My Tome of Battle conversion for Pathfinder.


Homebrew and House Rules


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After searchings these boards I've failed to find any reworks of the DnD 3.5's Tome of Battle for Pathfinder. So, I've decided to rectify this glaring problem myself. The houserules I'm presenting to you are not a straightforward conversion of the ToB rules. It started as a set of 3.5 houserules/additions for the Tome of Battle, before I eventually converted it to the Pathfinder rules and it differs from the original quite significantly.

The Book of Nine Swords, while a step in the right direction, did not step nearly far enough. The offensive capability of martial adepts was insufficient to keep up with level-appropriate opposition unless you used the same old ubercharge tactics with a two-handed weapon. Means of making your charges work even a bit more reliably, so that they could not be easily stopped by just about anything, from difficult terrain to a line of mooks, were scant either. Offensive maneuvers, as a rule, did not scale at all, which not only contributed to above-mentioned insufficient offense, but also undermined the goal of giving martials more choice in combat - with low-level maneuvers swiftly falling behind the curve their arsenal of things that actually worked was bound to remain quite limited. Tome of Battle did provide some defensive options to compensate for great fragility of martial types in actual mid- to high-level DnD, but these were sparce and concentrated in a few disciplines. And of course it did next to nothing to make martial adepts contribute anything to the adventure outside of combat.

These houserules were initially intended to rectify these problems, by making most maneuvers level-scaling, removing "the exact same maneuver but stronger because of its higher level" chaff, introducing more defensive options, introducing at least some utility options in every discipline, giving some support to normally bad options, like sword-and-board or combat maneuvers, and generally making martial adepts stronger, so that you can play one and keep yourself largely level-appropriate just by picking obvious maneuver and feat choices. Homebrewed maneuvers from http://www.dnd-wiki.org served me as inspiration and examples in some points. I've also cut all the extraneous fluff whereever I could and even changed some overtly fancy and non-descriptive maneuver names. These documents are about crunch, use them with whatever fluff you want.

After switching to Pathfinder I converted the resulting homebrew to the new rules, while boosting martial adept classes some more to compensate for Pathfinder's overall power growth and for the fact that I couldn't be bothered to write a dozen archetypes for every class so players could pick the strongest one. After adding a couple of feats which were important for martial types in 3.5, the documents I'm presenting to you were born. It received some testing in actual play, as far as this could be done by a single group. I'd be glad to hear feedback on it, as long as it is not "but these classes are stronger than barbarian/fighter/monk/ranger!". ("But these classes are weaker than barbarian/fighter/monk/ranger!" would be given my utmost attention, of course.)

All that said, here's the link to my conversion documents (post it in a new window and remove the space break that opens in it every time, probably thank to the post format of this forum, to get access to the proper folder):
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7dNYAJTmMkIfmxUMllCZ1ZpZFlidEZCWWZtQkJjc VM1WkhUclVYOF9xWnB3LWFJRGlQVnc&authuser=0


Dreamscarred Press wrote a whole new line called Path of War that is supposed to be Pathfinder's spiritual successor to ToB:Bo9S. You can buy it on the Paizo store page if you'd like, although d20pfsrd.com is running a charity event right now to help a fellow gamer in need. You can even check it out for free on d20pfsrd.com right now.


Hooo, a conversion of The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic :o

More seriously, I've always been interested by this book when I GMed 3.5, but most of my players were lost to "the Hate" of the ToB.

I just took a quick look; The files formatting may gain to be transfered to googledoc (The Maneuver list, particularly, could really gain to have an automatic table of content).

I'll look at more in details it this evening (I'm at work right now) and give my though after that.

Also, as said by Calethos, see The Path of War. I Hadn't go around to play with it for now. I'm still having fun surprising my player with non 3rd party content.


Again, you are way too late and apparently didn't scour the boards hard enough. We already have a Pathfinderized Time of Battle. Its called Path of War.


