spellcasting?  It's a walk in the park.  I find "it's yet another mechanic I need to think about" a rather weak excuse.  Of course, I find most of the reasons to not allow it weak excuses, in my opinion ...

And honestly, the mechanic isn't all THAT different than spell casting.  Maneuvers known is like spells known.  Readied is like Prepared.  Every Maneuver/spell has an action cost, and for that action you get to do something.  Some of those somethings are buffs (boosts are similar to some of the swift action spells, stances are not unlike buff spells), some are attacks (there's plenty of spells where you make an attack roll and then determine effect).  The recovery mechanic is different depending on the class (and if you have Adaptive Style), but that's a relatively minor difference as far as keeping track of things is concerned.  Unless you go nuts with the multiclassing and Mo9 stuff, you'll have way fewer maneuvers than just about any base caster will have spells.  I think my 19th level SS/Mo9 had ... almost 30 maneuvers?  Maybe?  (I could be misremembering).  So at worst we're talking comparable difficulty in keeping track of your resources to a Sorceror.  Waaaaay easier than the prepared casters, particularly as your spell list expands.  

My wife eventually gave up on her 12ish druid in one campaign because it ended up that most of the time it was me and the other powergamer at the table figuring out what spells she should have because she just couldn't keep up with it all.  She hasn't had a chance to actually play anything from ToB, but we're going to end up rebuilding her current Knight character into a Crusader (mostly, probably hold onto a few Knight levels to keep the GM happy, and we don't tend to play superoptimized anyway), and she's looking forward to it.

[Unbeliever]

Perhaps.  It is the DM's game, after all.  

I don't want to pick on you, but I vehemently disagree w/ this.

Also, it's not like the DM really needs to know how it works if he/she doesn't want to.  You need to have a rough idea, maybe, but it's pretty straightforward stuff and then let the player worry about it.

My wife eventually gave up on her 12ish druid in one campaign because it ended up that most of the time it was me and the other powergamer at the table figuring out what spells she should have because she just couldn't keep up with it all.  She hasn't had a chance to actually play anything from ToB, but we're going to end up rebuilding her current Knight character into a Crusader (mostly, probably hold onto a few Knight levels to keep the GM happy, and we don't tend to play superoptimized anyway), and she's looking forward to it.

This sort of thing is something that I've learned over the past few years, and I think it's really important.  The character has to be fun for the person playing it.  If the player isn't turned on by the (oft-bewildering) array of options that say a Conjurer or Druid has available each round, then those are going to be annoying.  That's part of what attracts me to things like the Warlock as a kind of "wizard substitute" -- you can play the concept of say a wizard, but w/ a different and perhaps less labor-intensive mechanic.  I don't think Warlocks quite do the job, but if they were beefed up a bit, maybe they and similar classes could.  Crusader might be a potentially similar take on a melee cleric.

[Illuminaire]

Let's say your DM likes the ToB classes, but thinks maneuvers and stances are the ick.  Surely, you lose a lot of power, but how much?  What tier are these lesser base and prestige classes?

Endarire, could you explain this further? In what way can he like the "classes" but not the class abilities that make up 80% of what they are?

And yes, as everyone else has said, there is no real reason to play a ToB class without maneuvers or stances... you're better off playing an ordinary Fighter. Which is to say, suck.

[Prime32]

If the mechanics confuse him, printing out the maneuver cards and "tapping" them should make things a lot easier.

[snakeman830]

If the mechanics confuse him, printing out the maneuver cards and "tapping" them should make things a lot easier.

These are even available on the WotC website.  Just search for "maneuver cards"