Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords [Hardcover]

This is an interesting and potentially exciting supplement, but there are so many new rules, you'll need a copy of the book for yourself and your GM. This is one of those supplements where the crunchy bits are so extensive you can't just drop it into an existing game and run with it.

Likewise, the crunchy bits are tightly intertwined and have new rules systems meaning that the GM and the player will need to understand them. Unlike many of the other splat books, this one would be hard to pick and choose - you can't just grab a couple of feats and go, you and your GM will need to understand the rules well.

The system includes three new base classes which are really there to allow you to use the new combat rules. The classes represent three different approaches to extreme combat training.

The book offers about 30 new feats including a large number of tactical feats. The much longer rules section is the maneuvers and stances. Many of the feats either have maneuvers or class levels as prerequisites, meaning you can't just drop them on your favorite fighters.

The maneuvers and stances are the core of the book. They are organized into 9 schools each of which has a different focus. These special tricks allow you to gain advantages in combat. The advantages range from simple bonuses to hit or damage to the ability to take extraordinary actions or create what would normally be considered magical effects.

Because some of these tricks are quite powerful, there is some bookkeeping involved in using them. The suggestion in the rulebook of using tokens (or index cards) to track them is perfect and should probably be considered mandatory.

Overall, this is a great book and a great expansion. The extra bang for fighters is very welcome and allows you to create some very popular cinematic and fiction archetypes that you just can't get with the conventional rules. The extra complexity is worth it, but you definitely need to make sure that you read the rules thoroughly before starting to play or adding this to your campaign.

I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about this product when I first heard about it. I generally like my games to have a lower power level, and I haven't bought many "splatbooks" in the past. Plus, over the top fighting styles usually don't excite me. However, as I read some of the promotional material my interest started to peak.

I knew from my gaming experiences that the spell casting classes tended to outclass the physical combatants. Not only did they get much more powerful, but they had a more interesting options. I don't mind playing a weak character (I played a half-orc diviner in one campaign) , but the game is simply not fun when you are unable to contribute to the fights as often happens with physical fighters at high levels.

The book of nine-swords changes this with a dynamic new system of "maneuvers", special fighter abilities that are superficially similar to spells. The book introduces three new base classes collectively known as Martial Adepts: the crusader, swords sage, and warblade that utilize these techniques. The game does this amazingly well and the system is easy to learn (especially if you keep track of the maneuvers on note-cards as the book recommends).

A martial adept can ready a few manuvers at the beginning of each battle and as he uses them, they go away. However, unlike a spell caster, he doesn't need to get a full nights rest to recover his powers - just a few minutes of practice / recovery time. This allows the martial adept to keep the durability that fighters are supposed to have over mages. The maneuvers themselves are very well done - they all have flavor text telling you exactly what they look like in battle and even the more fantastic ones them sound more exciting and flashy then just cheesy.

The martial adept classes give a strong alternative to traditional spell casters without taking their place. High level maneuvers are impressive but not as flexible or powerful as equivalent spells. At the same time, they make front line fighting dynamic and exciting. The book even enhances the power of existing characters, providing several feats that allow anyone to learn a maneuver or two. I would highly recommend this book, its approach is brand new and breaths new life into the D&D combat system.

After a summer of what I've considered a series of poor releases, this book has been the shining beacon to look forward to for D&D campaigns. The supplement is almost entirely self-contained, much like the previous Tome of Magic, in that very few pieces of the book are useful to any characters that are not built directly from the three base classes presented therein. This is probably the largest drawback of the book, aside from the potential that like many D&D supplements, we may see little more from WotC on the subject of Martial Disciplines and Maneuvers in the future.

The highlights of the book are the three new base classes: Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade. The Crusader has the most complicated system as far as having maneuvers available to him, but its class abilities make it a formidable character option for front-line offense. Swordsages are your "Wizards" of the Tome of Battle, as they have the most options in terms of maneuvers known and disciplines available. Warblades are the closest to traditional fighters, and would be a great class for someone who likes fighter-types but with a little more pizzazz.

You've got nine Martial Disciplines, each with a unique flavor. Desert Wind focuses on mobility and fire damage, Tiger Claw focuses on animalistic movements and attacks, Setting Sun emphasizes throws and trips in a very Judo-like fashion, as a few examples. Each discipline has about 20-30 maneuvers of differing levels, some of which get very powerful. The maneuvers include strikes, boosts, counters, and stances. Strikes are like one-hit spell effects, boosts are temporary bonuses to some attribute, counters are immediate actions that can be used, and stances are lasting effects that only end when you change stances or altogether stop that stance. The advanced maneuvers tend to look very overpowered, but when compared with spellcasters of equivalent levels, they are very much on par. Remember, 20th level spellcasters have a bevy of instant-kill spells at their disposal, 20th level Psions can create their own planes of existence, so being able to deal +100 damage on a single strike as a 20th level Warblade shouldn't be too out of line.

The feats and prestige classes are almost entirely self-contained. Most feats require some knowledge of a martial discipline; all of the tactical feats do. A few prestige classes require caster level prerequisites (Jade Phoenix Mage) or undead turning capabilities (Ruby Knight Vindicator).

As for the Nine Blades themselves, these are Weapons of Legacy that follows the rules of the book of the same name. It is nice to see a little revisit to that text, which I had assumed would quickly fall by the wayside.

In brief, this book is wonderful if you're running a low-magic campaign with an emphasis on a more tactical combat. Even in a high-magic setting, this gives fighter types more flavor in their motions, so "advance, full-attack, full-attack" isn't the only thing they have available. It's not for everyone, but I'm certainly going to make good use of it in my campaigns.

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