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

[Beltendu]

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.

I thought I'd left the bit about "but you can always compromise, walk, or make your own game" in there, but apparently it got lost in a pre-post edit ...   I agree with you, obviously, since it's not like you can have a game without players ...

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.

An excellent addendum to what I was saying.  In my wife's case, it's not that she COULDN'T hold all that detail in her head, it's that she doesn't WANT to in order to play a game.  She tends to ask me about gear upgrades in MMOs too ...

[SorO_Lost]

Do you want them in color or black & white?

Link.
I have it booked marked, and sigged if you count my link file.

[Endarire]

The notion sprang from

-One DM who thinks maneuvers like Divine Surge are too much.
-A casual player from another game who gets bored because she seemingly can't do anything in combat, yet dislikes complex characters.  She plays something like a Fighter.  The DM hasn't told us her character's official abilities.

[bearchucks]

Warlock for the casual player.  "You have five tricks you can do all day.  You have one major attack trick which is solid."  Your DM won't have a problem with it--the small list of tricks are easy to keep track of, and the skills all run around the same basic theme.  Simple and yet elegant.

[borg286]

The notion sprang from

-One DM who thinks maneuvers like Divine Surge are too much.
-A casual player from another game who gets bored because she seemingly can't do anything in combat, yet dislikes complex characters.  She plays something like a Fighter.  The DM hasn't told us her character's official abilities.

A vanilla fighter typically has no combat tricks other than, "I charge and swing my sword at the big guy."  If the others in her party are spellcasters and casting all these fun spells that debuff, control, devastate, and pack a whalloping 10d6 flaming balls of fury, then I completely understand.  

This power divergence is not solved by furthering the discrepancy in downgrading the fighter to an expert with a few bells and whistles, I mean maneuver-less warblade just because some power said +8d6(heck, compare this to other level 4 spells, the sucky fireball would deal 7d6 in a flippin huge area).  Either the rest of the team is also playing a game where damage doesn't go above 20, the DM is blind to the fact that control >>> damage and whips out the nerf bat when he sees more than 5 damage dice, or he doesn't understand how simple and balanced ToB can actually be, compared to the rest of Tier 1.

[Sinfire Titan]

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.

Tome of Battle's mechanic have more in common with the 4E Monster Manuals than they do with the PC classes.

[Saxony]

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

No, it is not the DM's game. It's the entire group's game.

I was required to say that.

[Illuminaire]

That's unfortunate Endarire. It sounds like the Warblade or Crusader was really made for players like her - a small list of Neat Things that cover more than just swinging a sword, while still being tough as nails. This may not be an option, but perhaps the DM can be convinced to simply ban the specific abilities he feels are too powerful.

There just aren't many choices for players who want "simple yet versatile" in DnD, and that list shrinks to almost nothing if you want a melee non-caster.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

There just aren't many choices for players who want "simple yet versatile" in DnD

Step 1: Cast telekinesis
Is the problem solved?
*No: You didn't use enough Telekinesis.  Goto Step1.
*Yes: Even if the problem isn't solved, I know that you still didn't use enough Telekinesis. Goto Step 1.


Anyway, I recently picked up a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons Diablo II books from a bargain bin, and although you'd still suffer from out-of-combat uselessness, their versions of the amazon/barbarian/paladin actually have interesting things to do other than full attack.

[Amechra]

Binder. That is all.

Or, alternatively, if you look in the rebuild compendium, there was an interesting version of the Paladin that was an invocation user...

[Unbeliever]

Binder. That is all.

I think Binder is really intimidating for people to look at.  Figuring out how the vestiges interact w/ each other can be a bit labor intensive at first, and I think people are intimidated by the potential, however remote and not particularly useful, of rearranging everything for the day. 

This may be weird, but I think Incarnum is probably a bit less intimidating initially, although it doesn't have the potential for a wizardy or spellcastery feel like some of the Vestiges do.

[Havok4]

I have always found that intimidation factor of the binder odd. You will never have more than 3 vestiges for the vast majority of a characters lifespan and most vestiges do not have more than 4-5 abilities. Compared to the huge number of spells available to any spellcaster and the required knowledge and cross referencing required to effectively play a spellcaster. Maybe it just looks odd to most people but it has always seemed much simpler than even the ToB classes.

[Amechra]

Might be from the delightful wrongness of a vestige's flavor.

I don't know about you, but I found some of the vestige fluff to be just subtly "wrong" enough that I actually got mad at my DM for altering the flavor, because it took a bit away from playing the class (he made them silly! SILLY, I tell you!)

The Writers must have taken 20 on their Craft: Fluff check.

So, yeah, there is no real reason for mechanical intimidation.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

The organization of the book is a pretty poor, to be fair. 

[Unbeliever]

So, yeah, there is no real reason for mechanical intimidation.

Here's the issue.  How do I know that a given Warlock invocation or Soulmeld is pretty good?  I read a couple of paragraphs and I grok its effects.  The vestiges are larger blocks of abilities, and it's not always obvious how they synergize. 

I'm comfortable w/ them and all of D&D's funky magic systems.  But, it took me a while to get so.  Seriously, did everyone here just automatically grok the Binder when ToM came out?  I somehow find that hard to believe given the threads on 339 about it at the time. 

[Sinfire Titan]

So, yeah, there is no real reason for mechanical intimidation.

Here's the issue.  How do I know that a given Warlock invocation or Soulmeld is pretty good?  I read a couple of paragraphs and I grok its effects.  The vestiges are larger blocks of abilities, and it's not always obvious how they synergize.

That's what CO is for. We figure it out for the less experienced players.

Side note: I hate how "O" and "P" are right next to each other on the keyboard...

[Soda]

That's what CO is for. We figure it out for the less experienced players.

Side note: I hate how "O" and "P" are right next to each other on the keyboard...

lololo

[Amechra]

So, yeah, there is no real reason for mechanical intimidation.

Here's the issue.  How do I know that a given Warlock invocation or Soulmeld is pretty good?  I read a couple of paragraphs and I grok its effects.  The vestiges are larger blocks of abilities, and it's not always obvious how they synergize. 

I'm comfortable w/ them and all of D&D's funky magic systems.  But, it took me a while to get so.  Seriously, did everyone here just automatically grok the Binder when ToM came out?  I somehow find that hard to believe given the threads on 339 about it at the time. 

I actually had little problem with it when I first read it.

For the weirdest reason, though, I still don't completely grok all the shadowmagic rules.

My brain is... weird, you could say.

Also, OT, but is there a dragon somewhere that has binding instead of spellcasting? Because that would be sweet to fight.

[Unbeliever]

...
That's what CO is for. We figure it out for the less experienced players.
...

+1 on this.  I think it's one of its great purposes.