Path of War vs Tome of Battle Power Levels

[DungeonmasterCal]

Please, before I go any further, I don't want this thread (if it goes anywhere) to degenerate into a fight about how OP martial maneuvers are or unfair they are or how they finally give martials fun things.... I truly don't and will ask the thread be locked if it does.

All I'm concerned about is this: How well do the Path of War maneuvers stack up against the Tome of Battle maneuvers power wise and how easy or hard is it to bring the the Path of War and Tome of Battle in line with each other, either by strengthening or weakening its maneuvers to allow them to be used as supplements to the Path of War rules. I think the Tome of Battle had some great disciplines and would like to be able to add at least some of them to the lists of those offered in the Path of War, if possible.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

[Deranged_Maniac_Ben]

Having used them together, my observations have been
1. The Maneuvers themselves are pretty close. On a rare occasion PoW maneuvers reference CMB/CMD, which ToB maneuvers don't (obviously). Otherwise they mostly play nice together.
2. The classes don't, though. ToB classes are defined almost entirely by what maneuvers they have. PoW classes have a lot more class features on top of maneuvers. The class features aren't huge (they aren't nearly as game-changing, as say, sorcerer bloodlines), but they are there to bring the PoW classes more in line with the general power-boost non-martial classes got in Pathfinder. If you are looking to use PoW maneuvers/disciplines in 3.5 (as my group does), what I've found to be the easiest is to just give the ToB classes access to some PoW disciplines (you're probably safe giving the warblade all warder disciplines, and the swordsage all stalker disciplines. Then decide which disciplines you think are appropriate for the crusader). If, on the other hand, you plan on using ToB maneuvers in a pathfinder game, you'll want to either
a)divvy up the ToB disciplines among the PoW classes, and ignore the ToB classes, or
b)give extra buffs/class features to the ToB classes.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Thanks! I wasn't looking to transfer the ToB classes over, just the maneuvers. I think that with the current PoW classes (5 and one more on the way, I believe) that is plenty. So divvying up the disciplines among the PoW classes would the route I'd go.

[Sundakan]

There's already kinda too many Disciplines as well, so beware of swamping the players with options.

Currently (including the Playtest ones for Zealot coming soon) there are 20 Disciplines, divvied up as such:

Stalker: Broken Blade, Solar Wind, Steel Serpent, Veiled Moon, Thrashing Dragon, and Riven Hourglass OR Tempest Gale (and Shattered Mirror and Cursed razor added to archetypes)

Warder: Broken Blade, Golden Lon, Iron Tortoise, Primal Fury, and either Eternal Guardian or Piercing Thunder (plus Riven Hourglass and TEmpest Gale for archetypes)

Warlord: Golden Lion, Primal Fury, Scarlet Throne, Thrashing Dragon, Solar Wind, and either Piercing Thunder or Tempest Gale (plus Riven Hourglass and Eternal Guardian via archetypes)

The new classes have access to 4-5 each as well. And of course Silver Crane and Black Seraph available to anyone with a Trait or Martial Tradition.

There's a high probability that there isn't a niche left for the Tome of Battle stuff to fill, though admittedly I've never looked at it.

[hiiamtom]

The popularity of PoW has hurt it a bit since they are adding a lot of disciplines and not just adding maneuvers to existing ones.

I love PoW, but have almost no ToB experience. I think the advances past the initial supplement have been been pushing it a bit more, but nothing I would come close to calling broken - and certainly not something I wouldn't already have to adjust for compared to optimized combat focused characters.

[Castilonium]

ToB and PoW disciplines play together well. But PoW strikes often do more damage than ToB strikes, probably because enemies in 3.5e had less HP compared to PF enemies. You could look at the damage numbers of the PoW strikes to get a ballpark of how much damage they generally do at each maneuver level, and raise the ToB strikes to match.

[Orthos]

Seconding pretty much everything said thus far. The two play together nicely and there's little reason they can't overlap, but there are noticeable differences due to the basic design adjustments during the edition jump.

[DungeonmasterCal]

I don't think I'd allow every ToB discipline, but Shadow Hand, Diamond Mind, and Setting Sun are the ones which come to mind when I think of the ones I'd add.

[Vanykrye]

Also remember references to Concentration in ToB were to the 3.5 skill (Diamond Mind in particular). You'll want to adjust accordingly for the PF mechanic.

[Orthos]

Yep. I've usually swapped it over to Autohypnosis, but if you don't use Dreamscarred's Psionics I imagine you don't use that skill.

[DungeonmasterCal]

I do use DSP's Psionics. The party face in my current campaign is a Telepath Psion.

[DungeonmasterCal]

hiiamtom wrote:

The popularity of PoW has hurt it a bit since they are adding a lot of disciplines and not just adding maneuvers to existing ones.

Yeah, I'd like to see new maneuvers, as well.