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I've read Path of War, thanks to PFSRD. As far as my patience held. It seems to have many of the above-mentioned problems of the Tome of Battle, like non-scaling maneuvers, "I remember this from two maneuver levels ago, except then damage was lower by 3d6" maneuvers, and lack of non-combat utility. I was unable to evaluate it thoroughly, because just reading to the Stalker Arts and their interaction with the ki pool made me stop, before I fail the Will save against poking my eyes out with a pencil. Maybe Path of War classes can pull their weight and maybe they are even interesting, I don't even care because their interlocking resource management systems (the Stalker has maneuvers, and then he has the ki pool, and then he has a ton of abilities, including selectable ones, which interact with both, and these abilities range from piddly bonuses to incredibly important) make preparation casters seem simple to play.

I'm open to listening why I'm wrong from anyone who actually played or run a Path of War character, though.


I was the one who introduced ToB to my players during 3x days, and I opposed the party with a team of martial adepts - and they hated it right off the bat. Considering only 2 full casters in the party, 1 half caster, the rest full martials, it wasn't caster's against improved martial characters, rather how these classes seemed like they belonged to a different non-D&D game, as their class features were nothing like anything in D&D before it. They rejected the idea, and never created their own martial adepts.

Personally I never cared for the way the martial adepts pool of power points are constantly refreshed. If you compare this point pool to say a magus's arcane points, gunslinger grit, swashbuckler panache, a monk's ki point pool - point pools exist in PF, yet once you run out of points, they are gone until tomorrow. The idea that a set of classes exist with a point pool that never runs out, while not true for any other class makes it an outlier concept. And I agree that doesn't fit PF.

Once we started to play PF, although there's supposed to be backwards compatibility, none were interested in converted one from the other. D&D was considered the past, relegated to history, without a care of bringing it forward to our table.

So there was no interest for ToB when it was released, and absolutely no interest in looking at it again.

And nothing against Dreamscarred Press, since we have all their psionic books, at no point will we even look at Path of War. Its not for our table.


There are points of Path of War that I do not like, but in play I feel like it works for what it is.

But it seems like you don't like a lot about the general backbone of the maneuver system so I suggest something I've also picked up, Book of Martial Action. The basics of it is that you have maneuver-like techniques that you buy into using feats, the first one granting you a 'martial pool' based on BAB. You spend points to perform techniques and the pool refreshes if you take a short rest. If you're not keen on self-refreshing resources I'd avoid it or houserule it so that the pool does not refresh and lower the costs of the techniques. The lowered cost is important because they are really expensive. I also recommend part 2 of the series which add new techniques that are divided by style, some of them getting scaling bonuses based on how many maneuvers you have in the same style.

How these work out in play; I've only attempted with a fighter because it seemed like fighters are the only ones with enough feats to take advantage of them, but from what I observed the techniques are not so great early game but become staples as you level with the higher level techniques being 'emergency buttons' since they can get expensive the more advanced they are. This keeps going like this as you level where you become more willing to spend martial points on low to mid level techniques that you can do more often and save points for the higher level ones for big bads. Its also a simpler system so its easy to make homebrew techniques for.

One thing I forgot to add, Pathfinder Unchained is coming out soon which from the descriptions from convention panels is introducing what sounds like a very similar stamina pool for martials so it may be worth it to wait for that.


For PoW, if the reasons are "I didn't like what they did", " It isn't how I would do it" and "It isn't what I wanted from the concept". No one will be able to change your mind.

That being said, they did a good job and are expanding into a second book as we talk with more classes and schools/disciplines. So obviously it actually made an impact and sold well, which would indicate quite a number of people who were fans of ToB or new people who didn't know about it think it was worth their money. It was something that DSP took a chance on as it had a following pre PFRPG (similar to psionics) and was something PFRPG was never going to do ever essentially. It seems to have paid off for them, which makes me happy as they are a solid company who publish well thought out and tested material.


Malwing wrote:

There are points of Path of War that I do not like, but in play I feel like it works for what it is.

But it seems like you don't like a lot about the general backbone of the maneuver system

What gave you this idea, considering that I went through the trouble of homebrewing for it? The maneuver system was one of the best things that happened to DnD since the publication of 3.0.

