FatR's page

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

I cannot say, that I'm a big fan of vanilla 3.5 ruleset (it only becomes a great game for me with addition of supplements and net guides, that alleviate the need to memorize these supplements). However, by now, after watching discussion on these forums for a time (and participating briefly here and there) I have decided not to switch Pathfinder. There are main reasons for that:

1)Backwards compatibility or, more accurately, lack of it. Let me tell my opinion straight. At this point, any talk of backward compatibility with 3.X is ridiculous sham. If I cannot take a 3.X monster or adventure and run it under Pathfinder on the fly, the game is not backwards compatible. And I cannot. Yeah, most skills can be switched on the fly, because the new skills are produced by merging the 3.X ones. Except for (pun unintended), the Fly skill, which frankly is one of those fifth wheels that killed my interest in the game. Exactly what was so unworkable in 3.5 system for flight. Then there is CMB. Not only it is calculated by different formula than old grapple and trip modifiers (which were the only combat maneuver modifiers that did matter), this formula nerfs combat maneuvers in general, delivering solid kick to the nuts to all monsters who were depending on them. Then there is the fact, that all characters now have more feats. Why, Paizo, why? Wouldn't it have been better to make crap core feats not-crap, instead of invalidating almost every classed 3.X NPC writeup ever at the same time causing enormous upheaval in balance of core + supplements games (making some feat-intensive builds, such as giga-damage spellcasters so much easier to achieve, for example)? Then, there is bigger HPs for everyone. Well, at least this is relatively easy to adjust and, frankly, changing Hit Die for some classes is actually a reasonable change. However, HPs lead me to my next big problem:
2)Too much 4theditionitis. To be frank, I hate 4E. Any iteration of 3.X rules that I'm willing to buy should, at the very least, stay as far away from it as 3.5 is. Extra HPs at the first level (at least strongly suggested)? Thanks a lot, now I know, that running fragile characters that must actually think twice before rushing into danger and be reasonably cautious around any tough-looking thug is wrong. It wasn't like I could start characters at 3rd level in 3.X, if I wanted them to kick ass from the get go. No Save or Dies? [Insert your favorite expletive here], is there any reason for these rules except to remove interesting tactical choices and reward dumb players that cannot be bothered to obtain easily-available protections against common SoDs? Maybe some of them, such as Flesh to Stone were too damn annoying for their level, thanks to lack of such protections, but, ironically, they remain in PBeta.
3)Tons of minor changes, that add nothing to the game, add some fairly insignificant benefits, not worth the effort of relearning the rules, or mess with things that actually worked. Most feat, spell and magic item changes fall right into this category. Perhaps I wouldn't have been turned off by them, if all of these changes were well thought-out and worked toward some goal I can approve. They aren't. Melee feat nerfs, I'm looking at you!
4)On the other hand, none of major issues seem to be fixed. Spellcasters still win DnD at high levels (without suffering so much at low levels) and actually win harder as soon as you add supplements, because melees still suck, and moreover, optimizing them now is actually harder (thanks a lot for above-mentioned melee nerfs), while optimizing spellcasters is easier (extra feats and free metamagic sure don't matter much... except they do). Lots and lots of buffs are still integral to the mid-high level game (because, well, melees still suck on their own). Wealth is still directly linked to power, leading to incredible variety of abuses. Options that were well-known traps in 3.5 (fencing, sword and board, Evocation school, monks, to name a few examples) mostly remain traps - paladin is the only exception that comes to mind. Not even all of the stuff that provably breaks campaigns in half is fixed. You can still chain-bind outsiders or mine planes for infinite wealth and you can still scry & fry (well, the latter can be countered by a prepared DM, but, in my opinion, it narrows the range of potential opposition too early and too much).
5)Finally, Pathfinder doesn't seem to offer any major benefits or revolutionary breakthroughs to make itself interesting, despite of above-mentioned failures. I would have been interested in Pathfinder, if it, for example, admitted the actual power scale of DnD (which is pretty friggin' steep, with competent characters above level 10th or so being able to do stuff that puts all but the most overpowered and godlike fantasy heroes to shame) and made appropriate adjustments for the expected playstyle, scale of abilities for all classes and the setting. But for now Pathfinder simply does not offer any significant pros to balance it cons. It is not the game that I can DM without houserules, it is not truly backwards compatible, and it is not noticeably better that my own houserules, most of the houserule sets that I can find on the net, or than 3.5+supplements without a handful of obvious gamebreakers (some of which still are present in PBeta).

To summarize, I might still be buying some of Pathfinder material, such as APs or monster books, because I like to read them and they can be mined for ideas, but actual conversion to Pathfinder rules is, at this point, out of the question. After watching the boards, I lost practically all hope for any positive changes between PBeta and the final version.

I don't know, whether this was discussed earlier, but, upon reading the first three adventures of the Second Darkness AP, I cannot help, but notice, that, besides them being too short, thanks to devoting parts of the softcovers to sidequets, they seem unsatifsyingly easy. As in, way, way less lethal, than previous APs. So far, I have failed to notice any encounters, that (barring very optimized PCs) are likely to brutally TPK you, if you're stupid enough to run into them headlong, instead of using a smart approach (such as Malfeshnekor; attacking Aldern with exhausted party; walking through Xanesha's front door; or charging in the middle of fort Rannik). Enemies also are much weaker in general. Just look at the end bosses of second or third adventures in RotRL and CotCT APs or compare Thistletop with the final catacombs in the "Shadow in the Sky". I don't know about everyone else, but I'm disappointed. Is reducing the difficulty for this AP a deliberate decision? Or, maybe, I'm missing some mechanical details?