I just don't like PoW's classes. For the reason I've already mentioned: stacking resource management systems on top of resource management systems, resulting in something that makes me mad when it not puts me to sleep. Oh, and the classes are pretty conceptually weak. One of the main reasons I switched to PF was having much easier time explaining to players in real-world terms what Alchemist, Oracle, Summoner or Witch are, than what Archivist, Beguiler, Favored Soul or Hexblade are. Here the situation is opposite, the three ToB classes represent wide and intuitively undestandable niches of "holy warrior", "martial artist" and "intelligent fighter"; for that matter you only need to add "musclebrained bruiser" and possibly "sneaky killer" here (although swordsage partially has the latter niche already) to cover the entire spectrum of possible inspirations for martial types. PoW classes, on the other hand, have narrow or/and vague niches, and you won't guess what they actually do in play from the description of these niches.

Their disciplines may be fine, though, if they give enough sheer power to compensate for their systematic flaws.

For that mater, it is not like their classes are not powerful. They just make me feel like "screw this, I'm off to generate a druid to scratch my martial itch, those are so much simpler to make and run".


The point of the classes not having specific pre intended roles is so that you as a player can make that decision and build into your concept. Instead of being pinned into something via built in class concept and having to go through hurdles to change that.

There are archetypes and ways to change your disciplines in PoW, so you can customize each class to your hearts content basically. By making their classes neutral, the player has more options if they want to make a certain concept.

Your looking at it in a fundamentally different point of view. You want the predefined concept from the sounds of it.


I do own PoW, but have only skimmed it. Other than the class with ki points, what resource managing do the others make you deal with?


Skylancer4 wrote:
The point of the classes not having specific pre intended roles is so that you as a player can make that decision and build into your concept.

Did you, like, look at the Path of War clasess at all? These classes do have specific pre-intended roles. In fact, they have bloody MMO roles taken straight from 4E. Take a look at PFSRD, it is right there in their writeups. So the rest of your post is an argument against them.

On the other hand broad archetypes like, again, "holy warrior", "kung-fu monk" or "intelligent warrior" do not have such roles. Because they are well, broad. Unless their mechanical writeup sucks, of course.


wraithstrike wrote:
I do own PoW, but have only skimmed it. Other than the class with ki points, what resource managing do the others make you deal with?

Let us look at the stalker.

-You have the maneuvers and the maneuver recharge system.
-You have the ki pool.
-And you have 10 possible stalker arts that interact with either ki pool or maneuver economy, and some of them turn yet more class features like Deadly Strike from near-useless to vital.

The same goes for other classes. They have at least one extra resource management system (armiger's mark, tactical presense, warleader) and some abilities that tinker with their maneuver use or recovery too. Now, they are not like monks, who have a ton of abilties which all suck. Path of War classes seem to be quite strong.

But.

The martial classes have a inherent problem since 3.0: they are supposed to be the classes for Bob the Noob, but in actual practice they are classes that only work for Richard the King of Minmaxing. Well, the Path of War classes are at least open about it. But this is still not a good thing. I, personally, consider himself above average at handling mechanics. I may play one of those classes as a PC, possibly, when stars are right. But there is no way in Abyss I'm ever generating or running one of those as an NPC. A wizard would be simpler to handle. Like, a lot simpler.

Now, Path of War disciplines (I've read more of them over the last two days) are pretty good, better in sheer killing power than even my homebrew in its current form, even with non-scaling saves, mostly non-scaling damage and the MAD problem (all save DCs work of the primary initiation attribute, in ToB at least some DCs worked off Strength). But they have clearly avoided the ToB's pitfall of simply setting the power level too low (save for a couple of maneuvers you needed to pick carefully). With plenty of maneuvers to choose from on every level in PoW, you easily can fairly easily avoid problematic ones and make your way to power through obvious choices. I'm considering allowing these disciplines as written in my games. But classes? No, thanks.


FatR wrote:
I don't even care because their interlocking resource management systems (the Stalker has maneuvers, and then he has the ki pool, and then he has a ton of abilities, including selectable ones, which interact with both, and these abilities range from piddly bonuses to incredibly important) make preparation casters seem simple to play.

Yeah... I'm not buying it.

The Stalker has maneuvers and a ki pool to track, and selectable talents.
The Magus has spells and an arcane pool to track, and selectable talents.
The Arcanist has spells and an arcane reservoir to track and selectable talents.
The Alchemist has extracts and bombs to track, plus the mutagen to track. Oh, and the selectable talents.
The Inquisitor has spells, judgements, rounds of bane and rounds of discern lies to track.

The complexity of the Path of War classes are pretty much par for the course for Pathfinder.

You can argue the conceptual bit until the cows come home, but the classes are well designed and can be used to cover a variety of combat roles.

Sounds like you just don't want to like Path of War, but I can tell you from experience it's a well-made book that plays excellently.


FatR wrote:
Skylancer4 wrote:
The point of the classes not having specific pre intended roles is so that you as a player can make that decision and build into your concept.

Did you, like, look at the Path of War clasess at all? These classes do have specific pre-intended roles. In fact, they have bloody MMO roles taken straight from 4E. Take a look at PFSRD, it is right there in their writeups. So the rest of your post is an argument against them.

On the other hand broad archetypes like, again, "holy warrior", "kung-fu monk" or "intelligent warrior" do not have such roles. Because they are well, broad. Unless their mechanical writeup sucks, of course.

Yes, I own it, I preordered it and have been paying attention since it was said it was stated to be in a work in progress. It is being worked on by people who made numerous popular homebrew disciplines for the original Bo9S and knew the original systems ins and outs, strengths and weaknesses, who also were very forward about their lack of experience with pfrpg and were very happy to work input into the final product. It was tested rather extensively by quite a few people and went through quite a few revisions, which they openly explained when asked about said changes. They did a good job with it. Better than some official Paizo products from the sounds of things on the boards as of late with the names and tones of threads about certain products.

Each of the classes have abilities, yes. But the entire feel of the class can be "played" with by swapping out the schools. Of course there is going to be a certain direction with each class, or else it ends up being stats thrown on a sheet of paper. The point I am trying to get through to you, is that "feel" of the base class can be changed. A good base class has just enough direction to not make it useless but enough flexibility to not make it the exact same thing every time it is used in a character build. You aren't pidgeon holed into the same thing every time you play it, multiple concepts are available using the same class as a skeleton.

But again, obviously this is something you aren't seeing or have no desire to. Which is fine, but goes back to me asking why should someone else try to convince you to use PoW when you obviously think your choices are better for whatever reason. There is no point.


Stark_ wrote:


The complexity of the Path of War classes are pretty much par for the course for Pathfinder.

And how second-wave PF classes doing the same thing makes that thing good?

Particularly when you still can play ye olde full casters (with the wizard easily snatching just about everythihg that is good about the arcanist for himself) and not only enjoy maximum power, but power coming in considerably simpler ways. Sure, you still have extra abilities to track, like hexes or whatever you snatch through the bloodline/mystery/school/whatever. But these generally are a static bonus or either/or proposition, replacing your normal actions. Take note that the only not-full-caster who had joined the big boys' club for the moment, the Summoner, is not overburdened with resource management systems - he just have spells, and spell-like abilties used in place of spells, and a pet he generates before a game session.

Now, the above-mentioned Stalker abilities are largely dynamic and interlocked (though it as a lot of static bonuses too, most of them piddly) to the point they make a high-level cleric buff array look simple (at least with the cleric you just usually write up a template of your normal adventuring buffs and a template of your max buffs, unless someone hits you with a Dispel you merely have three versions of your charlist, instead of tracking abilities round-to-round).


FatR wrote:
Stark_ wrote:


The complexity of the Path of War classes are pretty much par for the course for Pathfinder.

And that makes it good how?

Particularly when you still can play ye olde full casters (with the wizard easily snatching just about everythihg that is good about the arcanist for himself) and not only enjoy maximum power, but power coming in considerably simpler ways. Sure, you still have extra abilities to track, like hexes or whatever you snatch through the bloodline/mystery/school/whatever. But these generally are a static bonus or either/or proposition, replacing your normal actions.

Now, the above-mentioned Stalker abilities are largely dynamic and interlocked (though it as a lot of static bonuses too, most of them piddly).

I think you missed the point that was being made, not that complexity makes it better, but that the amount of complexity isn't really as much as you are making it out to be. PoW classes tend to be seen as powerful not because they are overpowered, but because they don't require the system mastery that several of the PFrpg classes NEED to be effective.

The caster debate is old, stop beating a dead horse. PoW makes playing a martial class interesting not just a list of feats and essentially a hack and slash dice rolling machine. That is enough to make people want to play one, which is the important part. Yes, casters are always on the top of the list, but the PoW classes let you do more in more interesting ways than the vast amount of PFrpg martial classes. That is what makes it "good".


Skylancer4 wrote:


The caster debate is old, stop beating a dead horse. PoW makes playing a martial class interesting not just a list of feats and essentially a hack and slash dice rolling machine.

Please enlighten me in what PoW ways maneuvers make a character more than a hack and slash machine.

I'll start with one: there are maneuvers that provide you with mobility that can be useful on adventure when combat music is not playing.

Anything else?

Doing damage, and imposing conditions and possibly letting you fly is well within the realm of what the druid's (and now also the oracle's and the sorcerer's...) pet can do. No, of course, the Path of War classes make you a way more interesting hack and slash machine. Your combat routine with them is more diverse than "I attack". Probably more diverse than the combat routine of your average original ToB character, where the difference between your best maneuvers and the rest was such that you generaly wanted to recharge after going through 1-2 strikes, unless you were a crusader - and you weren't because few people liked to be toyed with by random chance. But they still hack, and they still slash, and nothing else. If you are in this thread not just to hype Path of War you might have notices that I've tried to insert some non-combat utility stuff in every discipline precisely because of that (although not nearly enough of such stuff yet, coming up with ways of making swording useful outside of the usual contect is pretty hard).


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FatR wrote:
Skylancer4 wrote:


The caster debate is old, stop beating a dead horse. PoW makes playing a martial class interesting not just a list of feats and essentially a hack and slash dice rolling machine.

Please enlighten me in what PoW ways maneuvers make a character more than a hack and slash machine.

I'll start with one: there are maneuvers that provide you with mobility that can be useful on adventure when combat music is not playing.

Anything else?

Doing damage, and imposing conditions and possibly letting you fly is well within the realm of what the druid's (and now also the oracle's and the sorcerer's...) pet can do. No, of course, the Path of War classes make you a way more interesting hack and slash machine. Your combat routine with them is more diverse than "I attack". Probably more diverse than the combat routine of your average original ToB character, where the difference between your best maneuvers and the rest was such that you generaly wanted to recharge after going through 1-2 strikes, unless you were a crusader - and you weren't because few people liked to be toyed with by random chance. But they still hack, and they still slash, and nothing else. If you are in this thread not just to hype Path of War you might have notices that I've tried to insert some non-combat utility stuff in every discipline precisely because of that (although not nearly enough of such stuff yet, coming up with ways of making swording useful outside of the usual contect is pretty hard).

My point of contention has been, why ask people to convince you to use PoW when you obviously aren't interested in it and it isn't what YOU want from the concept, so why ask people to do what can't be done? It has a lot more to do with pointing other people who might be interested in the material (that you continue to bash) because yours is apparently superior, because you made it, and it does everything you think it should do. When in reality it is a pretty good product.


FatR wrote:


But they still hack, and they still slash, and nothing else.
FatR wrote:


Please enlighten me in what PoW ways maneuvers make a character more than a hack and slash machine.

Including movement modes, let's see what the path of war maneuvers can do...

-Flight
-Self healing
-Healing allies
-Condition removal
-Temporary condition negation
-Teleportation
-Detecting evil
-Rolling Perception checks twice and taking the better result
-Creating darkness
-Preventing teleportation
-Ignoring hardness
-Banishing creatures to another plane
-Going incorporeal
-Seeing invisible creatures
-Scent
-Freedom of movement
-Bonuses to skill checks
-Really large jumps
-Effectively delivering poison
-Gaining spell resistance
-Exorcism of possessed creatures
-Ignoring concealment

Yeah. I think there are a couple things that are useful outside of combat.

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